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It\u2019s often said that the UK and Europe lack the huge level of growth funding for later-stage startups that the US has for its own, and this is correct.\u00a0According to the European Investment Fund, there are at least seven times more<\/a> large-size VC funds in the US than in Europe. So the appearance of a new growth fund in the UK is significant.<\/p>\n Cambridge\u00a0Innovation Capital<\/a> (CIC), which invests exclusively in the Cambridge\u00a0ecosystem in and around the famous university, has launched a new \u00a3100 million ($126 million) \u2018Opportunity Fund\u2019, essentially a growth fund. CIC has $757 million invested in over 40 companies and has a privileged relationship with the University of\u00a0Cambridge.<\/p>\n The fund is being anchored by Aviva Investors and British Patient Capital and will invest in growth-stage deep tech and life sciences companies.<\/p>\n Two investments have already been made. Pragmatic Semiconductor<\/a> is a large chip designer and manufacturer which has raised $389.3 million to date, while Riverlane<\/a>, is a quantum computing error correction company that has raised $120.7 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n The new CIC fund will invest up to \u00a320 million ($25.2 million) per investment into the later-stage funding rounds of deep tech and life sciences companies. The hope, of course, is to address the UK\u2019s long-standing funding gap issue for later-stage startups, which tends to lead to a drain of those companies towards other countries, usually the US.\u00a0<\/p>\n In part, it\u2019s this issue that led the UK government to announce last month, its \u201cAI Action Plan\u201d \u2014\u00a0a string of measures designed to grow the economy using AI, and included a pledge to build Europe\u2019s \u201cSilicon Valley\u201d by super-charging the existing tech ecosystems around the famous Oxford and Cambridge universities.\u00a0Plus, the \u201cGolden Triangle\u201d of London, Oxford, and Cambridge, comprising five leading UK universities, will also be given greater links, including transportation, alongside a package of\u00a0 \u00a314 billion in funding.<\/p>\n Andrew Williamson, Managing Partner at CIC, told TechCrunch over a call that CIC had traditionally invested in early-stage companies around\u00a0Cambridge, but there were many that were maturing into proven technologies.<\/p>\n \u201cHistorically, what we\u2019ve done is when our companies get to Series C stage\u2026. we didn\u2019t have the capital in our core funds to make those [later stage] investments,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cSo we used to offer them as co-investment to some of our LPs. But not many institutions, particularly financial institutions, are really set up to make direct investments into companies. So the genesis of this fund was one they could participate in.\u201d<\/p>\n He added that one of the key directives from the UK government to the British Business Bank is to address the later-stage gap in scale-up capital: \u201cSo this is a perfect mission for what they\u2019re looking to do, to anchor new growth funds like this. In the case of Aviva, they\u2019re one of the signatories of the Mansion House Compact<\/a>. So this is around allocating some of their pension fund capital into productive growth assets.\u201d<\/p>\n Exits from CIC\u2019s portfolio include the sale of gene therapy company Gyroscope Therapeutics to Novartis for $1.5 billion, the $285 million acquisition of pet treatment developer PetMedix by Zoetis, the sale of liquid biopsy platform Inivata to NeoGenomics for $390 million, and the sale of sound recognition developer Audio Analytic.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cambridge\u00a0is best known for producing several significant companies including ARM Holdings, Abcam, Darktrace, and Bicycle Therapeutics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n