Author: Jonathan Symcox

Mad dash to put my daughter to bed before the show starts – I’m even in time to catch the end of EastEnders.

It seems Stacey amd Max are still going strong – it’s probably 15 years since I last clapped eyes on the Square!

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Many faces have entered and exited the lair of the Dragons on the BBC – but one face has been an ever-present.

Peter Jones CBE has sat in the chair since the very first episode of Dragons’ Den in 2005 and remains the only original Dragon still on the panel.

At 6ft 7in, he has become the show’s most recognisable figure; but behind the on-screen persona is a career built on early setbacks, high-street revivals, international television formats and a commitment to enterprise education.

But who is he? And what dos he get up to at home?

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden, Touker Suleyman, Steven Bartlett and the departing Sara Davies will once again hear pitches from founders convinced their ideas can stand the heat of the Den.

But who is set to enter first?

Author: Jonathan Symcox

The BBC’s long-running business show Dragons’ Den returns for the final part of its 22nd series, nine months after the season began, at 8pm tonight.

The show resurfaced for a single summer episode before vanishing again, but the Dragons are back in their chairs on Thursday 2nd October – and this time, the series will run through to the end of the month.

Follow the pitches live here from 8pm!

Author: Patrick Killeen

Media and telecommunications giant Sky is back in the green after a huge turnaround, bouncing back from a £773 million loss in 2023.

The Comcast-owned firm has posted a pre-tax profit of £253m for its 2024 financial year, in accounts filed on Companies House.

Revenue for the year also increased slightly to £10.3 billion.

In September, the London-headquartered business reported that it is to make roughly 600 tech roles redundant as it moves away from the development of new technology platforms.

Charlton Athletic’s home ground, The Valley, is set for a major digital revamp this October following a new partnership with stadium technology specialists ADI.

Nearly 600m² of new digital screens and signage will be installed, creating one of the largest digital platforms in UK football.

The upgrade is designed to transform the matchday experience for fans while opening up fresh commercial opportunities for the recently-promoted Championship side and its partners.

As part of the deal, Preston-based ADI will manufacture and install the new hardware as well as manage matchday content, which will be delivered via its Live Venue remote broadcast fibre network.

Greater Manchester agency Unhooked Communications has secured funding from Innovate UK’s Create Growth Programme to develop a new AI-powered platform for measuring PR impact.

The tool, being built in partnership with innovation firm Big Echo, will help PR teams and organisations move beyond traditional metrics like media reach by tracking outcomes linked to reputation, behaviour and commercial results.

Only 6.5% of applicants were successful in this competitive funding round, which awarded grants of up to £50,000 to creative SMEs across the UK.

Author: Jemma Perks, managing director, S&A Academy

The government’s decision to withdraw funding has a direct impact to both employer and employees across all sectors of the economy including manufacturing, service industries, tech, financial services, construction and engineering.

The withdrawal of funding will have an impact – not just on the SME sector but also global corporates. – on senior leader roles across all UK companies.

It will mean that after the 1st January 2026 employers will now have to pay £14,000 per employee if they choose to put employees on the L7 senior leader programme.

The cost is likely to also be prohibitive to employees looking at the options of self-funding.

Overall investment into apprenticeships drives economic growth and the reduction of employees taking the L7 senior leader program will impact that growth.

The longer-term impact for UK companies will also be felt in senior leadership roles with not enough talented future leaders coming through the executive leadership pipeline.

In turn, this will have an impact on business growth and GDP.

Cineworld is set to host the first-ever podcast premiere in cinemas, with The Diary of a CEO episode featuring Louis Tomlinson screening exclusively across UK, Ireland and US Regal cinemas on October 8th.

The one-night-only event will give fans early access to the episode before its global release, offering a unique chance to experience Steven Bartlett’s podcast on the big screen.

The show is expected to cover Tomlinson’s life, loss and fame to a shared, cinematic setting.

eBay has launched a £3 million programme developed with OpenAI to give 10,000 UK small businesses free access to AI tools and training.

AI Activate participants will receive up to 12 months of ChatGPT Enterprise, alongside tailored support to help automate admin, create campaigns and improve product listings.

The US giants have teamed up in the hopes that the scheme will boost productivity and give small sellers the same AI advantages as large retailers.

Australian FinTech Zeller is set to launch in the UK, its first move outside its home market and the beginning of a global expansion strategy.

The company will establish a base in London and grow a team of more than 40 over the next three years to support technology, operations and market rollout.

Targeting the UK’s 5.5 million businesses that process over £1.3 trillion in payments each year, Zeller will offer an integrated platform combining payments, banking, expense management and financial reporting.

The expansion builds on its growth in Australia, where it has attracted more than 100,000 business customers since its founding in 2020.

An AI-powered operating system for veterinary clinics, has secured a $20 million (£14.9m) Series A round to accelerate international growth, expand its AI agent suite and launch the world’s first veterinary AI lab.

Founded in 2023 by former BCG and Meta executives, London-based Lupa replaces multiple disconnected tools with a single platform that is said to save vets an hour a day and deliver double the ROI of traditional setups.

The company has already signed partnerships across the UK and Europe and gained backing from investors including Singular and Firstminute Capital.

It raised a £3.3m seed round in January and has since seen 50x revenue growth.

Author: Patrick Killeen

Crowdcube has announced a landmark partnership with the London Stock Exchange in an attempt to give hundreds of thousands of individual investors the chance to invest in later-stage, high-growth private companies on the same terms as institutional investors.

The partnership uses the London Stock Exchange’s new Private Securities Market and Crowdcube’s platform to give investors the chance to buy shares in fast-growing private companies – opportunities that were once only available after an IPO.

Private companies are remaining private for longer, with many raising multiple late-stage rounds before listing publicly.

That trend has meant some of Europe’s most innovative firms were only accessible to venture capital and institutional backers, but this new partnership seeks to change that dynamic.

North East-founded HealthTech Daiser has moved into new premises at Hale House, a purpose-built HealthTech hub in London’s Harley Street district.

Founded in 2024 by UK clinical expert Professor Mike Trenell and New York entrepreneur Adam Wootton, the company has developed a platform that allows innovators to build digital health services and AI tools without coding, while supporting healthcare providers in managing them.

The move positions Daiser at the centre of Europe’s healthcare innovation cluster as it pursues growth across the UK, Europe and beyond.

Despite being little more than a year old, the company has already joined Google’s AI in Healthcare Accelerator, taken part in the ABHI US trade mission and secured partnerships with major UK health and research organisations.

A new initiative at Selhurst Park is giving visually impaired supporters the chance to follow live football in much greater detail.

FA Cup winners Crystal Palace have become the first Premier League club to offer GiveVision headsets, which are powered by a private 5G network installed at the stadium by Shared Access.

The system works by capturing live broadcast footage, enhancing it and projecting the images directly onto the working part of the user’s retina.

It is designed to help those with sight loss see action on the pitch and the atmosphere in the stands more clearly.

Creator Fund has secured an initial close of $41 million (£30.4m) for its first European institutional fund, more than double the size of its 2022 UK vehicle, with a final close expected in early 2026.

Anchored by Equation Capital and Denmark’s Export and Investment Fund (EIFO), the fund has drawn backing from more than 60 limited partners.

The Kensington-based pre-seed VC specialises in turning university research into startups and now operates across 24 universities in eight countries, using a model that recruits students on campus to help identify promising founders.

Over the past five years it has backed 55 companies that went on to raise more than $250m in follow-on funding, including two exits such as the sale of neural rendering startup Loci to Epic Games.

The first investments from the new fund include Ovo Labs, focused on fertility science, and Sphotonix, which develops laser-engraved glass data storage.

Risers:

Morgan Sindall Group PLC – +10.86%
Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holding – +4.60%
Tesco PLC – +4.17%
Wizz Air PLC – +3.57%
ICG PLC – +3.16%

Fallers:

Experian PLC – -6.31%
Tate & Lyle PLC – -3.33%
Greggs PLC – -3.17%
CMC Markets PLC – -2.33%
Johnson Service Group PLC – -2.27%

RM Technology has partnered with Sky Business Wholesale to boost digital connectivity in schools across the UK.

The deal will give schools access to a fibre-first, 100GB-ready network with built-in resilience features such as network-to-network interface handoff and shadow VLANs.

With Sky’s presence in more than 2,800 exchanges, the partnership is aiming to enhance RM’s ability to deliver fast, secure broadband nationwide.

The move is looking to support the growing use of digital tools like Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom and RM Unify.

BT and Infobip have expanded their partnership to deliver AI-powered communication services to multinational businesses worldwide.

Building on a UK collaboration launched in 2022, the deal combines BT’s global voice and inbound contact services with Infobip’s cloud communications platform, including WhatsApp, RCS and SMS.

The arrangement will see the London firm become an authorised reseller of BT’s international contact services, while BT customers gain access to Infobip’s messaging suite.

The companies say enterprises will now be able to offer more seamless, scalable customer engagement across more than 180 countries.

UK-based AI infrastructure company Nscale has closed a $433 million (£320m) pre-Series C SAFE, only days after raising $1.1 billion in what was described as the largest Series B round in European history.

The funding brings in support from investors including Blue Owl Managed Funds, Dell, NVIDIA and Nokia, alongside other backers from the earlier round.

The London-based business, which operates more than 50 data centres and manages one of the world’s largest GPU pipelines, says the additional capital will reinforce its ability to deliver vertically integrated compute, networking, storage and AI services at scale.