Led · Equity · Aug 2023

Universal Plastic is a Spanish climate tech company that quantifies, audits and records data from plastic waste collections using AI and blockchain. The company has entered a strategic partnership with blockchain and web3 IP library nChain, which invested €2 million and acquired a 20% equity stake. As part of the deal Universal Plastic receives licensing of nChain’s intellectual property portfolio. The funding and IP licensing aim to support the company’s mission to restore marine ecosystems, empower local communities, and catalyse corporate environmental responsibility. nChain’s CEO framed the collaboration as a way to enable transparent and trustworthy avenues for companies to honor environmental commitments. Universal Plastic’s CEO described the partnership as a momentous leap toward the company’s threefold vision and the application of disruptive Web3 technology to its mission.

Led · Equity · May 2023

Asset Layer is a blockchain-powered provider of a digital asset platform delivering interoperable digital assets for web3 applications. Its platform offers an API and no-code tools that allow developers and creators to create, manage, and share digital assets across applications, available with affordable and predictable SaaS pricing. Led by CEO Jackson Laskey, the company focuses on making digital assets interoperable and accessible to developers and creators. It currently supports 14 active apps, maintains a catalogue of over 5 million digital assets, and has recorded over 12 million on-chain transactions. The company intends to use the funds to enhance its offering and drive adoption of the platform.

Led · Equity · May 2023

Transmira provides the OMNISCAPE™ platform, which combines augmented and virtual reality to create city-scale digital twins and virtual marketplaces. The company focuses on functionality, utility and commerce, enabling brands to monetise virtual goods and drive user engagement and loyalty. Its platform uses foundational blockchain technology to allow users and brands to transact securely, with authenticated exchanges of value. Transmira targets businesses, brands, and creators seeking virtual goods monetisation and real-world metaverse experiences. The company is led by Robert Rice and is based in Raleigh, North Carolina. Recent strategic investment activity aims to accelerate go-to-market efforts and bolster the platform's commercial adoption.

Led · Equity · Apr 2023

Libraro has soft-launched a platform that democratises publishing by creating direct connections between aspiring authors, engaged readers, and publishers. The platform leverages blockchain to protect authorship, prevent copyright infringement, and includes a Web3 loyalty program to deepen engagement. Libraro has signed Letters of Intent with several of the world’s largest publishing houses and is in ongoing discussions with leading literary agents. The company has expanded leadership with four strategic hires, including a Head of Author Engagement (former HarperCollins audience lead), a Head of Reader Engagement with a digital audience of over 30,000 readers, a Head of Partnerships with reach to 300,000 writers, and an incoming CTO with AI and platform experience. The funding will be used to scale technology, grow the community, and deepen industry partnerships. Ayre Ventures has invested a total of £1 million in Libraro since its initial seed commitment in October 2024. Libraro is a London, UK–based blockchain book publishing platform led by CEO Arsim Shilova. The company uses a crowd reading model to connect authors with readers and publishers. Libraro emerged from the Block Dojo blockchain incubator program, part of the nChain Group. It plans to use its recent funding to drive development and adoption of its solution. The platform will leverage nChain’s Web3 and blockchain IP portfolio to enhance capabilities. nChain will also provide development and professional services and back-end blockchain infrastructure support.

Led · Equity · Oct 2020

GeoSpock is a Cambridge, UK-based big data analysis company that builds an analytics database to fuse any-scale connected device, smart city, and IoT data. Its technology is designed to unlock next‑generation use cases by dynamically integrating diverse data sources. The company is led by CEO Richard Baker and Founder/CTO Dr. Steve Marsh. GeoSpock raised an additional $5.4M in strategic funding and intends to use the proceeds to accelerate development and adoption of its database. The financing brought the total capital raised to date to over $32M. Investors on the round include strategic and corporate backers such as NTT DOCOMO Ventures. GeoSpock develops a proprietary spatial big data platform and data engine that visualises and analyses extreme volumes of contextual, geospatial and temporal data in sub-second response times. The platform is designed to handle trillions of data points for interactive analytics. GeoSpock positions its technology as the processing engine for next-generation infrastructure including smart cities, the Internet of Everything (IoE), mobility applications and autonomous vehicle fleet management. The company intends to use recent funding to support international expansion and to build on rapidly developing client accounts. Leadership and advisory team changes, including the appointment of Pontus Noren to the board, accompany the company’s growth plans. GeoSpock was conceived by Dr Steve Marsh at Cambridge University and was founded as a business in 2013. GeoSpock provides an extreme-scale spatial big data platform that visualises and analyses trillions of geospatial and temporal data points in sub-second response times via cloud-based services such as infin8, illumin8, and extrapol8. Its core product powers analytics, insight, and predictions across space and time for use cases including smart cities, the Internet of Everything, future mobility and autonomous vehicle fleet management, serving automotive, telecoms, mobility, marine, media, and retail sectors. Founded as a business in 2013 and conceived at Cambridge University, GeoSpock is based in Cambridge, England. The company said the additional £10 million funding will support rapid international expansion into strategic markets such as Singapore and Japan and enable continued investment in research and development, particularly in machine learning and data science. The round increases GeoSpock's total funding to date to £19.25 million and forms part of a Series A+. Management plans to use the investment to develop key client accounts and grow global commercial and engineering teams. GeoSpock builds a data integration platform that visualises large amounts of contextual data in milliseconds. The platform integrates and correlates information from a wide variety of data sources at a moment’s notice. It is used by customers across mobility, smart city, ad tech, financial services, telematics, and telco sectors. The company is led by CEO Richard Baker and Founder/CTO Dr Steve Marsh. GeoSpock raised additional capital in a Series A close and has now raised $13.2M in total to date. The product focus is on fast, spatiotemporal analytics and prediction for enterprise customers. GeoSpock is a Cambridge, UK provider of geospatial database technology that leverages knowledge of how brains store, manage and retrieve information to index and query location-tagged data. Its first product is a cloud-based database service with an API designed for all location-tagged information and able to handle enormous datasets and massive concurrent load. The company positions the product for Internet of Things (IoT) use cases. GeoSpock intends to use the funds from the Series A round to bring its first product to market. Leadership includes CEO Steve Marsh and co-founder/chairman Darrin M. Disley. Victor Christou of Cambridge Innovation Capital joined GeoSpock’s board as a non-executive director in conjunction with the raise.