Global employee experience platform Haiilo is strengthening its presence in Manchester, with the city now a central hub for UK expansion.

As its fastest-growing regional office, headcount has grown by more than sixfold since 2024.

The business has scaled significantly over the past two years, making 98 hires globally, including 51 in the last 12 months, with UK headcount increasing by 30 over the same period. This growth follows the appointment of CEO Andrew Avanessian in 2024 and reflects rising demand from organisations looking to simplify increasingly complex digital workplaces.

Alongside hiring, the business has focused on building a high-performing and sustainable team. It reported a gross retention rate of 93% and net retention of 105%, while continuing to invest in career development, with 13 internal promotions in 2025 and a further 17 already completed in 2026.

The company has also invested £25 million into facilities, technology and talent globally, alongside expanding its leadership team with the appointment of a Chief Technology and Product Officer.

Haiilo’s employee experience platform creates a ‘digital home’ where employees are connected with the knowledge, tools and community they need to be productive. This creates room for focus, collaboration and genuine engagement, making work feel effortless.

Digital health and wellbeing platform Raiys has appointed mental health and ADHD specialist Anna Srireddy as its clinical lead for neurodiversity, a role created as the company expands its range of services.

Glasgow-based Anna has more than 20 years’ experience spanning mental health nursing, ADHD assessment and treatment, clinical governance, non-medical prescribing and multidisciplinary leadership positions across England and Scotland.

Her appointment at Raiys follows the recent launch of its neurodiversity programme, which aims to bridge gaps in overstretched services that leave neurodivergent people facing long waits for assessment and care.

The programme provides screening tools, behavioural support resources, lived experience content and structured wellbeing pathways to assist individuals, families, employers and healthcare providers.

Working alongside medical director Dr Laura Coia, consultant clinical psychologist Dr Matt Wild and other members of Raiys’ independent health advisory board, Anna will lead the development of the company’s healthcare-led neurodiversity strategy.

This includes the introduction of specialist guidance spanning ADHD, autism, dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia and Tourette’s syndrome.

UK digital health company Aide Health has launched its first US programme through a new partnership with Temple Health, targeting one of healthcare’s fastest growing and most costly conditions — type 2 diabetes.

The collaboration, part of the 2026 Clinical Care Innovation Grant programme funded by Independence Blue Cross (IBX), will support the development of new app support models designed to improve patient outcomes, reduce barriers to care, and lower costs.

The partnership marks a significant milestone in Aide Health’s international expansion, building on proven success within the NHS.

The new programme, My Health Aide, will introduce Aide Health’s conversational AI platform designed to support patients outside traditional clinical settings.

Through short, daily interactions, the tool helps patients adhere to their medication, monitor their condition, and access trusted health information on demand. Clinicians, meanwhile, receive real-time data insights, enabling earlier intervention and more personalised care.

The Access Group has appointed Sally Johnson as its new Chief Financial Officer.

Sally joins from Pearson plc, where she served as CFO for six years and brings more than 25 years of experience across strategic finance, M&A, business transformation and investor relations in large and complex global organisations.

Her appointment follows the retirement of Rob Binns, who steps down after seven years as CFO of The Access Group. Rob has been a trusted and defining presence throughout some of the Group’s most significant chapters and leaves with the whole business’s enormous gratitude. Rob and Sally will work closely together to ensure a smooth and seamless handover.

Prior to Pearson, Sally held finance leadership roles at Dorling Kindersley and Penguin Group and began her career at PricewaterhouseCoopers. She also serves as a Non-Executive Director and Audit Chair at Rentokil Initial.

IMU Biosciences, a biotechnology company decoding the immune system to pioneer a paradigm shift in how we understand, diagnose and treat disease, has successfully brought its Series A to over £40 million.

The oversubscribed financing round was co-led by IQ Capital and Molten Ventures, and supported by The British Business Bank and Meltwind alongside existing investors.

IMU has built the world’s largest immune dataset, scaling to more than 25,000 individuals in 2026 through unrivalled access to patient samples and population wide clinical data. By combining high-fidelity multi-omic analysis with proprietary machine learning analytics, IMU can use a simple blood sample to measure over 100 million immune data points, creating the most detailed immune picture ever assembled at clinical scale.

With its data, the company is establishing a universal standard for immune profiling which will enable the discovery of new immune mechanisms and identify precision approaches, monitor disease progression and the course of treatment, and predict treatment suitability and efficacy for individual patients.

The funding will also be used to advance IMU’s clinical programmes including its Stem Cell Transplant and Solid Organ Transplant Programmes in addition to MANIFEST, a ground- breaking UK research consortium investigating patient response to cancer immunotherapies.

Reward Gateway | Edenred, a global leader in employee engagement and HR technology, has announced Joe Walsh as Managing Director of its UK business as the company accelerates into its next phase of growth.

Joe brings more than 25 years of commercial experience across a number of global brands, including, most recently, Samsung, where he led the organisation’s enterprise mobility and solutions strategy. His experience at the forefront of consumer technology and user experience has given him deep insight into evolving customer expectations and how technology can create more connected and engaging workplace experiences.

Alongside Joe’s appointment, Thierry Afalo has been named Managing Director of Edenred’s Global Engagement business to support the company’s global scaling ambition. He succeeds Nick Burns, who is transitioning into a senior advisory position at the start of June, supporting continuity across the leadership team and the next stage of the company’s growth journey.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Admiral Group has completed its £80 million acquisition of London InsurTech Flock.

Flock, which has raised over £40m from leading VC investors including Octopus Ventures, Commerz Ventures, Chamath (Social Capital) and Anthemis Ventures, has revolutionised motor fleet insurance through its fully digital platform.

It uses AI-driven risk models trained on hundreds of millions of miles of real-world driving data to reward commercial motor customers who have demonstrated improved safety throughout the lifetime of a policy.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Currency broker Halo Financial has collapsed into administration after running into cashflow issues.

The London-based firm uses tech to process hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of trades annually. 

Bai Cham and Louise Longley each of BTG Begbies Traynor have been appointed as special administrators at the request of its directors.

 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

GB Group plc has written down the value of its US business segment by around £90 million in its latest annual results.

The Cheshire-based identity solutions business recorded a small increase in revenue for the year ended 31st March 2026 but the writedown saw it swing to a huge loss on a statutory basis.

Revenue was £285m, up from £282.7m; but losses before tax were £74.5m, compared with a £15.7m profit in the previous year.

Gradient Labs, an AI-native customer operations platform for financial services, has increased its Series A funding to around £20 million.

The round was led by new investors Octopus Ventures and CommerzVentures with follow-on backing from Redpoint Ventures and Exceptional Capital. 

Founded by former leaders from Monzo’s AI team, Gradient Labs has developed a suite of vertical-specific AI agents to automate operations spanning customer servicing and long-running processes such as lending, disputes and Know Your Customer (KYC) checks. 

A former touring musician who performed at Glastonbury is now building an AI-powered startup designed to transform how people experience music.

Ben Etches, founder of Sineco, has swapped life on stage for entrepreneurship, developing a platform that creates real-time adaptive audio shaped by a user’s biometric data – including heart rate, movement and activity.

Based in Greater Manchester, Sineco is aiming to become a global leader in adaptive audio for fitness, wellbeing and performance, turning music into a responsive, personalised experience.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Nutrition brand Protein Works has announced its acquisition by Lactalis, the world’s leading dairy company.

Founded in 2012, Protein Works produces a wide range of protein-based nutrition products designed for health and well-being. Its portfolio includes protein shakes, meal shakes and savoury options, wellness supplements and protein snacks.

The company, which has been backed by YFM Equity Partners since 2019, generates annual revenues of approximately £55 million and has sold 500n shakes to date.

Founder Mark Coxhead said: “It’s been an incredible ride for both Protein Works and me over the last 15 years. Seeing the brand in rude health and ready for its next phase of exciting growth makes me very proud. 

“With such a talented team, now backed by Lactalis, the sky is the limit for the brand I started all those years ago in my spare bedroom.”

Calculus, one of the UK’s longest-established EIS and VCT fund managers with over 25 years backing innovative growth companies, has announced a £2.5m investment into Edify, an AI-powered operations platform built for quick service restaurants and hospitality chains.

The investment forms part of a £3m round completed alongside current investors.

Edify was founded in 2024 by Ed Barry, a hospitality operator who built and sold Over Under, a London coffee chain, to Blank Street Coffee in 2022. Through that journey, Barry saw how fragmented systems, manual processes, and unclear information flows were holding hospitality businesses back.

Edify was built from that perspective: a live intelligence platform designed around the realities of the floor, and the decisions operators need to make every day.

Current customers and brands served include Pret A Manger, Dunkin’ Donuts, WatchHouse, Yolk Brands.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

AccessPay has appointed Johan Jardevall as CEO following its private equity takeover, with Anish Kapoor moving into a chairman role.

Kapoor is stepping down after more than a decade of leading the Manchester FinTech through a significant period of growth, technology transformation and platform development.

Jardevall brings more than 25 years of experience leading and scaling enterprise software and SaaS businesses across Europe and the UK. He has held several senior executive and CEO positions within high-growth technology companies, with expertise spanning operational leadership, customer delivery, strategic growth, and product commercialisation. 

Loqbox and Blackbullion have partnered to help more than 450,000 students build stronger financial futures through accessible credit-building tools and curriculum-linked financial education.

The partnership gives students across 100+ UK universities, colleges and businesses access to practical financial skills and the opportunity to start building credit responsibly while they study.

It comes as students face rising accommodation costs, increasing debt burdens and ongoing cost-of-living pressures, with 88% of them feeling hopeless about their financial situation.

Yet most are leaving education without the credit knowledge they need to navigate it. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of Gen Z wish they had learned more about bills and personal finance before leaving home, and many of them don’t understand how to build a strong credit history before they need one.

The consequences follow students long after graduation. A thin credit file can affect access to housing, mobile phone contracts, fairer borrowing rates and future financial opportunities.

Blackbullion is the UK’s leading student financial wellbeing ecosystem, helping students learn about money, access funding, and manage their finances with confidence. It featured in sixth spot on our FinTech 50 ranking last year.

Brightwell, a service provider for defined benefit pension schemes, has announced the appointment of Mike Bussey as non-executive chair, subject to FCA approval.

Bussey worked for HSBC Group based in Asia, the Gulf, Africa, North America and UK for over 20 years in a number of senior executive level roles followed by ten years as CEO of three highly respected global private banking and trust firms.

From 2011 he has enjoyed a selective portfolio of chair and non-executive roles. Mike is chair of Deutsche UK Bank Ltd, a position he has held since 2020. In November 2024, he was also appointed chairman of The London Clinic, the UK’s leading private charitable hospital based in London.

Mayors in areas including Liverpool City Region, West Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, and Greater London will be handed control of Local Innovation Partnership funding.

After the next Spending Review, they will be given the ability to decide how and where to target regional R&D investment through the Local Innovation Partnerships Fund on their own doorstep. 

The Fund supports partnerships of local leaders, businesses and universities to turn existing research breakthroughs into practical solutions that back local businesses, create jobs and improve people’s lives. 

Joining mayors and local officials on a visit to Liverpool today, Technology Secretary Liz Kendall has confirmed plans to pass future control of the Local Innovation Partnership Fund in England to regional leaders, with the change expected to kick in during the next Spending Review period. 

Laverock Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing disease-responsive advanced therapies through its unique, programmable gene control technology, has been awarded two new grants totalling in excess of £2.2m to support the next generation of its gene-control platform development, and expansion into additional non-oncology therapeutics areas.

The first grant-funded project will focus on scaling the company’s platform within a T-cell product context, utilising solid tumour-based patient datasets, and foundational data around both intracellular signalling and antigen expression. Leveraging single cell and AI-powered approaches Laverock will be able to rapidly identify the preferred combination of product features to unlock efficacy and safety in solid tumour cancer indications, tailored to tumour type, and using patient derived models for rapid prototyping and evaluation.

The second grant will enable the expansion of Laverock’s macrophage-based programmes into non-oncology indications, building upon the platform’s ability to program myeloid cell phenotypes and precisely control the expression of therapeutically relevant payloads. This work will be part of a consortium effort pulling in leading experts in the disease indication of interest and across the product development workflow to enable rapid translation to the clinic.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Applied Nutrition plc has acquired US-based sports nutrition manufacturer Nutrablend Group as it expands its North American footprint.

The deal, for a total cash consideration of $16 million (£12m) is for the trade and majority of assets of Nutrablend Group – including a manufacturing and warehouse facility in Buffalo, New York State, which has been independently valued at approximately $7m.

Applied Nutrition has also entered into a collaboration agreement with Mondelēz International to allow the group to develop and manufacture AN Supps & SOUR PATCH KIDS and AN Supps & SWEDISH FISH branded sports nutrition products.

The range will initially be stocked in 2,200 Walmart stores and 1,300 GNC corporate stores from August 2026.

Knowsley-based Applied Nutrition has upgraded expectations for the current financial year ending 31st July 2026, with revenue now expected to be approximately £148m and EBITDA margin in line with current consensus market expectations.

A new evidence-based health app designed to help people understand and manage physical ageing has launched in the UK.

Developed by ADL Smartcare, The LifeCurve app translates more than 30 years of research into a simple digital tool that helps people identify early signs of decline and take action to maintain independence and wellbeing for longer.

At the heart of the app is The LifeCurve model – a scientifically validated framework showing that people tend to lose everyday abilities, such as climbing stairs, cutting toenails or getting on and off the toilet, in a predictable order over time. Research shows that both the age at which decline begins and the speed of decline are strongly influenced by lifestyle and behaviour, meaning early intervention can help people maintain – and in some cases regain – ability.

The app brings this concept to life through a two-minute assessment that shows users where they sit on The LifeCurve and provides tailored guidance to help improve functional ability. This includes personalised goals, movement routines, practical advice, and connections to local services and support.

ADL Smartcare CEO Peter Gore said: “Ageing is inevitable, but decline doesn’t have to be. The LifeCurve gives people the tools, confidence, and insight to take action earlier, helping them stay independent, active, and in control for longer.”