What We Do
Acceleration through Augmented Intelligence
🚀 Startup Acceleration
We run a curated accelerator programme for Oxford-affiliated startups, from students and researchers to alumni and spinouts, offering:
- Mentorship from leading academics, operators, and investors
- Access to funding networks and strategic partners including leading VCs
- Training in fundraising, go-to-market strategy, IP, and leadership
- Opportunities to pitch at high-profile demo days and investor events
We operate on the principle that Oxford University’s world-class academic environment produces exceptional entrepreneurs who, with proper support and capital, can build transformative businesses. The accelerator focuses on ventures that may not necessarily fit with Oxford’s institutional IP but harness the university’s talent pipeline and network effects.
🤝 Scaleup Acceleration
We run dedicated, tailored programmes for scaleup leaders. Scaleups leverage our deep academic foundations, successful startup track record, and the University of Oxford’s global reputation to address the complex challenges companies face when scaling from Series A to international expansion.
- Research-Powered Scaling: Exclusive access to Oxford's world-leading research facilities and academics, enabling scaleups to maintain technological advantage through R&D partnerships, IP collaboration, and deep sector expertise in life sciences, AI, and climate tech
- Leadership & Talent Pipeline: Integrated executive education through Saïd Business School combined with structured access to PhD researchers, MBA candidates, and senior alumni, solving the critical human capital challenges that constrain scaling companies
- Global Expansion Platform: Leverage the Oxford Guild's international network and University of Oxford's worldwide reputation to provide soft-landing programmes, regulatory navigation, and cross-border partnerships through the Collegium Global Network spanning 40+ universities
- Patient Capital Ecosystem: Connect scaleups with growth-stage investors and corporate innovation partners, offering a sustainable scaling approach that bridges the gap between venture funding and strategic exits, particularly suited to deep tech and B2B companies
The Oxford Accelerator is not just as another accelerator, but an essential partner for ambitious companies building category-defining businesses from the UK. By focusing on sustainable scaling backed by intellectual capital rather than just financial capital, we can help create enduring companies that leverage the best of British innovation and beyond. The combination of academic rigour, practical experience, and global networks creates a scaleup programme that no other institution can replicate.
🌍 Ecosystem Conferences & Events
We host and co-organise flagship conferences, innovation summits, and sector-specific events, demo days, networking sessions and more that bring together:
- Startups, scaleups, and founders
- Investors, venture capitalists, and angels
- Corporate innovation teams and R&D leaders
- Policy makers, government reps, and academic institutions
These events which have included talks with major CEOs, founders and investors including the likes of Sam Altman (OpenAI), Doug Leone (Sequoia), Manny Maceda (Bain), Daphne Koller (insitro and Coursera), David Rubenstein (Carlyle) and more serve as critical touchpoints for connection, collaboration, and capital across the UK and global innovation ecosystems. Some of our conferences includ the Global FinTech and Blockchain Conference, European Student Startups Competition and Global Female Leadership Conference.
🤝 International Companies and Delegations Support
Oxford Accelerator supports inbound international trade and innovation delegations in exploring and engaging with the UK’s Golden Triangle. We:
- Design bespoke programmes and soft landing tours
- Facilitate access to key stakeholders in academia, government, and industry
- Partner with equivalent organisations abroad to build reciprocal innovation bridges
- Showcase UK innovation hubs through curated visits and networking
Our outbound programmes include our flagship over-subscribed Europe2SiliconValley tours for leaders at startups and scale-ups, and guided delegations to tech centres and events in US, Europe, MENA, China and Southeast Asia.
Our programme partners have included Vodafone, Deutsche Telecom and forward thinking government departments including Ministry of Defence (UK), Department of Defense (US) and several Government Ministries from Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Singapore and more.
LEADERSHIP TEAM
Abbas Kazmi
CEO
Abbas Kazmi is a multi-award-winning serial entrepreneur and investor who founded his first of several successful companies at 16. Abbas has been behind many exciting businesses, initiatives, and organizations. He has been recognized as a Forbes 30Under30 Standout (selected as one of the fronting faces for their magazine edition, European list, Finance list, Dorm Room Founders list, and Middle Eastern list), as a Maserati 100 (one of the Top 10 People’s Choice among 'game-changing entrepreneurs and innovators'), as one of the Great British Entrepreneur Awards Entrepreneurs' Champions of the Year, and as one of Startups UK’s Young Entrepreneurs of the Year and Business Growth Enablers of the Year. He has also been recognized as a ‘Young Gun’ and one of the top UK entrepreneurs under 35 by Startups UK, named one of the Top 5 inspirational UK entrepreneurs to watch by Tech City News, and invited to MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 community, serving as an ambassador and judge. Recently, he was named Service Industries Entrepreneur of the Year at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards and Mobile & Emerging Technologies StartUp Founder of the Year at the StartUp Awards National Series, among numerous other honors.
Abbas has been appointed a United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Fellow, focusing on youth entrepreneurship and empowerment in MENA, and as a World Economic Forum Global Shaper.
Previously at BlackRock, Abbas worked across EMEA and the US, contributing to the launch of BlackRock’s first internal accelerator with an impact/ESG focus, seeding the firm’s first Saudi ETF, and its $152m acquisition of robo-advisor FutureAdvisor, their first FinTech acquisition. He co-founded both the Oxford Accelerator and VC fund Collegiate Capital and serves as an Investment Committee member, advisor, and LP investor in several European funds, including BlackWood Ventures, where he is the lead dealmaker. Abbas focuses predominantly on early-stage investments (pre-seed to Series A). His LP investments include Hambro Perks Leaders Fund, JamJar Fund II, Passion Capital Fund III, Future Planet Capital, and Innvotec. He has angel-invested in notable startups like Monzo (valued over $4.5bn), Curve ($781m), and Yonder ($88m).
He has been invited multiple times to Latitude’s and LocalGlobe’s investment committee meetings (top-ranked early-stage VCs in EMEA) and was awarded the Phoenix Court Group Works Scholarship. Abbas has co-invested alongside LocalGlobe, Northzone, Tiger Global, Seedcamp, Bill Gates, and Total. His favorite investment is mental health double-unicorn Spring Health, where he single-handedly sourced and managed the first institutional investment external to Yale. Spring Health, now valued at over $2.5bn, has raised approximately $365m from investors including Tiger Global and Northzone, and Abbas's stake is valued at over 200x the initial investment.
Abbas co-founded the first VC fund bridging Central Asia and MENA, SABAH.Fund. He was recognized by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE’s Vice President and Deputy Prime Minister, as an Arab Youth Pioneer, tasked with addressing youth unemployment and promoting entrepreneurship in the region. Passionate about blockchain, the metaverse, and AI technologies since 2014, he advises the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Metaverse and Web 3.0 in the UK and several Azerbaijani government ministries through the SABAH.HUB Innovation Centre. He headed innovation mandates for COP29 in Baku and is a Helena Group Fellow alongside Snap Inc CEO Evan Spiegel, as well as one of the youngest fellows of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).
Abbas sits on boards including FINGREEN AI (ESG Data and Monitoring solution) and Prospect 100 (co-creation platform for Gen Z talent). His extensive experience spans roles at financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Internet Capital Group, and many others across finance, consulting, commodities, and PE/VC. Abbas co-founded the Institute of Economic Affairs’ Young Professionals Network, "I on the Future," served on the Young Enterprise London Alumni Board, and was an inaugural member of the Milken Institute Young Leaders Circle MENA Chapter. He is a signatory to VentureESG and the Venture Climate Alliance, co-founder of diversity-focused Power of N Syndicate and the Influential Group Syndicate, and previously an Entrepreneur in Residence at MassChallenge.
He co-founded the European Student Startups competition and judged numerous startup competitions including MIT Innovators Under 35 and INSEAD Venture Competition Finals. Abbas frequently speaks at top universities and global conferences such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Forbes 30Under30 Summit, Milken Institute MENA Summit, and World Government Summit.
Abbas is an Entrepreneurship Expert at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, advising MBA students through the O Network, and Investor-in-Residence at London Business School. He has lectured at Oxford, Cambridge, LBS, LSE, UCL, INSEAD, and more.
An academic scholar from Westminster School and Oxford University, and a VC Fellow at LBS’s Newton Venture Program, Abbas is Chairman of the Oxford Guild, which he built into the largest university society globally, hosting guests like Sam Altman, Kanye West, Woody Harrelson, and Malala. He recently became an Aspen Institute UK Rising Leaders Fellow, co-founded the All In startup diversity pledge, Global Fintech & Blockchain Conference, Europe2SiliconValley Trip, and Spirited Network Covid-19 relief initiative.
He co-produced four films, including collaborations with Idris Elba, co-founded the Golden Age Network promoting intercultural relations in MENA+, serves on the committee at MENA2050, and is an inaugural Fellow at ROPES, focusing on the Israel-Palestine peace process.
Chariman
Sebastian "Seb" Haigh is a technology entrepreneur, investor, and author. Seb began his career early, working on his parents' farm before taking on roles in the hotel business, contract farming, and gardening. His first high-tech role involved programming industrial robots, where he developed a method that significantly improved quality assurance metrics. Seb went on to co-found multiple technology ventures, launch an award-winning talent accelerator in Oxford, and lead product teams at companies including HP and Amazon. He has also advised business and government leaders on technology investments exceeding two billion dollars.
Seb was born in Papua New Guinea and returned to the UK for schooling at Bishop of Hereford's Bluecoat School and Kelly College in Devon. He studied Philosophy, Psychology, Mathematics, and Computer Science at Leeds University, graduating with a BSc in Computer Science with Artificial Intelligence. At Leeds, he received a prestigious Nuffield Studentship for his thesis on Automatic Extraction of Tagset Mappings from Parallel-Annotated Corpora.
In 1995, Seb joined Online as an early employee, where he developed game engine platforms. The company floated on London’s AIM market 18 months later and rose to become a dotcom star before the 2000 crash. Seb then joined Serverware Group, first as lead developer and later as project lead for major clients such as BP, Shell, the UK Government, Lloyds Bank, and Microsoft USA. Serverware’s product, now known as EMC Server Configuration Manager, was acquired by Fundamental Software in a multi-million-dollar deal.
From 2000 to 2003, Seb was seconded as a deployment consultant to Trilogy Inc., a renowned tech talent hub featured in Rolling Stone and Harvard Business Review. Working in Paris, London, and Washington DC, he led an in-house startup team at SITA-Equant, transforming its sales operations. Returning to the UK, Seb co-founded CMBridge, a consulting firm specializing in Enterprise Configuration Management, landing major contracts with Hutchison 3G, the NHS, Carphone Warehouse, and Siemens.
While on sabbatical in 2004, Seb identified an opportunity to scale US-based Web 2.0 platforms internationally. He led the global expansion of the RateMy web properties developed by Michael Hussey. RateMyTeachers and RateMyProfessors gained widespread attention, including front-page press and parliamentary debate. RateMyProfessors was acquired by Viacom and RateMyTeachers by a private equity firm, both in multi-million-dollar deals.
When CMBridge technology was adopted in the UK MOD’s Atlas Defence Information Infrastructure program, Seb joined consortium leader EDS. A planned two-year role evolved into a decade of software-intensive business transformation with clients including Vodafone, Rolls-Royce, and Ahold. Seb co-created HP’s Agile Digital Customer Experience (DCX) practice, growing it from a startup to $10M+ in new business within a year. His team won several awards including Oracle Middleware Partner of the Year and Telco Website of the Year (three times). During his tenure at EDS and HP, Seb was a frequent industry speaker and co-authored reports with Accenture, Frost & Sullivan, and Gartner.
Seb later led product management for the official Formula 1 app and pioneered open procurement systems at Amazon Ltd. He remains active in global startup ecosystems with investments and advisory roles across California, Michigan, New York, Oxford, London, Luxembourg, Ukraine, Qatar, India, Pakistan, China, and Singapore. He is co-founder and board member at Oxford Accelerator (NACUE Innovation Award winner, 2017) and Oxford.AI. His investments and board roles span companies including StatSocial, PeekYou, Onfido, Maple Intelligence, NodeGear, Buysta, Mavra, Yell, and others.
