Author: Jonathan Symcox

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has said she is “minded to intervene” in Sky’s takeover of ITV.

Comcast, the American owner of Sky, agreed a £1.6 billion deal in July to acquire the broadcast arm of ITV.

The deal, which includes ITV’s free-to-air channels and on-demand streaming service ITVX, would create the UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster.

However Nandy said she has a number of potential public interest concerns and has written to both companies before she takes a final decision on whether to call in regulators to scrutinise the deal.

Sky and ITV have been given until Tuesday 20th October to respond to her letters.

Connexin has announced a financing package of up to £35 million to support the continued deployment and growth of its smart water meter network across the UK.

The financing brings together Santander UK, PATRIZIA and Connexin in a funding structure designed to support the large-scale rollout of critical smart water infrastructure.

The package comprises a £10 million facility from Santander UK, alongside a £5m revolving trade facility, £10m of financing provided through PATRIZIA-managed funds, and a further £10m accordion facility.

The transaction is believed to be the first financing of its kind for a smart water meter network in the UK.

 

Microbiotica, a clinical-stage biopharma company developing a pipeline of orally-dosed, precision microbiome medicines, has announced the first close of a £36 million Series C financing.

The financing was led by British Business Bank, with participation from Tencent, IP Group, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Flerie Invest, and Seventure Partners. All existing Series B investors participated.

Proceeds will support the advancement of its lead asset MB310 into Phase 2 clinical development in ulcerative colitis, following positive early study results.

 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Nearhuman, a physical AI startup based at Bristol Robotics Laboratory, has raised £350,000 in pre-seed funding led by SFC Capital. 

Founder Faizan Mir grew up in Kashmir and was building things from an early age. At 14, he built a drone and a working flamethrower, earning national recognition. 

Yet he says his father’s response stayed with him: “How does a flamethrower help people? Build something that makes the world a better place.”

 

Silvia Bio, a University of Sheffield spinout looking to accelerate biomanufacturing, has raised £3 million in seed funding.

More than half of new biological medicines are now considered difficult to manufacture. Many critical therapeutics such as antibodies and gene therapies rely on using living mammalian cells as a factory to produce them. As those molecules become more complex, the cells can struggle to manufacture them consistently, creating low yields, variable quality and costly delays.

For biopharmaceutical companies, each day a medicine is delayed can represent around £500,000 in lost sales, while patients wait longer for potentially important treatments.

Silvia Bio addresses this challenge through an integrated platform that identifies the biological bottlenecks limiting cell performance and develops precision media additives to overcome them.

Northern Gritstone led the round, with additional investment from the Parkwalk Northern Universities Venture Fund, the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (managed by Future Planet Capital), Wren Capital and angel investors.

The British Business Bank has committed £180 million across six venture capital and growth equity funds, creating deeper pools of capital for the UK’s high-potential AI and DeepTech companies. 

From foundational technology to applied solutions, the funds will back the UK’s AI innovators across all stages, from inception and early-stage funding through to Series B and beyond.

Alongside its investment through funds, the Bank is backing UK AI companies directly. It recently made a £10m investment in Salience Labs, an Oxford spinout building optical switching technology that removes a key bottleneck in AI networking. 

That followed direct investments in Wayve, Kraken Technologies, PhysicsX, PolyAI and Ineffable Intelligence.

 

Deloitte has officially opened the doors to its new Birmingham office in One Centenary Way, strengthening the firm’s long-standing commitment to the Midlands.

Deloitte will occupy two floors in One Centenary Way, one of the city’s largest contemporary buildings, spanning a total of 46,000 sq. ft.

Located in the Paradise development in the heart of Birmingham, the firm’s new Midlands headquarters will serve more than 1,000 people across the region.

A UK startup whose innovative powder transfer valve solves some of the key challenges facing pharmaceutical and other manufacturers has raised over £2.4m to commercialise its technology.

Medcotec has secured funding from NPIF II – Mercia Equity Finance, which is managed by Mercia Ventures as part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II (NPIF II), alongside LYVA Labs, the Liverpool City Region Seed Fund which is managed by AXM Venture Capital, and private investors.

The Daresbury-based business is already working with a leading pharmaceutical company as well as other manufacturers that use powder systems. The funding will enable it to carry out further trials and build its team.

Its first product, the Helyx valve, is designed to be safer and more cost‑effective than existing powder transfer systems, particularly for shorter production runs.

Maven Capital Partners has opened a new office in central Leeds and appointed Greg Allsopp as investment director to lead its investment activity across Yorkshire.

The move follows £4.3 million of investment in Leeds-based businesses Xentra and eviFile over the past 12 months.

Allsopp joins from Venturian Funding & Investment Group, bringing more than a decade of investment experience, and will lead deal origination and execution across the region.

Manchester-based InsurTech startup Fruga has raised £1m to scale its open banking technology and help customers reduce the cost of their annual insurance renewals.

Fruga allows customers to link their bank, credit or debit card to their insurance policy using open banking. When an insurer’s customer spends with selected partners across travel, supermarkets and high street brands, they earn ‘insurance credits’, which build up over time, giving them a discount on renewal – often in excess of £150 – and value throughout the policy lifecycle.

One business already partnering with Fruga is Money Expert, which uses Fruga’s technology to let its customers earn insurance credits every time they spend with partner brands, building a pot of money to cut insurance costs, which remain one of the largest household expenses.

Insurance providers can also embed the technology under their own brand to gather data and build a year-round relationship with their customers.

Fruga has been bootstrapped to date but is now scaling its ambitions after raising money from NPIF II – PXN Equity Finance, which is managed by PXN Ventures as part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II (NPIF II). Investment has also come from Haatch.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

The Competition and Markets Authority has fined three businesses £6 million for misleading sales tactics.

Wayfair and Appliances Direct were fined for misleading customers with time-limited offers that did not end when they said they would – and Appliances Direct for also automatically opting customers into paid-for extras. 

Meanwhile Gold’s Gym was fined for not giving the total price for memberships, including the joining fee, in a clear and timely way.

 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Shares in THG plc jumped 15% in early trading today after it reported its latest quarterly results.

Group revenue grew almost 1% to £408.8 million for the Q3 period ended 30th September 2026.

Its nutrition division grew revenue 3.7% to £152.4m in the period, while its beauty division was down 0.7% to £256.4m.

The eCommerce group said its strong profitability momentum had driven an upgrade of FY26 adjusted EBITDA expectations to £103m – ahead of both market consensus and management’s previous expectations.

 

Salience Labs has raised $125 million (£94m) to build connectivity infrastructure for AI data centres.

The photonic solutions firm was founded in 2021 and backed by over a decade of research from the University of Oxford and the University of Münster in Germany.

Its innovative developments in photonic switching technology enable high-speed, ultra-low latency networking fabrics that remove infrastructure bottlenecks for AI workloads.

 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A cloud infrastructure platform for AI has been valued at $15.75 billion after launching in London.

Modal Labs was founded by Swede Erik Bernhardsson, who began his career at Spotify, to allow developers to run AI and machine learning workloads without managing physical servers.

Headquartered in New York, it maintains a base in Stockholm but recently announced a big push into Europe with the opening of an office in London. 

Foresight Group has invested £4m into Round Group, a technology-enabled digital agency serving the global music, entertainment and consumer brands sectors.

Founded in London in 2019, the company specialises in delivering campaigns through short-form social media content. 

Round’s service is underpinned by its proprietary technology platform, supporting campaign design and activation, payment processing and detailed performance analytics, along with access to a global database of over 100,000 content creators.

 

Bristol-based Siloton has been awarded a major contract to accelerate the development of its groundbreaking handheld eye imaging system, which makes the detection and monitoring of retinal diseases more accessible to patients.

The MedTech start-up has secured £8.4 million from Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), through its Contracts for Innovation: Quantum Missions Primer initiative. 

The programme helps public sector organisations to solve some of their most complex challenges by running competitive funding opportunities for the development of new technologies.

eCommerce and creative marketing agencies Say Yes and Verse have merged to create Common, a design-and-build practice centred around commerce systems and digital experience.

Migrating key accounts include Mitchells & Butlers, Myomaster and Union Coffee.

Co-founder and CEO Phil Clark has appointed seasoned commerce specialist John Brolly into a newly created role of chief orchestration officer to strengthen the existing senior team. 

 

Olympic medallist and DNAfit co-founder Andrew Steele has raised £4.6 million in seed funding for HealthTech Stride.

Norwich-based Stride is described as the UK’s first diagnostics-driven preventative health membership, designed to help people understand, track and proactively improve their health data over time.

The round includes investment from Arāya Ventures, Morgan Stanley Inclusive & Sustainable Ventures, Better Ventures, Innovate UK, and an a16z Scout Fund investor, alongside a group of angel investors.

 

Airtel Money, the mobile money arm of London-listed Airtel Africa, has began trading on the main market of the London Stock Exchange in a high-profile IPO.

Priced at £5.3 billion ($7bn), it is the biggest debut on the LSE in five years. However earlier expectations when the IPO plans were announced were for a $10bn valuation.

The float is expected to have raised somewhere in the region of £500 million for the firm.

Alchera Technologies has raised £2.7 million in seed funding to accelerate growth and scale its AI platform for transport authorities and operators.

The round includes £2m led by Maven Capital Partners through the British Business Bank’s South West Investment Fund, alongside Bayes Entrepreneurship Fund and The FSE Group, with additional backing from Innovate UK and existing investor Cambridge Applied Research.

The Cambridge-based company helps transport authorities make faster, data-driven decisions using real-time data, with customers including City of York Council, Lancashire County Council and Greater Cambridgeshire Partnership.