Molten Ventures (Draper Esprit)

Molten Ventures (LSE: GROW) is one of Europe's largest and most established venture capital firms, founded in 2006 by Simon Cook and Stuart Chapman as Draper Esprit and rebranded to Molten Ventures in November 2021. Listed on the London Stock Exchange and a constituent of the FTSE 250, the firm held platform assets under management of roughly £1.9 billion at end-March 2025, with the PLC portfolio valued at approximately £1.4 billion and a market capitalisation of around £900 million. Molten has offices in London, Cambridge, and Dublin and a team of approximately 47 people including 14 partners, led by CEO Martin Davis alongside co-founders Stuart Chapman and Simon Cook. The firm leads rounds and invests across the full company lifecycle — seed through growth stage — in fintech, AI and deep tech, hardware and electronics, digital health, spacetech, and enterprise software. Molten's portfolio of 67 companies includes seven unicorns and names such as Revolut, UiPath, Trustpilot, Ledger, Graphcore, Aircall, ICEYE, OneFootball, and Thought Machine. The firm has made 35 Series A investments averaging approximately $16.6 million, 24 Series B investments averaging approximately $35.3 million, and 12 seed investments averaging approximately $7 million. FY25 exits totalled £135 million from Perkbox, Endomag, Graphcore, and M-Files, plus a £23 million partial Revolut realisation. The most recent new investment was in SatVu in February 2026. Molten's listed structure gives the firm a distinctive ability to hold positions through multiple rounds and across market cycles, providing founders with a long-term capital partner that can bridge pre-IPO stages and follow on into public markets — a differentiation few European VC firms can credibly offer.