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Luminous Ventures

https://luminous.vc

Last activity: 17.06.2026

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Invests in categories: HealthTechSoftwareAIArtificial IntelligenceHardwareCareDataLearnTechnologyPlatform

Luminous Ventures is an early stage VC fund based in London that partners with founders pushing the boundaries of science and technology to solve the world’s greatest challenges.

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Investment Type: Venture Capital

Investment Stage: Pre-Seed; Seed; Series A; Series B

Portfolio 27

Date	Name	Website	Total Raised	Location
18.03.2021	CytoSeek	cytoseek.uk	$6.48M	United Kin...
18.03.2021	Treos	treosbio.com	$22M	-
11.02.2021	HOXTON FAR...	hoxtonfarms.com	$25.96M	United Kin...
19.01.2021	Kernal Bio...	kernalbio.com	$25M	United Sta...
08.12.2020	Mahana The...	mahanatx.com	$61M	United Sta...
07.12.2020	Magdrive	magdrivespace.com	$1.9M	United Kin...
14.11.2020	Biomage	biomage.net	-	United Kin...
14.11.2020	Fathom	fathomcomputing.com	-	United Sta...
30.09.2020	FLOX	flox.ai	$1M	Sweden
30.09.2020	Phenomic A...	phenomic.ai	$6.08M	Canada, On...
15.07.2019	Optellum	optellum.com	$15.25M	United Kin...
12.12.2018	Synthace L...	synthace.com	$72.99M	United Sta...
-	Beyond.Lif...	beyond.life	-	United Kin...
-	Biobeats	biobeats.com	$6M	United Kin...
-	Climax Foo...	climaxfoods.com	$7.5M	United Sta...
-	Astroscree...	astroscreen.com	$1M	United Kin...
-	Universal ...	universalquantum.com	$12.04M	Germany
-	Ellipsis H...	ellipsishealth.com	$97M	United Sta...
-	LGN	lgn.ai	$2M	United Kin...
-	Sparrho	sparrho.com	$3M	United Kin...
-	Huma	huma.com	$248M	United Kin...
-	Caregivers...	activeglobalcaregiver.sg	-	Singapore
-	Vital Bio	vitalbio.com	-	Canada, On...
-	OxfordVR	ovrhealth.com	$13.04M	-
-	Temporall	temporall.com	$1.26M	United Kin...
-	Hadean	hadean.com	$46.88M	United Kin...
-	Facesoft	facesoft.org	-	-

News 41

Date	Title	Description
09.12.2020	Mahana Therapeutics – Our Investment	Mahana Therapeutics (https://www.mahanatx.com/), a Luminous Ventures portfolio company, has recently announced that the FDA has granted marketing authorization for its first product, Parallel™, a prescription digital therapeutic (PDT) int...
25.09.2020	Join our next Venture Office Hour	Luminous Ventures is holding a joint Venture Office Hour with Illumina Accelerator on 7 October 5pm. We’d like to use it as an opportunity to support entrepreneurs and the European healthcare start-ups – businesses creating much-needed solu...
02.09.2020	Digital mental health: Resolving the engagement paradox	At Luminous, mental health is a big theme for us and we have made three investments in the area in recent years — BioBeats, Oxford VR and Ellipsis Health. However, one persistent question is the ability of apps to alleviate anxiety or depre...
-	Phenomic – Our Investment	Luminous Ventures is very excited to welcome Phenomic to our portfolio. Phenomic AI, headquartered in Toronto, uses AI/ML to process data emerging from drug screens in complex experimental models that more closely match human biology. This ...
-	Luminous Ventures portfolio company Hadean secures £7million funding	Luminous Ventures, the backers of technical and scientific founders in Europe, is delighted to announce that its existing portfolio company, Hadean – creator of the world’s first cloud-based operating system (HadeanOS) and distributed simul...
-	“What’s the interest in Pinterest?” Isabel Fox explains all on BBC World and BBC Radio 5 Live	Luminous Ventures General Partner and Co-Founder, Isabel Fox was in demand for media interviews this week as Pinterest became the latest tech ‘unicorn’ to go public. Interviewed on BBC 5 Live’s Wake Up to Money programme, she boiled down t...
-	Book Review: Life 3.0	In “Life 3.0,” the MIT professor Max Tegmark, or “Mad Max” as he’s known at The Future of Life Institute, writes about how to keep artificial intelligence beneficial for human life and ensure that technological progress remains aligned with...
-	Portfolio Spotlight:	Congratulations to our portfolio client, Synthace after being announced as a partner to Microsoft for their new biotechnology research system, together with Oxford BioMedica and researchers at Princeton University. Microsoft hopes that the...
-	Isabel Fox interviewed on Bloomberg Radio	Luminous Venture’s General Partner and Co-Founder, Isabel Fox was interviewed by Matt Miller on Bloomberg Radio (Daybreak Europe). Isabel spoke enthusiastically about the prospects and opportunities for UK and European investment despite B...
-	Luminous Ventures invests £1million in world’s first AI software for personalized early lung cancer diagnosis and treatment.	Luminous Ventures has announced a £1million investment in Optellum, developers of the world’s first AI clinical diagnosis support software for personalized early lung cancer diagnosis and treatment. When applied to CT scans, Optellum’s rev...
-	“I would like to create the most ethical face recognition company”	Facesoft is paving the way for live facial recognition, with its ethical code as a key priority. Allan Ponniah tells us about the origin of Facesoft, how running a startup is “quite relaxing” when you’re a surgeon and how London’s connectio...
-	Clean meats & plant-based proteins: the food of the future?	More and more people are waking up to the idea that, in order to preserve a future for our children, our eating habits need to change. According to a recent report by Oxfam, by the middle of this century, the earth’s population will have i...
-	Why today’s deep-tech companies need to be ethical and society-conscious	Deep-tech startups have the potential to dramatically improve the society we live in today with the countless possibilities that breakthrough innovations within science and technology can bring. Many strive to solve global needs with their ...
-	Ethics in AI	Google announced the dissolution of its AI Ethics advisory panel on April 4, barely more than a week after it announced its introduction on March 26. read more>> The panel was going to be tasked with providing perspective on some of G...
-	BioBeats becomes a Huma company	Luminous Ventures is pleased to announce that BioBeats, our portfolio company and one of the first digital health companies targeting mental health and one of the first applying deep learning to healthcare data, has become part of Medopad (...
-	Why is there a funding gap in the UK tech market at Series B?	The UK tech scene has had a lot to celebrate of late: Third in the world for producing successful tech companies and home to 13 tech unicorns – 37 per cent of Europe’s total unicorn companies, making it officially the tech unicorn capital o...
-	Disrupting the veterinary and pet industries	This month, we were inspired by our own office dog, Heidi, and have been investigating ways that technology is disrupting the veterinary and pet industries. The EU is home to 66 million pet dogs, while the US is home to another 70 million....
-	Powering A Greener Future	The European Union elections at the end of last month (May 2019) saw an unprecedented win for The Green Party. The same week, the Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police stated his intent to prosecute more than 1000...
-	It’s never been a better time to be backing UK Deep-Tech	Despite the uncertainty of Brexit, one thing is certain: It has never been a better time to be backing UK deep-tech. According to the latest 2019 Technology Innovation Hubs report from KPMG, the UK now sits at No 3 in the global ranking of...
-	Strengthening Luminous Ventures	We are delighted to announce that Alex Jones has joined the Luminous Ventures team as an advisor. With a strong background in business development and partnerships, Alex’s main interest is helping companies to adopt the right culture and p...
-	-	Our June newsletter looks at disrupting the veterinary and pet industries as well as powering a greener future. You can catch up on the latest team news as well as some exciting portfolio spotlights, which this month fall on BioBeats and...
-	New London-based event to connect emerging tech fund managers with investors	A new summit connecting emerging technology fund managers with investors has been launched in London by early stage VC firms, 7Percent Ventures and Luminous Ventures. ALLOCATE – which takes place on 19th September 2019 – is focused on conn...
-	Lomax Ward discusses Slack IPO and tech unicorns on BBC One	Luminous Venture’s General Partner and Co-Founder, Lomax Ward was invited to discuss Slack IPO on BBC One’s Business Briefing programme. Max told news presenter, Sally Bundock: Explaining Slack’s untraditional route to market, Max said: ...
-	Our investment into Universal Quantum	Luminous Ventures recently announced its investment into Universal Quantum, a spin out from the University of Sussex building a universal quantum computer. At Luminous, we exist to back entrepreneurs and scientists striving to move society ...
-	Luminous welcomes Temporall to portfolio	We’re delighted to announce that we have invested in UK tech start-up Temporall, founded by former Google directors, with a £1m Seed investment. We’re entering a unique moment in which organisations that look after and understand their emp...
-	Luminous Ventures appoints John Spindler as new Venture Partner	LONDON-based venture capitalist firm, Luminous Ventures, has appointed John Spindler as a Venture Partner. The highly regarded entrepreneur, investor and venture capitalist has a distinguished career spanning more than 15 years. As CEO of...
-	Book Review: The Creativity Code	Marcus Du Sautoy, professor of mathematics at Oxford University, recently published his book The Creativity Code: Art and Innovation in the Age of AI. After watching a Go master bested by Deepmind’s AI robot, Du Sautoy began questioning eve...
-	Luminous Adventures: June 2019	Nordic Next: Max is in Malmö, Sweden June 3 and 4, and will be visiting startups and investors in Copenhagen later in the week. EBAN & Arctic 15: Alex is in Helsinki, Finland week commencing June 3. Cogx: Margaret and Alex are at CogX...
-	Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech by Jamie Susskind	Jamie Susskind first published Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech in 2018, focusing on the implications of living in a society where technology pervades our daily lives. Our human experience has become intertwin...
-	Luminous Ventures appoints Ryan Ward to Advisory Board	LONDON-based venture capital firm, Luminous Ventures has strengthened its advisory board further with the appointment of expert sales strategist, Ryan Ward. Ryan has over 25 years’ experience and a proven track record of helping US compani...
-	Portfolio Spotlight:	Our portfolio company, BioBeats recently featured in a Daily Telegraph article exploring the benefits of interoception, the perception of sensations inside our own bodies. Read more
-	Fred Becker joins as an Executive-in-Residence	We are excited to share that Fred Becker joins Luminous Ventures as an Executive-in-Residence. Most recently, Fred was the Senior Director, Finance & Corporate Development for Symphony-Secure Communications and helped the company scale...
-	The Future of UK R&D	Ahead of the UK general election this week, we at Luminous Ventures thought it important to discuss and contrast the plans outlined by the three major parties relating to science and innovation and research and development, which form an in...
-	2019 IPOs: Hot or Hype?	The first half of 2019 has seen a boom of IPO listings, with several highly anticipated listings of unicorns such as Uber, Spotify, Lyft and Slack. Slack was admitted to trading on 20 June, via a direct listing. In this regard, they followe...
-	Book Review: LikeWar	Likewar, written in 2018 by Emerson T. Brooking and P. W. Singer, provides an overview of how propaganda and advertising has become exponentially more powerful via social media. Brooking and Singer argue that social media has been effective...
-	Why we invested in Climax Foods	Luminous Ventures is proud to welcome Climax Foods to our portfolio. Climax, based in Berkeley, California, uses data science and machine learning to transform plants into foods that we love, eliminating the need for animals in the food sys...
-	The role of software, robotics and data in tackling cancer	For decades, outcomes for cancer patients have improved steadily but slowly. Breakthroughs in R&D were achieved one gene and one protein at a time, and cancer diagnosis often came too late for the patient. In the 1980s and 1990s, new c...
-	Most promising applications of AI in healthcare	We are excited by the continuing application of artificial intelligence to healthcare. While this is a wide subject matter and there is certainly a lot of “hot air”, we think there are some great investment opportunities. On the consumer s...
-	What’s a G Worth? 5G Revolution	The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February saw announcements from several leading companies including Huawei, Samsung, LG, ZTE and Xiaomi that they will be launching 5G phones in 2019. You, too, will need a new phone as your existin...
-	Isabel Fox discusses Facebook figures on BBC	Luminous Venture’s General Partner and Co-Founder, Isabel Fox was invited to discuss the latest Facebook figures on BBC News: BBC Business Live with presenters Sally Bundock and Victoria Fritz. The interview was broadcast simultaneously on ...
-	Isabel Fox interview: Enterprise Security Magazine – special edition on Enterprise Security Startups	and financial) damage to a number of healthcare organizations of varying size. Since then, ransomware has exponentially increased as a threat to the healthcare industry – largely due to the industry’s increasing use and reliance on EHR (el...

Mentions in press and media 11

Date	Title	Description
17.06.2026	Could replacement technology become longevity medicine’s next frontier?	Around 1000 BC, Tabaket-en-Mut, the daughter of an ancient Egyptian priest, likely never imagined that the wooden prosthesis she wore after losing her big toe would become a piece of medical history some 3,000 years later. Archaeologists be...
25.05.2026	Chinese Robotics Startup Tianji Bags USD147.4 Million From GL Ventures, Meituan	(Yicai) May 25 -- Chinese robotics startup Tianji Intelligent System has raised CNY1 billion (USD147.4 million) in Series B and B+ financing co-led by Hillhouse Capital-backed GL Ventures and Chinese local services giant Meituan, lifting it...
18.05.2026	Chinese Exoskeleton Startup Hypershell Bags USD50 Million in New Round Led by Ant, Meituan	(Yicai) May 18 -- Hypershell, a Chinese manufacturer of wearable robotic external skeletons that support human movement, has secured USD50 million in its latest funding round, led by Chinese fintech giant Ant Group and Meituan Dragonball, t...
23.03.2021	London-based edge AI firm LGN raises $2 million	Edge AI firm LGN has raised $2 million in funding in order to help clients beat their competitors to the punch when it comes to better and more resilient AT models. Investors include Trucks Venture Capital, Luminous Ventures, and Jaguar Lan...
17.02.2021	What does it take to scale a deeptech company?	Diffblue, a deeptech company that saves developers time by automating the writing of code, span out of Oxford University in 2016. It raised the largest AI Series A funding in Europe with Goldman Sachs a year later. “The first thing you loo...
22.12.2020	Meet the 35 healthcare startups VCs say will take off in 2021	This story is available exclusively to Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Healthcare startups that had a breakout year in 2020 are poised to have an even better 2021, investors told Business Insider. Startups, esp...
07.08.2019	Can a radical new event disrupt how VCs raise funds, unlocking cash for Europe?	For many years there’s been an accepted way to raise capital as a venture capital fund. Essentially, GPs (general partners, who set up and run venture capital firms) go “cap in hand” to LPs (limited partners, who invest into their VC firms)...
17.07.2019	Hot, hot, hot at cofinitive!	Hot, hot, hot at cofinitive! 17-07-2019 After a busy Spring, things have just carried on being hot, hot, hot at cofinitive this summer. The agency writes: Having taken on a new project with returning client, LSCC, we got stuck right in with...
15.07.2019	Optellum scores £1 million in funding from Luminous Ventures to tackle lung cancer diagnosis with AI	Oxford-based Optellum, which offers AI software for early lung cancer diagnosis and treatment, has just raised £1 million from Luminous Ventures, as part of a seed follow-on round of £3.25 million. Optellum’s software is said to be the firs...
16.12.2018	Luminous Ventures Joins $25.6M Series B for Synthace	Synthace Ltd., the company behind the leading cloud software platform for automating and improving the success rate of biological research and development, today announced the closing of a $25.6m Series B financing round led by Horizons Ven...
13.12.2018	Luminous Ventures Spins Out of White Cloud Capital with $30M Fund	Luminous Ventures, a London, UK-based venture capital firm focused on investing in seed and early stage applied science and technology ventures across Europe, has spun-out from growth capital fund White Cloud Capital*. The $30m fund, backed...

Luminous Ventures

Portfolio 27

News 41

Mentions in press and media 11

Reviews 0