Top 10 VC Investors in the United Kingdom

The venture capital (VC) investment scene in the UK has been steadily growing over the last two decades. Given that London is the top tech hub in Europe, it's not surprising that startups have been getting more attention. And while Silicon Valley is currently the most dominant region out there in terms of VC funding, the UK's startup ecosystem is slowly getting stronger every year. Here is an overview of the Top 10 VC Investors in the UK.

This article is part of a series where we present you the best Venture Capital firms across different cities and countries. Here you can view the rankings for London and Manchester.

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Top Venture Capital Firms in the United Kingdom

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1. Crowdcube

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Crowdcube is an equity crowdfunding platform for entrepreneurs of start-ups and growing businesses. Crowdcube enables individuals to invest or loan in small companies in return for equity or an annual return.

As an investment crowdfunding platform, Crowdcube enables entrepreneurs to raise finance with the added benefit of being backed by thecrowd. For investors, Crowdcube provides a way to handpick a stake in an innovative business that traditionally would have been restricted to corporate investors.

Since Crowdcube first pioneered equity crowdfunding in 2011, a total of £300m has been invested through the platform from a crowd of over 390,000 investors, with more than £230m successfully invested in 520 raises. Businesses like the challenger bank Monzo, which raised £1 million in a record-breaking 96 seconds, as well as household brand names such as River Cottage and the Eden Project along with venture capital-backed businesses such as JustPark, eMoov, Sugru and Chip have all successfully raised growth funding from the crowd.

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Website: www.crowdcube.com

Founded: 2010

Total fund size: $64.1M

Crowdcube's most notable exits include Bidstack, TC BioPharm, and Pod Point.

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2. Northstar Ventures

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Northstar Ventures is a venture capital firm investing in innovative solutions to help solve the most pressing societal issues we have today.  Our ticket sizes range from £100k to £1mil into early stage tech companies. We provide added value in leveraging our network of university partners, funders, non-executive directors and talent to support each investment.

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Website: www.northstarventures.co

Founded: 2004

Total fund size: £81.7M

Northstar Ventures's most notable exits include Talivest, Moltin, and Pogo.com.

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3. Seedcamp

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Seedcamp is Europe's seed fund, identifying and investing early in world-class founders attacking large, global markets and solving real problems using technology. The Seedcamp Nation includes over 400 startups building breakout businesses that change the way people live, interact and buy and includes publicly listed UiPath, Wise, and unicorns Revolut, Hopin, Sorare, Pleo, and wefox along with fast-growing businesses such as Grover, viz.ai and Ezra.

Seedcamp fast-tracks a founder's vision and creates value through immediate access to smart capital, a lifelong community of support and a global network built upon more than a decade's experience backing exceptional talent.

Seedcamp fast-tracks a founder's vision and creates value through immediate access to smart capital, a lifelong community of support, and a global network built upon more than a decade's experience backing exceptional talent.

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Website: www.seedcamp.com

Founded: 2007

Total fund size: $108.7M

Seedcamp's most notable exits include Re:infer, UiPath, and Wise.

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4. Eight Roads Ventures

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Eight Roads Ventures is a global investment firm backed by Fidelity. Eight Roads Ventures manages $8 billion of assets across its offices in China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, UK and the US. Our 50-year history of investing includes partnerships with over 300 companies.

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Website: www.eightroads.com

Founded: 1969

Total fund size: $2.8B

Eight Roads Ventures's most notable exits include Alibaba Group, Innovent Biologics, and Beam Therapeutics.

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5. SoftBank Vision Fund

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SoftBank Vision Fund is a subsidiary of Softbank Group that specializes in growth capital and social impact investments. Sectors that the fund invests in include internet-of-things, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, communications infrastructure, telecoms, computational biology, biotech, cloud technologies and software, consumer internet businesses, financial technology, and mobile apps. The Fund is designed to be a catalyst for technology progress in anticipation that it will expand SoftBank's capabilities, accelerating progress towards SoftBank 2.0.

It aims to invest in businesses and foundational platforms that SoftBank believes to revolutionize and innovate the world tomorrow.

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Website: www.visionfund.com

Founded: 1990

Total fund size: $140B

SoftBank Vision Fund's most notable exits include NVIDIA, blinkit, and Uber.

6. Business Growth Fund

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Business Growth Fund is an influential investor in small and mid-sized businesses. It was set up in 2011 to offer growing companies and ambitious entrepreneurs patient capital and strategic support.

With 14 offices, they are close and relevant to the businesses they invest in. They have grown to a team of 150+ and a network that’s made up of one of the largest pools of board-level executives. Collectively, the companies in their portfolio employ close to 50,000 people. They want to see more entrepreneurs using their capital not only to scale-up their own business but also, collectively, to drive economic activity and with it increase employment, exports, and growth.

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Website: www.bgf.co

Founded: 2011

Total fund size: $597.3M

Business Growth Fund's most notable exits include LoopMe, Trouva, and Miss Group.

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7. Balderton Capital

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Balderton Capital they invest in companies with seeking investment .

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Website: www.balderton.com

Founded: 2000

Total fund size: $5B

Balderton Capital's most notable exits include Sinch, Recorded Future, and THG.

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8. Entrepreneur First

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Entrepreneur First is the place where the ambitious come together to build globally important technology companies. Through our platform running in 6 cities across 3 continents, we invest in high-potential individuals to help them meet their co-founder, develop their ideas and secure funding from leading investors in the shortest possible time. We have built over 300 companies from scratch; have over 5000 alumni worldwide; and our portfolio is valued at over $5bn.

EF companies include Tractable (Computer Vision, currently valued at $1bn as of June 2021), Magic Pony Technology (AI, acquired by Twitter for a reported $150m), Represent (social commerce, acquired by CustomInk), BloomsburyAI (acquired by Facebook), Cleo (fintech), OpenCosmos (space), CloudNC (manufacturing), Transcelestial (satellite communications) and many more.

We're backed by some of the world's best tech founders and investors, including Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Greylock Partners, Founders Fund, Demis Hassabis (Google Deepmind) and Taavet Hinrikus (Wise). For more information about Entrepreneur First, visit www.joinef.com.

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Website: www.joinef.com

Founded: 2011

Total fund size: $180M

Entrepreneur First's most notable exits include Passfort, Credit Kudos, and Brolly.

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9. Octopus Ventures

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For the people and ideas that will change the world, because we believe you can build a better tomorrow by investing in it.

We can back you at every stage of your journey, from ideas on a page through to IPO. Each year we deploy more than £200 million across five areas where we see maximum potential for impact: health, fintech, deep tech, consumerand B2B software. With many years of experience and expertise investing in each of these areas, our team can help our portfolio companies scale at speed.

For us, investment is about more than money. Being truly invested is about giving time, energy and focus; working with founders to give them the best chance of success. It means a shared commitment to solving the big problems that matter.

We’ve backed the likes of ManyPets, Cazoo, Depop, Elvie and WaveOptics, while others have gone on to join forces with the world’s largest businesses.

We are based in London and New York with a network of partners across the U.S and Asia.

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Website: www.octopusventures.com

Founded: 2008

Total fund size: $1.2B

Octopus Ventures's most notable exits include Glofox, Opensignal, and Digital Shadows.

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10. Northzone

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Northzone is a venture capital fund with a perspective shaped by lives as entrepreneurs. Established in 1996, they have raised over €1.5 billion in funds and partnered with the founders of Spotify, Avito, iZettle, Klarna, Hopin, and hundreds of others to build category-defining businesses. The firm has offices across the Nordics, London, and NewYork, it works around the clock to connect its companies with customers, business partners, and key talent on a truly international scale.

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Website: www.northzone.com

Founded: 1996

Total fund size: $1.8B

Northzone's most notable exits include fuboTV, Spotify, and iZettle.