IQ Capital earmarks $400m to back transformative DeepTech startups across Europe
Cambridge and London based DeepTech VC firm IQ Capital has wrapped up its fourth venture fund (Fund IV) – worth $200 million – taking its assets under management to more than $1 billion.
It has also launched its second $200m Growth Fund to provide later-stage funding to outperforming companies, primarily in its venture portfolios.
This enables IQ Capital to deploy capital at multiple stages, investing an additional $30m in individual companies as they internationalise.
All the firm’s portfolio companies have shown the potential to dominate their respective markets on a global scale. The portfolio includes leading DeepTech companies such as Speechmatics, Thought Machine, Paragraf, Porotech, Nyobolt and Causalens.
The IQ Capital team has achieved over 20 exits to date including trade sales to Oracle, Google, Apple, Facebook, Siemens and several IPOs.
IQ Capital has defined DeepTech investing in the UK since its foundation in Cambridge in 2007. The firm will continue to invest at Seed and Series A into UK and European startups to commercialise IP-rich breakthrough technologies and back founders with the ambition to scale globally.
Fund IV will build on the success of IQ Capital’s existing funds, which have achieved exits to Oracle, Google, Apple and Facebook, along with several high-profile IPOs and delivered industry-beating returns to the investors.
IQ Capital’s PhD-rich team has invested in over 100 DeepTech startups, attracting a further $1.4bn follow-on capital to its portfolio and creating over 4,000 DeepTech jobs.
The firm’s general partners, Kerry Baldwin, Max Bautin and Ed Stacey, have worked together for more than 20 years with their commercial and scientific networks attracting founders from across Europe.
Investors in Fund IV include global institutions, funds-of-funds, family offices, corporates and tech entrepreneurs of whom several were previously backed by IQ Capital, as well as British Patient Capital.
IQ Capital co-founder Kerry Baldwin – Managing Partner and previous Chair of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association – is one of the leading female voices within the European venture capital community.
She said: “DeepTech will play a pivotal role as both the UK and Europe continue to lead the way in developing technology that will have a lasting global impact.
“IQ Capital backs IP-rich technologies with the potential to dominate massive global markets, at a time when DeepTech investment is at the forefront of investor's minds, topping $17bn in 2022.”
Max Bautin, co-founder, Managing Partner and board member of Invest Europe added: “The world has seen many examples of the transformative impact that DeepTech can create to achieve vital improvements in all spheres of life and help address some of the biggest challenges facing humanity.
“Breakthroughs in novel AI models, new energy & climate, robotics and SpaceTech, quantum computing, synthetic biology – all demonstrate what a significant opportunity DeepTech now presents.”
Fund IV has already made investments including: DreamFold, which uses Generative AI algorithms to predict the properties of therapeutic proteins; Risilience, a climate-risk platform providing the technology for multinational corporates to meet their net-zero objectives, which has gone on to raise a further $26m, and Secretarium, which has pioneered confidential computing, developing the world's first 'trustless' cloud computing infrastructure, based on advanced cryptography using only standard hardware components.