£22.5m Fund Launched to Turn North East University Research Into Companies
The North East Spinout Inspire Fund aims to back at least 30 spinouts in five years and has already invested in NunaBio, H2CHP and Gnosis Health.
- £10m comes from the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority and £12.5m from five universities.
- Northstar Ventures will manage the fund.
- Its first three investments total more than £1m.
The North East’s five universities have joined forces with the North East Mayoral Strategic Authority to launch a £22.5m fund that will turn academic research into high-growth businesses.
The North East Spinout Inspire Fund is backed by £10m from the Mayoral Strategic Authority and a combined £12.5m from Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside universities. It aims to support at least 30 spinout firms in its first five years.
Filling an early-stage gap
The fund will focus on early-stage spinouts, where risk is higher and private investment is often harder to secure. It will be managed by Northstar Ventures, which has worked with the region’s university spinouts for more than 20 years.
It forms part of the Mayoral Strategic Authority’s £100m regional investment framework, administered by The North East Fund, alongside the North East Accelerate and North East Elevate funds.
The first investments
The fund began investing in March and has backed three businesses with more than £1m in total. NunaBio, a 2021 Newcastle University spinout developing DNA synthesis technology, has received £500,000.
H2CHP, which builds on research led by Professor Tony Roskilly, has secured £300,000 to develop distributed electric generators for data centres, ports and microgrids. Gnosis Health, a spinout of the universities of Newcastle and Plymouth, has received £250,000 to develop MAXine, an AI healthcare assistant for managing Parkinson’s disease.
