First all-female GP team secures £45m British Business Bank ECF mandate, medtech portfolio now in US
THENA Capital has closed its inaugural £45 million fund, becoming the first all-female General Partner-led fund to secure backing from the British Business Bank’s Enterprise Capital Funds (ECF) programme. The milestone marks a structural shift in a UK venture landscape where female-only founded teams still account for just 6 per cent of the market.
Fund close and ECF backing
The London-based venture capital firm closed Fund I at £45 million, following a first close of £27 million in March 2025. The fund is now fully closed and anchored by the British Business Bank’s ECF programme, which was established in 2006 to address the equity gap by combining public and private money to back early-stage, high-potential UK companies. The British Business Bank is the largest domestic backer of venture capital funds in the UK and has committed £1.06 billion of capital through the ECF programme as of March 2022, matched by £0.77 billion of private sector capital.
“THENA Capital’s successful final close and strong pace of early deployment demonstrate the value of specialist investors with deep sector expertise and clear commercial focus. Through the Enterprise Capital Funds programme, we aim to support teams like THENA that are addressing structural gaps in the UK’s equity ecosystem,” said Mark Sims, managing director and head of development equity funds at the British Business Bank. “As a founding signatory of the Investing in Women Code, we are pleased to continue our partnership with an all-female investment team who have also signed the Code.”
Five companies in twelve months
In its first year, Fund I has already deployed capital into five UK medtech companies across three verticals: patient support, care delivery, and medical products. Plexāā launched its first product, BLOOM⁴³, in the US market and began a development collaboration with the Mayo Clinic, which also joined the company’s cap table. Salient Bio received UK CE-marked IVD status from the MHRA for its IBD diagnostic test — formal regulatory validation that is rare for a seed-stage company. Sanome closed its seed round with co-investment from THENA’s own LP base. Heim Health was selected for the 2026 NHS Innovation Accelerator cohort, one of the most competitive early commercialisation programmes in UK health innovation. Zonova completed its investment with THENA Capital as the lead investor.
Having the right investor at seed stage matters operationally, as both portfolio company leaders noted. “Having THENA Capital on our cap table has been invaluable. The diversity of backgrounds and expertise across their team means we benefit from a wealth of perspectives — from opening doors to health systems and the broader US ecosystem, to helping us think creatively and bringing insights that have shaped how we approach scaling from the UK into the US market,” said Saahil Mehta, founder and CEO of Plexāā. Verity Baldry, chair of Zonova, added: “At the start of this fundraiser, Zonova’s greatest desire was to attract backing from investors who really ‘got’ what the company and its mission are about. THENA Capital is a dream ticket, amplified by a group of amazing investors who bring so much to the company.”
Founders Dr Pamela Walker Geddes, Esther Reynal de Saint-Michel and Tatum Yount Getty launched THENA Capital in 2021 with a specific thesis: the UK produces world-class medtech science but lacks the commercially minded, transatlantically connected capital needed to scale those innovations to patients. Their strategy is to originate investments at UK seed valuations and build portfolio companies toward US institutional entry at Series A and beyond. “Origination at THENA starts with a very specific question: where is exceptional UK MedTech innovation being undercapitalised relative to its clinical and commercial potential?” said Reynal de Saint-Michel. Fund I targets approximately 25 companies, investing between £500,000 and £1 million in seed-stage digital health platforms and fast-track medical devices with a proven pathway from UK origination to US-scale commercialisation.
The founders bring deep sector experience. Dr Walker Geddes has worked with Pfizer, Roche, Novartis, Abbott, Sanofi, Bayer, Boston Scientific, Medtronic and GE Healthcare, and sits on the Investment Committee of Jesus College at the University of Oxford. Reynal de Saint-Michel is a McKinsey-trained commercial strategist with partnerships including GlaxoSmithKline, Reckitt, Unilever and Johnson & Johnson. Tatum Yount Getty scaled consumer health brands SoulCycle, Tonal and Barry’s, with commercial partnerships including Nike, Spotify and Fitbit, and serves on the Board of Trustees of the Tate Foundation.
LP base built with operational intent
The £45 million fund was assembled with unusual intentionality. Over 50 per cent of the limited partners are women. The investor base includes Baroness Martha Lane Fox, co-founder of Lastminute.com; Mirjam Staub-Bisang, chair and senior advisor at BlackRock Switzerland; and Patrick Healy, CEO of Hellman & Friedman. Senior pharma executives from GSK, Novartis and AstraZeneca sit alongside professionals from Carlyle, TA Associates, Vista Equity and GHO Capital, Europe’s leading specialist healthcare fund. Family offices Firebird Collective and This Day Foundation are also committed.
That composition delivers more than capital. Pharma and private equity LPs provide direct exit intelligence, informal M&A pathway access and the sector credibility that portfolio companies inherit from their first board meeting onward. Before raising the fund, the founding team spent four years building the Future of HealthTech Hub — a community of more than 400 members spanning founders, clinicians, payers, providers, pharma executives and healthcare investors — alongside a Fellows Network of over 50 industry experts in the UK and US. More than 20 transatlantic events have been hosted to date, creating an origination advantage that compounds with every fund cycle.
The UK digital health market is projected to reach $7.45 billion by 2030, growing at a compound annual rate of 6.97 per cent, according to Statista. Against that backdrop, the significance of an all-female GP team closing a £45 million ECF-backed fund is a structural milestone — particularly when female-only founded teams make up just 6 per cent of the venture capital market and the amount they raise has stagnated since 2016, as the Investing in Women Code report notes that venture capital signatories outperform the equity market in supporting female founders.
“The UK MedTech ecosystem has never lacked talent or ambition. What it has historically lacked is the kind of commercially-minded, transatlantically-connected capital that THENA provides. Fund I closing at £45 million, in a difficult fundraising environment, and deploying into five companies in its first year is a statement about both the quality of this team and the scale of the opportunity they are addressing,” said Andrea Ponti, co-founder of GHO Capital and an LP in THENA Capital.
