Silicon Fen is the name given to the Cambridge Cluster by analogy with Silicon Valley in California , and because of the large area of drained fenland to the north of Cambridge . The name is also a meant to rhyme with Silicon Glen, a pre-existing high-tech enclave in Scotland.

The companies in the Silicon Fen are mostly small companies (as few as three people, in some cases) grouped in sectors such as computer-aided design. Over time the number of companies has grown; it has not proved easy to count them, but recent estimates have placed the number anywhere between 1,000 and 3,500 companies. They are spread over an area defined perhaps by the CB postcode (which is highly sought after), or more generously in an area bounded by Ely-Newmarket-Saffron Walden-Royston-St. Neots-Huntingdon.

In February 2006, the Judge Business School reported estimates that suggested that at that time, there were around 250 active startups directly linked to the University of Cambridge, valued at around US$6 billion.

Only a tiny proportion of these companies have so far grown into multinationals such as ARM and Autonomy Corporation which are the most obvious examples; recently CSR has also seen rapid growth due to the uptake of Bluetooth.

Cambridge ’s traditional strengths in hard innovations like semiconductors and biotech make the Cambridge Cluster the leading IT Hardware cluster outside of Israel, and the third-most important area for Healthcare & Life Sciences investment.

Cambridge’s location, close to Stansted Airport and London, the low incidence of social problems such as crime and hard drug use and the University of Cambridge reputation, works as an unlimited source of world-class research and talented personnel for the region’s companies.

Cambridge Cluster was at the 1^st position in terms of IT Hardware European (exc. Israel) institutional capital committed, as of September 2007, the Cambridge Cluster contains 108 publicly disclosed active venture backed companies. Between them, these companies have over £600m of institutional capital committed, just under 10% of the UK total. This makes the Silicon Fen is the second largest venture capital market in the world, after Silicon Valley .

Angel funding, with three main players, NW Brown, Cambridge Capital Group and Cambridge Angels, focuses on investment in novelty technology sectors that characterise the Cambridge cluster. These technology sectors are attractive to investor because they are scaleable patent protected and so are more likely to be able to deliver returns within a short timeframe and lower risk.

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