The British Business Bank (BBB) has committed up to £90m to 10 first-time UK VCs. The selected funds — which are all between £10m to £20m — will back pre-seed and seed-stage startups in areas like deeptech, defence and climate tech.
This marks the UK state bank’s first commitment from the £500m package announced in July 2025 to back investment fund managers from underrepresented backgrounds.
“At the earliest stage of company development, we want to support differentiated and heterogeneous investor and fund types,” the BBB’s chief investment officer, Leandros Kalisperas, tells Sifted, in order to create wider bottom-up change.
Of the general partners at the funds backed, 57% are women and 43% from ethnic minority backgrounds. They are all first-time institutional managers.
“We’re trying to give them the profile and the opportunity to claim institutional track record,” Kalisperas says.
The fund is supporting Common Ventures, which backs state-educated founders at pre-seed; The Tech Bros, which supports female founders at pre-seed; Twin Track Ventures, a London-based early-stage defence fund; and Evertrue Capital, a pre-seed fund which earlier this week won backing from Bootstrap 4F, a fund manager backed by the BBB last year.
“We’re trying to create ecosystem effects and a multiplier effect in terms of capital here,” Kalisperas says.
The BBB is also using the £90m to back OpenSeed, Almanac Ventures, Firstdoor, Blue Lake VC, Mustard Seed and Future Impact Ventures. The bank will commit around 50% of each of the 10 funds.
“We have the right economic plan– backing the next generation of investors to spur growth and ensure businesses start, scale-up and expand across every part of the country,” the UK’s finance minister Rachel Reeves said in a statement.
Earlier this week, the BBB’s chief executive, Louis Taylor, stepped down after leading the bank for four years. When Taylor leaves his post in the autumn, chief financial officer David Hourican will be appointed interim CEO as the bank seeks a permanent appointment.
