The Venture Codex

Led · Equity · Oct 2025

Athernal Bio is a Cambridge, UK-based biotechnology company focused on stopping blood cancers before they form by treating precursor conditions. Its lead programs target high-risk clonal haematopoiesis (CH), a widespread pre-malignant disorder that can progress to acute myeloid leukaemia and other haematological cancers. Co-founded by physician-scientists Nirupa Desai, MD, PhD, and Ieuan Walker, MD, and led by CEO Colin Freund, the company is designing highly selective immunotherapies aimed at early intervention. The new capital will finance in vivo proof-of-concept studies for a CH therapy and prepare an Investigational New Drug (IND) application. Athernal Bio has assembled a transatlantic advisory network to accelerate development and position the program for first-in-human trials. The recent £3.5 million raise provides its initial institutional funding and extends the runway to achieve preclinical milestones.

Led · Seed · May 2025

Penzilla develops a SaaS platform that simplifies administration of company pension schemes by uniting HR, payroll and pension providers on a single system. The product aims to make occupational pensions simpler, more accessible and more efficient for employers and employees, reducing administrative burdens and legal risks. Its platform integrates with payroll and HR systems (e.g., Personio, HiBob, Rexx, DATEV) and has sales partnerships with major pension providers including Allianz, Swiss Life, Canada Life, WWK and Signal Iduna. Well-known customers such as Lacoste, Notebooksbilliger.de and ProSiebenSat.1 use Penzilla, and the company manages schemes for thousands of employees and pensioners. Penzilla plans to use its recent funding to invest in market development and to strengthen its position as a leading software platform for bAV management. Founded in 2022 and based in Munich, the startup emphasizes a software-first approach to address the complex needs of large SMEs and international corporations.

Participated · Equity · Jul 2023

uMed is a London-based health tech company whose platform helps healthcare institutions identify, screen and engage specific patient cohorts for clinical trials, registries and population health initiatives. The platform leverages health-record data to target patient groups and automates communication, including collection of patient-reported outcomes. By taking on identification and outreach work, uMed reduces administrative burden on healthcare providers and facilitates their participation in research programmes. The company says its patient cohorts provide researchers with unique data and insights while cutting the cost of finding, engaging and collecting prospective patient data. uMed raised £9.8 million in a new funding round and intends to use the capital to ramp up UK-focused efforts and expand its presence in North America. The raise was positioned as a response to collapsing patient access to industry clinical trials in the NHS. uMed is a London-based technology platform embedded in a global network of healthcare providers that automates the creation of high-quality prospective research registries. Its platform can reach back compliantly from the electronic health record (EHR) to patients, enable e-consent, and capture structured outcomes remotely while protecting patient data and ensuring regulatory compliance. The company is already deployed across over 160 primary care sites in the UK, representing more than 1.7 million patients, and expects to serve 2 million patients from a large US health system from early next year. uMed's tools are used in clinical studies such as the University of Oxford–led RAPTOR-C19 study within the national CONDOR platform and support remote data capture linked to patient records. The technology is positioned to reduce manual costs in research workflows and allow small GP practices and large hospitals to participate in multiple research programmes without increasing clinical burden.

Participated · Series A · Nov 2022

Turbine’s core product is a foundational virtual cell model that, together with a lab-in-the-loop data engine, creates digital twins of wet-lab assays. Researchers use these virtual assays through Turbine’s no-code Virtual Lab to run millions of in-silico experiments, identifying disease drivers and optimal therapeutic combinations far faster than physical labs allow. The platform has already supported more than 30 discovery programs for biopharma partners such as MSD (Merck & Co.), AstraZeneca and Bayer. Previously focused on oncology, the company is now expanding into immunology via a newly announced collaboration with an unnamed top-10 pharmaceutical firm that will supply proprietary immune-cell datasets. The fresh capital will fund the virtualization of additional assay types across discovery and translational medicine, further fine-tuning the platform to new tissues. Turbine is backed by prominent tech and life-sciences investors including Accel and MSD Global Health Innovation and operates from hubs in London and Budapest.

Participated · Series B · Jan 2022

Ori Biotech provides a proprietary, full‑stack manufacturing system designed to close, automate, digitize and standardize CGT manufacturing. The platform is intended to enable therapy developers, contract manufacturers and academic researchers to move from pre‑clinical process discovery through clinical trials to commercial scale. The company plans to use its latest financing to expand key personnel across all functions and to support its transition through pre‑commercialization to platform launch. Ori is launching the Lightspeed Early Access Program (LEAP) to give select partners pre‑launch access in 2022. Founded in 2015, the company is led by CEO Jason C. Foster and has executive hires from established industry players. Financially, Ori secured over USD 100m in its Series B to fund these commercialization and expansion efforts. Ori Biotech is a London, UK and New Jersey-based cell and gene therapy (CGT) manufacturing company. The company has developed a proprietary, flexible manufacturing platform that closes, automates and standardizes manufacturing to support CGT developers. Its platform aims to enable developers to move products from pre-clinical process development to commercial-scale manufacturing. Ori intends to use new funding to bring its manufacturing platform to market. The company highlights a seasoned board and executive team with extensive pharmaceutical, cell therapy and venture-building experience. Leadership and advisors named in the article include CEO Jason C. Foster, Co-Founder and CSO Dr. Farlan Veraitch, CBO Jason Jones, Tom Heathman, and expert advisors Bruce Levine, Annalisa Jenkins and Anthony Davies. Ori Biotech Ltd is a London- and Philadelphia-based cell and gene therapy (CGT) manufacturing company. The company has developed a proprietary, flexible manufacturing platform that closes, automates and standardizes CGT manufacturing. Its platform is intended to help therapeutics developers move products from pre-clinical process development to commercial-scale manufacturing. Ori plans to use the raised funds to bring the manufacturing platform to market. The company was founded in 2015 by Dr. Farlan Veraitch and Prof. Chris Mason and is led by newly appointed CEO Jason C. Foster. It closed a $9.4M (£7M) seed funding round in 2020.