It is often said that the United Kingdom and Europe do not have the huge level of growth funding for US for new US businesses for their own, and this is right. According to the European Investment Fund, there are at least seven times more Larger VC funds in the US than in Europe. Thus, the appearance of a new UK development fund is important.
Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC), which invests exclusively in the Cambridge ecosystem inside and around the famous university, launched a new “Opportuncture Fund” of £ 100m ($ 126 million), essentially a development fund. CIC has invested $ 757 million in more than 40 companies and has a privileged relationship with the University of Cambridge.
The fund is anchored by Aviva investors and the British capital of patients and will invest in Deep Tech and Life Sciences.
Two investments have already been made. Semiconductor It is a large chip designer and manufacturer that has raised $ 389.3 million to date while PotalanIt is a quantum 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 later funding rounds of deep technology and life science companies. Hope, of course, is to address the long -term issue of UK funding gap for newly established businesses, which tends to lead to drainage of these companies to other countries, usually the US
In part, this issue led the UK government to announce last month, the “AI Action Plan”-a series of measures aimed at developing the economy using AI and included the promise of the construction of “Silicon Valley” of Europe by over-extinguishing existing technological ecosystems around the famous Oxford and Cambridge universities. In addition, London’s “Gold Triangle”, Oxford and Cambridge, which includes five top universities in the United Kingdom, will also receive higher links, including transfer, along with a pack of £ 14 billion in funding.
Andrew Williamson, Managing Director of CIC, told TechCrunch for a call that CIC had traditionally invested in early stage companies around Cambridge, but there were many maturing in proven technologies.
“Historically, what we did is when our companies get to the C series … We didn’t have the capital in our basic capital to make them [later-stage] Investments, “he said.
“So we used to offer them as a co-investment in some of our LPs. However, there are not many institutions, particularly financial institutions, they are truly created to make immediate investments in companies. Thus, the birth of this fund was the one in which they could participate. “
He added that one of the basic guidelines by the UK government in the British business bank is to face the gap of a later stage in the escalation chapter: “So this is a perfect mission for what they want to do, to anchor new growth funds such as this. Mansion house compact. Therefore, this is around the distribution of some of the funds of their pension fund in productive assets. ”
CIC portfolio outputs include the sale of Geneppy Gyroscope Therapeutics to Novartis for $ 1.5 billion, acquiring $ 285 million from Pet Petmedix therapy programmer from Zoetis, the sale of the Inivata Platea For $ 390 million and the sale of audio recognition Developer Audio Analytic.
Cambridge is known for the production of several major companies, such as Arm Holdings, Abcam, Darktrace and Bicycle Therapeutics.
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