Episode 1
VC Fund
London, United Kingdom
Episode 1 is a VC fund in London focused on Software and Artificial Intelligence. Episode1 Ventures is a London based venture capital fund set up to invest in early-stage technology companies based in the UK. It was created with a mixture of public and private money, including backing from a number of entrepreneurs including Alex Chesterman of Zoopla Property Group. It is one of the UK Government's Enterprise Capital Funds – set up to support fund managers who invest in small, high-growth businesses. The £12.5 million of private investment was matched with £25 million of public money. Episode 1 Ventures invests in seed and Series A rounds of up to £2m in software-driven businesses with the potential to transform industries. They’ve been entrepreneurs theirselves so provide a frank and fast approach to investing and they like to play a very hands-on supportive role in growing the businesses they back. They look for entrepreneurs with relevant experience ambitious to change their sector. They like to see that they can hire world-class talent and delegate to them effectively, and that they really know the customers and understand the problem. They also like entrepreneurs that are data-driven. But above all they like people with passion and ambition, that can execute at speed and overcome significant hurdles along the way. They are building a portfolio of companies that are using software technology to disrupt their chosen marketplaces. It is a diverse group across a range of industries, but with two common themes – a great founder and a big market. They also like to invest once a company has launched their product and has some clients they can reference. Revenues are usually from zero to £50k per month when they first invest. They like to play an active role in helping the companies that they invest in, at least until their companies have secured one or more later financing rounds. They want to help entrepreneurs turn their early stage ventures into fast growing companies built to grow into significant and valuable entities. They see every investment as a partnership. Indeed, they share their office with a number of portfolio companies so they work very closely with them.
- Total investments:
- 185
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 41%
- Fund size:
- $96M
- Last fund:
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Episode 1 invests in
Stages Episode 1 invests in
Countries Episode 1 invests in
Round sizes
Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
| See all 6 contacts → | |||
Round size
- Seed
- $951k–$5M
- Pre-Seed
- $1M–$4M
- Series A
- $3.2M–$18M
Investment Focus
Industry
- Software 27 (15%)
- Artificial Intelligence 25 (14%)
- SaaS 14 (8%)
- Machine Learning 14 (8%)
- Analytics 9 (5%)
Stage
- Seed 65 (35%)
- Series A 26 (14%)
- Pre-Seed 20 (11%)
- Series B 8 (4%)
- Funding Round 5 (3%)
Country
- United Kingdom 60 (32%)
- United States 8 (4%)
- Germany 3 (2%)
- Ireland 2 (1%)
- Lithuania 1 (1%)
Team
| Name | Title | Investments | Links | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Simon Murdoch
Managing Partner
|
Managing Partner | Total investments: 133 | Find email | |
Adrian Lloyd
Partner
|
Partner | Total investments: 26 | Find email | |
Damien Lane
Co-Founder & Partner
|
Co-Founder & Partner | Total investments: 39 | Find email | |
Hector Mason
Partner
|
Partner | Total investments: 5 | Find email | |
Leah Martin
Marketing, Communications & Events Manager
|
Marketing, Communications & Events Manager | Total investments: 0 | Find email | |
| See all 6 team members → | ||||
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mantic is a Digital Transformation Service Provider. | $25M / Seed / Sep 18, 2026 | ||
| Veridue uses AI to automate M&A due diligence and project finance for renewable energy. | $4M / Pre-Seed / Sep 08, 2026 | ||
| Ossprey Security is a British cybersecurity company that detects malicious open-source packages in npm and PyPI using AI-powered behavioural analysis. Unlike signature-based scanners, Ossprey analyses what packages do at runtime to catch novel threats before they reach production. A graduate of both the Cyber Runway Launch and Grow programmes,Ossprey is working with copmanies across UK and European fintech, crypto, and technology companies to establish the standard for open-source dependency security.Engineering teams depend on open-source software at scale, and the supply chain attacks targeting those ecosystems are accelerating faster than traditional defences can track. Ossprey's just-in-time AI scanning pipeline catches malicious packages in real time, without relying on databases of known threats.The platform is API-first, with integrations across the CLI, CI/CD pipeline, AI security coding apps, IDEs, SCA, and a security dashboard, giving teams visibility at the point of dependency resolution rather than after a compromise has occurred. Ossprey has detected confirmed real-world campaigns including Shai-Hulud, Bitwarden CLI breach, and the Telnyx PyPI compromise. | $2.7M / Pre-Seed / Jul 22, 2026 | ||
| Record OS is an AI-powered accounting and tax platform built specifically to streamline the UK Self Assessment and Making Tax Digital (MTD) workflow | $2M / Pre-Seed / Jun 10, 2026 | ||
| Poindexter Labs designs Olympiad-grade STEM datasets, stepwise reasoning annotations, and secure evaluation architectures for advanced AI models. The company focuses on multi-step reasoning in mathematics, physics, and computer science, providing fully worked solutions, proofs, and counter-examples. Its contributor network of academic professionalsand Olympiad alumni generates tasks whose solutions are decomposed into verifiable steps with tagged dependencies and error types. Outputs are delivered in structured formats such as LaTeX, JSON, and Parquet to integrate into post-training workflows and reinforcement learning loops with verifiable rewards. Poindexter Labs also develops internal benchmarks, grading rubrics, and fine-tuning curricula for technology organizations, data annotation platforms, and online platforms that train and evaluate large language models. | $2.7M / Seed / Jun 02, 2026 | ||
| RevEng.AI is a cyber security and artificial intelligence company that helps organizations understand their cyber security supply chain. RevEng.ai identifies fundamental components of closed-source program binaries and generates real-valued vector embeddings for each component. | $15M / Series A / May 27, 2026 | ||
| Bubble Robotics, a company focused on building advanced underwater robots. Their mission is to create autonomous ocean robotics for scalable subsea data collection to improve offshore efficiency and marine resource stewardship. By combining advanced resident robotics, seamless autonomy, and AI-powered analytics, they aim to revolutionize oceanexploration and operations, making the oceans safer, smarter, and more sustainable. | $5.3M / Pre-Seed / Apr 20, 2026 | ||
| Sable Bio employs artificial intelligence to analyze large amounts of biomedical data to test possible drugs for toxicity. The data is then sent to drug developers to help them make safety judgments. | $3.8M / Seed / Feb 11, 2026 | ||
| Refute identifies and addresses misinformation on behalf of there businesses. | $6.8M / Seed / Feb 03, 2026 | ||
| Jack & Jill AI is the creator of an AI-powered recruiting tool that aims to automate the job search process. It provides job offers and interview assessments, allowing users to locate jobs without the inconvenience caused by traditional techniques. | $20M / Seed / Oct 16, 2025 | ||
| See all 185 investments → | |||
Co-Investors
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FAQ
What does Episode 1 invest in?
Episode 1 invests primarily in Software, Artificial Intelligence and SaaS startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 185 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United Kingdom. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
What round sizes does Episode 1 invest in?
Episode 1 typically joins rounds of $951k–$5M at Seed, $1M–$4M at Pre-Seed and $3.2M–$18M at Series A. These are whole funding-round sizes, not Episode 1's own check, which is rarely disclosed: the 10th–90th percentile of the confirmed public funding rounds Episode 1 took part in.
How do I contact Episode 1?
Public channels for Episode 1 include LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and the website linked on this profile. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.
Who are the partners at Episode 1?
The team at Episode 1 includes Simon Murdoch (Managing Partner), Adrian Lloyd (Partner) and Damien Lane (Co-Founder & Partner), among 6 team members tracked by Shizune. The Team section lists each member with their title, investment count and links.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Oct 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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