A look under the bonnet – three companies from Pembroke VCT portfolio
The UK is a hotbed for startups – ranked #2 worldwide and #1 in Europe in the Global Startup Ecosystem Index 2025 (StartupBlink research).
Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) are a government-backed scheme that helps underpin the UK’s startup ecosystem, an important engine of the economy.
VCTs channel vital “patient capital” and often other forms of support, such as strategic guidance, to what they deem the most dynamic and promising startups.
By the same token, VCTs provide private investors access to some of the UK’s potentially most exciting high-growth companies – with the benefit of significant tax incentives to compensate for the high risks of earlier-stage investing.
The tax breaks include tax-free dividends (dividends are variable and not guaranteed) and currently up to 30% income tax relief. Please be aware: the rate of VCT income tax relief will reduce to 20% from 6 April 2026. If planning to invest, you may wish to act now. Tax rules can change and benefits depend on circumstances.
What kind of companies do VCTs invest in? Here we look inside a VCT portfolio – Pembroke VCT’s – to see some of the kinds of companies it invests in and why.
Remember, these are examples of highlights from the Pembroke VCT portfolio; as must be expected when investing in early-stage companies, there have also been failures.
Read more about:
LYMA – luxury health and wellness brand LYMA is Pembroke’s largest holding and considered one of its most successful investments, now valued at 17x cost.
Popsa – Popsa’s photobook app made $100k revenue in the first year it launched, 2016; in Black Friday/Cyber Monday week 2025, it made that in half an hour.
PEAK:AIO – one of Pembroke’s newest investments, PEAK:AIO builds ultra-fast storage systems for AI workloads, in an AI infrastructure market where tech giants like Google and Microsoft look to commit tens of billions.
Past performance is not a guide to the future.
Important: The information on this website is for experienced investors. It is not a personal recommendation to invest. If you’re unsure, please seek advice. Investments are for the long term. They are high risk and illiquid and can fall as well as rise in value: you could lose all the money you invest. Tax rules can change and benefits depend on circumstances.
Largest holding
LYMA
Pembroke VCT’s largest holding LYMA is a UK-based luxury health and wellness brand that has expanded from high-end supplements into a dominant player in the beauty technology market.
Founded in 2017 by Lucy Goff after a personal health crisis, the company reported $48 million in revenue for 2025, driven largely by its expansion into the US market, which now accounts for 70% of its global sales.
LYMA’s initial product was the patented LYMA Supplement, helping with sleep, stress, immunity and skin health. In 2020, the company launched the LYMA Laser: the world's first medical-grade, cold near-infrared laser for home use – FDA-cleared to treat wrinkles, pigmentation and scarring. The Laser has a large international fanbase – including celebrity A-listers Martha Stewart, Carey Mulligan and Kate Beckinsale –and was named one of Time Magazine’s Best Inventions 2023. Other LYMA products include a beauty serum and an AI face-scanning app providing personalised skin analysis and treatment protocols.
The US launch in April 2025 of LYMA’s upgraded Laser PRO amassed a waitlist of 16,000 customers – a more than $100 million demand.
2025 was a transformative year for LYMA as we solidified our position in the US market and demonstrated the global appetite for truly innovative regenerative technology. Our success reflects our unwavering commitment to delivering clinically-proven results through cutting-edge science, and we're seeing that resonate particularly strongly with American consumers who demand both efficacy and luxury.
Why did Pembroke VCT invest in LYMA?
Pembroke considers LYMA one of its most successful investments to date. The VCT first invested £1 million in 2018 – following on with another £1 million in 2020 as the business scaled internationally. The position is now valued at £34.4 million (c.17x cost) and accounts for 13.4% of net assets (September 2025). Past performance is not a guide to the future.
The investment fits Pembroke’s core strategy of backing ambitious founders in the Consumer and Technology sectors who are developing premium brands with high growth potential.
Pembroke's CEO Andrew Wolfson has noted that while other investors told founder Lucy Goff to "come back later", Pembroke recognised her as a visionary founder with a deep understanding of the market and a brand that offered a unique point of difference.
Pembroke invested in view of LYMA’s scientific credibility (patented ingredients backed by over 200 clinical trials) and potential to disrupt the market. The investment team also saw the potential for LYMA to grow into a broader “wellness ecosystem”.
Second largest holding
Popsa
Pembroke’s second-largest holding Popsa is an AI-powered photobook app in 12 languages, with more than 8 million users (2.5 million paying customers), in 50 countries around the world.
Founded in 2016, the app lets you transform your digital photos into physical photobooks, calendars and ornaments. Its proprietary AI algorithms sort through your phone’s photo library to identify the best moments, group similar images and suggest layouts in under six minutes. Users have free access to the app but pay for the physical products – Popsa fulfils these orders through local partners in various countries.
In Popsa’s first year, the company generated around $100k in revenue. During the Black Friday to Cyber Monday week 2025, it made $100k in just over 30 minutes.
Popsa currently receives 20,000 orders a week, increasing to 80,000 during peak seasons. The company reported a record $58 million revenue in 2025. Only 15% of Popsa’s revenue comes from its domestic UK market; France is the company’s top market, whilst the US is the fastest growing.
Pembroke’s ongoing support has been instrumental in Popsa’s growth journey, from facilitating introductions, to professional services such as legal advisors and FX providers, to connecting us with the wider investment community and also acting as a trusted sounding board.
Why did Pembroke invest in Popsa?
Pembroke considers Popsa an excellent fit for the VCT’s focus on high-growth, consumer-led digital businesses.
Pembroke VCT first invested £1 million in 2018, following on in subsequent years – most recently in 2025 – a total investment of £5.2 million. The holding is currently valued at £17.2 million.
The investment team identified Popsa as a technology-led disruptor. At the time, Pembroke CEO Andrew Wolfson noted “We invested in Popsa because they are simplifying a complex task with huge consumer potential, becoming one of the first movers in this market to embrace true automation for innovation.”
In addition, Pembroke recognised the advantages of Popsa’s asset-light model with strong repeat customer behaviour. Popsa outsources printing, so has no inventory, and operates a capital-efficient model. Despite now processing over a million orders annually from around the world, Popsa still maintains a lean team of under 60 employees, achieving a milestone of $1 million in revenue per employee in 2025.
Recent investment
PEAK:AIO
PEAK:AIO is a Manchester-based AI-infrastructure software company building ultra-fast storage systems for AI workloads. This helps organisations deploy AI faster and more cost-effectively.
PEAK:AIO’s system consolidates the performance of multiple servers into one – dramatically reducing power consumption, physical space requirements and carbon emissions. Conventional storage systems would typically require 6–12 servers to achieve similar performance.
Founded in 2021, the company launched the first iteration of its product to the NHS in 2023. It has since continued to demonstrate strong traction, with revenue and partner networks quadrupling over the past year.
The platform has been implemented in institutions where traditional storage technology was preventing AI progress. Besides the NHS, its global customers include King’s College London, the Zoological Society of London, and notably US Government research facility Los Alamos National Laboratory, the world’s largest supercomputing organisation.
PEAK:AIO’s addressable AI infrastructure market is forecast to exceed $428 billion by 2030.
AI has created demands that traditional IT was never designed to handle. From the start we built PEAK:AIO to answer those challenges, and our success in the UK quickly led to adoption in the US. This investment is about more than growth, it is about backing a UK company that is setting new standards in AI infrastructure worldwide.
Why did Pembroke invest in PEAK:AIO?
Why did Pembroke invest in PEAK:AIO?
Pembroke VCT led a £5 million funding round (contributing £3.7 million) in PEAK:AIO in October 2025.
Pembroke invested on the strength of PEAK:AIO’s exceptional team with deep domain expertise. Of its three co-founders, Mark Klarzynski pioneered software-defined storage in 2000 and introduced frameworks still licensed across enterprise storage today – he has worked alongside VP Engineering Mark Ruijter since 2010, and CTO Eyal Lemberger also consults for NVIDIA. In addition, CEO Roger Cummings brings deep global growth expertise – including six exits to IBM, AWS and Hitachi.
Pembroke believes PEAK:AIO directly addresses a critical “bottleneck” in the AI sector, namely data storage, in a market where tech giants like Google, Meta and Microsoft are committing hundreds of billions to AI infrastructure to help scale AI more cost-effectively and sustainably.
Pembroke’s investment is intended to support PEAK:AIO’s global expansion, particularly into the US market – as well as to help grow the technical team and to accelerate platform development.
How might you invest in similar companies?
Pembroke VCT is open for investment. The VCT looks to back ambitious entrepreneurs – such as the founders of these companies – developing strong brands and challenging outdated practices in a high-demand sector.
Launched in 2013, Pembroke VCT gives investors exposure to a portfolio of around 50 companies across sectors the team knows well: consumer, B2B business services and technology.
With net assets of £256 million (September 2025), the VCT has to date achieved six profitable exits, generating £46.6 million in proceeds against a cost of £13.9 million. There have also been failures.
In the 10 years to December 2025, the VCT has produced a NAV total return (including dividends) of 45.7% (12.4% over five years). Past performance is not a guide to the future. The VCT targets an annual dividend of 5p per share, variable and not guaranteed.
See five year performance of Pembroke VCT:
Pembroke VCT - NAV and cumulative dividends per share over five years (p)
Source: Morningstar. Past performance is no guide to the future. Dividends are variable and not guaranteed. The bar chart shows net asset value and cumulative dividends per share for the period 31/12/2020 to 31/12/2025.
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Alex Davies
Chief Executive
Alex was a board director at Hargreaves Lansdown, where he worked for 15 years. He was responsible for building Hargreaves Lansdown into the biggest direct-to-consumer SIPP provider in the UK with more than 150,000 clients and over £12 billion under management. He is a keen investor with a portfolio of shares, funds, student property, EIS and VCT investments.