Archangels, the Edinburgh-based business angel investment syndicate, said on Wednesday it led investment of £12.4 million in Scottish tech and life sciences companies in the first half of 2021, up from £9.5 million in the first half of 2020.

Archangels’ H1 2021 deals data reveals that Archangels itself invested £7.3 million during the first six months of 2021, with co-investment of £3.1 million from Scottish Enterprise and £2 million from a range of other co-investors.

Archangels’ investment of £7.3 million is a record for the group in any six month period.

During the period, Archangels invested in one new business and provided follow on growth capital to seven existing portfolio companies.

These included:

• A first time investment in Scottish bio-tech company BioCaptiva, the University of Edinburgh spin-out that has developed a novel next generation “liquid biopsy” technology device that could revolutionise the early diagnosis and monitoring of difficult-to-detect cancers
• A follow-on investment round in Edinburgh-based Administrate, the platform that equips organisations around the world to plan, organise, deliver and scale training to match their business objectives. This investment round will be used to accelerate and capitalise on the strong growth which the team at Administrate had already been experiencing
• A further round of investment in Optoscribe, the supplier of 3D glass-based integrated photonics products

David Ovens, Joint Managing Director at Archangels, said: “While the pandemic has had an inevitable impact on areas of the economy such as retail and hospitality, Scotland has a world-renowned tech and life sciences community that supports many thousands of high quality jobs and is making an increasingly important contribution to the economy.

“At Archangels, we are committed to providing the growth capital and access to networks that support our portfolio companies, based here in Scotland, as they scale up to become truly international success stories.”