Networking at the 2025 #21toWatch awards at Botanic House

Not having read any books about networking, I’m never sure I’m doing it right. I just have one guiding principle: speak to the first person who seems available for an introduction, and say hello. A bit short for a book, I guess.

After the presentations at the 2025 #21ToWatch ceremony at Botanic House there was a chance to meet the winners and - yes! - to network, so as the applause died down I turned to the person on my right and said hi. This happened to be Andy Frame, VP product management at VyperCore, so there was lots to catch up about.

VyperCore, a winner in the ‘Innovation’ category, was represented by Russell Haggar, CEO, chair, and co-founder, plus Andy.

What does the win mean for VyperCore?

“For us it’s an opportunity to get into the broader investment community,” Andy replied. “There’s investors here, and previous winners.”
VyperCore’s involvement in #21ToWatch has been partly finance-oriented, and partly awareness-raising, because “Cambridge is well known for biotech and not a lot of people are talking about processor technology”.

By moving the memory allocation management complexity from software to hardware, VyperCore’s technology offers up to 80 per cent power reduction, with five-fold memory-safe acceleration of future datacentre applications across a vast spectrum of industries.

Two years ago VyperCore had an “early seed round” raise of $5m.

“It was the largest seed funding for a chip company in the UK in the last 10 years,” notes Russell, adding that “a late seed round” is next.

A new look at deriving advantages from existing CPUs is necessary because Moore’s Law - that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles every two years with minimal cost increase - no longer applies to semiconductors, says Russell.

“They’re still getting smaller but not faster,” he notes. “Everyone’s panicking that AI is going to need nuclear power soon, but our technology reduces power consumption in the CPU by a factor of five. So data centres will still be necessary but they won’t need to build as many, which is a gamechanger.”

Meanwhile, Nat Hastings, CEO of Cellestial Health, another ‘Company’ winner, said of the occasion “it’s great to network and celebrate with everybody”. Cellestial is working to stop the progression of Parkinson's disease from the time of diagnosis, by protecting the neglected half of the brain composed of astrocytes. Astrocytes work with neurons - the other half - to support brain function. Neurons send and receive chemical signals, while astrocytes provide structure and metabolic support.

Martyn Postle, Cellestial’s advisor, said: “Everyone’s focused on neurons with what goes on in, for example, Parkinson’s Disease, but astrocytes are an under-researched and under-drugged area that could have really big implications for treatments.”

In the first instance “Cellestial is looking to stop the disease from progressing”. The company’s solution is “a small, extremely safe molecule that would cross the blood-brain barrier and it would be oral - and it’s very exciting!”.

The ceremony last week also featured the extraordinary sight of TRIMTECH Technologies, fresh on the heels of the announcement of a $31m seed round, collecting an award as one of seven ‘Company’ winners.

What this means is that a company that incorporated less than 18 months ago has gone from being a ground zero start-up to a fully fledged corporate entity between the time their Quite an enviable trajectory!

The award was collected by the co-founder and head of research at the start-up using Cambridge technology to combat diseases such as Alzheimer's and Huntington's, Damian Crowther.

After the ceremony was concluded I noticed Damian was with Nicki Thompson, TRIMTECH’s CEO since January. Dr Thompson won the CEO of the Year award at the 2023 Cambridge Independent Science & Technology Awards during her four-and-a-half-year tenure at Amphista Therapeutics.

I offered my double congratulations for the oversubscribed seed fund success and #21ToWatch win and asked company builder Nicki - former CEO of Amphista Therapeutics and chair of Camena Bioscience - what had made her want to join the nascent company and supercharge it.

“Damian gave me the TRIMTECH pitch then I met the co-founders, Leo and Will,” said Nicki.

The company was founded by Cambridge Innovation Capital and the Dementia Discovery Fund in conjunction with CIC’s then joint entrepreneur-in-residence, Damian Crowther, and academic co-founders Leo James (MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology) and Will McEwan (UK Dementia Research Institute at the University of Cambridge).

Damian, a clinician-scientist, has now relinquished his CIC role to head up research at TRIMTECH’s base at the Milner Therapeutics Institute. TRIMTECH is developing a pipeline of potent, CNS (central nervous system) penetrant therapeutics based on its aggregate-selective degrader molecules known as TRIMTACs. It leverages the E3 ubiquitin ligase TRIM21 molecule to selectively and potently degrade protein aggregates associated with a range of diseases which are not well served by current TPD approaches. This includes treatments for severe neurodegenerative and inflammatory disorders including Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s disease.

“Nicki helped to make this investible,” remarks Damian.

Congratulations to all the winners.