Plural
Founded in 2022 by Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus, Songkick co-founder Ian Hogarth, Bigpoint CEO Khaled Helioui, and Teleport co-founder Sten Tamkivi, Plural is a founder led early stage venture fund for Europe. The founding team collectively built Skype, Wise, Songkick, and Teleport, bringing deep operator experience to a market where only 8% of European investors are former founders. Plural leads rounds of €1m to €10m and has invested in 48 companies across six countries. Notable portfolio companies include Robin AI, Isometric, Proxima Fusion, and Phasecraft. Its largest investment themes are AI (31%), frontier tech (16%), and climate and energy (14%).
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5 companies in our directory
Molyon
Molyon is a University of Cambridge spinout from the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy developing next-generation lithium-sulphur batteries with double the energy density of conventional lithium-ion cells. The company emerged from 15 years of research by Professor Manish Chhowalla, focusing on metallic molybdenum disulfide as a breakthrough cathode technology. Founded in February 2024 by Dr Ismail Sami (CEO) and Dr Zhuangnan Li (CTO), who met while studying under Chhowalla, the startup has demonstrated batteries achieving energy densities of 500 Wh/kg compared to approximately 250 Wh/kg for typical Li-ion cells. In November 2024, Molyon secured €4.3M in seed funding co-led by IQ Capital and Plural, with participation from Cambridge Enterprise and ParkWalk, targeting initial applications in drones and robotics.
Helsing
HiringHelsing is a defence technology company focused on building AI-powered software and autonomous systems for military applications across air, land, sea, space, and cyber domains. Founded in Munich in 2021 by Gundbert Scherf, Niklas Kohler, and Torsten Reil, the company has rapidly scaled to become one of Europe's most valuable defence tech startups, valued at €12B following a €600M Series D led by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek's Prima Materia. Helsing has delivered thousands of strike drones to Ukraine, acquired aircraft manufacturer Grob Aircraft, and unveiled the CA-1 Europa autonomous combat aerial vehicle. The UK is a core operating market: Helsing incorporated its UK subsidiary simultaneously with German operations in 2021, has committed £350M of investment under the UK-Germany Trinity House Agreement, opened an 18,000 sq ft Resilience Factory in Plymouth to produce the SG-1 Fathom autonomous submarine-hunting glider, and holds multiple MoD contracts including the ASGARD programme for AI-enabled battlefield targeting. The company maintains a London HQ at Mortimer Street and actively hires across UK engineering and AI research roles.
Proxima Fusion
HiringProxima Fusion was founded in April 2023 as a spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, bringing together scientists and engineers from IPP, MIT, and X Development. Co-founded by Dr Francesco Sciortino (CEO, PhD in plasma physics from MIT) and Dr Lucio Milanese (COO, PhD in theoretical plasma physics from MIT, formerly McKinsey), the company is developing quasi-isodynamic stellarators combined with high-temperature superconducting magnets to build the world's first commercial stellarator fusion power plant. Proxima has partnered with RWE and the Free State of Bavaria on a planned €2B facility near Munich. The company has raised €200M to date, including a Series A led by Cherry Ventures and Balderton Capital with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Plural, and others. Proxima maintains a UK presence at the Culham Campus and a London-registered entity.
Isometric
HiringIsometric was founded in 2022 by Eamon Jubbawy, who previously co-founded Onfido where he served as COO and President, scaling the company to verify over one billion identities before its $650M acquisition by Entrust. Jubbawy studied Economics and Management at Keble College, Oxford. Isometric addresses trust in the carbon removal market through an AI-native science platform that issues monthly certificates with real-time expert verification, maintains a comprehensive registry with full evidence documentation, and operationalises verification protocols. The company serves major enterprises including Google, Microsoft, Shopify, Anglo American, and Molten, and maintains a network of over 400 scientists and ecosystem partners. Isometric raised $25M in seed funding co-led by Plural and Lowercarbon Capital, with participation from angel investors including Niklas Zennstrom (Skype), David Helgason (Unity), and Ilkka Paananen (Supercell).
Olix
HiringOlix Computing is a London-based startup developing the Optical Tensor Processing Unit (OTPU), a new type of AI accelerator that uses photonics rather than traditional GPU architecture for AI inference. The company integrates photonics with an SRAM-based memory architecture, which it claims can outperform high-bandwidth memory systems in efficiency, throughput per watt, and overall cost. Originally registered as Flux Corp Ltd in March 2024, the company rebranded to Olix Computing. Founded by 25-year-old serial entrepreneur James Dacombe, who also runs brain-monitoring company CoMind, Olix has grown to over 70 employees and plans to ship its first products by 2027. Valued at over $1B.