British Business Bank commits £180m to six AI and deeptech venture funds
The state-owned investor is spreading capital across six funds, from pre-seed specialists to a dedicated AI growth vehicle, as it looks to deepen the UK's funding pool for technical founders.
Six funds, one strategy
The British Business Bank has announced £180m in investments spread across six venture capital funds focused on AI and deeptech, as it seeks to plug gaps in UK funding at different stages of company growth.
The largest single commitment is £55m into Intrepid Growth Partners’ Fund I, a growth-stage fund dedicated to AI. The Bank is also putting £35m into Crane Ventures Partners’ Crane III fund, which backs London-based founders from inception through to seed stage, and £26m into global investor Headline’s EU VIII fund.
Connect Ventures, also based in London, receives £20m for its Connect V fund, which targets founders at pre-seed. Matt Clifford’s Entrepreneurs First gets £22m for its early-stage fund, and Matt Miller’s Evantic Fund I also receives £22m.
Filling the gap
The investments come a day after the Bank revealed a separate £10m investment in Salience Labs, and follow a pattern of direct backing for UK tech companies including Wayve, Kraken Technologies and PolyAI.
Leandros Kalisperas, chief investment officer at the British Business Bank, said the UK’s problem was not a shortage of ideas or talent but a funding landscape that fails to match the country’s technical strength. He said the commitments were part of a strategy to create deeper pools of capital at every stage of growth, so that companies can access more funding domestically rather than looking abroad.
The Bank was given greater spending power last year following a government review, giving it scope to make larger and more frequent commitments of this kind. Spreading £180m across six funds, rather than concentrating it in one or two vehicles, suggests an attempt to cover the full pipeline, from pre-seed through to growth-stage AI specialists, rather than backing a single point in the funding chain.
What it means for the ecosystem
For UK founders, the significance lies less in any single fund and more in the breadth of coverage. Pre-seed specialists such as Connect Ventures and early-stage backers such as Entrepreneurs First address the earliest stages of company formation, while Intrepid Growth Partners’ dedicated AI growth fund targets companies that have already proven their model and need larger cheques to scale. That spread is intended to reduce the number of promising UK AI and deeptech companies that have historically had to seek growth capital from US or other overseas investors.
The move also signals continued state appetite to back the AI and deeptech sectors specifically, at a time when private investors are already piling into both areas. By co-investing through established fund managers rather than only backing individual companies directly, the Bank is betting that strengthening the broader venture ecosystem will have a multiplier effect beyond its own direct portfolio, which already includes names such as Wayve and PolyAI.
What to watch next
Attention will now turn to how quickly these funds deploy the capital, and whether UK AI and deeptech founders see a tangible increase in the availability of larger, later-stage rounds domestically. Further British Business Bank commitments, following this and the Salience Labs investment announced the day before, may also be expected as the Bank continues to exercise its expanded spending power.