Fund profile / United Kingdom

Creator Fund PhD Fund I

Geography: United Kingdom
Stage: Pre-Seed
Fund size: $56M
Focus: AI/ML, Biotech and Deep Tech
Signals: Published

N°01 / About

About Creator Fund PhD Fund I

UK's Creator Fund launched a pan-European fund to back university spinouts founded by PhDs. Invests up to $750k at pre-seed/seed in AI, deep tech and life-science startups.

N°02 / Thesis

Investment Focus

Location / RegionUnited Kingdom

Funding StagePre-Seed

Industry Focus

AI/ML

Biotech

Deep Tech

Investor Signals Profile

active

Sweet Spot

PhD founder or academic spinout in deep tech, pan-European, pre-seed

deep-tech

academic-spinouts

PhD-founders

pan-european

pre-seed

Bullish Signals

$41M first close with institutional LPs like EIFO and Equation Capitalblog

Portfolio attracted over $250M follow-on funding, incl. ElevenLabsblog

$56M final close confirmed Jan 2025 — fund fully raisedtwitter

Loci portfolio exit to Epic Games confirmedtwitter

Helical AI portfolio raised $10M seed roundtwitter

30 campuses, 10 countries — scout network expanding across Europetwitter

Airspeed portfolio raised $20M Series A from GoogleDeepMind talenttwitter

200+ students trained through venture programme across 10 countriestwitter

Ovo Labs (FemTech) launched from Max Planck Institute researchtwitter

Quant Diamonds portfolio raised €91M semiconductor inspection roundtwitter

Celeris-1 portfolio approaching GPT-5 level intelligence with 15x speedtwitter

Latent Worlds AI enables robots to learn in wild, Delft spinouttwitter

Next gen investors trained via PhD venture programme at top EU fundstwitter

Allfocaloptics nanophotonic lens tech revolutionizes screen displaytwitter

Contrarian Signals

Only invests in deep tech — no classic software startupsblog

Check sizes under $1M — no capital for later stagesblog

Access primarily via uni scout network — cold outreach harderblog

Unrelated 'Creator Fund' LLC causes brand confusion with creator economy fundlinkedin

LinkedIn post confirms competing 'Creator Fund' focus on brand creatorslinkedin

Brand confusion worsens: competing Creator Fund LLC/Bacon TV partnershiplinkedin

Founder Do's

Be a PhD researcher or academic spinout founder

Come from one of the 30 partner university campuses across 10 countries

Build in AI, Biotech, Robotics, Photonics, FemTech, or Advanced Materials

Show clear potential for global scaling from the lab

Use the scout network at your university as first contact

Founder Don'ts

No pure software/SaaS without deep-tech component

Don't expect fund to focus only on London or Berlin

Don't come too late — fund invests before traditional venture radar

30 signals on Creator Fund PhD Fund I

14 bullish · 6 contrarian · 5 pitch do's · 3 don'ts · 2 GP profiles, each with its source. From €9/month, cancel anytime.

See a signal free View Plans Browse all Signal Profiles →

Facts

Fund Overview

Fund Size$56M

Saves0

Website

People

Key People

Jason Mayden

Creator Fund TeamGeneral Partner

Jamie MacfarlanePartner

Backers

Known LPs

EIFO (Export and Investment Fund of Denmark)Sovereign wealth fund

Equation CapitalFund-of-Funds

N°04 / See also

Related Funds

Outlier Grove Fund I

Fund size$20M

Location: United Kingdom
Stage: Seed
Focus: Saas
Manager: Candice Du Fretay

Seed

Saas

ERV Fund II

Fund size$13.5M

Location: United Kingdom
Stage: Series A
Focus

Series A

2150 Fund II

Fund size$197M

Location: United Kingdom
Stage: Series A
Focus: Enterprise Software
Manager: Christian Hernandez, Jacob Bro

Series A

Enterprise Software