Investment Experts
Managed by UK Space Agency and lead by E-Spark, Fusion has teamed up with leading investment experts in the UK Space sector.
Anuj Ashar
Anuj Ashar is an aerospace engineer, technology entrepreneur, and the Founder and General Partner of Asteria Space. Asteria is a specialist venture capital firm backing global space-tech companies from pre-seed to Series A, with an edge in space-enabled biotech and a team spanning exited founders, astronauts, NASA scientists and world-leading biologists.
An award-winning founder and active angel investor, Anuj speaks regularly across the UK and European space sector. Before Asteria, he was a specialist advisor for Innovate UK, supporting dozens of space and deep-tech companies on investment and commercial readiness.
Fariba Hozhabrafkan-Cook
Fariba Hozhabrafkan-Cook is a board chair, Non-Executive Director and strategic adviser working across defence, national security, space, cyber, AI and deep technology. She helps organisations make and execute decisions on strategy, capital, technology and growth, combining independent judgement with senior experience across multinational corporations, venture-backed businesses and government markets. Fariba has successfully repositioned technology companies from commercial sectors towards dual-use, defence and government growth opportunities, diversified capital strategy across VC, corporates, high net worth individuals and joint ventures; focusing product direction around customers and mission needs. She also advises founders, boards and investors on strategy, fundraising, governance and international growth.
Karima Serageldin
Karima Serageldin is an operator, investor and advisor across deeptech, space and digital infrastructure. She held product management roles at Verizon Business, and at exited AIM-listed scale-up, Pipex Communications, where she ran core corporate products generating over 70% of revenues and engaged in corporate development. She has invested at established VC funds and as a founding Partner. Karima is Founder of Northbright Capital, established as a Cisco corporate VC contractor (part of $150m early-stage investment strategy), and is Managing Director at CEA (capital raising advisory), Industry Advisor to Ocient (agentic-AI scale-up), and startup mentor at Cambridge University and Grishin Robotics.
Mateusz Portka
Mateusz Portka is an Investor at Oxford Technology, a pre-seed fund investing in deep technology, life science and engineering companies.
He is an engineer first, with an Oxford PhD in engineering, and previously worked on deployable structures for satellites. At the fund, he oversees a portfolio of more than fifty companies and their SEIS and EIS relief compliance. He also studies how government funding and investment schemes influence which technologies reach the market.
Founders can expect direct answers on what makes a science or engineering company fundable, how to structure the first round, and what investors are actually looking at.
Jodi Bartin
Jodi Bartin is CEO of Citicourt & Co Limited, an FCA-regulated corporate finance advisory firm in London advising private companies, listed businesses and investment funds on capital raising, strategic transactions and M&A. She is also founder of the Space4Earth growth fund (S4E Capital) investing into dual-use space technologies.
With decades in financial services, Jodi brings a pragmatic, commercially grounded approach to situations where technology, capital and execution risk intersect. An entrepreneur from an early age, she co-founded and exited an engineering company at 22 and later completed a management buyout of Citicourt ahead of the pandemic.