Portfolio company First Light raises £22.7m

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IP Group PLC

14 August 2015

 

 

FOR RELEASE ON

14 August 2015

IP Group plc - Portfolio company First Light Fusion completes £22.7m funding round

University of Oxford spin-out seeks to commercialise new implosion processes and establishes Scientific Advisory Board

IP Group plc (LSE: IPO) ("IP Group" or "the Group"), the developer of intellectual property-based businesses, is pleased to note that its portfolio company, First Light Fusion Limited ("First Light" or "the Company"), has completed a fundraising of up to £22.7 million.

First Light, a spin-out from the University of Oxford, has discovered new implosion processes that can achieve the high temperatures and compression necessary for fusion reactions and other valuable applications. The Company's approach has the potential to dramatically shorten the timescale and cost of achieving practical and affordable fusion energy. This fundraising will allow First Light to further develop its modelling tools and experimental capability and will fund collaborations with leading research groups in the field. 

The Company has also announced today that it has established a Scientific Advisory Board to provide technical input and governance for its ongoing development programme. The Board is chaired by Arun Majumdar, who is the Jay Precourt Professor at Stanford University, and consists of eminent figures in energy innovation including Nobel laureate Steven Chu, the former US Energy Secretary.

The financing round will be completed in two tranches subject to the attainment of certain milestones. Following the £14.0 million first tranche of the fundraising, IP Group has an undiluted beneficial interest of 34.9% in First Light that is valued at £13.9 million and this has resulted in an unrealised fair value gain to the Group of £6.4 million. The Group has committed £5.8 million to the first tranche. Other investors in the financing round include a fund managed by Invesco Asset Management Limited, clients advised or managed by Sandaire Investment Office and the University of Oxford.

Robert Trezona, IP Group's Head of Cleantech, said: "First Light is making excellent progress in developing its technology towards eventual commercial application. The participation of such high-quality investors alongside IP Group in this fundraising is a testament to the achievements of the First Light team so far. The Company's ability to attract world-class talent to its advisory board is an endorsement of its scientifically rigorous approach to developing its technology."

Nick Hawker, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of First Light, said: "The Company has made considerable progress in the last eighteen months, which has allowed us to raise significant capital from leading investors in the science commercialisation space. We believe that we have a differentiated approach to developing technology for fusion and these funds will accelerate our vision of affordable, practical and safe energy supply. We are already working with a number of leading university research groups, and we will use the new capital to expand this programme. Rigour remains a critical feature of our work and, guided by the new Scientific Advisory Board, we will maintain the highest scientific standards in the development of our technology."

For more information, please contact:

IP Group plc	www.ipgroupplc.com
Alan Aubrey, Chief Executive Officer Greg Smith, Chief Financial Officer Liz Vaughan-Adams, Communications	[phone] [phone]/[phone]
FTI Consulting
James Melville-Ross/Simon Conway/ Victoria Foster Mitchell	[phone]

Notes for editors

About IP Group

IP Group is a leading intellectual property commercialisation company which focuses on evolving great ideas, mainly from its partner universities, into world-changing businesses. The Group has pioneered a unique approach to developing these ideas and the resulting businesses by providing access to business building expertise, capital, networks, recruitment and business support. IP Group has a strong track record of success and its portfolio comprises holdings in over 90 early-stage to mature businesses across four main sectors -- Biotech, Cleantech, Healthcare and Technology. The Company is listed on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange under the code IPO.

For more information, please visit our website at www.ipgroupplc.com.

About First Light Fusion Limited

First Light Fusion Limited is a lean, focused and agile corporation researching energy generation by inertial confinement fusion. The company was spun out from the University of Oxford in June 2011 and is based near Oxford. First Light continues to work closely with the academic community in the UK and internationally. The company is well-funded by both institutional investors and private individuals.

Inertial confinement fusion for energy generation is a well-established research field and is being pursued in many laboratories worldwide, perhaps most notably in the US at the National Ignition Facility. First Light is exploring a number of alternative research directions that harness the same fundamental physics, with the prime focus being power generation. First Light's work to date has included theoretical analysis, detailed numerical simulation and experimental validation. This has allowed description of the accessible parameter space and led to a clear vision of the pathway to fusion.

First Light has also considered the costs and engineering practicalities of a reactor implementing its technology and can articulate a number of advantages over other approaches. Additionally, the energy-focused processes being pursued form the foundations of a new technological platform where secondary opportunities exist in a number of alternative applications, for example material processing and chemical manufacture.

For more information, please visit: www.firstlightfusion.com.

About the First Light Scientific Advisory Board

The Scientific Advisory Board has been established by First Light to provide technical input and a scientific governance structure for its ongoing development programme. The Board consists of members who offer extensive expertise gained through academic research and industry experience. The Board is chaired by Arun Mujumdar, who is the Jay Precourt Professor at Stanford University and was the founding director of the US Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy ("ARPA-E"). He is joined by Steven Chu, the former US Energy Secretary and winner of the 1997 Physics Nobel Prize; Richard Dennis, former Director of Research and Development for Doosan Babock Energy where he was responsible for power station boiler development and investments in new energy technologies; Richard Garwin, a prominent US physicist and current IBM Fellow Emeritus at the Thomas J. Watson Research Centre in New York; and Steven Rose, Head of Plasma Physics at AWE Aldermaston and former Head of the Imperial College Plasma Physics Group.    

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