The UK’s deeptech ecosystem has obtained a brand new increase because the British Business Bank will increase its assist for Bristol-based Empirical Ventures with a recent £10 million dedication via its Regional Angels Programme. The brand new funding brings the Financial institution’s whole assist for Empirical to £15 million, following an earlier £5 million dedication introduced in 2023.
The extra capital will allow Empirical Ventures to develop its backing of founders, translating chopping‑edge scientific analysis into industrial ventures throughout power, superior supplies, robotics, and life sciences. The initiative is designed to assist extra scientists step past academia and construct globally aggressive deeptech firms.
The transfer aligns with the UK authorities’s 2026 Fashionable Industrial Technique, which prioritises unlocking better industrial worth from nationwide analysis strengths. By channelling affected person capital into early‑stage deeptech, the British Enterprise Financial institution goals to assist de‑danger science‑based mostly innovation and create excessive‑high quality jobs throughout the UK’s areas.
From spinout success to enterprise constructing
Empirical Ventures was based by Dr. Ben Miles and Dr. Johnathan Matlock, who first collaborated at Ziylo Ltd, a College of Bristol spinout acquired by Novo Nordisk in 2018. Each stay lively figures within the UK’s science‑commercialisation panorama. Miles additionally launched Spin Up Science in 2018, an initiative that has supported over 4,500 scientists and helped catalyse greater than 200 deeptech firms nationwide.
Their collective expertise shapes Empirical’s mannequin, which focuses on serving to technical founders navigate the shift from analysis to industrial operations and scale.
Empirical’s portfolio represents a various group of science‑pushed startups, together with Quantum Dice, Wave Photonics, Senisca, Forefront RF, Zero Level Movement, Scarlet Therapeutics, Lumi Industries, and Intrinsic Semiconductor Applied sciences.
A brand new playbook for deeptech investing
Empirical’s “Enterprise Scientist” thesis argues that the following wave of transformative firms will likely be constructed by founders who can bridge basic analysis and industrial influence. Supported by a mixture of SEIS, EIS, and syndicate constructions, Empirical invests from the earliest phases, when many conventional funds hesitate to take technical danger.
With the British Enterprise Financial institution’s new £10 million dedication, Empirical Ventures continues to empower scientists to show discovery into world‑altering enterprises.
