Participated · Series B · Jul 2023

Causaly provides a cloud-based AI SaaS platform used to identify drug targets, determine biomarkers, and aid pathophysiology research to speed drug development. Its platform emphasizes natural-language querying and modeling of chemical permutations to reduce false starts in R&D. The company says its tools can shorten the typical 10–15 year target-to-trials timeline to “several” years and is not itself developing therapeutics. Causaly works with 12 of the world’s largest pharmaceutical and research organizations, including Gilead, Novo Nordisk, Regeneron, the FDA and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Management plans to incorporate more large-language-model capabilities via fine-tuning (not training LLMs from scratch) to make querying easier without greatly increasing compute needs. The recent funding will be used to support R&D and to continue building out the team. Causaly's platform uses AI and machine learning to scour scientific literature, regulatory documents, clinical trials and proprietary research, mapping correlations and relationships that are difficult for humans to find. It reframes the biomedical workflow from “search, read, and synthesise” to “ask questions and analyse,” enabling researchers to pose complex queries and get rapid insights. The product is positioned to speed decision‑making about which research areas to prioritise and to shorten learning cycles in drug discovery. Founded in 2018 by Artur Saudabayev and Yiannis Kiachopoulos and based in London, the company emphasizes intuitive, interactive access to scientific evidence. Causaly raised $17 million in a Series A and plans to use the capital to grow its technology and sales teams. Management is aiming to use the funding to support expansion into the American market. Causaly builds natural language processing AI that reads, understands and interprets biomedical literature, visualising relevant relationships within seconds. The company says its platform has ingested over 30 million biomedical publications and notes roughly 100,000 new articles are added each month. Causaly works with pharma and biotech companies, hospitals and academia — customers include Novartis — and the platform is used across R&D and commercial functions such as drug discovery, drug safety, clinical trials, epidemiology and HEOR. Leadership describes the product’s aim as helping researchers and decision-makers find pivotal insights hidden in millions of documents and accelerate time-to-insight versus traditional literature reviews. The engineering team is focused on hard natural language understanding problems, including linguistic causality comprehension, with goals of reaching or in some aspects surpassing human reading performance. The company announced a Series A in which new and existing investors committed $4.8M; proceeds will be used to substantially grow technology development and customer success teams. Causaly offers a machine reading platform that analyses millions of documents to build knowledge graphs highlighting cause-and-effect relationships in biomedicine. Its NLP-driven semantic search and causal graphs let scientists explore associations and gather evidence far faster than manual review. The company has extracted more than 100 million causal associations from published academic literature and counts clients including Novartis. Co‑founders Yiannis Kiachopoulos (CEO) and Artur Saudabayev began the project after meeting at Singularity University's Global Solutions Program and chose biomedicine as their initial domain. Causaly aims to build a causal model of the world's research and apply it to drug discovery, health economics and pharmacovigilance. The company intends to use the seed financing to scale the team and accelerate product development.

Led · Series A · Mar 2023

Deep Render has developed an AI-powered video compression algorithm designed to reduce video sizes while preserving relative streaming quality. The technology is built to harness and scale with AI hardware already deployed in hundreds of millions of devices, including Apple’s Neural Engine, Qualcomm, Samsung and MediaTek NPUs. Its compression applies across video-on-demand, live streaming, video chat, metaverse, AR/VR, cloud gaming and more niche use cases such as satellite imaging, CCTV, remote drone operations and national defence. The company raised $9M in funding consisting of a $6.3M Series A and a $2.7M grant from the European Innovation Council. Deep Render plans to use the funds to double its team, accelerate commercial engagement, expand to the US, pursue patent plans, and further roll out the technology. The company is led by CEO Chri Besenbruch and CTO Arsalan Zafar and is based in London, UK. Deep Render has developed a proprietary "Biological Compression" technology that uses a non-linear, context-aware algorithm to mimic neural processes of the human eye. The company says its approach reduces image file sizes by 10x compared with best industry standards while maintaining visual quality. Deep Render spun out of Imperial College London’s robotics lab in 2017 and was founded by Arsalan Zafar and Chri Besenbruch. The startup positions its tech for content platforms, VR/AR streaming, cloud gaming, medical imaging, satellite and CCTV imaging, and other applications. Management plans to use the new funding to further develop the product and to hire additional talent. The company framed its work as addressing rapidly growing global data demand and visual-data storage and transmission challenges.

Participated · Series A · Feb 2022

FloodFlash is a London-based parametric insurance technology company that combines computer models, cloud software and internet-of-things sensors to provide flood cover. Customers select a flood depth and payout amount for their policy; when flooding reaches the chosen depth the policy pays out, typically within 48 hours. The company is a registered coverholder at Lloyd’s of London and is authorised and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority. Led by CEO Adam Rimmer, FloodFlash raised $15m in a Series A to fund growth. The company intends to use the proceeds to accelerate international expansion, targeting the US, Germany, Australia and Japan. FloodFlash offers event-based, parametric flood insurance: an internet-connected water sensor triggers an automated payout of a pre-agreed fixed sum as soon as a predefined flood level occurs. A slice of the premium pays for the sensor plus FloodFlash's automated underwriting and claims services. The startup is regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority and is running a live pilot with a select group of SMEs in parts of the UK, including Carlisle. Insurance capacity for FloodFlash policies is provided by Everest Re through their syndicate at Lloyd's of London. Founders Adam Rimmer and Ian Bartholomew developed the product after studying parametric catastrophe bonds to make similar benefits available to SMEs. FloodFlash has been working as part of the InsurTech Gateway incubator since mid 2017.

Led · Equity · Nov 2021

Vauban is a platform that provides venture capital fund managers and angel investors with tools to raise funds, create syndicates, and manage fundraising and investment activities. The product enables users to set up, deploy and manage Funds and SPVs online across multiple jurisdictions, handling structuring, legal documents, investor onboarding, banking and reporting within a single dashboard. The company says users can complete these processes at a fraction of the usual time and cost. Vauban is led by Founders and Co-CEOs Rémy Astié and Ulric Musset and is headquartered in London. Over $1bn has been invested via the platform, current VC users include Anthemis, Passion Capital and Octopus Ventures, and more than 5,000 LPs use the service. The company plans to deepen its tech and regulatory infrastructure and open a new office in Luxembourg to strengthen its European offering.

Participated · Series A · Nov 2021

Cognitive Credit provides specialist data and analytics software for institutional investors in corporate credit markets. Its product combines proprietary data collection with a web-based application, automated credit models updated within minutes of earnings releases, and workflow tools for credit professionals. Coverage spans US and European investment grade bonds, high yield bonds, and leveraged loan markets. The company plans to use new funding to expand into additional markets and to invest in algorithmic debt valuation and AI solutions. Cognitive Credit counts leading asset managers, hedge funds, and investment banks as clients, including 100% of the top 10 global high yield league table banks. Since its Series A in late 2021 the company has quadrupled its client base, more than doubled its internal team, and increased ARR by over 7x. Cognitive Credit offers data-driven software that combines productivity tools with analytical features to streamline corporate credit analysis and reduce repetitive data processing. Its platform is designed to free investment teams to focus on higher-value work and is used by leading investment banks, asset managers, hedge funds, and financial/legal advisory firms. The company plans to launch multiple products across global credit markets in the coming year. Proceeds from the recent raise will be used to extend market leadership, grow the team, and support expansion into the US market. Cognitive Credit is hiring across engineering, commercial, and data divisions in both the UK and US. To date the company has raised £10 million in total funding.