Manchester entrepreneur Dez Derry is launching a new venture in the live events market that is rooted in his own experience of trauma and the relentless pace of business life. 

Derry, who founded and sold tech business Blume to Sun Capital and helped take law firm Fletchers Group past £100m turnover, says Escapism is a new premium events brand bringing world-class electronic music, high-profile DJs and gourmet food to iconic venues.

There are two important rules: no phones on the dance floor, and everyone home by midnight.

The brand launches at Victoria Baths (pictured below) in Manchester on 10th October 2026, with events planned for London, Leeds and Bristol to follow. 

Derry, who became an Ambassador for Adoption Matters after speaking publicly about his own experience of being adopted, says the venture is driven by equal parts personal passion and commercial instinct. He knows from both his upbringing and years in high-pressure business that people carry more than they let on.

 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Shares in Revolution Beauty Group plc climbed 28% today on the news that The Financial Conduct Authority had ended its three-year investigation into the firm.

The regulator said it would take no action against the AIM-listed beauty brand, which it was probing over potential market abuse – examining events and accounting issues that took place between July 2021 and September 2022.

It previously discontinued a probe into co-founders Adam Minto and Tom Allsworth, who recently returned to the business.

 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Shares in Raspberry Pi have rocketed 26% today after it reported strong trading in the first half of the year.

Units for the first half are expected to be over four million and adjusted EBITDA at least $38 million.

The strong profitability delivered in the first half is expected to result in FY 2026 EBITDA being significantly ahead of current market expectations.

 

A new Cambridge Enterprise initiative called Leaps is launching to embed Cambridge-based companies in leading ecosystems, giving selected founders access to new markets, talent and investment in key geographical hotspots to enable their success.

London is the first landing spot chosen by Cambridge Enterprise, having been recognised in Dealroom’s annual Global Tech Ecosystem report as Europe’s top-performing city in AI, FinTech and life sciences, and fourth globally.

The initiative has been launched in collaboration with global partners Phoenix Court, Balderton Capital and the BioInnovation Institute Foundation (BII). With space for three companies, the London Leap will allow Cambridge startups to be embedded within the dynamic London ecosystem, which attracts not only international capital, but has a reputation for continued unicorn creation.

With Cambridge being ranked as one of the world’s top cities for innovation output per capita in Dealroom’s latest Ecosystem Index, behind only the Bay Area and Boston, the initiative will tangibly connect two powerful and complementary ecosystems. The aim is to help Cambridge-born companies turn world-renowned research from the University of Cambridge into globally significant businesses, addressing challenges ranging from climate and healthcare to quantum computing.

Companies will be invited to apply and chosen on a competitive basis by the Leap partners and an advisory board formed by investors and serial entrepreneurs with a global presence. Among them are Susan Hill, CEO of Mestag Therapeutics, Daniel Mahony, Senior Partner at Novo Holdings UK, Lord David Prior, Deputy Chairman UK and Global Senior Advisor at Lazard, Dr Bobby Yerramilli-Rao, Chief Strategy Officer at Microsoft and Dr Kaja Wasik, CEO of Echo Labs.

FinTech Aveni has raised a £12 million funding round led by PXN Ventures.

Aveni is the established market leader in AI adoption across UK wealth and banking, with over seven years of live deployments and product development.

Its products Aveni Assist, an AI productivity solution for advisers and operations teams, and Aveni Detect, its AI compliance monitoring tool, are deployed across the UK’s leading banks, wealth managers and financial advisers.

Underpinning both is FinLLM, Aveni’s proprietary suite of specialist small language models built for and utilising UK financial services data.

The round was supported by existing investors Puma Growth Partners, Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide and Scottish Enterprise.

DeepTech leaders working at the frontier of AI, global innovation, infrastructure, venture capital and public policy will take to the stage at Cambridge Tech Week 2026 to explore ‘How Deep Tech Changes the World’, the theme of this year’s event. 

Running across five days in Cambridge (September 14th-18th), the internationally recognised festival will focus proactively on how to move frontier technologies from breakthrough to deployment and examine the systems, infrastructure and policy needed to scale them globally.

Revolut co-founder Vlad Yatsenko is stepping down as CTO of the company.

From 1st July Yatsenko will become a non-executive director at the UK’s leading FinTech, which has 75 million customers worldwide.

One of the core architects of Revolut’s innovative platform, he will be succeeded by Donato Lucia as vice president of technology. 

 

Cloudsmith, the Belfast-born software supply chain security firm, has expanded its leadership team with two key appointments following its recent $72m Series C: Mark O’Connor as Chief Financial Officer and Dan Lascell as General Counsel.

The appointments reflect the company’s scale as Fortune 500 and Global 2000 customers are selecting Cloudsmith as their trusted partner.

Both O’Connor and Lascell step into full-time roles having previously served Cloudsmith in an advisory capacity – O’Connor across Cloudsmith’s last three funding rounds, and Lascell as fractional General Counsel spanning several years. O’Connor will lead financial infrastructure toward IPO readiness.

Apoha, a London-based deep tech company building the foundational data class that reveals how molecules and materials behave under real-world conditions, is emerging from stealth with $36M in funding led by Singular VC.

AI has learned language, vision, and code, but it still lacks structured data about how matter behaves. Apoha is generating that missing layer, effectively giving machines the ability to feel, taste, smell and understand the physical world.

Its technology, which it calls Liquid State Intelligence, is already used by Fortune 500 companies across food and beverage, pharma and materials to discover new flavours, product formulations, etc.

The platform is based on 15 years of foundational research, arising from a Nobel Prize-winning study, and is protected by 60+ patents across hardware, software, data, and AI.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

The Financial Conduct Authority had ended its three-year investigation into Revolution Beauty Group.

The regulator said it would take no action against the AIM-listed beauty brand, which it was probing over potential market abuse – examining events and accounting issues that took place between July 2021 and September 2022.

It previously discontinued a probe into co-founders Adam Minto and Tom Allsworth, who recently returned to the business.

It brings to a conclusion an extended period of upheaval at Revolution Beauty, which sells across retail and online channels.

The Sunday Times 100 ranking of the UK’s fastest-growing companies has been revealed for 2026.

Gary Lineker’s podcast production and distribution company Goalhanger leads the way with 321% growth on £37.9 million sales.

In second, with almost 300% growth on £210m sales, is fellow London firm Lucky Egg, a board games maker.

Altrincham legal claims services provider TGG, West Sussex content creator firm Viewture and Hertfordshire-based meal delivery service company Simmer Eats complete the top five.

A record 33 of the 100 companies contain a female leader, including Michelle Laithwaite, a BusinessCloud Northern Leader who co-founded Warrington meal delivery service FuelHub with husband James.

The regional breakdown sees 45 firms based in London, followed by the North West (14), South East (10), East of England (8), the West Midlands and Yorkshire & Humberside (5 apiece), Wales (4), South West and East Midlands (3 apiece) and Scotland and North East (both 1).

Tech firms to make the top 50 include data consultancy Dot Collective (13th), consultancy Swift Strategies (29th), digital lender/broker Lovey (31st) and digital advertising firm FunnelFuel (33rd).

Roger Hunter has been appointed CEO of electric vehicle charge point firm Fuuse.

Hunter brings extensive senior leadership experience across the EV charging sector, including as global vice president, e-mobility at Shell, where he headed up Shell Recharge Solutions. 

He is an independent non-executive director at Ignitis, the largest charge point operator in the Baltics and was previously accountable for EV charging globally at BorgWarner. 

Founder and current CEO Michael Gibson will step down on 1st September following a decade leading the business. Gibson started the company in 2016 as a data analytics business before launching Fuuse in June 2021. 

 

Former DeepMind researchers have raised £15 million for their AI firm Airspeed.

The agentic AI scaleup has grown revenue 4x in the last 12 months and now serves 200 customers across 20 countries.

Airspeed is described as the execution layer for revenue teams, helping them turn customer conversations and commercial data into actions that move sales deals forward.

The Series A was led by DN Capital, with participation from Vi Partners, Framework Venture Partners and Atlassian Ventures. The round brings Airspeed’s total funding to more than $25 million.

It will be used to scale its presence in the US.

 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Computacenter and investment bank Investec are to join the FTSE 100 Index later this month alongside Aberdeen Group after the London Stock Exchange’s annual review.

Computacenter plc, an independent technology and services provider headquartered in Hertfordshire and led by CEO Mike Norris, has seen its share price rise 69% in the last 12 months on the back of growth in the UK and North America.

Berkeley Group Holdings, Mondi and Rightmove are to leave the FTSE 100 and join the FTSE 250 Index.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Lex Greensill has been disqualified from acting as a company director for nine years.

The Australian financier, founder of collapsed North West FinTech Greensill Capital, has been banned until June 2035 following an investigation by The Insolvency Service.

Lex Greensill, a former sugar farmer now aged 49, was a director of three companies within the Greensill Group – Greensill Capital (UK) Limited, Greensill Limited and Australian parent company Greensill Capital Pty Limited –  which collapsed in 2021 with combined liabilities of more than £1.6 billion.

Following the collapse it emerged that former Prime Minister Lord Cameron had sent dozens of messages during the COVID-19 pandemic requesting that Greensill be granted access to the government’s coronavirus loan support scheme.

Cameron had joined Greensill as an adviser after leaving Downing Street and owned stock options in the then-struggling company. The Treasury select committee found in July 2021 that the politician had shown a “significant lack of judgement”.

Lex Greensill was due to face a six-week trial from Monday (8th June), but that has been avoided after he signed a disqualification undertaking – a legally-binding agreement where directors do not dispute certain facts, for the purposes of the disqualification proceedings only, to end court action.

Wordsmith has raised more than £50 million to help companies to run their in-house legal teams.

The Scottish startup is reducing the reliance on outside legal counsel and is now used by more than 500 companies to organise, route and complete legal work.

Alongside recent customer wins Sage and Starling, its clients include BT, the Financial Times, Trip.com and Canva.

The Series B funding is from Highland Europe and Index Ventures, among others. The funding will be used to accelerate development of its AI platform, scale towards 300 people globally by the end of the year and double down on the US market.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Elon Musk is set to become a trillionaire when SpaceX floats on the Nasdaq next week.

The expected world-record $1.75 trillion IPO would see the space and AI company raise around $75 billion if it is successful in selling 555.6m shares at $135 apiece.

The plan was revealed by Space Exploration Technologies Corp – the formal name of SpaceX – in a company filing on Wednesday.

However Morningstar analysts warned that it is “significantly overvalued”.

Customers of Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland were unable to access their apps or online banking services for several hours today.

Lloyds Banking Group, which has 26 million customers, started experiencing problems just after 11am this morning.

A spokesperson said early this evening that “all our services are back up and running” after customers took to social media to vent their frustrations that the problems had persisted throughout the afternoon.

Having apologised for the inconvenience caused, Lloyds advised those who were still experiencing issues to “please leave it a few minutes and try again”.

 

Dr Arnabu Basu, CEO of Durham tech innovator Kromek, will speak at a new tech founder-focused event at this year’s North East Technology Festival, TechNExt.

Taking place at Durham Business School on Wednesday 17th June, the Startup Hub has been curated by Jamie Hardesty, director of ecosystem development, Sunderland Software City, and will bring together entrepreneurs from across the North East to explore the realities of building technology companies.

It aims to move beyond polished startup mythology to focus on the genuine challenges, decisions and pressures involved in growing a company.

Flok Health, the world’s first AI-operated physiotherapy clinic, has raised £9.5 million in an oversubscribed Series A round.

The round was led by Albion VC, with participation from existing backers Eka VC and Form Ventures, as well as new investors Mercia Ventures. 

Flok Health’s pioneering clinic is the first and only AI platform in Europe to deliver entire healthcare pathways autonomously without requiring human oversight. The tech is currently available to millions of NHS patients across the UK, offering on-demand appointments for back pain with zero waitlist, via a simple mobile app.