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2024 round-up: Investment flows into White City Innovation District

An image of both 88WL and Uren Hub from the ground up
The sky’s the limit: 88 Wood Lane and the Sir Michael Uren Hub in White City Innovation District.

As we head into the holidays and begin to look ahead to the coming year, we reflect on an extraordinary twelve months of investment flow into White City Innovation District. Despite a highly challenging environment for raising capital, entrepreneurs and innovators in the WCID community across a variety of sectors have succeeded in attracting millions of pounds of funding – a strong vote of confidence in both these individual businesses and White City Innovation District’s status as a global innovation hub and commercial gateway to the world.

Here is our highlight summary of the significant funding deals closed by the WCID community in 2024.

  • Siftr Bio (based at Imperial White City Incubator), $1.3M pre-seed funding, December 2024

Precision cancer therapeutics pioneer Siftr Bio – an Imperial College London spin-out – announced this month that it has raised $1.3m pre-seed funding from two US-based funds. The new investment is being harnessing to advance Siftr Bio’s innovative platform technology aimed at improving the precision of antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) – a new and potentially transformational type of cancer treatment. The company is collaborating closely with Imperial’s world-class researchers to usher in the next-generation of high-precision, low side-effect therapeutics for patients, for use in cancer treatment and beyond.

  • Puraffinity (based at Scale Space), Series A funding now totalling £17M, September 2024

Imperial start-up Puraffinity confirmed in September that it has raised an additional investment of £6.73 million – bringing its total Series A fund-raising to £17M. The company, which is developing innovative per-and polyfluoroalkyl (PFAS) removal technologies to extract persistent harmful chemicals from water, will use the new funding to scale-up production and explore new commercial applications for its patented smart materials.

  • P.Happi® (based at Imperial White City Incubator), UK Biomedical Catalyst Grant from Innovate UK, July 2024

Biotech start-up P.Happi® is on a mission: to empower women to take control of their intimate wellbeing. The all-female team of scientists recently launched the company’s first product – an innovative daily serum that forms a barrier to help protect the intimate female area from the ‘bad’ bacteria that can disrupt the microbiome and cause discomfort and health issues ranging from urinary tract infections (UTIs) to thrush.  In July this year, the company announced that it had won a UK Biomedical Catalyst Grant from Innovate UK to expand its innovation and research in the women’s health space. The grant will enable the team to conduct a further microbiome study. Learn more in our Day in the Life profile of Chanelle Ryan, Senior Scientist for P.Happi®.

Picture of Senior Scientist Chanelle Ryan sitting at a lab desk. She is wearing blue disposable gloves and a white lab coat.

P.Happi®Senior Scientist Chanelle Ryan working at the company’s lab space in Scale Space White City.

  • Addionics (based at Scale Space), £30M Series B round, July 2024

Addionics – developers of advanced 3D Current Collectors for the next generation of rechargeable batteries – celebrated closing a £30M Series B funding round in July. The funding round was co-led by GM Ventures and Deep Insight, with participation from Scania, along with new and returning strategic investors. This latest investment will support the company’s operational growth and global business expansion. Addionics is the leading manufacturer of 3D Current Collectors, which drive significant battery manufacturing and performance benefits – including better heat dissipation throughout electrodes, faster charging times, increased power and improved stability, culminating in better-performing batteries at a lower cost. 

MORE FUNDING AND GRANTS

Congratulations to the following White City Innovation District companies that also welcomed news of fundraising success and key grant awards this year:

IMPERIAL INITIATIVES: INSPIRING INVESTMENT IN WHITE CITY

  • £5M to scale climate start-ups, November 2024

In November, Imperial announced its leading role in the new Climate Scaling Collaborative – a pioneering initiative to support IP-rich university start-ups and spin-outs working on solutions for climate mitigation and adaptation. The initiative, which is backed by £5M funding from the Research England Development Fund, builds on years of innovation leadership developed at partner universities, including key programmes led by White City Innovation District’s Undaunted. Read the Imperial story.

  • £3M to drive growth in UK’s Engineering Biology sector, November 2024

Imperial is set to create new investment-ready collaborations between academics and industry working within the key Engineering Biology sector following the news that its proof-of-concept programme has received £3 million investment from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The programme is open now and will be delivered through the SynbiCITE Innovation and Knowledge Centre (IKC), based at Imperial College London’s White City DeepTech Campus – part of White City Innovation District and the Imperial WestTech Corridor. Head to the Imperial news page for more.

  • $30M funding for Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein, June 2024

The new Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein launched at Imperial in June, with a £30M investment to accelerate its goal of advancing the design, delivery, and commercialisation of alternative food products that are economically and environmentally-friendly, nutritious, affordable, and tasty. The multidisciplinary Centre spans seven Imperial academic departments and will progress breakthrough research into precision fermentation, cultivated meat, bioprocessing and automation, nutrition, and AI and machine learning. Full details on the Imperial website.

L-R: Dr Andy Jarvis (Director of Future of Food, Bezos Earth Fund), Dr Rodrigo Ledesma Amaro (Director, Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein), Professor Mary Ryan (Vice-Provost (Research and Enterprise), Imperial), Sir Andrew Steer, (President and CEO, Bezos Earth Fund). Credit: Brendan Foster Photography

  • £12M EPSRC funding for AI for Chemistry hub, February 2024

Imperial and the University of Liverpool are leading a new £12 million research Hub to develop state-of-the-art artificial intelligence for chemistry. The £12m funding was awarded earlier this year by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and is being supplemented by £19m from consortium partners. The new AI for Chemistry Hub, AlChemy, will bring together leading academic researchers industry partners and stakeholders to promote a collaborative community, provide training and innovative new approaches at the rapidly evolving AI-chemistry interface.

Professor Sophia Yaliraki, Co-Director of Imperial’s AI initiative I-X commented: “Located within the White City Innovation District, I-X will be a springboard for the AIChemy activities, working collaboratively alongside our AI experts across foundational and application areas.” You can read our interview about with Professor Yaliraki about Imperial’s I-X initiative here.

INTO 2025: ACCELERATING MOMENTUM

Many congratulations to all of White City Innovation District’s exciting ventures and new initiatives that secured funding and investment this year to advance their game-changing research and solutions. Make sure to check in regularly with this blog and our LinkedIn page to follow the journeys of our extraordinary WCID stakeholders.

We’ll be sharing more news from our global pathfinder community in the coming year. Happy holidays to you all!