Sure Valley Ventures, the London, UK-based founder-led venture capital firm that invests in high growth software companies in sectors such as the Metaverse, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Cybersecurity, completed an £85m first close of a £95m UK software technology fund.
This includes a cornerstone £50m investment from the British Business Bank through its Enterprise Capital Funds (ECF) program, which aims to increase the supply of equity capital to high-potential, early-stage UK companies.
Sure Valley is a seed capital investor in software companies. It plans to invest into 25 software companies from across the UK through its new fund. Currently based in London, Dublin, and Cambridge, the team will also be opening an office in Manchester to help access deals in innovation clusters that have developed around creative technologies in the North of England and in the Metaverse and AI opportunities in cities such as Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle.
The first investment from the Fund will be into a Belfast-based company.
Led by Managing Partner and Co-Founder Barry Downes, Sure Valley Ventures has established a strong track record in these sectors, having invested in them since the firm’s inception in 2017 through investee companies including Getvisibility, Smarttech, Nova Leah and Precog Systems in the security space, Engage XR, War Ducks, Admix, Volograms, VividQ and Virtex in the Metaverse sector and Cameramatics, Artomatix and Ambisense in the AI sector.
Alongside the equity invested, Sure Valley supports entrepreneurs via its platform, which draws on the team’s knowledge and experience as founders to create a programme which is tailored to each investee company’s individual needs. Sure Valley’s platform also features a global network of advisors, based in leading innovation hubs across the globe, including San Francisco, Silicon Valley, New York, LA, Austin and Seattle in the USA as well as leading European and Asian hubs.
FinSMEs
02/03/2022