Last year, I wrote that 2024 had been the year of fundraising and practical scale-up and that 2025 would be the year of growth, exits and realisations. Twelve months on, that thesis has played out more clearly than I dared to predict.
Across our portfolio and the wider UK deep tech ecosystem, 2025 was marked by meaningful exits, strategic acquisitions, and a shift from proof-of-concept to deployed, scaled technology.
The Royal Academy of Engineering’s State of UK Deep Tech 2025 report notes that deep tech now makes up around a third of UK venture funding, with this year set to be the second strongest on record and nearly $20bn of M&A value delivered through UK deep tech startups alone. In other words: the market is still selective, but it is very much open for teams that deliver real outcomes.
From fundraising to realised outcomes
Two transactions in particular capture what patient capital and deep tech investing is for.
In August, Terumo agreed to acquire OrganOx, the Oxford medtech spinout whose perfusion technology is transforming liver transplantation, for $1.5bn – one of the largest UK medtech exits and the biggest sale of a UK university spinout to date. It completed in October and stands as a powerful example of what long-term partnership between founders, universities and specialist capital can achieve. It was a significant result for many investors, including Amadeus as the manager of The Royal Society Enterprise Fund, which seeded the company over a decade ago.
Earlier in the year, Worldpay announced it would acquire Ravelin, the AI-native fraud prevention platform we backed at seed in 2015. For merchants, that combination means better protection and higher authorisation rates; for us, it demonstrates that applied AI with clear economics continues to command returns.
Alongside these headline exits, our portfolio continued to convert deep technology into durable commercial positions and landmark raises:
- Altana expanded its work with US Customs and Border Protection through a new two-year federal contract, embedding its AI platform into trade enforcement workflows at scale.
- Constructive Bio, Nuclera and others continued to advance synthetic biology and techbio platforms, beginning their journey by raising some of the “large rounds in a quiet year” (which we highlighted last January).
- PolyAI raised an $86m Series D for its conversational AI customer contact applications, Nu Quantum a $60m Series A for quantum networking, and Photonic a $130m round for quantum computing at scale.
Taken together, these outcomes justify the confidence we expressed a year ago: advanced technology solving real problems, led by exceptional founders, can still attract capital, customers and strategic buyers – even in a disciplined market.
Quantum and AI move from experiments to infrastructure
In 2024, we talked about quantum “moving towards practical scale-up” and urged investors to look past early scepticism. In 2025, quantum systems began to look much less like lab curiosities and much more like national infrastructure (it was the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, after all!).
Riverlane and Oxford Quantum Circuits announced the UK’s first quantum error-corrected testbed integrated with high-performance computing, funded under the UK’s Quantum Missions Pilot programme and due to go live in a commercial data centre by March 2026. This work directly supports the UK’s National Quantum Strategy and brings fault-tolerant error correction into real-world environments.
In parallel, Riverlane has continued to lead on error correction research – including publishing its Quantum Error Correction Report 2025 – and collaborating with hardware partners to bring logical qubits closer to practical use. Most recently, its partnership with Rolls-Royce and Xanadu has shown dramatic improvements in simulating jet engine airflow using quantum algorithms, underlining the importance of quantum to industrial performance, not just scientific curiosity.
On the AI side, the pattern we described in Capitalise – the deal becomes the product – has accelerated. Europe’s best-funded AI companies, from enterprise assistants to defence “neoprimes”, spent 2025 building M&A muscle as they bought capabilities rather than waiting for the perfect product. At the same time, sovereign resilience has emerged as a defining theme: cybersecurity, AI-driven threat detection and dual-use systems now sit squarely in strategic budgets, not just innovation sandboxes.
This is precisely where many of our Intelligence and Planet investments operate – whether in quantum-safe networking, XIoT security or resilient sensing – and we expect this convergence between deep tech and sovereign resilience to intensify in 2026.
The fundraising landscape
Despite a volatile macro backdrop, 2025 has been a decisive year rather than a frozen one. PitchBook data showed that the share of down rounds in Europe fell materially versus 2024 as valuations recalibrated and then stabilised, even as investors remained cautious.
For UK deep tech specifically, the Royal Academy of Engineering reports:
- Deep tech now represents roughly 31% of all UK venture funding – triple its share a decade ago.
- 2025 is on track to be the second-strongest funding year on record, with forecasts of around $7.4bn in deep tech investment.
- The year delivered $20bn of M&A value and five $1bn+ exits across UK deep tech startups.
This is the context in which our own funds have been deploying capital. We have kept our focus on Intelligence, Human, and Planet – AI and compute, health and biology, and technologies that strengthen the resilience of our planet and infrastructure.
The challenge – and opportunity – remains late-stage capital. As the same report highlights, UK deep tech still relies heavily on overseas investors for scale-up rounds, leaving a structural funding gap but also a clear role for specialist firms like ours to steward companies from spinout to the global stage.
In my speech for the Innovation and Technology dinner at Mansion House in early September 2025, I called for UK pensions to allocate just 0.5% to venture. That represents a 70-fold increase from the 0.007% currently allocated. A rounding error for one of the largest savings industries in the world; but rocket fuel for our founders.
Looking ahead to 2026
So, what does all this mean for the year to come?
First, 2025 confirmed that our ecosystem is capable of producing globally significant deep tech outcomes: billion-dollar medtech exits, strategic AI acquisitions and quantum computing systems stepping into commercial settings. We should be ambitious about building on this momentum, not treating it as a one-off spike.
Second, the bar for capital has risen and that is healthy. Investors are backing fewer, better opportunities. Founders who can show clear routes to market, robust evidence and integration into existing workflows will continue to raise meaningful rounds on sensible terms.
Third, “sovereign resilience” – in health, AI infrastructure, cyber and defence – will remain a powerful demand driver. That aligns strongly with our long-standing focus on technologies that matter for society as well as for shareholders.
At Amadeus, our priorities for 2026 are simple:
- Continue to support our portfolio through scale-up, internationalisation, and strategic exit discussions.
- Deploy patiently into new trailblazers in Intelligence, Human and Planet where the science is difficult, the markets are large, and the route to impact is clear.
- Use our network, experience, and voice to help close the late-stage funding gap that still holds too many UK deep tech trailblazers back.
A year ago, I closed by saying that 2025 would be the year of growth, exits and realisations. It has been exactly that – and more. My hope for 2026 is that we take those realisations and compound them: turning standout deals into a repeatable pattern of outcomes for founders, investors and the ecosystems we serve.
Thank you to all the founders, investors and friends who have worked with us over the past year. I wish you and your families a healthy, fulfilling, and prosperous 2026.
Sincerely,
Dame Anne Glover
Read on for more news from our portfolio and partners across Intelligence, Human, and Planet this month.
Intelligence
Nu Quantum raises $60m to build the Entanglement Fabric. Oversubscribed Series A led by National Grid Partners will accelerate distributed quantum networking and team expansion. Read the announcement.
Photonic closes C$180m (US$130m) to scale distributed quantum computing. New backers include RBC and TELUS, with funds aimed at commercial milestones for its Entanglement First™ architecture. Read the release.
RaaS for warehouse picking. The Amadeus APEX Technology Fund co-leads NEOintralogistics’ €3m seed using robots to automate warehouses with a pay-per-pick model. Read the announcement.
Why Photonic’s architecture stands apart. Our blog breaks down the design choices that enable modular scale in quantum with insights from our co-founder, Hermann Hauser. Read the blog.
Real-time QEC, on hardware. Riverlane unveils a hardware decoder enabling microsecond-scale cycles and adaptive accuracy—bringing fault-tolerant quantum closer to production. Read the update.
PolyAI recognised by Inc. for AI Implementation. Enterprise voice agents earn a spot on Inc.’s 2025 Best in Business list for impact in real-world deployments. Read the news.
On stage at DLD. Unlikely AI’s William Tunstall-Pedoe lays out how neurosymbolic methods deliver trustworthy, scalable AI. Watch the interview.
Sifted’s Big Interview: Carmen Palacios-Berraquero. Why Nu Quantum is building the networking layer for distributed quantum computing – “This will be a multi-billion dollar business.” Read the interview.
Human
GridION Dx approved in the UK & EU. Oxford Nanopore’s first IVD device secures CE and UKCA marks, with an initial TB application via bioMérieux. Read the update.
Quibim strengthens its board. Dr Jeanne Bolger joins as Independent Director & Advisor to accelerate life-sciences growth. Read the announcement.
GLP-1s’ hidden scaling problem. The Observer reports ~14,000 kg of hazardous solvent waste per 1 kg of active ingredient for weight-loss jabs; Constructive Bio is exploring biological routes to cut the footprint. Read the feature.
Planet
Graphene sensors recognised. Frost & Sullivan names Paragraf its 2025 European Technology Innovation Leadership winner in graphene-based electronics manufacturing. Read the award note.
News from the team
Dame Anne Glover DBE. Anne’s Investiture at Windsor Castle earlier this month recognises her contributions to science, engineering and business. Not to mention supporting quite a few founders over three decades in VC. Read the press release.