Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE) has announced that its technology investment partnership with Foresight Group has hit a milestone of £50 million raised, helping a total of 20 UK-based SMEs and start-ups ‘take their innovative products to market’.

Launched in 2016, the Foresight Williams Technology EIS fund has had one aim: to help grow small and medium-size UK technology and engineering businesses, by giving them access to technical expertise and investment.

The inspiration for the fund followed a partnership between WAE and Aerofoil Energy, which has supplied an energy-saving refrigeration system to most of the UK’s supermarkets, preventing cold air from spilling into the aisle and thereby delivering significant energy savings and reducing CO² emissions.

The 20th and latest company to benefit from Foresight Williams Technology EIS Fund investment is Audioscenic, which uses small arrays of speakers and advanced head tracking technologies to create immersive 3-D sound systems that mean headphones or speakers located all around a room are no longer required. The fund has invested £1 million as part of a £1.6 million ‘round’.

The Foresight Williams Technology EIS Fund has also invested £1.5 million in the Cambridge University spin-out Flusso, which has developed the world’s smallest flow sensor, with WAE sharing market research into automotive applications and making introductions to potential customers.

Moreover, some £2.95 million has been invested in Inovo (pictured), a collaborative robotics company that WAE has been supporting since 2018 with customer introductions, programme management reviews and is currently installing a cobot in WAE’s battery build facility.

WAE managing director Craig Wilson said: “We are extremely proud that the Foresight Williams Technology EIS Fund has hit a milestone of £50 million and 20 innovative UK company investments.

“The opportunity to collaborate with start-ups that have demonstrated transformational technology and could benefit from WAE’s expertise to develop, commercialise and scale, has allowed us to address the challenge facing most new start-ups — funding.

“Foresight Group has allowed us to solve that issue and have been the perfect partner from the start.”