Osney closes £60m fund to back UK cyber security startups
This article covers Osney Capital, a fund manager, which has closed its debut fund at £60m after an oversubscribed raise against an initial £50m target. The fund is positioned as the UK’s first specialist seed fund for cyber security and will back pre-seed and seed-stage startups with cheque sizes between £250,000 and £2.5m and a target portfolio of 30 companies.
Osney Capital has closed its debut fund at £60m, hitting its hard cap after an oversubscribed raise against an initial £50m target. The fund positions itself as the UK’s first specialist seed fund focused exclusively on cyber security, backing pre-seed and seed-stage startups with cheque sizes from £250,000 to £2.5m and a target portfolio of 30 companies. The raise is anchored by the British Business Bank through its Enterprise Capital Funds programme and is accredited by the National Security Strategic Investment Fund.
Why it matters
The UK is sharpening its focus on cyber security as both an economic sector and a matter of national resilience. A dedicated seed fund for cyber fills a gap in the market: generalist investors often lack the technical depth for early-stage security bets, while larger security venture funds tend to enter later. By concentrating on pre-seed and seed rounds, Osney aims to supply the kind of specialist capital and sector expertise that can help founders scale core security technology out of the UK.
A 2025 government report cited in the announcement puts the UK cyber security graduate pipeline growth at about 20% year-on-year, suggesting a steady flow of technical talent and potential founding teams for funds like Osney to back.
Who’s behind the fund
Osney’s Fund I is anchored by a cornerstone commitment from the British Business Bank’s Enterprise Capital Funds programme, and it has accreditation from NSSIF, the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund. Final-close investors include Imperial College London’s Endowment and Planet First Partners, with further commitments from exited UK cyber entrepreneurs and senior figures in the cyber and national security communities.
Those institutional and strategic backers give the fund both financial heft and an implicit validation from bodies with an interest in the UK’s cyber defence and commercial tech base.
Inside the portfolio
Since an initial close above £50m, Osney has completed seven investments. The companies provide a snapshot of the fund’s thematic focus and the kinds of problems it is betting on:
- Refute — a disinformation detection and response platform, addressing risks to media integrity and corporate reputation.
- Overmind — a reinforcement learning fine-tuning infrastructure platform, relevant where AI model tuning intersects with secure development.
- Ossprey — tooling to protect software supply chains from malware and malicious code in open-source libraries, a key area after recent supply chain incidents.
- Ploy — an agentic-powered identity governance and administration platform, tackling identity and access control challenges.
- Aisy — uses attacker-style reasoning to map vulnerabilities across live environments, simulating how adversaries think.
- Huntbase — enables defenders to proactively hunt for breaches at machine speed, sharpening incident detection capabilities.
- Aviel — a threat intelligence platform focused on online fraud activities, aimed at reducing economic harm from fraud.
Collectively, these bets illustrate Osney’s emphasis on tooling that helps defenders find and fix problems, hardens development pipelines, and secures AI and identity surfaces.
How it will invest
Osney’s cheque sizes sit between £250,000 and £2.5m, allowing it to lead or co-lead rounds at the early stages and follow into meaningful seed checks. The fund explicitly lists AI security, disinformation detection and software supply chain protection among its priority areas, reflecting where technical demand and market opportunity intersect today.
Targeting a 30-company portfolio, Osney’s model looks to provide early capital across a spread of niche security technologies while aiming to back future category leaders.
The bigger picture
Specialist seed funds are increasingly seen as a vital part of the European venture ecosystem, particularly for technically complex sectors such as cyber security. Institutional support from programmes like the British Business Bank’s ECF and NSSIF accreditation sends a signal that these investments are not purely commercial but also strategically relevant.
Closing a first fund oversubscribed to its hard cap in the current fundraising climate suggests investor appetite for early-stage cyber exposure. It also underscores a belief that the UK can be a source of global cyber vendors if given focused capital and expertise early in the company lifecycle.
What to watch next
Key indicators of Osney’s success will be how well its portfolio companies scale into revenue-bearing businesses, the fund’s ability to help founders win follow-on rounds, and whether any of its early bets become international category leaders. The interplay between NSSIF accreditation and commercial scaling will also be worth watching, as it may open doors for startups needing to navigate both market and national security considerations.
Osney Capital’s £60m close adds a dedicated pool of early-stage cyber capital to the UK market at a time of growing talent supply and strategic attention on cyber resilience. For founders and investors alike, a specialist seed vehicle focused on security could accelerate the formation of the next generation of UK cyber companies.
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