The 5th Mode of Transportation is Here - Silicon Roundabout Ventures, Community Updates, Apr 25
Our Community update, with fresh fund highlights, community events, and deeptech market insights. Written by our AI. Edited by our humans.
In this edition
New Portfolio Addition: Invested in Swisspod Technologies, Swiss hyperloop leader with proprietary linear induction motor technology cutting deployment costs vs traditional rail ($20M/km vs $71M/km in Germany)
Co-Investment Opportunities: Space available for value-add co-investors in 3 portfolio companies
Upcoming Events: NATO Innovation Fund dinner (Krakow, May 12), DragonChasers retreat (Morocco, May), SuperVenture Berlin (June 2-4)
Fund Performance: Fund 1 [REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs] currently invested [REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs] across 18 companies
Portfolio Highlights: Origin Robotics secured €4.5M EDF grant; Panakeia study in Nature's Top 25 papers; Anaphite raising £10.4M Series A; Ephos crossed $1M in sales; VyperCore launched VyperLab platform achieving 5x acceleration
Market Update: AWS unveiled first quantum computing chip architecture; Novo Nordisk CRISPR therapy showed 90% reduction in liver disease; Cerebras Systems announced WSE-3 with 2.6M cores
Hiring: Multiple portfolio companies actively recruiting (Gama Space, Ephos, Nu Quantum, Origin Robotics)
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 top-tier VC Molten Ventures (LSE:GROW) and exited founders, engineers and execs: including ex googlers, amazonians and from 4 unicorns.
Portfolio updates
[REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs]* is a snapshot of the current portfolio.
*Link to a private Airtable base with a list of all portfolio companies and include the company’s name, short description, why we invested, URL, and category.
Looking to acquire 1-3% of a company at pre-seed or seed in critical infrastructure technologies across our main themes with £150-200k cheques.
➕ New Additions
We welcome Swisspod Technologies to the Silicon Roundabout family
Standing on the windswept plains of Pueblo, Colorado, as massive steel tubes rise from the dusty earth like some alien infrastructure, it's hard not to feel the gravitational pull of the future.
This sprawling 43-acre elliptical track-soon to become America's second-largest vacuum chamber-bears little resemblance to the beaches of Costanza, Romania, where Swisspod CEO Denis Tudor once hawked t-shirts to help support himself and his family while studying.
Yet both spaces represent the same relentless human drive: to create something from nothing, to build pathways where only barriers existed before.
Today we announce our investment in Swisspod Technologies: the Swiss-American hyperloop leader transforming transportation with groundbreaking propulsion and levitation technology.
Far from the speculative moonshots that have plagued this sector, Swisspod has already demonstrated technical validation that separates fantasy from imminent reality: In December 2024, Governor Jared Polis joined Denis to unveil the first 200 meters of hyperloop tubes at PuebloPlex –the initial phase of what will become the world's largest hyperloop testing facility by the end of this quarter.
This 1.6km closed-loop infrastructure spans 174,000 square meters, equivalent to 25 football fields, and represents the pragmatic engineering approach that drew us to this opportunity.
Swisspod's proprietary linear induction motor technology enables vehicles to operate with passive infrastructure, dramatically reducing deployment costs compared to both traditional rail systems and competing hyperloop designs. During recent trials at their Swiss facility, they achieved speeds that scale to 488.2 km/h in a full system-impressive technical validation for a company targeting the $37.9 billion hyperloop market expected by 2033.
What particularly impressed us is the founders journeys, particularly that of their CEO: from the scrappiness of selling t-shirts as a teenager to the obsessive and relentless dedication over many years to reinventing logistics –holding one of the world's only doctorates in hyperloop systems from EPFL.
The whole team exudes exceptionalism and hyper-competitiveness, most having contributed to winning as students Elon Musk’s hyperloop competition before leaving the academic world behind to launch Swisspod. Their complementary skills and in many cases years working together is the opposite of people who just met each other. The leaders are also obsessive and relentless about learning and improving: constantly asking the right questions and marrying great ambitions with self-awareness on what’s still left to achieve for them to build a multi-billion enduring company.
Founder DNA
Denis Tudor brings exceptional hyperloop credentials:
Led his university team to win Elon Musk's Hyperloop competition in 2019.
Authored a doctorate in Hyperloop Electrical Energy, Optimal Design, and Operation Strategies from EPFL.
Bootstrapped from challenging beginnings into becoming a hyper-competitive player in transportation technology who’s been able to get governments to hand him over millions in grants and facilities to progress his technology vision.
Cyril Dénéréaz complements this with strong engineering expertise:
Designed passive rail infrastructure reducing deployment costs compared to high-speed rail (approximately $20M/km vs $71M/km in Germany)
Developed patented Linear Induction Motors technology (PTH/CH2021/050026 & PTH/CH2021/050027)
Technology Edge
Swisspod's system addresses critical hyperloop adoption barriers:
Infrastructure Efficiency: Passive track design reduces traditional rail CAPEX. This is a real deal in making this technology a viable alternative to today’s HS rail.
Energy Performance: Significantly lower energy consumption than aviation (20-30 Wh/passenger/km at 500 km/h vs 575 Wh for aviation), while opening the door for similar journey times on the ground.
Flexible Implementation: “Retrofit” capability enables phased commercialisation: Swisspod partners can choose to implement the full vacuum hyperloop or a slower open-air alternative that’s cheaper to build than high-speed rail –and which is still at least as fast as HS rail, if not faster.
Their testing achievements are impressive:
Built Europe's first operational hyperloop infrastructure in Switzerland.
Achieved a record-breaking hyperloop journey covering 9.6 km (equivalent to 115.2 km full-scale)
Constructing a full-scale testing facility in Pueblo, Colorado spanning approximately 162,000 square meters.
Market Opportunity
Swisspod enters a hyperloop technology sector with significant growth potential. According to industry research, the market is expected to grow at:
41.9% CAGR from 2024 to 2030, reaching substantial market size by decade’s end.
From an estimated $1.83 billion in 2023 to potentially $10.98 billion by 2029.
Unlike many competitors we’ve seen in the past or researched about, Swisspod's approach includes multiple revenue streams which they are pursuing with very strong partnerships and that are getting them extremely close to both real short-term revenue and practical use case demonstrators in real life tracks:
Technology licensing (as evidenced by their MoU with Indian Government and TuTr Hyperloop) –including open-air systems that can be “retrofitted” on traditional rail infrastructure without requiring to build out the full vacuum tube systems.
Vehicle provision and leasing.
Consulting and advisory services (which is helping them penetrate markets hungry for logistic leap-frogging such as in the Middle-East).
Strategic Positioning
The transportation sector faces significant challenges:
Growing need for sustainable, efficient transportation solutions, while the cost of traditional high-speed rail electrification prevents many projects from seeing the light of the sun or from hitting completion on time, on budget, and with the originally planned benefits (e.g. the failing HS2 link in the UK).
Increasing concerns about climate change and urban congestion.
Rising demand for faster transport methods.
Swisspod's riding “inevitable” trends. For example, some of their key breakthroughs are leveraging the improvement in battery technologies that have already allowed EV cars to break record after record. This is against a traditional rail and aviation industry that has not made significant technology progress for decades. Further to this, their phased approach –beginning with freight before passenger transport and allowing for open-air rollout options– mirrors how other transformative transportation companies have successfully evolved by first targeting specific but high-growth niches they could steal from much larger incumbents and use to generate strong revenue.
We don't believe hyperloop will replace all transportation modes, but like containerisation revolutionised shipping decades ago, Swisspod's hyperloop networks could fundamentally reshape how goods move globally. With endorsement from the Swiss Government (including Innosuisse grants), partnerships with EPFL, HEIG-VD, and MxV Rail, they've built a strong foundation for growth.
They are also a rare example of a seed company that’s not let investors “push a board” onto them, but instead carefully surrounded their founders with top-tier non-execs that are actively supporting the company’s growth, such as Dr. Sotiris Pagdadis and Felix Porsche.
We look forward to supporting Denis and Cyril as they advance their vision of sustainable, high-speed transportation solutions into the future.
💸 Co-Investment Opportunities
There may be space for a couple of value-add co-investor from our LPs in Swisspod’s current round (subject to CEO approval). Two other portfolio companies are preparing for their Seed round.
Reply to this email if interested in either.
📅 Upcoming Events and Community Updates
May, Krakow: Deeptech Defence Private Dinner - ft. NATO Innovation Fund
We partnered up with the NATO Innovation Fund for a deeptech & defence focused intimate dinner mainly aimed at central and eastern LPs, family offices, and angels.
It’ll take place on the eve of the EDID25 in Krakow, Poland, on May 12th.
May, Morocco
We’ll be attending our regular yearly LP/GP retreat with our friends DragonChasers. We know we’ll see some of you there, but while it’s already sold out, if you’re not in the crew you may want to join. Truly phenomenal, absolutely non-business-and-yet-invaluable-for-business event. Here the application link: dragonchasers.org/apply
June, SuperVenture Berlin
Ralph and Francesco will both be at SuperVenture Berlin from June 2nd to 4th. We’re also planning a side event and as always are co-hosting the side-event whatsapp group for LPs and GPs going. Join the group if you’re planning to go and let us know if you fancy to help organise the side event :)
Whatsapp group: https://chat.whatsapp.com/ByfH4PTKhgB3BvBhRbWGDr
Markups
No markups this month, but… but watch this section in the upcoming editions.
Performance Snapshot
Here is each fund’s performance to date. These numbers are taken directly from Vauban’s back office and represent our ownership position based on the most recent priced rounds, including any down rounds to better represent the current market value.
Note: We do not book non-priced rounds as markups.
Silicon Roundabout Ventures LP Fund 1
Vintage: 2023
New investments since last update: 1
Total Portfolio Companies: 18
Top-of-the-funnel Pipeline: 5
Key Deeptech Areas: Future of Computing, Energy, and Defence
Status: closed
Fund Target Size: £5M (Actual Size £5.05m)
Currently invested: [REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs]
First closing: Dec 2022
TVPI: [REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs]
DPI: [REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs]
Net IRR: [REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs]
MOIC: [REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs]
Most Valuable Positions: [REDACTED: ONLY FOR LPs]
GP’s Angel Portfolio + 4 “Fund 0” SPVs
Vintage: 2020 (H2)
Investments: 15
TVPI: 1.5X
DPI: n/a
Highlight Companies: Ori.co, Aegieq.com, Kaizan.ai, Nanusens.com, rnwl.co.uk, Ecosync, Axiom.ai
Status: closed
Community “Virtual” Portfolio
Vintage: 2016
Companies considered: 26
Method for selection: Silicon Roundabout community pitch winners until the beginning of the GP investment activity
Assumed “virtual” investment: £200,000 cheque into each company; No follow-on
Simulated TVPI: 6-6.9X
Simulated Most Valuable Positions: 50-58X
Notable companies: Monzo, Zego, BlueVision Labs, Sano Genetics, Admix, Humanising Autonomy, CausaLens, iProov, Proximie, Senseon, VividQ
🚀 Portfolio Updates
Origin Robotics
Origin Robotics has secured several significant contracts and developments. The Latvian Ministry of Defence has awarded them an R&D contract to develop a Counter-Unmanned Aerial System (C-UAS). The company also received a €4.5 million grant from the European Defence Fund to develop MPortISTAR, a man-portable ISTAR drone with advanced laser targeting capabilities. They recently demonstrated their BEAK system's target engagement capabilities to the Italian Armed Forces and are actively expanding their team with multiple engineering positions open.
🔗 Learn about the MPortISTAR Project
Panakeia
Panakeia's study on deep learning-based prediction of multi-omic biomarkers was named among Nature Portfolio Communications Medicine's Top 25 papers of 2024, with over 7,000 downloads. Founder and CEO, Pahini Pandya, has been recognized with a Barclays Eagle Labs International Women's Day award for Outstanding Contribution to Entrepreneurship. The company is actively presenting at major scientific conferences, showcasing their AI-powered molecular profiling technology.
Anaphite Technologies
Anaphite was named among the top 5 South West companies to watch in 2025 by BusinessLive, the company plans to leverage its £10.4m Series A funding to commission a new manufacturing plant, scaling their dry coating technology to help decarbonize electric vehicles.
🔗 Support Anaphite's Charity Run 🔗 Read BusinessLive's Top Companies Feature
Ephos
Strengthen by the crossing of $1m in sales last year, Ephos is expanding access to their Milan chip fabrication facility (Fab-1), which has been fully operational since September 2024. The company is launching an educational outreach program starting with engineering and physics student tours on May 21st. Additionally, Ephos has announced a new internship program with three positions: Engineering Intern, Research Intern, and Communications Intern.
🔗 Register for Fab-1 Student Tour 🔗 View Internship Opportunities
VyperCore
VyperCore has launched VyperLab, their cloud-based evaluation platform showcasing their revolutionary compute accelerator technology. The platform delivers up to five-fold memory-safe acceleration of managed-language applications with zero code changes and up to 80% reduction in data center CPU power consumption. The company has also been shortlisted for the 2025 #21toWatch cohort for their innovative approaches to server applications and memory safety.
Nu Quantum
Nu Quantum Nu Quantum's team attended the National Quantum Computing Centre's (NQCC) Quantum Computing Scalability Conference 2025, where key stakeholders discussed advances and challenges in quantum computing scalability. The company's experts, including Dr. Alex Moylett, Bhargavi Jonnadula, Coral Westoby, Claire Le Gall and Jay Man, have shared detailed insights from the conference in their latest technical blog. The company is also expanding their team in Cambridge, with new positions open for Senior Optics Engineer and Project Manager roles.
🔗 Read Nu Quantum's NQCC Conference Analysis
Hippos
Hippos Exoskeleton has been featured in both the Sports Business Journal and Financial Times for their innovative AI-powered knee injury prevention technology and founders’ decision to expand to the US. Their recent motion capture studies have validated that their prototype knee airbag can effectively prevent knee valgus angles, a significant factor in ACL tears. The company was also featured on Sky News, showcasing their latest exoskeleton technology. They continue to expand their partnerships, having secured pre-orders from La Liga and NCAA teams.
🔗 Watch Sky News Interview 🔗 View Technical Study Results
SCI Semiconductor
SCI Semiconductor has been showcasing their CHERIoT-based ICENI technology at embedded world 2025 in Nuremberg. CEO Haydn Povey was featured in an EE Times interview discussing their open-source CHERIoT-Ibex secure microcontroller silicon. The company continues to advance their compiler support with improvements to Clang 17, implemented collaboratively with Google, as they work to make memory-safe computing more accessible.
🔗 Watch embedded world Interview 🔗 Read about CHERIoT Security Features
The Deeptech Lowdown (Market update)
AWS Debuts Quantum Computing Chip Architecture
Amazon Web Services announced Ocelot, their first quantum computing chip designed to demonstrate a scalable and hardware-efficient architecture. While the chip currently has limited computational capability, it represents a proof-of-principle demonstration aimed at building quantum systems capable of delivering on promised applications like fast and accurate simulations of battery materials. Oskar Painter, head of quantum hardware at AWS, emphasizes that this architecture lays the groundwork for larger quantum computers that can solve meaningful, industrial-scale problems in the coming years.
Read more at MIT Technology Review
Novo Nordisk's CRISPR Gene Therapy Shows 90% Reduction in Liver Disease
Novo Nordisk announced breakthrough results from Phase II trials of their CRISPR-based gene therapy targeting hereditary transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis (hATTR). The treatment showed a 90% reduction in disease progression in patients, significantly outperforming existing therapies. Unlike earlier gene therapies requiring multiple administrations, this one-time treatment uses a novel CRISPR variant with enhanced specificity and reduced off-target effects. If approved, it could treat an estimated 50,000 patients globally who currently have limited treatment options.
Cerebras Systems Unveils WSE-3: World's Largest AI Processor Chip
AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems unveiled their third-generation Wafer Scale Engine (WSE-3), featuring a massive 2.6 million cores and 20.8 petabytes per second of memory bandwidth. This single chip contains more transistors than all of Nvidia's H100s combined and can train large language models 100x faster than GPU clusters. The WSE-3 will power a new class of AI supercomputers capable of training models with over 1 trillion parameters. Major cloud providers including Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud have already placed pre-orders with delivery starting Q4 2025.
Asks & Portfolio Roles 🙏
Gama Space are hiring for multiple positions
GP Personal Update
When I was a little kid I used to love model trains.
But, while fun, they never reached the speeds of the one I took my little one to see at Swisspod’s R&D centre in Lausanne!
I’m still trying to find the balance (and time!) to be a dad, husband… and soloVC.
But taking my little ones to labs during DD trips and seeing her marvel at new physics and engineering breakthroughs helps marrying the two.
(And daddy got to see Freddie Mercury’s statue and recording studios in nearby Montreux, which was an even greater achievement in slotting together work commitments and family time 🎧)
Til next time!
Francesco