Deep Tech · VC Firm · Active
IQ Capital
IQ Capital is a Cambridge/London-based deep-tech VC, founded 2006, with $400M AUM — Fund IV ($200M, 2023) plus Growth Fund II ($200M).
Investment thesis
IQ Capital is a Cambridge/London-based deep-tech VC, founded 2006, with $400M AUM — Fund IV ($200M, 2023) plus Growth Fund II ($200M). Four GPs (Kerry Baldwin, Max Bautin, Simon Hirtzel, Ed Stacey) with 20+ years working together; PhD-rich investment team. Invests Seed to Series A with £5-10M initial cheques from Fund IV, follow-ons up to £30M from the Growth Fund.
Quantum portfolio concentrates on UK Cambridge/Oxford quantum stack: Nu Quantum (quantum networking / distributed computing, co-led seed from Amadeus, participated in the $60M Series A Dec 2025 — largest UK quantum Series A ever), QuantumDiamonds (NV-center magnetometry for biomedical imaging, German-Swiss), and Paragraf (graphene-based electronics relevant to cryogenic qubit control). Distinctive exposure to networking — the next quantum bottleneck — rather than raw qubit count.
Value-add: four exits to Apple, Google, Oracle, Facebook and IPO track record. PhD-level technical diligence and strong UK academic spin-out pipeline (Cambridge, Oxford, Imperial).
Differentiated as the UK deep-tech VC with the most specialized quantum networking conviction, ahead of the industry consensus that distributed quantum computing is the near-term bottleneck.
Anti-thesis
The patterns that trigger a fast no with this fund.
- Quantum hardware plays without a credible commercialisation path inside 5 to 7 years (Max Bautin has flagged that productisation in compute has been slower than sensing and networking)
- Founder teams without deep Cambridge or Oxbridge research roots: IQ Capital is structurally biased toward IP-rich university spinouts (Cavendish, Cambridge CS, Oxford physics)
- US-headquartered or US-flipping companies: the fund explicitly backs UK and European deep tech at Seed and Series A, founders planning a Delaware flip pre-Series B are out
- Capital-intensive full-stack qubit hardware races: they prefer infrastructure layers (networking, sensing, photonics, control) over competing IBM/Google on logical qubits, Nu Quantum and QuantumDiamonds set the pattern
- Science project pitches with no path to defensible IP and no near-term wedge in adjacent classical markets (semiconductors, defence, biotech instrumentation)
Notable quantum portfolio
Full portfolio →Reach out to IQ Capital
A cold email and a 1-page brief, ready in two clicks.