Cambridge scientists launch £100m technology fund

Joseph Archer 3 September 2018 • 5:41pm

Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, who is one of the founders of the fund, is a Nobel prize laureate and president of the Royal Society. — Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, who is one of the founders of the fund, is a Nobel prize laureate and president of the Royal Society Credit: David Levenson

Eight of Cambridge's top scientists have created a £100 million fund to invest in "young and hungry" UK technology companies.

Ahren Limited Partners has been formed by a group of researchers from the city's thriving start-up scene including Sir Shankar Balasubramanian, inventor of a variety of genome sequencing techniques.

The fund has already raised £100m over the summer with contributions from insurance company Aviva and Wittington Investments.

Ahren, which expects to raise further cash over the next few months, plans to invest in companies that focus on four areas of research: the brain and artificial intelligence, genetics technologies, space, robotics and clean energy technology.

Because the fund is controlled by scientists who have seen financial success with their own inventions and research, Ahren aims to help entrepreneurial scientists to “create immense business and societal value”.

Professor Zoubin Ghahramani, who is head of the Machine Learning Group at Cambridge University and a founder at Ahren, said: “Ahren invests in transformative companies with bold vision seeking, sometimes to create, enormous markets for their products and services.

“We back young and hungry, highly motivated entrepreneurs that want to win big. We firmly believe that this strategy will generate the strongest returns for Ahren’s Limited Partners.”

Alice Newcombe-Ellis, the founder and managing partner of Ahren, is a maths and physics graduate who convinced the eight Cambridge's academics to join her in setting up the fund.

Professor Zoubin Ghahramani, another founder of Ahren, sold his AI technology Geometric Intelligence to car-sharing app Uber for an undisclosed amount.

Other founders include Professor John Daugman, the inventor of IRIS eye recognition technology that has been used to register 1.5bn citizens worldwide, Sir Gregory Winter, inventor of technology leading to the world’s highest grossing drug Humira with $18bn (£14bn) sales in 2017, and Sir Venki Ramakrishnan, a Nobel prize laureate and president of the Royal Society, the UK’s leading science body.