Arāya Sie Fund announces £7.5M first close to back female-led tech startups in the UK and Europe

Arãya Ventures, founded by Rupa Popat and Sie Ventures, founded by Triin Linamagi have partnered to launch the Arãya Sie Fund, announcing a £7.5m first close to back female founders building in AI, deeptech, fintech, healthcare and sustainability.

The fund will invest in up to 40 pre-seed and seed-stage companies over the next four years, writing initial cheques of £100k to £300k across the UK and Europe.

Despite growing pools of venture capital, female founders still receive less than 2% of funding across the UK and Europe. The Arãya Sie Fund aims to address this gap by backing underrepresented founders at the earliest stages.

Sie Ventures brings an established track record of supporting female founders, having run founder programmes for over 250 entrepreneurs and an angel syndicate that has backed 25 companies. These platforms will serve as a pipeline for early-stage talent into the fund. Sie Ventures portfolio companies have raised capital from leading firms including Sequoia, General Catalyst, Localglobe and Balderton.

The fund has already made its first investment in Lemrock AI, an Entrepreneur First-backed startup building agentic infrastructure for brands and retailers. Lemrock enables merchants to sell natively across major LLM platforms without rebuilding their existing tech stack.

The Arãya Sie Fund will deploy approximately 70% of its capital in the UK and 30% across Europe. UK-based investors will benefit from SEIS/EIS tax relief on qualifying investments.

The fund is backed by the British Business Bank (which coinvests alongside the Arãya Sie Fund) via the Regional Angels Programme, underscoring growing institutional support for emerging venture managers and angel partners in the UK.

Notably, more than 50% of the fund’s LP base is made up of women, one of the highest proportions in venture, reflecting a deliberate effort to reshape participation in the asset class as well as access to capital.

The fund’s investor base features prominent female limited partners, including American Actress Kelly Rutherford, alongside accomplished female entrepreneurs and C-level executives from global organizations such as LinkedIn, McKinsey, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Google.

“We’re seeing a fundamental shift in the kind of companies being built, particularly in AI and deeptech, and we believe diverse founders will define the next generation of category leaders,” said Triin Linamagi, Managing Partner of the Arãya Sie Fund.
“This partnership is about more than capital, it’s about bringing the right networks, conviction and long-term support to founders who have historically been overlooked.”

“Backing diverse emerging fund managers and angel partners is key to improving access to finance across the UK,” said Mark Barry of the British Business Bank. “The Arāya Sie Fund fits our mission to support high-potential founders and build an innovation economy that draws on the UK’s full talent base.”

The partnership combines Sie Ventures’ strong track record backing female founders with Arāya Ventures’ operator-led approach, fundraising and fund structuring expertise, and hands-on operational support, positioning the fund to back female founders with high-conviction capital and access to a powerful network of investors, venture partners, and operators from day one.

“We’re incredibly excited about this partnership and to also extend the Arāya value-add platform to even more founders from our bi-weekly masterclasses and curated SF founder trip to commercial introductions and hands-on fundraising support as they scale. Our mission at Arāya is to increase the surface area of opportunity for our founders.” said Rupa Popat, Founder & Managing Partner of Arāya Ventures.