The British Business Bank has agreed to commit up to £46m to Zinc Capital Management's second institutional vehicle, the Science-for-Impact Fund, through its Enterprise Capital Funds programme. The fund is targeting £70m and aims to build a portfolio of 80 new deeptech companies.
Zinc was founded in 2017 as a pre-seed firm that both writes first cheques and builds companies from scratch, focusing on scientific founders working on health and environmental problems. Its model places it at the earliest point on the cap table, typically before a priced round exists.
The commitment, disclosed on 2 September, is the state-backed lender's second into the manager, following its 2022 backing of Zinc II. It arrives through the Enterprise Capital Funds programme, the Bank's long-running structure for supporting emerging and sub-scale managers whose fund sizes fall below the threshold most institutional limited partners will consider.
At up to £46m against a £70m target, the Bank would account for roughly two-thirds of the vehicle, leaving Zinc to raise the balance from private limited partners. The commitment is stated as an upper limit rather than a drawn amount, and the fund's final close size has not been disclosed.
Spread across a target of 80 companies, a £70m fund implies average exposure of under £900,000 per name including follow-on reserves — consistent with a first-cheque strategy that buys minority positions and expects heavy dilution through subsequent rounds.
Zinc's existing portfolio includes SignaCor, working on first-in-class therapeutics for heart disease; Epiome, an AI biomarker platform for neurodegenerative disease; Speek, a digital clinical care platform; Spine, an operating system for grid-scale battery assets; and CellMine, a waste-free lithium-ion battery recycling process.
Mark Sims, managing director and head of development equity funds at the British Business Bank, said breakthrough businesses need support from the earliest stages to realise their potential, and pointed to Zinc's record of backing founders working on health and environmental challenges.
Zinc co-founder and managing partner Ella Goldner said the UK produces world-class scientific talent but that too many breakthrough discoveries never become companies.
The manager frames the fund's strategy as aligned with government industrial strategy priorities across advanced manufacturing, clean energy, life sciences, engineering biology and AI.
The commitment lands against a tightening UK seed market, in which first-cheque capital has become scarcer and state-backed limited partners are carrying a growing share of the burden at the earliest stages of the funding chain.
Original source: EU-Startups — https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/09/british-business-bank-commits-e53-6-million-to-zincs-e81-5-million-science-for-impact-fund/
