Amadeus
Co-founded in 1997 by Hermann Hauser (co-founder of Acorn Computers/Arm) and Anne Glover, Amadeus Capital Partners is one of the UK's leading deep tech venture capital firms. Based in Cambridge and London with offices in Oxford, San Francisco, and São Paulo, the firm has backed over 200 companies since inception. Its portfolio has produced 5 unicorns, 5 IPOs, and 70 acquisitions, with profitable exits returning up to 18.9x (average 3.5x). Notable investments include Paragraf, PolyAI, Unlikely AI, and Darktrace. The firm also partners with APEX Ventures on an €80m European deep tech fund.
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4 companies in our directory
Paragraf
Paragraf is a University of Cambridge spinout founded in 2017 by Simon Thomas (CEO), Professor Sir Colin Humphreys, and Ivor Guiney. The company commercialises graphene and other two-dimensional materials at scale using standard semiconductor fabrication equipment, with a proprietary direct deposition technique that produces device-quality graphene on 8-inch wafers without metal catalysts or transfer processes. Paragraf launched its first product in 2019, a graphene-based Hall-effect sensor offering 30x greater sensitivity than conventional silicon at one-tenth the power. The sensor portfolio has expanded to include molecular sensors for healthcare, agritech, food production, and chemical manufacturing. The company has raised over £140M across four rounds, including a $55M Series C in 2025 led by Mubadala.
Robok
Robok is a Cambridge-based startup that develops AI-powered computer vision software to transform existing industrial CCTV systems into intelligent monitoring platforms. Founded in 2017 by Hao Zheng and Liangchuan Gu as a spinout from the University of Cambridge, the company's technology detects safety breaches and provides operational insights for ports, warehouses, and critical infrastructure sites. Robok's customers include Bristol Port Company and other major logistics operators. The company has raised £3.3M to date from investors including Amadeus Capital, DeepTech Labs, Martlet Capital, Parkwalk Advisors, and Cambridge Innovation Capital, plus grant funding from UKRI and Innovate UK.
Outfield
Outfield Technologies is a Cambridge-based agritech company founded by Jim McDougall and Oli Hilbourne in 2016. The company's AI-powered platform uses drone technology and computer vision to help growers maximise yields from high-value orchard crops, particularly apples and tree fruits. The system can count individual blossoms and estimate fruit load with less than 10% error margin, with a single drone surveying 6,000 trees in under 20 minutes compared to 6+ hours of manual counting for 600 trees. Outfield's technology has been deployed across the UK, Europe, South Africa, Chile, and New Zealand, with over 1,000 reports delivered to growers. The company raised a £750K seed round in 2021 led by Turquoise, with participation from Low Carbon Innovation Fund, Cambridge Agritech, DeepTech Labs, and Amadeus, and has secured additional grant funding from Innovate UK and DEFRA.
Graphcore
HiringGraphcore is a Bristol-based AI semiconductor company founded in 2016 by serial semiconductor entrepreneurs Nigel Toon and Simon Knowles. Toon previously led XMOS and Picochip, while Knowles co-founded Element14 (acquired by Broadcom) and Icera (acquired by NVIDIA for $435M). The company developed Intelligence Processing Units (IPUs), novel AI accelerators designed from the ground up for machine learning workloads, alongside the proprietary Poplar graph programming framework. Graphcore raised $767M in total funding, reaching a $2.77B valuation, with backing from Sequoia Capital, Atomico, Amadeus, Microsoft, and others. In July 2024, SoftBank Group acquired Graphcore for approximately $500M to $600M. The company continues to operate from Bristol with plans to expand its UK headcount to 750.