It is often said that the UK and Europe lack a large level of growth capital for late startups that the US has its own. This is the right thing to do. According to the European Investment Fund, there are at least seven times more large European VC funds in the US. Therefore, the emergence of new growth funds in the UK is important.
Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC), which invests only in famous universities and its surrounding Cambridge ecosystems, has launched a new £100 million ($126 million) “Challenge Fund,” essentially a growth fund. . CIC has invested $757 million in more than 40 companies and has privileged ties with Cambridge University.
The fund is fixed by Aviva investors and UK patient capital and will invest in growth-stage Deep Tech and Life Sciences companies.
Two investments have already been made. Pragmatic Semiconductor is a large chip designer and manufacturer that has raised $389.3 million to date, and Riverlane is a quantum computing error correction company that has raised $120.7 million.
The new CIC fund will invest up to £20 million ($25.2 million) per investment in late funding rounds for deep technology and life science companies. The hope, of course, is to address the issue of the UK’s longstanding funding gap. This tends to lead to the outflow of those companies usually towards the US, other countries and other countries.
Partly this is the issue that led the UK government to announce its “AI Action Plan” last month. This is a series of measures designed to grow the economy using AI, including the pledge to build Europe’s “Silicon Valley” through a supercharger. The existing technological ecosystems around the famous Oxford University and Cambridge University. Additionally, the “Golden Triangle” in London, Oxford and Cambridge, which consists of five major UK universities, will also receive a larger link, including transportation, and funded £14 billion.
CIC’s managing partner Andrew Williamson told TechCrunch over the phone that CIC had traditionally invested in early-stage companies around Cambridge, but he was often matured with proven technology.
“Historically, what we did was when we reached the Series C stage… We didn’t have capital in the core funds to make them. [later stage] Investment,” he said.
“So we were offering them as co-investments in some of the LPS. But many institutions, especially financial institutions, have not actually been established to make direct investments in companies. Therefore, the origin of this fund was something they could participate in.”
He added that one of the key directives from the UK government to the UK Business Bank is to address the later gaps in scale-up capital. Such a growth fund. In the case of Aviva, they are one of the signers of the Mansion House Compact. Therefore, this is to allocate a portion of their pension fund capital to productive growth assets. ”
Exits from CIC’s portfolio include $1.5 billion sale to Novartis of gene therapy company Gyroscope Therapeutics, $285 million acquisition of PET therapy developer PetMedix by Zoetis, and liquid biopsy platform Inivata’s NeogenicA This includes $390 million sales and sound recognition sales. Developer Audio Analysis.
Cambridge is best known for producing several important companies, including ARM Holdings, Abcam, Darktrace and Bicycle Therapeutics.
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