The M4 corridor is home to a large number of high tech companies and has one of the largest digital tech workforces and some of the highest salaries in the country. The area runs from London to South Wales and links Slough, Bracknell, Maidenhead, Reading, Newbury, Swindon, Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Swansea.

The Thames Valley section of the M4 corridor has been named the UK’s Silicon Valley and covers the Berkshire towns from Sough to Newbury, including Reading and Bracknell. This area was the first to see tech investment and many large high tech companies set up home here in the 80’s and 90’s. It is also home to the UK’s most visible wind turbine adjacent to the M4 on the Green Park business park.

Tech Nation has identified 30 major tech clusters in the UK with the Reading and Bracknell cluster named as the largest cluster of digital businesses outside London.

Reading Tech Cluster

The area around Reading is the home of digital businesses which contribute over £13.6bn in annual turnover to the British tech economy and over 45,000 digital jobs.

Large tech multinationals established here include: Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Ericsson and Huawei . In more recent years a number of high growth UK tech startups have also set up home in and around Reading: DataSift, Osirium, Altitude Angel, VirtualStock, Snyk.

Bristol and Bath

Investment has gradually spread from the eastern end of the M4 corridor westwards since Microsoft first came to Reading in 1980s.

In the west the Bristol and Bath tech cluster has seen considerable growth in recent years. Tech giants based here include Nokia, Amazon and Sony, together with high-growth startups spanning a wide range of sectors from Cleantech to biotech and deep tech: Rovco, Focal Point Positioning, Graphcore, Ultraleap.

London

However, the Reading tech cluster continues to trail behind London which attracts most of the investment, talent and media coverage in the South East. London’s tech cluster contributes £156bn in annual turnover, over 589,730 digital jobs and £6.5bn of investment in 2020, according to the ONS.

Richard Wheeler Associates is an IT recruitment consultancy that partners with fast growing IT and digital companies in Reading, Bracknell, London and the M4 corridor / Thames Valley area to hire highly skilled, specialist people who can make real quantifiable difference.