Winners
2023
The total amount raised to date by #21toWatch alumni has reached more than £710 million
In 2024, we highlighted that the Top 21 had collectively raised £110 million in a single year. In 2025, that number surged by 42%, with alumni raising over £183 million – bringing the total amount raised to date to more than £710 million (excluding CMR Surgical private equity, and undisclosed deals).
Full #21toWatch List
| Name | Synopsis | People/Company/Thing | Longlist | Shortlist | Top21 |
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| Ama Frimpong has been named the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) Young Woman Engineer of the Year. She manages the 52 North Health engineering teams in the development of NeutroCheck - a low-cost, portable device that helps identify people living with cancer who are at risk of a life-threatening medical emergency. |
People | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
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| The BCN2201 is a novel low-cost chip that can use nearby smartphones to get data securely to cloud backends. This allows businesses to extract data from real-world products and environments to allow them to make better decisions, whether to drive product decisions and growth or achieve efficiencies and net-zero goals. |
Thing | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| People | ✓ | ||||
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| With an extensive research background in renewables and power electronics, Borong is a self-motivated researcher proficient in modelling and testing for power electronic devices/components/converters and also has experience in data processing and machine learning. |
People | ✓ | ✓ | ||
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| Broken String Biosciences is a genomics tools company leveraging a state-of-the-art platform for assessing off-target gene editing events in the genome. In partnership with leaders in the field, our mission is to bring gene editing therapies safely to all who need it. |
Company | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Thing | ✓ | ||||
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| Cambridge Future Tech is a uniquely technology-first venture builder, working closely with top-tier universities for positive global impact. |
Company | ✓ | |||
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| Cambridge Sensoriis have developed a radar system to help unleash the drone revolution. Our lightweight, highly sensitive, all weather, easy to install technology maximises automation and safety, and minimises costs. |
Thing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| We are relaunching plastics for a smart and sustainable future. Our natural biopolymers have created a new class of sustainable barrier plastics to initially replace metal and chlorinated plastic in multilayer packaging and ultimately fully replace plastics for guilt free packaging. |
Company | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
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| CardiaTec is a University of Cambridge spin-out pioneering cardiovascular drug discovery with its AI-powered multi-omics drug target discovery platform. |
Company | ✓ | ✓ | ||
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| Coco is a neuroscientist and co-founder of Fathom Cognition. Her goal is to create new cognitive markers that can help detect Alzheimer's disease earlier, years before dementia onset. |
People | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Colleen is the founder and CEO of luucid, which is protecting individuals against their drinks being spiked. The company is currently developing its first product: luucid sip, a drug-detecting straw that alerts you if your drink is spiked with ketamine or GHB. |
People | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Company | ✓ | ||||
| Thing | ✓ | ||||
| Daniel pioneered technologies for genetic code reprogramming at the MRC-LMB and is now Head of R&D at Constructive Bio, using synthetic biology to expand the building block repertoire of cells. |
People | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Daniel is making biological age control a reality with the team at Shift Bioscience, promising a future where you routinely reset to prime-of-life and step back from the precipice of age-linked diseases. |
People | ✓ | ✓ | ||
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| Dr Hannah Sore is the founder and CEO of PharmEnable, a company combining AI and medicinal chemistry expertise to develop the next generation of complex and 3D small molecule drugs. |
People | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Dr Zoe Tolkien, director of research at Advanced Furnace Technology Ltd in Cambridge, has secured £50,000 plus a mentoring and support package after being named an Innovate UK Women in Innovation award winner. |
People | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Thing | ✓ | ||||
| Elena is a disabled neuroscientist and CEO of Neuro XR. A part of “Top 100 female entrepreneurs to watch”, she works on brining the power of the human mind to Virtual Reality. |
People | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
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| Company | ✓ | ||||
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| Helio Display Materials, a joint spin-out venture from the universities of Cambridge and Oxford, which is commercialising technology for brighter and more colourful displays that use significantly less energy. |
Company | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| HutanBio makes carbon-negative biofuel for shipping and transportation, utilising desert regions to increase global capacity for photosynthesis and achieve atmospheric carbon drawdown. The world’s best path to decarbonising long-distance transport. |
Company | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
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| Earlier this year InferSens raised $1million to accelerate the core capability development of its next generation tinyML technology. The game changing InferSens technology enables deep learning (a performance-improving subset of machine learning) to be executed “on board” a device in the field using only battery power. Eco-efficient and cost-saving, it is projected to deliver immediate results and has multiple use cases across the built environment and beyond. |
Thing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
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| A revolutionary EV charger designed specifically for the on-street environment, enabling the >30% of UK households that do not have off-street parking to benefit from affordable, convenient and reliable charging. |
Thing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Company | ✓ | ||||
| People | ✓ | ||||
| The youngest ever winner of the Business Weekly Awards Cambridge Judge Business School’s Woman Entrepreneur accolade. Lucy is an experienced founder with a demonstrated history of working in the health wellness and fitness industry. |
People | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Medwise.ai is the Google for medical professionals and healthcare organisations. Their mission is to empower every healthcare professional to do their best work and provide better care for their patients. |
Thing | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| People | ✓ | ||||
| Mimicrete is an advanced materials science startup, founded in 2021, developing novel self-healing concrete. The technology was developed via a doctorate within the University of Cambridge’s Geotechnical and Environmental Research Group in the Department of Engineering. |
Company | ✓ | ✓ | ||
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| Monument Therapeutics is bringing a precision medicine approach to neuroscience drug development, using proprietary digital biomarkers to successfully develop new drugs for schizophrenia and neuroinflammatory conditions. |
Company | ✓ | ✓ | ||
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| As CEO of healthtech startup Sano Genetics, Dr Patrick Short is improving the outlook for people living with rare and chronic genetic diseases. |
People | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| One EV charge card, one app, and one fleet management dashboard combined with access to 25,000+ charge points in the UK. |
Thing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| People | ✓ | ||||
| SomaServe are delivering the next generation of genetic medicines. Our PolyNaut polymer nanoparticle platform enables intracellular, targeted delivery of new genetic therapeutics, including siRNA and mRNA, to the brain and other hard to reach tissues and cell types. |
Thing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| Qkine is a UK manufacturer driving innovation in growth factor proteins, essential reagents used in transformative technologies such as stem-cell disease models, organoids, cell therapy, bioinks and cultivated meat. |
Company | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
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| RippleXn helps brands ensure they are complying with advertising regulations on social video media in real-time and at a large scale. |
Thing | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Roadfill Ltd uses recycled plastic products to repair and re-lay roads in an environmentally friendly way. |
Company | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
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| A postdoctoral roboticist at the University of Cambridge Bio-Inspired Robotic Laboratory, creating innovative robotics for the medical, healthcare and industrial sectors, and currently commercialising the automation of the biopsy process in collaboration with NHS and CUH. |
People | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Sam contributes to interdisciplinary research with her experience in artificial intelligence, collaborating across multiple disciplines to solve real world problems to reach sustainable development goals. She contributes to her department by serving as the postdoctoral theme lead for intelligent systems in supporting applications of AI in engineering |
People | ✓ | |||
| Sanome is building a prevention-focused healthcare solution to detect health risks earlier. By integrating and analysing existing data, it generates actionable clinical insights for clinicians. The platform is developed within a regulated Software-as-a-Medical Device (SaMD) framework. |
Company | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Saussan is a published academic and founder of Kalamna, a social enterprise revolutionising the way Arabic is taught across the UK and globally through instruction, training and curriculum and material development |
People | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| SemaCyte® cell assaying microcarriers are flat, ultra-miniaturised, steerable wells designed to support small colonies of adherent cells. The technology enables the movement and control of adherent cells in liquid, accelerating, miniaturising, and multiplexing cell assays. This approach delivers up to 10× gains in drug screening applications, including molecular profiling, cell panel screening, and patient-derived cell studies. |
Thing | ✓ | ✓ | ||
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| Spirea Limited, which was created to advance a new generation of antibody drug conjugate (ADC) therapeutics, secured £2.4m funding in June. Spirea will use the funds to initiate its pipeline of superior and differentiated ADCs in the treatment of solid tumours where there is a high unmet need. |
Company | ✓ | ✓ | ||
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| Sun Bear Bioworks is reimagining farming with precision fermentation to produce sustainable and healthier everyday ingredients. They are developing a deforestation-free, drop-in palm oil substitute, to change how we produce our food and fuels. |
Company | ✓ | ✓ | ||
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| University of Cambridge spin-out, Tenyks, started 2022 with a $3.4m seed round. The startup’s platform helps machine learning engineers working with computer vision data build more reliable software, faster. Like a ‘doctor for AI’, it helps developers understand what’s wrong with their algorithms, resolve issues, remove bias, boost model performance and enhance data quality. |
Thing | ✓ | ✓ | ||
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| Viridian Seeds is an agricultural biotechnology company commercializing climate smart sustainable protein crops with novel traits, using its proprietary high-throughput non-GM technology, TILLING by sequencing for food and nutritional security. |
Company | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| Tim Chisholm |
People | ✓ | |||
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| Versed AI automatically uses cutting edge AI technology to automatically map companies’ supply chains to tier n, helping them to monitor and mitigate risk. |
Company | ✓ | ✓ | ||
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| VIOLET AI algorithms gather and interpret as much data in one hour as the baseline methods can in a hundred. For quality, assurance and skill capture it is now a choice: go slow and blind, or get fast and interactive. |
Thing | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| For insulation and heating upgrades in housing, Warmscore uses environmental data and powerful software to measure housing and heating performance, so that we can decarbonize housing without sacrificing comfort. |
Thing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
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| Wave Photonics is breaking into the quantum economy with chips based on fibre-optic designs. |
Thing | ✓ | ✓ | ||
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