Creator Fund

We are delighted to share that our portfolio company Loci has sold to Epic Games. 🔥 🚀 🎮 This is a huge achievement by founders Eugene Yi and Jack Davis, who have built one of the best solutions for searching and tagging huge libraries of 3D assets through computer vision. We first discovered Jack through his computer science thesis at University of Cambridge where he had created a virtual universe of a tennis match through 3D rendering. Jack so self-evidently had something special about him and we backed him a few weeks later & helped him start up. We later recruited the formidable Eugene from the gaming and media world as commercial co-founder. Jack & Eugene have been a powerful duo (photo attached of them on one of their many sales trips to cold gaming markets) and built technology that makes it easy to manage huge asset libraries so that a developer can quickly retrieve the exact object they need. This sale happens just over 3 years since Creator Fund led the pre-seed. We couldn't be more proud of Jack and Eugene and all they have achieved.

We're back in Cambridge for our PhD Founder Matchmaking night on April 10th! https://lnkd.in/e4v4uFXc In 2022, the first Open Mic speaker to step up to the mic was Tom Hamer, and after hearing his pitch we led Marqo's pre-seed round a few weeks later. Marqo has now raised over $17mm and is one of the world's best neural search platforms. Sign up and join us to share your ideas and meet co-founders across the Cambridge ecosystem. Joshua Weygant Juliane Weller Benedetta Gaggio Kristina Kordova Sasha Lopoukhine Marguerite Colin Bill S. Adam Brzosko Tom Albrow-Owen

CEO of Recycleye Victor Dewulf explains to Forbes how machine vision and robotics is changing the way we sort and recycle the world's trash.

There are major advances being made in FemTech, often driven by entrepreneurial scientists at European universities focused on women's health and challenges facing both sexes like fertility. For International Women's Day, Kristina Kordova and Nayanika Bhalla look at where innovation is taking place in FemTech: https://lnkd.in/eqUgFv44

We have backed 10 companies from Imperial College London. From machine vision for recycling ♻️ to chemical design 🧪 Imperial scientists are changing the world. That's why we're back for our PhD matchmaking night on 3rd April bringing together aspiring scientific founders to meet potential co-founders and casually pitch their ideas. Sign up here: https://lnkd.in/eX8_XMC5 We'll also be joined by Joshua Blight who will speak through his journey from post-doc in Imperial's Insectory tackling malaria to raising a $12mm Series A to build mutation proof vaccines 💉.

Welcome to the Creator Fund Class of 2024-5! We spent the summer recruiting a team of 47 students embedded across 25 universities in 8 countries. It is this PhD team that meet the best scientific founders across European laboratories, and has the technical understanding of cutting-edge science in AI, BioTech, Physics, Materials, and Robotics. We are delighted to announce our new team for the 2024-25 academic year! Now across 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇫🇮 🇸🇪 🇩🇪 🇨🇭 🇭🇷 🇳🇱 🇩🇰 https://lnkd.in/ewz8JEmu

We host matchmaking nights at universities across Europe, where top PhD students come together to meet potential co-founders and pitch their ideas over a glass of wine and snacks. On 2nd December we're headed back to the dreaming spires of Oxford. If you are keen to meet others students across the university working on Deep Tech ideas, sign up here: https://lnkd.in/eKvpsura Miranda Conn Sasha McMurray Edward Harris Yoav Gelberg Bruno Trentini Cherie Wong

Look up to the sky: there are now drones flying blood samples across London. This is the first use of medical drones over a major world city. Apian has pioneered this between St Thomas' to Guys hospital significantly cutting down delivery times in Southwark. Watch the launch coverage by the BBC this morning and the story of what it means for the first patients. Huge congrats Hammad Jeilani, Alexander Trewby, Christopher Law.

Congratulations to our portfolio company AllFocal Optics (formerly Lark Optics) who announce their $5.3mm seed round and also their new commercial partnership with Jaguar Land Rover. All Focal is developing lenses for AR and VR that eliminate nausea and discomfort typically associated with experiencing virtual worlds. It is led by the inspiring Pawan Shrestha who grew up in rural Nepal and only used electricity for the first time at 8 years old, and eventually became a Research Associate in Electrical Engineering at University of Cambridge. We invested at pre-seed. And thrilled to see this round led by Speedinvest, and another.vc and Germany World Cup winning goal scorer Mario Götze. Covered in Sifted too: https://lnkd.in/epCie24A Alexandra Ntemourtsidou Jan Heck Jamie Macfarlane

Delighted to announce our investment in TreQ in Sky News today. CEO Mandy Birch is a Brigadier General in the US Air Force and worked at Rigetti Computing and is an expert in quantum computing. She launched Treq in Oxford to leverage UK universities' leadership in the field. Treq makes early quantum computing systems viable for real-world applications by connecting and integrating all the different components of the hardware and software stack. Round led by Lavrock Ventures and we were joined by our friends at firstminute capital https://lnkd.in/gr2HjmKt Mark Kleinman henry lane fox Alexandra Ntemourtsidou Adriana Vitagliano Daniel Marti Dafcik Jamie Macfarlane