British Business Bank Commits £3m to TSP Ventures for UK Resource Resilience

The British Business Bank has committed £3 million to TSP Ventures through its Regional Angels Programme, targeting the persistent funding gap for early-stage climate tech and resource resilience startups outside London. For venture capital professionals, it signals a continued government push to decentralise equity finance while prioritising "hard science" sectors critical to national infrastructure and supply chain security.

What was announced

The British Business Bank (BBB) has confirmed a £3 million investment into TSP Ventures, an early-stage venture firm focused on "hard science" and breakthrough technologies. This commitment is delivered through the bank’s Regional Angels Programme via its partner, Haatch. The funding is specifically designed to be co-invested alongside capital from TSP’s own investor base, providing a scalable mechanism to support high-growth potential businesses across the United Kingdom.

TSP Ventures, founded in 2019 by Chris Smith and Mike Doswell, specialises in sectors that provide sustainable and geo-secure supplies of critical resources. This includes energy, food, water, and metals. To date, the firm has already backed 17 seed-stage companies. These portfolio businesses span diverse technical fields such as metal-organic frameworks, clean hydrogen production, sodium-ion batteries, metal recycling, and bio-electrochemical waste treatment.

The impact of TSP’s previous investments is significant; the 17 companies in its portfolio have successfully raised more than £125 million in follow-on funding. Furthermore, these ventures have been responsible for the creation of over 150 jobs within the UK. The new £3 million commitment aims to build on this momentum by reducing regional imbalances in access to early-stage equity finance, ensuring that founders building essential technologies can access capital regardless of their geographic location.

"We started TSP because we believed that resilient resources – abundant green energy, clean air, plentiful freshwater and food – would define the coming decades, and everything we've seen since has only sharpened that conviction. Having the British Business Bank alongside us is a huge vote of confidence, not just in TSP, but in the founders and teams we're backing."

Mike Doswell, Co-Founder & Chief Investment Officer of TSP Ventures.

The companies involved

The British Business Bank is the UK’s government-owned economic development bank. Its primary mission is to drive sustainable growth and prosperity across the UK by supporting smaller businesses in accessing the finance they need to thrive. The bank operates several programmes designed to address market failures in the provision of finance, including the Regional Angels Programme, which specifically targets the equity gap found in regions outside the South East of England.

TSP Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm that prioritises resource resilience. Founded in 2019 by Chris Smith and Mike Doswell, the firm has carved out a niche in the "hard science" space, moving away from traditional software-as-a-service (SaaS) investments to focus on tangible, breakthrough technologies. The firm’s investment philosophy is rooted in the belief that the coming decades will be defined by the availability and security of basic resources.

Haatch acts as the delivery partner for this commitment. By using the Haatch platform, the British Business Bank can deploy capital through experienced investors in a way that is both simple and scalable. This partnership model allows the BBB to leverage the sector-specific expertise of firms like TSP Ventures while fulfilling its mandate to increase the supply of early-stage capital across the country.

What FF News has reported before

FF News has extensively tracked the British Business Bank’s efforts to stabilise and stimulate various sectors of the UK economy. We previously reported that British Business Bank Regional Funds Bridge Critical Finance Gap for 81% of Backed Firms, highlighting the essential role these programmes play for companies that would otherwise struggle to secure investment.

The bank’s reach extends beyond venture equity into critical infrastructure and sector-specific guarantees. For instance, the British Business Bank Boosts Shawbrook ENABLE Build Facility to £350m for UK Housebuilders, and it has also provided significant support to the primary sector, as seen when the British Business Bank Backs Oxbury Bank with Record £500m Guarantee for UK Agriculture. These actions underscore the bank's strategy of using diverse financial instruments to support UK industry.

What this means

This announcement highlights a significant pivot in the venture capital landscape toward "geo-security" and physical resource resilience. For years, the UK's early-stage ecosystem was dominated by fintech and software, but the current geopolitical climate is forcing a re-evaluation of what constitutes a "critical" investment. By backing TSP Ventures, the British Business Bank is validating the necessity of hard-science startups that require longer development cycles and more capital-intensive R&D than typical digital products. This move puts pressure on traditional VCs to develop the technical expertise required to evaluate deep-tech firms. It also raises the question of whether the UK can successfully bridge the "valley of death" for these hardware-heavy companies as they move from seed stage to industrial scale.