Author: Jonathan Symcox

Artificial Labs, a provider of digital broking and underwriting technology for the specialty and commercial insurance markets, has completed a £33 million Series B funding round.

The raise marks a major milestone for Artificial as it continues to grow and expand its global market presence.

The round was led by CommerzVentures, a leading European Fintech investor, with support from Move Capital Fund I, a leading European B2B Tech investor, and existing investors.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Shares in CyanConnode have leapt 19% today after the Cambridge company confirmed a £35 million takeover approach.

The IoT communication and smart metering solutions provider said Dubai-based Esyasoft Holding Ltd was considering an all-cash offer.

Shares in the company are now up 22% in the year to date.

Chris Howarth has been appointed as CEO of Avanade.

Howarth succeeds Rodrigo Caserta, who will step down as CEO after more than 11 years with Avanade to join Microsoft as Corporate Vice President, Small, Medium Enterprises & Channel (SME&C), Americas. Caserta has served as Avanade’s CEO since 2024.

Howarth has been closely involved with Avanade for more than five years through his leadership within the Accenture=Microsoft ecosystem, helping drive joint innovation, client success, and growth across the partnership.

After more than 28 years with Accenture, he will join Avanade as CEO, to lead Avanade through its next phase of growth, building on the company’s strong foundation and strategic priorities. He will retain ownership of the overall Microsoft relationship, recognizing the critical role Avanade plays in driving growth for Accenture and Microsoft across all customer segments.

The Electronics Group Ltd has expanded into Scotland and launched a new Aberdeen IPC training centre at Davidson House.

The UK’s largest independent IPC and electronics training partner has secured 1,546 sq ft of space at Davidson House.

The new facility will become EGL’s third UK training centre and its first in Scotland, complementing the company’s established headquarters in Leeds and its second centre in Cirencester, opened in the summer of 2024.

Social media agency GH05T has announced a series of leadership changes.

Co-founders Adam Biddle and Joe Battimelli have formally moved into client partner roles, alongside their positions as CEO and COO respectively.

Both Biddle and Battimelli have spent their entire careers in client service and will now officially oversee all client delivery across the agency. Working closely with GH05T’s client delivery team, they will partner directly with clients on overarching strategy, innovation and creative output on a day-to-day basis.

Nicola O’Connor has been promoted to managing director, expanding on her current role as finance director. O’Connor has become indispensable to the running of the agency and will now take responsibility for the day-to-day management of the business, overseeing all internal operations while continuing to lead the finance team.

Author: Chris Maguire

US-based autonomous driving technology company Waymo has announced a $16bn investment is a round that values the company at $126bn.

The financing was led by Dragoneer Investment Group, DST Global, and Sequoia Capital, and included significant investments from Andreessen Horowitz and Mubadala Capital as well as Bessemer Venture Partners, Silver Lake, Tiger Global, and T. Rowe Price.

Waymo’s technology has been credited with a 90 per cent reduction in serious injury crashes and is set to be launched in London.

Waymo is run by co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov, who said the investment will be used to fund global scale.

In a joint statement the co-CEOs said: “From our recent launch in Miami to the new markets ahead, we are expanding our fleet and our world-class team to meet an exploding global demand for autonomous mobility.”

In 2025, Waymo tripled the number of rides it was responsible for to 15 million and it now operates across six major US metropolitan areas.

 

 

Penfold, the digital workplace pension provider, has appointed Jonathan Schneider as Chairman, adding one of the UK’s most experienced fintech founders and investors to its board.

Schneider joins as Penfold accelerates its growth within the workplace savings market. With a 25-year career spent building and backing high-growth finance firms, he brings a track record of scaling platforms from early-stage disruptors into major institutional players.

Notably, Schneider has been the Chairman of Iwoca since its seed round and has helped steer the lender to over £3bn in loans disbursed, funding thousands of SME’s. He brings deep experience of supporting businesses through their scale-up phase and has founded and sold businesses, including Capital Step (exited via the LSE listed Duke Roylaty plc) and, most recently, the 2025 sale of Provira to an institutional capital backed roll up.

Author: Chris Maguire

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has opened a formal investigation into Grok, the AI tool on Elon Musk’s social media platform X.

Grok sparked outrage when it allowed users to ‘undress’ images of real people to create sexualised images.

Now the ICO has launched formal investigations into X Internet Unlimited Company (XIUC) and X.AI LLC (X.AI) covering their processing of personal data in relation to the Grok artificial intelligence system and its potential to produce harmful sexualised image and video content.

William Malcolm, executive director regulatory risk & innovation at the Information Commissioner’s Office, said: “Our investigation will assess whether XIUC and X.AI have complied with data protection law in the development and deployment of the Grok services, including the safeguards in place to protect people’s data rights. Where we find obligations have not been met, we will take action to protect the public.”

Earlier this month, X introduced changes that prevented users of Grok being able to ‘undress’ images of real people.

Venture capital firm Molten Ventures has appointed Franco Danesi as senior partner and promoted Inga Deakin and George Chalmers to partner positions.

Danesi brings over 25 years of experience in financial services, including 18 years on the buyside investing in high‑growth companies. He was previously a partner at European venture capital firm Korelya Capital and before that an investment director at Kinnevik, a listed Swedish investment firm focused on technology.

Deakin and Chalmers both joined Molten, which has a focus on high‑growth technology businesses, in 2020.

Deakin leads investments across HealthTech, while Chalmers heads up the firm’s energy and industrial technologies investment strategy.

Author: Chris Maguire

Dragons’ Den star Peter Jones is reportedly in talks to buy retailer American Golf.

According to Sky News, the keen golfer is in ‘advanced talks’ with private equity firm Endless to add Europe’s largest golf retailer to his burgeoning portfolio of more than 30 businesses.

Neither the 59-year-old serial entrepreneur or Endless have commented publicly but any deal would combine Jones’ love of retail and golf.

The Dragons’ Den star’s business interests include the iconic UK photography retailer Jessops and Localised, a local-first e-commerce for brands expanding globally.

Endless acquired Warrington-based American Golf in 2018, following an accelerated sale process completed in only two weeks.

Series 23 of Dragons’ Den returned to our screens last week and Jones has been an ever present on the hit show.

SmartyPlants, a UK‑based technology startup focused on improving everyday plant care, has received £190,000 in funding from the British Design Fund (BDF) to support the development of its smart‑sensor system for house plants.

Founded in 2023 by Ben Beavers, SmartyPlants was created to address a common challenge faced by householders – knowing when and how to care for their plants with confidence. The startup aims to help the millions of UK plant owners to understand exactly what their houseplants need, through the use of its smart sensors.

In 2023, UK adults spent £700 million on houseplants, according to a report by the Horticultural Trades Association. Inconsistent watering routines, poor light conditions, and limited insight into plant health can all prove fatal for plants. SmartyPlants’ sensors and companion app aim to simplify the process by providing real‑time information on soil moisture, light levels, temperature, humidity, and nutrients.

Author: Mark Boost, CEO, Civo

It’s exciting to see Government ambition to develop AI‑led tech towns outside the traditional tech hubs, and Barnsley’s designation as the UK’s first Government‑backed ‘Tech Town’ marks a bold step in bringing AI into schools, healthcare and local business.

However, there’s a real risk that the way this is playing out leans too heavily on US tech giants like Microsoft.

This approach can help bootstrap innovation in the short term, but it also means the UK may end up importing the technology and value rather than building its own sovereign capabilities here. Much of the data, infrastructure and ultimately the commercial value created may flow back overseas, rather than staying in the UK to support future British AI leadership.

If the UK truly wants to be a global AI trailblazer, we need to balance international partnership with UK‑owned and UK‑controlled data, cloud and AI platforms, so that skills, innovation and economic gains stay onshore and benefit communities like Barnsley as well as the wider economy.

Allica Bank is one of a select few firms invited to participate in the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) and Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) newly launched Scale-up Unit, a joint regulatory initiative designed to support fast-growing, innovative financial services firms to scale, invest and create high-skilled jobs across the UK.

The Scale-up Unit, launched by the Chancellor as part of the UK Government’s Financial Services Growth and Competitiveness Strategy, will provide scaling firms with dedicated regulatory resource to support their growth ambitions. It is designed to help financial services firms that are already scaling within their markets and are in a period of sustained growth to navigate complex regulatory challenges.

Since first opening its doors in 2020, Allica’s impressive growth means its total outstanding lending to established SMEs has now reached £3.5 billion. Named the UK’s fastest growing company in 2024, and the fastest growing UK FinTech ever in 2023, Allica is building on strong momentum to achieve its target of a 10% share of the established SME market by 2028.

University of Cambridge spinout Sparxell has raised £3.7m in pre-Series A funding to scale a biomimetic colour technology based on structural colour rather than chemical dyes.

The company’s patented process extracts and assembles cellulose crystals from wood pulp to reflect specific wavelengths of light, replicating the physical mechanisms responsible for colour in butterfly wings and beetles.

Unlike pigment chemistry, the colour is generated through structure, eliminating the need for petroleum-derived dyes, heavy metals, and plastics.

The round is led by SWEN Capital Partners’ Blue Ocean 2 fund, with participation from Alpha Star Capital and Cambridge Enterprise. The investment accelerates Sparxell’s transition from pilot programmes to commercial-scale manufacturing, with tonne-scale production facilities operational by 2026.

Commercial law firm Hill Dickinson has announced the appointment of Chris Williams, who joins the firm’s London City office as a partner in its commercial dispute resolutions team.

A highly regarded commercial litigator, Williams has a particular focus on technology-related disputes and intellectual property, including patents, copyright, trademarks and confidential information. He brings almost a decade of partner-level experience to the firm, joining from Clyde & Co’s London office.

He is a key adviser to organisations across a range of sectors, including marine, natural resources and energy, with a client base ranging from multi-nationals to owner-managed businesses. He regularly advises clients on the development, exploitation and enforcement of intellectual property rights and is experienced in running complex litigation and arbitration proceedings across multiple jurisdictions.

Chris is also highly active in the burgeoning AI space, with a strong emphasis on intellectual property considerations and the emerging regulatory landscape.

Refute has raised £5m in seed funding to accelerate its mission to protect organisations and democracies from the rapidly evolving landscape of hybrid warfare and disinformation threats.

The round was led by deep tech specialist Amadeus Capital Partners, with participation from Playfair, Episode 1, Osney Capital and the National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF), the UK Government’s deep tech venture capital fund that invests in dual-use technologies for national security and defence.

Refute’s founders have over 40 years of experience creating technologies to fight terrorist attacks and financial crime, and elevate internet trust. As hybrid warfare intensifies, threat actors are rapidly evolving their tactics, blending bot farms with influencers, deploying agentic AI for end‑to‑end automation, and increasingly targeting commercial organisations alongside governments.

Since emerging from stealth and closing its pre-seed round in 2024, Refute has built military‑grade AI capabilities now used by leading commercial and government customers. The platform surfaces early‑stage signals of online manipulation, providing intelligence and recommended response strategies at the pace of the attackers.

UK businesses to benefit from a landmark £11 billion lending package to help them invest and expand abroad, to grow their businesses and the economy.

The lending commitment, from the UK’s five leading banks, is one of the largest collective moves by the banking sector in over a decade.

Senior executives from NatWest, HSBC UK, Barclays, Lloyds and Santander finalised an agreement with the Government last week at a roundtable in Westminster convened by the Business Secretary and the CEO of UKEF Tim Reid.

Together, the banks serve half of all British businesses across all corners of the country.

Dr Paul Bate will be stepping down as Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency at the end of March 2026 as it is absorbed into the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.

Dr Bate has led the UK Space Agency for four and a half years. Working closely with ministers, he delivered two successful delegations to the European Space Agency Councils of Ministers, securing record investment levels, UK science leadership and three new UK astronauts.

The UK space sector now has access to a wider range of national space funding than ever before, with flagship initiatives such as the National Space Innovation Programme and Space Clusters Infrastructure Fund catalysing increasing levels of private investment.

“To be trusted to deliver the government’s civil space ambitions, and to lead an Agency of expert professionals who are passionate about their craft, has been the greatest privilege of my career and proof that space is a team sport,” he said.

“As the UK Space Agency becomes part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), now is the right time to pass the baton on. Whoever is successful will have one of the best jobs in the civil service, leading the new UK Space Agency, delivering innovation and world class science across space, working closely with Ministers, and combining policy, strategy, delivery and technical expertise to help make the UK a leading space nation.”

Big Technologies plc, a provider of electronic monitoring solutions including the Buddi prisoner tag, has appointed Simon Thomson as a non-executive director, with immediate effect.

Currently chairman of AIM-listed Rockhopper Exploration plc, he previously served as CEO of Cairn Energy PLC (subsequently Capricorn Energy PLC) from 2011 to 2023, having joined Cairn in 1995.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A heavyweight duo of ex-unicorn leaders have joined forces to launch a new venture offering custom health and wealth products to people aged over 60.

Laura Ashforth, former managing director at InsurTech unicorn Zego, is the CEO of Lateral, which has raised £2.5 million seed funding.

Her co-founder is Steven Mendel, co-founder and ex-CEO of pet health unicorn ManyPets.