White City Innovation District companies secure over £137 million funding in 2026

From seed to Series A rounds and beyond, businesses scaling in London’s leading deep tech ecosystem win investor confidence 

Startups from White City Innovation District, one of the UK’s leading economic ecosystems for frontier innovation and future industries, have demonstrated their high-growth potential and strong appeal to investors – raising over £137 million within the first half of 2026.  White City Innovation District, a landmark partnership between Imperial College London and Hammersmith & Fulham Council, is a transformative innovation hub located at the heart of the “Innovation Borough” – now London’s fastest-growing economy.¹ 

Recent analysis by company data provider Beauhurst ranks Hammersmith & Fulham as the top London borough for investment raised per company over the last five years², cementing its position as the fastest-scaling economy in the capital and top ten UK-wide³.

RQ Bio, a biotech developing long-acting antibody therapeutics for the prevention of influenza in high-risk and immunocompromised populations, closed out White City Innovation District’s H1 figures with the announcement of its oversubscribed $115M (£85.5M) Series A financing – the largest publicly announced UK Series A fundraise by a spinout this year.  

Highlight raises by businesses based in White City Innovation District include:

• Avacta Therapeutics (AIM: AVCT) – a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing pre|CISION®, a tumour-activated oncology delivery platform – announced that it had raised £9 million in an oversubscribed strategic equity placing (June 2026)
• Resurrect Bio – developer of a plant disease resistance trait discovery platform powered by proprietary FloraFold® AI technology – announced in February 2026 the successful closing of initial Series A funding of £5.9 million. Resurrect Bio has now announced the final closing of the round at £7.5 million – oversubscribed from the initial close (May 2026)
• Meatly – the pioneering cultivated meat company, which has developed Europe’s first commercially approved lab-grown meat for pet food – has raised £10.4 million in Series A funding to build Europe’s largest-ever cultivated meat facility (May 2026)
• Nanomox – an Imperial College London spinout developing sustainable processes for inorganic materials through its patented Oxidative Ionothermal Synthesis (OIS®) platform – secured £2.4 million in seed funding (Feb 2026)
• SOLVE Chemistry – an AI-driven chemistry startup spun out of Imperial – raised £4 million seed funding to expand its work helping pharmaceutical and agrochemical manufacturers bring products to market faster, more sustainably, and at lower cost (January 2026)
• Engitix Therapeutics – a biotech company targeting the extracellular matrix (ECM) to develop transformative therapies for cancer and fibrosis – confirmed £18.3 million Series A extension financing (January 2026)

Engitix Therapeutics is located at White City Place, and all other companies are based on Imperial’s White City Campus. In early-stage funding rounds spanning seed to Series A and beyond, these highly innovative White City businesses have won clear investor backing and long-term confidence despite a challenging global investment market. 

Further fuelling the momentum being generated across the White City ecosystem, Myricx Bio, a cancer therapy spinout from Imperial’s Department of Chemistry, has just announced a landmark agreement to be acquired by Novartis – based in White City Innovation District – for up to $1.5 billion. This record deal represents the highest-value acquisition of any Imperial spinout company to date.

White City Innovation District is one of four major research and innovation clusters powering WestTech London – the new globally competitive innovation ecosystem that is empowering the future of scientific and technological collaboration to drive entrepreneurship, job creation and investment. WestTech London brings together stakeholders around a shared mission to unlock the potential of West London’s innovation landscape and create a new powerhouse for frontier innovation.

White City Innovation District is home to some of the world’s most innovative organisations – from fast-growth startups to global brand leaders – and is playing a pivotal role in accelerating advances and fuelling growth in future industries spanning AI, deep tech, space, defence, life sciences, food tech, climate tech and digital media. Launched in 2017, this pioneering district is building a reputation as one of London’s leading economic ecosystems – creating over 17,000 jobs⁴ and generating over £6 billion of investment to date. Globally renowned organisations based in White City Innovation District include L’Oréal, Novartis, ITV and the BBC.

Commenting on the stand-out investment performance, Hugh Brady, President of Imperial College London said: “White City Innovation District was created to give the UK’s most promising startups and spinouts the co-located environment, expertise and community they need to prosper. The impressive investment secured by these businesses shows just how powerfully that model is working. Investors are backing the exceptional science, talent and ambition emerging from White City – even in a challenging market – because they recognise the world‑class potential that is thriving within White City Innovation District and our wider WestTech London ecosystem. This is exactly the kind of impact Imperial and H&F Council set out to deliver in partnership: helping frontier innovators to scale faster, to create new industries, and to open up new opportunities and pathways to success in West London that will benefit the entire UK economy.”

Councillor Stephen Cowan, Leader of Hammersmith & Fulham Council added: “Building an environment where serendipitous collisions can occur among people who can innovate and change the world is at the heart of our Upstream London industrial strategy. Through our partnership with Imperial, we are transforming Hammersmith & Fulham into an inclusive innovation campus borough and a stand-out European leader in fourth industrial revolution industries. These hugely impressive investment figures are a vote of confidence in our mission and show why our borough has become London’s fastest growing economy.”

Owen Ensor, CEO of Meatly, commented: “This investment marks a powerful endorsement – not just of Meatly, but of Britain’s foodtech and biotech sectors. Meatly has one focus – to make commercially viable cultivated meat a reality. Over the last four years, Meatly’s pioneering team has systematically focused on reducing key costs and building the strongest possible technical foundation for growth. Now we have our own industry-leading technology, and we are ready to scale. This step will allow us to prove commercial viability at scale and start to continually produce Meatly Chicken to the UK pet food market.”

Linden Schrecker, CEO of SOLVE Chemistry, commented: “Since our last funding round led by XTX Ventures, we have tripled our team as we build the future of chemical process development. SOLVE Chemistry is helping some of the biggest pharmaceutical and agrochemical companies in the world move faster from discovery to full-scale production, using our unique automated flow lab hosted in Scale Space, and our ML and AI-driven software to generate better data, sooner. White City Innovation District has been an ideal base to grow our company, offering flexible lab space, access to leading customers and investors, and world-class collaboration opportunities with Imperial College London.”

1. Estimated figures from ONS for London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham’s gross domestic product (GDO), April 2025
2. Source: West London Business powered by Beauhurst, January 2026
3. Source: Hammersmith & Fulham Council figures, 2025
4. Estimated 17,200 jobs have been added in high growth sectors, 2017– 2025 (Source: Data City, 2025)