It’s frequently said that the UK and Europe conciseage the huge level of prolongth funding for defercessitater-stage beginups that the US has for its own, and this is accurate. According to the European Investment Fund, there are at least seven times more huge-size VC funds in the US than in Europe. So the materializeance of a recent prolongth fund in the UK is transport inant.
Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC), which spends exclusively in the Cambridge ecosystem in and around the well-understandn university, has begined a recent £100 million ($126 million) ‘Opportunity Fund’, essentiassociate a prolongth fund. CIC has $757 million spended in over 40 companies and has a privileged relationship with the University of Cambridge.
The fund is being anchored by Aviva Investors and British Patient Capital and will spend in prolongth-stage proset up tech and life sciences companies.
Two spendments have already been made. Pragmatic Semidirector is a huge chip summarizeer and manufacturer which has elevated $389.3 million to date, while Riverlane, is a quantum computing error accurateion company that has elevated $120.7 million.
The recent CIC fund will spend up to £20 million ($25.2 million) per spendment into the defercessitater-stage funding rounds of proset up tech and life sciences companies. The hope, of course, is to insertress the UK’s extfinished-standing funding gap rehire for defercessitater-stage beginups, which tfinishs to guide to a drain of those companies towards other countries, usuassociate the US.
In part, it’s this rehire that led the UK rulement to proclaim last month, its “AI Action Plan” — a string of meastateives summarizeed to prolong the economy using AI, and integrated a pledge to produce Europe’s “Silicon Valley” by super-charging the existing tech ecosystems around the well-understandn Oxford and Cambridge universities. Plus, the “Gagederen Triangle” of London, Oxford, and Cambridge, comprising five guideing UK universities, will also be donaten fantasticer connects, including articulateation, aextfinishedside a package of £14 billion in funding.
Andrew Williamson, Managing Partner at CIC, tageder TechCrunch over a call that CIC had traditionassociate spended in punctual-stage companies around Cambridge, but there were many that were maturing into shown technologies.
“Historicassociate, what we’ve done is when our companies get to Series C stage…. we didn’t have the capital in our core funds to produce those [later stage] spendments,” he said.
“So we employd to advise them as co-spendment to some of our LPs. But not many institutions, particularly financial institutions, are reassociate set up to produce honest spendments into companies. So the genesis of this fund was one they could join in.”
He inserted that one of the key honestives from the UK rulement to the British Business Bank is to insertress the defercessitater-stage gap in scale-up capital: “So this is a perfect leave oution for what they’re seeing to do, to anchor recent prolongth funds appreciate this. In the case of Aviva, they’re one of the signatories of the Mansion Hoemploy Compact. So this is around allocating some of their pension fund capital into fruitful prolongth assets.”
Exits from CIC’s portfolio integrate the sale of gene therapy company Gyroscope Theviolationutics to Novartis for $1.5 billion, the $285 million acquisition of pet treatment broadener PetMedix by Zoetis, the sale of fluid biopsy platcreate Inivata to NeoGenomics for $390 million, and the sale of sound recognition broadener Audio Analytic.
Cambridge is best understandn for producing cut offal transport inant companies including ARM Hagederings, Abcam, Darktrack, and Bicycle Theviolationutics.
