An investment fund backed by the government, it will be providing seed funding to science and technology start-ups and SMEs. In total £8 million will be allocated.
Investments will typically range from £100,000 to £500,000, says the agency, and the fund will be managed by Future Planet Capital.
“This government is on the side of innovators and risk takers in fast changing domains like space,” said Andrew Griffith MP, Minister for Space at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
“The purpose of today’s new space investment fund is to ensure we capitalise on the potential of home-grown talent, offering backing to get them onto the global space market and reaping the rewards for our economy.”
Space Portfolio
The Space Portfolio initiative is designed to target the funding gap that early-stage space companies can face.
“Collaborating with the UK Space Agency enables us to be at the forefront of building UKI2S’s Space Portfolio, helping us to significantly contribute to the development of the space industry,” added Shruti Iyengar, Investment Lead for the Space Portfolio within UKI2S and an Investment Manager at Future Planet Capital.
“Having nurtured startups from pre-seed to exit over the years across many sectors, the team is thrilled to be supporting the UK’s space-tech entrepreneurs to scale their ideas from the earliest stages of company development through crucial stages of growth, so as to deliver globally impactful innovations.”
UKI2S
The UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund – which was formally known as the Rainbow Seed Fund – is a national seed investment fund “that nurtures innovative businesses to leverage private investment and grow jobs, recycling profits from the realisation of our investments into the next generation of impactful UK companies”.
Its brief is to invest in innovations emerging from the UK’s publicly funded science and knowledge base.
The fund is backed by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), Ministry of Defence (MOD), the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), and the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), as well as other public bodies.
See also: First funding call for C-LEO programme for satellite communications