Eight of Cambridge's top scientists have created a £100 million fund to invest in "young and hungry" UK technology companies.

Ahren Limited Partners has been formed by a group of researchers from the city's thriving start-up scene including Sir Shankar Balasubramanian, inventor of a variety of genome sequencing techniques.

The fund has already raised £100m over the summer with contributions from insurance company Aviva and Wittington Investments.

Ahren, which expects to raise further cash over the next few months, plans to invest in companies that focus on four areas of research: the brain and artificial intelligence, genetics technologies, space, robotics and clean energy technology.

Because the fund is controlled by scientists who have seen financial success with their own inventions and research, Ahren aims to help entrepreneurial scientists to “create immense business and societal value”.

Professor Zoubin Ghahramani, who is head of the Machine Learning Group at Cambridge University and a founder at Ahren, said: “Ahren invests in transformative companies with bold vision seeking, sometimes to create, enormous markets for their products and services.

“We back young and hungry, highly motivated entrepreneurs that want to win big. We firmly believe that this strategy will generate the strongest returns for Ahren’s Limited Partners.”

Alice Newcombe-Ellis, the founder and managing partner of Ahren, is a maths and physics graduate who convinced the eight Cambridge's academics to join her in setting up the fund.