James Wise, the fund’s chairman, invoked a pop culture reference to bat away fears of government sluggishness — and announced its first deals.
The chairman of the UK government’s new £500 million venture fund backing domestic AI startups channeled his inner Craig David last night to signal the speed of its dealmaking, pushing back against criticism that it might prove slow and bureaucratic.
Referencing lyrics from a David hit, James Wise said: “Just last week we met a company that told us they were doing a fundraising round. On Monday, we met the founders. On Tuesday, we did due diligence. On Wednesday, we made a decision. On Thursday, we took them out to celebrate — moving at a speed that Craig David would blush at.”
Wise was speaking at the launch event for Sovereign AI, held at Wayve’s London headquarters.
The event drew a packed room. Wise, a partner at London-based venture firm Balderton Capital, was joined on stage by AI Minister Kanishka Narayan, Technology Secretary Liz Kendall, Wayve CEO and co-founder Alex Kendall, and Meryem Arik, CEO and co-founder of AI startup Doubleword.
The launch coincided with the announcement of the fund’s first deals. The £500 million vehicle is aimed at keeping Britain’s most promising AI startups on home soil as they scale globally.
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“We are venture investors with a mandate to back the AI companies in Britain we believe are national priorities — and on commercial terms,” Wise said.
The fund is writing checks of between £5 million and £10 million, leading and follow-on rounds, with a focus on Seed- and Series A-stage companies. Its investment scope ranges from AI model development and drug discovery to agentic AI applications.
Portfolio companies will also receive access to UK government-funded supercomputers, public procurement opportunities and free visas for international hires.
Wise is leading Sovereign AI alongside Joséphine Kant, a venture capitalist who previously worked at Y Combinator.
Addressing criticism over check size at a time when US AI firms are raising billions, Wise argued that the fund’s investments could still prove decisive. “When the time comes for founders we work with to raise those larger rounds, we will be able to introduce them to the best investors in the world,” he said. “And they will have a hotline to the British Business Bank, which we are already working with, hand in glove.”
Wise said a core investment criterion was that portfolio companies “must have the potential to be a huge commercial success.”
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Technology Secretary Kendall struck a broader tone. “I believe sovereign AI is going to be one of the most important things this government does to build a better future for our country,” she said, adding that AI was “beyond negotiable for our national security.”
The fund’s first equity investment is in AI infrastructure startup Callosum, for an undisclosed sum. It has also awarded supercomputer compute time to Prima Mente, Cosine, Cursive, Doubleword, Twig Bio and Odyssey to train their AI models. In return, the fund will retain the right of first refusal on future investment in several of those startups.
