UK software engineering specialist Ultamation has hired Manchester digital agency Pixel Kicks to create a new digital platform to support its next stage of growth.

Ultamation builds tools and software used to run smart homes and commercial buildings, working with manufacturers, installers and end clients on high-end audio-visual and automation projects. The appointment forms part of a wider investment in digital infrastructure as the business accelerates its shift towards a software-services-led commercial model.

The four-month project will see Pixel Kicks, now operating under PushON Commerce, design and build a bespoke WordPress and WooCommerce website that brings together Ultamation’s existing brochure site, B2B eCommerce store and technical support content in one place.

Tandem Bank has announced the promotion of Ryan Heaps to Chief Financial Officer following regulatory approval as it continues to accelerate value-led growth.

Since joining Tandem, CEO Neil Chandler has prioritised building a leadership team fit for the bank’s next phase of growth. This includes the appointment of Ryan as CFO, the recent arrival of Russell Strevens as Chief Technology Officer – subject to regulatory approval, in addition to David Shrimpton Davis as new Managing Director of Motor Finance.

Ryan, a chartered accountant with over 15 years’ experience in senior finance roles, joined Tandem in 2022 as part of the Oplo acquisition, where he had served as Head of Finance since 2018. Since joining Tandem, he has been instrumental in shaping the bank’s strategic direction. The appointment is a testament to Tandem’s focus on nurturing internal talent and its investment in developing a strong pipeline of future leaders from within the bank.

ClearBank, an enabler of real-time clearing and embedded banking, has appointed Neil Drennan as CTO.

Drennan will lead the evolution and enhancement of ClearBank’s cloud-based API and payments infrastructure as it continues to expand its services across the UK and Europe.

Drennan joins the company from Visa, where he has spent three years as CTO for Visa Cross Border Solutions and Currency Cloud, the global cross-border payments, collections and FX provider. He brings over 15 years of experience across the media and financial services industry, including roles at 10x Future Technologies and Amazon.

He will lead ClearBank’s technology team and sit on the Group executive team as the company looks to accelerate its expansion into new markets.

Last year, ClearBank announced the launch of its channel partnerships offer and embedded banking services for corporate customers, enabling it to expand its services and attract new customers.

How companies can simplify data migration and drive retail growth

Published: February 5, 2026 at 10:36 am

Author: Marat Bolatov, CEO, Native Commerce

Migrating to a new platform is one of the most important decisions a retail business can make, yet one of the easiest to postpone.

The risks are clear. This process can be costly, disruptive, and time-consuming. 

Choosing the wrong platform or implementing it poorly can set a business back months and, in the worst case, undermine customer trust and revenue.

So what are the typical challenges businesses face during migration? And how can they avoid them?

AppFactor has raised £3 million in seed funding to scale an AI-augmented platform which automates the maintenance and optimisation of enterprise software.

The round was led by Tensor Ventures, with participation from Begin Capital, Adara Ventures, and Narwhal Investments.

Taxnova has raised £730,000 pre-seed funding to facilitate R&D tax credit applications through AI.

The funding is from a16z speedrun, s16vc, Karaoke Club and 20 angels based within tech companies.

The company connects directly to the tools engineers already use – including GitHub, Jira, Linear, Slack and Notion – to automatically extract evidence of qualifying R&D work.

It has also entered the a16z speedrun accelerator programme.

Oxford AI startup Decima2 has raised £480,000 in pre-seed funding to eliminate wasted marketing spend for small and medium-sized businesses.

The female-founded startup said the round includes £335,000 in equity investment and £125,000 in equity-free grant support. Investors include Haatch and Y Combinator partner Nicolas Dessaigne.

Decima2 uses causal modelling and generative AI to help businesses understand what genuinely drives growth across paid marketing channels.

The platform continually optimises Google Ads and high-converting landing pages, giving smaller teams access to analytical capabilities traditionally reserved for large enterprises.

Employee recognition, reward and benefits platform Rippl tripled its rate of new customer acquisition in the six months following the appointment of Will Roberts as CEO last spring.

This restructure and strategy refresh have also led to a second round of investment from Stonehage Fleming.

Roberts, who previously scaled digital rewards software Loyalty Bay and train ticket upgrade platform Seatfrog, is now focused on supporting organisations looking to engage and reward their deskless or decentralised teams, such as Betfred, DP World and Dyno-Rod.

This deskless demographic makes up 80% of the global workforce, and accounts for an estimated 2.7 billion employees, many of whom are neglected by traditional HR tools reliant on corporate email access.

Vypr has appointed Gary Bennion as its chief product officer.

The Manchester-based technology business is investing in its product intelligence platform and strengthening its offering for UK and international customers as it welcomes the co-founder of CloudM, a cloud migration and security platform used by companies including Netflix, Spotify, Uber and Booking.com.

Bennion later joined employee experience platform Haiilo to shape product strategy within a high-growth environment serving customers such as Google, Salesforce and E.ON.

He will build on last year’s launch of Vypr Predict, a self-serve research platform designed with AI to help global consumer brands, retailers and manufacturers make faster, smarter product decisions.

Vodafone Group Plc is to commence a share repurchase programme of up to a maximum consideration of €500 million.

Goldman Sachs International has been instructed to carry out the purchases by no later than 11th May 2026.

Finseta plc has announced that Judy Happe, it CFO, has decided to leave the business ‘to pursue other opportunities’.

Happe led the London company through its IPO and its early growth, while she was also key to the opening of offices in Canada and Dubai.

She has a six-month notice period and has agreed with the board that she will step down as a director with effect from today but will continue to work with the group until such time as a successor is appointed.

Finseta is a foreign exchange and payments company offering multi-currency accounts and payment solutions to businesses and individuals.

Dataline Labs, a London-based AI data analysis startup, has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding led by Haatch Ventures with backing from the British Business Bank.

The bootstrapped startup has also been selected for the Ministry of Defence’s Digital Supply Chain Accelerator, where they’re working alongside Babcock, Thales and Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land to fix fragmented data systems slowing down UK defence.

The company turns messy, fragmented enterprise data into clean AI-ready APIs in minutes – and is betting on a future where any worker can query complex business data in plain English.

APEXX Global has raised strategic investment of up to £7.3 million led by Finch Capital, a European growth investor with deep expertise in payments and scaling financial technology players internationally. 

APEXX Global is a payment orchestration platform enabling enterprise merchants to optimise payment performance at scale through a single API. By intelligently routing transactions across the global payments ecosystem, APEXX materially increases acceptance rates, reduces processing costs, and improves unit economics – turning payments from an operational burden into a measurable driver of revenue and margin. 

APEXX Global secured significant enterprise merchant wins including Jet2, Iglu.com and Norse Atlantic towards the end of 2025.

As part of the investment, Radboud Vlaar, managing partner at Finch Capital, will join the APEXX Global board and assume the role of chairman, bringing extensive experience supporting boards and high-growth payments and financial technology businesses.

A new AI platform is launching to address a growing quality problem in UK grant applications.

Ailsa has attracted early-stage backing from Monzo co-founder Gary Dolman and former Tesco Bank CEO Benny Higgins.  

As the widespread use of generative AI drives application volumes up, success rates have fallen to record lows. 

Despite billions of pounds being channelled through non-dilutive funding programmes each year, recent Innovate UK Smart Grant competitions reported success rates of just 2-3%. 

An estimated £200 million in available UK grant funding went unclaimed in the past year, with sector bodies noting that poorly applied AI is adding to assessment workloads without improving application quality.

S&W, the fast-growing professional services group, has appointed Dan Goodall as partner in its data and technology services team. 

Goodall brings extensive experience helping organisations use data and technology to improve operations, strengthen resilience and deliver strategic outcomes.

He has led major transformation programmes across multiple sectors, supporting organisations with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and data platform modernisation, cloud migration, automation, AI adoption, governance and large‑scale digital change.

Financielle, a platform described as the home of money for women, has surpassed 350,000 downloads worldwide after receiving £125,000 of investment from GC Angels in December 2022.

The platform has also grown to 25,000 monthly active users and expanded its content, community and product features as it continues its mission to help women take control of their money.

Founded in Manchester in 2021 by BBC Morning Live finance expert Laura Pomfret (pictured, right), Financielle was built to give women a supportive space to improve their financial confidence through clear tools and relatable content. The app has since been named Apple’s App of The Day both in the UK and the US. 

OneDome, a London-based housing and FinTech platform, has raised £18 million in a Pre-Series C funding round, taking total funding raised to date to almost £30m.

The round was funded largely by existing investors alongside Channel 4 Ventures, whose investment was announced in late 2025.

The funding will be used to support the next phase of growth, including continued investment in technology, product development, and expansion of OneDome’s integrated housing and financial services platform.

The Growth Company, powered by its early-stage investment arm GC Angels, and Bruntwood SciTech have successfully brought together over 150 investors, founders and key ecosystem partners from across the UK at their flagship ‘Early-Stage Northern Showcase – Investor x Founder’ event.

Held at Sister’s Renold Innovation Hub, the event welcomed more than 75 pre-vetted early-stage businesses from across the North of England and over 50 investors from across the UK, marking a historic moment for the region’s early-stage investment community. 30 of the businesses present were among the first cohort of GC Angels’ Underrepresented Accelerator Programme – Venture Forward – delivered on behalf of Innovate UK.

Designed to connect investors from outside the North with regional investors and ambitious Northern businesses, the event focused on building long-term relationships, ensuring early-stage and scale-up businesses can access the capital needed to continue expanding at pace. Each business is undergoing an active pre-seed or seed fundraising round, covering high-growth sectors including EdTech, ClimateTech, MedTech, BioTech, FinTech, PropTech and advanced manufacturing.

Aston University has joined forces with Aurrigo, a provider of autonomous vehicles and related software for international airport operations, to develop AI to make its fleet even more efficient, responsive and sustainable.

As the number of autonomous vehicles used for baggage and cargo handling at airports continues to grow, managing these fleets becomes increasingly complex.

Traditionally, task allocation and scheduling have relied on centrally controlled systems overseen by human operators. They must interpret large volumes of real-time information (for example, battery level and location) and respond to frequent changes such as flight delays or gate reassignments. While effective at smaller scales, this approach can create decision bottlenecks and limit the ability of fleets to adapt quickly as operations expand.

Under the Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP), Aston University’s research team will develop new algorithms that allow individual vehicles to make smart, safe decisions locally, based on their real-time status and surroundings, and their place in the wider network of AVs.

Digital Catapult, the deep tech innovation organisation, has announced the opening of a new office for South Gloucestershire, Bristol and Bath, strengthening its long-term commitment to working in partnership across the South West of England and Wales.

To deliver shared economic and skills ambitions, Digital Catapult is primed to deliver in-demand innovation services to local startups and businesses, including technological consultancy, accelerator programmes, and access to Digital Catapult’s network of labs to enable deep tech startups to scale.

Located on the Bristol & Bath Science Park, the new permanent base will strengthen Digital Catapult’s regional presence, building on its place-based approach to innovation that has established successful partnerships with local academic institutions, government authorities, industry leaders, and startups.

This includes delivering the £30million MyWorld programme in collaboration with the University of Bristol, the University of Bath and the University of the West of England (UWE), catalysing nearly £28.3m of investment raised by South West based SMEs, and working with the University of Bristol to accelerate the commercial deployment of future 6G technologies through the REASON and JOINER projects.