Lift for UK healthtech as fund bags £100m from national bank
The British Business Bank (BB) has agreed to make a £100 million investment in a new healthcare fund launched by London-based private equity group Apposite Capital, in a boost to the UK's life sciences sector.
The Apposite Healthcare Growth I fund is directed at smaller innovative companies, mainly in the UK, which are focusing on medical products, diagnostics, life sciences tools, digital health, and pharmaceutical outsourcing services.
According to BBB and Apposite, this is the economic investment bank's largest fund commitment to date and aims to address a shortage in scale-up capital for companies "approaching a growth inflection."
The aim is to stay closely aligned with government initiatives in these sectors under last year's Life Sciences Sector Plan, aimed at making the UK the leading life sciences power in Europe by 2030. To that end, Apposite is collaborating with the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), which is responsible for an annual funding budget of £1.7 billion, saying that this will "maximise the fund's impact."
2025 was a challenging year for the UK biotech sector, according to figures from the BioIndustry Association, but it ended the year with signs of renewed confidence and broadening investor support, even though venture capital funding deals shrank 13% compared to 2024, to $1.79 billion.
On the plus side, the UK firmly retained its position as Europe's leading national biotech market throughout the year, representing 30% of all European venture financing, and a recent report by property advisory firm Knight Frank found a 22% increase in the number of life sciences companies domiciled in the UK between 2019 and the end of 2025.
However, there are longstanding concerns that the country will become an "incubator economy" in life sciences, with promising startups seeking financing from overseas when they are ready to scale up.
One positive development in the area of scale-up financing was the Mansion House reforms, which allow UK pension funds to invest up to 5% in unlisted UK companies, with a target of unlocking $50 billion in such investments by 2030.
"The UK needs growth stage funding, and the Bank is stepping up to deliver this," said BBB's managing director and head of commercial equity funds, Christine Hockley.
"To help funds launch and ensure they have the size and firepower needed, we are writing larger cheques and signalling these commitments to institutional investors, with the intention it mobilises the private sector."
Sam Gray, managing partner at Apposite, added that the new fund will "back the next generation of UK healthcare technology leaders…enabling high-potential companies to accelerate their growth, commercialise transformative technologies, improve health outcomes and support economic growth."
