Bite-size news and insight from UK business and tech – including funding, deals and appointments
Published: May 26, 2026 at 8:25 am
A new initiative designed to inspire and equip the next generation of women angel investors is launching in South Yorkshire next month.
The TECH SY x Lifted Angel Academy in South Yorkshire is a fully funded angel education programme delivered by Lifted Ventures in partnership with TECH SY.
The support is funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, through the Tech Town status given to Barnsley Council, as well as funding through the British Business Bank and South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority.
The programme will support up to 20 women from across South Yorkshire to learn the fundamentals of angel investing, gain confidence in assessing investment opportunities and connect with founders, investors and ecosystem leaders from across the region.
Published: May 26, 2026 at 8:15 am
Tata Consultancy Services has expanded its global cloud portfolio with the launch of SovereignSecure Cloud in Europe.
The IT services, consulting and business solutions giant says the bespoke offering is designed specifically for governments, public sector enterprises and regulated industries.
It combines sovereign cloud architecture with AI capabilities to enable sovereignty across data, operations and digital infrastructure.
The launch of TCS SovereignSecure Cloud in the EU builds on its rollout in India in 2025, followed by expansions into Kenya, East Africa and the Philippines.
Published: May 25, 2026 at 3:22 pm
TympaHealth, an ear and hearing health technology provider, has secured a £2m Innovate UK loan.
The money will be used to accelerate Tympa Assist, its world-first AI-powered guidance platform.
TympaHealth is a team of doctors and technology experts united by a mission to help the world achieve better ear and hearing health.
Founded by ENT surgeon Dr Krishan Ramdoo, TympaHealth raised £18.4m in Series A funding in 2023.
Published: May 25, 2026 at 2:51 pm
Fresha, a London-based AI-powered marketplace and business management platform for the beauty and wellness industry, is the latest UK firm to achieve unicorn status.
It follows the news that the firm has secured a £60m ($80m) primary growth investment from funds managed by KKR, valuing the company at over $1bn.
The investment marks a major milestone for Fresha, which began as a salon booking and scheduling tool in 2015 and has grown into one of the world’s largest beauty and wellness technology platforms, now used by more than 130,000 businesses globally.
Already profitable, Fresha has now raised $285m (£210m) to date and will use the new funding to accelerate international expansion, product development and AI innovation, as it continues its mission to transform how self-care businesses operate and grow.
Headquartered in London and founded in 2015 by William Zeqiri and Nick Miller, Fresha is one of the fastest-growing beauty and wellness platforms in the world.
Published: May 25, 2026 at 9:35 am
THG has admitted to an admin error over its Ingenuity demerger.
Shareholders have now been asked to vote for a ‘procedural rectification’ in relation to last year’s demerger of Ingenuity at next month’s AGM.
THG Ingenuity’s demerger into a standalone business from the profitable THG Beauty and THG Nutrition divisions was confirmed at the start of 2025 after 88.71% of shareholders voted for it at the company’s general meeting.
Last week, THG announced it would be holding its AGM at THG Studios on June 24, but what caught the eye of shareholders in the notice to the London Stock Exchange was a mention of the Ingenuity demerger.
The exact wording is very complicated and heavy on legalese but several shareholders asked BusinessCloud to investigate.
Nobody from THG wanted to comment publicly, but the admin error has been described as a routine oversight that should have been filed at the time of the Ingenuity demerger.
Published: May 22, 2026 at 11:37 am
Autotrader, the UK’s largest automotive marketplace, saw its share price slump by more than 8 per cent on the back of its full year results.
The company’s share price ended Thursday on 452.60p – a fall of 43.70p.
Analysts say the results were short of forecasts and set against continued pressure in the used car market.
On Friday at 11.30am the share price stood at 454p.
Published: May 22, 2026 at 11:34 am
After working with Steven Bartlett and THG’s Matt Moulding, Alex Ayin has launched his own high performance business – Tomorrow’s Potential – for founders and CEOs.
In a far-reaching interview with Chris Maguire, Ayin spoke about the lessons he’s taken from working with some of the UK’s highest profile entrepreneurs.
Ayin joined Manchester-based Social Chain,in 2015, helping it grow to over 250 employees across five global offices and a multi eight-figure turnover.
He said the experience taught him about the importance of culture.
“Get obsessive about culture,” he said. “Understand who comes in. I was there from the very early days. The first 50 people determine the trajectory of the company.
“We made some mistakes in hiring people in the early days and we didn’t fire them quick enough.
“Fire much quicker than you think and analyse based on a set of character traits that we now have.”
Ayin said leaders should spend x10 longer on recruitment and measure candidates against metrics like ‘bias for speed’ and ‘independent learning’.
Published: May 22, 2026 at 11:29 am
In today’s founder story Charlotte Ridley has written movingly about how the death of her father inspired her to set up Memorify Technologies.
Her grief at her father’s loss was compounded by the fact that she also lost access to his digital memories.
In the article she shares the 6 things she’d tell her younger self.
Here are the five things she learned in addition to the impact of her dad’s death.
1. You don’t need to know it all
2. Listen to advice, but don’t always take it
3. Know your worth
4. Resilience is built
5. Make it personal
Published: May 21, 2026 at 10:01 pm
Wandering among the bright lights of the Las Vegas Strip, the music is occasionally interrupted by the gunning of a pickup truck or sports car with a particularly enthusiastic driver.
Meanwhile, barely making a sound, a robotaxi picks its way through the traffic.
Waymo is currently testing such vehicles in London but the proliferation of the Zoox taxis in Vegas – a subsidiary of Amazon – takes me aback on my trip to Dell Technologies World. Yet when asked by a friend whether I’d like to jump in one, I am quick to decline.
It is not the only ‘wow’ moment. Heading into the conference one day this week, a humanoid robot jogs up and gazes quizzically at me.
Stumped for something to say, I utter: “Hi, little guy…”
We humans may still struggle to interact with lifelike machines – and trust driverless taxis – but we will quickly have to become comfortable with the notion of working with a virtual ‘colleague’.
Published: May 21, 2026 at 10:57 am
Primer, a London-based payments startup, has announced a $100m (£75m) Series C funding round.
The round was led by Sofina, with participation from Peak XV Partners, and continued backing from all existing investors, including Balderton, Accel, ICONIQ, Tencent, and Speedinvest.
The company has clients in 30 countries and plans to grow US revenue to more than a third of its business by 2028 and will hire up to 50 roles in the region to support that expansion.
Trusted by leading companies including Get Your Guide, Dialpad, Rail Europe, Printful, Lime, and loveholidays across eCommerce, travel, FinTech, and digital platforms, Primer has raised $170m (£126m) from investors.
Primer was founded in 2020 by ex PayPal and Braintree employees Paul Anthony and Gabriel Le Roux on the premise that payments needed a single, unified infrastructure layer before they could benefit from the intelligence built on top.
In 2021, Primer was valued at $425m after closing a $50m Series B fundraise.
Published: May 21, 2026 at 10:21 am
A campaign to raise £500,000 in memory of Abi Godfrey, a director of Grant Thornton’s North West corporate finance business who died at the age of 34, has topped £70,000.
A total of 363 supporters have so far pledged £73,505, which will be used to support her baby son, Leo, and her family.
Abi died in February just two weeks after giving birth to her first baby, Leo.
It’s hoped the total will be given a significant boost next Thursday (May 28th) when colleagues at Grant Thornton will join friends and members of Abi’s family in taking part in the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge in her memory.
You can donate here
Published: May 21, 2026 at 10:19 am
Autotrader’s big week continues with the news they’ve grown revenues by 4% to £624m in the last financial year.
The news follows the opening this week of their new 130,000 sq ft HQ at Manchester’s Circle Square.
Nathan Coe, chief executive of Autotrader, said: “We continued to grow both revenue and profits this year, despite a challenging backdrop.
“Our competitive position has strengthened, with six times more time spent on Autotrader than all our main competitors combined.
“We remain committed to using our brand, technology and proprietary data to benefit car buyers and retailers.”
Published: May 20, 2026 at 9:38 pm
AI workloads are rising faster than legacy infrastructure and national grids were designed to absorb, leading to a ‘data centre reckoning’ in Europe.
In EMEA specifically, the squeeze is sharper because capacity is constrained not only by technology, but also by planning rules, land use and grid bottlenecks.
Cities such as Amsterdam are openly restricting data centre expansion due to space and electricity network scarcity, while London-facing grid constraints are now a mainstream policy issue. Companies such as London-based Nscale are raising extraordinary amounts of funding to build facilities dedicated to serving the energy needs of AI.
David Holmes, global industries CTO at Dell Technologies, is at the forefront of the change. “The vertical markets that we cover in my overall organisation are healthcare, life sciences, manufacturing, retail and energy – but my focus is very much around energy,” he tells me at Dell Technologies World in Las Vegas.
“Our remit is understanding how we can apply technology to solve the problems of the energy industry, working with our partners. What we’ve seen over the last two years is AI becoming part of the conversation.
“How do we sustainably build the energy ecosystem that’s going to support the massive scaling of AI over the coming years? How do we enable this incredible driver of economic growth to deploy whilst ensuring that the energy ecosystem is reliable, resilient, affordable and sustainable?”
Published: May 20, 2026 at 8:24 pm
Marks & Spencer suffered a sharp fall in its annual profit following last year’s high-profile cyber attack.
The retailer was forced to halt all orders through its website and apps following last April’s hack.
According to the company’s annual results, profits were hit by £131.3m in costs related to the cyber incident.
The retailer said pretax profit dropped 29 per cent to £364.6m in the 52 weeks to March 28, from £511.8m the year prior.
Adjusted pretax profit fell 24 per cent to £671.4m from £881.1m, but sales grew 25 per cent to £17.37bn from £13.91bn.
M&S’s share price rose by just over 5 per cent on the back of Wednesday’s results, which were ahead of forecasts.
M&S said: “Performance in 2025/26 was a year of two halves: significant operational impact from the cyber incident during the first, followed by a return to sales and profit growth in the second.”
“Despite the disruption, M&S made further progress on its transformation, enabled by a strong balance sheet.”
Published: May 20, 2026 at 12:00 pm
North East entrepreneur Kelly M Whitfield has opened up about the reality of female founders trying to raise investment.
She recently joined a recent delegation of North East female founders to 11 Downing Street, which was organised by Sophie Milliken MBE.
Writing for BusinessCloud, Whitfield said: “I had my first child in 2004 and launched my first business in 2006 with a small loan.
“My second son arrived in 2008, the same year I was appointed regional director for a London-based UK trade body.
“Both businesses were profitable from year one and scaled organically.
“The reality is that I built around my children. I was hugely ambitious and wanted to go flat out, but instead I had to go steadily.
“I don’t think I’m alone as a woman in deliberately keeping my business smaller than I would ideally like because it fits around family life.
“I’ll turn 50 this year, and my youngest son turned seven in October.
“Only now, with the support of my husband, can I fully commit to my new venture, KLIK SaaS. The kind of raise I’ve secured simply would not have been possible in the previous decade.
“I didn’t build lifestyle businesses by choice or by accident. I put my boys first and have never regretted that decision for a moment. But I don’t think it is entirely fair that I had to make it.
“I’d like to see us dig deeper to understand why that 2 per cent statistic exists.
“Do women have the support they need to scale? Are we intentionally holding back so we can put our families first? I’m someone who believes women can have it all. I’ve done it all, and with very little support.
“But we need to understand what brilliant female founders and innovators truly need, and why only 2 per cent are securing funding.
“Only then can we create the solutions and support systems female founders need to level the playing field.”
Published: May 20, 2026 at 11:00 am
UK startup Scope has raised $20m (£15m) in Series A investment, which could spell the end of time-consuming clipboard inspections.
Jonathan Low and Jakob Cassiman founded Scope in 2024 to create an AI inspection platform for the testing, inspection and certification industry (TIC).
Inspection is the most common way physical data is collected, underpinning the integrity, operation and safety of every industry.
However, the software the inspection process runs on hasn’t changed in 20 years – which is why Low and Cassiman launched Scope.
They identified the problem that most inspectors still carry a clipboard and a typical four-hour inspection would entail spending days at a desk, manually transcribing findings into reports and chasing data across paper forms and legacy systems.
Scope’s AI platform changes all that by helping inspection teams capture findings in the field, autofill forms, and generate reports automatically – cutting report production time by up to 10x and error rates by 95 per cent.
Already, inspectors at six of the top 10 global inspection companies are using it and every pilot has converted to a paying customer – resulting in Scope’s ARR growing 9x since launch.
Explaining their investment, Stephane Kurgan and Bastian Hasslinger, of Index Ventures, said: “There’s a type of founder we keep coming back to at Index: someone who works so obsessively to fix a problem they’ve identified that it becomes their only calling.
“Rather than a market to be sized, it’s a challenge they feel compelled to solve. That’s how it felt the first time we sat down with Jonny Low, Scope’s CEO and co-founder.”
Published: May 20, 2026 at 10:15 am
Blue Wilson played a pivotal role in growing fashion label Nadine Merabi from £30k to £40m.
Now, she’s doing it for herself as the founder of jewellery brand Kouree, which has been worn by celebrities including Lindsay Lohan.
Wilson, who remains co-owner of Nadine Merabi, said: “I spent over a decade building other people’s dreams, and I genuinely loved it.
“I grew a leather jacket brand from £30k to £4m before I was 30, and became a partner at Nadine Merabi at 27, when it was doing only £30k a year.
“By the time I left, it had grown into a £40m global business. Building was always the part I thrived on.
“I also took less than four weeks of maternity leave. I don’t say that proudly or as a badge of honour; it was simply the reality at the time, and it is still the reality many women face.
“I was building someone else’s business while my son was a newborn, managing a team of 90 people and running on empty. I loved what I was doing, but I definitely lost a part of myself in it.”
Wilson spent more than eight years as managing director and chief executive at Nadine Merabi before leaving to launch Manchester-based jewellery brand Kouree in 2025.
Published: May 20, 2026 at 10:14 am
GEEIQ, a leader in insights, data and analytics for games and virtual worlds, has secured £5m ($6.8m) in new investment led by YFM Equity Partners.
London-headquartered GEEIQ was launched in 2018 and works with a range of global brands including Walmart, L’Oréal, Gucci, NASCAR and Warner Bros.
Brands use GEEIQ to benchmark performance, identify partners and creators, and optimise spend across activations, campaigns and social channels.
Charles Hambro, CEO and co-founder at GEEIQ, said: “At GEEIQ, our vision is to shape a future where every brand thrives in virtual worlds.
“What was once seen as an experimental corner of marketing is fast becoming one of the most important places where the next generation spends time, builds identity and engages with brands.
“History doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes, and virtual worlds are now entering a very familiar verse.
“Just as social media became a core marketing channel once brands had the data, measurement and intelligence to invest with confidence, the same transition is now happening here.
“This $6.8m (£5m) raise will help us accelerate our mission, deepening our product, data partnerships and AI capabilities as we build the intelligence layer behind enduring brand success in virtual worlds.”
Published: May 20, 2026 at 1:00 am
European FinTech bunch has raised $35m (£26m) to accelerate its growth plans.
The FinTech was founded in 2021 and is based in Berlin, but employs 20 people at its second-largest office in London.
The round was led by Portage, with participation from Illuminate Financial, significant follow-on investment from existing investors Motive Partners, Cherry Ventures and Fintech Collective, as well as additional angel investors.
bunch grew its ARR by 300 per cent in 2025 and achieved 156 per cent net revenue retention.
The latest round brings the total amount raised by the startup to more than $58m and will be used to accelerate commercial growth across Europe.
The investment comes as private markets enter a new phase of growth and operational pressure.
Assets Under Management (AUM) are forecast to reach $32tn by 2030, but the systems supporting them have not kept pace.
bunch has a growing base of private markets firms including FINVIA Family Office, Passion Capital, Hummingbird VC, Merantix, Tiny Supercomputer and Antler.
The company was co-founded by Levent Altunel and Enrico Ohnemüller and now supports more than 150 fund managers and over 12,000 LPs across major European jurisdictions.
Published: May 19, 2026 at 10:45 am
Matthew Scullion, CEO and founder of Matillion, knows a thing or two about AI.
His business joined an exclusive club of only 41 UK unicorns in 2021 when a $150m Series E funding round took its valuation beyond the magical $1bn mark.
He estimates Matillion has invested ‘many, many tens of millions into Maia’, which is its AI data automation platform.
“This market is crazy and one of the things AI is doing is reducing the barriers to entry to develop software,” he said.
He told The Naked Founder that AI could mean multi-million turnover companies could have only one or two members of staff.
“Established multi ten or hundred million pound companies (will be) disappearing because AI makes their business model irrelevant,” he warned.
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