Help Shape the 2026 Global Innovation Index
We welcome submissions from universities to help improve our mapping of academic
spinouts and the startups created from university research.
By contributing verified information on your institution’s spinouts and technology
transfer outcomes, you help improve the global accuracy of this data and ensure
your university is correctly reflected in international rankings, benchmarking,
and analysis.
Trusted by Leading Universities Worldwide
We collaborate with leading universities and researchers around the globe to strengthen the innovation ecosystem.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are you considering as a spinout?
Companies that are started from a technology developed in a university or research centre.
In many cases, the university/research centre may hold equity in the company, but that is not required to be considered a spinout. The university/research centre might have agreements not including equity, such as royalty-only, or in which, for a combination of reasons, there is no formal agreement, but still there is a fundamental link to the institute. We still consider those cases as spinouts. This is often the case in countries with professor privilege, such as Sweden.
Our focus is on showcasing and benchmarking the value created by universities and research centres (societal value), not how much money these institutes are directly creating from commercialisation.
We don’t count as spinout companies those not born from university research that might have been supported, accelerated, or licensed some technology that is not their core starting IP.
Dealroom highly values institutions’ inputs but reserves the right to sanity-check them and make judgment calls. Dealroom features closed spinouts and other companies to keep track og historical trends.
What info do you need?
We just need the company’s name and an identifier (e.g., website, company registration number, LinkedIn). No additional information about the sector, status, funding, or other details is required.
What value do countries/universities get out of collaborating with Dealroom on this?
Your collaboration will enable us to better capture and highlight the startups and spinouts emerging from your country/institution. Doing so increases visibility and strengthens your country/university’s reputation within the global tech and innovation ecosystem, and ensures it will be accurately represented in the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2026 by WIPO, which Dealroom will be supporting with startups and spinouts data.
It also enables you to reliably report on your impact (number of startups that have achieved certain milestones, total amount of funding raised and combined enterprise value created, jobs created…) and benchmark with your peers.
What happens when spinouts are acquired? Do you consider the acquirer as a spinout sometimes?
No, if a spinout from a university is acquired by another company, the acquirer is not considered a spinout from the university, even if shares are part of the acquisition deal. This is because we consider spinouts if they come from the academic research in that institution, not just if the institution has equity somehow.
Can a spinout be from two different universities?
Yes, there are many cases in which spinouts emerge from joint research from different institutes, at times also from different countries. We assess if the link is strong enough to all the various institutions, and if so, they are considered spinouts from more than one. Our assessment of this can differ from the one self-proclaimed by the university.