Leeds medical AI spinout adsilico raises £10m Series A

adsilico, a University of Leeds spinout, has secured £10m in a Series A round to grow its medical AI and simulation technology, which it hopes will change the way heart and brain implants are tested around the world.

PXN Ventures, Northern Gritstone and Parkwalk backed the round.

Sheena Macpherson, Dr Nishant Ravikumar and Dr Zeike Taylor founded the business and spun it out of the university in 2024. Following the investment it plans to increase headcount from 14 to 34 at the Nexus innovation hub.

The money will also be used to develop its technology for assessing how medical devices perform across diverse virtual patient populations, giving manufacturers information to guide expensive development decisions.

The company's patient populations are entirely synthetic and mirror the real spread of age, sex, ethnicity, body size and disease. The aim is to narrow the diversity gap in testing medical devices, where women, older people and patients with smaller or different anatomy tend to be under-represented.

The funding comes at a time when UK and US regulators are pressing for proof that medical devices work for all the patients who need them.

Macpherson, co-founder and chief executive of adsilico, said: “This investment enables us to grow our team and extend our reach beyond virtual hearts into new therapy areas. Our mission is for our virtual populations to reflect real-world diversity, helping make implantable device testing faster, safer and more equitable for the patients who need it.

“The UK has world-class clinical and research talent, and from our base in the North with backing from UK investment, we set the global standard for virtual patients within a new dimension of in silico generated evidence that will accelerate the launch of safer devices to those that need them most.”

Dr Elizabeth Young, investment manager at PXN Ventures, said: “adsilico represents the level of groundbreaking innovation and deep thinking being spun out of universities across the North of the UK currently.

“What Sheena and the team have built has the potential to have a significant global impact for medical device manufacturers, the pre-clinical development process and, therefore most important of all, patients. PXN is excited to be joining at such a vital time for the business, supporting the team as it scales and sets new standards for in silico testing.”