- Antler invested £2.2 million in 10 UK pre-seed startups.
- Based on Antler, greater than one-third of those startups are growing bodily AI or industrial automation options.
- The preliminary funding in every startup is roughly £210,000, break up between debt and fairness.
Antler, which started working in Singapore in 2017 and has since expanded to 30 cities, invested £2.2 million into 10 pre-seed startups throughout the latest founder residency and, in some circumstances, made direct investments in present groups.
The checklist contains Cloop, a to-do checklist that does itself; Lir Labs, which automates organic water therapy; Marco, a studying layer for bodily intelligence; Ninopay, which helps households unfold the price of childcare whereas suppliers receives a commission upfront; Picnic, an AI assistant for product groups; Plenex, which lets customers question the bodily world; siliXon, which converts pure language requests into working electronics; and Sonura, a generative AI for music creation. Two different startups are nonetheless in stealth mode.
Over one third of the brand new UK startups they’ve supported are targeted on industrial automation and bodily AI, a report determine for Antler, says Hannah Leach, a accomplice at Antler, toTech Funding Information.
Based on Leach, every preliminary funding quantities to about £210,000 and is break up between debt and fairness.
Exploring untapped industries
Initially, Antler didn’t got down to deal with bodily AI.
“We’re a generalist fund, not one that’s based mostly on particular hypotheses,” Leach stated, including that the founders’ areas of curiosity align with broader business developments. Though the startups are grouped beneath the classes of bodily AI and agentic AI, Leach made it clear that the founders originated these themes.
Founders are specializing in analog industries as a result of there may be much less competitors, although it’s more durable to promote to sectors which can be “not tech native” and have longer gross sales cycles, says Leach.
She additionally identified the chance for robust buyer retention: “Should you can combine yourselves into these conventional, established workflows, you then’ll find yourself constructing some stickiness.”
The physical AI market size will reach e of $1.5 billion in 2026, rising to $15.24 billion by 2032. Final week, Patrick Bion, CEO of Minimal, stated expanding physical AI companies takes longer and requires important capital to deploy. The founders of Wave by Vento in Turin famous that Europe can’t match both China’s manufacturing capability or the USA’ stage of analysis spending.
Though pre-seed funding doesn’t get rid of this hole, it does decide which startups get the chance to compete.
Massive Tech backgrounds should not the primary pattern
Many founders have distinguished backgrounds: 30% have earlier expertise at main know-how corporations, 60% have been concerned in early-stage startups, and 25% come from the monetary sector, with some overlap.
Particularly, six founders have been from Massive Tech, and 13 have a technical background. Notable corporations talked about embrace Meta, Google, Snapchat, NVIDIA, Affirm, and Allica Bank.
“We’ve got a reasonably even distribution,” Leach provides, citing former founders, engineers, AI and machine studying researchers with PhDs, and a quantity from large know-how corporations.
“Individuals who depart are doing so to pursue new alternatives. There’s merely a lot alternative nowadays. They’ll obtain a lot greater than ever earlier than with even lower than previously,” she provides.
Different Massive Tech graduates are likewise elevating cash as reported in different TFN tales. Klarent, a Zurich-based firm based by two former Google engineers, secured $8 million in seed funding. Souk, based mostly in London and based by former staff of Deel, GitHub and BlackRock, raised $1.6 million, with Antler as considered one of its buyers.
Bigger investments in a more durable seed market
Antler has elevated its funding over time. Beforehand, it had invested £840,000 in seven startups (£120,000 per firm) and £1.7 million in 14 startups (£121,000 every) in spring 2025, as Vestbee said.
The present determine, roughly £210,000 per startup, is sort of double and aligns with the terms TFN reported in August 2025: £125,000 for 8.5% fairness, an £85,000 convertible notice, and as much as £330,000 pre-committed for the subsequent spherical. The sooner totals could have been based mostly on totally different funding buildings, so the figures will not be straight comparable.
Startups are actually progressing quicker, operating faster pilots, gaining extra expertise, and making extra frequent modifications of course. In consequence, Antler’s funding method has modified.
“Ultimately, we’re investing within the founders and of their capability to tackle suggestions. The factor we spend money on in the intervening time is probably going not going to be what they’ve inbuilt six months or a yr,” famous Leach.
The market is uneven: UK startups raised $17 billion within the first half of 2026, a 102% rise on the earlier yr, with AI corporations securing $12.6 billion, Dealroom reviews. Based on Antler’s analysis of over 41,800 UK funding rounds, solely 12% of British startups that elevate a seed spherical go on to achieve Sequence A.
The actual problem comes after the funding. Leach admits that gross sales cycles in these industries “could be more durable.” Whether or not these 10 groups, with greater than a 3rd in slow-selling sectors, can beat that 12% is the important thing quantity to look at as they go for seed rounds.
