It is often said that the UK and Europe lack the substantial growth funding of late-stage startups owned by the United States, which is right. According to the European Investment Fund, at least Seven times In the United States, large venture capital is more than in Europe. Therefore, the emergence of new growth funds is very important in the UK.
Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC) invested only in the prestigious university and its surrounding Cambridge ecosystem, and it has launched a new £100 million ($126 million) “opportunity fund” which is essentially a growth fund. CIC has $757 million in investments in more than 40 companies and has established privileged relationships with the University of Cambridge.
The fund is anchored by Aviva investors and UK patient capital and will invest in deep technology and life science companies in growth stages.
Two investments have been made. Pragmatic semiconductors is a large chip designer and manufacturer that has raised $389.3 million to date, and rivera quantum computing error correction company that has raised $120.7 million.
The new CIC fund will invest up to £20 million (US$25.2 million) per investment, investing late-stage funds in deep technology and life science companies. Of course, the desire to address the long-term funding gap for startups in the UK in late stages, which often leads to the loss of these companies to other countries (usually the United States).
In a way, it was this issue that led to the UK government’s announcement of its “AI Action Plan” last month, a series of measures aimed at using artificial intelligence to develop the economy, and including the establishment of the “Silicon Valley” in Europe through supercharger The preservation of existing technology ecosystems around the University of Oxford and Cambridge. In addition, the “Golden Triangle” of London, Oxford and Cambridge (including five UK-leading universities) will also gain greater ties, including transportation, and £14 billion in funding.
Andrew Williamson, managing partner at CIC, told TechCrunch that his phone has traditionally invested in early-stage companies near Cambridge, but there are many people who are mature in technology.
“Historically, what we did is when our company goes into the C Series phase…. We don’t have the core funds to make these funds [later stage] Invest,” he said.
“So we used to use them as a co-investment in some LPs. But there aren’t really many institutions, especially financial institutions, to make direct investments into companies. So the origin of the fund is something they can participate in.”
He added that one of the main directives from the UK government to the British Commercial Bank was to address the late-stage gap in capital at scale stage: “So it is the perfect task for what they want to do to anchor new tasks like this growth Funds. For Aviva, they are Luxury house compact. So it’s about allocating some of its pension fund capital to production growth assets. ”
Portfolio exports from CIC include the sale of gene therapy company Gyrospope Therapeatics to Novartis for $1.5 billion, Zoetis’ $285 million acquisition of PET therapy developer Petmedix to sell liquid biopsy platforms to Neogenomics for $390 million for $390 million. and sells developer audio analysis.
Cambridge is most famous for producing several important companies, including Arm Holdings, Abcam, Darktrace and Bicycle Therapeutics.
