London-based Creator Fund has closed a $56 million fund with a deliberately specific mandate: European PhD founders, reached inside university labs before they have a pitch deck, a co-founder or even a company name.
The fund will back researchers across 30 universities in ten European countries, writing first cheques of between £100,000 and £700,000 into scientific founders working in AI, biotech, robotics, advanced materials and physics.
The timing was carefully considered – the window between a PhD researcher becoming commercially viable and being pulled into academia, a Big Tech role or a US lab is short, and Creator Fund is betting that most European venture capital is arriving too late. By the time a scientist surfaces on the usual VC circuit with a deck and a demo, the most attractive options have already recruited them.
Creator Fund has been running this model since 2019.During this period, the firm has supported 55 startups across nine countries, helping them secure more than $250 million in follow-on capital. Its notable portfolio companies include Glasgow’s AI chemistry pioneer Chemify and Imperial College London spinout Recycleye. Its exit track record includes Loci – a Cambridge PhD spinout – which was acquired by Epic Games.
How The Model Works
The most distinctive part of Creator Fund’s approach is the way it finds and sources deals. The fund recruits student investors inside university departments – people with direct visibility into which researchers are doing commercially interesting work – and gives them carried interest to surface potential founders. It’s a sourcing model built around the reality that the best scientific founders often don’t know they’re potential founders yet, and that traditional VC outreach arrives after the decision has already been made.
The investment model supports founders for up to six years, covering the long development cycles that deep tech companies in AI and robotics require. That is a completely different setup from your standard pre-seed fund, which usually gives companies an 18-to-24-month runway before expecting them to raise a seed round.
For a researcher working on a problem that requires years of iteration before it becomes a product, this longer runway changes the calculation about whether starting a company is a viable risk.
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The Impact On Europe’s Deep Tech Pipeline
Creator Fund’s model answers a long-standing European deep tech challenge. The UK attracts more deep tech venture funding than any other European country, but the companies it builds still routinely end up acquired by American buyers or relocated to access US capital and talent networks. The brain drain isn’t just about researchers leaving – it’s about researchers never becoming founders in the first place.
Creator Fund’s approach is one answer to that problem: catch the talent before the better-funded alternatives do. Backing 55 companies across nine countries from a relatively modest capital base is evidence that the supply of commercialisable research exists. The question is whether European venture capital builds enough infrastructure around it to compete with the salaries, equity and resources that Big Tech and US research labs can offer a scientist who hasn’t yet decided which direction to go.
The $56 million close gives Creator Fund considerably more capital to press that advantage. For European scientists weighing their options, a fund that arrives early, writes a real cheque and supports them through six years of development is a different offer from what most European VC has historically made at the pre-company stage.
