Author: Jonathan Symcox

On Thursday the 16th annual everywoman in Technology Awards will be held in London.

Jane Cubbidge, head of mobile and online banking technology at NatWest Group, is a finalist for the Leader Award – and with good reason.

Jane, who has over 30 years’ experience, specialises in large-scale digital and cloud platforms, delivering customer-focused solutions and driving complex technology change.

A dedicated advocate for diversity and inclusion in technology, she actively mentors and sponsors colleagues to promote female leadership and increase the dial on the ratio of females in tech.

Based in London and a mum of two teenage boys, she is the founder of the Digital Equality in Tech group.

We caught up with Jane ahead of the awards, which are sponsored this year by Salesforce and for which BusinessCloud is a proud media partner.

Faye Holland will lead a groundbreaking partnership between two of the UK’s leading innovation cities as the newly-appointed Cambridge x Manchester partnership director.

Holland brings extensive experience in the Cambridge innovation cluster to the role, having worked across communications consultancy, innovation and economic development over the course of her career.

She founded and directed cofinitive – a communication consultancy at the forefront of innovation – for a decade before selling and exiting the business at the end of 2025.

Holland is currently chair of the Cambridgeshire Chamber of Commerce and has previously served as business board member for the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority and as a board member and key contributor in other organisations involved in technology innovation and good growth.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Last Tuesday Physiomics plc announced that it had raised £500,000 in a share placing, via its broker Hybridan LLP, and launched a retail offer to raise another £50k.

The saying goes that a week is a long time in politics – but the same is true in business.

By Friday that retail offer, massively oversubscribed, had raised £223,000. But the real headline-grabber came on Monday, when the company was forced to notify the London Stock Exchange that a shareholder revolt was seeking to remove its entire board.

This morning the Oxfordshire company effectively replaced the previously announced placing with a revised deal. Its share price has dropped more than 12% today, although it remains 46% up in the year to date. 

So how did we get here?

Sequential, a leader in genomic testing from non-invasive human clinical samples, has closed its first equity round, securing $3.5 million.

The round was co-led by Sparkfood and Corundum Systems Biology (CSB), with participation from Dermazone Holdings, SOSV, Scrum Ventures, an ex-General Partner at Index Ventures, alongside continued support from Innovate UK. With this raise, Sequential has secured a total of $7.5m in dilutive and non-dilutive funding to date.

Sequential advances innovation in skin health by quantifying how ingredients and consumer, biotech, and pharmaceutical products alter microbial and host biomarkers, using its proprietary non-invasive testing platform.

The company has built one of the most comprehensive clinical datasets in the industry, comprising over 50,000 samples, 4,000+ ingredients, and 10,000+ participants worldwide.

SuperSeed Fund III has secured a cornerstone commitment of up to £50 million from the British Business Bank to invest in B2B AI and SaaS startups. 

The Bank has made its commitment through the Enterprise Capital Funds programme, with the fund also having the benefit of being accredited by the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) as was SuperSeed’s prior fund.

As the largest investor in UK venture and venture growth capital funds, by providing cornerstone commitments, the British Business Bank enables a fund to achieve a first close and helps the fund to execute their planned strategy more effectively and often to a greater scale.

ClearCourse, the acquisitive provider of software and embedded payment solutions for SMEs, has completed a deal for Motasoft Ltd, a specialist provider of garage management and operational technology for the independent automotive aftermarket.

Founded in 2007, Motasoft now serves over 1,200 automotive businesses across the UK, from small to medium independent garages, to fast-fit tyre centres.

Its core platform, Virtual Garage Manager (VGM), combines decades of practical experience with the real-world operational needs of independent automotive businesses to support end-to-end workflows, including workshop and job management, managing customer and vehicle records, and customer-facing booking solutions.

Luminance, a pioneer of legal-grade AI for enterprise legal teams, has appointed Greg Pelander as CTO.

Pelander brings nearly two decades of engineering leadership at prominent Silicon Valley technology companies to the role. Most recently VP of engineering for product and AI at ClickUp, he scaled the company’s engineering organisation as it grew into one of the most widely used productivity platforms in the world.

Before that, he spent eight years at SurveyMonkey leading engineering across multiple product lines, and six years at Yahoo.

Author: Gilbert Corrales, CEO, Leaf

Not so long ago, running ads online was a much more manual process. Marketers chose placements, audiences, creatives, budgets – and success ultimately depended on human judgement. 

Today, it’s the opposite. Platforms like Google and Meta are powered by algorithms that learn and optimise in real time, making decisions, allocating spend, picking audiences, and fine-tuning campaigns automatically.

But those algorithms are only as intelligent as the data they’re fed. The information coming back from your website and apps – every product view, add-to-cart, checkout and purchase – is the fuel. And if that fuel is contaminated, the whole machine starts to misfire.

eCommerce brands obsess over creative, product, UX and ad campaigns – but there’s a hidden threat quietly draining revenue from beneath their feet: broken conversion tracking.

The three Albion Venture Capital Trusts have completed a £90 million top-up offer, which is now fully subscribed.

The offers, which opened on 3rd November 2025, surpassed their initial £60m target, prompting the boards to exercise the £30 million over-allotment facility in December 2025 to meet investor demand.

The capital raised will be deployed into high-growth companies across Albion Capital’s core conviction sectors, including DeepTech, healthcare, and B2B software.

Virgin StartUp has announced that a new pot of £20 million in Start Ups Loan funding has been made available to support UK founders this financial year.

It marks the biggest annual funding allocation from the British Business Bank for the not-for-profit since it became a national distribution partner in 2013.  

The announcement coincides with a major milestone for Virgin StartUp, which has now distributed more than £100m in Start Ups Loan funding, supporting more than 6,500 UK founders to launch businesses of all shapes and sizes across the UK.

Creator economy platform Deaku has raised £480K in a pre-seed round led by Fuel Ventures, with participation from prominent creators including Rob Landes, Charles Berthoud, Rob Van Impe and Mario Joos – the latter the strategist behind many of MrBeast’s viral videos.

Founded by childhood friends Oscar Ferguson (a former NHS doctor) and Harrison Chapman, Deaku is building an AI-powered workspace designed to replace the fragmented stack of tools creators currently rely on with one connected platform combining strategy, analytics, collaboration and AI.

The funding will support product development, engineering hires and go-to-market partnerships with leading creator-economy voices.

Fintel, an AIM-listed provider of FinTech and support services to the UK retail financial services sector, has reported strong full-year growth.

For the year ended 31st December 2025, revenue increased 10% to £85.9m, supported by £7m year-on-year inorganic growth.

SaaS & subscription revenue was up 9.6% to £48.7m, with recurring revenue streams now representing 57% of revenues.

Adjusted EBITDA growth was 16.6% to £25.9m.

Revenue and profits flowed at Water Intelligence plc in 2025.

The London firm is a multinational provider of minimally-invasive, technology driven, preventive maintenance solutions for ageing water and wastewater infrastructure.

For the year ended 31st December 2025, group revenue increased by 9% to $90.4 million, supported by good growth across owned US and international corporate locations.

It also reported strong adjusted EBITDA growth of 15% to $16.5m and adjusted profit before tax growth of 9% to $9.2m.

Meanwhile Bobby Knell, non-executive director for the last eight years, has informed the board of his intention to retire and stand down on 31st March 2026.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A dramatic rise in its visibility within AI models is driving growth at Trustpilot.

The London-listed global review platform – which is headquartered in Denmark – reported profitability ahead of expectations as its CEO said “authentic human feedback has never been more critical” amid the rise of AI.

Full-year revenues for 2025 were £261.1 million, up 24%, while adjusted EBITDA was £40.7m, a rise of 69%, and profit before tax was £14.1m, up 172%.

A strategic focus within the business drove a dramatic rise in Large Language Models (LLM) exposure, with click-throughs from AI search up 1,490%, Trustpilot said.

The site ranked as the fifth most cited domain globally on ChatGPT in January 2026, according to Promptwatch. 

The CFO of SThree plc, a global STEM workforce consultancy, is stepping down after nearly five years with the company.

Andrew Beach will step down from the board at the conclusion of the company’s Annual General Meeting on 29th April 2026.

He has agreed to continue within the business until the announcement of the company’s half year results on 21 July 2026, to support a smooth and orderly transition.

Damian Fehrenberg, currently senior VP finance USA, will become interim CFO from 30th April 2026 whilst the process to identify a permanent successor is completed.

Author: Chris Maguire

Accenture has completed the acquisition of London AI firm Faculty.

Faculty, which was founded in 2014 and has worked with Dublin-headquartered Accenture since December 2023, helps public and private sector clients to deploy AI solutions in the UK and other key markets.

The deal, announced in January, saw Faculty become the first tech unicorn of 2026 after it was bought by Accenture in a deal worth more than $1bn.

With the acquisition completed, Faculty CEO and co-founder Dr Marc Warner has expanded his role to also become chief technology officer of Accenture and join the company’s Global Management Committee.

Author: Chris Maguire

The UK is investing £2.5bn in fusion research and development in pursuit of providing commercial fusion energy.

On Monday, the government launched its Fusion Strategy and revealed details of its £20m cornerstone investment into Starmaker One, a UK fusion investment fund – backing British innovation and attracting the best technologies to UK shores.

The current conflict in the Middle East has highlighted the need for the UK to end its dependence on fossil fuel markets and accelerate the transition to clean homegrown power.

Fusion holds the potential to revolutionise the energy system and ensure lasting energy abundance and security.

The government say Britain is the first country in the world with a clear path to commercial fusion energy and will support over 10,000 UK jobs by 2030, drive investment, and give industry the confidence to take fusion from the lab to the grid, ready for deployment.

This includes plans for the UK to be the first to offer a market framework to attract and support private investment in fusion energy. This would provide confidence to investors and ensure a fair deal for consumers.

The strategy builds on the government’s record £2.5bn investment in fusion research and development secured at the Spending Review.

PropTech Vertical, based in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, has appointed Dan Alvarez as its new group chief revenue officer.

Vertical delivers smart energy solutions that simplify energy management for landlords, students, and residential customers.

Alvarez has over 30 years of experience of transforming and driving scalable growth within a number of UK businesses including Vitrifi, Vorboss and Glide, where he specialised in building structured, high-performing operations and fostering collaborative team cultures.

He will oversee all customer, revenue, and marketing related functions across the group’s portfolio of brands including The Student Energy Group, Do Energy and Tickd.

ThinCats, the leading alternative finance provider to mid-sized SMEs in the UK, has appointed Dan Houman as senior director, origination.

Focused on owner-managed businesses, Houman will be based in Yorkshire and work with SMEs across the county and the North East to help them access the funding they need to grow.

He has held senior roles at Virgin Money, OakNorth and Santander.

His role will help strengthen collaboration across the Shawbrook Group’s lending platforms, giving regional businesses access to a wider range of funding solutions.

Manchester tech unicorn Matillion has appointed a chief revenue officer.

The firm, builder of the AI data automation platform ‘Maia’, said Tim O’Neil will bring deep expertise in enterprise data software from leadership roles at Alation and ThoughtSpot.

Matillion said organisations including Merck, EDF and GE Healthcare are using Maia to automate data workflows that previously demanded significant manual effort — freeing their teams to focus on building data products rather than managing pipeline complexity.

Maia works natively within ecosystem platforms, integrating tightly with Snowflake, AWS and Databricks, and leveraging AI labs models, like Anthropic, to deliver automation where enterprises already operate.