For ambitious businesses across the West Midlands, one of the biggest barriers to growth isn’t a lack of innovation or entrepreneurial ambition. More often, it’s access to the right investment and strategic support at the point where businesses are ready to scale.
The West Midlands Co-Investment Fund (WMCO) was established to help address that challenge. A partnership between the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) and the West Midlands Pension Fund (WMPF), managed by Future Planet Capital (FPC) Regional, the fund was created to unlock growth by investing alongside private capital and strengthening the region’s innovation ecosystem.
Three years on, the results demonstrate more than capital deployed. They reflect a growing ecosystem where ambitious founders are attracting investment, private investors are increasingly recognising the strength of the regional pipeline, and businesses are scaling with the support they need to build long-term success.
Three Years in Numbers
Since launching in 2023, the WMCO has invested £6.2 million, helping portfolio companies secure almost £38 million in total funding through more than £31.7 million of additional private co-investment.
Those figures illustrate one of the fund’s core objectives: using regional capital to unlock significantly greater private investment into the West Midlands.
Over the past three years, we’ve supported businesses across sectors including healthtech, digital technology, advanced manufacturing and consumer products. Together, they represent the breadth of innovation emerging across the region and the strength of the businesses being built here.
While the figures provide an important measure of progress, they only tell part of the story. Reflecting on the past three years, Rupert Lyle, Investment Director at FPC Regional, believes the WMCO’s greatest success has been the confidence it has helped build across the West Midlands investment ecosystem.
Investment Is Only the Beginning
One of the biggest lessons from the past three years is that successful regional investing is about far more than providing capital.
Investment can help businesses reach their next stage of growth, but building resilient, high-growth companies also requires strategic thinking, experienced leadership, strong networks and access to the right expertise at the right time.
As investors, we’ve worked alongside founders to refine growth strategies, strengthen investment propositions, introduce co-investors and prepare businesses for future funding rounds. This active partnership reflects our belief that long-term value is created through collaboration rather than transactions alone.
At the same time, our experience has reinforced an important challenge within the regional ecosystem.
The biggest obstacle isn’t a shortage of capital. It’s ensuring more businesses are genuinely investment ready.
Over the past three years, we’ve met hundreds of ambitious founders with exciting ideas and significant potential. However, attracting institutional investment requires more than a compelling product. It demands a clear commercial strategy, a capable leadership team, financial discipline and an investment proposition that gives investors confidence in the journey ahead.
There’s still a gap between building a business and building an investable business. Closing that gap represents one of the greatest opportunities for the region’s innovation ecosystem.
Building Long-Term Value
One of the most rewarding aspects of the WMCO Fund has been seeing our portfolio companies continue to build momentum long after the initial investment.
Businesses including Rem3dy Health, Saicho, You. Smart. Thing. and Implantly have continued to evolve, securing additional investment, expanding into new markets and strengthening their commercial positions. Their progress reflects not only the quality of the founders behind these businesses but also the importance of sustained support throughout the growth journey.
More recently, investments in businesses such as Covatic and Unloq demonstrate that the region continues to produce ambitious companies capable of attracting both regional and international investor interest.
While every company’s journey is different, they share common characteristics: ambitious leadership, scalable business models, and the willingness to build for the long term.
Strengthening the West Midlands Investment Ecosystem
Perhaps the greatest achievement over the past three years has been the growing confidence in the West Midlands as a destination for investment.
From the outset, our ambition wasn’t simply to deploy capital. It was to become an active partner within the regional investment ecosystem, working alongside founders, investors, universities, accelerators and public partners to help create an environment where ambitious businesses can thrive.
Since launching the WMCO, we’ve reviewed a huge range of early-stage investment opportunities emerging across the region, developed strong relationships throughout the investment community and helped connect businesses with investors from across the UK and beyond.
Encouragingly, we’re now seeing investors who may previously have overlooked the West Midlands actively backing businesses here. That’s an important sign of a maturing ecosystem, where strong companies are attracting increasing levels of private capital and confidence continues to build.
It also reinforces a broader lesson. Sustainable regional growth depends on collaboration. When founders, investors and support organisations work together, the benefits extend well beyond individual investments, helping to create a stronger pipeline of businesses capable of delivering long-term economic impact.
Looking Ahead
Three years after launching the West Midlands Co-Investment Fund, our ambition here at Future Planet Capital Regional remains unchanged.
We want to continue backing ambitious founders, attracting more private investment into the West Midlands, and strengthening the ecosystem that enables innovative businesses to scale.
The progress we’ve seen since 2023 demonstrates what’s possible when regional investment is combined with long-term thinking, active partnership and collaboration across the wider ecosystem.
The opportunity now is to build on that momentum, supporting the next generation of high-growth businesses, and ensuring the West Midlands continues to establish itself as one of the UK’s leading regions for innovation and investment.