Midlands Mindforge has made another major addition to its first investment cohort, supporting University of Birmingham spinout KVector as part of a £3.8 million funding round.
The funding round brings together Midlands Mindforge, the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II (through Frontier Development Capital), the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S), Future Planet Capital, and the University of Birmingham, and includes £950,000 from Innovate UK through the Investment Partnerships programme, which matched part of the equity investment.
The company will use the funds for recruitment and to develop a range of radar and communications products in collaboration with KVector’s existing partners in the defence sector.
KVector is developing a new class of lightweight, low‑power beam‑steered antenna technology for next‑generation radar and satellite communications systems. Today’s Active Electronically Steered Arrays (AESAs) steer a beam using thousands of individually controlled electronic components. While effective, they are expensive to develop and build, draw significant power and their weight limits many emerging applications.
KVector’s patented approach replaces that electronics stack with engineered metamaterial surfaces within a simple electro‑mechanical architecture, improving RF transmission efficiency while reducing power draw, weight and system complexity. The technology can be tuned across a wide range of frequencies and is designed for scalable manufacture through UK and European supply chains, enabling applications where antenna performance has previously been a limiting factor.
The technology originates from research undertaken at the University of Birmingham’s Metamaterials Engineering Laboratory. The company was founded by Executive Chair Henry Nurser, Dr James Churm and Professor Alexandros Feresidis, the researchers behind the antenna technology, and will be headquartered in the Midlands.
Henry Nurser, co-founder and Executive Chair of KVector, said: “I am excited to be working with Alex, James and the wider team to realise the commercial potential of technology that could have a significant impact on the sensing and communications sector. We are delighted that our investors share our ambition and are supporting us in building the foundations for a world‑class company here in the UK.”
Dr Daniel Carew, Deep Tech Lead at Midlands Mindforge, said: “Mindforge is delighted to back the talented KVector team and their strategically important breakthrough in RF systems.
“KVector enables new approaches and applications at a significantly lower cost while eliminating national vulnerabilities in the electronics supply chain. The depth of interest in the company’s technology from the defence industry, both in the UK and internationally, has been astounding. We look forward to helping the team build a new category leader in this field.”
