IQ Capital raises $400m to invest in transformative deep tech startups across UK and Europe
IQ Capital, the leading London-based deep tech venture capital firm, today announces the final close of its fourth Venture Fund at $200m (Fund IV), taking its assets under management to more than $1bn.
The firm has also launched its second $200m Growth Fund to provide later-stage funding to outperforming companies, primarily in its venture portfolios. This enables IQ Capital to deploy capital at multiple stages, investing an additional $30m in individual companies as they internationalise.
IQ Capital has defined deep tech investing in the UK since its foundation in Cambridge in 2007. The firm will continue to invest at Seed and Series A into UK and European startups to commercialise IP-rich breakthrough technologies and back founders with the ambition to scale globally.
Fund IV will build on the success of IQ Capital’s existing funds, which have achieved exits to Oracle, Google, Apple and Facebook, along with several high-profile IPOs and delivered industry-beating returns to the investors. IQ Capital’s PhD-rich team has invested in over 100 deep tech startups, attracting a further $1.4 billion follow-on capital to its portfolio and creating over 4,000 deep tech jobs.
IQ Capital’s general partners, Kerry Baldwin, Max Bautin and Ed Stacey, have worked together for more than 20 years, with their commercial and scientific networks attracting founders from across Europe. IQ Capital’s investments include: Thought Machine, a core-banking software unicorn which they backed from Seed; Nyobolt, ultra-fast charging battery tech; and Speechmatics, the leading speech recognition technology scale-up.
Investors in Fund IV include global institutions, funds-of-funds, family offices, corporates and tech entrepreneurs of whom several were previously backed by IQ Capital, as well as British Patient Capital, the largest LP investing in UK venture capital.
Kerry Baldwin, co-founder, Managing Partner and previous Chair of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA), said: “Deep tech will play a pivotal role as both the UK and Europe continue to lead the way in developing technology that will have a lasting global impact. IQ Capital backs IP-rich technologies with the potential to dominate massive global markets, at a time when deep tech investment is at the forefront of investor's minds, topping $17bn in 2022.”
Max Bautin, co-founder, Managing Partner and board member of Invest Europe commented: “The world has seen many examples of the transformative impact that deep tech can create to achieve vital improvements in all spheres of life and help address some of the biggest challenges facing humanity. Breakthroughs in “novel AI” models, new energy & climate, robotics and space-tech, quantum computing, synthetic biology – all demonstrate what a significant opportunity deep tech now presents.”
Fund IV has already made investments including: DreamFold, which uses Generative AI algorithms to predict the properties of therapeutic proteins; Risilience, a climate-risk platform providing the technology for multinational corporates to meet their net-zero objectives, which has gone on to raise a further $26m, and Secretarium, which has pioneered confidential computing, developing the world's first 'trustless' cloud computing infrastructure, based on advanced cryptography using only standard hardware components.
Paul Taylor, founder of Thought Machine, said: “At Thought Machine, we are delighted to see IQ Capital closing their fourth fund. IQ Capital has been central to Thought Machine's success. They invested $2.5m at Seed stage, following on with another $50m through our growth stages as we expanded globally. IQ Capital provided much more: their experience in every aspect of deep tech development and commercialisation is unrivalled and they fully stand behind founders through good times and bad. We rightly regard IQ Capital as a partner for our whole journey. I was so impressed with IQ Capital that I personally invested in the fund and I always enjoy seeing the breadth and depth of the companies IQ Capital supports. I very much hope fund 4 is another stepping stone to IQ Capital, the UK's and Europe's growing deep tech success story.”
