The Public Bank That Still Closes Molten’s Growth Fund

Molten Ventures plc announced the first close of its Growth Fund at £175 million on 7 September 2026. £100 million of that money is the listed company’s own cash.

The British Business Bank committed the other £75 million. No other limited partner is named, and the vehicle is still £175 million short of a £350 million target. Shares in the firm, ticker GROW, hit a 52-week high of 719.50p on the announcement day.

Molten Is Using £100 Million of Its Own Cash

The close is a continuation of Molten’s Series B and later investing, which the firm says covers more than 40 deals and over £700 million deployed across ten years, at what it calls top-quartile returns. The new vehicle is meant to let outside institutions buy that same book through a private fund, using the listed platform’s reporting and governance.

On the numbers disclosed, that outside book is still a single public cheque. Molten put up 57% of the first close. The Bank put up 43%. Together they have half of the stated target.

WHO PUT IN THE FIRST-CLOSE MONEY

Chief executive Ben Wilkinson called the Bank’s presence “a strong endorsement of Molten’s strategy and of the relationship we have built over many years.” He also said the UK and Europe do not lack founders, they lack growth capital. Franco Danesi, senior partner, said the Bank’s cheque gives the firm “real momentum” toward £350 million.

The firm’s own phrasing is blunter than the endorsement language. The growth fund, it wrote, is how to “do more with more, at a time when Molten sees itself as capital constrained rather than opportunity constrained.”

The Only Outside LP Is the British Business Bank

Robert Greenwood, senior director for funds at the Bank, did not describe the cheque as a one-off favour to a listed manager. He described a policy of standing behind UK growth funds.

To create deeper pools of late-stage capital for breakthrough technologies, we are helping UK tech investors to launch new growth funds. This commitment is the latest example of that strategy. Molten Ventures is one of the UK’s leading growth investors, with a strong track record of backing fast-growing technology businesses. This fund will help the next generation of tech entrepreneurs scale faster and build global companies from the UK.

Robert Greenwood, Senior Director, Funds, British Business Bank

That is the hidden party in a story that reads, on the wire, as a private fundraising win. The only named outside LP is a state development bank whose job is to crowd others in. Until those others arrive, the close is public capital plus the GP.

Wilkinson used a 15 September interview, carried by Edison Investment Research, to keep talking about the fund and about bringing more institutional money into venture. Two weeks after first close, the pitch was still the missing LPs, not a finished raise.

This Relationship Started With a £30 Million Cheque

The Bank has held stock in the listed vehicle since 2018, when the firm still traded as Draper Esprit. That year British Patient Capital, the Bank’s commercial arm, put evergreen money into the company as part of a £2.5 billion programme born from the Patient Capital Review.

THE ROAD TO THIS CLOSE

1. June 2016: Draper Esprit lists on the London Stock Exchange, selling public investors an evergreen book of European tech.
2. 13 June 2018: The firm welcomes a £30 million evergreen investment from British Patient Capital, on the day the £2.5 billion programme launches.
3. 1 March 2022: British Patient Capital joins a $60 million Series B in Paragraf, a graphene electronics firm Molten first backed at Series A in 2019.
4. 16 February 2026: The Bank puts £5 million into SatVu, a thermal-intelligence satellite company already in Molten’s book, as part of a £30 million round.
5. 9 June 2026: Molten’s year-end results confirm a cornerstone investor is secured for the new Growth Fund.
6. 7 September 2026: First close is struck at £175 million, with the Bank as the only named outside LP.

The 2018 post from the firm called UK and European startups “starved of the growth capital they need to scale.” Eight years later Wilkinson is making the same argument, and the same public investor is still the one willing to print a cornerstone ticket.

Why UK Scale-Ups Still Need Public Growth Capital

The Bank’s own evidence to the Commons Business and Trade Committee, filed in September 2025, sets out why it keeps writing these cheques. Breakthrough firms, it said, raise a similar number of rounds to US peers and still take in less money on a GDP-weighted basis. Domestic pensions barely show up in the asset class.

WHAT THE BANK SAYS IS MISSING

• Pension share: Retirement savings are 10% of Britain’s venture pool, against 72% in America.
• Canada comparison: Canadian pension funds put 15 times more into private equity and venture than UK equivalents.
• Crowding-in record: Over a decade the Bank says it has pulled in more than £4 of private money for every £1 of public funds, or £26 billion private beside £6.3 billion of government capital.
• Current firepower: In 2024/25 it deployed £1.2 billion of public capital, and it cites an expanded £25.6 billion of capacity across its programmes.

The UK still accounts for 40% of Europe’s venture investment and 5.8% of the world total in 2021-23, the Bank told MPs. Older UK funds have not been a return disaster: for 2002-2019 vintages the pooled TVPI was 1.87, against 2.01 in the US and 1.96 in the rest of Europe. The shortage the Bank keeps pointing at is scale-up cheques, not a dead early scene.

WHERE EXPERTS DISAGREE

• Molten’s case: The firm calls Series B and later a “critical funding gap” in the UK and Europe and built the Growth Fund to write larger tickets in space, AI, fintech, quantum, deeptech and hardware.
• Antler’s case: Christoph Klink, a partner at Antler, told PitchBook in September 2026 that the growth-stage gap gets the attention while early-stage is the blockage, with company foundings up 84% through 2025 and fewer of those starts getting backed.
• The LP drought: A Rothschild growth-equity note, citing PitchBook, said capital raised in 2025 for European VC vehicles hit its lowest point since 2014, which is the constraint that leaves a first close looking like this one.

Those views can all be true at once. Mega-rounds can soak late-stage volume while ordinary Series B companies still struggle to find a domestic lead, and while new funds still cannot fill from pensions and endowments. Greenwood’s line about “deeper pools of late-stage capital” is the Bank acting as if the third problem is the one it can change.

SatVu and Paragraf Already Carry Both Backers

The announcement names four UK companies where the Bank has already sat beside Molten: SatVu, IMU Biosciences, Thought Machine and Paragraf. Two of those have public deal files that show what “late-stage” looks like when the state is in the round.

On 16 February 2026 the Bank put £5 million into SatVu inside a £30 million financing. NATO Innovation Fund joined, as did SPARX Space Frontiers Fund and Presto Ventures, with existing holders including Molten, Adara Ventures, Ridgeline Ventures, Lockheed Martin and Seraphim Space Fund. SatVu sells thermal imagery from orbit for defence and security and had two satellites planned for 2026, with three more under contract.

Leandros Kalisperas, the Bank’s chief investment officer, used that round to say the Bank now has more room to take direct stakes, “from early-stage innovators through to unicorns,” and will keep funding breakthrough technology at Series A and B.

Paragraf is the older overlay. British Patient Capital joined a $60 million Series B in Paragraf on 1 March 2022 through Future Fund: Breakthrough, a £375 million co-invest sleeve. Molten had led at Series A in 2019. The Cambridge spinout makes graphene electronics that can run through existing chip lines. That is the hardware and deeptech book the new fund says it wants more of, with larger ownership than a listed balance sheet can always carry on its own.

Typical Molten tickets on its live proposal page still run from £2 million to £50 million at Series A or B. The Growth Fund is how those upper cheques get bigger without every extra pound coming off plc NAV.

What a £175 Million First Close Leaves Open

A first close is not a final close. Molten said it “will continue to seek additional investors.” Until they sign, the fund can deploy, but it cannot yet do the thing Wilkinson is selling: a dedicated third-party pool that lets the firm lead more Series B-plus rounds as a matter of course.

In the 9 June 2026 results for the year ended 31 March, the company had already told shareholders a cornerstone was in. The same review said a growth fund would let Molten back high-conviction companies “without stretching the plc balance sheet,” and that the prize was “more ownership in the winners, stronger management fee economics over time, and a clearer route to narrowing the discount to NAV.” Three months later the first close still required £100 million of that balance sheet, about 7.6% of the £1,324 million of net assets reported at year end.

That is how GP commits work, and the £100 million will be drawn across the fund’s life rather than wired in one lump. It is still the largest cheque in the room. The listed vehicle is acting as both manager and majority LP at the moment the public market is being asked to cheer a third-party raise.

There has been little public argument about that mix. Most of the posts that followed the RNS repeated the £175 million headline and moved on. The interesting fact sat in the second paragraph of the release: more than half the first-close capital is the company’s, and the rest is the state.

Management Fees Need a Larger Third-Party Pool

The listed platform behind the fund is larger than the fund. Across the group Molten manages over £2 billion. Since 2016 it has deployed more than £1 billion and, by the September announcement, realised more than £800 million; the June results had put realisations at more than £750 million as of 31 March 2026, before a further £63 million came out of Revolut after year end.

THE PLATFORM AT 31 MARCH 2026

• NAV per share: 760p, up 13% from 671p, an 89p lift of which buybacks supplied 21p.
• Gross portfolio: £1,525 million, with a 13% net fair value move, against £1,367 million a year earlier.
• Realisations and cash: £120 million of sale proceeds in the year, and £52 million of group cash at the balance-sheet date, down from £89 million.
• Portfolio health: 88% of core companies funded for at least 12 months, seven of them profitable, core revenue averaging over $600 million, and $3.75 billion raised across the book.

After the period, ICEYE completed a Series F of €450 million at a valuation of over €10 billion. The firm also spent £38 million on buybacks in FY26, plus £1 million after year end, and kept admin costs at 0.5% of NAV. A secondaries team is now in place, and Molten East, a Central and Eastern Europe fund, was still being pointed at a 2026 first close in the June results.

Fee income on other people’s capital is the part of this close that listed holders actually need. A £100 million GP commit earns Molten more ownership in the winners if the bets pay. It does not, on its own, build the management-fee stack that the June review tied to a narrower discount. That stack needs the missing £175 million.

The Bank has now done this twice with the same manager, in 2018 as an evergreen shareholder and in 2026 as a fund cornerstone. Private LPs still have an open invitation to sit beside it. Until they do, the UK’s late-stage story at this house remains the one Greenwood is paid to write: the development bank goes first, and everyone else is asked to follow.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of a fund close and related company disclosures. It is for information only and is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold shares in Molten Ventures plc, units in the Growth Fund, or any portfolio company named here. It does not constitute investment, tax or legal advice, and it is not an offer of fund interests. Readers should consult a regulated financial adviser, and where relevant a tax specialist, before making any investment decision. Figures, fund sizes, NAVs, valuations and fundraising status are those given in the cited company, Bank and market sources on their stated dates and will change as the raise, the portfolio and the share price move.