Treasury puts £100m into regional and first-time VC funds
The second tranche of the £400m Investor Pathways Capital Initiative goes to early-stage funds outside London. Who gets the cheques has not been named.
The Treasury and the British Business Bank will deploy £100m to early-stage regional venture capital funds across the UK.
The money is the second phase of the Investor Pathways Capital Initiative, a £400m programme.
It follows £90m committed in June 2026 to the initiative's first cohort. That leaves £210m of the programme unallocated on the published figures.
The stated target is new funds, including those run by first-time and emerging managers based outside the traditional financial centres.
The announcement was made around visits to businesses and investors in Sheffield and Leeds by Economic Secretary to the Treasury Lucy Rigby and Chancellor John Healey.
Both framed the money as an attempt to widen access to venture capital beyond London and to narrow regional funding gaps.
For founders, the practical point is who ends up holding the cheque book. The initiative backs funds, not companies directly, so the money reaches startups only once a manager has raised, closed and started writing tickets.
That is a slow chain. The first cohort was funded in June 2026; the second tranche has been announced now.
No individual fund managers were named in the announcement. Nor was a regional split published, beyond the two cities the ministers visited.
There is also no stated timetable for when the £100m is drawn down, or for how the remaining programme money will be allocated.
What a founder outside London can usefully do is watch the British Business Bank's cohort announcements rather than the Treasury's headline figure. The names of the funds are the part that determines who can actually raise.
Until those names appear, £100m is a commitment, not capital in a founder's bank account.