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Future Thinking: 44.01 From Earthshot Prize to FPC Investment
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Future Thinking: Discover our new video series ⭐
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SecureX, MMHH, BVCA Pensions Showcase & World Ocean Summit
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Making a Success of the Mansion House Accord: Life Sciences
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Future Thinking: Making a Success of the Mansion House Accord
Making a Success of the Mansion House Accord
Last month marked the inaugural roundtable of Making a Success of the Mansion House Accord, a high-level series convening senior leaders from pensions, investment, and policy to advance the practical implementation of the UK Government’s Mansion House reforms.
Focused on security, this session responded to the Chancellor’s July 2023 call for UK pension funds to better align with national growth priorities while upholding fiduciary duties. Building on the Mansion House Compact (2023), leading pension providers signed the Mansion House Accord in May 2025, committing to allocate 10% of default workplace pension assets to private markets by 2030 — with at least 5% invested in the UK economy.
Hosted by Future Planet Capital in partnership with NatWest Cushon, the roundtable examined how long-term capital can drive UK innovation, emerging models for investing in strategic sectors, and governance considerations related to national interest.
This event is the first in a series designed to foster co-ordination and generate actionable insights to inform government policy and industry best practices. We remain dedicated to translating policy ambition into effective capital deployment that benefits savers, society, and the broader economy.
Reach out to Marketing Associate, Sara for further details and to register your interest in future sessions.
Meet the Team
🎥 Meet Malika Arshad, Business Development Manager at Future Planet Capital.
Malika joined FPC in 2023 as an Associate and quickly became an integral part of the team, working across investment opportunities and portfolio value add, fundraising and investor engagement, as well as data.
With a background in investment banking at Credit Suisse — where she worked on M&A, IPOs, and financing projects across EMEA — Malika brings deep financial expertise and a global perspective to our work. Her experience also spans Equity Research, Leveraged Finance, and Asset Management.
She has a keen interest in how the venture capital ecosystem can support broader economic and sustainable development, especially through supporting innovative founders, a vision that closely aligns with our mission here at Future Planet Capital.
Watch the video above to learn more about Malika’s journey, her role at FPC, and her vision for impact through innovation.
At Future Planet Capital we’re proud to have played a significant role in advancing global, national, and regional innovation through strategic investments, board-level support, and ecosystem building. We’ve helped accelerate innovations tackling climate, health, and digital transformation.
Globally, we were among the first to back Captura and continue to support Armada Technologies as it scales maritime innovation.
Nationally, UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund [UKI2S] have backed companies like Cobalt Systems Ltd through to a successful acquisition, and have helped Tokamak Energy raise over £117 million in funding and public-private partnerships to develop commercial fusion.
Future Planet Capital Regional have driven growth in companies like The Supply Register, Utility Stream (USL) Limited and Igloo Vision, scaling teams, revenue, and impact across the UK.
At Future Planet Capital, our aim is to help solve challenges profitably, by backing visionary founders to achieve commercial success and lasting impact.
Find out more about Future Planet Capital on our website.
Future Thinking: 2024/25 FPC Impact Report
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Future Thinking: Reflecting on BEFF 2025
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Future Thinking: The Power of Collaboration, Building Businesses of the Future
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Future Thinking: Unlocking Innovation Through Partnership
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Future Thinking: The Ultimate Deep Tech Frontiers
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Future Thinking: Space Innovations Driving Impact on Earth and Beyond
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Future Thinking: Strategic Technologies
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Future Thinking: DC to VC
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Future Thinking: Geopolitics and Global Survival
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Future Thinking: Launch of the BCF
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Future Thinking: Unlocking Funding for Defence & Security
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Future Thinking: Defence and Security Portfolio Highlights
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Spotting potential and commercialising academic discovery - in discussion with Patrick Chung
Here are two questions for venture capital: how do you spot potential in a sea of AI start-ups? And how do you build a university and enterprise system that really can create the next Google?
Patrick Chung, co-founder and managing general partner of Xfund, is well qualified to answer both. Patrick wrote Open AI founder Sam Altman’s first cheque and established Xfund – a VC firm that backs founders from US universities. His previous investments include personal genomics company 23andMe and AI pioneer Kensho.
On a flying visit to the UK – where Xfund is a partner to Future Planet Capital – he has straightforward answers when asked how he identifies value. “We chase the talent,” he says. “We let the talent decide where to go.”
He has helpful insight for investors and, perhaps, for a new UK government that arrives in office having pledged to work with universities to support spinouts.
Because for years, talent-spotting has been Xfund’s approach, finding fresh ideas among the students and alumni of institutions like Harvard and Stanford.
There are plenty of successful new AI-driven companies to come, Patrick says, even if another Open AI won’t burst onto the market any time soon. No one is going to compete with the established large language models (LLMs). They’re simply too expensive to build and operate. But start-ups can licence proprietary data to develop better trained LLMs.
Take Open Evidence, an Xfund portfolio company, which has secured data from the Mayo Clinic. Its AI – trained on resources from this world-famous medical research centre – will be better able to understand medical conditions than any LLM relying on information it can find freely-available online.
Or consider Delphi, another Xfund investment, which is creating digital clones. If – with your permission – an AI engine could read all your messages and observe all your work decisions it could eventually make the same decisions that you would. This digital clone could not only record a meeting you missed, but draw the same conclusions that you would have done.
There’s a reason, Patrick explains, that some US universities do so well at incubating businesses like these. It stems from a mix of culture, understanding and knowhow and it’s an approach the UK – and some institutions across the US - could yet copy.
He identifies three core qualities that drive entrepreneurial success on campus.
The first is cultural. Turning academic discovery into commercial success is celebrated in West Coast learning. That’s still not the case in every university where – for all the excitement about spin-outs – making money can still be seen as unworthy of an academic.
“We need a culture change so this commercialisation and mass distribution is an acceptable manifestation of your discovery if you’re a lead investigator,” says Patrick.
Secondly, universities need informed, sophisticated departments to licence their intellectual property for academics who want to build start-ups. Some academic administrators can still seem baffled by business.
In one case, Patrick says, a founder wanted to gift equity from his company to his university. It was an act of gratitude towards the institution that had inspired him and trained his first staff. That founder wasn’t thanked; instead, the university demanded a payment for accepting the gift. Its administrators simply confused equity with liability.
An understanding gap remains.
Finally, universities need to be places where you can get involved in a new business, but also get back out of it again.
Tenured professors would be much more likely to make the leap from academia to business if they knew they could leap back the other way afterwards. Investors should be able to invest in businesses that have strong leadership already in place and not have to piece executive teams together for themselves, then hang around forever to run their companies.
It all means that we can still do better at commercialising academic work. For now great ideas still languish in labs for want of the right structures and leaders to set them free, Patrick says. For the VCs though, that means there are still new ideas, and more Sam Altmans, to fund.
Douglas Hansen-Luke, Executive Chairman at Future Planet Capital in Les Echos
Our Executive Chairman, Douglas Hansen-Luke recently featured as a signatory in support of an article published by the French publication Les Echos, demonstrating his and Future Planet Capital’s commitment to protecting and investing in our planet’s Ocean.
Noting the disparity between ocean-based investment and current investment levels in novel technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), the article focuses on the importance of our Ocean in tackling climate change – in the immediate and long-term.
Despite being Earth’s largest entity, covering 71% of its surface, the Ocean’s depths remain lesser known and understood than the face of the Moon. And let's not forget that the seas produce between 50-80% of the world’s oxygen and absorb 9.2 gigatons of carbon dioxide annually – almost 30% of total carbon emissions. No doubt, the Ocean is essential for all life on Earth.
Scientists have long emphasised the importance of protecting our Ocean and, indeed, the need for collective action to do so effectively. But recent planetary and biological developments have served as a shock to the system for many.
Not least, Ocean temperatures are rising at an unprecedented rate. While this can be put down to the likes of El Niño in part, human activity is half to blame. At the same time, ocean acidification has spiked as a direct result of human-induced CO2 emissions reaching their peak in 2023. This serves as a direct threat to ocean life and biodiversity – the most important enabler in the Ocean’s capacity as both a carbon sink and oxygen pump.
Should we fail to act in reversing this damage as a matter of urgency, the repercussions will be monumental. Not just for the three billion people that live in coastal areas and rely directly on the Ocean’s resources, but for the planet as a whole.
To encourage action, engaging state and political actors in committing to addressing these issues is key. The United Nations Global Ocean Conference in a year’s time serves as a landmark moment on this journey, and will – we hope – set us on a path towards a blue-focused COP.
More than this, though: we need endorsement from the private sector and, specifically, from investors and the finance space. It is paramount that sustainable, blue solution investments become central to any investment and fund strategy, so that we are able to direct capital towards the sectors and innovations that need it most.
Find out more in the full article: https://www.lesechos.fr/idees-debats/cercle/opinion-climat-investisseurs-noubliez-pas-locean-2101005