DIG Ventures closes £90m fund to back UK AI infrastructure startups
This article covers DIG Ventures, a venture capital firm, closing a £90m Fund III to back early-stage European startups building the underlying software infrastructure for the AI era. The fund aims to support roughly 30 pre-seed and seed companies working on data, identity, compliance and orchestration layers that other AI businesses will rely on as the technology scales.
DIG Ventures has closed a £90m Fund III to back early-stage European startups building the underlying software infrastructure for the AI era. The firm says the fund will back roughly 30 pre-seed and seed companies working on data, identity, compliance and orchestration layers — areas that other AI businesses will rely on as the technology scales — and intends to lead most rounds while already deploying capital.
Why it matters
AI is lowering the cost of producing software, which changes where durable value concentrates. DIG Ventures’ thesis is that the long-term winners will be the companies that control the platforms and plumbing other software runs on — the identity systems, data fabrics, compliance tooling and orchestration layers that sit beneath AI applications.
The new £90m vehicle signals a continued shift in venture capital toward specialised bets on infrastructure rather than surface-level AI features, and it arrives as European founders still wrestle with converting technical innovation into global distribution.
Inside the portfolio
DIG points to Fund II as evidence that its strategy can scale. According to the firm’s internal data, 80% of Fund II companies raised further institutional capital within two years of DIG’s investment, and more than 90% of commercially launched Fund II companies entered the US market within 12 months.
Notable portfolio companies include:
- Dash0, an AI-native observability platform that reached a $1bn valuation after a $110m Series B.
- Taktile, which recently raised a $110m Series C led by Goldman Sachs.
- CUBE, an AI-powered regulatory technology provider used by over 30 global financial institutions.
- Jack & Jill, an AI HR platform.
- Nexos.ai, an AI orchestration platform.
DIG says Fund II — its first institutional vehicle — ranks in the top decile globally for its vintage and size on Carta TVPI and IRR metrics.
Who’s behind the fund
DIG Ventures was founded in 2018 and is led by Ross Mason, Melissa Klinger and Rytis Vitkauskas. Mason founded MuleSoft, which Salesforce acquired for $6.5bn. Klinger was the UK sales lead at MuleSoft. Vitkauskas founded events app YPlan and was previously a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. The team presents itself as operator-led, emphasising hands-on support for go-to-market and US expansion.
Our conviction as a fund is clear: as development accelerates and differentiation erodes, the truly scalable, defensible companies will be the ones building the foundations on which wider enterprise software depends. These are the companies whose advantages compound as the cost of building software falls. In Europe, we are seeing huge waves of innovation on this frontier - the continent is not short of technical talent. But the challenge is turning technical advantage into global distribution. Having built and sold enterprise software globally, our operator-led team knows what it takes to cross that gap. We built DIG to help founders do exactly that. We guide our startups from day zero through to their first US customers, and beyond. With Fund III, we’ll steer a further generation of founders towards global growth. Ross Mason, Founding partner at DIG Ventures
LP base and signals
Fund III’s limited partners include institutional names such as Horsley Bridge, Sofina and Granite, a leading US university endowment fund, and a number of entrepreneur LPs: founders behind Slack, Datadog, Nord Security, Cast AI, Supercell and Dash0. That mix combines traditional institutional capital with experienced founders who can provide domain and distribution expertise.
DIG says it will lead the majority of rounds from Fund III and has already begun deploying capital.
Founder perspective
Seed-stage founders often look for more than checks. DIG leans on its operator experience to offer product and GTM support, and at least one portfolio founder credits that help with rapid global scaling.
I don't think there is another VC in Europe that offers true partnership the way that DIG does. They think like founders, are deeply connected in the enterprise fabric globally, and never waiver from their conviction. Ross, Rytis and Melissa believed in Dash0 before we had much more than an idea. They brought a level of depth and experience that proved instrumental as we built a foundational technology, enabling us to get product decisions right and scale globally at a crazy pace. Mirko Novakovic, CEO at Dash0
How it fits the market
Specialist funds focused on infrastructure are becoming more common as AI proliferates. For enterprise buyers and startup builders, the distinction between application and infrastructure matters: commoditised app layers can be reproduced quickly, while control points such as identity, regulated-data pipelines and orchestration frameworks are harder to displace.
Europe has technical depth, but scaling to the US market and achieving global distribution remains a recurring hurdle. DIG’s playbook — lead rounds, provide operator support, push for early US customers — is explicitly designed to address that gap.
What this means for the ecosystem
A £90m vehicle focused on AI-native infrastructure adds capital and attention to the less visible layers of the AI stack. If DIG’s past performance is any guide, the new fund could accelerate a wave of European companies that aim not just to build AI features, but to supply the foundations those features depend on — a shift with implications for enterprise adoption, cross-border growth and the types of startups that attract follow-on capital.
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