Silicon Roundabout Ventures, June-May 2026 Bulletin
Our "Build in Public" LP update, with fresh fund highlights, community events, and deeptech market insights. Written by our AI. Edited by our humans.
In This Edition
Here is a TL;DR summary of this edition:
Upcoming & Recent Events (London, Paris, Berlin)
New Investment Announcement: $3 million pre-seed round for Edinburgh-based startup Cnuic.
Key Market Trend (”Born European, Built Global”): European deeptech companies are rapidly scaling into global markets (the US and China) across several core sectors:
Defence & Security: Hippos Exoskeleton signed a deployment agreement with the US Army; Archangel Lightworks closed an oversubscribed $13.5M Series A.
Quantum: Haiqu launched HaiquOS (an Agentic Operating System) and published joint research with HSBC using 156 qubits.
Life Sciences: Panakeia presented landmark cancer metabolic data at AACR 2026 in San Diego and is deploying its platform across NHS hospitals.
Energy & Mobility: Anaphite is debuting its battery technology at the China International Battery Fair in Shenzhen, while Swisspod set a new hyperloop speed record of 146 kph in Colorado.
Fund Performance Snapshot & Co-Investments (LP Only Section)
A reminder of what we are about
Silicon Roundabout Ventures is a SuperAngel Seed fund in the UK investing in European Deep Tech startups. It leverages their community of 15,000 entrepreneurs and engineers, through which the team previously attracted, selected and helped launch 33 Deep Tech and Big Data startups now valued at over £6 Billion.
The fund is backed by Molten Ventures (LSE:GROW), Cherry Ventures, and exited founders, engineers and execs: including ex googlers, amazonians and from 4 unicorns.
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📅 Upcoming Events and Community Updates
Upcoming Events and Community Updates
TODAY: Deep Tech Showcase 2026, London - 11th June
The 3rd edition of Deep Tech Showcase, hosted by Frontier Deep Tech and Silicon Roundabout Ventures in collaboration with Mishcon de Reya. An immersive, in-person evening highlighting the most innovative technology from the UK and beyond. This is all about the hard tech: robotics, semiconductors, quantum, synthetic biology, with live hardware demos.
We curate the guest list to ensure a balanced mix of technical founders, investors, R&D leads and the key players moving the needle in the UK ecosystem. Space is limited and we review applications daily.
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM, London.
See highlights from our 2025 edition: https://www.mishcon.com/news/tv/deep-tech-showcase-2025
Request to join: https://luma.com/bb33ncaa
Deep Tech Founders Dinner: US Expansion, Paris - 25th June
An intimate dinner and facilitated Q&A designed specifically for deeptech founders navigating the complexities of the US market. Cocktails, seated dinner, and candid peer-to-peer conversation on what it truly takes for a UK/EU company to compete and win in the US.
We will be joined by Daniel Glazer (London Managing Partner, Wilson Sonsini), who has guided companies like ElevenLabs, Monzo, Remote, Paddle, Onfido, and PolyAI through the US life cycle, from launch to IPO.
7:00 PM - 9:30 PM, Paris.
Space is strictly limited, request an invite: https://luma.com/i41l5wnq
We Hosted Super Return’s GP/LP DeepTech Breakfast in Berlin on June 10th
We hosted a curated GP/LP breakfast alongside Marvelous, Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund, Tenacity Capital, and Work In Progress Capital on the morning of SuperReturn. A small, high-signal room of GPs and LPs actively building and backing frontier technology companies.
The breakfast took place at the labs of Cellbricks Therapeutics, one of our portfolio companies, where guests had the opportunity to see live human tissue biofabrication and join optional lab tours inside one of Europe’s most ambitious BioTech companies.
➕ New Announcements
💥 Silicon Roundabout Ventures and The Deeptech Demo Day 2025 has brought together the inception round for a new approach to chip lithography launching in Scotland, UK: Cnuic.
Company Overview
Company: Cnuic
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Key Personnel: Omar Durrani & Ben Suztor.
Funding Stage: Pre-seed
Round Size: $3 million
Lead Investors: Tensor Ventures, Blank Space Ventures (Silicon Valley)
Participating Investors: Silicon Roundabout Ventures, Phasechange, SANDS, and Superlative.
The Team & Their Journeys Driven by deep technical mastery and a unified vision for the post-silicon era:
Ben Szutor (Co-founder): Moved from Hungary to Scotland at 18 to study at the University of Edinburgh, earning an EngD (PhD) in laser physics (Source: Forbes Hungary). He climbed from student researcher to CEO/CTO at quantum tech pioneer Skylark Lasers, earning global “Rising Star” honors from Laser Focus World before founding Cnuic to commercialize this hardware breakthrough.
Omar Durrani (Co-founder): A tech strategy specialist whose professional trajectory is shaped by a macro-view of human advancement. He co-founded Cnuic with the explicit mission to build the foundational tooling required to shift humanity’s primary computing medium from electrons to light.
Key Support: Grounded by Dorian Urban (Founding Engineer, leading optical lithography engineering) and David Semmens (Founding Advisor).
The Problem: The semiconductor industry is approaching physical limitations with traditional silicon chips, particularly regarding data transmission speeds and overheating. While photonic chips (which transmit data using light/photons instead of electrons) offer a solution with vastly higher speeds and lower heat generation, their mass deployment has historically been blocked by immense technological complexity and prohibitive manufacturing costs.
The Solution / Technology: Cnuic has developed a working prototype of a radically new photolithography device. By leveraging the unique properties of light, their device enables the rapid, reconfigurable, and cost-effective production of photonic chips with enhanced 3D control: a feat that was previously impossible.
Market Opportunity & Impact
Data Centers: The technology could radically lower cooling and electricity costs for tech giants operating massive data centers.
Artificial Intelligence: Photonic chips & chiplets will significantly accelerate AI model training and inference by eliminating the communication “bottlenecks” that occur between thousands of processors.
Broader Applications: The underlying technology has versatile use cases, opening up mass production possibilities for metalenses, 3D photonic crystals, AR/VR waveguides, and flexible gratings.
Strategic Advantage: Positioned as potentially the biggest hardware innovation since the transistor, this breakthrough has the potential to shift the balance of power in the global semiconductor industry in Europe’s favor.
Performance Snapshot
Note: We do not book non-priced rounds as markups.
Silicon Roundabout Ventures LP II
Stay tuned for updates :)
Silicon Roundabout Ventures LP
Vintage: 2023 / Investments: 21 (closed)
Key Deeptech Areas: Future of Computing, Energy, and Defence
Fund Size: £5M
GP’s Angel Portfolio
Vintage: 2020 / Investments: 17
TVPI: 2X / DPI: 0.1X
Highlight Companies: Ori.co, Aegieq.com, Kaizan.ai, Nanusens.com, rnwl.co.uk, Ecosync, Axiom.ai
Community “Virtual” Portfolio
Vintage: 2016 / Companies considered: 26
Method for selection: Silicon Roundabout community pitch winners until the beginning of the GP investment activity
Simulated TVPI: 6-6.9X
Market Update
Born European, Built Global
We wrote in January that value is migrating back to the Physical Layer. In February we called it the Execution and Sovereignty Phase. In April we showed how defence is once again catalysing large-scale deeptech adoption, just as it did for the jet engine, the transistor, and the internet.
This month, a new pattern has become impossible to ignore: European deeptech companies are going global.
Our portfolio (thankfully!) over-index on this trend, but the underlying shift is a deeper pattern that validates the rise in value and global importance for European frontier technology builders.
We don’t mean it in the vague “we have international ambitions” sense. What we see is: “we are signing with the US Army, presenting at AACR in San Diego, breaking records in Colorado, expanding fabs across the Atlantic, and entering the Chinese battery market” sense.
This is exactly what we want to see. European deeptech has always had the talent and the IP. What it has historically lacked is the confidence and the capital to scale beyond its borders early enough. We are now seeing, through the lenses of our portfolio, that the best European deeptech companies are doing precisely that. The pattern is consistent: build the breakthrough in Europe, validate it with European institutions and customers often under the pressure building resilience, then take it global before anyone else catches up.
Defence and Security: From NATO to the Pentagon
Market Context: European defence procurement continues to accelerate. But the biggest procurement budgets on earth are still in the US. For European defence startups, the transatlantic bridge is where small contracts become large ones.
Portfolio Zoom: Hippos Exoskeleton has signed a deployment agreement with the US Army’s 1st Cavalry Division, one of the most storied combat divisions in American military history. Phase 1 and 2 deployment begins this year, with a pathway toward 2,000-unit division-wide procurement in 2027. As their founder put it:
“As a 21-year-old, all I could have asked for was a place where I could freely dream the impossible, a team to build shoulder to shoulder with, and a purpose greater than myself. America gave me all three. Today, the system we built is being trusted to help protect the men and women who protect all of us.”
Origin Robotics signed an MOU with DroneShield to combine detection, tracking, and sensor fusion capabilities with Origin’s autonomous interceptor platform, BLAZE. This is about building more scalable counter-UAS systems as the threat landscape evolves. The Belgian Armed Forces also showcased BLAZE during a visit from Latvian Defence Minister Andris Spruds. When armed forces present the systems they rely on to allied ministers, it says a lot to see our portfolio company’s product among them.
Archangel Lightworks closed an oversubscribed $13.5M Series A led by Santander Asset Management, with participation from NSSIF, Oxford Science Enterprises, Blackfinch Ventures, Oxford Capital, and Lycka. CEO Richard said: “Now is the time for us to accelerate with our partners, new and old, to meet the needs that we are hearing from our customers across markets.” They were at Space Symposium in Colorado Springs this month, showcasing the TERRA-M at the UK Pavilion.
SCI Semiconductor was at CYBERUK in Glasgow, where Security Minister Dan Jarvis visited their booth to discuss the ICENI cyber-resilient MCU. PA Consulting was on the DSIT Innovation Stand evangelising the CHERI Adoption Collective. SCI also presented at HSBC Innovation Banking’s Critical Infrastructure Innovation Day in London, pitching alongside PhysicsX and Oxford Quantum Circuits. (CHERI Adoption Collective)
Quantum: Crossing Borders, Closing Gaps
Market Context: The UK’s £2B quantum announcement earlier this year set a clear signal. But quantum is a global market. The companies that win will be the ones that build ecosystems across borders, not the ones that stay in one lab in one country.
Portfolio Zoom: Nu Quantum won Highly Commended for Employer of the Year at the Cambridge Independent Science and Technology Awards. They were named on Sifted’s list of startups to watch. Carmen presented on “Entanglement Networks for Datacentre-Scale Quantum Computing” at ETSIT UPM in Madrid. The team was at Quantumatter 2026 in Barcelona, visited Nanonetworking Center in Catalunya, and sponsored QCTiP 2026 at Oxford where they presented on quantum error correction and logical gates for dynamic codes.
Paper / DealRoom/HSBC UK Innovation Update / Innovate UK World Quantum Day feature
Haiqu launched HaiquOS, the first Agentic Operating System for quantum R&D teams. After successful beta testing with industrial partners, HaiquOS is now available for enterprises and academic labs. They also published joint research with HSBC in Physical Review Research, developing a faster, more scalable method for encoding complex financial distributions into quantum circuits, validated on IBM Quantum hardware using up to all 156 qubits. CTO Mykola Maksymenko joined a Deloitte DBriefs session on strategic quantum paths.
HaiquOS press release / HSBC research press release / Paper in Physical Review Research / Deloitte DBriefs recording / Agentic Quantum OS blog
Life Sciences: From NHS Wards to Global Stages
Market Context: Clinical AI is maturing fast. The companies that will define this space are the ones presenting real-world validation data at the world’s biggest oncology conferences, not just shipping demos. AACR and ASCO are where the biopharma world makes decisions.
Portfolio Zoom: Panakeia won Medtech Company of the Year at the Cambridge Independent Science and Technology Awards. At AACR 2026 in San Diego, CEO Pahini presented landmark data on metabolic pathway activation in cancer: the PANProfiler platform determined functional metabolic hallmarks across 450 pathway-cancer models spanning 21 cancer types, directly from routine brightfield images. 87% were successfully determined, with no additional tissue, no specialist workflows, no added cost. They also presented a poster on discordance between clinical HER2 status and actual downstream effector activation in breast cancer.
AACR press release / Full event schedule (including ASCO Chicago)
Energy and Batteries: Entering the Dragon
Market Context: Dry coating is going mainstream. The Chinese battery market accounts for the vast majority of global production. If you want to be a serious player in battery technology, you eventually have to show up in Shenzhen.
Portfolio Zoom: Anaphite is heading to the 18th China International Battery Fair (CIBF 2026) in Shenzhen, 13-15 May, presenting Gen IV LFP DCP technology on the Intralink booth (15T030-1). CEO Joe Stevenson spoke to Emobility Engineering about scaling DCP technology from lab to fab. This follows their packed schedule at the International Battery Seminar in Florida and InterBattery in Seoul. When your technology gets an audience in the US, Korea, and China within the same quarter, the market is telling you something. (Emobility Engineering interview)
Infiniti Recycling attended the Battery Recycling Expo, where their read was that graphite is the next big conversation in battery recycling: “Graphite makes up around 40% of a lithium-ion battery by mass, but the wider focus is still on black mass and NMC.” Per Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, EU and UK refining capacity is set to fall short of available scrap through 2030. Infiniti is building that capacity now: New website live at infinitirecycling.com.
Infrastructure and Mobility: Records and Platforms
Market Context: For deeptech infrastructure companies, the step from “it works in a lab” to “it works in Colorado / it works in a data centre / it works in a restaurant” is the one that separates research projects from real companies.
Portfolio Zoom: Swisspod set a new hyperloop speed record: 146 kph (91 mph) at their facility in Pueblo, Colorado, concluding the AERYS1 testing phase and beginning AERYS2 development. As they put it: “AERYS1 hit speeds 97% of European rail and 99% of US rail services never reached. And we’re just getting started.” Their key insight on scalability: “Infrastructure complexity is what drives cost and limits scalability. The capsule carries the complexity, not the infrastructure. That’s how you go from a demo to something that could actually scale.”
Press release / Munro Live podcast
LP Only Section Begins (LP Performance Snapshot & Coinvestment Opportunities)