Longwall Ventures
Oxford-linked venture capital firm writing £500,000 to £2m cheques into early-stage deeptech; Fund 1 backed OrganOx, sold to Terumo for $1.5bn.
Last refreshed: 29 May 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Is Longwall Ventures' 19x OrganOx exit a repeatable formula or a once-in-a-decade outlier?
Timeline for Longwall Ventures
Announced £50m BBB cornerstone and £86.2m first close of Fund 4
UK Startups and Innovation: State £50m backs the tier funds skip- What is the Longwall Ventures OrganOx exit and why does it matter for UK deeptech?
- Longwall's Fund 1 backed OrganOx, which was sold to Terumo for $1.5bn in 2025 — a 19.2x return on the British Business Bank's original capital and the largest-ever Oxford University spinout acquisition.Source: IT Pro / Oxford University
- How much has the British Business Bank committed to Longwall Ventures and for what purpose?
- The British Business Bank has committed £50m as a cornerstone investor in Longwall Fund 4, which targets £100m to back 14-16 early-stage deeptech firms writing £500k–£2m cheques.Source: IFA Magazine
- What sectors does Longwall Ventures invest in?
- Longwall writes cheques into early-stage UK deeptech across advanced manufacturing, clean energy, defence and life sciences, typically filling the gap between university proof-of-concept grants and institutional Series A rounds.Source: IT Pro
Background
The British Business Bank made a £50m cornerstone commitment to Longwall Ventures Fund 4 on 27 May 2026 via its Enterprise Capital Funds programme. Fund 4 targets £100m total and had reached £86.2m at announcement. The fund writes £500,000 to £2m cheques into 14 to 16 early-stage deeptech companies across advanced manufacturing, clean energy, defence and life sciences.
Founded in Oxford around 2008–2011, Longwall Ventures has built one of the UK deeptech sector's most credible track records. Its Fund 1 backed OrganOx, the Oxford spinout maker of liver perfusion devices, which was sold to Japan's Terumo in 2025 for $1.5bn — a 19.2x return for the British Business Bank on its original commitment and the largest-ever acquisition of an Oxford University spinout.
Longwall targets what it calls the 'tier gap': the space between university proof-of-concept grants and institutional Series A rounds, where capital-intensive deeptech companies most frequently fail. The BBB's continued commitment across four funds reflects the long-term Nature of deeptech investing; OrganOx took 17 years from founding to exit.