New £100m Cambridge Innovation Capital fund launched

The aim is to help our best businesses clinch growth capital in the UK rather than being forced abroad for cash help.

The fund has already made its first two investments into Pragmatic Semiconductor – one of the UK’s largest and most innovative chip designers and manufacturers – and Riverlane, a leading quantum error correction company.

With up to £20m per investment into later-stage rounds of DeepTech and life sciences companies, the Opportunity Fund aims to address the UK’s scale-up financing gap, which forces many of Britain’s most promising companies to seek overseas funding to support their growth.

Developing home-grown global technology businesses is a central theme of the Government’s plans to create Europe’s Silicon Valley, with Cambridge at the heart of the transformation.

The fund has received significant backing from Aviva Investors and British Patient Capital, demonstrating the appetite of prominent institutional investors to invest in growth-stage deep tech and life sciences companies – and the potential returns available from the UK’s maturing scale-up ecosystem.

Since its inception in 2013, exits from CIC’s portfolio include the sale of gene therapy company Gyroscope Therapeutics to Novartis for $1.5 billion, the $285m acquisition of pet treatment developer PetMedix by Zoetis, the sale of liquid biopsy platform Inivata to NeoGenomics for $390m and the sale of sound recognition developer Audio Analytic. CIC’s portfolio company Bicycle Therapeutics listed on NASDAQ in 2019.

Andrew Williamson, Managing Partner at CIC, said: “CIC has traditionally invested in early-stage opportunities around Cambridge and has seen many of these companies mature into highly commercial businesses developing proven technologies.

“With this new fund we will support our portfolio companies and scaleups from the UK ecosystem as they reach a defining moment in their growth – and at exactly the point where the UK often loses its most exciting businesses.

“We want to be a part of that change, and we’re delighted to be working with Aviva Investors and British Patient Capital to achieve this ambition.”

Ben Luckett, Managing Director, Venture and Strategic Capital, at Aviva Investors, said: “We are very pleased to complete our latest investment in the Cambridge innovation cluster.

“CIC has a wealth of expertise in life sciences and deep tech, discovering and supporting pioneering companies like Pragmatic and Riverlane which are putting the UK at the forefront of global innovation.

“As an investor with a long-standing presence in Cambridge, we understand its reputation as a world-leading technology cluster, the huge value of the unique ideas being created here, and their potential to create growth, success and impact.

“We believe CIC’s new Fund and its unrivalled access to these early-stage companies, will enable us to support their growth whilst aiming to deliver long-term investment outcomes.”

Aviva Investors’ commitment to the CIC Opportunity Fund aligns with UK Government plans to deliver the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Corridor, furthering the region’s ambition to be a world-leading life science, tech and innovation cluster.

The investment with CIC follows a recent financing by the Aviva Investors Venture & Growth Capital LTAF in Cambridge-based Owlstone Medical, together with existing Aviva venture capital investments in the Cambridge market, including Ahren Innovation Capital and Amadeus Capital Partners.

It also builds on Aviva Investors’ existing support for Cambridge’s life sciences and biotechnology community, which includes Chesterford Research Park, an advanced laboratory and office space for biotechnology, pharmaceutical and technology R&D companies, spread across 250 acres.

In 2019 Aviva Investors agreed to invest up to £250 million towards the creation of Brookgate’s CB1 Estate, a 26-acre master-planned development to regenerate and revitalise Station Road in central Cambridge, funding several buildings under the scheme including 10, 20, 30 and 50/60 Station Road, which are home to global leading companies including, Amazon and Samsung.

Christine Hockley, Managing Director, Funds, British Patient Capital, adds: “We’re pleased to be expanding our relationship with CIC. Cambridge has long been a global research centre, but it is now a growing hub for breakthrough technology as its spin-out ecosystem matures.

“CIC has unparalleled access to the opportunities emerging from that ecosystem and is providing critical growth funding that can help these businesses to reach their commercial potential, ultimately allowing British entrepreneurs to build successful, globally competitive companies.”

Cambridge was ranked as the world’s leading science and technological cluster by intensity by the Global Innovation Index (GII) 2024. University of Cambridge affiliates have won 125 Nobel Prizes and founded many of the UK’s most successful science and technology companies, including Arm Holdings, Abcam, Darktrace and Bicycle Therapeutics.