Revolut backer Molten Ventures hits £175M first close of growth fund
Tech.eu John Reynolds
Molten Ventures has closed the first £175m on a new growth fund. The British Business Bank put in £75m, aiming to help UK startups find bigger backing.
Based on reporting by Tech.eu, John Reynolds — read the original for the full story.
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Molten Ventures has taken the first close on its Ventures Growth Fund at £175m, with a target of £350m overall. The headline number matters because the firm is pitching the fund as a way to fill the awkward gap between startup money and the larger cheques needed to scale.
A big piece of that first close is a £75m cornerstone investment from the British Business Bank. That matters less as a single cheque than as a signal: cornerstone money is meant to pull in other investors and make the rest of the fund easier to raise.
The fund will back Series B and later rounds in the UK and Europe, with a focus on space, AI, fintech, quantum, deeptech and hardware. Molten says the point is to help address a familiar problem for UK founders, who often look overseas when they need capital to grow beyond the early stage.
Ben Wilkinson, Molten’s chief executive, framed the British Business Bank’s backing as both a vote of confidence and a nudge for more long-term institutional money to come into venture and growth. That’s the real subtext here. The money is important, but so is the argument behind it: if the UK wants more companies to scale at home, it needs more investors willing to stay in the room after the first round of applause.
Molten is already a listed investor with a portfolio that includes Finnish satellite startup Iceye and UK digital bank Zopa. It manages £2 billion across its funds, and it is also reported to be in the running to manage the government-backed £1bn Scale Up Fund, alongside M&G Investments and Schroders.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the kind of fund announcement that sounds boring right up until you notice who’s doing the financing. The UK keeps talking about scale-up capital as if it were a weather problem, but it’s really a plumbing problem: who writes the next cheque, and who waits long enough to let companies grow?
Read more about this at: Tech.eu
