ET Capital, a long-standing investor in high-growth technology businesses, has launched the Cambridge Venture Index SEIS/EIS Fund 2 (CVIF2).
It aims to back up to 20 early-stage, science-based companies emerging from the Cambridge and Oxford start-up ecosystems.
The fund marks an expansion of ET Capital’s ambitions to improve access to early-stage venture investing opportunities for sophisticated angel investors. Its first fund CVIF1, was raised in 2025 and is being invested in up to ten companies coming out of some of Cambridge’s leading accelerator and deal originator programmes.
Companies that have received investment to date include:
- Reo Tx, which uses advanced technology for a disease with a significant unmet medical need.
- Cellestial Health, a preclinical biopharmaceutical company transforming the future of brain disease therapies by targeting previously overlooked causes of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s.
The Cambridge Venture Index funds focus on delivering diversified, risk-limited returns through structured venture investment, a technique based on extensive proprietary research by ET Capital.
The research analysed the financing history of nearly 200 start-ups in the Cambridge cluster to model the performance of a series of synthetic venture funds from 1992 to 2024. Using the same criteria across all cohorts, five of the six synthetic funds outperformed the FTSE 100 Index. ET Capital is using this approach as an alternative to a more traditional VC methodology, based on ‘picking winners’.
According to Martin Rigby, managing director of ET Capital, businesses coming out of Cambridge and Oxford science clusters represent some of the UK’s most ground-breaking deep science and technology start-ups.
“At the same time, there are sophisticated or high-net-worth investors that want to back these new companies, but who find it hard to access the breadth of deals.
With the second of our venture index funds, we aim to give those investors access to a broad range of investments that balance significant potential with a reduction of risk through diversification.”
Struan McDougall, an investor in CVIF1 and managing director of local angel syndicate Cambridge Capital Group, said:
“The start-ups coming out of the Cambridge and Oxford ecosystems represent an exciting new wave of scientific innovation, but the opportunities for early-stage investors are often limited to a small part of the market.
I am delighted to be investing in CVIF2 as ET Capital expands its innovative approach, offering a way for a wide range of investors to support ventures with significant potential.”
Lead image: David, James and Martin from ET Capital.