Serial tech entrepreneur Dr Hermann Hauser, who co-founded Acorn Computers and Arm and who continues to invest in the cream of Cambridge, UK and European businesses, is the guest speaker at the Awards dinner at Queens’ College on Wednesday September 11 and has much to say that is relevant to companies in the Cluster with global growth ambitions.
New this year is the Cambridge Tech Week (CTW) Award which will honour the winner of a scale-up competition being held during CTW in September.
One change to the 16 Awards we traditionally make at the Cambridge presentation dinner involves the popular Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Cambridge Judge Business School has kindly allowed Sana Capital in Cambridge to facilitate sponsorship of the category by Murray Edwards College. Judge continues to sponsor the equally popular Graduate Business Award.
The award categories are: Young Company of the Year, Cambridge Judge Graduate Business of the Year, The Sir Michael Marshall Engineering Excellence Award, Disruptive Technology, The Pathfinder Award, Technology Scale-up, Life Science Scale-up, Life Science Innovation, International Trade Champion, Quoted Company of the Year, Woman Entrepreneur of the Year, Sustainability Champion, DeepTech Innovation, Cambridge Tech Week (CTW) Award, and Investment of the Year. From all the category winners, sponsors will choose a Business of the Year.
Launched in 1990, The Business Weekly Awards welcomes entries from across the six counties of the East of England – Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Bedfordshire, Essex and Hertfordshire. The Awards are sponsored by Mills & Reeve, AstraZeneca, Arm, PwC, Barclays, TTP, Cambridge Judge Business School, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Marshall, Bruntwood SciTech, Cambridge Science Park, Murray Edwards College, Cambridge Network, Unity Campus, and St John’s Innovation Centre.
SHORTLISTED COMPANIES
Advanced Infrastructure
Advanced Infrastructure launched in 2020 with a mission to address the challenge of a whole-systems net-zero Energy Transition. The company builds data and develops advanced geospatial solutions to simplify understanding of the current energy baseline and reveal the most practical steps to accelerate decarbonisation. Advanced Infrastructure’s innovative software, data and API services allow local governments, private companies, and distribution network operators to efficiently and effectively plan for increased renewable generation and carbon-cutting.
AngioGenius
AngioGenius is an App where anyone can take a photo of their eye at home to help detect and monitor eye disease progression. The company is on the Pre-Accelerate Programme at Cambridge Judge Business School.
Astex Pharmaceuticals
Astex is toasting 25 years since its foundation. In that time, it has grown from a start-up, pioneering its innovative Pyramid fragment-based drug discovery platform to become one of the UK’s most successful biotechs with a consistent aim to discover life-changing drugs for cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.
Bicycle Therapeutics
Nasdaq-listed Bicycle Therapeutics, headquartered in Cambridge, UK, raised a $555 million PIPE financing this May significantly increasing its pro forma cash position to c $1.0 billion. Bicycle continues to advance its work to develop novel precision-guided therapeutics for cancer and other diseases.
Biofidelity
Cancer is rising globally, with 29 million new cases predicted annually by 2040. Targeted treatments are increasingly available, but their effective use requires genomic testing, which is currently costly plus complex to access and interpret. Biofidelity addresses this barrier with cost-effective, rapid genomic testing technology. In 2023, the company launched ASPYRE®-Lung, which uses existing PCR platforms for simplified local testing, improving rapid access to critical genomic data. Its solution has potential to increase the number of lung cancer patients who receive recommended biomarker results to > 80 per cent.
bit.bio
Synthetic biology company bit.bio was founded in 2016 to provide human cells for research, cell therapy and drug discovery with a mission to code cells for groundbreaking cures. bit.bio’s proprietary gene-targeting platform opti-ox™ is applied to induce transcription factor combinations. The Cambridge University spin-out has raised over $200m in funding from investors who include Arch Ventures, Charles River Laboratories, Foresite Capital, Milky Way, National Resilience, Tencent, Puhua Capital and more.
Blackdot Solutions
In order to identify risk and stop crime, investigators in the public and private sectors need access to a wide range of data - including live internet data, or Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). However, the huge volumes of data available on the internet mean that they aren’t finding the information they need. This year, Blackdot launched Videris 5, which makes accessing and analysing OSINT simpler, bringing all of the OSINT sources an investigator needs into a single platform for collection, analysis and visualisation.
The Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC)
The Cambridge Crystallographic Database (CSD) and software is used by researchers worldwide to discover and develop new medicines and materials.
Cambridge Future Tech (CFT)
Cambridge Future Tech leads the tech venture-building landscape with its pioneering DeepTech focus and commitment to innovation, sustainability, and diversity. Founding ventures with leading universities, scientists, and inventors it commercialises scientific discoveries and technological innovations that address global challenges.
Cambridge Mechatronics (CML)
Cambridge Mechatronics Limited is a world leader in Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) actuator design and control, with its products shipped in over 70 million products to date. In Q1 2024, Cambridge Mechatronics secured over $40m investment in an oversubscribed funding round to expand its pioneering smartphone imaging technology in a round led by Atlantic Bridge with co-leads Intel Capital and Supernova and participation by Sony Innovation Fund.
Cambridge Vacuum Engineering (CVE)
CVE’s Ebflow technology is a game-changing welding solution that is accelerating engineering projects worldwide, including those pivotal to delivering on net zero goals. In the offshore wind sector Ebflow is proven to weld wind turbine monopiles at least 25 times faster than currently used methods whilst using 90 per cent less energy, costing 88 per cent less, and producing 97 per cent less CO2 emissions.
Cellexcel
Cellexcel’s vision is to enable Net Zero by enhancing the performance and increase the usage of plant-based materials in manufacturing without the use of PFAS or other non-biodegradable materials, that prevent recycling. Spun out of the University of East Anglia, Cellexcel is backed by College Green Ventures, New Anglia Capital, Low Carbon Innovation Fund 2, Turquoise and angel investors from Anglia Capital Group.
Cellular Origins
Cellular Origins is at the forefront of a monumental shift in cell therapy manufacturing, tackling accessibility barriers to next-generation therapies with cutting-edge mobile robotics. Uniquely combining advanced, autonomous robots with aseptic fluid handling, Constellation™ offers a revolutionary solution to affordable, scalable manufacture, delivering 30x space efficiency, alongside 16x/51 per cent reduction in labour/production costs. The company entered several partnerships, including the collaboration with the renowned CGT Catapult, to demonstrate Constellation’s transformative potential in industrial-scale CGT manufacturing.
clock.bio
What if we could use the rejuvenation programme in pluripotent stem-cells to develop new therapeutics for age-related diseases? clock.bio’s vision is a future in which we stay healthy for longer. As a Cambridge-based biotech company, launched out of stealth after reaching proof-of-concept last year, clock-bio seeks to extend healthspan by 20 years by the end of this decade.
CMR Surgical
CMR Surgical’s groundbreaking next-generation surgical robot Versius performed its 20,000th surgical case in 2024. The unicorn company’s small robot offers portability and unique design features that enable surgeons worldwide to provide minimal access surgery (MAS) to more people and across more specialities, such as thoracic surgery.
CN Bio
2023 was transformative for CN Bio, overcoming challenging market conditions to attain record-breaking revenues/growth. Throughout 2023/24, the Company made six key leadership appointments spanning the UK/USA, which coupled with a $21M first close Series B in April, position it for rapid global expansion. In December, CN Bio’s technology also supported the initiation of a Phase 1 trial of Inipharm’s INI-822 - the first example of an OOC provider’s data supporting clinical progression of a drug for complex metabolic liver disease.
Cresset Biomolecular Discovery
Building on domestic growth, in 2013 Cresset identified the necessity to expand into North America and Asia Pacific for sustained development in life sciences, pharmaceutical, biotech and academia. Initially supported by UKTI/DIT, Cresset engaged in global trade missions and recently established legal entities in India and North America, facilitating localized support with offices and teams in Bangalore and Massachusetts.
Domainex
A King’s Awards winner and our 2023 Life Science Scale-Up champion, Domainex is a leading integrated drug discovery company and research partner with a particular focus on small molecule research. Working in partnership worldwide across numerous life science sectors, the multi-award-winning company launched in 2001 to provide innovative tailored drug discovery services.
Echion Technologies
Echion Technologies develops niobium-based, fast-charging battery materials. Last month, the company raised £29 million in a Series B round led by specialist battery and energy storage technology investor Volta Energy Technologies with participation from existing investors CBMM, BGF and Cambridge Enterprise Ventures. Echion’s longstanding partnership with the world’s leading producer of niobium, Brazilian company CBMM, will see the opening of a 2,000 tonne per year XNO® manufacturing facility this year.
Enhanc3D Genomics
Enhanc3D Genomics’ genome-wide 3D-genome mapping technology, GenLink3D™, provides profound insights into long-distance gene regulation and disease pathways. Enhanc3D is building a comprehensive 3D Genome Atlas comprising all cell types and disease states that can be licenced, interrogated and exploited for downstream drug discovery.
Ethicronics
Ethicronics operates at the intersection of advanced Research, Science & Technology, providing cutting-edge solutions to complex challenges where security and privacy engineering are paramount. The company specialises in software technologies for hardware problems (starting with cybersecurity). Ethicronics has made the final of several competitions (including a NATO innovation challenge), and has also participated in a key UK defence project.
Exonate Ltd
Led by CEO Dr Catherine Beech, Exonate is bringing about a paradigm shift in retinal vascular disease treatment, to transform the lives of patients suffering vision loss. The company’s lead asset, EXN407, is a small molecule inhibitor that leverages alternative splicing to selectively inhibit disease-causing isoforms of VEGF.
FlexEnable
FlexEnable, a leader in the development and production of flexible organic electronics for active optics and displays, recently revealed that the world’s first mass-produced consumer product incorporating organic transistor technology had started shipping. The device, called Ledger Stax, is a secure crypto wallet developed by French company and market-leader Ledger.
Green Doors
Green Doors founder, Joseph Holman, is on a mission to provide every door with a second life and to stop uPVC going to landfill. Green Doors started with a door he found in a skip. The business now produces revenues of close to £2m and has 30 employees.
Guardtech Group
Guardtech has developed CleanCube Mobile Cleanrooms – a range of innovative portable shipping container cleanrooms and laboratories that are being utilised by businesses across the Life Sciences sector.
HutanBio
HutanBio is on a mission to disrupt the biofuel industry; scaling up its HBx program to make low carbon biofuels to meet the challenge of transitioning to net zero in the marine and heavy transport sectors. HBx is a biofuel with a social conscience. The team has addressed the many social and environmental challenges that other biofuel energy crops face. HBx biofuel draws down CO2 by adding photosynthesis capacity to the planet.
Ian Charles (Quadram Institute)
Ian Charles is an innovator, entrepreneur and inspirational leader. In his nine years as CEO and Director he has transformed the old Insitute of Food Research into the Quadram Institute, pioneering world-leading research in food and health. His leadership has created a nationally important centre of excellence, enabled global collaborations and industry partnerships. He was awarded an OBE in 2023 for his services for science and clinical research.
Ignota Labs
TechBio startup, Ignota Labs, leverages cutting-edge AI to identify the root causes of safety failures in drug development, facilitating the turnaround of failed drugs. Over the past year and a half, its groundbreaking platform has made significant strides, enabling numerous drug rescue operations. Ignota Labs recently acquired its first asset.
IQGeo
IQGeo is a geospatial software company that has achieved consistent and impressive revenue, employee, and geographic growth since its relaunch in January 2019. Over the last five years, the company has helped broadband operators deploy and manage fibre networks that are delivering digital equity, and electric utilities build and maintain the net-zero carbon grids of the future.
Laverock Therapeutics
Laverock is an innovator in cell and gene therapies – which have the potential to transform medicine. Laverock’s technology harnesses the cell’s own gene control systems to develop a new generation of programmable therapies to tackle major diseases. In the last year, Laverock completed an expanded seed round, raising £13.5m, the second highest seed investment by a UK company in 2023.
Levidian
Powered by its patented LOOP technology, Levidian provides a comprehensive decarbonisation service for customers that not only captures carbon but unlocks commercial value from it. LOOP captures the carbon from the world’s most harmful greenhouse gas (methane) before it is burned, and turns it into clean hydrogen and high-quality graphene, a nanomaterial used as an additive to unlock product performance and drive process efficiencies. It has established its first international base in Abu Dhabi where it expects to create around 250 jobs in manufacturing and R&D.
Luminance Technologies
Built on a proprietary legal Large Language Model, Luminance’s Legal-Grade™ AI augments every touchpoint an organisation has with its contracts. Off the back of 5x ARR growth in the past two years, Luminance recently announced its $40 million Series B funding round, which is being used to scale headcount, strengthen its global foothold and fund groundbreaking innovation. In the past 12 months Luminance has added a host of household names to its customer base, including AMD, LG Chem, BBC Studios and Staples.
Macomics
Macomics has continued to refine its proprietary macrophage based drug discovery platform, ENIGMAC, making significant advances in the last 12 months. It expanded its operations in both Edinburgh and Cambridge; expanded its applications from oncology into inflammation; advanced its pipeline with its lead program reporting positive pre-clinical data; and appointed Simon Dew as CBO to continue its successful partnering drive, to maximise the impact of its platform on new drugs with two pioneering collaborations announced with leading academic groups in Europe, and significant progress in its deal with Ono Pharmaceuticals.
Maxion Therapeutics
Biotech start-up Maxion is revolutionising biologic medicines by targeting ion channels, critical in treating diseases like autoimmune conditions and chronic pain, which affect millions globally. Maxion’s innovative platform, combines knottins (mini-proteins), with antibody scaffold to unlock the potential for antibody discovery against ion channels and GPCRs.
Mestag Therapeutics
Mestag harnesses new insights into fibroblast-immune biology to develop impactful therapeutics for patients with cancer and inflammatory disease. Its lead program targets critical barriers in treatment of cancer, which include the immune system’s access to the tumour, and its failure to recognise cancer cells. The second program targets chronic inflammation in inflammatory disease (e.g. RA, IBD, lupus). Mestag is also identifying novel targets for future therapies using its fibroblast-focused target discovery platform.
Mimicrete
Mimicrete is a University of Cambridge startup working on sustainable and resilient vascular self-healing concrete for the built environment. Its solution can lengthen concrete lifetime and reduce the need for repair/replacement, and reduce carbon emissions. In the past 2 years, the female-led startup has raised over £1.2m from private/public funds, worked with over 15 Tier-1 companies in the UK and EU, and conducted commercial site trails with its partners.
NRG Therapeutics
NRG is pioneering new approaches to treat devastating neurodegenerative disorders. Based on its unique understanding of mitochondrial biology, it has discovered novel candidate therapeutics that target the mitochondrial permeability transition pore (mPTP), shown to play a key pathological role in the neurodegeneration associated with Parkinson’s and ALS. In partnership with charities such as Parkinson’s UK, The Michael J Fox Foundation, and FightMND it is working to advance its candidate drugs into the clinic.
Nuclera
Nuclera is a disruptor in the life science sector, with a mission to support scientists to better human health by enabling rapid access to proteins required for drug discovery research. Accelerating protein expression and purification workflows, through automated construct screening to inform protein scale-up, Nuclera’s eProtein Discovery™ is the first thought-to-protein benchtop prototyping system.
Orca Scan
Orca Scan is a cloud-based barcode tracking platform that simplifies enterprise-grade solutions without code. Since 2016, they have worked with 300,000+ users worldwide, simplifying the tracking and use of barcode data. Brands can use the Orca Scan platform to create and manage bespoke QR codes made to the GS1 standard and place them on the product. Orca Scan was founded in 2016, and supported by Cambridge Judge Business School through the Accelerate Cambridge start-up programme, Barclays Eagle Labs Scale-up programme and Rising Women Leaders Programme at the University of Cambridge.
OutSee
OutSee is an exciting young company making a start in its journey to disrupt the space of genomic analysis by introducing its new technology “Nomaly” to the areas of drug target discovery and precision medicine. After 10 years development in academia (patent filed 2016), following a vision created ahead of its time, it is now mature enough to launch. It has built a small but expert team from a loan and two InnovateUK grants (£500K), has completed a small pharma pilot study and is in discussions for two larger deals.
PhoreMost
PhoreMost’s mission is to accelerate, diversify, and rationalise drug discovery by using a systematic approach to identify new drug targets and, crucially, how to drug them. Using its SITESEEKER platform, PhoreMost is addressing challenges in targeted protein degradation by identifying novel E3 ligases with optimised properties for degrader therapeutic development.
PlaqueTec
PlaqueTec is pioneering a precision medicine approach for millions of patients with coronary artery disease. Proprietary technology, the Liquid Biopsy System™, is being used to collect blood samples for PlaqueTec’s BIOPATTERN trial, following MHRA approval in November 2023. Focused on identifying novel endotype-specific biomarkers linked with critical patient factors, PlaqueTec is building BioCarta, a bioinformatics platform to define disease signals and identify new actionable drug targets, supported by recent $8m equity financing.
Plextek
For more than 30 years companies have been going to Plextek to tackle their hardest engineering challenges requiring outside-the-box thinking. The product development company supports organisations to bring highly technical products and services to market. On a Fee-for-Service basis, Plextek technical and commercial teams are working with customers every day to ensure their projects are market leading. The company aims to bring the competitive advantage to any proposition it tackles.
QPT Limited
QPT makes electric motors more efficient, slashing electricity usage by up to 10 per cent. QPT’s innovation enables motor controls to use GaN transistors to run much faster without EMI or overheating problems.
Sano Genetics
Sano Genetics is developing software to enable the precision medicine revolution. Sano Genetics combines genetic testing, recruitment, and long-term engagement in one platform, accelerating enrolment and simplifying operations for precision medicine teams driving breakthroughs for patients. In 2023 alone, Sano Genetics experienced 5x ARR growth year-on-year, doubled its headcount to 62 and expanded into the large pharmaceutical market, working with four of the top 20 pharma companies. It raised $11.4m in new funding at the start of 2024 and recently launched its ‘Light the Way’ programme – an online support platform that offers no-cost genetic education, testing and counselling for individuals at risk of genetic motor neurone disease (MND).
Secondmind
Secondmind develops impactful AI solutions that tackle complexity in automotive engineering. The Secondmind Optimization Engine significantly reduces simulation time, calibration overhead, and continuously improves vehicle performance by combining data-efficient AI with automated experiment design, and empowering engineers to leverage domain expertise with solutions they trust. In November 2023, Mazda Motor Corporation joined Cambridge Innovation Capital, Amadeus Capital, Atlantic Bridge Ventures in a $16M Series B2 funding round. Mazda and Secondmind also extended its strategic partnership to foster deeper collaboration around the leveraging of AI more broadly in vehicle design and development.
SkyTech Cambridge
SkyTech Cambridge is a drone services company. SkyTech has undertaken work for a number of Cambridge colleges, including Trinity and Corpus Christi, providing roof surveys taken across the city, mapped the Botanic Gardens in Cambridge and has completed numerous projects for property clients around the world. Earlier this year, SkyTech provided organisers of the Cambridge Half Marathon with high quality aerial media and real-time visual oversight for the duration of the race. Further afield, SkyTech worked for Saab, which is a military contractor as well as an automotive specialist, in Germany last year by creating a complete digital 3D twin of its training facility. Saab uses this data to plan training missions in 3D and for feeding the maps produced to infantry on the ground.
Stantec
Stantec is a global interdisciplinary design and engineering consultancy. The Stantec community unites more than 31,000 employees working in 450 locations across 6 continents.
Superdielectrics
Superdielectrics’ vision is to create affordable, sustainable, energy systems. This could mean affordable grid independent energy anywhere in the world. Superdielectrics’ energy storage technology combines electric fields (physics) and conventional chemical storage (chemistry) to create a new aqueous polymer-based energy storage technology - a highly efficient store of energy that charges over 10 times faster than lead-acid batteries with high cycle life.
T-Therapeutics
Spun out of the University of Cambridge and led by Professor Allan Bradley, T-Therapeutics emerged from stealth less than a year ago with £48m from a blue-chip syndicate of investors, a world class human T Cell receptor discovery platform, a motivated and skilled team of drug developers along with the ambition to build a pipeline of first-in-class drugs. The company’s drugs in development are designed to harness the natural power of T cells to reshape the clinical landscape for patients with cancer or autoimmune disease.
Tessellate BIO
A preclinical stage biotechnology company with a focus on novel Synthetic Lethality approaches, Tessellate BIO emerged from stealth in October 2023, with €8m in seed funding. Originating in the Netherlands, it chose Stevenage as its R & D site for growth. It aims to become a global leader in precision oncology by redefining Synthetic Lethality. Its lead program targets the DNA damage response and in particular cancers that depend on Alternative Lengthening of Telomeres.
Vector Bioscience Cambridge
Last year, Vector Bioscience Cambridge secured more than $3m in non-dilutive funding and embarked on a scale-up process. Vector offers a novel targeted delivery system for various therapeutics and addresses multiple cancers. Vector has developed a truly disruptive nanoscale drug delivery platform after more than 15 years of R & D at the Department of Engineering and Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge. Its nanoscale shuttles can deliver a range of therapeutics, from traditional drugs to RNA, directly to tumours.
Image credit: Phil Mynott
