Welcome to Oakley Capital’s fifth annual Responsible Investment Report, which sets out how we are building businesses that are resilient, responsible, and ready for the forces reshaping our world today. Our Responsible Investment strategy directly supports our wider investment strategy and mission, and that mission remains unchanged: to be the partner of choice for exceptional founders and to help them build outstanding businesses that endure, especially through periods of great uncertainty and change.

The defining feature of 2025 was the pace of change, driven above all by the arrival of artificial intelligence as a mainstream practical force rather than a distant prospect. Oakley funds have been investing through the lens of AI for four years, with portfolio company successes in IU Group and vLex over the last few years, and Oakley Touring backing AI native companies since 2023. However, in the space of 2025, AI moved from specific AI use cases deployed by a few, future looking or AI native businesses, to wider AI adoption in day to day business operations, reshaping how the world operates, what customers expect, and where competitive advantage will lie. For some of our companies, it is already directly impacting their underlying market; for others, it is, for now, a question of operational efficiency. Either way, it is shifting the ground beneath every business we back.

This is an exciting time to be an investor. It feels like the early days of telecoms and hosting, when a new layer of infrastructure was being laid down, and the businesses that understood it early went on to define their markets. AI has that same quality: a shift large enough to create real winners and to leave behind those who treat it as someone else’s problem.

Our job is to help our founders meet that moment with discipline and ambition. Over the past year, we have built the foundations to do this, putting the right governance, tools and frameworks in place to assess AI thoughtfully as an operational tool, a lens through which to examine the companies we back, and as a dynamic force that is transforming many of the sectors we invest in. Building businesses that are enduring and well-run is the thread that runs through this report and ultimately, what creates durable value for founders and investors alike.

The pages that follow set out the year in full.

Peter Dubens
Managing Partner and Co-Founder