Bite-size news and insight from UK business and tech – including funding, deals and appointments
Published: March 26, 2026 at 4:59 pm
Tech Nation has unveiled the 25 innovative ClimateTech companies joining its 2026 Climate Programme.
Tech Nation, powered by Founder’s Forum Group – described as the UK’s leading growth platform and industry body for startups and their teams – selected high-potential companies tackling some of the most urgent challenges across food systems, industrial decarbonisation, energy, materials and nature restoration.
Collectively, the cohort has raised $250m+ in funding; works with global corporates including Microsoft, Shell, Salesforce, Heathrow, SUEZ and TotalEnergies; and represents a new generation of founders building commercially viable, scalable solutions to the climate and biodiversity crises.
The four-month growth programme accelerates high-potential tech startups that bridge the gap between climate innovation and industry. The programme supports leading ClimateTech companies to scale their impact by accessing the right investors and multinational customers, and by providing founders with a platform to advance climate policy and remove regulatory barriers.
Published: March 26, 2026 at 3:54 pm
A San Francisco company has completed the acquisition of UK PropTech WiredScore.
WiredScore, based in London, is a global certification platform for digital connectivity and smart technology in real estate.
The acquisition by Meter, a provider of internet infrastructure for enterprise, delivers an exit for transatlantic venture capital investor Beringea.
Published: March 26, 2026 at 2:56 pm
UK pet insurance brand Waggel has appointed Katie King as its first chief marketing officer, as the business continues to scale under new CEO Henri Dowling.
The firm has a technology-led approach to pet insurance.
King joins Waggel from Capital One UK, where she served as UK marketing director.
Prior to this, she held senior roles at high-growth FinTech companies in Australia, including OnDeck and Athena Home Loans.
Published: March 26, 2026 at 2:31 pm
The Government says people in Barnsley are set to benefit from shorter hospital waiting lists and fewer missed appointments under a new pilot scheme being trialled in the UK’s first ‘Tech Town’.
Residents and local firms will also have the chance to gain AI skills thanks to a new Government fund.
The two pilots will demonstrate how AI can support both local workers and frontline services, building a blueprint that can be used by communities across the country, the Government added.
As part of this, local SMEs in key industries like manufacturing – as well as residents who may not typically have the confidence or resources to use AI – could receive targeted training through a new £800,000 AI Upskilling Challenge Fund.
Published: March 26, 2026 at 1:00 pm
Eunice, a London-based company building institutional-grade due diligence infrastructure for regulated markets, raised £6 million in seed and pre-seed funding.
The round was led by Moonfire Ventures and Speedinvest, with participation from Openspace Ventures. The round includes founders of Anchorage, ComplyAdvantage and more.
Eunice was founded on a simple premise: as alternative assets grow in scale and complexity, the standards for documenting and defending investment decisions must evolve with them. The company builds due diligence infrastructure that standardises how complex investment decisions are assessed, documented and defended across regulated markets.
Published: March 26, 2026 at 12:43 pm
More than 20 Ukrainian tech and cyber companies visited Greater Manchester last week as part of the UK-Ukraine TechBridge roadshow, meeting local businesses, investors and support organisations across the city region.
The visit took place during UK Tech Week and comes at a time when President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that the conflict in Iran is delaying progress on peace negotiations for Ukraine.
Organisers said Manchester’s role on the roadshow reflected the continued resilience of Ukrainian tech firms and the strength of Greater Manchester’s digital and cyber sectors.
The TechBridge programme, launched by the UK and Ukrainian governments in 2024, is designed to deepen collaboration in innovation, technology, and investment. It sits within the wider 100‑year partnership between both countries, announced in 2025 in Kyiv by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and President Zelensky.
Greater Manchester was selected as a host city due to its established capabilities across the tech sector. The region is home to more than 6,000 cyber professionals and over 150 cyber firms, alongside strong clusters in data science, digital commerce, advanced manufacturing and creative technology.
Mark Hughes, Chief Executive of The Growth Company, said the TechBridge programme was “about turning international collaboration into practical partnerships between UK and Ukrainian businesses”.
More than 70 delegates took part in the Manchester session, including Ukrainian founders working across AI, software engineering, digital and cyber, alongside representatives from the Department for Business and Trade (DBT), the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), the GM Business Growth Hub and around thirty Greater Manchester tech firms.
Published: March 26, 2026 at 11:58 am
Digital Catapult has invested £500,000 in London-based startup Exabler to support the practical application of its deep tech solution in cross-border trade and strengthen UK industrial supply chain resilience.
With international trade increasingly impacted by tariffs, supply chain setbacks and complex regulatory requirements, Exabler’s solution uses proprietary software to empower business leaders by simplifying processes and streamlining trade operations.
Founded in 2015, Exabler is an alumnus of Digital Catapult’s Digital Supply Chain Hub where it partnered with defence primes BAE Systems and Leonardo UK to develop a solution for the defence and security sector.
Exabler’s solution is also helping to transform trade in other highly regulated and complex sectors including logistics, pharmaceuticals and financial services, by using advanced analytics to help businesses reduce costs, improve operational efficiency and mitigate future supply chain disruptions.
Published: March 26, 2026 at 10:55 am
Point74 has acquired QUOR, creating the UK’s first unified platform for food product development and lifecycle management.
The deal brings a unique offering to food manufacturers and retailers, allowing faster and safer new product launches while enabling them to streamline their operations, improve product quality, and strengthen their regulatory compliance.
Published: March 26, 2026 at 9:03 am
THG CEO Matt Moulding said the company was ‘on the front foot’ after publishing its results for 2025.
The company described 2025 as a ‘tale of two halves’, starting with a ‘challenging’ Q1 but giving way to ‘accelerating momentum’, which culminated in the strongest quarter of the year in Q4.
The group delivered adjusted revenue of £1.72bn.
2025 started with the demerger of THG Ingenuity and included the disposal of Claremont Ingredients for £103m, which helped reduce net debt from £304.3m to £233m.
THG also announced its free-cash flow generation was anticipated to be in the range of £25m-£50m for the year ahead.
The company also said it expects to benefit from a VAT ruling on protein powders, with the potential of a successful £78m claim against HMRC.
THG’s share price rose from 31.60p to 34.18p in early trading on the back of the news. The company has a market cap of £558m.
CEO and founder Matt Moulding told the City: “We enter 2026 on the front foot with strong trading momentum and a focus on material free cash flow delivery.”
Published: March 26, 2026 at 8:31 am
Checkit Plc has put itself up for sale out of frustration at its public valuation.
Checkit, an augmented workflow and smart sensor automation company for frontline workers based in Cambridge, has been listed on the public markets since 1997 and its share price peaked at 64 pence in 2021.
Recently it has been trading around 14p, although the news this morning that it has commenced a formal sale process has seen it leap 26% in early trading to 18p.
Published: March 26, 2026 at 8:06 am
A graduate has raised £422,000 from investors to reimagine wind energy.
Adarsh Bhardwaj is an aero-mechanical engineering graduate from the University of Strathclyde.
He started Regeno at the age of 23, having had the idea at the age of 18 before completing his dissertation on wind turbines.
Published: March 26, 2026 at 7:59 am
London has its latest unicorn after AI note-taking app Granola raised £94 million in Series C funding.
The firm, founded in 2023, was valued at £1.1 billion by the round.
Chris Pedregal and Sam Stephenson founded Granola to bring together shared knowledge and understanding from scattered documents. It uses AI to improve everyday communication and information capture.
Pedregal worked at Google before founding Socratic, an AI-powered tutor for high school students, In New York. The startup was acquired by Google in 2018. After two years working on the product within Google in San Francisco, he founded Stack, an AI scanner and organiser, inside Google’s in-house incubator Area 120 back in London. Stack was acquired by Google Drive in 2022.
Stephenson is a designer with a decade of experience across the US and London.
Published: March 26, 2026 at 7:13 am
The CEO of Prezzo has said “my mind is pretty blown” after raising £4.5 million for his FinTech TiPJAR.
James Brown started the cashless tipping platform from his bedroom in 2019, when he was retail director at BrewDog.He would go on to lead its bars business as MD then CEO but left in late 2024 for Prezzo.
In the background he was building TiPJAR, which has just secured the growth capital investment from YFM Equity Partners.
“My mind is pretty blown as I started this business in my bedroom frustrated at how hard and murky the world of tipping could be for both businesses and the tipped workers,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
“My first try I failed and it wasn’t until I found highly skilled, capable and patient co-founders in Ben Thomas and Paul Stancer did we really start going.”
Published: March 25, 2026 at 5:45 pm
Northstar Ventures has opened the third tranche of its EIS Growth Fund for investor subscriptions.
The Newcastle-based venture capital firm has a track record built over two decades of investing, scaling and exiting fast-growing technology companies.
Now in its third year, the Northstar EIS Growth Fund gives individual investors the opportunity to back high-growth companies whilst also benefiting from generous income tax, capital gains tax and inheritance tax reliefs.
The third tranche of the fund is now open for new subscriptions, with fundraising scheduled to close on 30th April 2026.
Funds will be invested during the 2026/27 tax year in later stage growth companies alongside other funds managed by Northstar Ventures.
Published: March 25, 2026 at 2:32 pm
Shares in ASOS Plc have risen almost 13% after it announced a positive trading update this morning.
The online fashion giant said it expected to report an approximate 50% improvement in EBITDA year-on-year for the half-year period ended 1st March 2026.
ASOS said it had reduced fixed costs by more than 10% YoY and also reduced total supply chain costs.
It reiterated its FY26 guidance.
Published: March 25, 2026 at 2:19 pm
NatWest Group has sold its employment law, HR, health and safety and environmental management consultancy business Mentor to Empowering People Group, backed by Limerston Capital.
Following the sale, NatWest will continue to offer access to Mentor’s services on a referral basis.
Empowering People Group has offices across the UK, providing comprehensive HR and health & safety support alongside employment law expertise.
Published: March 25, 2026 at 12:16 pm
London-based conversational AI platform instep.ai has secured £900,000 in pre-seed funding in a round led by Fuel Ventures.
The investment will accelerate the company’s national roll-out and enhance its back-office automation capabilities, purpose-built to tackle a £190k gap in missed enquiries for property agencies.
Instep.ai’s AI assistant Ella is purpose-built for the property industry to tackle the structural issue of overwhelming inbound calls and enquiries – offering 360 logistical support from managing inbound demand round the clock across voice to managing leads, helping agencies recoup lost leads without bloating teams.
Published: March 25, 2026 at 11:30 am
LegalTech Summize has appointed Alexandria Lutz as its first general counsel after it raised £40 million funding to accelerate global expansion.
The Manchester-headquartered scaleup is an AI-powered contract lifecycle management provider with a growing presence in the United States.
Lutz most recently served as senior corporate counsel at Nordstrom, where she advised on data protection, AI adoption and emerging technology across the business.
She has also held in-house legal roles at a national hospitality company and an international food services organisation.
Published: March 25, 2026 at 11:01 am
Stateful Robotics has raised £3.6 million in pre‑seed funding, led by Amadeus Capital Partners and Oxford Science Enterprises, with additional investment from Stan Boland (founder of Five, acquired by Bosch).
The round backs the company’s breakthrough in ‘stateful’ AI – a new approach to decision‑making software for physical robots that makes them safer, more adaptive and commercially viable in dynamic environments.
It aims to maintain a persistent, shared memory of tasks, environments and prior behaviour, allowing robots to plan over longer horizons and operate reliably without constant human intervention.
Published: March 25, 2026 at 10:59 am
Leeds-based online training platform Virtual College has appointed Laura Cooper as marketing director.
Cooper, who has worked within the company for two and a half years, brings extensive marketing experience to the role, and will lead the company’s marketing function as it continues to expand its compliance training offering across key sectors.
The appointment comes as regulatory pressure on organisations continues to grow but UK training provisions are declining, exposing a gap between compliance expectations and real-world delivery.
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