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.”

 

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.

 

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.

easyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou is taking on Amazon with the launch of easyShop.com.

The new multi-category marketplace has launched across 21 European countries. 

Retailers can reach shoppers in their choice of 21 markets through one account, with VAT calculated automatically. They do not need to establish a company in every country, which opens international expansion to businesses that may previously have found the cost and complexity of local operations a barrier. 

Unlike retail-led marketplaces, easyShop does not hold stock, sell own-label products or compete with the businesses using its platform. Every product belongs to a retailer, and every customer order generates a sale for a retailer. 

A new specialist venture capital fund will invest exclusively in high-growth businesses founded by refugees in the UK, catalysing the targeting of an overlooked segment of the UK’s entrepreneurial economy.

Launching with an initial £300,000 pilot fund, the Refugee Venture Fund (RVF) expects to make initial investments of £50,000–£100,000 in approximately three to five companies. 

Bringing together specialist knowledge of refugee entrepreneurship, venture capital expertise and early-stage investment experience, the fund has been set up by The Entrepreneurial Refugee Network (TERN) – the only UK organisation dedicated to supporting refugee entrepreneurs to start and grow businesses. 

Affinity Labs, an AI software builder for creators, has announced a $2m pre-seed funding round. The London-based startup is a new house of creator-led software brands, launching and scaling products co-founded with leading content creators.

The round was led by Fuel Ventures, alongside Antler, and includes a £498k grant from Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), awarded through its competitive Growth Catalyst: Investor Partnerships programme.

They are joined by angel investors from Google DeepMind, Meta, and Playfair VC, alongside content creator Marcello Ascani and Devran Amaratunga Karaca, CEO of creator economy company Kyra.

Affinity Labs’ wider backers include Christian Arnstedt, CEO of Blazar Capital, the venture studio behind Emma Chamberlain’s Chamberlain Coffee; Ryan Nelson, co-founder of JOBI Brands, which has launched consumer brands with Courteney Cox and Kaley Cuoco; and Quentin Jayat, head of design at easyJet.

Shares in Bytes Technology Group plc dropped 5% today after it announced a £19 million acquisition.

However the FTSE 250 firm’s market cap remains above £1 billion – and 45% up in last six months – after it also posted positive half-year results.

The software, security, AI and cloud services specialist said it had acquired CyberOne, a UK cybersecurity services provider to enterprise and the mid-market, for an initial consideration of £19.4m.

 

High street retailer Poundland could enter administration within days – but there are hopes thousands of jobs could be saved as its management team works towards an MBO.

Ireland-based Martin Property Group, which this week bought car parks giant NCP out of administration, is backing a potential management buyout.

Poundland was bought for just £1 last summer from Pepco Group by investment firm Gordon Brothers but the latter is now seeking a buyer for the discount retailer.

Poundland employs nearly 12,000 people and operates almost 600 stores, predominantly in the UK but also in Ireland. Its managing director Barry Williams is leading the bid for a solvent takeover.

Digital care management platform Log my Care has secured a £2 million growth credit facility from Palatine Growth Credit.

Founded in 2017, Log my Care is a B2B SaaS provider of digital care management software to the care sector, with a specialism in complex care. Holding NHS Assured Supplier status, Log my Care supports better outcomes for some of the UK’s most vulnerable people.

The business has scaled to serve more than 1,000 customers across the UK, who are, in turn, responsible for the support of 30,000 service users.

In September Sam Hussain, one of the founders of the business and CEO, moved into a new role as founder director. Matt Russell has joined the business as the incoming CEO.

CMR Surgical has struck a £300 million investment deal which could lead to a full takeover.

The Cambridge-headquartered firm has agreed a strategic alliance with New York-listed Stryker to advance its robotic-assisted surgery technology.

Stryker announced the strategic equity investment of approximately £300m, with an exclusive option for it to acquire the remaining equity of CMR Surgical, alongside an exclusive US commercial agency agreement for the latter’s Versius portfolio.

CMR Surgical will continue to lead portfolio development and commercialisation in markets outside the United States.

The British Government has announced a series of measures which it says will protect the nation from the risks posed by increasingly powerful AI.

Ironically it has tasked frontier AI models with strengthening cyber defences, examining stronger legal protections and preparing for serious incidents involving autonomous AI systems.

It says the move builds on two pilots that have already helped identify and fix over a thousand potential cyber vulnerabilities across government systems, and detect potential cyber threats.