DeepTech Labs
Founded in Cambridge and backed by Arm, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Ewan Kirk, Martlet Capital, and the University of Cambridge, Deeptech Labs is a post seed accelerator and VC fund for deep tech startups. It runs a twice yearly 10 week programme, investing £350,000 per selected company and connecting founders with a network of over 500 deep tech leaders. To date it has brought 48+ companies through eight accelerator cohorts. Notable alumni include Nu Quantum, Salience Labs, Xapien, and Circuit Mind. In partnership with British Business Investments, DTL deployed an additional £10m to fuel the UK early stage deep tech ecosystem.
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3 companies in our directory
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.
Salience Labs
HiringSalience Labs develops silicon photonics-based optical switches for AI data centres, enabling all-optical connectivity between compute nodes to overcome data-movement bottlenecks. Spun out from the University of Oxford and University of Munster in 2021, the company was co-founded by Vaysh Kewada, Johannes Feldmann, Harish Bhaskaran, and Wolfram Pernice. Its OC-32M all-optical switch delivers 10ns latency (20x lower than electronic alternatives) at under 1W per port, with 32-, 64-, and 128-port variants in development. Salience has raised $88M to date, including a $30M Series A led by Applied Ventures and ICM HPQC Fund. The company was ranked #28 in Sifted's AI 100 and #2 in Hardware. It is headquartered in Oxford with an office in San Jose.
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.