British Business Bank commits £180m to six AI funds

The British Business Bank has committed £180m to six venture capital and growth equity funds to expand the capital available to AI and deep technology businesses in the UK.

The commitments, reported by BusinessCloud on 15 October 2026, are intended to strengthen domestic financing options and help the UK retain more of the economic value generated by its technology companies. The money is being committed to investment funds rather than distributed directly to businesses.

What happened

Intrepid Growth Partners Fund I receives the largest commitment, at £55m. The fund specialises in growth investment in AI, placing it at the later-stage end of the bank’s latest allocations.

Crane III receives £35m to back founders globally from inception through seed funding. Its remit covers foundational technologies spanning AI, software, infrastructure and deep science, rather than concentrating solely on applications built on existing systems.

A further £20m goes to Connect V, which targets technical founders at the pre-seed stage. Its investment focus combines AI with hardware and real-world automation, bringing physical technology businesses into the funding programme alongside software companies.

Entrepreneurs First’s Early Stage Fund receives £22m. It will support companies emerging from the EF platform at seed, Series A and Series B, including businesses developing AI infrastructure.

Headline EU VIII receives £26m for seed and Series A investments across Europe, with a focus on AI. Its European remit means the fund’s investment scope extends beyond the UK, although the bank’s stated objective is to improve financing for UK innovators.

The remaining £22m is committed to Evantic Fund I, which invests in globally focused AI companies at the growth stage. That gives the package a second specialist route into businesses seeking capital beyond their initial development rounds.

The allocations cover different technologies as well as different investment stages. Hardware and infrastructure are part of that scope, areas also represented in the separate £3.8m funding round raised by neural chip developer MintNeuro.

The background

The bank is also investing directly in AI businesses. It recently put £10m into Salience Labs, an Oxford spinout developing optical switching technology designed to address a bottleneck in AI networking. That investment is separate from the six fund commitments.

Earlier direct investments named by the bank include Wayve, Kraken Technologies, PhysicsX, PolyAI and Ineffable Intelligence. These holdings show that its AI financing activity includes company-level investment as well as capital allocated through external fund managers.

Its relationship with Entrepreneurs First dates back to 2016, when it anchored EF’s first institutional fund. The latest commitment therefore extends an established relationship rather than introducing a new fund manager to the bank’s portfolio.

Carl Bishop, partner and head of funds at Entrepreneurs First, said the bank had also invested directly in EF-backed companies, including PolyAI, Accurx and Hadean. The relationship has consequently involved both funding the platform’s investment activity and backing individual businesses that emerged from it.

The announcement sits alongside other public financing measures for innovation, including the government’s £1bn innovation plan and mayoral funding proposals. The six allocations are specifically commitments to venture capital and growth equity funds, rather than a general business grant programme.

What people are saying

Leandros Kalisperas, chief investment officer of the British Business Bank, said the UK’s financing environment did not yet match the strength of its technical capabilities. He presented access to capital, rather than a shortage of ideas or talent, as the gap the bank was seeking to address.

Kalisperas said the strategy was to make larger pools of finance available throughout a company’s development. The intended result is greater access to capital within the UK, reducing the need for businesses to look elsewhere as their funding requirements grow.

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds linked the commitments to the UK’s ability to develop its own AI capabilities. He said research strength and entrepreneurial talent needed to be matched by financing opportunities, with the investment intended to support safe, secure companies developed at home.

Matt Miller, founder and managing partner of Evantic Capital, said the firm had chosen London as a base connecting the UK with Silicon Valley. Its approach includes encouraging overseas portfolio companies to establish operations here and giving UK businesses access to US networks.

Miller said Evantic had already invested or committed more than £150m in UK businesses. Nine of its non-UK portfolio companies had opened London offices, providing a concrete measure of the international investment activity he described.

Robert Greenwood, senior director of funds at the British Business Bank, said increasing the amount of capital was only one part of the task. Businesses also needed investors whose expertise matched their stage of development, from formation to international expansion.

Mark Machin, co-founder and managing partner of Intrepid Growth Partners, emphasised the need for patient, specialist growth funding. He said the UK’s AI research base, engineering expertise and ambitious founders needed deeper sources of long-term capital to build globally competitive businesses.

What happens next

Investment decisions will follow the individual funds’ mandates. Connect V’s pre-seed focus differs from Intrepid’s and Evantic’s growth-stage strategies, so the commitments do not create a single financing route or a common entry point for companies seeking backing.

For founders, the relevant distinction is between early investment to establish a business and later funding to expand it. Separate activity such as Manchester Angels reaching 22 investments illustrates another part of the early-stage financing market, rather than a route into these six funds.

The announcement does not set out a timetable for deploying the £180m or identify the companies that will receive investments from the funds. The next company-level outcomes will depend on the investments those managers select.