Led · Seed · Dec 2025

A&B Smart Materials is an Oxford-based materials science startup engineering fully biodegradable superabsorbent polymers that can slot into existing manufacturing processes for products such as nappies, menstrual pads, and agricultural soil additives. Its technology modifies biopolymers derived from widely available, low-cost natural feedstocks to deliver absorbency performance comparable to synthetic SAPs while eliminating microplastic pollution. The company’s R&D focuses on balancing high absorbency, competitive cost, and industrial-scale validation so that large hygiene and agricultural players can adopt the material without retooling. Management sees a sizeable opportunity in a SAP market expected to reach about $17 billion by 2035 and aims to “completely replace” persistent fossil-based SAPs in high-volume single-use products. The fresh capital strengthens its runway to accelerate lab work, pilot production, and partnership development for commercial trials. To date, the company has raised £1.5 million in external funding, with no operating revenue disclosed yet.

Led · Equity · Oct 2025

Born from the 2022 pivot of on-demand photography marketplace Meero, Diffusely now operates as a pure-play AI software provider. Its core products, CarCutter for auto dealers and AutoRetouch for fashion brands, automate background removal, retouching and asset generation, promising up to 80% lower production costs and a 90% faster time-to-market. The company trains its models on a proprietary library of more than 200 million images, giving it a defensible data advantage. Diffusely reports €12 million in annual recurring revenue and serves about 1,500 customers across its two verticals. To sharpen focus, it recently divested its real-estate photography tool ProperShot to Nodalview. Management is targeting profitability by 2026 while continuing to deepen its verticalized AI stack. The firm was originally founded in 2016 by Guillaume Lestrade and Thomas Rebaud under the Meero name and is now led by CEO Gaétan Rougevin-Baville.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2024

Symmio provides an intent-centric clearing layer and Derivatives-as-a-Service (DaaS) that enables exchanges to launch decentralized derivatives trading platforms within days. Its infrastructure allows permissionless creation of synthetic markets and offloads liquidity onboarding so partners can focus on user growth. The protocol is live across Arbitrum, Base, BSC and Mantle (non‑EVM chains coming soon), supports 600+ trading pairs, and reports $200M in open interest and over $8B in trading volume. Symmio uses off‑chain Solvers and a topological, intent‑based system to enable parallel order matching before on‑chain finalization, aiming for much higher throughput than on‑chain orderbooks. The team has been in R&D since 2021 and highlights AMFQ technology and a scalable multichain architecture as core differentiators. Symmio plans a Token Generation Event on December 16, 2024, launching the $SYMM token on the Base network with initial liquidity via SYMM/ETH on Aerodrome Finance.

Participated · Equity · Nov 2024

Faircraft develops lab-grown leather derived from animal skin cells using proprietary tissue-engineering and cellular agriculture techniques to replicate the structure and composition of traditional leather. The company operates development and manufacturing laboratories at its Paris headquarters and holds two international patents for its standardized, in‑house production process. Faircraft emphasizes luxury finishing, working with master tanners to adapt the material for premium leather goods. Current manufacturing costs remain higher than traditional leather, but the company says it is on a trajectory toward price parity. The $15.8 million funding will be used to expand the team—notably hiring more engineers and biologists—and to accelerate scaling of operations to meet growing demand.

Participated · Series B · Dec 2023

Zuper is a field service management platform offering automated workflows, workforce collaboration, and integrations with CRM, payments, and location intelligence. Originally focused on residential repair services, it has expanded to serve small business and enterprise customers across industries including manufacturing, facility and property maintenance, and renewable energy. The platform delivers personalized support, reporting, and analytics and is designed to manage diverse workforces of full-time and contracted labor. In 2022 the company had 150 customers; it now reports 500 customers and more than 50,000 users, has handled over 10 million work orders in the last four months, and processed over $100 million in payments. Zuper is developing a generative AI-powered chatbot called ZIVA, currently in alpha. Management plans to use new funding to grow its mid-market and enterprise base, scale globally, advance technology development, and add about 50 employees in 2024. Zuper builds a platform that connects booking, dispatch, technician workflows and customer engagement through integrations with CRM, payroll and APIs so technicians have job information and parts at their fingertips. The product includes booking tools that match technician skills, ETA notifications for customers, and features to ensure jobs are completed correctly the first time. Customers using Zuper report saving at least 20 hours per week per user and improving customer satisfaction by more than 50%. Over the past 12 months the company saw sevenfold annualized recurring revenue growth, 140% net revenue retention, onboarded 100+ customers across North America, Asia and Europe, and tripled headcount to 55 employees. In 2021 Zuper supported over 3 million work orders, 15 million scheduled hours, and facilitated more than $20 million of transactions through the platform. The company plans to invest the new funding in product leadership for workflows, location intelligence, dispatching, marketing and sales, double headcount, and expand its partner ecosystem. Zuper provides an intelligent workforce and customer management SaaS platform that helps service organizations manage, modernize and transform field and remote workforces. The platform includes a white‑labeled mobile and web application for customers, a back‑office application to manage and govern operations, native iOS and Android apps for workforce collaboration, and Service 360 to grow business with data. It targets residential and commercial cleaning, HVAC, electrical, ISPs, plumbing and landscaping businesses. Since 2016 Zuper has empowered more than 500 service businesses and thousands of users, and has facilitated over 2 million work orders across the U.S., EMEA and APAC. The company plans to invest in platform innovation, sales and marketing to fuel aggressive growth and expansion in North America and other key geographies. It is also hiring across functions in the U.S. and India to support that growth. Founded in August 2016, Zuper is led by newly appointed CEO Anand Subbaraj.