Newsletter: VC Breakfast Club

/espresso

• /deals: $78.7M+ raised by Sokin, iplicit, Yavrio, and more.

• /UK flywheel: a16z exits London; Oxford & Cambridge drive innovation but need better infrastructure.

• /ai: Zelt, Prosper, Smartify raising to scale.

/raising (?)

Are you raising? Founders, pitch here.

/deals

💰 Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital led a $31M investment into London-based fintech Sokin, alongside Aurum Partners and ex-PayPal exec Gary Marino. Profitable since 2022, Sokin serves 500+ businesses and plans global expansion into Asia, South America, and Africa.

☁️ UK cloud accounting platform iplicit secured £25M from One Peak to accelerate product development. Serving 2,000+ organizations and 38,000 daily users, iplicit has achieved six years of triple-digit revenue growth.

🤝 London-based Zelt raised $6M led by Nauta, with Venrex and Episode 1, to expand its all-in-one HR, Finance, and IT platform. Trusted by 150+ companies, Zelt aims to simplify people operations and cut software costs by up to 50%.

🌎 Sightline, a London-based climate market intelligence platform, secured $5.5M to expand AI-powered research and analytics. Backed by Molten Ventures, its platform serves HSBC, BHP, and the US Department of Energy.

🚀 Fuel Ventures led a £4M round into Prosper, an AI-driven wealth management platform with £200M in assets. Backed by Monzo, Capital One, and A16Z investors, Prosper aims to modernize private market investing and streamline financial management for high-net-worth individuals.

💸 AI, the generative AI-powered compliance startup, has secured $3 million in a seed funding round led by Gradient, Google’s early-stage AI fund, with participation from Y Combinator, Amino Capital, Olive Tree Capital, and the Oxford Seed Fund.

🧠 Cedars-Sinai and Oxford Science Enterprises co-invested $2M in Neu Health, a smartphone-based neurology-care platform for Parkinson's and dementia. This partnership marks Neu Health’s U.S. market entry with a Cedars-Sinai pilot program.

🏦 London-based FinTech Yavrio raised £1.9M in seed funding led by Fuel Ventures to revolutionize ERP banking integrations. Already linked to 10,000+ banks, Yavrio automates reconciliations, eliminating error-prone CSV imports.

🏛️ Smartify, a visitor interaction platform, raised €1.8M led by Metavallon VC. Using AI and AR, it enhances museum experiences, tackling high digital costs for cultural institutions.

/funds

The UK spent five years lobbying Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) to open a London office, only for the VC giant to exit in 18 months. Trump's crypto-friendly policies and UK regulatory delays led a16z to refocus on the US market.

London-based VC NextSTEP is injecting €1.6M into 16 CleanTech startups in 2025, targeting energy, mobility, and carbon capture. Founded in 2022, the fund bets on sustainability-driven early-stage innovation.

/tech

• Swiss biotech MoonLake Immunotherapeutics, now valued at £2.6B, expands its Cambridge presence, leveraging local biotech talent.

/flywheel

• The UK aims to build “Europe’s Silicon Valley” by expanding transport, housing, and infrastructure in Oxford and Cambridge

• Oxford and Cambridge universities have produced over 2,000 spinouts since 2011, but hurdles in commercializing research remain. Streamlining IP rules, faster processes, infrastructure, and fostering human capital could amplify their impact.

• Oxford startup teams most frequently partner with alumni from Harvard (9.7%), Cambridge (8.1%), and consulting company BCG (8.7%). While Cambridge founders lean towards engineering and FAANG alumni, Oxford founding teams typically lean finance & MBB. Cambridge also more integrated with London based on founding teams.

• Oxford BioEscalator’s Annual Review highlights five years of impact: nurturing 42 companies, raising £1.65B in funding, and creating 433 jobs.

• Cambridge-based chip giant Arm has become a startup launchpad, with 18 former employees now leading their own ventures.

• Capital Enterprise and Turing Innovation Catalyst Manchester have partnered up for an accelerator in Manchester.

• XWaves is hosting the Female Founder Forum on Feb 7 at Oxford Saïd. Join 80+ founders, investors, and researchers for panels, 1:1 mentoring, and networking. Featuring leaders from Clear, Compass Labs, yhangry & more. Limited spots!

/breakfast

• 7 young Oxford VCs backing Oxford founders

• Bringing customers back: AI & retention marketing

• Is public funding propping up mediocre European VCs?

📸 /techbrunch

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

This week, DeepSeek claims its ‘reasoning’ model beats OpenAI’s o1 on certain benchmarks - the Xsphere & LinkedInverse were aflutter with debate. Is smart beating big - is this the end of market leaders like OpenAI and the upstream big bets by NVIDIA? Or does Jevon’s Paradox save the day?

• Caption this in comments?