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AlbionVC year in review

AI / Data Climate Tech Deeptech Digital Risk Fintech Healthtech Life Sciences

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As we step into 2025, we are taking a moment to reflect on the milestones, lessons and progress that defined 2024 – a year of transformation for our companies and within our firm. We also look ahead to what the new year may bring.

Amid an evolving macroeconomic landscape, we raised £84m of fresh capital, made 11 new investments across software, healthcare and deeptech, welcomed one significant exit and made four Partner promotions. More on key 2024 numbers below.

Our companies had a strong year too, with the combined portfolio ARR now at over $500m. Decision intelligence AI unicorn Quantexa reached the $100m ARR mark and announced a partnership with Microsoft. Multiple seed portfolio companies graduated to Series A securing funding from leading European and US funds. Others in the portfolio announced a number of strategic partnerships and regulatory approvals setting themselves up for a strong year ahead. More on the key 2024 portfolio stories below.

Beyond financial metrics, last year we helped drive real outcomes for our ecosystem: 5170+ jobs were created, over 780,000 patient outcomes improved and 14 women founders supported by the Radia programme.

As we look ahead to 2025, the possibility for UK tech is exhilarating. While the US claims seven trillion-dollar companies, UK has none. This presents a unique opportunity. The platform shifts we’re seeing today operate at an extraordinary scale, and much of the fundamental innovation underpinning this is coming out of Europe. As our ecosystem continues to mature we see repeat and successful entrepreneurs building again at pace. At the same time our society has become inherently entrepreneurial, with many UK undergraduate students sighting “starting a business” as the top career choice.

The UK’s foundations are solid. History has shown us what’s possible – ARM and Darktrace, both born from the UK university research, became global tech icons. If the UK can retain and nurture its future titans, it’s not far-fetched to envision the first trillion-dollar company emerging from this soil. As we start the year with the sensible valuations environment, this is a win-win for founders and investors as expectations are in check with reality. Now is a good time to build, a good time to invest and a good basis for optimism. With the right focus, the UK can do more than dream of a trillion-dollar company – it can build one.

With this buoyant outlook for 2025, we’d like to say a big thank you to all our founders, co-investors and friends. Here’s to a year of bold ideas, meaningful impact, and shared success.

2024 in numbers

Four new Partners promotions were announced – congratulations to Adam Chirkowski , Cat McDonald, Paul Lehair and Nadine Torbey; Business Insider has more

We raised £84m from retail and institutional investors and welcomed a significant cyber security exit – cloud email secruity provider Egress was acquired by a US cyber security giant KnowBe4 – fireside chat with Tony Pepper, CEO & Co-founder Egress, a KnowBe4 company here

11 new investments were made accross software, healthcare and deeptech. Welcome to the founders and their teams:

  • ClimateTech Gridcog, secured £3.3m to drive energy transition in the UK and EU. More in Business Insider
  • INSTINCT DIGITAL secured a £5m Series A to revolutionise investment reporting, more here
  • Mondra, the AI driven environmental insights platform, secured a £3.6m seed funding, more here
  • OpenDialog AI raised $8m Series A to bring conversational AI to regulated industries. More in TechCrunch
  • OpenTrade raised $4m seed to advance stablecoin yield solutions, more here
  • Oriole Networks, a UCL spinout accelerating machine learning in a low carbon world raised a total of $35m last year – we co-led the seed (more in Sifted), and Plural led the A (Fortune has more)
  • Stanhope AI, another UCL spinout, raised £2.3m to bring AI into the physical world, more in Sifted. Rosalyn Moran, CEO & Co-founder Stanhope AI was named among the 100 women to watch by Founders Forum
  • Treefera, climatetech led by former JP Morgan and UiPath executives raised $12m Series A for an AI platform to bring transparency to nature data. More in Sifted
  • trumpet 🎺 raised $6.35m funding to empower revenue teams with bespoke digital sales room. More in CityAM
  • Plus two more investments to be announced soon

Our seed portfolio graduated into Series A – energy platform tem. secured a $10m round led by Atomico (More in TechCrunch); a UCL spinout revolutionising battery charging Gaussion raised $12m funding (more here); Oriole Networks raised a further $22m to accelerate low-carbon machine learning led by Plural (fireside chat with James Regan , CEO, and Georgios Zervas CTO, Oriole Networks, here)

We helped make 55 C-level hires accross our companies, and 100% of new investee companies and their teams recieved GTM and advisory support. Our advisory network continued to scale, reaching a combined £100bn in enterprise value built. As a result portfolio founder NPS rose to 81, up 17% YoY

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