UK-based AI startup Enginuity has raised £500,000 in new funding to further its mission to unlock the estimated $1.58 trillion in untapped global intellectual property.
The round was led by Fuel Ventures, with participation from Symvan Capital and a group of angel investors.
Founded by innovation specialist Richard Heggie, Enginuity uses multi-agent artificial intelligence to map patents and research resources based on real-time market demand signals. The aim of the platform is to help companies, universities, R&D teams and startups identify existing technologies that could solve current challenges but remain commercially inactive.
Industry estimates put global R&D spending at over $2.5 trillion annually, yet about 95 percent of patents are never used. Enginuity argues that much of today’s innovation bottlenecks stem not from a lack of ideas, but from the difficulty of matching them with commercial opportunities.
The platform allows users to search intellectual property by function and feature, uncover related technologies and innovation paths, and connect ideas directly with buyers, partners and funding sources.
Heggie said the company’s goal is to transform intellectual property from a static legal asset into an active commercial resource. “Most of the world’s ideas sit unused on the shelf,” he said. “By making intellectual property searchable and commercially relevant, we help innovators save time and unlock value from what already exists.”
The funding will support product development, expansion of technical and business development teams and expansion of partnerships in the UK, US and Europe.
Enginuity is already working with innovation ecosystems affiliated with Cambridge, MIT/Harvard and the Technical University of Munich, and has piloted projects with venture studios such as C10 Labs.
Mark Pearson, founder of Fuel Ventures, said the startup addresses a critical inefficiency in global innovation. “Wasting unused intellectual property is one of the biggest missed opportunities in technology,” he said. “Enginuity has the potential to transform the way ideas are discovered and applied.”
As AI becomes increasingly integrated into business decision-making, Enginuity positions itself at the intersection of intellectual property analysis and commercialization – aiming to transform dormant inventions into active economic drivers.
