One of Scotland’s biggest and most popular pitching events for high growth companies will not go ahead this year.

EIE, which has helped more than 540 companies raise in excess of £1.1 billion since 2008, is taking a year off.

The programme is delivered by The Bayes Centre, the University of Edinburgh’s innovation hub for data science and artificial intelligence.

It bills itself as offering the most advanced start-ups and scale-ups the opportunity to undergo an intensive programme to make them investor ready.

It culminates in a technology investor showcase, bringing together a select cohort of companies with international backers.

Some of Scotland’s best-known tech start-ups such as PureLifi, Roslin Technologies, Earthbox, Novosound and Codeplay – which was acquired by Intel – are among EIE’s alumni.

Danny Helson, who is head of EIE programme delivery & investor relations, told Daily Business: “EIE is on hold for this year. It’s been held online since the lockdown, and we want to get back to having it as a live event.”

He offered no further detail on why it is not being held online this year, but investors have become more cautious about investment in technology as values have fallen.

A total of £2.9bn was invested into UK firms in the opening three months of the year, the lowest raised in the opening quarter of a year since 2020, according to big four firm KPMG’s Venture Pulse report.

It represents a sharp fall from the £8.2bn raised in the first quarter of 2021 and £12.3bn raised in the first quarter of last year, when low interest rates fuelled a boom in deals.