Deeptech company StandardX has raised £10 million in seed funding to develop its accelerator-based isotope refinery and increase production of rare isotopes used in medicine and energy. The round was led by Vsquared Ventures and East X Ventures, with participation from firstminute capital, UKI2S (the UK Innovation and Science Seed Fund), Brevan Howard Macro Venture and Geometry.
Founded in 2025 by Richard Pearson (CEO) and Ross Allen (CTO), both nuclear engineers with experience scaling startups, StandardX is building an isotope refinery designed to produce different types of isotopes at commercial scale. The company was established with the aim of creating a more reliable and resilient European supply chain for critical rare materials.
Its proprietary accelerator system is intended to replace isotope-specific production infrastructure with a platform capable of manufacturing a broader portfolio of isotopes from a standard industrial footprint. The system is designed to support distributed production, allowing isotope manufacturing to be located closer to where the materials are needed.
Isotopes are used across healthcare, energy and other industries, but global production relies on a limited number of ageing facilities and machines with restricted output. StandardX is initially focusing on isotopes used in cancer diagnosis and treatment, including materials needed for targeted alpha therapies.
The company plans to supply its first isotopes to a medical research partner in 2027. Its technology is intended to support the production of both isotopes currently used by hospitals and those required by drug developers working on new treatments, some of which are not currently commercially available at scale.
Isotopes underpin the next era of innovation across several key sectors, but all share the same constraints around supply. Shortages are most acute in cancer medicine, already impacting patients today, and stalling progress in the development of next-generation treatments. This problem will only get worse, with new cancer cases projected to increase 67% by 2050. So we're building the platform the world needs to address this,
said Richard Pearson.
StandardX also plans to use the same accelerator platform to produce isotopes for other industries, including tritium, a fuel used in fusion energy. The company has signed agreements with fusion developers to manufacture tritium as they work towards bringing fusion power to the grid.
The seed funding will be used to grow the team, secure StandardX’s first industrial site in London and advance the design and construction of its first accelerator-based isotope refinery system. The company also plans to begin pilot isotope production and distribution to a medical partner in 2027, ahead of industrial-scale production from 2029.
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