UK venture capital firm Sure Valley Ventures has raised £85m for a fund to back 25 early-stage British software startups in sectors including the metaverse, artificial intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity.
The British Business Bank, a government-owned but independent investment bank, provided £50m to the fund via its Enterprise Capital Funds programme. The remaining £35m came from new and existing private investors.
Sure Valley Ventures, which shared the first close exclusively with UKTN, said it plans to raise an additional £10m over the next six months from private investors, bringing the total capital at its disposal to £95m.
The VC firm will “broadly” split the cash from its UK Software Venture Capital Fund equally across the 25 startups it selects.
This will see it put around £3.5m to £4m into each startup from Seed stage up to Series B....