Cambridge Start-Up Fund Backed By ARM

Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC) has raised an initial £50m from long term institutional and strategic investors to support the growth of innovative businesses based in the Cambridge Cluster.

Main investors are Invesco Perpetual and Lansdowne Partners, helped by with further the University of Cambridge Endowment Fund, ARM and IP Group.

The university will also support CIC through its commercialisation office, Cambridge Enterprise.

Cambridge has 19 science and business parks and over 1,500 high-tech companies, a dozen of which have achieved a valuation of over $1 billion.

ARM has a long relationship with Cambridge, sponsoring individuals and initiatives such as Cambridge University Entrepreneurs, the launch of the Judge Business School and activities in the Computer Lab and the Engineering department.

CIC’s management team is led by Peter Keen, co-founder of Merlin Biosciences.  The Board includes Mike Muller, co-founder and CTO of ARM.

CIC’s business panel includes Hermann Hauser, Warren East, Sir Greg Winter, Master of Trinity College and founder of Cambridge Antibody Technology and Domantis, Prof. Sir Richard Friend, Cavendish Professor of Physics and founder of Cambridge Display Technology, and Jonathan Milner, founder and CEO of Abcam.

CIC plans to invest in companies across a wide range of technologies, at different stages in their development.  Being a permanent capital vehicle, it will invest over a long time horizon and expects some of its investments to take a decade or more to reach maturity.  It intends to invest its initial capital over a two to three year timescale, after which it will raise more capital, probably by means of an IPO.


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