The Founders Factory Venture Studio is building a new generation of healthcare companies in partnership with one of the world's leading industrial healthcare groups. We're looking for founders to build with us. Ageing populations, rising rates of chronic disease, workforce shortages and mounting cost pressures are all accelerating the shift towards care delivered beyond traditional clinical settings. Remote health monitoring sits at the centre of that transition. The clinical end of this market alone is expected to grow from ~$30bn today to more than $200bn by 2035. But collecting data is only part of the challenge. The companies that will define this space won't just generate insights; they'll be integrated into care pathways, helping clinicians and caregivers make better decisions and intervene earlier. We've spent months exploring where the largest value pools sit, what is technically possible versus what meaningfully influences clinical outcomes, and where the toughest problems remain unsolved. We're now building and backing founders working in: → Clinical remote patient monitoring → Hospital at home → Elder care tech → At-home diagnostics → Remote monitoring infrastructure If you're building in one of these areas, or thinking about it, we want to hear from you. Learn more and apply to build with us below.   foundersfactory.com/request-… #healthtech #medtech #venturebuilding

What does it mean to build a healthtech within one of the leading healthcare providers in the US? We spoke to the Northwestern Medicine Healthcare accelerator cohort on the clinical validation and commercialisation avenues that emerged during their residency week in Chicago. “We came with hypotheses about how lab systems work and have actually learned a lot about data integration and validation testing.” Founders spent the residency working through a packed schedule of 1:1s and more than 20 meetings across four days, spanning radiology, cardiology, surgery, women's health, neurology, orthopaedics , primary care and rehab services. The week culminated in a showcase at MATTER, Chicago's healthcare innovation hub, where each founder pitched to a room of 60+ attendees, including Northwestern Medicine leadership, the UK Government Board of Trade, Lurie Children's, Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, Hyde Park Ventures and other investors and health systems. #HealthTech #Chicago #Accelerator #Residency

Nature and industry are increasingly a two-way street. If it takes a balanced water table to build a mine, it requires regenerative mining practices to ensure the land can provide for local ecosystems. If a concrete port needs to be built for shipping, why shouldn’t it also provide support to marine life, which carries knock-on benefits to fishing and farming communities? It’s this synergy that our nature tech accelerator, with the Government of Western Australia, is building towards. We’ve seen this in: ➡️ Tidal Moon’s community ownership model ➡️ Pyri’s forest fire assessment ➡️ North Australian SeaCulture’s mine rehabilitation work ➡️ Ocean Hex coastal restoration ➡️ SnailCam reducing chemical reliance on crop yields Since the programme’s launch portfolio have completed pilots with tier 1 corporates, raised over $10M AUD, and are set to expand from 30 investments with a cohort announcement coming soon. Swipe through the carousel to see more 👉 #Mining #Agriculture #Shipping #Infrastructure #Accelerator #Nature #Tech #Restoration

On October 13th the Northwestern Medicine Healthcare Accelerator concludes with a demo day in London. If you’re investing in healthcare and looking to see what’s next, this is the final chance to meet the cohort building in this space. There will be: 📣 A panel discussion on commercialising healthtech across US + European health systems 🎤 6 pitches from founders working across AI diagnostics, surgical intelligence, reproductive health, neuro-rehabilitation and clinical workflow automation 🥂 Networking with founders, accelerator partners and fellow investors The cohort spans medical imaging AI, novel biomarker discovery, real-time surgical video analysis, wearable medical devices and healthcare operations software, each validated with leading hospitals on both sides of the Atlantic. This is for pre-seed, seed, and Series A investors active in healthtech, medtech, and AI-enabled healthcare. Register your interest here: luma.com/y3ozwtt4 #Healthcare #Accelerator #fundraising #HealthInvestor #HealthTech #MedTech

🇩🇪 Berlin: Join us for an evening on the future of health innovation On October 1st, Founders Factory is bringing our team to Berlin for an evening with portfolio and future founders and operators from across the Berlin ecosystem. We're looking for the next wave of health tech founders ready to: 🚀 Access funding to take you from idea to MVP 🤝 Build with a dedicated studio team working alongside you 🔗 Gain direct access to corporate partners for pilots, customers and follow-on investment Strictly no panels or presentations, just an opportunity to meet others in the space and walk away with a few new connections. Join and learn how the studio works, meet the community, and find out what it actually takes to build your company. Who's it for: Technical founders, commercial operators, clinicians and anyone seriously thinking about starting a company in and around healthcare. The details: 📅 October 1, 2026 📍 WeWork Berlin, Rosenthaler Str. 44 🕡 6:30 PM Places are limited to keep the event intimate, register your interest here: luma.com/0r4e4skm

Last month our Northwestern Medicine accelerator cohort: Nucleo Research, Aykua, Uncovr.ai, Genie Fertility, Myonerv and Matricis.AI, travelled to Chicago for a residency week at the NM Ventures & Innovation Office. Marking the midway point in the programme, the week opened with a welcome lunch alongside the NM Ventures exec team. Founders went on to a packed schedule of 1:1s with more than 20 meetings across four days, spanning radiology, cardiology, surgery, women's health, neurology, orthopedics, primary care and rehab services. From pitching new AI implementations to Epic integration deep-dives with lead IS architects, providing hands-on validation. A highlight of the week was the cohort showcase at MATTER, Chicago's healthcare innovation hub, where each founder pitched to a room of 60+ attendees, including Northwestern Medicine leadership, the UK Government Board of Trade, Lurie Children's, Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, Hyde Park Ventures and other investors and health systems. Beyond the boardroom, the week built real connections — from a Chicago River architecture boat tour to a workshop on value analysis with NM's innovation team. Huge thanks to Hannah Koczka, Dr. Derman and the entire Northwestern Medicine Ventures & Innovation team for hosting, and to our founders for showing up ready to learn and build. #HealthTech #Chicago #Accelerator #Residency

Founders Factory has backed Mama Insurance, Italy's first AI-native insurance platform, in a new round led by Fastweb+Vodafone alongside Vento. Mama Insurance is tackling one of Europe's most underinsured markets. More than 50% of Italian households have no home insurance despite rising exposure to fire, flooding and theft. The platform, underwritten by Chubb, offers instant quotes, modular cover written in plain Italian, and an end-to-end purchase completed entirely online in under two minutes, distributed through a direct digital platform, agents and brokers, and embedded partnerships with leading consumer brands. The raise brings Mama Insurance's total funding to more than €2 million across equity, non-dilutive public funding and bank debt reflecting their progress past into the execution stage. With this capital, Mama Insurance will expand beyond home insurance into new personal lines and SME products, a segment where Italy's protection gap is just as structural. Congratulations to CEO Leonida Fini Zarri and the entire Mama Insurance team on this milestone. Read more about the investment in Tech.Eu: tech.eu/2026/09/14/fastwebvo… #Insurtech #AI #VentureCapital #Italy

Xapien has raised $56M to make dynamic due diligence the new global standard by which all organisations manage all third-party risk. Led by Spectrum Equity, with participation from existing investor YFM Equity Partner, the investment will fund Xapien's U.S. expansion, where the company already generates 50% of its revenue, growing the Boston office and relocating the CEO and other leaders there. Xapien's AI-native platform reads the open web, corporate records, sanctions lists and media in any language, resolving against thousands of similarly-named people and entities, to deliver human-grade due diligence, in minutes rather than days. Founders Factory has backed Xapien since 2019 with Aviva. In the years since, co-founders Dan Secretan and Shaun O'Mahony have built one of the UK's most credible vertical AI businesses. Xapien now serves 350 clients and partners across 15 countries, including Greenberg Traurig, ABB, Dow Jones Risk & Compliance and KPMG, and has grown ARR more than 350% over the past 24 months. This round positions Xapien for its next phase: dynamic due diligence. Currently in beta, Xapien Live gives companies a persistent view of counterparty risk, moving organisations from static, periodic checks to continuous risk surveillance and tracking material changes in risk rather than just news mentions. Congratulations to Chris, Dan, Shaun and the entire Xapien team on this raise, and look forward to their next chapter. To celebrate the moment we look back on our feature with Dan's full account of building Xapien in 2025: foundersfactory.com/articles… Read more about the raise in Deelroom: app.dealroom.co/news/note/xa… #Fundraising #VentureCapital #AI #DueDiligence

We're excited to announce our investment with Mediobanca in finQbit, a quantum computing platform that delivers 10–300x faster and more precise financial risk calculations without requiring quant analysts to understand quantum physics. With roughly $5 trillion of OTC derivatives traded daily, banks are relying on classical-computing approximations that introduce model risk — while Basel IV and FRTB demand ever more granular, higher-frequency risk calculations from infrastructure that's already at its limit. finQbit's hardware-agnostic platform runs on classical infrastructure today, benchmarking across IBM, Rigetti, IonQ and IQM, with quantum processing units as the upgrade path as hardware matures — meaning revenue doesn't wait on the hardware roadmap. Through this partnership, Mediobanca brings deep institutional banking expertise and commercial access across European markets, while Founders Factory provides London-based access to investors, corporates and a proven track record scaling fintech. Congratulations to Tomasz Ćwik and the team. Read more in Forbes: forbes.pl/biznes/kwantowa-re… #Fintech #QuantumComputing #VentureCapital

Emerald Nuclear, a Blue Action Accelerator alumni, has been featured for its work bringing micro-reactor technology to Arctic shipping and remote coastal power. Long-haul cargo routes like the Northwest Passage are constrained by fuel but Emerald's shipping-container-sized nuclear micro-reactor (the Emerald GEM, 5MW) that could keep a vessel running for years without refuelling, cutting both emissions and logistical overhead. The same technology could also serve remote communities. Emerald is working with the Nome Joint Utility System in Alaska on a feasibility study, exploring a leasing model that would let towns swap in a floating power plant without taking on the burden of owning a nuclear facility — while spent fuel never has to stay onsite. It's early-stage but with a research reactor partnership with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and Norwegian shipping company Island Offshore signed on as first commercial customer, Emerald is moving from concept toward real-world deployment. Congratulations on the progress, CEO Wesley Deason and the rest of the team. Read the full article in Knom: knom.org/2026/09/02/this-com… #OceanTech #Nuclear #ClimateTech #Shipping #BlueEconomy

North Australian SeaCulture has won Croc Pitch 2026, Northern Australia’s premier pitching competition. Hosted by the Darwin Innovation Hub and backed by Paspalis Capital, the Northern Territory Government, Business Enterprise Centre NT and Charles Darwin University, it connects ambitious founders with investors and industry leaders to win up to $1 million in venture capital. This year's finalists were drawn from a pool of applicants spanning Australia and overseas, including entries from Pakistan, India, Singapore and Hong Kong. North Australian SeaCulture, founded by Alison Duguid and an alum of Founders Factory's Nature Tech Accelerator with the Government of Western Australia, was named the winner. Growing and processing native tropical seaweed into soil products, NASC help mine sites meet rehabilitation targets current methods cannot achieve. Lab trials show up to 75% higher seed germination against a 50% regulatory benchmark, with paid trials already underway with a major miner. Judges described this year's field as the closest call in the competition's history. NASC's win reflects the strength of the team and the traction built since completing our accelerator programme. Congratulations Alison and the team on the achievement. #CrocPitch2026 #NatureTech #Seaweed #ClimateInnovation

Today we're kicking off the Future Industries Partnership Commercialisation Bootcamp. The six-week commercialisation intensive for the FIP cohort is built to tackle moving from pilot to scale, often the hardest transition in industrial climate tech. The format is three-sided: 🔹 Investor side: sharpening the narrative, numbers and readiness that gets deep tech funded in markets where capital is cautious and cycles are long. 🔹 Customer side: pressure-testing commercial models against what heavy industry buys. 🔹 Showcase: closing the programme by putting founders directly in front of the investors and corporates who can move them forward. We're looking forward to working with founders across materials, critical minerals, carbon management, green hydrogen, bio-fuels and scope 3 supply chain intelligence. Meet the cohort taking part below. The Future Industries Partnership is a philanthropic programme supported by HSBC and delivered by Founders Factory and Third Derivative, RMI's global climate tech accelerator, supporting startups scaling industrial climate solutions across Southeast Asia, India and the Middle East. Read more about the programme on the RMI page: rmi.org/resources/scaling-th… #Accelerator #Decarbonisation #BuiltEnvironment #CriticalMinerals

Geothermal has long been considered a perfect clean energy solution with low to no emissions, 24/7 power and relatively small plots of land. The perception that’s held geothermal back is that you need high, volcanic heat from the ground to generate power for grids, factories and homes. Mongkhol Jandakaew, founder of GeoAgni explains why these perceptions around geothermal power are incorrect. After two decades drilling high-pressure, high-temperature oil and gas wells across Southeast Asia, Mongkhol kept discovering that heat was pulled out of the ground and thrown away, because it wasn't hot enough. In our latest feature, Mongkhol explains GeoAgni’s closed-loop well system paired with an in-house graphene nanofluid that boosts heat transfer by up to 300%, designed to make that ‘not hot enough’ resource commercially viable at scale. Read the full story: foundersfactory.com/articles… GeoAgni are taking part in the Future Industries Partnership bootcamp, a philanthropic programme supported by HSBC and delivered by Founders Factory and Third Derivative, RMI's global climate tech accelerator, to scale industrial climate solutions across Southeast Asia, India and the Middle East. #CleanEnergy #Geothermal #HardTech #ClimateTech

Scan.com has closed $220 million in combined equity and debt financing, after doubling revenue over the past year to surpass a $165 million annualised run rate. The $90M equity round was led by Noteus Partners, with participation from Aviva, Concord Health Partners, YZR Capital, Oxford Capital and others, alongside $130M in debt facilities from VerisFi Capital and Atempo Growth. Valued at around $100 billion, the US medical imaging market is one the largest segments of American healthcare yet there's still no national infrastructure connecting patients to the right scanner at the right time. Patients wait weeks for an MRI that could cost a few hundred dollars at one center and several thousand a few miles away, while machines nearby sit idle. AI sits at the core of the platform, matching referrals to availability, price and subspecialty, automating scheduling and paperwork, and routing every report to the right subspecialist, while care guides keep the human touch throughout. Patients typically get results back within 48 hours. Backed early by Founders Factory and Aviva, Scan.com is already the UK's largest medical imaging network. The business has expanded rapidly across the US since 2023 and has now supported over 900,000 patients globally. This new funding will fuel further network expansion and deeper investment in the API and agentic AI infrastructure. Congratulations to Charlie Bullock and the whole Scan.com team on this milestone. Read more in The Times: thetimes.com/business/compan… #HealthTech #DigitalHealth #MedicalImaging

Startup Bulletin #65 Deep-tech startups have crossed the threshold from academic spinout to institutional asset class, yet they remain the hardest technologies to build. No where is that more evident than in healthcare with longer timelines and more unforgiving de-risking requirements than most venture-backed categories tolerate. With insights from the founders of Fluent, Origin and Matricis.ai we look at what it takes to build frontier technology in healthcare. Also in this month's bulletin: - Jack Kennedy on the $3 trillion problem with red mud - Tembo and Aviva announce partnership extension - Hades’ new mining licence - Apply for Blue Earth 100 with up to $10 million in investment available - Ocean Hex finalists in Western Australia Innovators of the Year award - Immoly AI spin out of the Vonovia venture studio - Job openings 🗞️ Read the Startup Bulletin: foundersfactory.substack.com… #VentureBuilding #StartupBulletin

Clinical coding can become an enormous administrative burden, particularly for surgeons where documenting activity consumes time that could be spent in theatre or in patient consultation. Ines Iraki, co-founder and CEO of Uncovr, encountered this admin hurdle when she looked at how surgery generates data. The documentation that determined whether a hospital was paid and whether a patient's next clinician understood what had happened in the operating room was being reconstructed from memory, often hours later. ➡️ Uncovr is building the world's video-understanding foundation model for surgery. The system watches live surgical video and turns it into structured, actionable clinical data in real-time. No reconstruction from memory or resulting documentation backlog and no revenue left on the table because the coding was incomplete. ➡️ Through the Northwestern Medicine and Founders Factory Healthcare Accelerator, Uncovr is gaining direct access to one of the largest and most operationally complex hospital systems in the United States. Understanding how a major health system procures and integrates a technology like Uncovr's, and proving that the platform delivers accurate codes and complete documentation is the commercial proof point that accelerates everything that comes next. ➡️ A typical hospital could add up to $5 million in annual revenue by preventing coding denials. Multiplied across the thousands of health systems and ambulatory surgery centres operating in the US, the addressable opportunity is enormous. Learn more at uncovr.ai #AI #HealthTech #ClinicalCoding #MedTech

The founder archetype cheat-sheet… Over the last few weeks we have shared what we look for in a founder. Three qualities that create lasting, successful companies. Here they are on one slide for you. ➡ 01 Founder-market fit The unfair advantage. Do you have a genuine right to win this specific market? We look for domain expertise that goes deep, a network that opens doors and years inside the industry, or system you are trying to serve. Passion for the problem, customer-obsessed and will break down doors a more rational person would walk away from. ➡ 02 Magnetism The best founders sell a vision before there is much to see. We look for storytelling that makes the future feel inevitable. Clarity of communication that signals clarity of thought and the self-awareness, coachability and emotional intelligence to make people heard. Can you pull capital, talent and customers into your orbit? ➡ 03 Resilience We look for creative problem solvers that think differently and innovate with minimal resources. We ask: would you build this without capital? The depth of conviction that answer reveals is what sustains a company through the moments that end one built on less. — These aren’t three independent qualities. Founder-market fit determines whether you are the right person to build this. Magnetism determines whether anyone joins you in building it. Resilience determines whether you are still building it in the years to come. We back founders who show all three — a shape that becomes visible over time. If that describes you, explore our open roles: jobs.ashbyhq.com/founders-fa… #FounderTraits #FounderArchetype

We're hiring a Venture Studio Tech Lead 🚀 Founders Factory is looking for a tech lead to join our venture studio in London — someone who can go from ambiguous idea to shipped MVP and who sees AI as core infrastructure. We need a technical operator who can help define the next generation of ventures across finance, healthcare, industrial and beyond from scratch. ➡ What you'll do: Work across 3-4 Studio ventures at once, acting as the key technical stakeholder for each setting technical direction, building AI-first product strategy. You'll also build internal AI tooling used across the whole portfolio, and run hands-on surgery sessions mentoring Accelerator founders and their tech teams. ➡ Who we're looking for: 🔧 A builder with real experience shipping products in fast-moving startups 🤖 Fluent in modern AI tooling and agentic systems 🤝 Comfortable switching between hands-on execution and strategic advice 📋 Prior experience as a technical founder is a strong plus. If you want to help write the blueprint for how the best technology companies of the future get built — and do it alongside 60+ operators and some of the biggest corporate names in the world — we'd love to hear from you. 📍 London (Hybrid) | Full-time Apply now → jobs.ashbyhq.com/founders-fa… #Hiring #FoundingEngineer #AI #VentureStudio #London

The electrification, defence and AI infrastructure investment cycle is unlike anything the copper market has previously had to absorb. ➡ Copper consumption is set to rise from 28 million tonnes to 42 million tonnes in 2040 ➡ AI data centres will need 6 times more copper than traditional ones ➡ According to the IEA, global primary copper supply could face a 25% deficit by 2035 That’s not to say copper is missing. The question is whether the technology exists to extract it at the cost and pace the market requires. This isn’t to say copper is missing. The three deposits that best illustrate the scale of what remains; Escondida in Chile, Oyu Tolgoi in Mongolia and the newly confirmed Vicuña system straddling the Argentine-Chilean border, contain enough copper to meet current global demand for several years. We look at the stack that beats the copper shortfall, featuring portfolio companies: Ekion, Sunchem and Endion who have all come through mining tech accelerator with Rio Tinto and how they’re innovating methods to ensure the world has enough copper. Read the full article: foundersfactory.com/articles… #Mining #Copper #MiningTech #DataCenter #Accelerator

Immoly, the AI-native property management platform, has spun out from the Founders Factory Venture Studio in partnership with Vonovia, Europe's largest residential real estate company. Immoly is building an AI platform that automates the administrative processes that consume time, create errors and scale poorly for private and semi-institutional landlords. Handled autonomously, with full transparency and landlord oversight at every step: 📱 Tenant communication 📁 Document management 🔧 Repair coordination 📈 Rent tracking Germany's residential property market is one of the largest and most fragmented in Europe. Germany has 44 million housing units, with 16 million rental homes provided by more than 5 million private landlords. Despite the size of the market, property management remains highly fragmented, with no dominant digital platform serving private landlords. That is the market Immoly is built for. The collaboration with Vonovia brings a deep sector expertise from the company that knows German residential real estate better than anyone, combined with the operational insight of a landlord managing properties at genuine scale. Congratulations to Florian and the Immoly team on this milestone. Read about the spin out on Vonovia’s website 👉 vonovia.com/presse/pressemit… #Proptech #Launch #VentureStudio #Vonovia #StudioSpinOut

Ocean Hex, part of our Nature Tech Accelerator with the Government of Western Australia, is a finalist in the WA Innovators of the Year Award. Launched in 2006, WA Innovators of the Year celebrates local businesses, government entities and young people that have developed an outstanding innovative product, technology or service for 20 years. The Great for the State Award, which Ocean Hex’s HIVE system is nominated for, is awarded to a WA innovator whose innovation showcases the State’s creativity and ingenuity, and offers clear benefits for WA’s economy, community and environment. Ocean Hex builds regenerative solutions for coastal infrastructures and ocean ecosystems through science, technology, robotics, automations and cross-sectorial collaboration. Their main focus is on the HIVE, a bio-engineered system that transforms coastal infrastructure into living, regenerative assets that serve both people and nature. The last few months have also delivered a series of results in the company’s commercial and scientific trajectory: 🌍 Selected for Phase 2 of the Plus Eight programme 🎯 Won an Innovation Booster Grant in the latest round 💰 Generating revenue with core partner 📋 Won a tender to work closely with regulators to advance coastal ecosystem monitoring 🤝 Developed a consortium with experts across multiple disciplines and sectors to develop and implement novel restoration methods across critical ecosystems in WA 🌊 Developed and successfully trialled the SNAPHEX in Indonesia: a cost effective and plastic-free technology (made with Uluu’s seaweed-based polymer) designed to replace cable-ties in coral reef restoration practices using rebar systems. The team is collaborating with experts from the UWA Oceans Institute, Uluu and Blue Corner Research Centre as well as the Lyn Beazley Academy to bring it to the next stage. Good luck to the team in the competition. #MarineRestoration #CoastalRestoration #Awards #Award #NatureTech