*|MC_PREVIEW_TEXT|* Finalist in Growth Investor Awards Ascension’s Carry-Back Fund Open for Investment COO, Rakesh Murria: From AI Insights to Electric Car Enthusiast! Meet 5D AI, the Latest Investment from Ascension’s Blended SEIS fund Managing Partner, Jean de Fougerolles: ‘The 2020s as the Decade of Purpose’ 25% of UK Emerging Cancer Tech Startups Selected by Sifted are Ascension Investments Portfolio in the News Open Roles in our Portfolio Companies
| | Shortlisted in Growth Investor Awards
We are delighted to share that Ascension are finalists in the Best EIS Investment Manager and ESG Champion of the Year categories at the Growth Investor Awards! Wish us luck in the final!
Ascension’s Carry-Back Fund Open for Investment
The goal of the Ascension Carry Back EIS is to provide tax-free capital growth through a diversified portfolio spanning Ascension’ EIS, Knowledge Intensive EIS, Fair By Design Impact EIS Funds, and other co-investment and follow-on options.
The unique 'Carry-Back' feature enables the application of EIS relief to the preceding tax year (2022-23), offering advantages to individuals with unexpected late-year capital gains or higher income, by swiftly reducing tax liabilities through expedited EIS investments.
To learn more, please refer to the investment flyer here or visit our website here.
| Ascension’s COO, Rakesh Murria: From AI Insights to Electric Car Enthusiast!
AI has been the talk of the town for the past 12 months, creating interesting dynamics from the chip wars, model training wars to open vs. closed source wars - all while pushing the boundaries in creating a new set of foundational technologies for the future.
My fascination with the evolving landscape of AI has not only deepened my understanding of its potential but also inspired me to switch to an electric vehicle. I made this transition through one of our portfolio companies, Electric Car Scheme. If you haven’t discovered the benefits of getting an electric car on salary sacrifice, check them out.
Image created using Dalle-3
Why did I go for it now? After the “Full Self Driving Beta 12”, where Tesla effectively threw away 10 years of self driving development to move to a “transformer model” based on training an AI on millions of hours of driving videos. The results were incredible, and a glimpse of a driving future that might not be too far away. It feels like months, not years. Exciting times ahead!
At Ascension we are on a mission to deeply understand industries and leverage cutting-edge tools for smart disruption. Companies like 5D AI (see below), Gendo (a company utilising AI for architectural visualisation), Novai (developed an AI-driven retinal biomarker), and Hazy (synthetic data solutions) are some great examples of our investments in this space across multiple verticals.
With all this going on, it’s no wonder Ascension’s Partner Remy Minute has been named one of the most influential investors backing AI startups by the Business Insider (it’s behind a paywall but worth a read if you can).
Meet 5D AI, the latest investment from Ascension’s Blended SEIS fund Professionals across various industries (e.g. real estate, finance, academic research) are increasingly using large amounts of unstructured data from numerous sources to generate proprietary insights for their clients. However, analysing and producing these insights are highly inefficient, labour-intensive and error prone. These knowledge workers spend significant amounts of time manually extracting, organising, and interpreting this data which adversely affects their productivity.
How does 5D AI bridge this gap?
5D AI has created a product called ‘Ellie’, which will automate the boring administrative parts found in heavy industries! They leverage large language models (LLMs) and advanced natural language processing techniques to automate the classification and interpretation of unstructured data. Professionals are able to automate workflows in real estate, boosting efficiency by at least 30%. 5D AI uses internal comms, brand guidelines, public content and user interactions to tune LLMs, consume all the proprietary data, and enable professionals to transform unstructured data into actionable insights more effectively, ultimately improving their productivity and decision-making.
Founder-Market Fit: founders have strong technical expertise in linguistics and AI combined with deep real estate experience and network, positioning the team for success.
Network Effects: built-in network effects increase moat & defensibility - the more users interact with the product → the larger the proprietary data → the stronger the model / better the product → the more attractive it is to users
Timing: with the release of GPT-3&4, generative AI has hit an inflection point where every industry will need to adopt it to remain competitive. However, large corporations lack the internal expertise, creating a clear opportunity for 5D AI.
Meet the founders - Dr Kate Jarvis and Johnny Morris
Ascension’s Managing Partner, Jean de Fougerolles - ‘The 2020s as the Decade of Purpose’
Jean foresees that the 2020s will mark the rise of purpose-driven impact investing, demonstrating that ‘tech for good’ does not need to compromise returns while at the same time delivering real help for some of society’s biggest problems.’’ To find out more read the rest of the article here. Europe’s Emerging Cancer Tech startups
Great to see three of Ascension’s Life Fund portfolio companies listed in Sifted’s 20 European Cancer Tech Startups! 25% of the UK companies selected are Ascension investments! Congratulations to Panakeia, Kuano and Tailor Bio! |
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Portfolio In The News
Open Roles In Our Portfolio Companies
| | | About Ascension Ascension is an early-stage venture capital firm built by exited entrepreneurs to back the next generation of tech and impact founders. Since 2015, Ascension has invested in 150+ start-ups across its (S)EIS & Institutional funds - our specialist approach and extensive sector reach allow us to identify and scale pioneering tech enterprises.
With over £80m under management, Ascension has been London's most active VC over the past decade (Beauhurst data), with a particular focus on backing impact businesses leveraging the power of technology to solve some of the world's biggest problems. For more information, see ascension.vc.
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