Author: Patrick Killeen

RWS Holdings has announced a major shake-up at board level as the company reported a sharp fall in profit for the year ended 30th September 2025.

Chair Julie Southern and senior independent director David Clayton will both step down at the end of the year, ending a period in which Southern helped strengthen the board and transition the group to new executive leadership.

The changes come as the global AI solutions company posted a significant 43% drop in adjusted profit before tax, falling from £106.7 million to £60.4m.

Adjusted EBITDA fell 29% to £100.8m and revenue declined 4% to £690.1m.

A consortium comprising Super Media Group, everplay and HIRO Capital has acquired first-person shooter studio Bulkhead from Chinese giant Tencent.

everplay, a global independent games developer and publisher, has acquired a 20% minority stake in SMG for £2 million.

Founded in 2014, Derby-based Bulkhead is behind indie FPS titles including Battalion 1944. It has also invested in proprietary Unreal Engine tooling with its ‘War Tech Framework’, enabling faster FPS development cycles built around realistic FPS mechanics.

Alongside everplay’s equity investment, the group will partner with the studio on a new title, Wardogs, a multiplayer FPS to be published by Team17 and planned for Early Access release on PC in 2026 and a full multi-platform release in 2027.

TruFin has announced a major upgrade to its 2025 outlook following the successful 9th December launch of Unbeatable, the highly anticipated anime-inspired rhythm-action adventure game from its subsidiary Playstack.

Strong sales of Unbeatable, combined with an impressive performance across Playstack’s back catalogue, mean the London-based-and-listed firm now expects full-year revenue, adjusted EBITDA and profit before tax to exceed £60.3 million, £11.2m and £7m respectively.

The company also anticipates a stronger year-end cash position than previously forecast.

Its shares have risen by 2.5% to 121p so far this morning.

Author: Patrick Killeen

EdTech RM plc has posted a huge increase in annual operating profit.

The global educational technology, digital learning and assessment solution provider, based in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, reported adjusted operating profit of £11.5m, with adjusted EBITDA of £16.6m, for the year ended 30th November 2025 – 34% and 21% higher than 2024, respectively.

The firm said this demonstrates ‘further progress on margin improvement and cost savings’.

Author: Patrick Killeen

NCC Group has swung back to profit despite a dip in revenues, as it pushes ahead with plans to simplify the business and focus on core cyber security services.

For the year to 30th September 2025, group revenue fell 7.2% from £329.2 million to £305.4m, with Cyber Security revenues down to £227.4m and Escode edging up to £66.5m.

Despite the revenue decline, the Manchester-based company delivered a strong profit recovery.

Adjusted EBITDA for the year was £43.7m (2024: £49.7m), but profit before tax rebounded to £20.6m from a £17.8m loss the previous year, reflecting tighter cost control, lower finance and depreciation charges, as well as an £11.4m gain on the sale of its Fox-IT Crypto business.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

HIRO Capital has appointed former Deputy Prime Minister Sir Nick Clegg as general partner.

The founder-led VC firm, also former president of global affairs at Facebook parent company Meta, said Sir Nick is joining as a general partner ahead of the launch of its third fund.

HIRO III is a large multi-stage fund able to deploy from €5-50 million each into promising innovators, targeting the scale-up capital gap in the UK and Europe.

HIRO’s team will also be strengthened by a new advisory board, which brings exceptional domain expertise across each of the four core themes of the HIRO thesis: spatial AI and cloud, autonomy & robotics, space & defence, and augmentation & longevity.

Author: Patrick Killeen

Azul has acquired Worcestershire-based Payara, a global provider of enterprise-grade solutions for Jakarta EE (Java EE) applications and microservices.

The acquisition builds on nearly eight years of collaboration between the two firms.

The announcement follows California-headquartered Azul’s majority investment from Thoma Bravo, alongside renewed minority investments from the company’s existing private equity sponsors, Vitruvian Partners and Lead Edge Capital.

Author: Chris Maguire

Morpheus Lending has today announced a new £110m senior funding line with leading alternative asset manager, Pollen Street Capital.

Manchester-headquartered Morpheus has built a digital-only bridging platform centred around speed and efficiency, for both clients and brokers.

The new funding line will enable further growth and scale to support more property professionals, landlords and SME’s across the UK.

Ocado (+16.77%) was the biggest winner on the entire FTSE All-Share today as it spiked following data from NielsenIQ, which showed that it leads in grocery retail growth over the last 12 weeks.

Evoke (+11.44%) rose substantially today on the back of the news that it is considering a potential sale to maximise shareholder value. The board has appointed Morgan Stanley & Co. International plc and Rothschild & Co as its joint financial advisers in connection with an upcoming strategic review.

Other risers today within the technology scene were Trainline (+2.96%), Paypoint (+1.69%) and TT Electronics (+1.49%).

On the flip side, Kainos Group (-6.81%) dropped today after a hugely successful month. It marks a stark contrast to the 28% jump it had experienced in the prior 30 days.

Auction Technology Group (-4.55%) also slid after releasing its annual report for FY25.

Other notable slips today included Ceres Power (-4.09%), Moonpig (-4.02%) and NCC Group (-3.21%).

UK robotics and AI firm Dexory has appointed its first chief financial officer in Bas Lustenhouwer.

Lustenhouwer’s background includes senior CFO roles and more extensive experience in investment banking.

He was previously CFO at Nivoda, a global B2B marketplace for the jewellery industry, and prior to that served the same role at fellow Dutch firm Klup, a social network for the over-50s.

The move comes as the company continues to build momentum following its £125m Series C funding raise in October, eyeing further global expansion.

Its real-time data and robotics platform is used by GXO, Maersk, DHL and others.

Author: Patrick Killeen

Scissero has acquired the managed services team of Robin AI in a move that the company says will create a London-based LegalTech powerhouse.

The combined business is to serve large international clients, including major investment houses, as well as FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 firms.

The deal significantly expands Scissero’s reach, boosting its client base to more than 100 companies, and combines its AI-enabled legal services and specialist knowledge in asset management and capital markets with Robin’s global footprint and established managed services customer base.

Robin was put up for sale in late October after falling short of its fundraising targets, putting nearly 200 jobs at risk.

Newcastle-based legal-AI startup AttiFin AI has raised £5 million in seed funding ahead of a planned launch in early 2026, aiming to build what it says will be Britain’s first enterprise-grade AI platform trained specifically on UK and devolved law.

The round lands as the domestic legal market continues to expand and LegalTech funding accelerates, with investors backing tools that can handle jurisdiction-specific complexity.

Backed by the founders of Scrumconnect, AttiFin is leaning on its team’s criminal-justice track record to shape a product focused on the nuances of UK legal practice.

The funding will support a Newcastle relocation and the hiring of at least 25 technical roles over the next year.

Kodiaq Technologies, a University of Cambridge spin-out developing organic, metal-free electrolytes for long-duration energy storage, has raised £850,000 from more than 20 high-net-worth investors.

The funding will help the company refine its UK-developed electrolytes, which it says can boost flow-battery energy density and cut the cost per unit of storage compared with lithium or vanadium systems.

Kodiaq’s capital-light plan is to retrofit existing flow batteries first, then co-develop next-generation systems with OEMs and integrators, aiming for pilot deployments ahead of a larger raise in mid-2026.

Bolt Insight has secured a £7 million funding round led by Pembroke VCT, with Pembroke putting in £3.5m alongside 212, Active Partners, Velocity and TIBAS Ventures.

The cash will be used to scale BoltChatAI globally and push the business beyond project-based research towards an always-on, AI-moderated insights platform, including a planned “assistant AI chief insights officer” for brands.

Led by former Unilever strategist Hakan Yurdakul and CTO Kerem Turgay, the business now employs around 50 people across London, Istanbul, Paris, New York and Singapore.

The company says its platform has already run more than 5m consumer interviews across 90 markets and counts 11 of the top 15 global CPG groups among its clients, with a reported 90% renewal rate.

Cloud Direct has named Leighton Searle as its new CEO, bringing in a long-time Microsoft leader with more than 25 years in the sector and almost two decades spent driving cloud, data and AI transformation at Microsoft.

He replaces founder Brett Raynes, who will move into an executive chair role and continue to steer strategy and product development.

The Bath-based Microsoft partner has grown to around 150 staff across the UK and South Africa, delivering 26% year-on-year revenue growth and holding top-tier Azure, Data & AI, Modern Workplace and Security accreditations.

Voltempo has appointed Simon Smith as CEO to lead the next stage of growth and delivery of its eFREIGHT 2030 project, which aims to build the UK’s largest depot-based electric HGV charging network.

The move comes as the Birmingham-based firm begins series production of its Megawatt Charging System HyperCharger, a key step in scaling ultra-fast charging for heavy freight.

Founder Michael Boxwell will move into a corporate development officer role focused on innovation, partnerships and policy engagement, while John Fox has joined as COO, bringing deep engineering and clean-mobility experience from Indra Renewable Technologies, Rolls-Royce and GE Aviation.

The refreshed leadership team is designed to accelerate commercial rollout in the UK and support international expansion in zero-emission transport infrastructure.

BGF has appointed Sagacity Solutions CEO and co-founder Anita Dougall as a non-executive director.

Dougall has scaled the consumer data intelligence business since 2005 and it ranked second in the Independent E2E Forum’s 100 fastest-growing female-led UK businesses in 2025.

Her background spans senior roles in investment banking at NatWest Markets and credit strategy leadership at One2One (now EE).

The board shake-up also sees long-serving non-executive director Alice Avis stepping down in April 2026, as BGF continues its wider push to back UK growth companies, including a £300 million commitment to female-powered businesses within its £3 billion investment pledge.

Club L London has reported a record FY24-25, with turnover rising 48% year-on-year to £65.9 million and gross profit up 62% to £37.8m.

Profit before tax for the premium womenswear and lifestyle brand jumped to £14m from £3.1m, pushing margins from 6.9% to 21.1%, while net assets grew to £16.6m.

The performance was driven largely by international expansion, with especially strong growth in the US, Australia, the Middle East and several European markets supported by localisation efforts.

Investments in infrastructure and technology, including a dedicated US third-party logistics facility, have helped improve delivery speeds and customer experience as the brand scales globally.

Listed independent technology group Cohort plc has posted a solid first half, with revenue up 9% to £128.8 million, helped by growth across most of its businesses.

Adjusted operating profit dipped slightly to £9.7m and margins eased to 7.5%, largely due to a mix shift in Sensors and Effectors and planned lower-margin deliveries on a major Italian sonar programme.

Management kept full-year expectations unchanged and lifted the interim dividend 10% to 5.8p.

EMV Capital has backed another raise for portfolio firm Wanda Connected Health Systems, which has closed at £860,000 following strong US commercial momentum.

The funding combines £600,000 in equity, a £260,000 loan facility and a further £600,000 from exercised warrants, and will be used to scale operations with key US customers and deepen product development.

After the round, EMV Capital holds 16.5% of Wanda, valuing its stake at about £1.7 million, while EMV-syndicated third-party holdings in the business have risen to 29.6% – worth roughly £3.1m.

Wanda says demand is being driven by US health plans and employers seeking better chronic-disease and GLP-1 management, with the company targeting more than $5m ARR by the end of 2026.

The firm has also appointed former Greenbrook Healthcare founder Michael Steel as chair.