STATE-BACKED investor British Patient Capital and founder of troubled car firm Cazoo have backed a £76m injection into a London-based venture capital firm as it gears up for a spate of AI investment in the coming months.

Episode 1, a London-based earlystage tech investor, announced this morning it had closed the £76m fund with £20m backing from British Patient Capital, the longterm investment arm of the stateowned British Business Bank. Listed VC firm Molten and founder of Cazoo Alex Chesterman are backers.

Launched in 2013, Episode 1 has backed over 69 firms to date, including car marketplace Carwow, legal AI firm Robin AI and talent start-up Omnipresent.

The firm said it was now looking to make investments between £250,000 and £3m in pre-seed and seed stage startups in the coming months with a focus on areas like AI, software infrastructure and health tech.

General partner of Episode 1 Hector Mason, told City A.M. the firm was looking to take a "picks and shovels" approach to backing the technology rather than investing in consumer products with "thin use cases".

(c) 2024 City A.M., source Newspaper