The headline number for Q1 2026 reads well. UK angel deals were up 8.4% on the same quarter last year, and median seed rounds held at £1.2 million. Below the surface, the composition of where that money landed tells a more useful story.
Sector mix has narrowed
Climate hardware and AI infrastructure took a larger share of new commitments than they did a year ago. Software-first consumer plays continued to shrink as a category. This is not a one-quarter aberration. The same pattern has held for four consecutive quarters in our pipeline, and the wider Beauhurst and Sifted datasets show a comparable shift.
The narrowing is partly cyclical and partly structural. Capital that would once have followed a marketplace or a D2C brand into seed is now sitting one stage earlier, in operator-led teams that look more like applied research than consumer product. The angels writing those cheques tend to be operators themselves.
Stage mix is shifting earlier
Average pre-seed cheque sizes in our pipeline rose modestly, from £42k to £48k. That sounds like a small move. In aggregate it is meaningful, because it suggests angels are leaning into earlier rounds with slightly more conviction, rather than chasing later-stage paper at compressed valuations.
We see the same pattern in syndication. The number of angels per round at pre-seed has fallen slightly, from a median of nine to seven. Larger individual cheques from fewer angels, often with deeper operational overlap.
SEIS and EIS continue to do real work
Around 71% of new commitments in our pipeline were SEIS or EIS eligible. That is consistent with prior quarters and continues to be a meaningful component of the post-tax return profile. The SEIS allowance at £200,000 per company and 50% income tax relief, together with EIS at 30% relief on up to £1 million per investor per tax year, remains the most material UK government support for early-stage backers and one we expect to persist through 2030 based on recent Treasury signalling.
What the data does not say
A quarter is a quarter. The numbers above are drawn from a deal pipeline that is curated, not random. They are useful for shape, not for forecasting. The same caveats apply to any single dataset in this market. Beauhurst, Sifted, and PitchBook each see different slices, and aggregating them remains an art rather than a science.
If there is a single takeaway, it is that the market is quieter than the headline number suggests. Activity is up. Composition is narrower. Cheques are slightly larger. Investors are returning to the basics of operator quality and round structure, and away from the broader-thesis investing that defined 2021 and 2022.
We will revisit this in our Q2 update.