Newsletter: VC Breakfast Club

/espresso

• Alloyed’s £37M Raise - Expanding automated 3D printing for aerospace and auto.

• Project Europe’s €10M Fund – Backing young founders to combat brain drain.

• Mimo raises $8.5M to scale AI-powered SMB bookkeeping automation.

/raising (?)

Are you raising? Founders, pitch here.

/deals

🚀 Oxford spinout Alloyed secured a £37M Series B to expand UK and US manufacturing. Backed by SPARX, Aviva Investors, and Oxford Science Enterprises, the firm develops advanced metal components for Boeing, Microsoft, and BMW, pioneering automated 3D printing for stronger, lighter alloys.

💰 London-based Mimo raised $8.5M (£6.5M) led by Project A, with backing from Northzone and Seedcamp. The SMB financial management platform processes hundreds of millions in payments and has secured $125M+ in embedded funding with Froda to scale its AI-driven bookkeeping automation.

🍻 Manchester-based AI startup Peak, founded in a pub in 2014, has been acquired by New York-listed UiPath. Peak’s AI-driven decision-making platform optimizes inventory and pricing. The acquisition enhances UiPath’s vertical AI solutions, expanding into retail and manufacturing sectors globally.

⚙️ Bristol-based Zero Point Motion secured a £4M pre-Series A to scale its breakthrough motion sensing tech. Backed by SCVC, Foresight, and Verve Ventures, the startup is redefining autonomous navigation, space exploration, and defence with cutting-edge quantum-enhanced inertial sensors.

💬 London-based Merx raised £1M pre-seed to scale its AI-powered conversational commerce platform. Backed by VentureFriends and Ascension, Merx helps brands engage customers via WhatsApp and messaging apps, replacing email marketing with AI-driven, hyper-personalised interactions.

📝 UK-based YAi secured £250K SEIS funding from Jenson Ventures to enhance its AI-driven content creation platform. YAi automates content scoring, brand voice checks, and factual accuracy, streamlining marketing workflows. Future plans include audio and video content capabilities by Q3 2025.

/funds

💡 Project Europe, led by Harry Stebbings, has launched a €10M fund to invest in 18-25-year-old entrepreneurs, combating Europe's "brain drain". Backed by 125+ top founders, including those from Shopify, Klarna, and GitHub, the initiative aims to supercharge Europe's tech startup ecosystem.

🔬 Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE) secured a £15M investment from Aviva Investors, adding to its £850M+ raised since 2015. OSE backs 100+ Oxford spinouts, including Alloyed, which received a £6.6M direct investment for advanced alloy innovation.

🏆 Founders Factory tops the FT’s 2025 UK & Ireland start-up hub ranking, supporting 300+ early-stage startups with investment, product development, and corporate partnerships. Despite UK VC investment falling to $15B in 2024, experts see strong infrastructure and investor confidence driving future growth.

💸 Fuel Ventures’ VCT fund, which raised £10.2M since launching in 2023, is now available via Hargreaves Lansdown’s platform. Investors can access tax-efficient VC opportunities supporting high-growth UK startups across hospitality, property analytics, and fund distribution networks.

/tech

• ⚛️ Oxford Ionics secured UK government backing for its 2D ion trap quantum project. Partnering with Riverlane and Bay Photonics, the initiative enhances qubit routing, advancing large-scale quantum computing.

/flywheel

• 🏴 Scottish tech startups will pitch at the Techscaler London Investor Showcase, connecting with global investors. The Scottish Government-backed program supports nearly 1,000 startups, raising £120M in two years, aiming to drive more investment into Scotland’s innovation ecosystem.

• 📈 Cambridge Enterprise distributed £12.6M in returns, supported 2,580 researchers, and enabled 25 new spinouts in 2024. The University of Cambridge Enterprise Fund X launched, adding to £27M raised across previous funds, backing 60 startups that secured £550M+ in syndicated capital.

• 🧪 The Oxford-Cambridge Flywheel aims to drive £78B in economic growth by 2035, supporting the UK’s 5,000+ knowledge-intensive companies in Cambridge. Oxford startups raised £872M last year, while Cambridge firms secured a record $1.6B in the first half of 2024.

• 🏥 Finnish pharma giant Orion Corporation is opening a Biologics R&D Centre at Cambridge’s Babraham Research Campus, aiming to expand biologics development and recruit up to 50 staff.

• 🎓 Murray Edwards College launches an entrepreneurship program for women at Cambridge, backed by AstraZeneca.

/breakfast

• Call it a flywheel.

• Cambridge and Oxford alumni have raised $3.34B to build robots

• Are we there yet? Autonomous vehicle startups in Cambridge & Oxford.

📸 /techbrunch

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

This week, VC Aileen Lee highlights how the broader investor exodus is worsening woes for unicorn companies. I imagine unicorns bemoaning the news.

• Caption this in comments?