Founders Factory

🏥 Founders Factory has launched a new cross-border healthcare accelerator with Chicago-based @NorthwesternMed, one of America’s leading healthcare systems. The partnership will bring Europe’s top AI and deeptech health startups into the world’s largest healthcare market 🇺🇸 AI is transforming healthcare, from earlier detection and chronic disease management to research acceleration and operational efficiency. Through this four-month programme, selected pre-Series A startups will gain direct access to: 🔹Northwestern Medicine’s 11 hospitals, 5,400+ physicians and 200+ outpatient sites 🔹A partner-track to accelerate customer discovery, deployment and commercialisation 🔹Use case development & pilot execution with Northwestern in Chicago and The London Clinic in the UK 🔹A Residency Week in Chicago for customer roundtables and commercial discussions with Northwestern Medicine, organisations in the US healthcare ecosystem and connections with US investors 🗓 Applications close March 31, 2026 👉 Apply here: foundersfactory.com/northwestern-m… #HealthTech #AI #MedTech #Accelerator

Sifted has ranked Founders Factory #3 in its 2026 UK & Ireland Investor Ranking, recognising the investors backing the region’s fastest-growing companies. The ranking highlights companies including Scan.com, Fluidstack, Pinwheel, Tembo, and Xapien as part of the broader success stories behind the data - a reminder that the real credit sits with the founders and teams building industry-defining companies. The full rankings can be found here: sifted.eu/rankings/sifte… #Startups #VentureCapital #Sifted100

🚜🌏 Meet the winners of the LANDCROS Innovation Studios Mining Challenge Together with Hitachi Construction Machinery, we’ve launched the LANDCROS Innovation Studios Mining Challenge to identify world-leading startups building breakthrough mining technologies across three themes: 🔷Smarter Machines: Automation, operator intelligence, energy efficiency 🔷Smarter Mine Sites: Connected operations, real-time data, decision layers 🔷Low Impact & Sustainable Mining: water, emissions, circularity and reduced footprint This challenge gives startups direct access to Hitachi Construction Machinery’s industry expertise and pilot opportunities, alongside Founders Factory’s global ecosystem of investors and commercial partners. 📍 Next up the startups will pitch live in Brisbane on 16 April to an international panel of Hitachi Construction Machinery global executives, investors and Tier-1 mining leaders. The day will culminate in the announcement of three Grand Winners across the strategic themes.

Launching the latest business from our Venture Studio – Malcolm. Insurers want to tap into the massive distribution potential of AI, but they cannot safely connect 20-year-old legacy pricing APIs directly to consumer LLMs without risking regulatory failure. In using Malcolm, insurers are able to deliver their products where their customers want them, compliantly, to unlock the next generation of products, information, and buying experiences. Malcolm modus operandi: ➡️ Universal agent integration: seamlessly handles intent from any major AI runtime (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) or custom Insurtech co-pilots. ➡️ Routing engine: intelligently maps unstructured AI requests into strict JSON payloads, routing them to the exact legacy APIs required for Car, Home, Travel, or SME insurance. ➡️Compliance pipeline: a built-in regulatory safety net featuring an immutable audit ledger, behavioural analysis, and hard-coded product guardrails to guarantee fair value and prevent silent mis-selling. ➡️ Plug-and-play tooling: Malcolm provides a set of off-the-shelf tools and components that allow you to design your own AI experiences and control the user journey. Read more about our new studio venture and founder Tim Graham: foundersfactory.com/articles/launc… #VentureBuilding #Startups #Insurtech #AgenticAI #AIAgents

🚀 Congratulations to Alomana on a €4M funding round to accelerate Alo, its AI operating layer that goes beyond simple assistance, focused on enterprise execution. The round is led by CDP Venture Capital SGR (Corporate Partners I – ServiceTech), with participation from Italia Venture I – Fondo Imprese Sud, Kairos Ventures (ESG One), Gresilent Holdings, Italian Angels for Growth (IAG) and Club degli Investitori. Alomana deploys a universal intelligence layer working across data, documents and applications, elevating AI from helpful chatbot to repeatable execution. Over the past year, Alo has been implemented across finance, manufacturing and pharma, supporting workflows like risk and security, financial controls, operational automation and advanced analytics, delivering real operational gains. Alomana joined the Founders Factory and Mediobanca MBSpeedUp Accelerator in 2024, and it’s been exciting to watch the team build toward production-grade enterprise deployments. Congrats to Giuseppe Ettorre, Daniele Ligorio and team. #VentureCapital hashtag#EnterpriseAI hashtag#AIAgent

🎥 Last month we closed out our Hospital to Community Accelerator, delivered in partnership with InnovateUK, with a Demo Day focused on moving care closer to patients and communities. Over 12 weeks, founders worked alongside our partners and specialists to pressure-test early to mid-stage solutions built for real-world implementation. The energy in the room reflected a shared reality across the wider system that shifting care into the community requires tools that improve access, reduce burden on clinicians, and deliver measurable outcomes. Our cohort presented across diagnostics, triage, rehabilitation and care coordination: - Sensore: automated pressure ulcer prevention mapping - Papcup: non-invasive cervical screening - Arcus Dental: digital dental check-ups from home - Punto Health: AI-powered dementia management platform - Auracare: AI triage for primary care providers - Dotplot: early breast cancer detection from home - Myonerv: wearable device to monitor and treat stroke-induced paralysis - Circe: clinical group therapy platform for women - William Oak: integrated diagnostics for nutritional deficiencies - Lifeyear: a modern operating system for cardiac care Huge thanks to everyone who joined, supported, and helped push these solutions closer to deployment. Watch the recap video below 👇 #HealthTech #NHS #CommunityCare #DigitalHealth #Innovation #Startups #UKRI

🌧️⚡️ Darryl Lyons built agtech startup Rainstick by combining Aboriginal knowledge with low-input deeptech. Darryl shares the journey behind the technology, as well as why low marginal cost matters for scaling deeptech, and how Rainstick found unexpected traction through pilots beyond agriculture. Founded by Darryl and Co-Founder Mic Black, part of our Mining Tech Cohort 2 with Rio Tinto, Rainstick translates storm effects into controlled electric fields and frequencies to help seeds establish and perform in harsher conditions. Read the full article 👉 foundersfactory.com/articles/rains… #ClimateTech #AgTech #DeepTech #IndigenousInnovation #NatureTech

🏘️ 16 million Germans are private landlords and more than 50% are unhappy with their real estate management. This management often costs up to 10% of the net revenue per unit with margins being squeezed further by increasing regulations. As a solution, management software is often unintuitive and reactive. With over 200,000 federal, regional and local rules to follow, private users as well as professional real estate managers are prone to errors while trying to meet regulatory requirements. That’s where Immoly comes in. Built in our Venture Studio, Ahmed Talbi and Florian Tonner are building a radically new way to manage real estate through proactive AI: Time consuming tasks fully automated by an AI agent team working for the landlord. Important decisions are weighted, prepared and forwarded to owners for approval. Regulatory requirements are handled in real time while working toward the long-term development of the property. According to co-founder Florian, Immoly will put landlords back in the driver seat managing their investment with compliance and ease. 👉 See their website here: friends.immoly.ai #PropTech #VentureBuilding

Built into operations by design and accelerated with AI, efficiency gains are the fastest path to decarbonisation - and are already spreading through industry. Across energy, mining, agriculture and natural resources, emissions often come from avoidable work, be it wasted energy, over-extraction, unnecessary transport, excess chemicals and poorly targeted interventions. In truth they’re not just emissions issues either, they add severe operational costs. In our latest blog post, we explore how AI is becoming the practical decision layer that exposes inefficiency and removes it at scale - making decarbonisation commercially rational. Four portfolio companies doing this in the field include: Terra AI - optimising resource and infrastructure projects before steel hits the ground, designing waste and embodied carbon out early Prospectral - hyper-spectral insight that enables targeted extraction, reducing wasted drilling, processing energy, water and chemicals Endolith - using biology and AI to replace energy-intensive chemistry, cutting both energy use and chemical inputs Rainstick - strengthening crops at the seed stage with electric field treatment, improving resilience and yields without changing on-farm practices The most scalable decarbonisation may be the energy and materials we no longer use. Read the full article: foundersfactory.com/articles/ai-is… #AI #Decarbonisation #DeepTech #IndustrialInnovation #EnergyTransition #MiningTech #AgTech

🚢 Armada Technologies, a Blue Action Accelerator portfolio company, has signed an agreement with TUI Cruises to install its Passive Air Lubrication System (PALS) on Mein Schiff 6. Armada tackles drag, one of the largest hidden sources of fuel use at sea. For shipping, decarbonisation isn’t only about future fuels. The majority of the global fleet already exists which means retrofit and design optimisation will also determine how quickly emissions fall. By generating a fine air-water layer beneath the hull, their passive air lubrication system reduces resistance and therefore the energy required to move a vessel. Unlike traditional systems, PALS maintains performance across speeds and sea conditions while minimising auxiliary power. This means operational efficiency improvements for operators as well as falling fuel consumption and emissions. Congratulations to Alex Routledge, Roger Armson and the Armada team and partners. ⚓ Read more about the partnership in Ship Management International: shipmanagementinternational.com/news/armada-te… #Maritime #Shipping #ClimateTech #Decarbonisation #BlueEconomy #VentureBuilding #EnergyTransition

We’re hiring across the Founders Factory ecosystem 👇 If you want to help build companies, these roles put you right at the centre of venture creation, from day-one founding to platform engineering. 🏥 Co-Founder: Healthcare Studio – Founders Factory (London / Europe / Remote) Co-build a new healthcare venture tackling challenges in remote monitoring, care optimisation and health infrastructure. Includes €275k pre-seed funding, hands-on studio support and access to leading healthcare partners to validate and scale. Apply here: app.screenloop.com/careers/founde… 🔧 Founding Engineer – Konduit (London / Hybrid) Join Aviva-backed venture Konduit, building the infrastructure for real-time insurance capacity allocation. You’ll architect and ship the core platform and define the technical foundations of a new category marketplace. Apply here: app.screenloop.com/careers/founde… 🦾 Venture Studio Lead – Founders Factory (Berlin / Hybrid) Act as co-founder across new ventures — validating concepts, shaping GTM strategy and preparing startups for spin-out and scale at the intersection of product, commercial strategy and founder hiring. Apply here: app.screenloop.com/careers/founde… 🧱 Venture Builder – Founders Factory (London / Hybrid) Work hands-on with founders to take companies from 0→1, shaping product strategy, building MVPs and driving early validation in a fast-paced venture studio environment. Apply here: app.screenloop.com/careers/founde… If you’re excited by building from first principles and solving real industry problems, we’d love to hear from you. #StartupFounders #VentureStudio #Entrepreneurship

Introducing Nebuly - one of the latest companies to join our @Fastweb + Vodafone Investment Programme. Unlike traditional apps, conversational AI leaves no clear trail of clicks or page views, and fewer than 1% of users leave feedback. That makes it incredibly difficult to measure performance, user satisfaction or ROI. Nebuly is building the analytics layer for the AI era. Their platform gives organisations a real-time, privacy-first understanding of how people interact with AI, helping teams quantify productivity gains and identify opportunities for automation. As AI becomes the primary interface between businesses and users, understanding those interactions will be as essential as web analytics was for the internet and mobile apps. Read more about the investment 👉foundersfactory.com/articles/inves… #AI #EnterpriseAI #GenAI #Startups #VentureBuilding #Analytics #Innovation

🌏 Meet the first 7 corporates joining our upcoming HSBC Industrial Innovator Programme, supporting startups building solutions to improve circularity and lower energy waste for industrial sectors. During the programme, founders will engage directly with Singapore-based industry leaders across real estate, healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, agriculture and maritime, exploring pilots, partnerships and commercial deployment. Corporates participating include: - IHH Healthcare: One of the world's largest private healthcare providers, IHH Healthcare operates over 140 healthcare facilities across 10 countries. - CapitaLand: A leading global real asset manager with a strong Asia foothold - Pacific International Lines: The largest home‐grown shipping carrier in Southeast Asia - Indorama Group: One of Asia's leading chemical companies - Seatrium: A Premier Global Player with Deep Engineering Expertise in the offshore, marine and energy industries - DKSH: A leader in global distribution,, warehousing and last-mile delivery for major brands - SATS: A world leader in air cargo handling, ground services, and inflight catering This programme aims to bring together sector expertise of established organisations and innovative ideas of new startups to accelerate deployment of transformative solutions. If you’re building at TRL 6+ in resource efficiency, circular materials, waste-to-value, water, energy or industrial AI, this programme is designed to move you from conversations to real deployments and first customers. 🗓 Apply before March 2nd: foundersfactory.com/hsbc-industria…

🔎 Studio insights: Many early startups obsess over whether they’re a consumer or B2B company, but Anthony Jacob, Founder & CEO of Nila Cares, realised customer discovery and GTM sequencing was what mattered over strict model definition. 👉 Read the full story: foundersfactory.com/articles/go-to… #GoToMarket #Startups #FounderJourney #HealthTech #Partnerships #VentureBuilding

🚀 Tembo raises £16M to give homebuyers control over their finances The round was led by Gresham House Ventures, with participation from the McPike Family Office alongside existing backers including @AvivaInvestors, Goodwater Capital, Ascension and British Business Bank. Built in the Founders Factory and @Aviva Venture Studio, Tembo’s digital savings and mortgage platform helps more people onto the property ladder, navigating affordability challenges in an increasingly complex £1.6tn mortgage market. In the past year: 📈 Tembo’s savings arm grew 10x to £3bn in assets under administration 🤝 The platform partners with 100+ organisations including Aviva and Saga 🏡 It launched HomeSaver, combining competitive savings (up to 5.24%) with digital mortgage advice Read more about the raise in Sky News: lnkd.in/eC4KNaNm #Fintech #Proptech #Startups #VentureBuilding

🔥@Hades Mining raises €15M Seed We’re delighted to see Hades Mining close a €15M Seed round, co-led by @HV_Capital and @HeadlineVC, with continued backing from Project A and Visionaries Tomorrow. Backed by Founders Factory and @RioTinto through our Mining Tech Accelerator, Hades is building a world first tech-enabled extraction company, starting with a laser drilling system. Read more about the raise in @Siftedeu: sifted.eu/articles/hades… #miningtech #startups #venturecapital

📦 Founders Factory and @ZEBOX_ are partnering to support #maritime and #logistics #startups globally. Leveraging ZEBOX’s deep sector expertise and direct access to @cmacgm, the partnership enables founders to accelerate deployment, secure industrial pilots and build pathways to international scale. Learn more and apply here: foundersfactory.com/zebox-maritime…

FF product & technology experts Jack & Jacob have been building and deploying agentic AI for the past 14 months. Read their insights and learnings battling LLM drift, hallucinations, voice AI implementation, and scaling multi-agent systems 👉 foundersfactory.com/articles/ventu…