Imperial alumni fund opens with £100k-£300k cheques

Project Ventures has launched a debut fund of £5m, or €5.8m, to back pre-seed and seed-stage companies working at the overlap of deeptech and AI.

The money is aimed at founders emerging from or connected to Imperial College London.

Cheques run between £100,000 and £300,000, the firm says.

Three investments have already been made: Tewke, a home operating system for energy optimisation and decentralised energy infrastructure; NexusAM, which uses AI to spot defects in metal 3D printing as parts are being made; and Neubond, a wearable neurotech platform for stroke rehabilitation.

The stated sector focus is energy and climate, advanced manufacturing, robotics and healthcare, with a preference for systems that connect software to physical hardware.

Project Ventures was founded in 2023 and is led by Shahryar Barati, its founder and managing partner, who holds three degrees from Imperial.

More than 80% of the fund's limited partners are Imperial alumni, according to the firm. It describes itself as the first independent, alumni-powered venture fund dedicated to the Imperial ecosystem — a claim nobody else has publicly contested, but one that rests on the firm's own account.

The model is borrowed from the United States, where alumni-backed funds attached to technical universities are long established.

Rowan Dixon, co-founder of Tewke, said his company had hired Imperial graduates and PhDs into roles from interns to technical leads before taking money from an Imperial-rooted investor.

Patrick Sagastegui Alva, co-founder of Neubond, said a medtech spin-out carries a specific set of problems beyond the product: intellectual property, clinical evidence, regulation and technology transfer.

The fund is not fully raised. Project Ventures is aiming for a final close by summer 2027 and says it will keep building a pipeline of Imperial-linked companies in the meantime, with the possibility of extending the model to other European technical universities later.

It arrives in a crowded year. EU-Startups, which reported the launch, counts around €783m announced across ten European deeptech, AI and research-led funds in 2026, including a €128m second fund from Transition Ventures in London, a €128.9m first close by Lansdowne Partners for commercialising UK university intellectual property, and a €48.8m fund from Creator Fund for scientific founders.

For an Imperial-linked founder, the practical point is narrow and useful. If you need £100,000 to £300,000 at pre-seed or seed, and your company came out of an Imperial lab or an Imperial network, there is now a fund whose entire remit is writing that cheque. If you are raising a first round above £300,000, or have no Imperial connection, this is not your fund.