Seedrs fundraising: Neil Woodford invests another £4m into crowdfunding startup Seedrs

Star fund manager Neil Woodford has increased his stake in crowdfunding startup Seedrs with a fresh £4m investment, taking his total to £10m.

Woodford Investment Management kicked off a fundraising round today, making its investment through two of its managed funds: Woodford Patient Capital Trust and Omnis Income and Growth Fund.

A crowdfunding campaign give existing shareholders and new investors the chance to participate in the funding round.

The startup is now valued at £40m on a fully-diluted pre-money basis, which represents a 27.2 per cent increase in share price from Seedrs’ last fundraising in 2015 and a 135.9 per cent increase in share price from its late 2013 funding round.

Jeff Kelisky, who took over as chief executive from co-founder Jeff Lynn last month, said the capital raised will allow Seedrs to deliver its next stage of growth.

The funds will be used to deploy new product capabilities that it said will “materially” increase liquidity and return potential for investors and businesses.

It will also be used to build out increased sales and marketing efforts, launch a select set of strategic partnerships and “massively” scale campaign execution through automation, machine learning and AI.

The startup funded over 510 deals with more than £250m invested into campaigns last month, including a £3.8m round for digital challenger bank Revolut.

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