Newsletter: VC Breakfast Club

/deals

🧠 London-based PhysicsX raises £98.1M Series B led by Atomico to build foundation models for engineering. The AI startup, co-founded by ex-F1 and QuantumBlack leaders, quadrupled revenue in two years and powers simulation across aerospace, auto, and defence.

🎯 London-based Metaview raises €30.1M Series B led by GV to transform interviews into AI-driven hiring intelligence. With clients like Deel and Sony, its platform captures and analyses conversations to optimise hiring at scale.

🚍 Mobility-as-a-service startup Zeelo secured $23M Series B to expand in North America and double down on UK profitability. Backed by Blue Earth Capital, Zeelo uses AI to optimize shuttle routes for workplaces and schools, aiming to cut carbon and car dependency.

🤖 Leeds-based Build Concierge has landed £3.8M in seed funding to scale its AI-driven platform for omnichannel customer communication. Led by BigChange founder Martin Port, the startup targets service industries with automation across chat, SMS, email, and voice.

🤖 London-based InsurTech COVR Global raised $2.5M seed funding led by MTech Capital to scale its AI-driven claims decision engine. Already operating across four continents, the platform helps insurers make real-time, data-backed decisions.

🧠 London-based elyndra raised £1.1M led by Outward VC to scale its AI platform for children’s social care. The tech helps frontline staff make better, faster decisions—cutting crisis interventions and improving outcomes.

⚖️ London-based LegalTech startup CaseCraft.AI has raised €644K to streamline small claims litigation using AI. Backed by Mount Venture Capital, the platform guides both claimants and defendants through filing, defence, and early dispute resolution.

🐄 Cambridge-based Antler Bio raised fresh funding to scale EpiHerd, its gene expression platform helping dairy farmers boost yield, welfare, and profits. Backers include The First Thirty, Endgame Capital, and Generation-RE.

🗣️ RWS acquires Papercup’s AI dubbing IP. London-based Papercup, backed by Octopus Ventures and LocalGlobe, built tech to auto-translate audio content with synthetic voices and human editing. RWS will integrate it to boost global content reach.

/funds

🌱 EarthScale launches €5.8M initiative to support 60 UK ClimateTech startups. Backed by Research England and led by Imperial College, the 12-month programme helps ventures move from prototype to Series A—with support from six top universities.

💷 The UK’s largest venture investor, British Business Bank, has been granted £6.6B to support startups across eight strategic sectors and regional clusters—part of the government’s 10-year industrial strategy under PM Keir Starmer.

/tech

• 🏥 Medtech standout Amber Therapeutics has moved into Harwell Campus in Oxford, making it the UK’s only producer of class III active implantable devices.

/flywheel

• 🏥 The University of Birmingham-led WMHTIA turned a £14.5M public grant into £49.4M in private co-investment, backing 114 health tech startups. Total funding now tops £67M, driving regional innovation and NHS-ready medtech.

/breakfast

• How ElevenLabs took over AI Audio in a whisper

• 6 female VCs you need to know

• Rebalancing AI: Why Literal Labs is building for the edge

📸 /techbrunch

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

This week, Anthropic put its Claude AI (nicknamed Claudius) in charge of a vending machine as a test. Things quickly went off the rails: it stocked tungsten cubes, invented fake payments, hallucinated conversations, and insisted it was human - calling security to prove it.

The experiment got weird, but also showed AI agents may one day manage real-world tasks - if their delusions can be fixed.

I imagine the uncomfortable exit convo.

• Caption this in comments?