HIRO Capital has appointed former Deputy Prime Minister Sir Nick Clegg as general partner.
The founder-led VC firm, also former president of global affairs at Facebook parent company Meta, said Sir Nick is joining as a general partner ahead of the launch of its third fund.
HIRO III is a large multi-stage fund able to deploy from €5-50 million each into promising innovators, targeting the scale-up capital gap in the UK and Europe.
The HIRO founding GP team of Luke Alvarez, Cherry Freeman and UK games legend Sir Ian Livingstone CBE have strong pedigree as founder-entrepreneurs, with multiple exits and IPOs between them totalling more than €10bn.
That track record has been built on technical expertise and scaleup knowhow from decades of building and investing in startups.
HIRO’s foundations as an investor in spatial computing position it perfectly for the new era of technology in which we will see extraordinary value creation across Europe in areas from spatial AI and robotics through to defence and longevity.
Sir Nick said: “I joined HIRO because I share with the founders a belief in the rise of immersive computing and spatial AI. We will move from staring at the internet, to living in the internet.
“We are right in the early stages of that platform shift with the convergence of spatial technologies and next generation world model AIs. Unlike other funds, HIRO is wholly focused on those themes, entirely within Europe.
“This is an amazing moment of opportunity for the UK/Europe’s tech ecosystem. We have some of the most outstanding researchers and universities on the planet, and great engineers and entrepreneurs too. Our problem is not a lack of innovation, it is a lack of capital at scale.
“Europe may have its critics, but we have a vibrant startup scene which is now ready to accelerate – I believe the HIRO team has the unique geographic and technological reach to help make that happen.”
HIRO’s team will also be strengthened by a new advisory board, which brings exceptional domain expertise across each of the four core themes of the HIRO thesis: spatial AI and cloud, autonomy & robotics, space & defence, and augmentation & longevity.
This includes Professor Yann LeCun, former chief scientist of Meta and Turing prize winner for deep learning AI; Malcolm Turnbull, former PM of Australia and a leading tech investor; Major Tim Peake, scientist, test pilot and the first British ESA astronaut; Laurent Solly, VP Europe at Meta; security and defence expert Professor Deeph Chana of Imperial, London, founding director of NATO DIANA & the Nato Innovation Fund; Hannah Gladman, strategy & special projects at Google DeepMind; Dr Jack Scannell, BioTech investor, longevity founder and creator of Eroom’s Law; Edward van Cutsem, chairman of private markets at Westerly Winds and ex-MD at BlackRock; Professor Paul Newman, Professor of Information Engineering at Oxford and founder of the Oxford Robotics Institute; Caroline Daniel, former Financial Times journalist and strategist; and Loredana Crisan, chief design officer at Figma.
Luke Alvarez, HIRO managing partner, said: “I am delighted to welcome Sir Nick to our team, together with Yann and our other amazing advisory board members.
“Today, we are in the early stages of a Cambrian explosion of new technologies, powered by the accelerating convergence of computing into the physical world, onto the human body and into autonomous agents.
“We all share the same belief in Europe’s potential to be at the forefront of tech and the same passion to play a part in UK & European success.
“Our new advisory board has been selected for their vision, their technology expertise and their networks globally and across Europe. We look forward to announcing the first HIRO III investments in 2026.”