# Northern Gritstone

> Northern Gritstone is a VC fund in Leeds backing Software and Electronics. See 39 investments, check sizes, portfolio and contact details. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: VC Fund
- Location: Leeds, United Kingdom
- Total investments: 39
- Last investment: Jul 2026
- Lead investor: 64%
- Last fund: Jun 2025
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/northern-gritstone/
- X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/NorthGritstone
- Website: https://northern-gritstone.com/

Northern Gritstone is an investment firm focused on investing in advanced materials, energy, health technology and cognitive computation.

## Contacts

5 contacts available for Northern Gritstone. Shizune tracks 1 team members at Northern Gritstone. Sign up free to unlock them: https://app.shizune.co/sign-up/investor-profiles/find-team-emails/northern-gritstone?utm_source=investor_profile

## Round sizes

| Stage | Round size |
| --- | --- |
| Seed | $2.4M–$7M |
| Series A | $3M–$27M |
| Series D | $42M–$229M |

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Software | 6 | 15% |
| Electronics | 5 | 13% |
| Health Care | 5 | 13% |
| Biotechnology | 4 | 10% |
| Manufacturing | 4 | 10% |

49 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Seed | 16 | 41% |
| Series A | 6 | 15% |
| Series D | 2 | 5% |
| Funding Round | 2 | 5% |
| Pre-Seed | 1 | 3% |

6 stages tracked in total.

### Country

| Country | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| United Kingdom | 23 | 59% |
| Singapore | 1 | 3% |

## Team

| Name | Title | Investments | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Duncan Johnson | Chief Executive Officer | 31 | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/duncan-johnson-90e3 |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Pixel-Flo | Pixel-Flo is developing a fluidic self-assembly mass transfer process that uses a slot-die mechanism and meniscus forces to continuously position microLEDs onto substrates. This backplane-agnostic technology is designed to assemble red, green, and blue LEDs in a single step for mass-market display manufacturing. | $7M | Seed | Jul 09, 2026 |  |
| Silveray | Silveray develop affordable large-area direct conversion detectors for the X-ray imaging market. | $6.6M | Series A | Jun 17, 2026 |  |
| Iceotope | Iceotope develops liquid cooling technology for data centers, artificial intelligence infrastructure, and high-performance computing environments. The company designs precision liquid cooling systems that use dielectric fluids to manage heat generated by GPUs, CPUs, memory, storage, and power components within server infrastructure. Its platformreplaces or reduces dependence on traditional air cooling by using sealed liquid-based thermal management architectures for rack-scale and edge computing deployments. The company provides cooling solutions for AI workloads, hyperscale data centers, telecommunications infrastructure, industrial edge computing, and enterprise computing systems. Its product portfolio includes liquid-cooled server systems, rack infrastructure, thermal management platforms, and integrated cooling architectures compatible with existing data center environments.Iceotope also develops thermal management technologies focused on energy efficiency, heat reuse, and reduced water consumption in compute-intensive environments. The company collaborates with hardware manufacturers, semiconductor companies, and infrastructure providers to support the deployment of liquid-cooled computing systems for AI, analytics, and high-density computing applications. | $26M | Series B | May 14, 2026 |  |
| AmpliSi | AmpliSi focuses on sustainable porous silicon anodes for lithium-ion batteries, with the goal of replacing graphite to increase energy density. | $2.7M | Pre-Seed | Mar 12, 2026 |  |
| Cytotrait | Cytotrait focuses on the development of novel traits for food and agriculture. | $4M | Seed | Mar 09, 2026 |  |
| Optalysys | Optalysys solves the fundamental limitations of conventional computing. Optalysys develops optical AI systems that accelerate the demanding deep learning and pattern recognition tasks at groundbreaking speeds but at a fraction of the energy consumption of traditional computing hardware.Optalysys' embeddable technology will enablesupercomputing capability in Edge and mobile devices. | $30.9M | Series A | Jan 22, 2026 |  |
| IVFmicro | IVFmicro is a Microfluidic systems for delivering fertility treatment, and optimize methods for Assisted Reproduction Technologies. | $4.7M | Pre-Seed | Dec 15, 2025 |  |
| Sitehop | Sitehop is a technology company that develops cutting-edge cyber-security and networking solutions. Sitehop's custom FPGA solutions are used to optimize and accelerate cloud/telco networks. | $10M | Series A | Oct 09, 2025 |  |
| PhovIR Technologies | PhovIR Technologies is a deep-tech firm that specializes in miniaturized near-infrared (NIR) material analytics. | $5.4M | Seed | Aug 19, 2025 |  |
| AssetCool | AssetCool is a thermal metaphotonics company. It produces photonic coatings and materials that enhance the functionality of electrical networks. | $13.7M | Series A | Jul 03, 2025 |  |

10 of 39 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Empirical Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/empirical-ventures) — VC Fund, 5 deals together
- [ACF Investors](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/angel-cofund) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [IQ Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/iq-capital-partners) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [Octopus Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/octopus-ventures) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [Praetura Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/praetura-capital) — VC Fund, 4 deals together
- [Catapult Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/catapult-venture-managers) — VC Fund, 3 deals together

## Similar investors

### Similar industry
- [Chevron Technology Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/chevron-technology-ventures) — VC Fund
- [Evok Innovations](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/evok-innovations) — VC Fund
- [Scottish Enterprise](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/scottish-enterprise) — VC Fund

### Similar stage
- [Antler](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/antler-be9c) — VC Fund
- [Alumni Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/alumni-ventures-group) — VC Fund
- [Right Side Capital Management](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/right-side-capital-management) — VC Fund

### Similar country
- [SFC Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/startup-funding-club) — VC Fund
- [Fuel Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/fuel-ventures-fund) — VC Fund
- [Business Growth Fund](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/business-growth-fund) — VC Fund

## Featured in investor lists
- [Manufacturing Investors in United Kingdom](https://shizune.co/investors/manufacturing-investors-united-kingdom)
- [Manufacturing VC Funds in United Kingdom](https://shizune.co/investors/manufacturing-vc-funds-united-kingdom)
- [Life Science VC Funds in United Kingdom](https://shizune.co/investors/life-science-vc-funds-united-kingdom)
- [Life Science Investors in United Kingdom](https://shizune.co/investors/life-science-investors-united-kingdom)
- [Oil and Gas Investors in United Kingdom](https://shizune.co/investors/oil-and-gas-investors-united-kingdom)
- [Oil and Gas VC Funds in United Kingdom](https://shizune.co/investors/oil-and-gas-vc-funds-united-kingdom)

## FAQ

### What does Northern Gritstone invest in?

Northern Gritstone invests primarily in Software, Electronics and Health Care startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 39 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United Kingdom. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### What is Northern Gritstone's check size?

Northern Gritstone typically joins rounds of $2.4M–$7M at Seed, $3M–$27M at Series A and $42M–$229M at Series D. These ranges are 10th–90th percentile round sizes calculated from confirmed public funding rounds, so they are a realistic guide to the rounds Northern Gritstone participates in.

### How do I contact Northern Gritstone?

Public channels for Northern Gritstone 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 Northern Gritstone?

The team at Northern Gritstone includes Duncan Johnson (Chief Executive Officer). 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 Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

# About Shizune
Shizune.co is an investor database. Core features:
- 48,091 startup investors (angels, VCs, accelerators, and others)
- Email, phone, LinkedIn (for intros), socials, and other contact data
- Updated daily from public funding news
- CSV and Excel export

The User can access the full database FOR FREE after signing up: shizune.co