- The British Business Bank is investing £180 million in six AI and deeptech venture funds.
- The Bank states that the funds have generated more than £1 billion, so its share is capped at 18%.
- The announcement makes no mention of whether any of the six funds invest solely in British companies.
In September 2016, the British Business Bank invested £26 million in a £40 million fund managed by Alice Bentinck and Matt Clifford, the founders of Entrepreneurs First, which provides assistance to people even before they have formed a team or have come up with a business idea. Since then, Entrepreneurs First’s portfolio is valued at more than $16 billion.
Today, the Bank made a further investment of £22 million in the firm’s Early Stage Fund, which was part of the £180 million push.
The other investments include £35 million for Crane III, which supports founders worldwide from the early stages to seed, and £20 million for Connect V, a pre-seed fund focused on AI, hardware, and automation. Headline EU VIII, a $400 million fund for European seed and Series A companies, is given £26 million.
The two growth-stage funds receive £77 million in total: £55 million for Intrepid Growth Partners’ $525 million Fund I and £22 million for Evantic Fund I.
The Bank says the six funds have raised more than £1 billion in total, so its share is limited to 18%. It sees these investments as a way to generate additional funding for promising UK AI and deeptech companies.
Who is carrying out the investments?
The two growth-stage funds are run by people who previously worked for larger companies.
Mark Machin, previously president and CEO of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, set up Intrepid in 2023 with Mark Shulgan, who led growth equity at OMERS, and Ajay Agrawal, a professor at the University of Toronto and founder of the Creative Destruction Lab.
Intrepid closed Fund I on September 14, attracting more than 80 limited partners, including the Bank, and the fund has offices in Toronto and London.
“The UK has an exceptional base of AI research, engineering talent and ambitious founders, but ensuring those companies can scale into global leaders requires deeper and more focused pools of long-term growth capital. The British Business Bank has been hugely impactful in strengthening that funding environment and helping more high-potential UK technology companies build and grow from here,” said Machin.
Matt Miller spent more than ten years at Sequoia Capital, headed its European expansion, and relocated to London in 2021 before founding Evantic. In July 2025, Tech Funding News reported on his $400 million fund.
The early-stage funds come from diverse backgrounds. Krishna Visvanathan and Scott Sage set up Crane in London in 2015, having previously invested together in seven European countries. Crane III is one of four funds raised for a total of $484 million, as TFN reported on September 15.
Connect Ventures, which has supported more than 120 companies since 2012, including Aikido Security and TrueLayer, achieved a first closing of $55 million for Fund V on September 23, with the Bank acting as the anchor investor. Headline closed EU VIII on October 1.
A state anchor with global mandates
If you compare the Bank’s investments to each fund’s size, you will see a trend: its £20 million is almost half of Connect V’s $55 million first close, and its £35 million is more than a quarter of Crane III’s $169 million.
For the larger funds, the Bank’s share falls to about 14% of Intrepid’s $525 million, less than 9% of Headline’s $400 million, and around 7% of Evantic’s $400 million or more. We also reported that the Bank contributed €30 million to Nauta Capital’s €60 million first close for Fund VI.
The majority of the funds are being directed towards later-stage investments, with Intrepid and Evantic accounting for around 43% of the £180 million, whereas Crane III and Connect V, which are early-stage funds, receive £55 million.
This aligns with the Bank’s approach to direct investments. In October 2025, the Bank had co-invested more than £250 million in UK scale-ups, and by June the total had exceeded £600 million across more than 50 companies. On October 14, the Bank invested £10 million in Salience Labs, a company spun out from the universities in Oxford and Münster, as part of a $125 million Series B round led by Bullhound Capital.
Robert Greenwood, the Bank’s senior director for funds, stated: “Building the UK’s AI ecosystem requires more capital, but companies also need the right investors at each stage of their development. The commitments announced [on October 15] back specialist investors that will help AI founders build companies from their earliest stages through to global scale.”
The gap the Bank is closing
The market is currently experiencing a major surge and is highly dominated. Startups in the UK raised $17 billion in the first six months of 2026, 102% more than the previous year, according to HSBC Innovation Banking UK and Dealroom. AI companies accounted for $12.6 billion of this amount, 68% of the total, coming from late-stage funding rounds.
Leandros Kalisperas, the Bank’s chief investment officer, said,“The UK has no shortage of ideas or talent. The problem is that our funding landscape does not currently match our technical excellence. This is what the Bank is changing.”
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds added, “AI is going to be a transformative technology for our society and for our economy, which is why it is vital that the UK has its own sovereign capabilities. We have exceptional talent and world-class research capability, now we are working to make sure that there are funding opportunities for AI entrepreneurs which match that potential.”
It will be several years before these funds report their returns, but the destinations of the first investments will be an early indication. Yet if the money ends up going to the founders in San Francisco and Bangalore, the Bank could provide more funding without increasing the UK’s share in these ventures.
