The UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S), managed by Future Planet Capital, has received a combined additional £33.25m across three of its six thesis areas, taking the fund's total capacity to £150m. The capital comes from the UK Space Agency, which contributed £9.25m for the Space thesis, the Ministry of Defence, which contributed £4m for Defence, and the UK Atomic Energy Authority, which contributed £20m for Fusion technologies.
The additional funding strengthens UKI2S's ability to back UK-based spin-outs and early-stage companies across three of the eight priority sectors in the UK's Modern Industrial Strategy: Defence, Clean Energy Industries, and Digital and Technologies. The defence allocation supports the 2025 Defence Industrial Strategy's focus on dual-use technology and UK industrial growth.
UKI2S has backed more than 123 UK deep-tech companies since launch and has deployed £55.7m into early-stage UK deep-tech companies, helping catalyse more than £1 billion in follow-on private capital - equivalent to approximately £18 of additional investment for every £1 initially invested by the fund. Portfolio companies include Tropic and Tokamak Energy.
Operating as an evergreen fund, UKI2S reinvests returns from successful exits back into new investments. Previous exits include Cobalt Light Systems (acquired by Agilent), Spectral Edge (acquired), Perfectus Biomed (acquired by NAMSA) and Quethera (acquired by Astellas), with more than £10m returned to the fund to date.
The UK Space Agency's £9.25m top-up takes the UKI2S Space Portfolio to £22m, which has already crowded in more than £17m of additional investment. Recent investments in Silicon Microgravity, Optera and Spaceflux - companies developing advanced sensing and protecting the orbital environment - illustrate the fund's approach of using early public capital to draw private investment into UK sovereign capability.
This investment is helping more British space businesses grow, bring in private backing and create high-skilled jobs across the country. That is how we build a stronger space sector and keep the UK one of the best places in the world to start and scale a space business.
The UK produces world-class science and engineering talent, but commercialising deep tech is exceptionally hard without early conviction capital. UKI2S exists to take that risk: backing strategically important companies ahead of private markets and consistently crowding in substantial additional investment behind UK innovation. This continued government backing is a clear vote of confidence in UKI2S as a delivery vehicle for the Modern Industrial Strategy, from dual-use defence to frontier clean energy.
