Leeds Digital’s Mini-Fest concluded last week, celebrating a city where tech innovation is creating high-value career pathways and cementing the region’s status as a premier global hub. 

As the digital economy in the city expands 125% faster than the national average, hundreds of delegates gathered to see how Leeds is proactively solving society’s biggest challenges. 

From deploying AI to promote online safety and prevent consumer harm to pioneering preventative health measures and robust cybersecurity defences, the ‘small but mighty’ three-day event served as a powerful showcase of technology being used as a force for good.

Serving as the official curtain raiser to the main Leeds Digital Festival in September, the Mini-Fest (21st–23rd April) highlighted the vital work being done to bridge the gap between education and employment. 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Molten Ventures shares are up more than 100% in the last 12 months.

The investor saw its share price rise 5% today to 560p after issuing a trading update which pointed to strong growth in net asset value and gross portfolio value.

There are several other positive pointers for investors.

Autotrader, the UK’s largest automotive marketplace, has revealed that its AI-powered Co-Driver tools are now used by 85% of retailers advertising on the platform — equating to around 11,000 businesses — saving the industry an estimated 200,000 hours (or nearly 20 years) of manual work in just over a year since launch.

Adoption is even higher among retailers accessing the AI solution via Autotrader’s customer Portal accounts.

Co-Driver uses Autotrader’s vehicle taxonomy, pricing and market data, overlaid with its unique car buyer insight to generate vehicle descriptions, manage images and identify key highlights, significantly reducing the time and effort required to create compelling and highly accurate adverts.

In the last 12 months alone, Co-Driver has generated more than 2.5 million AI-created vehicle descriptions and smart image re-orders, moving AI beyond industry hype to become a standard part of day-to-day advertising for thousands of UK automotive businesses.

Factory automation specialist FANUC has named Andy Armstrong as the new managing director of FANUC UK and FANUC Ireland.

With a long history in the automation sector and over 40 years’ experience in engineering & sales, Armstrong has spent the past two years as vice MD for FANUC UK and FANUC Ireland.

FANUC has a portfolio of industrial robots, robot systems and all-electric injection moulding machines.

Scotland Women in Technology (SWiT) will fund two new cohorts of The Data Lab’s Data and AI Leadership Programme in a bid to boost AI leadership skills among women working in the Scottish tech ecosystem.

This is announced as part of a wider multi-year partnership between SWiT and The Data Lab to create opportunities for early to mid-career women in data and AI across Scotland.

Over the next two years, SWiT will fund places for 40 women to participate in one of The Data Lab’s most successful development programmes.

The course will be delivered through a blend of virtual and in-person sessions extending the reach of the programme and participants across the length and breadth of Scotland.

DeepTech startup Loc.ai has raised £1 million in pre-seed funding, led by Fuel Ventures.

Developing off-cloud AI infrastructure, Loc.ai directly addresses a critical issue threatening AI scalability: the escalating costs and privacy concerns driven by cloud-based inference.

The startup was part of the Google for Startups Accelerator 2025’s initial cohort.

Duffel, a TravelTech platform, is capping off a year of record growth with the launch of Duffel Cars – the latest major vertical to join its suite of API travel services.

The firm reached a record $900 million total transaction value run rate last year, with 85% of its volume coming from the US. 

The platform is now trusted by global names such as newly-minted unicorn Bilt, which uses Duffel to turn rent payments into travel rewards; and spend-management platform Rippling, which uses Duffel to give its companies real-time control over corporate travel spend. 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Listed Cambridge firm Bango has reported a rise in profits as it moves towards an annual recurring revenue model.

Bango has revolutionised the monetisation of digital content and services by opening up online payments to mobile phone users worldwide.

The payments insights company said that for the year ended 31st December 2025, total revenue was down 2% to $52.2 million but adjusted EBITDA rose 7% to $16.4m.

Author: Gavin Wheeldon, CEO, Purple

Last week, the Telegraph reported a headline that should stop every policymaker in their tracks: “Mobile data could be rationed to tackle soaring costs of Iran war.” 

The instinct will be to debate whether they should have been included in the Chancellor’s Industrial Competitiveness Scheme. That’s the wrong conversation. 

Because the real question this headline forces is a more uncomfortable one: why, in 2026, in one of the largest economies in the world, is “rationing” even a word we’re applying to connectivity? And why are we still relying on commercial operators — whose first obligation is to shareholders, not citizens — to deliver what is, by any reasonable measure, essential public infrastructure? 

This isn’t a case for bailing out the companies, considering rationing. It’s a case for building infrastructure they can’t ration. 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Uber rival Lyft has agreed to acquire the UK business of Gett as it expands into London.

Gett is an app which features three-quarters of London’s black cabs and has built B2B relationships with clients ranging from London’s largest corporations to historic venues and major public sector organisations. 

The deal is expected to close in the coming weeks and will nearly double the number of rides on the Lyft platform in London, Europe’s largest taxi and ride-hail market.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Belfast tech firm Cloudsmith has raised £53 million in Series C funding.

Cloudsmith has built a platform for the era of AI-driven software development and is used by some of the world’s leading enterprises.

It only raised Series B funding a year ago and both rounds were led by TCV.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A Wi-Fi engagement platform which raised £16 million in funding is to be struck off.

Onvi Tech Ltd, founded in 2016 as Wi-5 Technologies, is registered in Cardiff and built a team of hundreds to target ‘create a new paradigm for in-venue and in-store customer engagement’.

The business was sourced from Wayra, the Telefónica-backed technology accelerator programme, which invested with a view to offering its services to O2 clients in the UK and Telefónica’s clients globally.

It was led by CEO and chief product officer Prask Sutton, who has served as CPO of FinTech 50 firm Round Treasury since September 2024. Sutton is still listed on LinkedIn as holding the CEO/CPO roles at Onvi Tech.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Phlo, QBS Software and PortSwigger were among the big winners at GP Bullhound’s 2026 Northern Tech Awards.

The 13^th edition of the awards were held at the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester and were attended by 250 CEOs, entrepreneurs and business leaders from across the digital economy to celebrate innovation and excellence across the North of England.

US bank KeyCorp has acquired the UK entity of corporate finance advisory firm Clearwater.

The agreement builds on the successful collaboration agreement established between Clearwater and KeyCorp in 2020.

The UK business will remain closely connected with colleagues across Europe and will continue to play an active role in supporting collaboration across the firm, strengthening its ability to deliver integrated cross border advice for clients.

Mark Taylor, CEO of Clearwater UK, said: “This is a significant milestone for our business and a major new chapter in Clearwater UK’s growth story.

“Having partnered with Key for many years, we are confident that both organisations know each other extremely well and that our values and cultures closely align.

“We are really pleased that Key recognises the strength and potential of our business, our differentiated model and the calibre of talent in our team.

“Importantly, our service offering to our clients and our core market will remain unchanged, only enhanced.”

Author: Chris Maguire

Manchester-headquartered agency Glass Atlas has acquired Summit, including its proprietary Productcaster platform.

The acquisition will bring the group’s headcount to approximately 240 and combined revenues to £22m.

The financials of the deal have not been revealed but it will strengthen the firm’s capabilities across end-to-end digital transformation, performance marketing, consultancy and product data technology.

In 2025, Glass Atlas was officially launched as a new digital agency following the integration of four established brands: Space 48, Bring Digital, Brave the Skies, and This is Digital.

The acquisition marks another strategic step in Glass Atlas’ growth journey, following investment from Foresight Group.

Jon Woodall, CEO of Glass Atlas, said: “Summit is a business I’ve respected for a long time. It’s built on strong fundamentals. A clear specialism in retail, long-standing client relationships, and a great track record of delivery.

“Productcaster adds an important layer of proprietary technology. As performance marketing becomes increasingly data and automation-driven, having that capability in-house is critical to how we support clients across their broader commerce strategy.

“This acquisition strengthens the platform and positions us well for the next phase of growth.”

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A subsidiary of chipmaking giant Arm has invested a further £50 million into Raspberry Pi.

A secondary share sale saw the Raspberry Pi Foundation divest shares in the listed Cambridge success story, amounting to 5.6% of the firm’s issued share capital, for £60m at a price of 550 pence per share.

It continues to hold 41% of Raspberry Pi’s shares.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Claire Blunt has resigned from the board of Digitalbox plc to focus on her executive role within Steven Bartlett’s media group.

The media industry veteran joined the Dragons’ Den star’s FlightStory last year and is now CFO and COO of his parent group Steven.com.

She joined the board of Digitalbox, which owns Entertainment Daily, The Daily Mash, The Poke and The Tab, in October 2024 as a non-executive director. She also served as the chair of the company’s remuneration committee. 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

ASOS Plc halved its losses in its latest six-month results but revenue dropped.

The online fashion giant said losses before tax for the half-year period ended 1st March 2026 were £137.9 million, down from £241.5m in the same period last year (H1 FY25).

GC Angels, the venture capital investment arm of the Growth Company, has led four investments in March 2026 supporting funding totalling £1.87m.

Two of the deals originate from GC Angels’ first Venture Forward accelerator programme, which ran at the end of last year, with a further two investments into existing portfolio companies, demonstrating the continued strength of the programme as a pipeline for high-quality opportunities.

The Venture Forward programme, funded by Innovate UK, is designed to support underrepresented founders across the North as they prepare for their first institutional investment round.

From the first cohort, GC Angels has made a six-figure investment into Breezemove as part of their £750,000 seed round. The business is building a UK PropTech platform designed to streamline and simplify the home-buying process.

GC Angels also led a £345,000 investment into MissionC, a premium wellness brand offering effective, FSA-regulated, and lab-tested CBD, Functional Mushroom, and Shilajit products; stocked by leading retailers such as Selfridges and Holland & Barrett. Both investments provide the businesses with the capital to move beyond early-stage hurdles and accelerate their next phase of growth.

This follows the successful delivery of the first Venture Forward cohort which ran from October to December 2025 in Manchester and has resulted in a total of 9 companies successfully raising investment worth over £2.5m.

Alongside the Venture Forward cohort investments, GC Angels completed two further investments into its existing portfolio. These include a £270k investment into OurPetsLife, a leading premium pet product retailer founded by Elliot Roxby, alongside angel investor and exited founder of Music for Pets, Amman Ahmed. The second follow-on investment was into Gaia Learning, an ed-tech platform for SEND children, which raised £400k alongside NESTA and a syndicate of angel investors.

In early April GC Angels completed delivery of the second Venture Forward cohort in Leeds. In the second cohort, 55% of founders were from an ethnic minority background and 55% were female founders, reflecting the programme’s continued focus on widening access to investment and equipping underrepresented entrepreneurs with the skills, networks and confidence to secure funding.

Cogna has appointed ex-Amazon AI leader Sam Ng as CTO.

Cogna uses AI to automate the IT consultancy process for critical infrastructure industries including utilities, construction, facilities management and logistics.

Ng brings nearly 20 years of engineering leadership experience at startups and public companies spanning Microsoft, Google, Amazon and more.

Most recently at Amazon, he led two major engineering programmes. In Amazon AI, his teams owned the language, compiler, framework, and tooling used to build training and inference workloads running on Amazon’s custom Trainium and Inferentia chips.

He also led a 300-person engineering organisation at Kindle, where he built two zero-to-one devices: Kindle Scribe, the first large-format Kindle with writing and notetaking, and Kindle Colorsoft, the first Kindle with a colour display.