Molten Ventures – executive interviews

In our series of interviews, Molten Ventures CEO Ben Wilkinson provides insights in the company’s realisations, capital allocation, valuations and core portfolio. He also discusses the EU venture capital market and pension reform.

1. Realisations

In this interview, CEO Ben Wilkinson discusses Molten Ventures’ successful exits in 2024, which exceeded the £100m target, releasing £124m in capital through four main transactions: Perkbox (1.3x return), Graphcore (slight loss but at book value), Endomag (nearly 4x return) and M-Files (7x return).

2. Capital allocation

In this section, Wilkinson discusses how capital will be re-reinvested, with a balance struck between direct investments to capitalise on the current AI-driven technology shift and drive future vintages, secondary investments to take advantage of market pricing opportunities and the need to support their share price through buybacks.

3. Valuations

In this segment, Wilkinson discusses the current venture capital valuation environment, noting a split between AI-driven companies or perceived winners receiving high valuations and others struggling to raise capital. He explains how Molten Ventures follows the IPEV guidelines, being slow to mark assets up and quick to mark them down when necessary. The group’s exits above carrying value over eight years have validated this careful valuation strategy.

4. Core review

Wilkinson outlines Molten Ventures’ core portfolio, which consists of 15–20 assets representing over 60% of portfolio value, with these companies showing an average growth of 50% for the coming year. Over 75% of these core holdings have more than 12 months of cash runway, and the company has demonstrated success in helping them raise additional capital from syndicates of investors.

5. EU VC market

In this section, Wilkinson expresses his optimism in the European venture capital (VC) market, which has matured significantly, growing from €20bn in 2016 to around €80bn today, though it remains about one-third the size of the US market. He emphasises that Molten Ventures offers investors daily liquidity access to VC returns, while highlighting the need for more capital in Series B and early growth stages, with pension reform potentially helping to address this gap.

6. Pension reform

Recent government initiatives to support investment in technology and innovation are welcomed as a positive – although the UK has been slow to support the tech sector compared to countries like the US. In the final segment of the interview, Wilkinson emphasises that while government intervention is not always perfect, it is necessary to help capitalise on British intellectual property (IP) in AI, energy and life sciences, particularly to prevent valuable IP from being acquired by US companies.