Some of the UK’s strongest technology companies begin inside universities, but turning academic expertise into a scalable business still requires early capital. Project Ventures believes Imperial College London’s alumni network can help close part of that gap.
The new Project Ventures fund has launched with £5 million to back pre-seed and seed startups connected to Imperial. Its focus sits where deep technology and artificial intelligence increasingly overlap across science, engineering, software, and physical systems.
More than 80% of the fund’s limited partners come from Imperial’s alumni community, giving the vehicle an unusual structure for Britain. Alumni-backed venture networks are more established around leading American universities, where graduates often recycle capital and experience into younger founders.
Project Ventures wants to bring a similar approach into the Imperial ecosystem while remaining independent from the university itself. The firm describes itself as an early-stage investor focused on technologies combining deep tech and AI.
Founder and managing partner Shahryar Barati is closely connected to that ecosystem, having completed three degrees at Imperial. His strategy is to use those relationships for more than fundraising by turning the network into a source of founders, expertise, commercial connections, and technical insight.
The Project Ventures fund plans to invest between £100,000 and £300,000 in individual companies. It has already backed three businesses before formally announcing the fund, allowing the team to establish an early portfolio rather than launching with capital alone.
Those first investments also show the range of businesses Project Ventures wants to support. The portfolio currently includes home-energy company Tewke, metal 3D-printing platform NexusAM, and stroke-rehabilitation startup Neubond.
Project Ventures Fund Turns Imperial’s Network Into Capital
University ecosystems can produce unusually strong startup opportunities because technical research, ambitious founders, and specialized expertise already exist close together. The harder challenge is identifying those opportunities early enough and helping them move from research or prototypes into companies.
Project Ventures believes its connection to Imperial can provide an advantage at precisely that stage. Its investment thesis focuses on founders applying science, engineering, and artificial intelligence to problems involving the physical world.
That can include robotics, healthcare, advanced manufacturing, climate technology, energy, and other sectors where technical barriers remain high. These companies often need investors capable of understanding complex technology before traditional commercial indicators become obvious.
The Project Ventures fund is therefore using alumni relationships as part of its investment infrastructure. Instead of viewing graduates only as potential investors, the firm can draw on them for technical expertise, introductions, market knowledge, and founder referrals.
Its team reflects that approach. Project Ventures includes venture partners with backgrounds spanning physics, entrepreneurship, deep tech, startup growth, commercialization, and technology businesses in London and the San Francisco Bay Area.
That network could become particularly useful during technical due diligence, where early deep-tech companies can be difficult to evaluate using conventional startup metrics. A promising scientific breakthrough still needs a practical market, defensible intellectual property, capable leadership, and a realistic commercialization route.
Barati has positioned the model as an attempt to bring an established American venture tradition into Britain. University communities in the United States have produced investment networks that use alumni capital and relationships to find promising founders before larger funds arrive.
Project Ventures is betting that Imperial has enough entrepreneurial depth to support a similar model. Its strength across science, engineering, medicine, and technology gives the fund a concentrated pool of founders working on technically difficult problems.
The timing also helps. Artificial intelligence is increasingly becoming part of products built far beyond conventional software, from robotics and manufacturing to healthcare and energy systems.
Project Ventures describes that intersection as deep tech meeting AI, where intelligent software begins interacting more closely with physical systems. The firm believes technical differentiation and proprietary intellectual property can create stronger competitive advantages in these businesses.
UK investors are already showing strong appetite for artificial intelligence. HSBC Innovation Banking reported that UK AI companies raised $5.8 billion during the first quarter of 2026, representing 74% of UK venture investment during that period.
That environment gives the Project Ventures fund access to a growing sector, but it also creates competition. Successful Imperial founders can attract institutional venture firms, specialized deep-tech funds, corporate investors, and existing university-linked investment vehicles.
The Alumni Model Still Has Something to Prove
The fund’s concentrated relationship with Imperial creates its biggest advantage and one of its clearest tests. A close network can improve access to founders, but relying heavily on one ecosystem can also narrow the available investment pipeline.
Project Ventures will need to show that its Imperial connection consistently produces enough high-quality opportunities to support a dedicated fund. It must also demonstrate that founders see meaningful value beyond the initial cheque.
That could come through technical expertise, recruitment, commercial introductions, international expansion, or follow-on financing. Early-stage deep-tech companies often need all of these capabilities because reaching the market can take longer than building conventional software products.
Its current portfolio provides an early illustration of how broad the opportunity could become. Tewke focuses on home energy, while Neubond applies technology to stroke rehabilitation and NexusAM uses AI for quality assurance in metal additive manufacturing.
Those businesses operate in very different markets, yet each combines technical complexity with applications in the physical world. That overlap fits directly with Project Ventures’ stated investment thesis.
The fund also operates independently from Imperial College London, an important distinction from an official university investment vehicle. Project Ventures says references to Imperial describe its origins and network rather than an institutional affiliation or endorsement.
That independence could give the firm more flexibility in how it invests and builds relationships with founders. However, it also means Project Ventures must establish its own reputation rather than relying on the university’s investment platform.
The firm plans to keep developing its Imperial-connected pipeline while closing the debut vehicle. Longer term, it has indicated that the alumni-backed approach could eventually be extended into other technical university ecosystems across Europe.
That possibility makes the first Project Ventures fund more interesting than its £5 million size might initially suggest. Its larger experiment concerns whether concentrated university networks can become repeatable venture platforms in the British and European markets.
If the approach works, successful founders and alumni could create a reinforcing cycle where experience, capital, and technical knowledge repeatedly return to the same entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The model still needs time to prove that advantage translates into strong companies and investment returns. Three early investments are enough to show the strategy in action, but they cannot yet establish whether the approach will outperform broader sourcing models.
For now, Project Ventures is starting with something Imperial already possesses in abundance: technical talent and a large global alumni community. The £5 million fund is designed to find out whether those two assets can also become a reliable engine for creating and financing the next generation of deep-tech companies.
