Newsletter: VC Breakfast Club

/espresso

• TransFICC raises £19M to expand low-latency bond trading infrastructure.

• Neuranics secures $8M for touchless health tracking using magnetic sensing tech.

• Ryft lands £5.7M to scale faster, cheaper marketplace payment automation.

/raising (?)

Are you raising? Founders, pitch here.

/deals

⚡️ TransFICC raised £19M Series B led by Citadel Securities to expand its low-latency trading infrastructure for Fixed Income markets. The platform now supports Government Bonds, IRS, Repo, and 20+ market participants.

🧠 Neuranics, a joint spinout from Glasgow and Edinburgh universities, raised $8M to scale its TMR magnetic sensing tech for touchless, low-power gesture and health tracking in wearables, XR, and digital health.

💳 London-based Ryft raised £5.7M Series A to expand its automated payments platform for marketplaces, enabling faster, lower-cost transaction processing and compliance across sectors like logistics, travel, and real estate.

📊 Dealstack raised $5.5M to automate private capital workflows, replacing manual tools with AI-powered solutions for valuation, equity tracking, and compliance. Backed by top investors, it’s used by firms managing $2.6T AUM.

🧗 Treble Peak has raised £5M to expand its private markets investment platform across Europe, streamlining access for non-institutional investors and partnering with top-tier fund managers to scale tech and distribution.

📈 Manchester-based Vypr raised £5M led by YFM Equity Partners to expand its consumer insights platform internationally and develop AI-driven tools helping brands launch products faster using behavioural science and real-time market validation.

🦴 OSSTEC, a 3D-printed joint implant startup spun out of Imperial College London, raised £2.5M to launch its cartilage-mimicking implants and form strategic healthcare partnerships. Led by Empirical Ventures.

🤖 Sagittal AI raised $2.2M pre-seed to launch Neo, an AI assistant that integrates seamlessly with dev workflows, enabling teams to delegate tasks across the software lifecycle without disrupting Agile practices.

💸 Damisa, founded by Volt’s Jordan Lawrence, raised £2.25M pre-seed to modernise cross-border payments and escrow services, targeting logistics, real estate, travel, and education. Public launch expected July 2025.

🕸️ AI startup Nettle raised £1.45M pre-seed to modernise risk engineering in insurance, using automation and historical data to accelerate assessments and address a looming shortage of risk engineers.

🩺 SiSU Health raised £1.25M from NPIF II and GMC Life Sciences to expand its digital platform, delivering accessible, data-driven health checks and prevention tools across workplaces, communities, and NHS sites across the UK and Europe.

🧫 Newcastle-based Aelius Biotech raised £750K from Mercia Ventures to expand its lab-grown gut model internationally, offering animal-free drug and food testing with industry-first, fully integrated digestion simulation technology.

📝 Southampton startup mytender.io, founded by undergrads, raised £250k from Fuel Ventures to scale its AI-powered bid-writing platform for construction and FM—marking the university’s largest-ever undergraduate-led raise.

/funds

🚀 London-based DIG Ventures has closed a €90M fund to back early-stage B2B SaaS, AI, and cloud startups across Europe. The operator-led VC aims to bridge technical brilliance with commercial success, already backing 15+ ventures.

🛡️ London-based Osney Capital has launched a £50M debut fund to back 30 early-stage UK cybersecurity startups. Backed by British Business Bank and NSSIF-accredited, the fund targets pre-seed and seed deals between £250k and £2.5M.

/tech

• Wave Photonics acquired Phoelex IP and partnered with Enlight Technology to advance energy-efficient optical interconnects for AI data centers, aligning with NVIDIA’s silicon photonics push and growing global demand.

/flywheel

• Arm’s 2025 Silicon Startups Contest offers early-stage chip startups a chance to win up to $250k in technology credits and access to Arm’s ecosystem. Applications close April 25, with winners announced May 15. Past winners include Agate Sensors and SmartKosh Technologies.

• New data ranks the UK’s most entrepreneurial universities, with UAL, LSE, Imperial, Oxford, and Cambridge leading the way in supporting student-led startups through accelerators, funding, mentoring, and vibrant alumni networks.

• Founders Factory COO Damian Routley says the UK’s startup ecosystem is thriving, but needs policy support, global partnerships, and talent retention to compete with Silicon Valley and cement its leadership in deep tech, AI, and innovation.

/breakfast

• 7 young Oxford VCs backing Oxford founders

• 15 sports tech VCs and athlete angels

📸 /techbrunch

Every week I use Midjourney to reimagine a TechCrunch story from the week.

This week, Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk would like to ‘delete all IP law’: the two sparked a weekend’s worth of debate around intellectual property, patents, and copyright, with a characteristically terse post declaring, “delete all IP law.”

I imagine two tech billionaires moving the goal posts.

• Caption this in comments?