Project Ventures, an independent early-stage venture capital fund rooted in the Imperial College London ecosystem, has launched its debut £5 million fund to invest in pre-seed and seed-stage startups working across deeptech and AI. It plans to invest between £100,000 and £300,000 in each portfolio company and has already completed three investments.
More than 80 per cent of the fund’s limited partners are Imperial alumni, with Project Ventures describing it as the first independent, alumni-powered VC fund dedicated to the university’s startup ecosystem.
Project Ventures is targeting founders applying science, engineering and AI to develop intelligent systems that connect the digital and physical worlds. Its areas of interest include robotics, healthcare, climate, energy and advanced manufacturing.
The fund is led by founder and managing partner Shahryar Barati, a three-time Imperial alumnus. Its approach is based on alumni-backed venture networks used by universities in the US, drawing on connections within the Imperial community to identify and support companies at an early stage.
This is such an exciting moment for deeptech, with AI accelerating development cycles that historically took years while bringing an entirely new intelligence layer into the physical world.
Imperial’s depth across science, engineering and medicine makes it an exceptional ecosystem from which to find and back companies at that intersection, and our deep roots across the Imperial community put us in a particularly strong position to support these pioneering businesses from an early stage,
said Barati.
Project Ventures has already backed three companies: home energy platform Tewke, AI-powered metal 3D printing quality assurance company NexusAM, and neurotech startup Neubond, which focuses on stroke rehabilitation.
Project Ventures aims to close its debut fund by summer 2027 while continuing to build its pipeline of Imperial-linked startups. Longer term, it sees potential to extend its alumni-powered investment model to other technical university ecosystems across Europe.
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