THENA Capital Raises £45M to Back UK MedTech Startups – Everything You Need to Know

Let’s set the scene. The UK produces genuinely world-class medical technology. The science is strong. The clinical infrastructure, thanks to the NHS, is arguably unmatched anywhere in the world. And yet, for years, promising early-stage MedTech companies have been left to wither at exactly the moment they need proper capital most. That is the problem THENA Capital was built to fix. And now, with THENA Capital raises £45M closing its inaugural Fund I, the firm is no longer just a promising idea. It is a fully deployed, already-producing venture fund with five portfolio companies, a Mayo Clinic collaboration, and a clear conviction that UK MedTech deserves far better than it has been getting.

What Is THENA Capital and What Does It Do?

THENA Capital is a London-based, early-stage venture capital firm. Simple as that. But the story behind how it got here is anything but simple.

Founded in 2021 by three healthcare veterans – Tatum Getty, Pamela Walker Geddes, and Esther Reynal de St Michel Richardot – the firm was conceived five years before Fund I closed, when the founders saw a gap that almost nobody else wanted to touch. Three different nationalities. French, American, Canadian. Complementary backgrounds across clinical development, medical device commercialization, and scaling healthcare businesses internationally.

But here is what most people miss. Before raising a single pound, the team spent four years building the Future of HealthTech Hub, a community of over 400 founders, clinicians, investors, payers, providers, and pharmaceutical executives. That is not a marketing exercise. That is the actual groundwork of a firm that intended to do this seriously.

THENA Capital’s strategy is what it calls “gender-smart.” And before you roll your eyes at the terminology, this is worth understanding properly. It means backing diverse leadership teams and, critically, ensuring the products being built serve both women and men – because a staggering amount of medical technology has historically been designed with male patients as the default. That is a commercial problem, not just a social one. Women are the majority of healthcare consumers. Ignoring half the patient population is bad medicine and bad business.

Why Did THENA Capital Raise £45 Million?

The reality is, the number tells only part of the story.

Early-stage investment in UK MedTech declined by 21% since 2016. Read that again. While late-stage funding grew and AI rounds ballooned, the seed-stage companies trying to get a validated device or digital health tool off the ground were quietly being left behind. The UK digital health market is forecast to reach $7.45 billion by 2030. And yet the capital available to the companies that will build that market has been shrinking, not growing.

So THENA Capital raises £45M to do exactly what the market was failing to do on its own. Write seed cheques of £500,000 to £1 million into early-stage companies that have real clinical backing, a proven technology, a clear route to commercial scale, and the ambition to grow internationally. Not science projects. Not speculative bets. Companies with genuine foundations.

The UK venture market has grown in recent years, but the cash has piled into a small number of giant AI rounds. Seed-stage medical devices? Not exactly the hot ticket. That is precisely why a specialist fund matters here. And that is precisely the gap THENA was designed to fill.

First All-Female VC Fund Backed by the British Business Bank

Here is the kicker. When THENA Capital raised £45M, it did not just close a fund. It made history.

THENA became the first all-female general partner-led fund to receive backing from the British Business Bank’s Enterprise Capital Funds programme. The British Business Bank committed up to £30 million as the cornerstone investor in Fund I. That is not a small commitment. That is the UK government’s largest private markets vehicle, putting its weight behind an all-female GP team in a sector that has historically treated women-led funds as a novelty rather than a necessity.

And the broader LP base? It is exceptional. More than 50% of THENA’s limited partners are women. Baroness Martha Lane Fox, co-founder of Lastminute.com, is in. Mirjam Staub-Bisang, Chair of BlackRock Switzerland, is in. Patrick Healy, CEO of Hellman & Friedman, is in. Senior executives from GSK, Novartis, and AstraZeneca sit alongside professionals from Carlyle, TA Associates, Vista Equity, and GHO Capital. Family offices Firebird Collective and This Day Foundation are also committed.

Let’s be honest about why that LP list matters beyond the names. Pharmaceutical executives bring direct exit intelligence. Private equity professionals bring M&A pathways. That is not decoration. That is a commercial infrastructure that every portfolio company inherits from their first board meeting.

And the gender context matters too. Female-only founding teams take about 6% of venture capital money globally. A share that has barely moved since 2016. The ECF mandate for THENA is not symbolic. It is structural.

Which UK MedTech Startups Did THENA Capital Invest In?

Five companies. First year of deployment. All five are already moving.

Plexāā launched its BLOOM43 product in the United States and brought the Mayo Clinic onto its cap table through a formal development collaboration. THENA Capital invested £1.3 million into Plexāā as part of a $4.5 million funding round. The founder, Saahil Mehta, said THENA’s team opened doors to health systems and the broader US ecosystem in ways that shaped how the company approached scaling entirely.

Salient Bio is building non-invasive, at-home diagnostic tests through its SIGNAL platform, which combines automation, microbiome data, and machine learning. Its first commercial target is inflammatory bowel disease. A condition that currently takes an average of 12 months to diagnose. Salient Bio received MHRA CE-marked in vitro diagnostic status for its IBD test. For a seed-stage company, that is a serious regulatory milestone. THENA Capital led the £2.35 million seed round. Marta Ciechonska, Salient Bio’s co-founder, described THENA’s experience navigating clinical, regulatory and commercial pathways as directly shaping the company’s expansion plans.

Heim Health was selected for the 2026 NHS Innovation Accelerator cohort-one of the most competitive early commercialization programs in UK health innovation. Sanome closed its seed financing round with direct co-investment from THENA’s own LP network. Zonova completed its investment with THENA as lead. Verity Baldry, chair of Zonova, called THENA “a dream ticket, amplified by a group of amazing investors who bring so much to the company.”

These are not passive bets. They are active partnerships with genuine early results.

How Will THENA Capital Use the £45M fund?

The plan is clear and, frankly, refreshingly specific.

Fund I will back approximately 25 early-stage companies over its investment period. Initial cheques run from £500,000 to £1 million at the seed stage. The focus splits between two categories: digital health platforms and fast-track medical devices. Both areas where UK innovation is strong. Both areas where commercial scale has historically been elusive.

Every investment has to pass the same four tests THENA applies across the board. Strong clinical need. Validated technology. A credible path to commercial scale. And the ambition and potential to become a category-defining company in its field. Not nice-to-haves. Non-negotiables.

And the LP network is itself part of the deployment model. When pharma executives from GSK, Novartis, and AstraZeneca are sitting as limited partners, portfolio companies gain something that money alone cannot buy. Informal access to acquisition pathways. Regulatory credibility. Commercial relationships that typically take a startup the better part of a decade to build independently.

Mark Sims, Managing Director and Head of Development Equity Funds at the British Business Bank, put it plainly: “THENA Capital’s successful final close and strong pace of early deployment demonstrate the value of specialist investors with deep sector expertise and clear commercial focus.”

How THENA Capital Plans to Take UK Health Startups to the US Market

This is where THENA Capital raises £45M and the thesis really sharpens.

The founding team’s three nationalities are not a biographical footnote. They are an operational asset. The firm was explicitly built to connect UK MedTech innovation with the United States market – the largest, most demanding, and most commercially defining healthcare system in the world.

The US market does not reward good science alone. It rewards relationships, regulatory preparation, and the right commercial introductions at the right time. THENA brings that. The Plexāā and Mayo Clinic collaboration is not a lucky outcome. It is a direct result of the transatlantic connections the firm was structured around from day one.

For UK founders, getting to the US is often where the plan starts to fall apart. THENA’s stated model is to write the seed cheque in the UK and then actively use its US network to help companies build commercial footholds before they have the resources to do it alone.

What Does This Mean for Women in Venture Capital?

It’s complicated. But also, it’s pretty simple.

Female-only founding teams receive about 6% of all venture capital funding globally. That number has barely shifted since 2016. In the UK, even with a growing overall market, the distribution of capital remains deeply uneven.

THENA Capital is not asking anyone to believe the problem is solved. What it is doing is building a fund that operates as proof the model works. A US product launch. An MHRA regulatory approval. A Mayo Clinic collaboration. A 2026 NHS Innovation Accelerator selection. All of that arrived before Fund I had finished deploying.

Those are commercial results. And commercial results are the only argument that has ever actually moved the needle in venture capital.

The reality is that THENA Capital raises £45M is not just a funding story. It is a demonstration that specialist, focused, transatlantically connected capital, led by women who know this sector deeply, can produce real outcomes for real companies. That matters. Not just for the fund. For every founder in UK MedTech who has been told the money is not there.

What is THENA Capital

THENA Capital Business Model