Project Ventures launches £5M fund for Imperial-rooted deeptech and AI startups
Tech.eu Tamara Djurickovic ● Covered by 2 sources
Project Ventures just launched a £5M fund for Imperial-linked AI and deeptech startups. It’s backed mostly by Imperial alumni, and it has already made three bets.
Based on reporting by Tech.eu, Tamara Djurickovic — read the original for the full story.
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Project Ventures has launched a £5 million debut fund to back pre-seed and seed startups coming out of the Imperial College London orbit. The firm says it will put between £100,000 and £300,000 into each company, and it has already made three investments.
This is not a generalist VC with a casual nod to academia. More than 80% of its limited partners are Imperial alumni, and Project Ventures says it is the first independent, alumni-powered fund built specifically for the university’s startup ecosystem. The pitch is simple: use the density of a technical university community to spot founders early and help them before the rest of the market catches up.
The fund is led by Shahryar Barati, who is himself a three-time Imperial alumnus. He’s betting on teams applying science, engineering and AI to build intelligent systems that link the digital and physical worlds — which means robotics, healthcare, climate, energy and advanced manufacturing are all in scope.
And the first checks already show that spread. Project Ventures has backed Tewke, a home energy platform; NexusAM, which uses AI for metal 3D printing quality assurance; and Neubond, a neurotech startup focused on stroke rehabilitation. The fund wants to close by summer 2027, keep building its pipeline of Imperial-linked startups, and eventually take the same alumni-backed model to other technical universities in Europe.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the right kind of VC signal: small, specific, and tied to a real network instead of a glossy pitch deck. Alumni capital can be surprisingly effective when it’s attached to actual technical depth, not just nameplates on a slide. Europe has far too many funds talking about deeptech and too few with enough patience to back it properly.
Read more about this at: Tech.eu
