--- url: 'https://qubit.capital/blog/uk-series-b-plus-weekly-funding-roundup-week-3-may-2026' title: 'UK Series B+ Weekly Funding Roundup (May 9-16, 2026): $2.25B Raised Across 3 Deals' author: name: Vaibhav Totuka url: 'https://qubit.capital/blog/author/vaibhav-totuka' date: '2026-05-16T05:30:02+05:30' modified: '2026-05-15T13:54:28+05:30' type: post summary: 'UK Series B+ rounds totaled $2.25B this week, led by Isomorphic Labs'' $2.1B AI drug design raise, Elliptic''s $120M Series D, and Iceotope''s $26M.' categories: - Weekly Funding Roundup image: 'https://qubit.capital/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/featured-uk-series-bplus-66906.webp' published: true --- # UK Series B+ Weekly Funding Roundup (May 9-16, 2026): $2.25B Raised Across 3 Deals UK late-stage funding had one of its biggest weeks of 2026. Three Series B+ rounds closed between May 8 and May 15, pulling in a combined $2.25 billion. The headline number is misleading on its own — a single deal, Isomorphic Labs’ $2.1B Series B, accounts for 93% of the total. The other two rounds tell a quieter story about where UK capital is flowing right now. Elliptic’s $120M Series D extends London’s lead in crypto compliance infrastructure, a category gaining urgency as MiCA and the GENIUS Act take effect. Iceotope’s $26M Series B points to the data center power crunch, with liquid cooling moving from niche to necessary as AI workloads multiply. Healthtech, cybersecurity, and climate hardware — three different theses, all funded in the same week. Weekly Funding Roundup MAY 8-15, 2026 $2.2B TOTAL RAISED 3DEALS CLOSED MixedSTAGE $749MAVG DEAL SIZE UKTOP REGION BY STAGE Series B+$2.1B93% Series D$120M5% Series B$26M1% BY SECTOR Isomorphic LabsHealthtech / AI drug discovery$2.1B EllipticCybersecurity / crypto compliance$120M IceotopeClimate / data center infrastructure$26M Table of Contents - [1. Isomorphic Labs Raises $2.1B For AI Drug Design](#1-isomorphic-labs-raises-$2-1b-for-ai-drug-design) [Deal Overview](#deal-overview) - [Investor Profile](#investor-profile) - [Company and Leadership](#company-and-leadership) - [Problem and Opportunity](#problem-and-opportunity) - [Product and Technology](#product-and-technology) - [Use of Proceeds and Vision](#use-of-proceeds-and-vision) - [Market Context](#market-context) - [2. Elliptic Closes $120M Series D At $670M Valuation](#2-elliptic-closes-$120m-series-d-at-$670m-valuation) [Deal Overview](#deal-overview-1) - [Investor Profile](#investor-profile-1) - [Company and Leadership](#company-and-leadership-1) - [Problem and Opportunity](#problem-and-opportunity-1) - [Product and Technology](#product-and-technology-1) - [Use of Proceeds and Vision](#use-of-proceeds-and-vision-1) - [Market Context](#market-context-1) - [3. Iceotope Group Raises $26M Series B For Liquid Cooling](#3-iceotope-group-raises-$26m-series-b-for-liquid-cooling) [Deal Overview](#deal-overview-2) - [Investor Profile](#investor-profile-2) - [Company and Leadership](#company-and-leadership-2) - [Problem and Opportunity](#problem-and-opportunity-2) - [Product and Technology](#product-and-technology-2) - [Use of Proceeds and Vision](#use-of-proceeds-and-vision-2) - [Market Context](#market-context-2) - [Lessons For Founders](#lessons-for-founders) ## 1. Isomorphic Labs Raises $2.1B For AI Drug Design ### Deal Overview - Stage: Series B+ - Sector: Healthtech / AI drug discovery - Geography: London, United Kingdom - Round size: $2.1B - Lead investor: Thrive Capital ### Investor Profile Thrive Capital led the round, returning after backing the company’s $600M raise in 2025. Alphabet, GV, CapitalG, MGX, Temasek, and the UK Sovereign AI Fund joined. The UK fund’s participation matters: it signals that [Isomorphic Labs](https://www.isomorphiclabs.com) is now treated as national-strategic infrastructure, not just a private bet. The investor mix combines a top-tier US growth fund, sovereign capital from the Gulf and Singapore, and Alphabet’s continued anchor support. That’s a setup designed for a long runway and an eventual public listing. ### Company and Leadership Isomorphic was spun out of DeepMind in 2021 and is led by Demis Hassabis, who continues to run DeepMind alongside it. The team has unusual depth in machine learning, structural biology, and computational chemistry, with talent pulled from both DeepMind and big pharma. Headquarters sit in King’s Cross, London, with a growing US footprint to support clinical operations. ### Problem and Opportunity Drug discovery still costs roughly $2 billion per approved molecule and takes more than a decade. Most failures happen because target selection, molecule design, and ADMET prediction rely on empirical screening rather than first-principles modeling. If AI can compress design cycles and raise the hit rate even modestly, the economics shift dramatically. That’s the bet here. ### Product and Technology The company runs an AI-first drug design engine built on AlphaFold 3 and generative chemistry models. The platform handles structural prediction, de novo molecule design, and ADMET forecasting in a single closed-loop system. Internal programs in oncology and immunology run alongside partnerships with Novartis and Eli Lilly worth roughly $3 billion in committed milestones. The data moat comes from privileged access to DeepMind models plus proprietary chemistry and assay datasets generated in-house. ### Use of Proceeds and Vision Funds will scale the design engine, move the first wholly-owned candidates into clinical trials, expand compute, and grow wet-lab capacity in London and the US. Hassabis frames the long-term goal as solving disease through computational engineering rather than empirical screening. The $2.1B gives the company enough runway to reach clinical readouts on its own pipeline, the milestone that will validate or refute the thesis. ### Market Context Global drug discovery is roughly an $80B market, with AI-in-drug-discovery forecasts above $20B by 2030. Recursion, Insitro, Genesis Therapeutics, Xaira, and Iambic are all chasing similar territory. Isomorphic’s advantage is foundation-model depth — none of its competitors have AlphaFold-grade structural prediction built in. ## 2. Elliptic Closes $120M Series D At $670M Valuation ### Deal Overview - Stage: Series D - Sector: Cybersecurity / crypto compliance - Geography: London, United Kingdom - Round size: $120M - Valuation: ~$670M - Lead investor: One Peak ### Investor Profile One Peak led the round, with Nasdaq Ventures, Deutsche Bank, and the British Business Bank participating. The presence of a major exchange and a tier-1 bank as direct investors says something about distribution: these are the exact institutions Elliptic sells to. The British Business Bank’s involvement also keeps the company anchored in the UK at a moment when many late-stage London firms have moved cap tables to the US. ### Company and Leadership [Elliptic](https://elliptic.co) was founded in 2013 by James Smith, Tom Robinson, and Adam Joyce. Total funding now sits above $240M, with prior backers including SBI, Evolution Equity, AlbionVC, Octopus, and SoftBank. The founding team has stayed intact for over a decade, which is rare in fintech and reflects in the depth of the company’s attribution database. ### Problem and Opportunity Stablecoin regulation is no longer hypothetical. The GENIUS Act in the US and MiCA in Europe both impose compliance requirements that banks and exchanges can’t meet without on-chain analytics. Manual investigation doesn’t scale to billions of addresses across 50+ chains. Every regulated institution touching crypto now needs a vendor like Elliptic. The question is which vendor wins. ### Product and Technology The platform covers wallet screening (Lens), transaction monitoring (Navigator), forensics (Investigator), and entity attribution (Discovery, which now covers over 500 billion addresses). The moat is the entity dataset itself, built over 12 years of attribution research. Combined with relationships at the FBI, NCA, Europol, and tier-1 banks, that’s hard for newer entrants to replicate quickly. ### Use of Proceeds and Vision Capital goes toward stablecoin issuer compliance products, US enterprise sales expansion, and AI-driven investigation tooling. The framing is Bloomberg or Refinitiv for on-chain risk data. Becoming the default reference dataset is the right ambition. It’s also where the competitive fight with Chainalysis and TRM Labs will play out. ### Market Context The crypto compliance market sits at roughly $2B and is growing fast. Chainalysis is the largest competitor by revenue, with TRM Labs, Crystal Blockchain, and Merkle Science behind. Elliptic’s $670M valuation is below Chainalysis’s last private mark, which leaves room for upside if stablecoin compliance becomes a forced purchase for every regulated issuer. ## 3. Iceotope Group Raises $26M Series B For Liquid Cooling ### Deal Overview - Stage: Series B - Sector: Climate / data center infrastructure - Geography: Sheffield, United Kingdom - Round size: $26M - Investors: Two Seas Capital, Barclays Climate Ventures ### Investor Profile Two Seas Capital and Barclays Climate Ventures backed the round. Barclays Climate Ventures has been deploying steadily into industrial decarbonization, and data center cooling fits that thesis cleanly — every watt saved at the rack level compounds across hyperscale deployments. Two Seas brings a growth-stage industrial investing track record that suits a hardware company moving from pilots to production. ### Company and Leadership [Iceotope](https://www.iceotope.com) has been working on precision liquid cooling for over a decade out of Sheffield, with a UK engineering core and growing commercial operations in the US and Asia. The company has shipped systems with major OEMs and hyperscale partners, giving it a credibility edge over newer entrants pitching theoretical performance. ### Problem and Opportunity AI training and inference workloads are pushing rack densities past what air cooling can handle. Power draw per rack has climbed from 10 kW a few years ago to 100 kW and beyond for GPU-heavy deployments. Air cooling can’t keep up. Operators either move to liquid or build new facilities, and new facilities take years that hyperscalers don’t have. ### Product and Technology Iceotope’s precision immersion cooling delivers dielectric fluid directly to chip-level hot spots inside sealed chassis. That avoids the open-bath drawbacks of full immersion while capturing most of the thermal efficiency gain. The system works with standard server form factors, which lowers the integration burden for operators rolling it into existing facilities. ### Use of Proceeds and Vision Funds go toward manufacturing scale, channel partnerships with OEMs and colocation operators, and continued R&D on edge and telco deployments where space and power constraints are tighter than hyperscale. The longer arc is making liquid cooling the default rather than a specialty option, particularly as sustainability targets force operators to cut PUE. ### Market Context The data center liquid cooling market is forecast to grow above $20B by 2030, driven almost entirely by AI workload economics. Competitors include Submer, GRC, LiquidStack, and Asperitas, plus integrated efforts from Vertiv and Schneider Electric. Iceotope’s chassis-level approach differentiates it from full-immersion players and gives it an easier sales motion into traditional enterprise data centers. ## Lessons For Founders - Sovereign capital is now a real funding source for AI-native UK companies. The UK Sovereign AI Fund’s check into Isomorphic shows the government is willing to back national champions directly, not just via grants. - Regulation creates timing. Elliptic’s raise lines up almost exactly with MiCA and GENIUS Act enforcement windows. If your product becomes mandatory because of a law that’s already passed, raise into that window. - Hardware companies need patient capital. Iceotope has been building for over a decade. Investors who understand industrial timelines (Barclays Climate Ventures, Two Seas) matter more than valuation at this stage. - Moats compound with time. Elliptic’s 12-year attribution dataset and Isomorphic’s DeepMind lineage are both effectively impossible to replicate from a standing start. If you’re early in a category, every year of data collection is a year of moat. - One mega-round can distort a market view. Strip out Isomorphic and the week looks ordinary. Always read funding totals alongside deal counts, not in isolation.