Molten Ventures plc (“Molten Ventures”, “Molten”, the “Group” or the “Company”) Strong NAV Growth, Compelling Realisations and Building Scale Molten Ventures (LSE: GROW), a leading venture capital firm investing in and developing disruptive, high-growth technology companies, today announces its final results for the year ended 31 March 2026. Financial highlights £1,525m Gross Portfolio Value* (31 March 2025: £1,367m). £1,324m Net Assets (31 March 2025: £1,236m). 760p NAV per share* (31 March 2025: 671p). 13% Gross Portfolio net fair value movement* (31 March 2025: 5%). £89m Invested (31 March 2025: £73m), in addition a further £22m from the managed EIS/VCT funds (31 March 2025: £73m invested and a further £34m from the managed EIS/VCT funds)** £120m Cash proceeds from realisations (31 March 2025: £135m). 0.5% Admin expenses (net of fee income and exceptional items) (31 March 2025: 0.6%) vs the targeted 1% of year-end NAV*. £52m Consolidated Group Cash (31 March 2025: £89m). £38m Share buybacks completed during the year, with a further £1m completed post period-end (31 March 2025: £17m). *The above figures contain alternative performance measures (“APMs”) – see Note 34 Annual Report for reconciliation of APMs to IFRS measures. **EIS and VCT funds are managed by Molten Ventures plc Group but are not consolidated. See accounting policies on page 146 to 157 and Glossary on page 192 to 193 of the Annual Report for defined terms. Portfolio and operational highlights Fair value increase in the year £172m Net Fair Value increase, exclusive of the impact of FX. Well funded Core Portfolio 88% of Core Portfolio companies funded for at least 12 months. Strong Core average revenue Average revenue of over $600 million in the Core Portfolio, including those that are currently earning over $1 billion a year in revenue. Strong Core gross margin position Core Portfolio companies average gross margin of 70% for 2026, excluding pre-revenue companies. Increased maturity in the Core 7 of the Core Portfolio profitable. Strong funding in the Core and Emerging $3.75 billion raised from funding rounds. Over $3.5 billion raised by Core companies and over $200 million for Emerging companies. Our Sustainability Report will be published on 16 June 2026 and will be available on our website: investors.moltenventures.com/sustainability Post period end Secured a cornerstone investor for our new Growth Fund. Realised a further £63 million from Revolut while retaining significant upside. Portfolio company ICEYE completed a Series F funding round raising €450 million at a valuation of over €10 billion. Ben Wilkinson, Chief Executive Officer of Molten Ventures, commented: “FY26 marks twenty years since Molten was founded as a venture investor in European technology and ten since our IPO. Over that time, we have built a differentiated platform with the experience, relationships and track record to back Europe’s most ambitious companies through cycles and realise value for shareholders. This year’s results reflect that, with strong NAV growth, realisations at compelling multiples, a strengthened team and costs well below target, as we continue to make progress against our strategic objectives. “One enduring feature of Molten has been our focus on the enabling layers of technology, which has been maintained through changing market cycles and has helped us to build a diversified portfolio across multiple subsectors. As AI reshapes the technology landscape, demand for European technological sovereignty grows and more domestic institutional capital is directed towards the asset class, we see these trends creating a favourable backdrop for both Molten and the wider European venture capital landscape. “Looking ahead, we are pleased with the progress we are making in scaling third-party capital alongside our balance sheet. We have secured a cornerstone commitment for our new growth fund, Molten East is progressing towards a first close later this year and our dedicated Secondaries team is building strong momentum. We also continue to see compelling opportunities in areas such as AI infrastructure, space and dual-use technologies. The opportunity to build Molten into the leading platform for European venture capital has never been clearer, and we enter FY27 with a well-positioned portfolio, growing momentum across our fundraising initiatives and confidence in the path ahead.” As previously announced, a live webcast presentation including Q&A will be held today at 9:30am for analysts and will be available on
https://brrmedia.news/GROW_FY26. Conference call details for the Q&A are available upon request via Sodali (details below). In addition, Molten will be hosting a presentation for all investors via the Investor Meet Company platform on 12 June 2026 at 10:30am BST. Existing and potential investors can sign up to Investor Meet Company for free via the following link:
GROW - MOLTEN VENTURES PLC | Investor Meet Company. The financial information set out in this announcement does not constitute the Company's statutory financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2026 but is derived from those financial statements. The Annual Report and Financial Statements 2026, which includes the full financial statements, will be made available to shareholders in due course and will be published on the Company's website. Where page numbers are referenced in this announcement, these refer to the Annual Report and Financial Statements 2026. The auditors have reported on those financial statements; their report was unqualified and did not contain a statement under section 498(2) or (3) of the Companies Act 2006.
| Enquiries: | |
| Molten Ventures plc Ben Wilkinson, Chief Executive Officer Andrew Zimmermann, Chief Financial Officer | +44 (0)20 7931 8800 ir@molten.vc |
| Deutsche Numis Joint Financial Adviser and Corporate Broker Joshua Hughes Liam Kingsmill | +44 (0)20 7260 1000 |
| Berenberg Joint Financial Adviser and Corporate Broker Ben Wright Harry Nicholas Mark Whitmore | +44 (0)20 3207 7800 |
| Sodali & Co Public Relations Elly Williamson Sam Austrums |
+44 (0)7889 297 217 molten@sodali.com |
About Molten Ventures Molten Ventures is a leading venture capital firm in Europe, developing and investing in high growth technology companies. It invests across four sectors: Enterprise & SaaS; AI, Deeptech & Hardware; Consumer Technology; and Digital Health, with highly experienced partners constantly looking for new opportunities in each. Listed on the London Stock Exchange, Molten Ventures provides a unique opportunity for public market investors to access these fast-growing tech businesses, without having to commit to long-term investments with limited liquidity. Since its IPO in June 2016, Molten has deployed over £1 billion of capital into fast growing tech companies and has realised more than £750 million to 31 March 2026. For more information, go to
https://investors.moltenventures.com/investor-relations/plc Chairman’s Statement Dear Shareholders, FY26 has been a year of meaningful strategic progress for Molten Ventures. Against a challenging macroeconomic and geopolitical backdrop that has tested capital markets globally, your Company has demonstrated resilience, discipline and a determination to build long-term value for shareholders and, importantly, has delivered against the strategy it set out. This was the first full financial year under Ben Wilkinson’s leadership as Chief Executive, and marks ten years since Molten’s IPO and twenty since the business was founded. Over that period Molten has built a distinctive long-term track record as a leading European venture investor, and it is that pedigree, together with the progress made this year, that underpins the Board’s confidence in the direction of the business. The strategic refocus Ben set out: concentrating capital at Series A and B, building out our secondaries capability, and scaling third-party capital alongside our evergreen balance sheet, is now well underway and, as the results demonstrate, is delivering. The Board is firmly supportive of this direction and encouraged by the pace of execution. The securing of a cornerstone commitment for our new Growth Fund is a significant milestone and, in the Board’s view, an important external endorsement of the scaling strategy. The detail of how this strategy is being executed across the portfolio is set out in the Chief Executive’s Review. The policy environment is also moving in a constructive direction. The growing recognition of European technology sovereignty, the Mansion House Accord, and wider efforts to unlock domestic institutional capital into growth companies all create structural opportunities that Molten is well placed to capture. Portfolio and performance Our portfolio companies have continued to demonstrate encouraging fundamentals, and these metrics give the Board confidence that the underlying quality of our investments is strong, even where the broader market environment has constrained some valuations and exit activity. The team has made good progress on realisations during the year and has taken a proactive approach to exit preparation and portfolio management, ensuring that the portfolio is well positioned to benefit as market conditions improve. Our share buyback programme formed part of a clear, Board-endorsed capital allocation discipline that prioritises NAV per share accretive uses of capital, with returns to shareholders through buybacks where they are accretive to NAV per share. As part of this, the Board resolved to allocate an additional £38 million to the programme during the financial year. A fuller discussion of investment deployment, the buyback programme and capital allocation priorities can be found in the Chief Executive Officer’s and Chief Financial Officer’s Reviews. People and culture Our people are the foundation of our success, and I am pleased with the progress made during FY26 to strengthen the team and embed a strong, values-driven culture. The investment team has seen thoughtful evolution, with new joiners at Investment Manager and Associate level complementing the experience of the existing team. We welcomed Franco Danesi as Senior Partner and furthered our secondaries capability by establishing a dedicated Secondaries team. The appointment of Chantal Cantle as Chief People Officer in June 2025 has provided renewed impetus to our people strategy, with a focus on structured career pathways, development programmes and the articulation of the Company’s values. The Board is mindful of the importance of succession planning at all levels of the business, and structured pathways to promotion for high-performing team members have been established. Employee engagement feedback has been positive, with strong support for the business direction, leadership, and the balance between autonomy and structure. Further detail on these initiatives can be found in the Sustainability Report and Governance Reports. Board and governance The Board has continued to evolve its governance framework in line with best practice. During the year, we undertook preparatory work for compliance with the 2024 UK Corporate Governance Code, including the addition of new sections addressing board leadership, purpose, culture and values. We have also enhanced our approach to risk management and internal controls in line with the updated Code’s requirements. Grahame Cook will stand for re-election at this year’s Annual General Meeting for a final term before retiring from the Board. Grahame has served as a Non-Executive Director since the Company’s IPO and has made an invaluable contribution to the Board, including as Chair of the Audit, Risk and Valuations Committee and as interim Chairman in the period before my appointment. On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank Grahame for his dedicated service over many years, including for standing in as interim Chairman during the leadership transition. Further details of the planned succession arrangements can be found in the Nomination Committee Report on page 95. Shareholder engagement During the year, the Board undertook a thorough review of the Company’s available strategic opportunities. Having considered each rigorously, the Board unanimously concluded that the current strategy of disciplined primary investment, proactive portfolio management and development, and selective capital return, remains the most compelling path to long-term value creation. I have personally engaged directly with all our large institutional shareholders, and the overwhelming majority expressed clear support for this direction. These conversations have been encouraging and candid, and I remain committed to maintaining an open dialogue with all our shareholders. Separately, our Senior Independent Director and Chair of the Remuneration Committee, Sarah Gentleman, has conducted a thorough consultation with shareholders on the Company’s remuneration policy. The feedback has been positive, with shareholders supportive of the proposed approach. The strong operational performance delivered during FY26 is reflected in the corporate KPI outcomes disclosed in the Directors’ Remuneration Report on page 108. Outlook Exit markets remain in recovery, and the Board is conscious that the pace of improvement is not yet fully predictable. Against that backdrop, the Board takes confidence from the foundations established during FY26: a focused investment strategy, a strengthened team, and a capital allocation framework that has delivered meaningful NAV per share growth. The work underway to scale Molten’s third-party capital platform, which Ben describes in detail in his review, represents in the Board’s view the most significant medium-term opportunity for the business. We enter FY27 with clear priorities, a cohesive team, and a Board that is fully supportive of the direction being taken. I look forward to reporting on further progress. I would like to thank our shareholders, portfolio company founders and my fellow Directors for their continued support. I am particularly grateful to the entire Molten Ventures team for their dedication during what has been a demanding but genuinely exciting year for Molten. I look forward to reporting on further progress next year. Laurence Hollingworth Chairman CEO’s statement Twenty years of Molten FY26 marks two milestone anniversaries for Molten Ventures: twenty years since we were founded as a venture investor in European technology, and ten years since our IPO in June 2016. During that period, we have deployed over £1.3 billion, realised more than £780 million, and delivered average portfolio returns of 26% per annum against a 20% target. Those numbers are not just a function of picking well at the outset. They reflect our ability to curate and actively manage the portfolio over many years supporting founders through initial investments, follow-on rounds, pivots, and exits which is a distinct VC skillset and where value compounds across cycles. Venture matters because it is how the next generation of companies are built and with them the innovation, skilled jobs, IP and resilience that flow through the wider economy. Venture returns are defined by the power-law, where a small number of category-winning companies drive the bulk of returns, and the discipline lies in identifying those companies early, backing them with conviction, and doubling down as they scale. Venture delivers the strongest long-term returns of any private capital strategy. The UK Private Capital (‘UKPC’) 2025 Performance Measurement Survey shows UK venture funds generating since-inception returns ahead of small and mid private equity over the long run, with exposure to the structural growth themes such as AI, space, fintech, energy transition, digital health and quantum, that are reshaping the global economy. Molten gives institutional and public market investors scaled, liquid access to that opportunity in Europe through a platform: a listed evergreen balance sheet providing liquid exposure, alongside managed EIS and VCT funds, and a growing third-party capital business, run by an experienced team with reach across the European ecosystem. We are committed to delivering shareholder returns, underpinned by our strategic priorities: driving NAV growth through our core investing strength at Series A and B, scaling our third-party asset management platform, putting capital to NAV-accretive use, and narrowing the share price discount to NAV. Our FY26 performance, together with the progress we have made since the period-end, demonstrates strong execution against each of these priorities. FY26 Performance Overview FY26 was a year of meaningful progress. NAV per share grew 13% to 760p, and Gross Portfolio Value rose 13% to around £1,525 million. Fair value growth, excluding foreign exchange, in the portfolio was £172 million, or 13%. Realisations remained strong, generating £120 million of cash proceeds at an average 3x multiple on invested capital. We deployed £89 million into new and follow-on investments and returned £38 million to shareholders through the share buyback programme, a NAV per share accretive use of capital that contributed 21p to the total 89p NAV per share uplift. We held operating costs well below our 1% of NAV target. We grew the team with new hires, including a dedicated secondaries team to support our scaling ambitions. The portfolio is balanced with strong operational delivery and funding rounds at ICEYE, Revolut, Ledger and Riverlane more than offset pressure in some listed comparables. Two portfolio companies, Modo Energy and Manna, moved into the Core during the year following successful Series B rounds. Realisations and Investments The £120 million returned in FY26 builds on £135 million in FY25, taking the trailing two-year total to £255 million. Partial realisations of Revolut at 21.0x and ICEYE at 12.9x, alongside full realisations of Freetrade at 1.5x and Lyst at 0.7x, all at or above holding value, reaffirm the maturity of the portfolio and our disciplined approach to valuation. Our direct investments included the leading of rounds in Modo Energy and Manna at the Growth stage, and earlier stage deals in Polymodels Hub, General Index, Duel and MAIA. These growth investments are an example of where our differentiated deal flow, brand and ability to lead create the most value, and they sit in the persistent funding gap European growth-stage companies face. On secondaries, we acquired a stake in Speedinvest Continuation Fund I, building on Molten’s long track record in this market. We’ve realised over £200 million from earlier secondaries positions, with a distribution-to-paid-in multiple of over 1.7x and a TVPI of over 2.3x. The logic is compelling, shorter duration, better visibility on exit, attractive entry pricing in a constrained liquidity environment, and a market where our European network is genuinely differentiated. European Technology The case for European technology has never been more compelling. Category-defining companies are emerging across artificial intelligence (‘AI’), space, fintech, energy transition, digital health, cyber and quantum. The growing case for European technological sovereignty and the recognition that critical infrastructure like defence applications, payments rails and frontier compute can’t depend wholly on capital outside the region is further compounding strategic interest in European champions. This plays directly to Molten’s positioning as a pan-European Series A and B investor. Capital is being recycled, entrepreneurial talent is starting new businesses, the investor ecosystem is deepening and the European flywheel is turning. Our thesis is consistent, we back the enabling layers, the infrastructure, middleware, data, and governance rails on which whole sectors are built. It is a less crowded part of the market, the unit economics are more durable, and it is where European founders have a genuine right to win. Europe’s strengths play directly into this layer, regulatory proximity to the world’s most demanding customers, a deep opensource and engineering heritage, sovereign procurement tailwinds, and an unrivalled density of technical talent coming out of our universities and research clusters. Our portfolio is well diversified, with a pipeline of investment, growth and realisation (both full and partial) opportunities, reflecting exposure to areas of tangible demand and commercial traction. Two areas of particular focus, both for the wider market and for Molten, have been AI and Space. AI is the most significant generational shift in technology since the internet. We’re in the sixth wave of technology, and our primary area of focus is the enabling middleware layer, security and governance, workload intelligence, agentic commerce infrastructure, and the data infrastructure for AI memory, rather than the foundational models or the application layer. We continue to invest with discipline and are not chasing the hyped-up applications at stretched valuations; instead we aim to back businesses where AI compounds an existing data, distribution or workflow advantage, and where European founders have a genuine right to win. Thought Machine, the cloud-native core banking provider, sit in the technology infrastructure layer that customers increasingly rely on as the foundation for AI deployment. Aircall, our cloud-based phone platform, has embedded AI into its product and was a standout fair-value contributor in the period. RavenPack supplies AI-driven analytics to financial markets clients. Among our newer FY26 positions, we led a $10 million Series A extension in General Index, a London-based provider of transparent, technology-driven energy and commodity pricing benchmarks, and a £7 million Series A in Polymodels Hub, which applies modelling, simulation and AI to pharmaceutical process development. Space has moved from speculative thesis to commercial reality faster than most anticipated. ICEYE, our largest space holding and operator of the world’s largest synthetic-aperture radar satellite constellation, delivered revenues of $250 million and backlog contracts of $1.7 billion, secured a series of major government and defence contracts during the year, including programmes with the Polish Armed Forces, the Finnish Defence Forces and the Portuguese Air Force, alongside a multi-billion-euro contract with Germany through its Rheinmetall joint venture. The maturity of the business is reflected in the £17 million partial realisation we completed during the year as part of the $2.8 billion Series E, with substantial value retained. ISAR Aerospace remains the leading European launch services provider; following its first orbital launch attempt from continental Europe in 2025, the company has spent FY26 preparing for its qualification mission, expanding its production facilities, and continuing to win commercial contracts. SatVu, our thermal intelligence holding, secured a £30 million funding round in February 2026 led by the NATO Innovation Fund and including the British Business Bank, with Molten as lead among existing investors. The round funds the build-out of SatVu’s multi-satellite thermal constellation, with HotSat-2 and HotSat-3 due for launch in 2026 and a further three satellites under contract. As governments rebuild defence and resilience capacity and corporates embrace space-driven commercial opportunities, the momentum in space and launch is structural rather than cyclical, and we have built deliberate exposure across both areas Our model: one platform, multiple pools of capital Molten gives investors institutional-grade, scaled access to European venture and growth-stage technology through a single, integrated platform. Capital flows in through three pools, our listed PLC balance sheet, our managed EIS and VCT funds, and a growing pool of thirdparty institutional capital, deploying through three complementary routes: direct primary investments at Series A and B, where we lead and shape rounds; secondary investments, where we acquire mature, high-quality portfolios with nearer-term liquidity; and a focused Fund of Funds programme, which gives us early visibility on the next generation of category leaders across the European seed ecosystem. Each route reinforces the others. Fund of Funds and seed exposure feed proprietary deal flow into the direct programme. The direct portfolio generates the realisations that recycle capital back into new investments and shareholder returns. Secondaries add duration management and a counter-cyclical entry point, and provide the foundation for our next phase of third-party fundraising. The result is a platform that can deploy through cycles, realise consistently, and offer LPs the rare combination of liquidity, diversification and scale in an asset class. The venture asset-class case is well established, being the most direct route to the structural growth themes such as, AI, space, fintech, climate, digital health and quantum, that are reshaping the global economy. The challenge has always been access at scale, with appropriate governance, at an attractive entry point. Molten’s platform is built precisely to close that gap: a twenty-year track record, a listed evergreen vehicle, and a growing opportunity for co-investment and fund structures alongside it. Strategic Priorities and Capital Allocation In February 2025 I set out a strategic refocus built around five clear priorities, all directed at delivering NAV per share growth and long-term shareholder returns: (i) reinforce our core investing strength in Series A and B; (ii) scale portfolio development and institutional co-investment; (iii) operate a narrower, more focused Fund of Funds programme; (iv) maintain balance sheet strength and NAV accretive use of capital; and (v) narrow the share price discount to NAV. On Fund of Funds, while we are concentrating future commitments on a smaller, select group of managers, we also took the opportunity in December 2025 to repurchase the previously syndicated portion of our Fund of Funds programme for £20 million. This was an opportunistic transaction to acquire a high-quality portfolio we know intimately, brought back fully onto our balance sheet at attractive pricing. We’ve added to and upskilled the team to support delivery, including the establishment of a dedicated secondaries team during the year. We continue to reaffirm our capital allocation policy being a balanced approach prioritising NAV per share accretive uses of capital, with a minimum of 10% of realisation proceeds returned to shareholders through the share buyback programme. During FY26, supported by strong realisations, the buyback programme contributed 21p to the total 89p uplift in NAV per share, alongside continued portfolio development through new and follow-on investments. Together, these actions have helped narrow the share price discount to NAV, which remains a key focus for the Board. Building scale Third-party fundraising is now the central pillar of our scaling strategy, and we’re building it on a platform that already works. The operational, governance and reporting infrastructure of an institutional-grade European venture capital investor is in place today. Our task is to layer additional third-party capital onto it. We’re not opportunity constrained, we’re capital constrained and the chance to do more with more is clearly there. We secured a cornerstone commitment for our new growth fund, a significant milestone and a strong endorsement of the strategy. The cornerstone investor validates the proposition, de-risks the path to a first close, and gives us real momentum to bring in further institutional LPs on the back of it. Just as importantly, it enables us to lead and scale Series B+ rounds in Europe, backing our highest-conviction companies with the depth of capital they need to compete globally, without stretching the plc balance sheet. For Molten, that means more ownership in the winners, stronger management fee economics over time, and a clearer route to narrowing the discount to NAV. Molten East, our fund focused on technology companies across the Central and Eastern European region, is progressing well and we expect a first close in 2026. Our new dedicated secondaries team is preparing a third-party fundraise targeting a market where competition for high-quality assets remains comparatively low and entry pricing is attractive. We’re also engaged with the UK and European pension and insurance investors, on initiatives aligned with the policy direction of unlocking domestic institutional capital for growth companies. The macro backdrop is supportive: UK Private Capital’s (formerly the BVCA) 2025 Report on Investment Activity shows UK private capital fundraising rising to £58.7 billion during 2025 with pension funds the largest contributor at 23%. Molten provides a complete proposition for diversified exposure to European growth-stage technology: a twenty-year track record, an established team and platform, a diversified portfolio of more than 90 direct and indirect positions, multiple routes to deploy and realise capital, and the option to participate alongside us through co-investment structures or dedicated vehicles. These initiatives share one objective: building third-party capital alongside our evergreen balance sheet so Molten can participate in larger opportunities, generate management fee income that strengthens our cost ratio, and aim to accelerate the closing of the share price discount to NAV. We continue to assess further options. Broadening of the Team None of this happens without the people who execute it. During the year we continued to hire into the investment team and strengthen the platform, the technology, finance, communications and operations capabilities that make a public-market venture business work. In March 2026 we announced the establishment of a dedicated secondaries team, bringing together Malcolm Ferguson and Nick Sando, who join from Octopus Ventures with deep experience supporting high-growth companies, and Steven Mendel, co-founder and former CEO of ManyPets, who scaled that business to unicorn status and brings first-hand insight into the liquidity needs of founders, employees and early investors. The team is focused on raising a dedicated third-party secondary fund to co-invest alongside the Molten Ventures plc balance sheet, building on our established track record of acquiring high-quality, mature assets with nearer-term realisation opportunities. The team is already pursuing a strong pipeline and is the engine for the third-party fundraise. The Portfolio The portfolio is scaling nicely, with the Core Portfolio consisting of 17 portfolio companies accounting for 64% of the Gross Portfolio Value. These Core companies are achieving 41% revenue growth with average gross margins of 70%, and 88% of companies being funded for at least 12 months, with seven Core holdings are now profitable. Modo Energy, which builds the global standard for benchmarking and forecasting electrification assets including batteries, solar, wind and flexible loads, advanced into the Core during the year following the £25 million Series B that we led in December 2025; its data is now used by major asset owners, operators and financiers across Europe, North America and APAC, with billions of dollars of assets underwritten using its intelligence. Manna, our drone delivery investment, also progressed into the Core following the $50 million Series B; the business now operates across Ireland, Texas and Helsinki, with platform partnerships including Deliveroo, Just Eat, Wolt, DoorDash and Uber as it scales toward becoming a global drone delivery operator. Market backdrop and Policy European venture deal volumes for 2025 were tracking around $68 billion against the 2021 peak of $125 billion, but the best businesses continue to attract capital at attractive valuations, whilst our portfolio companies raised $3.75 billion in aggregate during the year. In the UK, the Mansion House Accord signed in May 2025 is working to unlock up to £50 billion of pension scheme capital into private markets by 2030, with at least half intended for UK assets. Combined with the British Business Bank’s Growth Partnership and broader efforts to deepen domestic institutional participation in growth capital, this represents a structural shift in the funding environment for UK and European technology companies. We continue to engage with policymakers and the wider industry on these opportunities, including through the UKPC, where I sit on as Chair of the Pensions and Private Capital Expert Panel, and where the case for unlocking domestic institutional capital into growth assets is being made consistently and constructively. Molten is well placed to participate in that shift, both as a listed vehicle that already gives public market investors access to high-growth private technology and as a manager of third-party capital for institutions seeking the same exposure. On geopolitics, Molten has no direct exposure to events in the Middle East and has not experienced any detrimental first-order effects on the portfolio arising from the current conflict. We continue to monitor the wider implications for capital flows, supply chains and risk sentiment as part of our standard portfolio risk management. Post-Period End and Outlook Post period-end, we’ve realised a further c.£63 million from Revolut while retaining significant upside, alongside securing a cornerstone investor for our new Growth Fund. This reflects our active approach: retain upside, release capital, and recycle it into the next generation of growth opportunities, which is the engine of our capital allocation policy We have entered FY27 with momentum: a well-balanced, robust portfolio with near-term realisation opportunities, a strengthened team, and an expanding pipeline of high-conviction opportunities at Series A and B, supported by structural tailwinds in European technology sovereignty, accelerating demand in AI, Space and Energy transition, and initiatives like the Mansion House Accord unlocking domestic growth capital. Recycling proceeds into this pipeline, not simply returning them, is how we compound NAV per share over the cycle. We’re particularly pleased with recent progress on building scale, which will support consistent deployment and broaden our access to the best European deals, as we continue to assess further initiatives to unlock value and close the NAV discount. Our capital allocation policy is reaffirmed with NAV-accretive deployment first and returns to shareholders through buybacks where accretive to NAV per share. I’d like to thank all our colleagues and stakeholders for their hard work and support. Ben Wilkinson Chief Executive Officer Portfolio review FY26 was a year of strong portfolio performance, disciplined capital deployment and continued delivery on realisations. Gross Portfolio Value (“GPV”) increased to £1,525 million (31 March 2025: £1,367 million), driven by £172 million of fair value growth (13% of opening GPV, excluding foreign exchange). Foreign exchange contributed a further £16 million uplift, driven primarily by our Euro exposure and partially offset by US Dollar and other non-Sterling denominated investments. Overview Our portfolio valuations process continues to follow the IPEV Guidelines, reflecting both public market comparables and pricing in recent funding rounds. Fair value increased by £172 million (13% of opening GPV), comprising £297 million of uplifts and partially offset by £123 million of reductions. Growth was led by the Core Portfolio, with strong contributions from ICEYE, Revolut, Ledger and Riverlane on the back of new funding rounds and continued commercial momentum, partially offset by reductions in Coachhub and Schüttflix. Portfolio companies collectively raised more than $3.75 billion during the year. Our activities in the year Disciplined portfolio management remains a defining feature of how we operate. During FY26 we deployed £89 million from the Plc balance sheet (FY25: £73 million), with a further £22 million invested through our managed EIS and VCT funds. Capital was directed into a focused set of new investments, selective follow-on rounds in companies hitting clear inflection points, and into our Secondary strategy where we continue to find attractively priced exposure to high-quality assets with shorter paths to liquidity. Follow-on investments
| Company and sector | Stage | What they do | Why we are excited |
| MODOENERGY Energy & Climate | Growth | Building the global standard for benchmarking and forecasting electrification assets, with battery and solar forecasts used by major asset owners, operators and financiers across Europe, North America and APAC. | Molten led a £25 million Series B round, investing £12.5m as a follow-on. Billions of dollars of assets are now being underwritten, operated and valued using Modo’s data a structural opportunity that scales with global renewable deployment. Modo advanced into the Core Portfolio during the year. |
| MANNA Consumer Technology | Growth | Pioneering drone delivery operator with a full-stack approach to last-mile logistics, live in Dublin, Texas and Helsinki, with partnerships including Deliveroo, Just Eat and Wolt. | Follow-on capital to support international scale-up. Manna also moved into the Core Portfolio during the year following its successful Series B. |
| fintechOS Enterprise & SaaS/ Fintech | Growth | Banking and insurance product development platform enabling financial institutions to launch and modernise products faster. | A £2.2 million follow-on supporting a highly disruptive, AI-fluent product engine that allows banks and insurers to modernize their technology stack. |
| BeZero Energy & Climate | Growth | Carbon credit ratings agency providing independent assessments of project quality, with ratings now available on 40+ platforms including Bloomberg. | Continued conviction following BeZero's appointment by the Swiss Government to assess carbon credits for national climate targets - one of the strongest external validations of its position as a reference standard. |
| imu HealthTech | Growth | A company at the intersection of immunology and data science decoding the human immune system using AI and deep, systems-level immune profiling. | Follow-on capital to accelerate an AI-driven map of the human immune system, unlocking breakthroughs in precision medicine. |
Core Portfolio The Core Portfolio comprises 17 companies representing the majority of our Gross Portfolio Value at 31 March 2026. Across this cohort, revenue grew by 40% in FY26, with average gross margins of approximately 70% (excluding ISAR Aerospace as a pre-revenue company), confirming that the Core continues to combine high growth with strong unit economics. Cash positions remain healthy: 88% of Core companies are funded for at least 12 months and seven are now profitable, underpinning the maturity and resilience of this cohort. The Core Portfolio drove the majority of the £172 million fair value uplift recorded in the year, with £210 million contributing to fair value growth. Modo Energy and Manna joined the Core Portfolio following successful Series B rounds, illustrating the funnel from Emerging to Core that is central to our portfolio construction model. Freetrade and Lyst exited the Core through full realisations. Emerging Portfolio The direct Emerging Portfolio spans a broad range of early to growth-stage technology companies that the team actively support. The best performing emerging companies become the Core Portfolio, as evidenced by the strong funding rounds for Modo Energy and Manna now entering the Core. Selected highlights: • BeZero: Carbon ratings now available on 40+ platforms (including Bloomberg) and 100+ enterprise clients. Following their FY25 Series C, BeZero was appointed by the Swiss government to assess credits for national climate targets. • Deciphex: secured full UKAS accreditation for its histopathology laboratory, and advanced its AI-driven platforms to improve efficiency of pathologist review in research and clinical practice. • Sightline Climate: Market intelligence for the climate economy, with growing corporate and investor demand. • RenewRisk: CAT risk models for renewable energy infrastructure, addressing a clear gap in the insurance and project finance markets. Fund Investments Our Fund Investments capture exposure to our Fund of Funds programme, Earlybird, and our Secondary strategy. Together they contributed £17 million of fair value growth in FY26 providing diversified exposure to the broader European venture ecosystem alongside our direct portfolio. Fund of Funds programme Since 2017 we have built a diversified seed Fund of Funds programme of over 80 funds. Total commitments at 31 March 2026 stand at £157 million, of which £130 million has been drawn; the remaining £27 million is expected to draw over the next three to five years. We continue to back the leading existing and new seed fund managers offering the best insight and breadth across the European ecosystem, having already committed to 6 new funds. During the year, Molten completed the acquisition of the remaining syndicated interest in its Fund of Funds programme. Full ownership consolidates the programme under a single decision-making structure, simplifies the distribution waterfall and ensures all future fair value growth flows directly to the Group. It also enhances our ability to engage strategically with the underlying fund managers, deepening access to proprietary deal flow and co-investment opportunities, while preserving optionality to pursue value-enhancing transactions across the portfolio as market conditions evolve. Secondary strategy Our Secondary strategy continued to scale during FY26 and is now supported by a dedicated team established during the year to build on Molten’s track record of acquiring high-quality assets and portfolios with nearer-term realisation opportunities. During the financial year Molten committed £15 million to Speedinvest Continuation Fund I, providing attractively priced exposure to a diversified portfolio of highquality, later-stage Central European technology companies with a shorter timeline to liquidity. Cumulative realised proceeds from Molten’s secondary positions now exceed £200 million, with a distribution-to-paid-in capital multiple of over 1.7x and a TVPI of over 2.3x. Realisations FY26 realisations totalled £120 million in cash proceeds (FY25: £135 million), delivered at an average 3.0x multiple on invested capital. All cash realisations were completed at or above carrying value, validating the discipline of our valuation approach. Total cash realisations since IPO now exceed £780 million. Confirmed FY26 realisations
| Company | Cost (£m) | Proceeds (£m) | Gross MOIC |
| Revolut (partial) | 2.1 | 45.6 | 21.0x |
| ICEYE (partial) | 1.4 | 17.5 | 12.9x |
| Freetrade (full) | 14.0 | 20.4 | 1.5x |
| Lyst (full) | 13.2 | 9.4 | 0.7x |
| Teraview (full) | 0.1 | 5.1 | 51.0x |
| Fund realisations and secondaries | 4.6 | 13.8 | – |
| Other realisations (<£2m) | 5.5 | 7.8 | – |
| Total FY26 realisations | 41.8 | 119.6 | 3.0x |
Realisations as a percentage of opening GPV equate to 9%, broadly in line with our annual through-the-cycle target of 10%.
Defensibility in the age of AI Sector and subsector review Molten’s portfolio is constructed across four core sectors, Enterprise; Hardware and Deeptech; Consumer Technology; and Digital Health, with thematic exposure across fintech, cybersecurity, quantum, energy and climate, spacetech. With £1.5 billion in Gross Portfolio Value and over £1 billion spread across these key subsectors. We see AI as an accelerant of our existing strategies, not a threat to it, and our diversified portfolio construction is designed to deliver resilience through cycles. A framework for evaluating AI exposure In our March 2026 thought piece, we set out how we think about AI as investors: whether it shrinks the markets companies operate in, expands them, or redistributes who captures value within them. That framework shapes how we read the portfolio. The businesses AI threatens most are those whose core product is a workflow it can now approximate for a fraction of the cost. That is a real and specific category. It is not a description of how we have built this portfolio. How we think about it For every business we hold, we assess vulnerability and opportunity independently, across workflow replication risk, foundation model absorption, pricing pressure, and the defensibility of the company’s data and infrastructure. The net of those assessments, done company by company, drives our view. Approximately 75% of the direct investment portfolio, being the Core and Emerging, sits in businesses we assess as net beneficiaries of AI, either structurally amplified by it or carrying a durable tailwind. A further 15% relates to companies where we identify real but manageable headwinds; these receive proportionally greater active management focus. The remainder sits in businesses where AI is not, at this time, a material factor either way. We include the full spectrum of outcomes precisely because we take risk seriously, and because honesty about where the headwinds exist is a prerequisite for managing them. Backing the enabling layer A consistent strand of our approach is to gain exposure to a powerful technology theme not by betting on which application wins, but by owning the infrastructure and enabling layer the entire theme has to run on. The pattern recurs across the portfolio. Ledger provides the security layer that gives us exposure to crypto and blockchain without a view on any single token or protocol. Riverlane builds the error-correction software quantum computing cannot scale without, our way to invest in the quantum thematic at the layer every approach depends on. Thought Machine and Form3 are the critical infrastructure of modern banking, core ledger and payments rails so deeply integrated that the switching cost is operational, not commercial. Aiven is the enabling middle layer developers build on. And Deciphex is the vertical-specific infrastructure for pathology, embedded in a regulated market where trust is earned over years. AI is simply the latest, and largest, theme to follow this logic. Every organisation deploying AI agents at scale hits the same problems immediately: who authorises what the AI does, and what happens when it touches sensitive data or initiates a transaction. These are not future problems, they are the bottlenecks engineering teams are hitting now, and they do not go away regardless of which foundation model wins. AI did not create them; it made them more urgent. The AIpowered banking products being built today will run on infrastructure like Form3’s and Thought Machine’s, not replace it. There is also a structural tailwind most commentary underweights. Inference now accounts for 80 to 90% of total AI compute costs over a model’s lifetime, a sharp reversal of the assumption that training was the dominant expense, and AI costs grow with every query. This is precisely where we expect the next wave of durable AI value to accrue: not in the models, but in the enabling layer that makes them usable, governable, and affordable at scale. The build vs. buy question The companies operating at the application and vertical layer prompt the most questions, and some scrutiny is fair. AI lowers the cost of building a credible first version of almost anything, but not the cost of running a production-grade system in a regulated environment over time, the reality in which FintechOS operates. And what the best vertical software companies sell is not automation but proprietary ground truth. RavenPack’s structured financial dataset is the retrieval layer on which AI-powered financial decision-making depends, and as AI scales its value grows because models need a reliable source of truth; BeZero applies the same principle in carbon markets. SimScale, meanwhile, illustrates genuine market expansion, physics-grade simulation, once affordable only to the largest firms, is now within reach of a mid-market that did not exist at scale before. That is not a threat; it is the market arriving. From 1 to 10 AI has compressed the cost of going from zero to one. Going from one to ten is a different problem. Domain expertise takes years to accumulate, institutional trust is earned through consistent delivery, regulatory relationships require years of certification, and proprietary datasets compound with every data point. These define the businesses we back, and are precisely the things AI cannot shortcut. The founders we invest in are not worried about AI taking their business; they are using it to widen a lead they have already spent years building, and that is the portfolio we intend to keep building. Space and European sovereignty Sector and sub-sector review Two interlinked themes, space and European technology sovereignty, are among the clearest sources of structural tailwind for the European venture ecosystem in which Molten operates. Space: from frontier to strategic infrastructure Space has emerged as a focal point on the geopolitical stage, in terms of both economic prosperity and strategic importance. The European Space Agency approved a record €22 billion budget for 2026–2028, a more than 30% increase, explicitly aimed at strengthening Europe’s strategic autonomy in space technologies and missions. Molten’s space exposure is anchored by investments across the Core and Emerging Portfolio holdings: ICEYE (£101m fair value, 12.95x MOIC), is the world’s leading SAR small-satellite operator, increasingly contracted by European and allied governments for sovereign intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. ICEYE’s data is increasingly viewed as critical national infrastructure. ISAR Aerospace (£39.7m fair value, 25.1x MOIC): sovereign European launch capability. With its first test flight completed and signed commercial contracts, ISAR is among the most credible European answers to the strategic problem of dependency on non-European launch providers. SatVu (£1m fair value, 1x MOIC): a British Earth observation company that captures high-resolution infrared thermal imagery from space. The company stands out by offering both still thermal images and up to 60-second video capabilities at a 3.5-meter resolution. Together, these holdings give Molten exposure to both the downstream services layer (data, intelligence) and the upstream accessto-orbit layer that underpins it, a vertically resilient position in a sector where European demand is both strategically driven and structurally underserved. European sovereignty as a structural tailwind The response to European Sovereignty has catalysed a genuine reindustrialisation agenda. The capital backdrop is unprecedented. An estimated €1.5 trillion of incremental investment is set to be deployed across European defence, energy, industry and technology by 2035, with EU defence spending alone on track to reach 2.5% of GDP. In the UK, the Mansion House Accord and broader efforts to increase domestic institutional participation in growth capital reinforce the same direction of travel, a deeper, more sovereign European capital base for the technologies that matter most. We believe Europe is particularly well placed for this moment. Its engineering culture runs deep; its regulatory frameworks create fertile ground for security and compliance innovation. Mapping the portfolio to European sovereignty
| Sovereignty pillar | Portfolio exposure |
| Space & defence-adjacent intelligence | ICEYE, ISAR Aerospace, SatVu |
| Cybersecurity & secure compute | Binalyze, Ledger |
| Critical financial infrastructure | Form3, Thought Machine, Revolut |
| Energy transition & industrial decarbonisation |
en | GB00BY7QYJ50 | MOLTEN VENTURES PLC | boerse | 69505655 |
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