Columbia, Cambridge & Oxford Pitch Day

In New York City, air pollution cuts an average of 2.4 years from residents’ lives. Current PM2.5 air-quality regulations, and the sensors that enforce them, overlook 90% of the particles we inhale (ultrafine particles), which include nanoplastics, viruses, and other toxins. Ultrafine particles currently remain invisible and unmonitored — a gap the WHO aims to close with new regulations.

Aetosense provides a cost-effective way to detect ultrafine particles, feeding real-time data into building management and smart-city systems. Our affordable hardware delivers the critical data link needed to connect clean air to measurable outcomes – reducing exposure, lowering sick leave, and boosting productivity.

We target forward-thinking cities and building developers who seek actionable air-quality data for health, efficiency, and compliance with upcoming ultrafine particle regulations. Unlike competitors serving only research markets, we deliver scalable, affordable technology for mass adoption, which enables step-change improvements rather than incremental gains.

Supported by public funding and paid trials, Aetosense technology is currently running trials with Bosch, University of Singapore and University of Cambridge Estate.

We are seeking $1.15 million to bring our technology to market-ready scale and expand globally. Join Aetosense in safeguarding the health of future generations.

Presenting: Dr Molly Haugen, CEO

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Cambridge Photon Technology (CPT) is a University of Cambridge spin-out developing breakthrough Photon Multiplier (PM) materials that boost the power output of silicon solar panels by up to 15%, without altering panel design or manufacturing processes. Solar power has been the fastest growing source of electricity in the last 10 years. Silicon, the dominant photovoltaic (PV) material, has been steadily increasing in efficiency and decreasing in cost.

However, this technology is now nearing its practical efficiency limit. Solar manufacturers need a new solution to continue raising panels’ efficiency
and value, and to further reduce the cost of solar energy. CPT’s “drop-in” PM technology addresses this pressing need, delivering improved PV performance, lower energy cost and attractive financial returns for the whole industry without disruptive changes or new capital investments. Being compatible with all types of silicon solar panels, the patent-protected PM
technology has a total addressable market of US$18 billion by 2034. Having established strategic business relationships, CPT has defined a business strategy and product roadmap to capture 25% of the market and achieve revenues of US$4.5 billion per year.

The next step in the company’s journey is a Series A round raise to fund product development and commercialisation.

Presenting: Dr Claudio Marinelli, CEO and Co-Founder

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Advanced nanomaterials drive next generation products in billion dollar industries, from semiconductors to pharmaceuticals. However, companies often take 10 to 20 years to bring a laboratory innovation to an economically feasible, industrial scale production process.

Accelerated Materials aims to disrupt this long and arduous pathway with a paradigm shifting platform for scaling-up nanomaterials production – cutting the time and cost to scale by 90%. The company has recently launched this platform, which combines patented, ultra-efficient microreactor technologies with machine learning and automation, through its “K-series” reactors and AI-enabled automation software “AMLearn”. AM provides these technologies
through solutions to R&D and manufacturing companies, which the company closely partners with through a licensing model.

In this talk, CEO and Founder, Dr Nicholas Jose, will describe this platform, as well as the recent efforts within the semiconductor packaging industry, where the company is poised to drive enormous value in the growing advanced semiconductor industry by enabling rapid, localized production of high performance thermal additives.

Presenting: Dr Nicholas A. Jose, CEO

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Reclinker (formerly Cambridge Electric Cement) is decarbonizing the cement industry by processing recycled feedstock in the electric arc furnaces (EAFs) used for steel production. Steelmakers already used lime as a flux in EAFs, and our trials have demonstrated that cement recovered from demolition waste performs very well in its place.

Our approach bypasses the reactions that make cement production such a large contributor to global emissions and puts us on the path to making Portland cement at scale.

We’ve recently signed a commercial agreement with a leading steelmaker for the pilot production of 2,000 tonnes of material and are negotiating off-take agreements with construction majors. The potential output from our first facility would be c.120k tonnes per annum without the need for significant capital expenditure.

We are currently raising a £10m ($13.5m) Series A round, which we hope to complete by the end of 2025.

Presenting: Bill Yost, CEO & Co-Founder

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Trismik is a Cambridge University spinout on a mission to remove one of the biggest bottlenecks in AI research – slow, unreliable model evaluation. Built for applied scientists, ML engineers, and technical founders, our platform delivers both adaptive and classical testing, cutting time from test to insight by up to 98% without sacrificing rigour.

With experiment tracking, stratified testing, and rich visualisation all in one place, Trismik accelerates iteration and builds trust in AI systems. In this pitch, we’ll share why our research-first approach sets us apart and give a glimpse of the product we’re launching just a week before the event.

Presenting: Rebekka Mikkola, CEO and Co-Founder

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Xterna is a London-based, pre-seed stage Engineering Biology company developing xeno nucleic acid (XNA) binders against a novel antigen class for targeted drug delivery. With 90% of drugs failing in clinical trials—largely due to poor efficacy (50%) and unmanageable toxicity (30%)—novel antigens and targeting methods are urgently needed. Xterna develops binders made of XNA, a therapeutically relevant and nonimmunogenic building block used widely in the clinic, to target specific cell types.

The technology leverages Xterna’s CSO’s training in Cambridge’s world-leading XNA chemistry group and CEO’s experience in oncology R&D, uniquely enabling HTS of large XNA based libraries directly in vivo. Xterna’s candidates also target a recently discovered nucleic acidbased antigen, unlocking cell types that evade protein antigen based targeting. Xterna’s discovery-stage R&D currently focuses on immuno- oncology, with plans to expand into additional therapeutic areas later this year.

Backed by biotech VCs across the US and Europe and winners of the 2025 Daiichi Sankyo Golden Ticket competition, Xterna is driven to make the untreatable, curable.

Presenting: Dr Jess Corry, CEO and Co-Founder

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Strokes affect 20 million people annually, and the most severe type, Large Vessel Occlusion (LVO) strokes, account for 95% of stroke-related disability and death. Timely diagnosis is critical, but current methods are slow and location-dependent. Our LVOne is a rapid, life-saving blood test designed for paramedics. Using just a finger-prick sample, it provides crucial information on stroke type in a few minutes. Its portability, speed, and ease of use enable paramedics to quickly triage patients and transport LVO patients directly to a specialized center for a thrombectomy. This dramatically increases treatment rates, saving lives and reducing long-term disability.

Our proprietary technology, protected by a granted US patent, has been clinically validated and is approved for commercialization in the UK. We are seeking US-centric investors to support our go-to-market strategy in the US in 2027.

Presenting: Gonzalo Ladreda, CEO

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William Oak Diagnostics is a University of Cambridge spin-out developing a digital health solution for diagnosing nutritional deficiencies and anaemia. Nutritional deficiencies account for nearly 50 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) globally, significantly impacting healthy ageing and longevity. The link between nutrition and health is well established, poor nutritional status not only increases the risk of developing disease but also contributes to severity and poorer outcomes.

Our innovation combines novel microfluidics with lateral flow technology to allow parallel testing of multiple assays simultaneously from a single drop of blood. This enables a test that is both extremely simple to use, with just one push of a button. Results are read via a smartphone app, providing a quantitative output to support clear decision-making, with a dashboard displaying key health parameters and integration with healthcare professionals. By utilising large-scale testing data, we are developing a predictive model that allows comprehensive targeting of deficiency risk-factors to allow efficient implementation strategies, as well as personalisation of testing and treatment for patients.

We are currently raising our seed round and are seeking strategic US investors and implementation partners to support market entry and scale-up.

Presenting: Dr Alexander Patto, CEO and Co-Founder

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