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🏛 Cultivating a community of entrepreneurial minds right in the heart of the University of Cambridge. Hosted in @kings.college – events open to all.

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Looking forward to speaking @kings.college tonight where I’ll be presenting “A Four Thousand Year History of Female Entrepreneurship” to @thekingselab

From Lamassi - the cloth maker who ran one of the world’s first “multinational” businesses in Bronze Age Iraq - to Annie Minerva Turnbo Malone and Madam C.J. Walker - America’s first Black female millionaires - this talk tells the story of women’s driving role in the business world over the past four millennia. Highlighting some of history’s most remarkable female entrepreneurs together with the invisible contributions of wives, mothers and daughters in family businesses - still today the mainstay of the economy - it challenges the belief that business has only ever worked in the interests of, and been shaped by, men.

Thrilled to hear that the talk is sold out and look forward to meeting everyone there.

To find out more, take a look at my economic history of the world (#economica @headline_press), which is now available in paperback and is currently 99p on kindle UK (& £3.99 for the UK audiobook)

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Inspiring to be at the Innovate Cambridge Summit 2026 today, which brings together more than 600 leaders from across research, industry, investment, government and the wider innovation ecosystem to explore the next phase of innovation-led growth for #Cambridge and the #UK.

Great opening remarks by Kathryn Chapman (CEO of Innovate Cambridge) and Tony Wood (Chief Scientific Officer of @gsk), followed by awesome panels covering a wide range of themes.

A personal highlight was to get a hard copy of the hot off the press white paper by the brilliant Pascal Levensohn "Should I stay or should I go? A pragmatic path to keeping UK innovation at home" and hear from a panel consisting of Jason Pontin (General Partner, DCVC) Debbie Toms (Chief of Staff of CuspAI) Alex McCracken (Head of Venture Relationships at @jpmorgan), and of course Pascale.

You can read a short piece on this work here: https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/2026/binding-commitments-needed-to-keep-innovation-in-the-uk/ or download the whole paper from here: https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/2026-levensohn-should-i-stay-or-should-i-go.pdf

The Research Assistant on the paper was Trang D. Nguyen, a recent graduate of The Cambridge MBA) and contributors to the paper are: Gishan Dissanaike (Dean of Cambridge Judge Business School) Bill Janeway (Distinguished Affiliate Professor at the Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge, and Special Limited Partner, Warburg Pincus LLC), Jason Pontin (General Partner at DCVC) Riyad Daud (Member of the Cambridge Innovation Hub Global Advisory Board), Agnieszka Iwasiewicz-Wabnig FRSA (Director of the Maxwell Centre, University of Cambridge); Kathryn Chapman (CEO of Innovate Cambridge).

📸 @maxbeam

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Wonderful to have Singapore Government's Chief AI Office Ruimin He and colleagues from various ministries including Pao Jia Yu (Deputy Secretary for AI), Chloe Nott (Director of Research, Singapore National AI Group), Rachel Tan (Assistant Director, Singapore National AI Group), and Phoebe Collins (Senior Manager, Policy & Strategy, Singapore National AI Group) visiting us at the E-Lab to talk all about #AI, #Quantum, our residential incubator programme #SPARK, and the wider innovation ecosystem in #Cambridge.

Thank you Sophie Harbour, Hanniya Kamran, and James Phillips for organising.

📸 @maxbeam

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Over the last few months at the E-Lab, we’ve hosted several conversations about the role of Artificial Intelligence in venture creation and development with industry experts, academics, and founders. In this week’s #Mindsets read from our very own brilliant Sheelpa Patel (Advisory Board Member of the E-Lab) about the key themes, insights, and questions that threaded through each discussion which should inform our understanding of entrepreneurship and human judgement in the era of AI: https://www.kingselab.org/blog/sheelpa-patel

Mindsets is the weekly E-Lab blog series edited by the amazing Sophie Harbour, get in touch with Sophie if you want to write for us.

📸 by @maxbeam from one of our #SPARK roundtables.

#SPARK is a five-week E-Lab residential incubator programme, building scalable ventures with real world impact, check our our portfolio here: https://sparkatkings.com/portfolio, and get in touch with the wonderful Francesca Hodgson and Petra Scalamandré if you want to find out more.

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A wonderful Graduates’ Matriculation Dinner at King's College, Cambridge tonight, when we formally welcomed all of our new (full-time) graduate students, ate delicious food, and listened to beautiful music from the Hall balcony by our amazing choir! Had a great time sitting and chatting with our Cambridge Judge Business School and catching up with our Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge of students from various programmes, including: PhD, MPhil and the Cambridge MBA.

Thomas Roulet: we talked about your amazing #MBA classes, but we missed you mon ami!

Thank you Alexander Bleistein and team for making all the new students feel so welcomed to their new home! ❤️

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An absolute pleasure to have Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, joining us at the E-Lab and being in conversation with our very own Gillian Tett on stewardship, strategy, and long-term investing in a standing-room only Keynes Lecture Theatre at King's College, Cambridge.

Drawing on his experience leading one of the worlds largest sovereign wealth funds and managing more than $2.3 trillion, Nicolai discussed responsible ownership, navigating global markets, and the leadership principles that underpin sustainable, long-term value creation.

Great questions from the audience as usual, with the best questions from the audeince getting signed copies of the just published book "Vibe: The Secrets of Strong Connections in a Lonely World" from the bestselling author of "Think Again" Adam Grant.

Great also to see friends from Norges Bank Emily Nathan and Grete Borchgrevink Starheim.

📸 @maxbeam

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Join us today at the E-Lab when Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norges Bank Investment Management, will be in conversation with our very own Gillian Tett on stewardship, strategy, and long-term investing.

Drawing on his experience leading one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds and managing more than $2.3 trillion, Nicolai will discuss responsible ownership, navigating global markets, and the leadership principles that underpin sustainable, long-term value creation.

All welcome: https://www.kingselab.org/all-events/nicolai-tangen

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What can 6 weeks of volunteering in Cambridge achieve?

This summer, 25 Cambridge students volunteered full-time with 19 local organisations working to tackle inequality across the city.

The result? Fresh ideas, extra capacity for community partners and valuable learning for everyone involved.

We caught up with six of the organisations and the students who joined them to hear about their experiences 👇

🏘️ Stine from @StJohnsCollege worked with the Cambridge Communities Team @CambridgeshireCountyCouncil, which supports local residents across the city

⚽ @JesusCollegeCam student Sonny joined @CUFCFoundation, which uses the power of football to improve lives and tackle inequality in Cambridge

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Rosalind of @TrinityHallCamb supported @CambridgeAcornProject, which provides therapeutic services for children and families

🔑 @Pembroke1347 student Harry volunteered at ItTakesACityCambridge, a charity working to end homelessness

📈 Rhiana from @NewnhamCollege helped at Greater Cambridge Impact, which invests in organisations that address inequalities across the region

🎨 Jia En of @LucyCavendishCollege worked with @CambridgeCAndI, an arts and wellbeing charity that helps children, young people and communities to thrive

All the students are scholars on the Laidlaw Scholars Leadership & Research Programme, funded by the Laidlaw Foundation via the King's Entrepreneurship Lab.

A huge thank you to all the community partners, students, @TheKingsELab, @Kings.College and the Laidlaw Foundation who came together to make a difference.

Explore how Cambridge students are supporting local organisations to build a more inclusive region through the link in @CambridgeUniversity's bio 🔗

#CambridgeInCommon #CambridgeUniversity #Cambridge A group of students standing together on grass. The text above them reads, "What can 6 weeks of volunteering achieve? Meet some of our Cambridge students helping local organisations tackle inequality across the city."

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SUPER EXCITED that the Cambridge-based biotech start-up Neela Biotech, part of our E-Lab family and our inaugural #SPARK incubator programme, turning waste into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) has just raised £2.1 million in pre-seed funding to take its technology from the lab to a pilot-scale trial at a biogas plant over the next two years. The investment comes as the aviation industry searches for a way to scale sustainable fuel production beyond today's limited feedstock supply – a challenge sharpened by this year’s spike in global jet fuel prices. 🥳 🚀 🥳

Deepanshu Singh, CEO of Neela Biotech, added: “Most SAF today is made from waste oils and fats through HEFA. But the world burns 300 million tons of jet fuel every year, and there is simply nowhere near enough waste oil and fat to meet this demand. When Friederike (Rike) Nintzel and I founded Neela Biotech, we set out to make HEFA-SAF cheaper and scalable. Our Controlled Microbial Upcycling process leverages recent advances in AI-driven synthetic biology to convert diverse waste streams like food and agriculture waste into HEFA-compatible feedstocks. By integrating our technology with existing biogas plants, we can reduce capital requirements, accelerate deployment, and enable distributed, local production. The £2.1 million funding round, led by Elbow Beach, will help us scale towards our pilot and move us closer to making locally produced SAF cost competitive with fossil fuel.”

About Neela Biotech
Neela Biotech is redefining how the world produces fuels and chemicals. Using a proprietary Controlled Microbial Upcycling process that leverages advances in AI-driven synthetic biology, Neela Biotech converts diverse waste streams into sustainable fuels and chemicals with the potential to reach cost parity with fossil-derived alternatives. Its technology can be deployed in existing biogas plants unlocking 5x higher revenues. The Company’s initial focus is Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), where its platform chemicals can replace scarce waste oils used in existing HEFA refineries. Neela is part of the IAG innovation program and has secured grant funding from Innovate UK and the Henry Royce Institute.

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Happy start to the new academic year at University of Cambridge!! 🥳 🥳

Join us for the Freshers' Fair on Parker's Piece today and tomorrow (6th & 7th Oct) 10.00-16.00 for a chance to win some AWESOME E-Lab Prizes including lots of our new merchandise.

At the Cambridge Freshers' Fair you can also discover another 300+ local and national organisations as well as clubs and societies.

If you can't make it to the Freshers' Fair we hope you will join the E-Lab team for our first event of the academic year this Thursday at 17.00 at King's College, Cambridge: https://lnkd.in/efCiTtm4! We're holding an evening open house to celebrate everything the E-Lab does, bringing every corner of our community into one place, from research and leadership to education and venture-building. See you then!

📸 Hanniya Kamran

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This year, our Annual Dinner carries a little extra meaning: 2026 marks five years of the E-Lab. 🥳 🚀 🥳 Since launching in September 2021, the E-Lab has grown from a bold idea into a thriving community of entrepreneurial minds at the heart of #Cambridge, and what better way than to celebrate that than by bringing everyone who has shaped it together in one room.

Over the past five years, the E-Lab has become a pioneer in entrepreneurship and innovation across the University, with work spanning four pillars: education, research, incubation, and community. Our Thursday Speaker Series has welcomed remarkable guests, from Geoffrey Hinton to will.i.am, for open and thoughtful conversations about the ideas shaping our world. The residential programmes equip students from all backgrounds with the skills and confidence to turn ambition into action, while the #SPARK incubator helps university-born ventures grow toward real-world impact. Beyond this, our Hackathons, Essay Competition, and #Mindsets blog reach thousands of students each year, many of whom never saw entrepreneurship as a path open to them. Together, these programmes help shape an inclusive community that students carry with them long after they leave King's.

The evening of the 30th of September was our chance to thank everyone who makes this possible. We come together to celebrate our alumni and benefactors, our Senior Advisory Board members and Entrepreneurship Prize judges, our former and current King's Entrepreneurship Prize winners, and the many contributors to our Residential Programme and speaker series. We are just as grateful to our Visiting Entrepreneurs, our Research and Senior Associates, and our Fellows, and that is only to name a few.

Five years in, this dinner celebrates all they have made possible, and looks ahead to everything still to come.

We are grateful to our friends at Trinity College Cambridge for hosting us, especially Catherine Barnard, Richard Turnill, Alice La Trobe Weston, and Sian Gardner. We look forward to continuing and growing our collaboration with Trinity.

Huge thanks to the E-Lab family for making the E-Lab a reality!

📸 @maxbeam

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DELIGHTED that Zenithon AI, an AI start-up that emerged from our inaugural @thekingselab #SPARK incubator programme, has raised $10 million as it develops new AI models designed to dramatically accelerate some of the world’s hardest physics and engineering problems. 🥳 🚀 🥳

Zenithon is building world models for extreme physics: physics-grounded machine learning models that make simulation for fusion, aerospace and semiconductor development dramatically faster. Its technology is designed to enable engineers to search a million design points in the time it would traditionally take to run a single conventional simulation, potentially accelerating the development of technologies including fusion reactors, rockets and semiconductor fabs. The company has secured investment from BACKED, Lunar, Seraphim, MMC and SOSV, alongside founders and hyperscaler directors.

Alex Higginbottom, Founder and CEO of Zenithon, joined #SPARK as a solo founder during the earliest stages of the company, using the programme to help navigate the transition from technical idea to building an ambitious commercial venture.

He commented, "I joined SPARK right at the start of Zenithon, when I was still a solo founder. There are a thousand things to learn as a founder, and through SPARK I found camaraderie with others on similar journeys, as well as invaluable help mapping out the unknown unknowns. That combination really kickstarted our development and made me a better founder."

SPARK was created to help University of Cambridge students, researchers and alumni and Anglia Ruskin University students and researchers turn ambitious ideas and early-stage technologies into investment-ready ventures. The intensive five-week long residential programme combines hands-on support with access to entrepreneurs, investors and commercialisation experts, alongside the wider E-Lab and Cambridge innovation networks.

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