Skip to content
You can now search across every topic, entity and event.What's new
UK Startups and Innovation
22JUL

Ex-DeepMind founders raise £14.9m for Airspeed

2 min read
09:12UTC

Airspeed, founded by two former Google DeepMind research scientists, raised £14.9m on 4 June led by Europe's DN Capital, the DeepMind alumni network producing an early-stage company rather than another mega-round.

← Back to CuspAI pools 45 partners' labs and computeJump to analysis ↓
TechnologyDeveloping
Key takeaway

DeepMind alumni are founding early-stage UK startups backed by European VCs as well as chasing large US-led rounds.

Airspeed closed a £14.9m ($20m) Series A on Thursday 4 June, led by European venture firm DN Capital. Founders Adam Liska and Devang Agrawal are both former Google DeepMind research scientists, with Agrawal as chief technology officer. The company builds autonomous AI agents for sales teams, software that updates customer-relationship records, flags deal risks and drafts follow-ups during a live sales process. 1

The DeepMind alumni story has run large and outward in this topic. Orbital Industries pulled $50m in May, a round backed by European and American funds , while Geordie's $30m came with a British cheque from Balderton Capital . Both were sizeable Series B or scale-stage rounds.

Airspeed sits at the other end of that range. A £14.9m Series A led by a European fund shows the same alumni network producing companies at the start of their life as well as at scale. The pipeline reads less as one shape than several: mega-rounds chasing capital abroad, mid-sized rounds drawing British leads, and now early-stage cheques European investors can write at founding. The diaspora is widening the range of company it produces rather than settling into a single pattern.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Sales teams at technology companies spend a large fraction of their time on tasks that are administrative rather than selling: updating CRM records, writing follow-up emails, scheduling demos, tracking proposal status. Airspeed builds AI agents that do those administrative tasks autonomously, freeing sales people to spend more time in conversations with potential customers. The founders, Adam Liska and Devang Agrawal, both previously worked as research scientists at Google DeepMind, which is Google's London AI lab. That background in research means they are building agents that reason about context and handle non-standard situations, the functional difference from earlier generations of rules-based sales automation tools.

What could happen next?
  • Consequence

    DeepMind alumni founding early-stage commercial AI companies in London creates a secondary wave of UK AI startups below the mega-round tier that European VCs can lead without competing with US capital.

  • Risk

    The AI sales-agent category is attracting US capital at higher valuations; Airspeed faces the risk of being acquired or undercut by US competitors with 3-5x its capital before reaching Series B.

Sources:CuspAI·CNBC·Tech Funding News
Mentions:Google DeepMind →Orbital Industries →Geordie →Balderton Capital →Google →London →Airspeed →
First Reported In

Update #7 · OQC's £260m sets European quantum record

CuspAI· 7 Jun 2026
Read original →
Causes and effects
Caused by
Orbital's $50m raise has no UK lead
Orbital Industries raising $50m with no UK lead in May contextualises Airspeed's European-led Series A as the early-stage complement to mega-round capital flight.
Occurred 28 May 2026
Read story →
Balderton leads Geordie's $30m AI round
Geordie's Balderton-backed $30m round in May showed British VC writing DeepMind-alumni cheques; Airspeed's DN Capital-led Series A extends that pattern.
Occurred 28 May 2026
Read story →
This Event
Ex-DeepMind founders raise £14.9m for Airspeed
The DeepMind diaspora is now seeding small, European-backed startups as well as the larger US-chasing rounds, widening the founder pipeline.
Led to
Conduct takes $60m as SAP buys in
Airspeed's £14.9m from DN Capital adds to the London ex-DeepMind/ex-Palantir enterprise-AI cluster that Conduct's round also reflects.
Occurred 17 Jun 2026
Read story →
Different Perspectives
EQT
EQT
EQT was reported on 3 July to be in advanced talks for a further CuspAI stake on behalf of the EU's Scaleup Europe Fund, but does not appear on the round CuspAI closed. Whether Europe's own sovereign vehicle secured a position, was outbid, or withdrew is unresolved.
Invest-NL
Invest-NL
Invest-NL joined CuspAI's $450m round as a new state investor alongside Britain's Sovereign AI Unit, named in the company's own 20 July announcement. Any framing of British state capital arriving must also credit Dutch capital with the same access, since Invest-NL took the opportunity too.
Kleiner Perkins and Bezos Expeditions
Kleiner Perkins and Bezos Expeditions
Kleiner Perkins and Bezos Expeditions co-led CuspAI's $450m Series B at a $2.6bn valuation, a figure Lowdown has now reported three times since June. Silicon Valley and a family office, not a UK investor, set the price of Britain's highest-profile materials-AI company.
British Business Bank
British Business Bank
British Business Bank proposed a £100m debt fund for aerospace suppliers at Farnborough on 20 July, co-designed with Airbus, Rolls-Royce and GKN Aerospace. It is the Bank's first non-equity instrument this cycle, aimed at suppliers who can service a loan but have no equity story, though the structure remains unfinalised.
Institute of Physics
Institute of Physics
The Institute has long argued STFC's national-laboratory infrastructure, not its grant programmes, is the binding constraint on UK physics output, and warns mothballing capacity like Clara removes capability that cannot be rebuilt on a four-year cycle. It represents the discovery-science community absorbing the reallocation the Bank's equity cheques do not touch.
Helsing
Helsing
The Munich-headquartered defence-AI firm chose Plymouth over Continental sites for a £350m manufacturing plant building underwater surveillance gliders, alongside its record raise. Its choice of postcode signals confidence in UK manufacturing capacity for defence hardware even as it looks abroad for the capital financing that hardware.