Led · Equity · May 2023

TidalSense develops an AI-powered diagnostic test, N-Tidal Diagnose, that captures a CO₂ waveform via a handheld device during normal breathing and analyzes it with AI models. The test requires patients to breathe into the device for around 75 seconds and TidalSense says its models have been trained on more than 2.5 million patient breaths. The company states that tests can be performed in under five minutes and that clinicians can see four to six patients an hour versus roughly one per hour with traditional spirometry. TidalSense says any healthcare professional can be trained to use the device in about 10 minutes without specialist qualifications. It launched the test on the NHS last year and plans to scale rollout across the NHS, expand into Europe and enter the US market. The company is led by CEO Dr. Ameera Patel and was founded in 2013.

Led · Equity · Dec 2022

Qkine develops animal-free, highly bioactive proteins and growth factors using proprietary protein production process development and protein engineering to deliver high-purity reagents. Its products target stem cell, organoid, regenerative medicine and cellular agriculture sectors, addressing biological and scale-up challenges. The company combines R&D and scalable manufacturing to meet demand and supports customers across research and manufacturing workflows. Qkine reports strong export sales to 28 countries across Europe, Asia Pacific and North America and plans to widen global commercial reach. Following the raise, it will scale manufacturing capacity, relocate to a newly re-fit Cambridge HQ with a dedicated β-lactam-free and animal-free manufacturing suite, and expand R&D and commercial functions. Qkine expects headcount to more than treble over the next three years and has formed a collaborative partnership with the Centre for Process Innovation to accelerate process development and yields. Qkine develops and manufactures highly pure recombinant growth factors, cytokines and other bioactive proteins for stem cell, organoid and regenerative medicine applications. It uses proprietary protein engineering and refolding technology developed by Dr Marko Hyvönen, Qkine Co‑Founder and CSO. The company is re‑defining industry standards for biochemical quality to enable more reproducible and cost‑effective scaling of stem cell, organoid and regenerative medicine applications. Qkine is applying its engineering techniques to create highly optimised proteins that address stability and reproducibility challenges in cell culture. These efforts aim to enable scaling of systems for precision medicine, toxicology screening and tissue engineering. The company says it has an ever‑increasing customer base and plans to accelerate global commercial scale‑up while making key leadership hires. Qkine is a University of Cambridge spin-out and specialist manufacturer of proteins for stem cell, organoid and regenerative medicine applications. The company uses proprietary technologies and protein engineering techniques to produce exceptionally high-purity growth factors and cytokines. Qkine's technologies are designed to address structural heterogeneity, poor stability and solubility, and spurious interactions with other biomolecules, providing more reliable tools for research and bio-manufacturing. The investment enables Qkine to establish a UK manufacturing base at Cambridge Science Park, expand its research team, and further develop its active R&D pipeline. The company plans to accelerate commercialisation and expand its commercial ambitions to meet growing demand for high-quality cytokines and growth factors.

Led · Series B · Aug 2022

FundamentalVR builds a medical-simulation platform that combines virtual reality and haptics with data, artificial intelligence, and multimodal learning. Led by CEO Richard Vincent, the company delivers immersive multi-user 'Blended VR' simulations underpinned by HapticVRTM interactions on the Fundamental Surgery platform. The platform enables full rehearsal of medical and surgical procedures and provides deep data insight into competency and skills development to drive consistency and compliance across training programs. Its high-fidelity simulations are deployed in over 30 countries and help life-science, pharmaceutical, and med-device companies deploy innovations across disciplines from ophthalmology to robotics and gene therapy. FundamentalVR intends to use the new funding to further develop HapticVRTM and to expand geographically throughout the U.S. The company has raised over $30 million to date following the latest round. FundamentalVR has developed a virtual reality training and data analysis platform often described as a “flight simulator for surgeons.” Its Fundamental Surgery education platform is the first surgical simulation software to deploy HapticVR, which combines VR with advanced haptics to recreate the sense of touch. The technology has been recognised by The New York Times and Fast Company, was named to TIME Magazine’s Top 50 inventions of 2018, and received SXSW’s Interactive Innovation Award in 2019. The new funding is aimed at developing the company’s flight-simulator-style offering for surgical training. The Series A included conversion of a £0.5 million convertible loan note and resulted in a £11.3 million post-money valuation. Strategic medical backers such as Mayo Clinic and Sana Kliniken joined the round alongside venture investors. FundamentalVR is a London, UK and Boston, MA–based virtual reality training and data analysis technology platform. Led by CEO and founder Richard Vincent, the company offers Fundamental Surgery, a SaaS platform that combines virtual reality with haptics to create a low-cost, scalable flight-simulator experience for trainee and qualified surgeons. The company raised £1.1m in funding from Tern Plc (AIM: TERN) to continue development of its platform. It signed a three-year agreement with Mayo Clinic to deploy Fundamental Surgery in its centers of excellence and to jointly develop immersive new products. Mayo Clinic is deploying the company’s current surgical training simulations in its centers in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota to help train surgeons on spinal pedicle screw placement, posterior hip replacement and total knee arthroplasty procedures. The funding will be used to continue FundamentalVR’s efforts to develop its platform.

Led · Equity · Jun 2022

Distributed is a London, UK-based platform that supplies on-demand, fully managed, globally distributed software teams. Led by CEO Callum Adamson, the company deploys full-time project managers, technical leads and quality assurance professionals on every client project. Its Elastic Teams let clients scale team activity up and down and compose teams across programming skill sets. The company intends to use the new funds to improve the workforce experience and extend the international reach of its Elastic Team offering. The fundraise caps a year of rapid growth underpinned by a £30m partnership with BT and the acquisition of core IP that will accelerate product development by approximately six months. Clients include Capita, WPP and the Ministry of Justice. To date Distributed has secured £17m in total investment, including a £5m Series A in May 2021 and the recent £8m raise. Distributed is a London, UK-based tech-enabled startup that provides Elastic Teams™ — fully managed, globally distributed teams — to build and maintain software without in‑residence development teams. Led by CEO and co‑founder Callum Adamson, the company offers on‑demand software talent and platform features for enterprises. Distributed announced a partnership with Capita plc in 2020, which accelerated adoption of its Elastic Teams™ across Capita’s enterprise customers. The company raised a £5M Series A and intends to use the funds to scale operations and platform capabilities. Total funding to date after the round exceeds £9M. No operating metrics were disclosed in the article. Distributed is a London-based, AI-powered tech talent resourcing platform founded in 2017 by Callum Adamson and Sam Rowlands. Its core product is a machine-learning platform that connects companies to global talent and provides a dashboard with personalized support, shared screens, chat, video calling and direct integration with internal systems. The platform pairs those tools with data sets connected to global talent and assigns a dedicated project manager to ensure access and outcomes. The company intends to use the new seed capital to scale both its technology and UK headcount. Distributed serves approximately 50 customers, including Mastercard, Sytner Group, Heron AI, REISS and RBS, and reports revenues in excess of £1 million. It recently completed a £1.5M seed raise from Fuel Ventures, bringing total initial funding to £1.65M.

Led · Series A · Apr 2022

Dragonfly AI has built a patented, neuroscience-led AI platform that predicts how audiences will notice, remember, and respond to advertising and other creative assets before they go live. Unlike data-trained generative AI systems, its biological algorithm does not rely on historical training data, helping brands avoid embedded model bias while receiving real-world attention and buyer-behavior predictions. The technology, originally developed in the neuroscience department at Queen Mary University of London, is now used by more than 70 global consumer brands, including Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever, Coca-Cola, and L’Oréal, and is integrated into enterprise workflows through partners such as CreativeX. Dragonfly AI is expanding its product suite with new Emotion & Memory metrics, broader video analysis, and deeper enterprise integrations via Dragonfly Connect. Proceeds from its latest financing will fund global expansion—particularly a larger U.S. commercial presence—along with growth of sales and customer-success teams. The company continues to invest in R&D under chief scientist and algorithm inventor Hamit Soyel while strengthening governance through the appointment of former Time Inc. executive Fiona Dent to its board.