Parkwalk Advisors Limited
Parkwalk Advisors is a London-based venture capital firm and the UK's largest manager of growth EIS funds, the tax-advantaged Enterprise Investment Scheme vehicles British investors use to back university spinouts. Owned by IP Group, Parkwalk has funded more than 180 deeptech, healthtech and cleantech companies since 2009, two of them in water.
Compiled by Antoine Walter, (don't) Waste Water, from official filings and direct intelligence in Leviathan.
The take
Parkwalk Advisors exists to close one specific funding gap. When Moray Wright and Alastair Kilgour started it in 2009, the science walking out of UK university labs had nowhere obvious to go between a research grant and a full venture round. Parkwalk built that bridge on the Enterprise Investment Scheme, the British tax break that rewards individuals for backing young companies, and grew it into the country's largest source of growth EIS capital for spinouts.
Parkwalk backs deeptech, healthtech and cleantech companies coming out of universities like Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and Leeds, and now runs university-specific funds for several of them. Water is not a theme Parkwalk markets, but its hard-science net keeps catching it: in my Leviathan database two of its companies sit in water, Mode Labs in real-time chemical sensing and Oxford Flow in sealless control valves, both spun out of research rather than built as water-utility plays.
As of June 2025, Parkwalk has gone regional. With Northern Gritstone it launched the Northern Universities Venture Fund, an EIS vehicle aimed at spinouts from Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield. For a newcomer, that is the pattern worth tracking: Parkwalk is less a water fund than a deeptech machine whose pipeline runs through water only when the underlying science does.
Water Commitment Score
Compiled from official filings, third-party records, and direct intelligence from investors and founders, in Leviathan · recomputed monthly · as of Jun 2026.
How they invest
Portfolio · 2 water companies
Invests alongside
Highlighted = profiled on (don't) Waste Water.
Frequently asked
- What does Parkwalk Advisors invest in?
- Parkwalk Advisors invests in IP-rich university spinouts across deeptech, healthtech and cleantech, including AI, quantum computing, engineering biology, semiconductors and sensing. Parkwalk backs companies from UK universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and Leeds, and has funded more than 180 of them since 2009, bridging the gap between early research and large venture rounds.
- Who runs Parkwalk Advisors?
- Parkwalk Advisors was co-founded in 2009 by Moray Wright, its CEO, and Alastair Kilgour, now Founder. John Pearson serves as Chief Investment Officer, with Alun Williams among the investment directors sourcing spinouts. Parkwalk has been part of FTSE 250 company IP Group plc since 2017.
- Is Parkwalk Advisors a water investor?
- Parkwalk Advisors is a generalist deeptech and university-spinout investor, not a dedicated water fund. Even so, its science-led portfolio holds two water companies across three deals: Mode Labs in real-time chemical sensing and Oxford Flow in control valves, reflecting how hard-science spinouts often touch water infrastructure.
- What is the Parkwalk Opportunities EIS Fund?
- The Parkwalk Opportunities EIS Fund is Parkwalk's flagship vehicle and has ranked as the UK's largest growth Enterprise Investment Scheme fund in most recent tax years. It gives individual investors tax-advantaged exposure to a diversified portfolio of UK university spinouts, alongside university-specific funds for Cambridge, Oxford, Bristol and Imperial.