Embedded strategy & execution partner for frontier industrial technologies.

We work with deep tech founders scaling from TRL 2-7, navigating the valley of death and the widening funding gaps along the pre-seed to Series B journey; OEMs adopting frontier technologies onto existing assets and offering startups a route to market; VC, Angel, Philanthropic and Grant funds needing technical due diligence and ground-level visibility; and corporate bodies/project developers requiring independent assessment of what they fund.
We focus on emerging industrial hardware and software technologies that have positive climate impacts and real potential to scale.

Engagements are embedded and hands-on: we work inside the company, maintain daily contact when needed, and address the most urgent problems in real time while the wider scale-up and go-to-market plan develops in parallel. We can usually start within days. For one client, we delivered a complete and ultimately successful UKRI grant application eight working days from start, alongside a readiness assessment, hazard analysis, and investor introductions in the same four-week sprint.
From day one the wider network is in play: process safety, EPC and vendor contacts, finance, procurement & operations support, recruitment partners, and grant and investor relationships are mobilised as soon as they become relevant.

Fees scale with depth and stage, and we share detailed pricing once we understand the programme. Entry Sprint and Baseline are fixed-fee, so you know the cost of getting a clean engineering and safety baseline upfront. Execute and Retainer are monthly and sized to what the programme actually needs, then reviewed and adjusted as the team and plant mature.Deliver is fixed-fee per agreed package of documents, and Project Development is success-based against predefined funding and FEL gates, with a success fee on capital secured.

Traditional consultancies are built for structured analysis and board-level communication, usually delivered by mixed-grade teams working at a distance. That model is valuable, but it is not optimised for TRL 2–7 hardware where most of the real learning happens inside the plant.
Praxis is built for embedded execution. You get 100% senior delivery and a curated specialist network deployed from day one, staying inside the programme and producing the critical outputs itself: the grant, the HAZID, the financial model, the signed LOI. Because we stay close to day-to-day decisions for months rather than weeks, we accumulate a depth of operational knowledge that standard due diligence or a single deck cannot replicate.

Hiring the equivalent capability in-house usually means £200k+ fully loaded, months of search and ramp, and real hiring risk on top of the technical and runway risk you already carry. One mis-hire at this level can burn as much runway as a failed experimental campaign.
The skills to move from TRL 2–4 are different from those needed at TRL 5–9, and many teams struggle to get the first senior hire right for the whole journey. Praxis gives you senior scale-up capability and a full network at a fraction of the cost, and can flex up or down as your runway and team evolve.
Phase Biolabs is an example: an intensive Entry Sprint, a Baseline that produced the engineering and safety record, a lighter Retainer phase while the team executed, and now project development support as the next scale step approaches.

In frontier industrial programmes, timing is the one variable founders and investors can really control. The decisions that determine whether the FOAK works are made at TRL 4–6, when reactor geometry, control philosophy, materials, and integration boundaries are set and become expensive or impossible to change.
Every pilot experiment should answer a question the commercial plant needs answered. If the pilot is not designed with the FOAK in view, you risk needing an additional scale step, another funding round, and years of delay to regenerate the data you should have collected the first time.
In parallel, site control, grid connection, consenting, feedstock, and offtake all have lead times measured in years. Started late, each becomes a new critical path item. Started early, the technology and project development advance together and you reach FID faster, with less capital burned on avoidable rework.

Process safety is the root cause of the risk the entire scale-up journey is trying to mitigate. The financial risk lenders and capital providers underwrite is that the technology will not go wrong at scale, and that risk begins and ends with the safety culture, ethos, and practices inside the company. Serious investors always look at safety. It is one of the clearest signals of how a company operates, thinks about risk, and whether it is building something that will survive contact with the real world.
Novel chemistry and process conditions demand safety thinking earlier than most teams expect. Every engagement carries a safety baseline as standard, run to recognised guidelines and matured alongside the design, with studies calibrated to the right depth for each stage.
Every safety deliverable includes an explicit scope statement and design-stage caveat, so it can stand on its own in a data room. Built correctly from the start, the safety record accelerates EPC engagement and lender diligence; rebuilt under pressure, it can stall or kill a project.

Project Development at Praxis is true co-development, with skin in the game and a long-term financial interest in the asset, not just an advisory fee.
Two streams feed it: projects that emerge from the consulting pipeline with clear commercial merit, and opportunities originated by Praxis where we bring in the right technology and partners. Entry can happen at any TRL; what matters is whether the technology is real, the team can execute, and the commercial case stands up.
From that point, we run three workstreams in parallel: technical development through FEL to a locked FEED basis, commercial and regulatory groundwork, and capital stack engineering across grants, venture, strategic capital, and project finance. The destination is FOAK to financial close and the bridge from high-cost venture equity to lower-cost project finance, achieved with less dilution and fewer dead ends.

Praxis is based in London and works globally, with clients across the UK, Europe, and the US, and active project development interests in India and Africa.
Equitable industrialisation is a core part of the mission. The same technologies solving climate and industrial problems in developed markets are often well suited to emerging economies, frequently at better economics and with richer real-world operating data.
The engineering fundamentals travel; what changes is capital, regulation, and stakeholders. We can help you navigate all three.

From day one, a clean exit is a design goal. The aim is to build internal capacity and hand over to a mission-aligned team, not to create dependency.
For many clients, we work toward a pilot project development milestone where engineering, safety record, and commercial groundwork have compounded into something investable. Phase Biolabs is a model: an intensive Entry Sprint, a Baseline that produced the record, a lighter Retainer phase, and then project development support as the next scale step approaches.
When the team can execute independently, we step back, remaining available to re-engage at the next critical scale step. Where commercial merit and alignment are strong, an Execute or Deliver engagement may instead convert into a co-development relationship.