African diasporan founders constitute only a fraction of the 0.95% allocated to Black founders in 2023, out of a total of $17.3 billion in the UK. This underscores the stark capital scarcity facing underrepresented innovators. For African founders attempting to break into deeptech, convincing VCs would typically have been harder, pointing not only to the structural barriers but also to the inherently high-stakes nature of the industry.
Project Ventures, an independent early-stage firm, opens doors for technical founders at the intersection of deeptech and artificial intelligence, having launched its debut £5 million (€5.8 million) fund targeting pre-seed and seed-stage startups. Operating within the Imperial College London alumni network, an alumni-driven micro-VC model such as this significantly lowers the friction for African immigrants and founders looking to build infrastructure-heavy solutions.
Led by founder and managing partner Shahryar Barati, a three-time Imperial alumnus, the fund aims to bridge the early-stage financing gap for technical founders by introducing the first alumni-backed venture in the UK, a model that has powered tech innovation in the US for decades. Notably, over 80% of the fund’s limited partners (LPs) are Imperial alumni.
With ticket sizes ranging from £100,000 to £300,000 per startup, Project Ventures is targeting founders focusing on intelligent systems across robotics, healthcare, climate and home energy, and advanced manufacturing.
“This is such an exciting moment for deeptech, with AI accelerating development cycles that historically took years while bringing an entirely new intelligence layer into the physical world,” Barati said. “Imperial’s depth across science, engineering, and medicine makes it an exceptional ecosystem from which to find and back companies at that intersection, and our deep roots across the Imperial community put us in a particularly strong position to support these pioneering businesses from an early stage.”
The fund has completed three early-stage investments, including Tewke, an intelligent home-operating system; NexusAM, a real-time, AI-driven quality assurance platform for metal 3D printing; and Neubond, a wearable neurotech platform delivering personalised therapy for stroke rehabilitation.
Project Ventures is targeting a final close on its debut fund by summer 2027.
