UCL Technology Fund 2 has achieved a first close on the way to its $131m target, with a cornerstone investment from UCL itself.
University College London (UCL) has reached an initial close of undisclosed size for the £100m ($131m) successor to its UCL Technology Fund, the early-stage vehicle aimed at commercialising its life, computer and physical sciences research.
UCL will act as the fund’s cornerstone investor together with British Patient Capital, the venture arm of government-owned British Business Bank. Unnamed existing and new investors have also joined the consortium.
AlbionVC, the venture arm of Albion Capital, will again manage the latest fund having also supervised its predecessor. It will work in partnership with UCL Business (UCLB), the university’s commercialisation company.
The new vehicle is expected to focus on opportunities in the biomedical, artificial intelligence and advanced materials spaces.
Its precursor had typically supplied from $131,000 to $3.3m according to the maturity of each project: proof-of-concept, pre-licensing or spinouts seeking funding across multiple rounds.
The first UCL Technology Fund raised $70m in 2016 from EU-owned European Investment Fund, AlbionVC and Touchstone Innovations, the commercialisation firm spun out of Imperial College London as Imperial Innovations and since absorbed by IP Group.
It made a total of 45 investments in projects, including 27 that became spinouts, which collectively raised more than £1bn ($1.3bn at current exchange rates) in funding and generated 570 jobs.
Exits from the first fund included gene therapy developers Orchard Therapeutics and MeiraGTx, both floated on the Nasdaq stock exchange, in addition to natural language processing spinout Bloomsbury AI, which joined social media group Facebook for an undisclosed figure.
Anne Lane, chief executive of UCLB, said: “We are now looking to build on the success of the first fund and invest in the best and brightest ideas within UCL’s extensive research base and realise its innovative potential.
“During what is a testing time for the global economy, we must look to universities to foster new research and provide them with the right resources to succeed, from proof-of-concept to commercial application.”
