Schroders backs AI unicorns in UK’s first venture fund for pensions

Autonomous vehicle unicorn Wayve and deeptech darling Elevenlabs are among the fast-growing unicorns that have been backed by the cash raised in a historic funding round by the UK’s first venture capital vehicle set up to cater for pensions.

Schroders Capital announced on Wednesday it had injected over £100m into British-based tech and life sciences scale-ups on behalf of its UK Innovation Long-term Asset Fund (LTAF), the maiden structure of its kind that gives pension funds access to early- and growth-stage companies.

The deployment makes the likes of Wayve and Elevenlabs the first companies to receive cash from the UK Innovation LTAF, after it closed a £500m funding round supported by pensions giant Standard Life and the British Business Bank last year.

Other scale-ups backed from the same capital raise included Cambridge spinout Luminance and the gene therapy venture Aavantgarde Bio.

“These companies are at the forefront of high-impact, world-class innovation, tackling enduring social need – from critical research into medical therapies, to powering the future of our essential industries,” said Harry Raikes, head of UK venture investments at Schroders Captal, the private markets arm of wealth management giant Schroders.

British pensions’ push into private markets

The cash demployment marks a significant milestone for Britain’s pensions sector, which has spent the past two years navigating a government-backed push to invest more in non-listed British companies.

The Treasury has been engaged in a multi-year effort to unlock billions of pounds of savings and plough them into British firms, in a bid to give savers exposure to fast-growing firms, and source capital for investment-starved British firms.

The push resulted in 17 of Britain’s largest pension funds to ring-fence five per cent of their workplace portfolios for private markets and infrastructure investments in the UK, the so-called Mansion House Accord last year.

British pension funds have traditionally been among the most risk averse in the world, traditionally allocating an outsized share of their portfolios to bonds and fixed income and steering clear of riskier private markets.

In equivalent economies like Canada and Australia, pension funds are among the largest and most sophisticated venture capital investors in the world, which has sparked a wave calls for Britain’s more cautious annuities firms to emulate their foreign counterparts.

The UK Innovation LTAF was forged in 2024 by both Schroders and pensions giant Standard Life (then Phoenix) as an attempt to address that imbalance. It raised its £500m round in 2025, and has subsequently been topped up with £68m from local authorities’ pension pots, the company said on Wednesday.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the UK Innovation LTAF’s deployment would help “bridge the gap between the UK’s investment pools and the high‑potential firms that will help drive the next phase of growth across the UK”.