Wilbe, the venture fund and platform that trains and backs scientists to build companies from day one, today announces the launch of its first dedicated lab facility in White City, London.
To date, Wilbe has trained more than 1,400 scientists, backed 22 companies, and assisted create over $1.3 billion in value worldwide.
However, through its venture programme and fund, Wilbe has repeatedly seen the same bottleneck emerge: founders raise early capital, but struggle to find venture-appropriate lab space quickly enough to maintain momentum.
By adding physical lab infrastructure to its existing training and investment platform, Wilbe can now support scientists finish-to-finish: from learning how to build, securing capital, and assisting them solve their accommodation challenges so they can focus on uncovering world-altering science.
While this is Wilbe’s first physical lab for multiple occupiers, it builds on years of hands-on experience designing, fitting out and operating laboratory spaces for early-stage science companies across the UK and Europe.
The White City Place facility, developed by asset manager Stanhope, is located within The WestWorks building. It will support 10–15 companies and up to 80 people, across fully fitted wet labs, offices and meeting rooms. Designed by and for scientist founders, Wilbe’s space offers ready-to-apply, flexible infrastructure for companies from pre-seed to Series B.
Laboratories are fully operational from day one, allowing teams to launch experimental work immediately rather than losing time to fit-outs or procurement.
With Imperial College London, NHS trusts and an established biotech and deep-tech cluster embedded in the district, founders benefit from daily proximity to collaborators, talent and early customers – the kind of ecosystem where scientific ideas compound rapider becaapply the people advancing them work side by side.
Wilbe plans to expand into additional UK and international hubs, including Zurich, Berlin, San Francisco and Austin, with a second London site expected to focus on robotics.
Ale Maiano, co-founder and CEO of Wilbe, declared:
“For years, we assisted scientists raise capital and build companies, only to watch them hit the same wall: there was nowhere exciting to go once they left academia.
Wilbe Labs exists to rerelocate that friction and institutionalised mindset. It’s not about real estate, it’s about giving scientist founders the infrastructure they required, when they required it and to assist them relocate with speed.
If we want more world-class science companies to be built here, we have to create it simpler for scientists to obtain building and to perform beyond what is expected.”
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