Hoxton Ventures

We backed Finster AI at the seed stage because Siddhant Jayakumar and the team were solving problem we thought would become increasingly important: bringing AI into the complex, high-stakes workflows used by financial institutions. Congratulations to Finster AI as they announce a strategic investment from UBS Investment Bank as part of its Series B alongside FactSet. The investment will support the continued development of its enterprise-grade AI infrastructure for investment banking, including deeper data integrations and new workflow capabilities for regulated environments. Financial professionals sit on enormous amounts of valuable data, but much of it is fragmented across internal systems, external sources and legacy tools. Research and analysis are still highly manual, while the standard for accuracy, security and traceability is far higher than in most industries. General-purpose AI isn’t enough when the output can inform a major transaction or investment decision. Finster is building the infrastructure to change that. Read more in the comments.

Our Partner Rishabh Kaul was recently featured on EUVC’s Consumer Tech Napkin series alongside Mike Martin of True. and Camilla Dolan of Eka Ventures to discuss how AI is changing the way the top consumer teams build, hire and experiment. Rishabh Kaul makes the point that while technology changes how companies are built, the fundamentals are the same. Enduring consumer businesses start with a deep understanding of the customer and ultimately a product people want. Listen to the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/eB7TnpCu as he discusses: • Why customer obsession remains one of the most durable advantages in consumer • How AI is allowing smaller teams to build and test faster • Why distribution can be as important as the product itself • What investors look for in exceptional consumer founders • The red flags that can make an otherwise compelling consumer opportunity difficult to back Thanks to Andreas Munk Holm and EUVC for bringing the conversation together, alongside True.

In a new interview with John Thornhill for the Financial Times, @Max Welling, co-founder of Hoxton portfolio company CuspAI, puts it plainly: “Science is the ultimate frontier of AI.” We agree. The enduring AI companies will not be defined by their interfaces alone; their moats will come from proprietary scientific data, deep technical expertise, physical validation and the ability to deploy discoveries in the real world. The next generation of category-defining AI companies will likely generate new molecules, materials and physical products. We led CuspAI’s pre-seed round because we believed Max Welling Chad Edwards and the team were pursuing one of the largest opportunities in AI: using machine intelligence to accelerate the discovery of breakthrough materials. Read the full conversation in the Financial Times: https://lnkd.in/eaeegGMT

“We can substitute any kind of metal if we understand how this metal works in a specific application.” In today's Pathfounders feature, Mike Butcher ✍️ speaks with Assia Kasdi, founder of portfolio company Milvus Advanced about how Milvus is tackling a hugely important industrial and geopolitical problem, and how to build a major industrial company from the UK. Milvus Advanced has already progressed from milligram-scale laboratory experiments to kilogram-scale production. Its next challenge is one shared by many of the UK’s most ambitious deep-tech companies: securing the facilities, planning support and long-term capital required to manufacture at scale. We backed Milvus early because its technology has the potential to reduce dependence on scarce and geopolitically concentrated materials. Read the feature: https://lnkd.in/dgfSdxEV Watch: https://lnkd.in/gM6VeKMB Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/gXgPdEeW Listen on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gbfPrJ_C

In a recent interview with Tech Funding News, Hussein Kanji reflects on where the next generation of category-defining businesses could emerge, and why the opportunity extends far beyond today’s race in generative AI. “AI for language is largely baked. AI for physical things and AI for biology are still uncracked," he said. From Peptone’s work developing drugs against previously “undruggable” proteins to emerging applications across robotics and materials science, Hussein explores how advances in AI are opening categories that would have been technically impossible just five years ago. He also discusses why British entrepreneurs may be too quick to sell just as the opportunity to build a generational company begins to emerge. “Your window of time to build the mega company is kind of now. Those moments come so rarely in life," he said. Hussein remains deeply optimistic about the ecosystem: “My suspicion is that we’re going to see many more success stories come out of the UK.” Read the full interview: https://lnkd.in/d3qHYNaR

From day one, we've backed the exceptions before they become obvious. Congratulations to Chad Edwards, Max Welling and the CuspAI team on raising a $450M Series B at a $2.6 billion valuation. We led CuspAI’s pre-seed round in 2024, backing the belief that AI could fundamentally reshape how new materials are discovered, unlocking breakthroughs across semiconductors, clean energy and advanced manufacturing. Since that time, dozens of large investors have come onboard, with the latest being Kleiner Perkins and Bezos Expeditions. Full story: https://lnkd.in/d9eZ_rgM Now, that vision is scaling globally. Alongside the new funding, CuspAI has launched its AI Materials Foundry, bringing together more than 45 leading organisations across compute, laboratories, proprietary data and scientific research including Samsung, Hyundai Motor Company, Henkel, Applied Materials, Tokyo Electron and Lam Research. This is exactly what we look for at Hoxton: exceptional European technical talent, tackling a category-defining problem with global ambition from day one. We’re proud to have been there at the beginning and even more excited about what comes next. Hussein Kanji Payton Dobbs Rishabh Kaul and more

Thank you to Early Early Stage for the great conversation with our Founding Partner, Hussein Kanji. Hussein covers a lot of ground in the interview: what European founders do exceptionally well, how he evaluates founders beyond the technology itself, why “why now?” is one of the most important questions in venture, and what makes a great co-investor. A few takeaways: - European founders are often highly capital-efficient and focused on building durable businesses. - Understanding behaviour, incentives, and trust matters just as much as understanding the technology. - Timing can be the difference between a good idea and a category-defining company. - The best co-investors optimise for outcomes, not credit. Check out the full conversation at the link in the comments. And a big thanks to Emir for having Hussein on.

Recently, Founding Partner Hussein Kanji appeared onstage at Panathēnea in Greece alongside speakers from OpenAI, NVIDIA, Sequoia Capital, ElevenLabs, and Bolt. Hussein sat down with Kamil Tamiola, Ph.D., founder of portfolio company Peptone, for a fireside on one of the most important questions in biotech right now: can AI finally crack drug discovery? The short answer: yes. But only if you take the hard road. Peptone is an AI-driven drug company going after intrinsically disordered proteins — the most important and historically undruggable class of human proteins. To do this, Peptone built proprietary machinery that generates a completely novel biophysical dataset nobody else has access to, because in life sciences you can't buy the data — you have to make it. Prostate cancer is a disease that affects one in six men, has over 20 approved treatments on the market, and still has no cure. Their edge is in the data: proprietary datasets that let them go after biological targets that have been effectively invisible to other approaches. The vision is as big as biotech gets: transforming a terminal disease into a manageable condition, and building something in the tradition of Genentech or Regeneron. We're proud to back Kamil and the Peptone team on that journey.

Our Founding Partner Hussein Kanji recently joined the judging panel for the Venture Spotlight at SXSW London alongside Chris Barnes at Atomico, Omran Al Kuwari at Forta and Yara Alenazi at Crane Venture Partners to judge pitches from Europe's most promising deep tech, life science, biotech, climate and creative technology founders. Venture Spotlight is SXSW London's university-affiliated startup competition, showcasing founders building technologies that felt like science fiction only a few years ago. From deep tech and life sciences to climate solutions and immersive media, the competition highlights the startups shaping what's next. Congratulations to all the teams that participated, and thanks to SXSW London for bringing together such a strong group of founders and investors.

Thank you, Venture Capital Journal for spotlighting us as Europe's next "fund of record." In this piece, our Founding Partner Hussein Kanji discussed the LP ecosystem in Europe, our portfolio companies and where we're investing next. Here, Hussein Kanji notes that language-based AI is largely picked over - he's focused on two unsettled frontiers: physical AI (backed via Machenta, spun out of Imperial College, which requires zero training data) and life sciences AI (backed via Peptone, which is targeting previously "undruggable" disordered proteins, with a lead program in prostate cancer roughly two years from regulatory approval). Full story below.