Big news
Two firms, a decade each. Now one community.
Ascension has acquired QVentures. The two firms that have each spent the past decade backing ambitious UK founders are joining forces, bringing two portfolios and two communities of founders and investors together into one.
“QVentures has built an impressive early-stage investment platform and a strong community of founders and investors over the past decade.” — Jean de Fougerolles, Managing Partner, Ascension
New investment
Suna
Your wearables track sleep, exercise and steps. None of them track your gut. Suna is developing a wearable that captures digestive activity alongside signals like HRV, temperature and movement, turning one of the body's least understood systems into something measurable, understandable and actionable.
Why we backed them: the gut is the one major health signal missing from today's wearables, and Suna is going after it with real founder-market fit. Dr Chad Okay is an NHS doctor who saw the gap at the bedside; his co-founder Selin Talishinska has built the product and a pre-launch community at remarkable speed.
Watch Chad tell the Suna story. Join the waitlist here.
Investor evening
Agents at Work: AI that does the job, not just the chat
The question in the room at our latest Investor Evening was simple, what happens when AI stops assisting and starts doing the work? Our founders showed the answer across five very different industries: managing landlords' portfolios, planning zero-carbon retrofits, coordinating autonomous fleets, running company finances and reshaping how we book spaces and experiences. Thank you to CMS for hosting us through CMS equIP for Start-ups, and to everyone who joined. See the highlights here.
Community
An evening with our founders
Last month, we brought our founders together for an evening in two parts.
First, a roundtable for founders building in health, led by Venture Partner Tony de Fougerolles, Moderna's founding CSO, covering routes to market, shared experience and time with people who have done it before.
Then the rest of our founder community joined us for the Ascension Summer Gathering: drinks and catching up across fintech, health and climate. Thank you to Price Forbes for sponsoring, and to everyone who came.
Community is essential to all we do at Ascension and getting to celebrate it is something we always treasure. See the highlights here.
From the team
What we've been up to
Jean in Barcelona with Norrsken VC. Last week, Jean joined Norrsken VC's impact event in Barcelona: a day of talks and insight from across the impact world. Excitingly, two of our portfolio companies were also on the wall at Norrsken House: Epoch Biodesign and MiAlgae, both part of this year's Norrsken100.
Fintech is uncool again. Good. In her Substack debut, Partner Emma Steele argues that fintech's funding slump is exactly why now is the moment: less competition, cheaper early-stage entry prices, and room for new infrastructure, from AI-driven payments to banks training their own models.
Freya takes Fundamentals on tour. Freya Wordsworth took Episode 6 of Fundamentals to Turing Fest in Edinburgh, joined by Fred Destin (Stride.VC) and Laura McGinnis (Singular) for a candid conversation on getting into venture and becoming a Partner. The verdict: underneath the jargon, it comes down to being human with founders.
Portfolio
Sprive at the London Stock Exchange
Jean, Emma and Iulia at the London Stock Exchange with Sprive. We led Sprive's seed round last year. Recently, the three joined founders Jinesh Vohra and Saad Hashim, alongside fellow investors Velocity Capital, at the LSE to mark the company's Series A.
Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment, and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong.