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UK Startups and Innovation
7JUN

Ex-DeepMind founders raise £14.9m for Airspeed

2 min read
10:09UTC

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.

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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:Oxford Quantum Circuits·Cambridge Enterprise·UK Tech News
Mentions:Google DeepMind →Orbital Industries →Geordie →Balderton Capital →Google →London →Airspeed →
First Reported In

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

Oxford Quantum Circuits· 7 Jun 2026
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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.
Different Perspectives
Spanish state finance (COFIDES, CDTI)
Spanish state finance (COFIDES, CDTI)
Spain's COFIDES and CDTI have co-invested alongside UK deep-tech rounds in prior cycles and track the British Business Bank's direct-investment activity as a benchmark for state-capital deployment in innovation. BBB's two direct co-investments in one week set a pace reference for Iberian equivalents.
UK city-region mayors (Greater Manchester, West Midlands, Liverpool)
UK city-region mayors (Greater Manchester, West Midlands, Liverpool)
The LIPF devolution from 2027 hands seven mayors direct grant allocation, cutting Whitehall from the approval chain. Liverpool's £23.7m first allocation to AI research programmes shows the mechanism working before the formal devolution date.
Japanese strategic investors
Japanese strategic investors
OQC already generates hardware revenue in Japan, one of four countries where its quantum systems are live. Japan's national quantum strategy targets 2030 for commercial adoption; a UK supplier with active Japanese contracts is a supply-chain asset before domestic fabrication scales.
European venture capital (Highland Europe, Plural, Index Ventures)
European venture capital (Highland Europe, Plural, Index Ventures)
European funds led or co-led three of the week's rounds: Highland Europe and Index Ventures on Wordsmith, Plural on Gigaton, Singular on Apoha. Continental LP capital is backing UK deep-tech and software at Series A and B without waiting for US validation.
US growth investors
US growth investors
Bullhound Capital's £260m OQC lead and DN Capital's £14.9m Airspeed ticket show US-linked growth capital treating UK quantum and AI as credible revenue bets rather than science projects. The OQC round is the largest-ever private quantum raise in Europe, suggesting US allocators have moved past post-Brexit risk discounts on UK technology.
UK Government (DSIT)
UK Government (DSIT)
DSIT published Horizon recovery figures, Global Talent Fund recruitment numbers and the LIPF devolution announcement on overlapping days in June, framing a triple proof-point for its innovation agenda. The co-timing signals a deliberate narrative strategy linking talent, funding geography and international re-engagement into a single story.