Bite-size news and insight from UK business and tech – including funding, deals and appointments
Published: May 12, 2026 at 5:53 pm
The 51% Club, a definitive community for ambitious female founders and leaders, is marking its second birthday with the announcement of its most significant milestone to date – the launch of a dedicated co-working space for female founders and leaders in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter.
Opening on 1st June 2026, The 51% Club at The Wilmot will be housed within The Wilmot, one of Birmingham’s most beautifully restored heritage buildings. The space will offer dedicated desks and flexible passes exclusively for women building and scaling their businesses, and its announcement comes at a time when only 2-4% of women-led businesses in the UK reach £1 million in revenue.
The launch marks a defining moment for The 51% Club, which has grown from a series of Birmingham events to a national movement with five city hubs located in Birmingham, Leamington Spa, Leicester, London and Worcester.
Published: May 12, 2026 at 5:13 pm
Isomorphic Labs, an AI-first drug design and development company founded by DeepMind founder Sir Demis Hassabis, has raised £1.6 billion in Series B funding.
The latest round of investment will accelerate the UK company’s evolution from pioneering novel AI models to applying them at scale.
The financing round is led by Thrive Capital, and includes participation from existing backers Alphabet and GV alongside new investors MGX, Temasek, CapitalG, and the UK Sovereign AI Fund, significantly expanding Isomorphic Labs’ global capital base.
Published: May 12, 2026 at 4:25 pm
A failed neobank based in Manchester has re-emerged as a profitable FinTech infrastructure provider.
In 2024 Frost, which combined digital banking with energy-switching tools, closed all retail customer accounts after five years of operation.
Despite attracting more than 18,000 users and processing tens of millions of pounds in transaction volume, changes in the market forced the business to rethink its future.
At the time, founder Paweł Ołtuszyk told BusinessCloud that it would instead provide its core banking technology and customisable mobile app to other financial institutions in a B2B pivot, and that its staff of 10 would remain in place.
Now the full reinvention of the company into Keel – a Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) platform shaped by first-hand operating experience – has been revealed.
Published: May 12, 2026 at 4:07 pm
It’s easy to look at all CEOs and think that they are all faced with the same pressures and challenges.
But the truth is that when you’re running a business you founded, something you have built from the ground up, you will have had a very different kind of journey from someone leading an established company.
As the business evolves, so does your role. Get ready for change.
In my early days as a business owner, I was much more hands on, with multiple roles and spinning a thousand plates.
What needed doing got done, often by me. Now my role is more about guiding the business and supporting teams.
It can feel like you’re further removed from the reason you founded the business as you move from a start-up to an established business, but that’s a sign of success.
Published: May 12, 2026 at 3:56 pm
Shares in Vodafone fell 8% today despite reporting total revenue growth of 8% in FY26 to €40.5 billion.
The telecoms giant expects to see profit before tax of almost £1.9bn, compared to a £1.5bn loss in FY25, as it simplifies its business.
It also recently announced plans to take full ownership of VodafoneThree after agreeing a £4.3bn deal to buy the 49% stake it does not already own. That deal is set to complete in the second half of 2026.
However investor sentiment was dampened by the decision to pause share buybacks to prioritise taking full control of the joint venture; disappointing results in Germany, its largest market; and missing its overall adjusted earnings forecast.
Published: May 12, 2026 at 3:40 pm
Shares in Intertek Group plc have jumped 7% today – the highest of any firm on the FTSE 100 – after Swedish private equity firm EQT made a fourth and final takeover bid of £9.4 billion.
The offer is made up of £9.24bn in cash, with the remainder made up by the final dividend for 2025 announced earlier this year should this be approved by shareholders at the firm’s annual general meeting on 20th May 2026.
EQT saw its third offer of almost £9bn – £58 per share in cash – rejected last week. Under public market rules, it has until Thursday to submit a firm offer for the FTSE 100 firm or walk away.
Published: May 12, 2026 at 2:20 pm
Eebz, a digital shelf analytics provider, has launched its new suite of foundation models built for eCommerce data extraction and intelligence.
The models are designed to address long-standing challenges plaguing digital shelf analytics, including data inaccuracy, high operational cost and latency in insights.
Backed by a £10 million investment in AI infrastructure, Eebz says the rollout of its technology marks a significant shift in how brands capture, structure and react to eCommerce intelligence.
The models eliminate false gaps and missed opportunities by moving beyond generic availability tracking, surfacing only the gaps that have genuine commercial impact. The models also enable real-time measurement of market share and sales through continuously updated views of category performance and retailer sell-through, removing reliance on delayed panel data.
In addition, users can identify competitor activity earlier by detecting new product launches and shifts in ranging strategy, weeks or even months, ahead of traditional data sources.
Published: May 12, 2026 at 1:45 pm
Lifted Ventures has announced a one-year extension of its partnership with the British Business Bank, reinforcing a shared commitment to building a more diverse and inclusive angel investment ecosystem across the UK.
The continued collaboration will further scale the Lifted Ventures Angel Network, increasing regional investment capacity and accelerating the activation of women angel investors nationwide. The partnership is designed to broaden participation in early-stage investment and ensure greater access to capital for female founders across all UK regions.
Building on the success of the initial partnership, both organisations will deepen their focus on addressing long-standing gaps in the early-stage funding landscape particularly the underrepresentation of women as both investors and recipients of angel capital.
Published: May 12, 2026 at 1:30 pm
A Leeds company whose software provides remote training and support for medics using complex laboratory equipment has set its sights on the Asia-Pacific market after raising a further £1.6m.
Envoke has secured the funding from existing investors NPIF – Mercia Equity Finance, which is managed by Mercia and is part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund, and Finance Yorkshire’s Seedcorn Fund, alongside new investor Foresight Group.
The company has already attracted major US-based equipment manufacturers including Bio-Rad, ThermoFisher Scientific, PacBio and Haemonetics, as well as the NHS and other health services and universities. It is now keen to target a wider global audience.
Envoke’s platform creates a virtual replica of each machine and uses interactive simulations to show staff how to use it. The system also enables remote troubleshooting and maintenance, which means that many problems can be quickly resolved without calling out an engineer.
Published: May 12, 2026 at 1:03 pm
Unlike a prompt-driven or conversational Large Language Model (LLM), agentic AI is goal-orientated. With access to knowledge, a set of defined instructions outlining what it’s trying to achieve, and the ability to connect to other tools and systems to collect the data it needs, this AI ‘brain’ can operate, reason and learn, without human intervention.
Let’s apply that to a real world use case such as accounts payable. Whereas traditional automation would struggle with inconsistent data across different invoice layouts, supplier-specific quirks or missing fields, a fairly straightforward finance agent could handle invoicing, expenses and reconciliations with ease, alleviating admin by 47%. I’ve also seen an incident outage agent reduce IT downtime by 30%, in what was again a simple use case. But of course the possibilities really are endless, with multi-agent orchestrations capable of handling complex end-to-end e-commerce orders, inclusive of customer fulfilment, for example.
Whatever the brief, AI agents can do much more than follow a script. They’re intelligent enough to follow intricate, multi-step activities, think independently, and handle variation. But this doesn’t mean they’re fully autonomous digital beings – if they were, you wouldn’t want them anywhere near your business.
Published: May 12, 2026 at 12:19 pm
Happl, a global employee benefits operating system founded by entrepreneur Ben Towers MBE, has raised £8.1 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round led by Portage Ventures.
The round includes participation from F Capital and existing investors Y Combinator, 6 Degrees Capital, Haatch and Ventures Together.
The raise is being celebrated with a billboard in Times Square, New York, alongside Happl’s US banking partner, Brex.
Published: May 12, 2026 at 12:00 pm
Manchester Games Network, a new business organisation, has launched today to strengthen Greater Manchester’s international reputation in the games sector.
The business-led community aims to promote, connect, and advocate for the video games sector across Greater Manchester. The network will be led by a board with a broad spectrum of games industry knowledge and experience who share a passion for games and for Manchester and its unique place on the global cultural stage.
The board includes Stephen Hey, games marketing veteran; Laura Harper, Partner at Lewis Silkin; Louise Andrew, Head of Studio at d3t; Michael Pattison, VP of Global Publishing at Lightspeed Studios; Carl Jones, games industry consultant; and Caroline White, creative consultant.
Published: May 12, 2026 at 11:17 am
Northstar Ventures has announced a £300,000 investment from the new North East Spinout Inspire Fund into H2CHP, a pioneering cleantech company and a spinout of Durham
University.
The commitment forms part of a round of £1.5m alongside £500,000 from Blackfinch Ventures and £700,000 of grant funding from Innovate UK’s investor partnership programme to develop a linear electric generator that does not utilise permanent magnets and rare-earth materials, which will help remove a significant supply-chain risk.
H2CHP is developing next-generation distributed electric generators for use in data centres, ports, construction, backup power, and microgrid deployment. Its fuel-flexible technology, which means the high-efficiency generators can be run on hydrogen, ammonia, biofuels and e-fuels, helps mitigate supply-chain risk, cut carbon emissions and improve performance.
The company aims to disrupt the multibillion-dollar global generator market, aided by rising pressure to reduce emissions and persistent grid reliability challenges.
Published: May 12, 2026 at 9:44 am
Shares in On the Beach dropped 17% in morning trading after it reported a poor set of half-year results.
The online travel retailer reported a loss before tax of £3.2 million for the six months ended 31st March, compared with profit of £4.5m in the corresponding period last year.
Revenues were £52.2m, down £7.2m, despite a rise in booked total travel value from £611.7m to £626.2m. Adjusted EBITDA halved to £6.4m (H1 25: £12.8m).
However it saw record H1 booking volumes of 324,000, growing by 7% and significantly ahead of the market ‘despite significant industry headwinds’. Its monthly active app users grew 29% while it recently launched its app in ChatGPT and said further AI integrations are set to follow in H2.
It argued that the results ‘demonstrate the resilience of the model given widespread demand disruption from the conflict in the Middle East since 1st March’.
Published: May 12, 2026 at 9:26 am
Travel Seen has acquired a majority stake in luxury ski specialist Oxford Ski Company.
The social-first group is headed by industry expert Jen Atkinson and backed by Arete Capital Partners.
The deal follows a string of acquisitions in late 2023 and swoop for eShores in late 2024, taking collective total travel value to over £55 million.
Oxford Ski Company specialises in curating high-end ski experiences at both chalets and hotels in the world’s best ski resorts for ultra-high-net-worth individuals in the UK and worldwide.
CEO Mark Gibbins and Rupert Longsdon, founder and chairman, will remain at the helm and retain a meaningful equity stake.
Published: May 12, 2026 at 9:10 am
Paymentology has secured £130 million backing from two private equity firms.
Apis Partners and Aspirity Partners have invested in the London FinTech, which saw sales rise 117% in 2025.
The transaction brings together two investors with deep experience in the payments industry and a shared focus on advancing payments infrastructure. They believe that issuer processing represents one of the most significant opportunities in the sector.
Published: May 12, 2026 at 8:18 am
Swedish private equity firm EQT has made a fourth and final bid of £9.4 billion to acquire Intertek Group plc.
The offer is made up of £9.24bn in cash, with the remainder made up by the final dividend for 2025 announced earlier this year should this be approved by shareholders at the firm’s annual general meeting on 20th May 2026.
EQT saw its third offer of almost £9bn – £58 per share in cash – rejected last week. Under public market rules, it has until Thursday to submit a firm offer for the FTSE 100 firm or walk away.
Activist investor PrimeStone has urged Intertek to engage with EQT and give it supervised due diligence access, as well as to take a more realistic approach to assessing its fair value. It said that “the view that £65 [is fair value]… seems disconnected from reality”.
Another investor, Palliser Capital, told BusinessCloud that the latest proposal from EQT “represents an attractive opportunity for shareholders that compares favourably, on a risk-and-time-adjusted basis, to the outcomes achievable through the strategic review [if Intertek was to split its businesses]”.
It added: “We strongly urge the Intertek board to engage with EQT now to establish a constructive dialogue, allow any required due diligence to take place and secure a favourable transaction for shareholders.”
Reports suggest that other investors have urged Intertek to hold its nerve and rebuff EQT’s advances.
Published: May 12, 2026 at 7:55 am
Adfin, a London-based FinTech, has raised £13.3 million in Series A funding to build its agentic money movement platform.
It says it is starting by helping businesses getting paid on time and will work towards a solution where ‘money moves itself’.
In less than two years, Adfin has grown to serve 1,500+ businesses across the UK, from accounting and law firms to scaling businesses in professional services, trades and care.
The firm was founded by payments veterans Tom Pope and Ciprian Diaconasu. Pope spent over a decade building payments infrastructure for Worldpay and Tink, which was acquired by Visa for $2.2 billion, while Diaconasu was the founding engineer at Mambu, which scaled to a $5.3bn valuation and powers FinTech leaders including N26 and Tide.
The funding round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from Visionaries Club and new investors Stéphane Kurgan (former COO of King) and Andrey Khusid (founder of Miro).
Published: May 11, 2026 at 5:00 pm
My dad told me my life would change when I became a father. I smiled, nodded, thanked him for the wisdom and had absolutely no idea what he meant until my son arrived.
There is no amount of reading or preparing that gets you there – you only understand it by living it.
Founding a company is exactly the same. I’ve spent time in environments that demand everything from you – particularly rowing for Team GB at the Olympics – and I still walked into building Navigator without truly grasping what it would ask of me.
You can talk to founders and study the frameworks but none of it fully lands until you’re the one making the calls and discovering at close range how to carry the weight and what you’re actually made of. It becomes apparent that the gap between knowing something intellectually and understanding it in your bones is wider than most people realise.
Here’s what I was least prepared for, though, and it isn’t what most people would expect. It wasn’t the difficulty, the pressure, the sleepless nights or even the moments where the path forward wasn’t clear. All of that I had braced myself for, at least in theory. What I genuinely wasn’t ready for was the generosity.
Published: May 11, 2026 at 4:06 pm
There’s a version of this job that looks, from the outside, like a calendar full of important meetings and sharp decisions made with total clarity. The reality is something messier and more interesting than that.
Every week looks different – investor conversations one week, deep in hiring the next, then pulled back into product or working through a growth question that’s been sitting unresolved for longer than it should have been – and any sense of routine feels almost illusory.
And yet there is one fixed point every Tuesday. Without exception, my day starts with the C-suite and then opens out to the whole company. That rhythm matters more than it might sound. When everything else is in constant motion, having a moment in the week that everyone can orient around isn’t just useful – it’s necessary.
Have Your Say