Aviva joins backers of college spinouts automobile Northern Gritstone

Aviva, the FTSE-100 insurance coverage group and asset supervisor, is becoming a member of the listing of backers ploughing tens of millions of kilos into a few of Britain’s most promising college spinout corporations.

Sky Information has learnt that Northern Gritstone, which is chaired by the previous Treasury minister Lord O’Neill, will announce this week that it has landed £50m in new funding from a syndicate of pension funds and different traders.

Sources mentioned £35m of the capital was being supplied by Northern LGPS, the collective asset pool of the Higher Manchester, Merseyside and West Yorkshire pension funds, with a further £15m from Aviva and Fulcrum Asset Administration.

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Since its launch in 2022, Northern Gritstone has invested in dozens of early-stage corporations spun out of universities in Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester.

As a part of the £50m fundraising, Paddy Dowdall, assistant director of the Higher Manchester Pension Fund, is becoming a member of the Northern Gritstone board as a non-executive director.

The automobile is targeted on corporations working in fields reminiscent of deeptech and life sciences, together with semiconductor design and manufacturing; novel supplies; safe computing; AI; healthtech; and gene therapies.

“We’re very grateful for this additional help from traders in our journey to develop world profitable companies within the North of England originating from our college ecosystem and contributing to the way forward for greater worth added exercise and the North’s productiveness,” Lord O’Neill mentioned within the assertion.

Duncan Johnson, Northern Gritstone’s chief government mentioned the fundraising supplied proof of “our skill to create the world-leading companies of tomorrow primarily based on world-class innovation that exists within the north of England”.

Its newest increase comes as quite a lot of college spinout ventures in different areas of the UK are struggling to boost ample funding to get off the bottom.

Ben Luckett, managing director, enterprise and strategic capital at Aviva Traders mentioned: “College spinouts will assist energy innovation, drive tangible real-world affect, and help the UK to prepare for the long run.”