LYVA Labs, the Liverpool City Region’s innovation commercialisation vehicle, has hit a £2.5m investment milestone, having backed 26 startups in the region since 2022, with a further £4.5m ready to be deployed following the expansion of its fund to £7m. The support they provide has also helped entrepreneurs across the region to secure a further £30m.
LYVA Labs’ latest investments represent an expansion in focus from health and life sciences investments to include two other key growth sectors, clean tech and deep tech.
In the last month, LYVA Labs has backed two University of Liverpool spin-out companies, helping to accelerate the development of early-stage innovations. LYVA Labs joined the £1m seed funding round for Plasma Fresh, alongside Northern Gritstone and Deepbridge Capital, investing £125,000 to enable the company to expand its pioneering cold plasma technology designed to revolutionise food safety.
A further £125,000 has been invested in ReNewVax, a company developing the first pneumococcal vaccine, and £125,000 has also been invested in Entropix to support the commercialisation of its NADA DNA purification technology and SCOPE, a protein fractionation technology.
LYVA Labs launched in the spring of 2022 with a £10.5m investment from the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority to support early-stage innovators in turning their ideas into reality, and provide start-up funding and commercial advice to clinicians, academics and entrepreneurs in the life sciences sector. In April this year, they secured a further £4.3m from the Combined Authority’s Health & Life Sciences Innovation Zone Fund.
Earlier this month, the company welcomed two new Portfolio Investment Directors to drive the expansion of its support for the city region’s growing innovation cluster. Elaine Loukes arrives with experience of working with deep tech and health tech startups at Cambridge Enterprise Ventures (CEV), while Vijay Curthan was previously at Catapult Ventures Group.
Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, said:
“The Liverpool City Region has always been a hotbed of innovation — from our world-class universities to our cutting-edge businesses.
“That’s exactly why we in the Combined Authority backed them with a significant investment, to support the next generation of high-growth, high-impact start-ups. By expanding its investment fund, LYVA Labs is backing the kind of ambitious ventures that will power our economy for years to come — creating high-quality jobs, attracting talent, and putting our region at the forefront of the industries of the future.”
Lorna Green, CEO at LYVA Labs, said:
“We’re incredibly proud to have reached this investment milestone and to be supporting some of the city region’s most promising startups. This funding is already helping to translate world-class research and bold ideas into real-world solutions that benefit people and the economy.
“Expanding our fund to £7 million enables us to go further – supporting high-growth businesses across clean tech, deep tech, health, life sciences and beyond. Our goal is to build an innovation ecosystem that unlocks the full potential of the Liverpool City Region.
“A huge enabler of this will be the arrival of our new Portfolio Investment Directors, Elaine and Vijay, who bring significant experience from outside of the region and will be instrumental in connecting LYVA Labs to investment and innovation ecosystems across the UK.”
Akshay Bhatnagar, Head of Investment at LYVA Labs, added:
“Whilst we’ve financially backed 26 startups so far, our support has gone much further. We’ve worked with portfolio companies to access £10m in co-investment, leveraged from our intense investment readiness support, and provided grant writing support to enable local SMEs to access £20m in grant funding.
“The appetite for innovation in the city region is only growing. With the expansion of our investment fund, we can now back even more founders who are tackling big challenges with scalable, high-impact solutions.
“We’re not just investing capital – we’re offering expert guidance and access to wider funding opportunities that help startups become investment-ready and sustainable in the long term.”
Find out more about LYVA Labs by visiting www.lyvalabs.com
