Cambridge university-backed VC group launches £100m start-up fund

The CIC team. Image credit: CIC

A venture capital group backed by the University of Cambridge has launched a £100m opportunity fund designed to drive growth among DeepTech and life sciences companies in the region.

The fund from Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC) has already invested in two Cambridge-based companies: chip firm Pragmatic Semiconductor and quantum computing specialist Riverlane.

With up to £20m per investment into later-stage rounds, the fund aims to address the UK’s scale-up financing gap, which forces many of Britain’s most promising companies to seek overseas funding to support their growth.

The new fund is backed by Aviva Investors and British Patient Capital, a subsidiary of the government-owned British Business Bank.

“CIC has traditionally invested in early-stage opportunities around Cambridge and has seen many of these companies mature into highly commercial businesses developing proven technologies,” said Andrew Williamson, managing partner at CIC.

“With this new fund we will support our portfolio companies, and scaleups from the UK ecosystem, as they reach a defining moment in their growth – and at exactly the point where the UK often loses its most exciting businesses.”

Since its inception in 2013, CIC has witnessed some notable exits from its portfolio, including Gyroscope Therapeutics (bought by Novartis for £1.18bn) and PetMedix (acquired by Zoetis in a £226m deal).

The unveiling of the new fund comes just weeks after the UK Government announced it was reviving plans for the Oxford-Cambridge Arc. Under the plans, the region would become the unequivocal Silicon Valley of Europe; the home of British innovation.

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