Author: Jonathan Symcox

A Forbes 30 Under 30 founder who moved the HQ of his startup TraqCheck to London has raised £6 million in Series A funding.

Jaibir Nihal Singh featured on the publication’s Asia AI list in 2025. He is co-CEO with Armaan Mehta, who also co-founded the firm and is – according to LinkedIn – now based in Los Angeles. They maintain an office in New Delhi.

TraqCheck is aiming to replace traditional HR software with AI agents, transforming talent sourcing, screening and background verification.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

James House has been appointed to lead loyalty tech firm Reward following its $230 million takeover by Rezolve Ai in February.

Reward was founded in 2001 by Gavin Dein and operates across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Its cloud-based API platform integrates content, advertising and commerce to deliver experiences for customers. It is behind many bank loyalty programmes seen today from brands such as Visa, NatWest Group and Barclays.

Reward also works with the world’s largest retailers such as McDonald’s, eBay, Deliveroo and Amazon. 

Last year it won backing from Dragons’ Den star Touker Suleyman, who struck a partnership that brought his clothing brand Hawes & Curtis into the company’s global retail network.

Reward – formerly known as Reward Insight – was recently bought by Nasdaq-listed Rezolve Ai PLC, a global provider of AI-driven conversational commerce and payments infrastructure.

Now Mastercard and BNP Paribas veteran House, previously chief commercial officer of the firm, has been appointed to lead it.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Allica has reported record financial results as the digital bank for established SMEs marked a third consecutive year of profit.

Underlying pre-tax profit in 2025 increased 34% to £43.7 million, even with £30m of strategic investment in new products and ‘go to market’.

Gross revenue rose 27% to £371.3m while its Active Business Reward Account customers grew 133% to over 14,000.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Wayve, a UK-based leader in AI for autonomous driving, has extended its Series D round with a $60 million investment from leading tech companies.

In February the firm announced it has raised $1.2 billion in Series D investment, with a potential further $300m from investor Uber to support the development of Wayve-powered ‘robotaxis’ on the Uber network.

Now Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Arm and Qualcomm Ventures have joined the investment round with the combined $60m injection.

HousingAI, a new AI knowledge platform built specifically for the social housing sector in England, has appointed Phil Shelton as chief executive ahead of its official launch in spring 2026.

Shelton brings more than two decades of experience in housing technology, having built and led software businesses focused on improving operational performance, compliance and decision-making within housing organisations.

Aryza, a Dublin-based provider of AI-enabled automation software across the credit & debt lifecycle, has acquired Umbrella Tech, a Toronto-based leader in voice-based agentic AI for financial services.

The acquisition significantly expands Aryza’s Agentic Collections & Recoveries intelligence, integrating human-like conversations into its existing conversational AI and digital collections platform, Aryza Engage.

This enables organisations globally to automate collections operations, customer service, and compliance journeys with speed and accuracy, 24/7, across 100+ languages.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

The CEO has been ousted from the board of a cryptocurrency investment firm backed by Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.

Jai Patel has been replaced by David Galan at Stack BTC plc, which counts former short-lived Tory Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng as its executive chair.

Paul Withers has also been appointed as chief strategy officer. 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Standard Life plc has entered into an agreement to acquire insurance and pensions giant Aegon UK plc for £2 billion.

The pensions provider said the transaction will be funded through a combination of debt, cash and the issue of new ordinary shares in Standard Life.

The cash consideration will be £750m, financed through a combination of £650m debt issuance to be issued prior to completion and cash resources; while Aegon will be issued with 181.1m new shares, representing 15.3% of the group’s enlarged share capital.

The deal creates the UK’s largest retirement savings and income business, with 16 million customers and assets under administration of £480bn.

Made Tech Group Plc has been awarded a new three-year Strategic IT and Security Delivery Partner contract with the Government Digital Service – part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

Made Tech, a provider of digital, data and technology services to the UK public sector, said the total contract value was £19 million.

Under the contract, Made Tech will act as the Strategic IT and Security Delivery Partner to GDS, supporting the delivery of the next generation of technology used by GDS staff. The programme is intended to improve collaboration and productivity, strengthen security, and reduce overall cyber risk exposure.

GDS has been a client of Made Tech since 2018. Following the contract award, the group’s year-to-date sales bookings have increased materially to £54m.

Online retailer THG saw its share price jump by more than 13 per cent today

The Manchester-headquartered retail giant saw its share price rise from 30.08p to 34.98p – the highest since February 26, when it reached 35.42p.

THG was the day’s second highest riser in the FTSE 250, behind only Ceres Power Holdings.

In March CEO Matt Moulding said the company was ‘on the front foot’ after publishing its results for 2025.

Forbes today unveiled its 11th annual 30 Under 30 Europe List.

The list aims to spotlight the continent’s most dynamic young innovators, entrepreneurs and changemakers.

This year’s list marks a defining milestone, as the first edition composed entirely of Gen Z honorees.

Ticketmaster has launched an app in ChatGPT which it says will transform how fans find events.

As fan behaviour evolves, discovery is no longer limited to search engines or social platforms, the firm says, with more fans turning to AI platforms to find events, compare options and make decisions in real time.

Ticketmaster is at the forefront of shaping this shift with its app in ChatGPT, it says, “ensuring your events are discoverable in these emerging spaces and piloting new ways to reach fans at the moment decisions are made”.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

The Liberal Democrats are demanding an inquiry into Nigel Farage’s promotion of a Bitcoin company.

The Reform UK leader promoted Stack BTC in a video alongside short-lived Tory Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, who is executive chairman of the Aquis-listed company.

Last month the MP for Clacton joined Blockchain.com in backing Stack BTC, while soon afterwards the firm raised around £2 million through a share placing, subscription and retail offer, with Farage investing a further £60,650 through the subscription – taking his total investment to £215,000 and holding to 6.3%.

Now the Lib Dems have called for the Financial Conduct Authority to investigate Farage’s promotion of the £2m deal in the video.

They say his actions may amount to “attempted interference in the cryptocurrency market” or “attempted market abuse”.

A spokesman for Farage told the BBC the event was a “photo call”, adding: “Mr Farage is embracing the 21st Century. He bought the [£2m] crypto on behalf of Stack and not personally.”

Author: Jonathan Symcox

The UK is set for its first electric vehicle battery recycling plant.

Altilium has been awarded £18.5 million in grant funding through the UK government’s DRIVE35 Scale-Up Fund, delivered by the Department for Business and Trade in partnership with the Advanced Propulsion Centre UK (APC) and Innovate UK. 

The funding will support the construction of Altilium’s new ACT3 recycling plant in Plymouth, Devon. Construction of the facility is expected to commence in summer 2026, with commissioning planned for the end of 2027. 

The Plymouth-based firm, founded by a trio of investment and commodities professionals, says the facility will have the capacity to process 24,000 EV batteries per year and recover critical minerals from them.

My Digital, a leader in contractor payroll, is now targeting the national payroll market.

Founded in 2015 and based in Stockport, My Digital has spent a decade building deep, battle-tested expertise in high-frequency, high-complexity payroll.

Processing payments for more than 300,000 employees every month – with individual customers running pay for up to 10,000 workers in a single weekly run – the platform is now set to become a springboard for something bigger.

Dan Moss – who joined the company when it was founded in 2015 and rose through roles spanning product design, head of product and COO, before becoming CEO in late 2024 – is leading that expansion.

With recurring revenue exceeding £3.5 million and accelerating cash generation, the business is preparing to launch its My Digital Payroll product to the broader bureau and accountancy market at Accountex in London this May.

Finseta plc, a foreign exchange and payments solutions company, has raised £900,000 via a placing and subscription of shares.

The firm, which offers multi-currency accounts to businesses and individuals through a technology platform, intends to raise up to a further £100,000 by way of a retail offer.

Sosandar plc has moved from the red into the black amid a rise in sales.

The fashion brand for women of all ages provided a trading update for its financial year ended 31st March 2026.

Revenue was £42.3m, up 14% year-on-year, while profit before tax is expected to be £400k (FY25: loss £100k).

The firm has net cash of £8.4m after £1.8m of share buybacks.

Author: Chris Maguire

James Cole is the latest guest on The Naked Founder podcast.

He’s the straight-talking founder and CEO of Panache Cruises and has a  reputation for authenticity and honesty.

A two-time founder, he’s on track to build his second £100m turnover company, but this time it won’t be at the expense of his family or by turning to drink.

In this episode of the Naked Founder podcast, he discusses:

• How he nearly lost it all with his first startup Cruise118
• How stopping drinking on New Year’s Eve 2018 transformed his life
• Launching Panache Cruises during Covid
• Turning 50 by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro for charity
• Growing to £50m turnover in five years
• Why his family will always come first
• Meeting his hero Sir Richard Branson

Listen here

If the bookmakers’ predictions are accurate, the outcome of the latest series of The Apprentice is a foregone conclusion.

MyBettingSites.co.uk says 28-year-old Karishma Vijay has a 75 per cent chance of being crowned The Apprentice champion.

Her odds of 1/3 compare with outsider Pascha Myhill’s odds of 3/1, meaning the bookies think she has only a 25 per cent chance of winning.

Both candidates are vying to win Lord Sugar’s £250,000 investment and mentorship.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Booking.com says some of its customer data has been accessed by hackers.

The accommodation reservation site warned customers of potential suspicious emails and phone calls from “malicious actors”.

However it claimed that “financial information was not accessed”.