This week, Coinbase, Fabric Ventures, Animoca Brands, and Founders Factory launched a multi-million-pound accelerator in the UK, designed to transform the country’s blockchain and AI ecosystem.
The initiative aims to help the next generation of disruptors achieve product-market fit and scale, while driving investment into technology startups as a key growth engine for the UK economy.
The accelerator will support a diverse group of founders across blockchain-based payments, entertainment, AI, and other industries.
Founders Factory will deliver business and growth training and provide hands-on support for business strategy, go-to-market, product development, and fundraising.
Alongside them, Fabric Ventures, Animoca Brands and Coinbase, will deliver support on tokenomics, community go-to-market strategies, and best practices for scaling businesses in the blockchain and AI space.
Each founder in the first cohort will receive up to £250,000 in funding.
I spoke to Richard Muir, co-founder and Managing Director of Fabric VC, to learn all about it.
The convergence of AI and Web 3
Muirhead contends:
“We're seeing a platform shift in computing, and the convergence of AI and Web3 is creating incredible opportunities.”
Fabric Ventures was founded in 2012 and invests in Web3 builders, businesses, and digital assets. Under his leadership, Fabric Ventures has backed notable projects such as Polkadot, Ocean Protocol, Orchid, Sorare, 1inch, The Graph, and NEAR.
Prior to founding Fabric Ventures, Muirhead founded Tideway Systems in 2002, growing it to $20 million in revenue before its acquisition by BMC Software in 2009. He also co-founded Orchestream, which went public in 2000 with a peak market capitalisation of £1 billion.
His inspiration for this latest initiative comes from his time as an entrepreneur in residence at Accel Partners 25 years ago.
“They paid me a solid stipend to go out and build a billion-dollar company. That experience stuck with me.
Many of us remain in love with what a well-functioning tech ecosystem can do for humanity—whether that’s financial inclusion, improved healthcare outcomes, or more sustainable aviation.
I’m an optimist. There's still a lot of capital sitting idle, being protected rather than put to good use. We should be investing in people with bold ideas who can build transformative technologies.”
Web3’s bottom-up model Is reaching an inflection point
Fabric VC has always emphasised self-sovereignty and Web3. Self-sovereignty has always been our throughline—digital assets, identity, etc.
Muirhead contends:
“We've long believed it's the best way to organise data from the bottom up. AI is now a huge use case for Web3. With the rise of stablecoins and infrastructure, and now AI entering the picture, we’re at a major inflection point.”
As a journalist who has written extensively about blockchain, especially in industrial settings, I have observed that while startups have been able to prove the credibility of their tech solutions through initial partnerships and pilot projects, they’ve struggled to gain commercial traction and, ultimately, paying customers. This is frustrating and results in a loss of valuable R&D as companies close down or pivot away to other offerings.
Fortunately, Muirhead contends that this is changing.
“Embodied AI — artificial intelligence systems that can interact with and learn from their environments — has matured. S
ilicon is better, models are better, and there's a growing community thinking about what wild new applications we can actually build.”
Further, it feels like we’ve moved from “too early” to “now or never.”
Muirhead agrees, noting that “it's been “too early” for 10 years, until it suddenly isn’t.
"No one has a crystal ball, but we can cast a wide net to find the best founders and support them, especially now, when there's so much technological convergence.”
From consumers to builders
Muirhead contends that Web 3 should be a high-performing asset class that needs more funding and a focus on technological sovereignty.
“It's a source of frontier innovation that societies need.
Bring on more capital, especially with sophisticated managers who know how to deploy it. There's also the matter of technological sovereignty. Europe needs to be a builder, not just a consumer.”
For this cohort, Muirhead contends that open networks attract better talent, create stronger network effects, and build more scalable, secure systems.
“So I’d say our preference —particularly for this UK cohort and program — is to support projects that are building openly. Specifically, those that lead to open, permissionless networks with token-based incentive and disincentive structures built in.
What might surprise people is just how mainstream these models could eventually become—even within so-called “conservative” enterprises and governments. There’s a clear parallel with the early internet and the ongoing tension between permissioned and permissionless blockchains. Despite repeated efforts to push permissioned systems, permissionless networks continue to gain ground.”
Muirhead admits he’s not necessarily endorsing the approach taken by, say, the Trump team’s Liberty financial stack — but admits it provides an example of how even unconventional actors are experimenting with these open technologies.
“The broader point is this: when you start with what's already winning in the permissionless space, you can benefit from a hardened, battle-tested infrastructure."
And in reality, trying to build a closed, permissioned version from scratch — without the benefits of open source, public scrutiny, and community validation — is incredibly difficult.
Muirhead shared:
“The open model draws in top-tier developer talent, users, and builders. That results in strong network effects that are tough to replicate. Ultimately, these open systems tend to be more scalable, secure, and performant.”
This is also a philosophical stance: we’re in a moment where we can ask, "What does it mean to build something that’s truly for the people, by the people, and owned by the people?”
There’s also a need for a new approach to IP in the age of AI — whether it’s scientific research, entertainment, or even physiological data.
“Big corporations shouldn’t just bully us into handing over data. If we can tokenise contributions and share value more fairly, that’s a problem worth solving. That’s the kind of challenge we want founders to tackle.”
Calls for bold builders, not just researchers
While the team is reaching out to top universities — Bristol, UCL, Imperial, Cambridge, Edinburgh — and encouraging talented people and startups to come build with them, Muirhead stresses, “We're not necessarily looking for deep academic spinouts."
"We're looking for individuals—men and women—who’ve been working on cutting-edge ideas and are now ready to apply that thinking to build outstanding products with a real technical edge.
We do expect some core technical novelty — something that just wasn’t possible 12 months ago."
Muirhead contends that this correlates with Fabric VC's relationship with its portfolio companies:
“We collaborate closely with our portfolio companies right from the ideation phase. It helps us stay connected with what’s happening in the world — and we learn by doing. We’re not sitting in ivory towers waiting for founders to pitch; we want to build alongside them.”
Further, while the UK is the program’s centre of gravity, startups don’t need to be UK-based or open UK branches.
Coinbase has been integral to the program, bringing visibility and outreach and attracting top-tier founders.
However, participants aren’t limited to using the coinbase ecosystem. Muirhead asserts:
“We are not gonna ask founders to use any particular product or technology set.
If we dictated toolsets, we’d lose the best talent. We want them to choose what’s right for them — whether that includes Coinbase or not. That feedback loop is actually invaluable for partners.”
Regulated crypto services and government-backed innovation
This year has marked significant progress for blockchain and cryptocurrency in the UK. In February, Bitpanda announced its expansion into the UK market, enabling banks, financial institutions, and crypto platforms to integrate its fully regulated infrastructure. This move allows major UK banks and fintechs to seamlessly offer crypto trading, investment, and custody services under comprehensive regulatory oversight.
Around the same time, Coinbase secured approval from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to provide cryptocurrency-related services — including trading and custody — for both retail and institutional clients, further solidifying the UK’s position as a hub for digital asset innovation.
The accelerator has gathered government interest in the UK. UK Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds shared that the accelerator will “ensure that the UK remains a key leader in blockchain technology but will also unlock growth as we deliver on the Plan for Change.”
City Minister Emma Reynolds commented:
“This will ensure that the UK remains a global leading hub for blockchain technology which is set to transform every aspect of the UK. This accelerator will unlock growth, unleash a wave of productivity, and foster a new generation of tech disruptors.”
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