Sainsbury's uses Vet Vision AI's cameras to check animal welfare on the farms that supply its milk, and M&S is also a customer.
Vets have an awkward problem. The animal they most need to see is the one nobody is looking at: the cow at 3am, the horse alone in its stable overnight. And the moment a person walks in, the animal changes how it behaves. Steve Ellis, Vet Vision AI's chair, calls it a form of white coat syndrome. "So it's really important to watch them when they think that no one's looking," he says.
That matters because a change in behaviour is often the first sign something is wrong. In a horse it can be an early sign of colic. On a dairy farm it's the difference between spotting a problem in one cow early and finding it late, across a whole herd.
Vet Vision AI was set up in September 2023 by Dr Robert Hyde and Dr Charlie Carslake, vets and researchers at the University of Nottingham's School of Veterinary Medicine and Science. It uses cameras and computer vision to watch animals continuously and turn what they do into information farmers, vets, trainers and owners can act on. It started with livestock and has since moved into horses, with an app that brings together data on sleep, nutrition and activity.
Dr Charlie Carslake, one of the co-founders, puts the aim simply: "We're developing tools to help vets, farmers and animal owners understand if their animals are healthy and happy."
Steve Ellis has worked with the founders since before the company was incorporated, supporting the team through Innovate UK's ICURe accelerator programme and the initial investment round as it spun out. He formally joined the board in October 2024, a year after the company was formed, when it was a three-person team working through its business plan and its first customers. In March 2025 it raised about £1.2m in its first priced round, mostly from private investors and angels, alongside the university. A smaller round followed in February and March 2026: about £0.5m, priced about 17% above the first.
Today the team is 18, the customers include M&S and Sainsbury's dairy operations, and the company reports that revenue in the year to August 2026 was five times the previous year's total. For a company not yet three years old, that's nothing to sniff at.
Most university spin-outs don't stall on the science. They stall on the business: who buys it, at what price, and who on the founding team has sold anything before. Vet Vision AI found its answer through the university's alumni network.
Ellis read Economics at Nottingham, graduating in 1993, then spent 30 years in food and drink. He started at Bass Brewery, held senior roles across brewing and food production, and finished with almost six years as CEO of Karro Food Group, a major supplier to Britain's supermarkets. He had volunteered with the alumni office since 2016, including mentoring founders at the Business School's Ingenuity Lab. With Karro sold, and no appetite for another C-suite job "working crazy hours", he took an introduction to two academics trying to turn their research into a company.
The team are the AI specialists. But the business problems are the same: customers, pricing, cash flows, finance, marketing, people.
Steve Ellis
Chair, Vet Vision AI
The science has deep roots. Hyde and Carslake work at Sutton Bonington, the campus that began as the Midland Dairy Institute in 1895 and joined the university in 1948. Its vet school opened in 2006, the first new vet school in the UK in 50 years.
The university has backed the company from the start. It has been a shareholder since the company was formed and is one of its largest. Nottingham Technology Ventures, the university's venture arm, does the due diligence on its spin-outs.
That is the idea underpinning the University of Nottingham EIS Fund I. The fund invests in the university's spin-outs alongside the university's own money, in the companies Nottingham Technology Ventures puts forward. Vet Vision AI is what one of those companies looks like two years in.
Dr Alice MacGowan, CEO of Nottingham Technology Ventures, sees the same pattern: "Vet Vision AI shows what happens when Nottingham research meets the right commercial experience at the right time. Our job is to find the spin-outs where that combination is in place, and back them."
The first turn was a supermarket. Getting a major retailer to take a chance on an early-stage company is one of the hardest things a spin-out does, and the team has named it as one of the challenges it had to get past. Sainsbury's now uses Vet Vision AI's system to check animal welfare across its supply chain, and M&S dairy operations are also customers. A retailer's welfare standards apply to every farm that supplies it, so one buyer can open a route to many farms.
The second was horses. The same cameras that watch a dairy herd can watch a stable overnight, and the company now uses the technology to monitor ceremonial horses for the Ministry of Defence. It has also launched an app for owners and trainers that brings together sleep, nutrition and activity data.
All of that was paid for in the way most spin-outs pay for their early years: research grants, the Innovate UK ICURe programme, and money raised "through friends, families, networks of ex-colleagues" and early angels. It went on developers, data scientists and the first sales hires.
Customer names, team size, revenue growth and product uses on this page are as reported by the company.
The open question is whether one system can sell at scale into two very different markets: dairy supply chains, where the buyer is a retailer or a processor, and horses, where it's often an owner, a yard or a trainer.
The company's stated priorities are:
Scale: take welfare monitoring to more farms in its retail customers' supply chains
Grow: build the equine app's user base among owners, yards and trainers
Build: keep developing the product and the team on the back of its commercial track record
The University of Nottingham has been a shareholder since Vet Vision AI was formed and is one of its largest, alongside the founders and the private investors who have backed each round. Steve Ellis is also a shareholder.
Round | New money | Who invested |
2023 to 2024 | Grant and seed funding | Research grants, Innovate UK's ICURe programme and the University of Nottingham |
March to June 2025 | About £1.2m | Private investors and angels, with the University of Nottingham |
February to March 2026 | About £0.5m, priced about 17% above the 2025 round | Private investors |
Source: Companies House share allotments and confirmation statements from SondeData, SyndicateRoom’s own data analysis. Amounts rounded. These are private company shares. They are illiquid, and their value can fall as easily as it can rise.
Vet Vision AI is held by the University of Nottingham, its founders and the private investors who backed each round. A subscription to University of Nottingham EIS Fund I goes into the next six to eight companies the fund backs, from December 2026.
At the start of the AI bubble, people were investing in ideas. I think people now want to invest in a proven track record.
Steve Ellis, Chair, Vet Vision AI
The fund invests in companies with a meaningful connection to the university, most of them from its portfolio of about 40 active spin-outs, which grows by four to six a year across life sciences, advanced manufacturing, clean tech and digital. A company may be raising its first round, but is more likely to be on its second or later, of about £1m to £5m, once it has had time to show it can sell. Nottingham Technology Ventures sources the companies, does the initial research and investment fit review, and mentors them. SyndicateRoom, as the FCA-authorised fund manager, makes each investment decision and manages the holdings for the life of the fund.
The university has put about £5m of its own money into its spin-outs over the past five years, so it will often already hold shares in a company the fund backs.
It's the university's first EIS fund, so the fund has no record of its own. The university does. Since 2014, exits from its spin-outs have returned more than £18m to the university, at an average of more than 4x the cash it invested, through trade sales and public listings, as the university reports. Most of that came before the current, larger portfolio and the more structured investing behind it. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. The fund targets 3x after 10 years, net of fees and before tax reliefs, and most exits are likely to take a minimum of five to ten years from investment. Targets and exits are not guaranteed.
Join our free live Q&A, Nottingham spin-outs and EIS, on Tuesday 17 November from 12:30 to 13:30 on Zoom. We'll cover how Nottingham Technology Ventures picks companies, how the fund invests alongside the university, and what EIS means for you.
University of Nottingham EIS Fund I is open until 30 November 2026, with a minimum subscription of £10,000. The fund deploys between December 2026 and November 2027, so EIS income tax relief falls in the tax year each investment is made, 2026/27 or 2027/28, and can be carried back to the tax year before. EIS gives up to 30% income tax relief, provided you claim it, and EIS shares held for two years may also qualify for Business Relief from inheritance tax. Tax treatment depends on your circumstances and may change. Fees apply.
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