Evertrue closes £13m fund to back UK frontier AI pre-seed startups
This article covers Evertrue Capital, a venture capital firm, closing its oversubscribed £13m debut fund. The fund will target pre-seed AI and frontier-technology startups across the UK and Europe, making concentrated early investments and providing hands-on support to founders.
Yvonne Bajela has closed Evertrue Capital’s oversubscribed £13m debut fund, targeting pre-seed AI and frontier-technology startups across the UK and Europe. The fund will make concentrated early bets, leading and co-investing in a small number of companies each year and offering hands-on support as well as capital — a model that stands out at a time when first-time funds and solo general partners are finding fundraising harder.
Why it matters
Evertrue’s £13m close matters for two reasons. First, the size and oversubscription of the debut raise bucks a wider trend: 67% of new VC funds launched in 2024 targeted under £7.5m. Second, the fund is explicitly focused on frontier AI and deep domain expertise — backing founders who “understand a problem deeply” and can build before the market has proof. That approach aims to find opportunities that conventional screening methods might miss.
Who’s behind the fund
Evertrue Capital is led by Yvonne Bajela, an investor with more than a decade of experience across Europe, Asia and Africa. Bajela’s CV includes early bets on Wise, a seed check for Marshmallow and backing Moove. Her career began at Goldman Sachs, followed by founding her own company and then a stint at Mitsui & Co., where she became one of its youngest investment managers and worked across Japan and EMEA. She was a founding member and Principal at Impact X Capital and later a Partner at Phoenix Court.
Yvonne Bajela, Founder & General Partner at Evertrue Capital, said:
Over the past decade, I've backed founders who went on to build billion-dollar companies, and almost none of them looked obvious at the start. The ones I'm drawn to understand a problem deeply, often from lived experience, and have the conviction and discipline to build around it. They don't always fit a familiar pattern, but their insight gives them an edge others can't yet see. The best moment to invest is before the market has proof. That belief has shaped Evertrue. We make concentrated, early bets and give founders the capital, access and support to build companies of consequence.
The fund attracted institutional backers including Phoenix Court via Basecamp, its fund of funds vehicle for emerging managers, as well as the British Business Bank, Better Society Capital, Bootstrap 4F (Invest in Women Taskforce) and Allocator One. Founders, operators and other GPs from Bajela’s network have also invested and will provide practical support to portfolio companies.
Inside the portfolio
Evertrue has already deployed capital into seven companies. Notable examples illustrate the fund’s thesis:
- Revion — a YC-backed startup building agentic AI for the automotive sector; half the fund’s portfolio has already launched operations in the US, and Revion exemplifies that transatlantic push.
- Poindexter Labs — described as an AI capability and efficiency lab, focused on tooling and processes that help enterprises adopt machine learning more effectively.
- Zuba — a fintech building infrastructure for global businesses, aiming to make cross-border financial operations smoother.
- Zaro — positioning itself as a shared knowledge layer for enterprises, addressing internal data and collaboration challenges.
Two portfolio founders commented on early support from Bajela.
Zaki Gabe-Wilkinson, Co-founder at Revion, said:
Yvonne was our first cheque and backed us from day zero. Her conviction in us as founders was clear from the start and she immediately got to work, helping us find top talent and opening doors across the UK and US to industry leaders and investors ahead of our Seed round.
Jocelyn D'Arcy, Co-founder at Poindexter Labs, said:
Yvonne saw what we were building before it was easy to explain, back when training data was still an afterthought to most investors. That early belief gave us the confidence to go after the partnerships that mattered.
Evertrue also has investments still operating in stealth, consistent with its thesis of backing nascent, high-conviction ideas.
How Evertrue invests
The fund emphasises a low-volume, high-conviction approach: leading and co-investing at pre-seed and making a concentrated number of investments each year rather than pursuing a broad portfolio. Selection criteria stress lived experience and problem insight over conventional signals such as CV pedigree.
The involvement of institutional backers such as the British Business Bank and a fund-of-funds vehicle suggests growing institutional appetite for specialist emerging managers who can source differentiated deal flow in AI and other frontier technologies.
The bigger picture
Evertrue’s focus lines up with a broader pivot in the market: after several years of later-stage contraction and more cautious LPs, there is renewed interest in early-stage bets in AI and deep tech, where outsized returns are still possible from small initial checks. For solo GPs, raising a meaningful first fund has become tougher, so Evertrue’s oversubscribed £13m close is a notable data point.
What this means for the UK and European ecosystem
A debut fund of this size dedicated to frontier AI and domain-expert founders adds another channel of pre-seed capital in the UK and European markets. By backing founders early and offering operational support, Evertrue may help startups reach proof points that attract larger rounds — and that could be particularly valuable for founders whose insights are not immediately obvious to mainstream investors.
Click here for a full list of 7,589+ startup investors in the UK