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British Patient Capital invests in Ultraleap’s £60m funding round through Future Fund: Breakthrough

Press release 17 November 2021

British Patient Capital announces its participation in Ultraleap’s Series D funding round as Ultraleap announces the close of the round at £60m. The deal is one of the first investments from Future Fund: Breakthrough, a £375m programme where British Patient Capital co-invests with private sector investors in later stage R&D-intensive UK companies.

Ultraleap’s hand tracking and mid-air haptic technologies allow users to engage with the digital world without touching surfaces, removing the need for touchscreens, controllers or keypads. The new funding will allow Ultraleap to continue to bring its machine-learning-based hand tracking software, Gemini, to more operating systems, and increase investment in tooling, to enable developers to build more applications with touch free interfaces. Ultraleap will also continue to invest in R&D in their mid-air haptics platform.

Ultraleap employs more than 150 people across the UK, Europe, North America and Asia.

Future Fund: Breakthrough was established to support UK R&D intensive companies raise the patient capital they need to fuel the later stages of their growth, and in doing so, help ensure the UK is a world leader in the industries of the future. Through our investment in Ultraleap, we are supporting the development of a UK champion in the metaverse, widely regarded as the next phase of the internet. It will be exciting to see how the company progresses. Judith Hartley CEO, British Patient Capital

The metaverse concept is not new to Ultraleap. It has always been our mission to remove boundaries between physical and digital worlds. The pandemic has accelerated the rise of the term as more people now understand the power of enhancing the physical world with digital elements.

For Ultraleap, this new era is not constrained to VR headsets. Like the internet, it is a reality we will interact with in all parts of life: at home, in the office, in cars, or out in public. Our aim with this Series D raise is to accelerate the transition to the primary interface – your hands – because there are no physical controllers, buttons or touchscreens in anyone’s vision of the metaverse.

Tom Carter Ultraleap CEO

Further Information

Notes to editors

About British Patient Capital

British Patient Capital is the trading name of British Patient Capital Limited, a wholly-owned commercial subsidiary of British Business Bank plc, the UK government’s economic development bank. It forms part of the British Business Bank’s commercial arm.

Its mission is to enable long-term investment in innovative firms led by ambitious entrepreneurs who want to build large scale businesses. Launched in June 2018, British Patient Capital has £2.5bn to invest over 10 years in venture and venture growth capital to support high growth potential innovative UK businesses in accessing the long-term financing they require to scale up. Find out more at britishpatientcapital.co.uk.

British Business Bank plc and its principal operating subsidiaries are not banking institutions and do not operate as such. Neither British Business Bank nor its principal operating subsidiaries are authorised or regulated by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) or the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). A complete legal structure chart for British Business Bank plc and its subsidiaries can be found on the British Business Bank plc website.

British Patient Capital makes commitments and invests on its own behalf and on behalf of third-party investors whose investments British Patient Capital manages.

The investment from British Patient Capital into Ultraleap Holdings Limited does not amount to any endorsement or warranty from British Patient Capital, the British Business Bank plc, or the government of the UK.

About Future Fund: Breakthrough

Future Fund: Breakthrough, managed by British Patient Capital, addresses the later stage equity finance gap faced by innovative, R&D-intensive UK companies with cutting edge technologies. These companies often require more capital and take longer to get to market than other companies.

Through the Future Fund: Breakthrough programme, British Patient Capital makes equity co-investments with private sector investors in later stage R&D-intensive UK companies operating in breakthrough technology sectors.

Companies must, inter alia, be raising a minimum total investment round size of £30m, and the maximum British Patient Capital will contribute to an investment round is 30%. British Patient Capital invests on the same terms as private sector investors.

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