Author: Jonathan Symcox

A subsidiary of chipmaking giant Arm has invested a further £50 million into Raspberry Pi.

A secondary share sale saw the Raspberry Pi Foundation divest shares in the listed Cambridge success story, amounting to 5.6% of the firm’s issued share capital, for £60m at a price of 550 pence per share.

It continues to hold 41% of Raspberry Pi’s shares.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Claire Blunt has resigned from the board of Digitalbox plc to focus on her executive role within Steven Bartlett’s media group.

The media industry veteran joined the Dragons’ Den star’s FlightStory last year and is now CFO and COO of his parent group Steven.com.

She joined the board of Digitalbox, which owns Entertainment Daily, The Daily Mash, The Poke and The Tab, in October 2024 as a non-executive director. She also served as the chair of the company’s remuneration committee. 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

ASOS Plc halved its losses in its latest six-month results but revenue dropped.

The online fashion giant said losses before tax for the half-year period ended 1st March 2026 were £137.9 million, down from £241.5m in the same period last year (H1 FY25).

GC Angels, the venture capital investment arm of the Growth Company, has led four investments in March 2026 supporting funding totalling £1.87m.

Two of the deals originate from GC Angels’ first Venture Forward accelerator programme, which ran at the end of last year, with a further two investments into existing portfolio companies, demonstrating the continued strength of the programme as a pipeline for high-quality opportunities.

The Venture Forward programme, funded by Innovate UK, is designed to support underrepresented founders across the North as they prepare for their first institutional investment round.

From the first cohort, GC Angels has made a six-figure investment into Breezemove as part of their £750,000 seed round. The business is building a UK PropTech platform designed to streamline and simplify the home-buying process.

GC Angels also led a £345,000 investment into MissionC, a premium wellness brand offering effective, FSA-regulated, and lab-tested CBD, Functional Mushroom, and Shilajit products; stocked by leading retailers such as Selfridges and Holland & Barrett. Both investments provide the businesses with the capital to move beyond early-stage hurdles and accelerate their next phase of growth.

This follows the successful delivery of the first Venture Forward cohort which ran from October to December 2025 in Manchester and has resulted in a total of 9 companies successfully raising investment worth over £2.5m.

Alongside the Venture Forward cohort investments, GC Angels completed two further investments into its existing portfolio. These include a £270k investment into OurPetsLife, a leading premium pet product retailer founded by Elliot Roxby, alongside angel investor and exited founder of Music for Pets, Amman Ahmed. The second follow-on investment was into Gaia Learning, an ed-tech platform for SEND children, which raised £400k alongside NESTA and a syndicate of angel investors.

In early April GC Angels completed delivery of the second Venture Forward cohort in Leeds. In the second cohort, 55% of founders were from an ethnic minority background and 55% were female founders, reflecting the programme’s continued focus on widening access to investment and equipping underrepresented entrepreneurs with the skills, networks and confidence to secure funding.

Cogna has appointed ex-Amazon AI leader Sam Ng as CTO.

Cogna uses AI to automate the IT consultancy process for critical infrastructure industries including utilities, construction, facilities management and logistics.

Ng brings nearly 20 years of engineering leadership experience at startups and public companies spanning Microsoft, Google, Amazon and more.

Most recently at Amazon, he led two major engineering programmes. In Amazon AI, his teams owned the language, compiler, framework, and tooling used to build training and inference workloads running on Amazon’s custom Trainium and Inferentia chips.

He also led a 300-person engineering organisation at Kindle, where he built two zero-to-one devices: Kindle Scribe, the first large-format Kindle with writing and notetaking, and Kindle Colorsoft, the first Kindle with a colour display.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A leading firm in the Wales tech scene has entered liquidation.

Amplyfi is an AI-powered market intelligence platform which was backed with more than £7 million investment from Cardiff Capital Region’s flagship fund Innovation Investment Capital and the Development Bank of Wales. 

It delivered insights to businesses by connecting structured and unstructured data at scale to uncover previously hidden links, trends and opportunities – summarising huge volumes of data sourced from millions of documents a day including company websites, news, RSS feeds and scientific papers.

Advancements in generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT have impacted its business and forced the board into a creditors voluntary liquidation. Bethan Evans and John Cullen of insolvency practice Menzies have been appointed joint liquidators.

CEO Paul Teather has ‘ended’ his tenure with a dateline of April 2026 on his LinkedIn profile. Formerly on the board as an investor, he took over the CEO role in 2023.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Aurrigo International plc is to triple the size of its headquarters with a move to Power Park in Coventry.

The self-driving technology leader, which recently announced a £6 million contract with Ultra Global for 25 autonomous guided vehicles, said it would install a test track at the 130,615 square feet site.

It will serve as its UK hub for advanced engineering, autonomous vehicle development, high-volume manufacturing and ongoing automotive activities. 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Andrew Higginson is to step down as chair of JD Sports Fashion Plc in a shock move.

He joined Britain’s biggest listed sporting goods group in 2022 and transformed its corporate governance. 

Together with his chief executive hire Regis Schultz, the firm expanded overseas and sold off non-core brands. It says that 40% of its business is now in North America.

Identity specialist GBG said trading was solid in the last financial year.

 

For the year ended 31st March 2026, expected revenue of £285 million represents 3.2% year-on-year growth on a constant currency basis.

FY26 adjusted operating profit will be approximately £67.5m (FY25: £67m).

GBG announced a £175 million refinancing deal last month.

TPXimpact Holdings PLC, a digital transformation partner to the UK public services sector, has reported strong results and hailed the completion of a three-year turnaround.

The AIM-listed firm said for the financial year ended 31st March 2026 it expects to comfortably exceed the recently upgraded consensus across all key financial metrics.

Revenue is expected to be around £78.1m (FY25: £77.3m), representing 1% year-on-year growth and ahead of market consensus of £76.2m.

Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be c.£8.6m (FY25: £5.6m) a 54% year-on-year increase.

“The group’s performance in FY26 marks the successful conclusion of its three-year strategic turnaround. Having met or exceeded all key financial and operational targets, the group has established a profitable, cash-generative platform with a significantly healthier balance sheet,” it stated.

“TPXimpact is now entering its new three-year strategic phase focused on sustainable growth, supported by new business wins of £122m and the recent appointment of Emma Broom as chief growth officer. “

Time To ACT plc, a group focused on technology for the energy transition supply chain, says Gary Wallace has resigned and will step down from the board and his role as CFO on 17^th July 2026.  

It said he leaves on good terms and will remain in the business during this period to ensure an orderly transition of responsibilities.

Eight new firms, including Barclays, Experian, Lloyds Banking Group (Scottish Widows), and UBS, have been chosen by the Financial Conduct Authority to live test AI applications to support safe and responsible deployment.

The FCA is working with its technical partner Advai, a London-based specialist in automated AI assurance, to provide AI Live Testing. This initiative helps successful applicants explore key questions around risk management and live monitoring to support the responsible deployment of AI for consumers and markets.

Applications reflect the fast-evolving nature of the technology, with a diverse range of AI models underpinning use cases – from agentic AI and small language models to emerging solutions such as neurosymbolic AI. Firms in the second group are testing both customer-facing and business‑to‑business use cases, including AI-enabled targeted support for investments, credit score insights for consumers, agentic payments, anti-money laundering detection, and Know Your Customer.

The FCA will also publish a good and poor practice report for AI in financial services later in 2026 to support firms in the safe and responsible adoption of the developing technology.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A former boss of Costa Express has raised £2 million for automated drinks retail platform Unity Coffee.

Founder Scott Martin previously co-founded Coffee Nation, which grew to a network of more than 900 self-service machines. Acquired in 2011 for £59.5 million by Whitbread, these were immediately rebranded as Costa Express.

Martin effectively introduced the first premium self-serve espresso solution to the UK, bringing real coffee and fresh milk to consumers at a time when instant coffee dominated the on-the-go market. It subsequently became a cornerstone of Coca-Cola’s acquisition of Costa Coffee.

Unity is expanding into a market that is rapidly changing how people buy food and drink on the move. It is building an automated retail platform, pairing premium beverages with connected hardware, app-based ordering and payments, and real-time loyalty. 

The funding will be used to roll out 500+ state-of-the-art machines across the next 12 months, scaling its app-first coffee stations into high-footfall venues including gyms, hotels and flexible workspaces, and forecourts.

Audoo, a music technology company redefining public performance royalty distributions, has announced a partnership with Sabam, the Belgian association for authors, composers and publishers.

The partnership will deliver a new approach to DJ reporting powered by the Audio Meter technology from Audoo, which topped our MediaTech 50 ranking last year.

Audoo’s scalable Audio Meter solution captures exactly what is played in real time across live environments – moving away from more complex technology solutions and manual and sample-based reporting. 

The result is more accurate data at scale, enabling royalty distributions based on actual usage. It also increases transparency and supports fairer remuneration for authors, composers and publishers. 

Audoo’s solution is designed for modern venues, including multi-room and multi-zone environments where multiple DJs may be performing simultaneously. Its technology captures music across all areas in parallel, delivering a complete and representative view of what is being played. 

The technology has already been deployed in several live environments in Belgium, where it successfully captured music across complex, multi-stage setups.

Shares in Manchester-headquartered online retailer THG have risen today after it reported revenue growth of 7% in the first quarter of 2026 – the highest Q1 figure for five years.

THG shares are currently trading just below 40 pence, up 3% in today, after rising 7% in early trading.

Building on the momentum of a strong end to 2025, the company’s group revenue was £393.1m, while Myprotein, the world’s largest online sports nutrition brand, saw its revenues rise by 8.8% to £159.8m.

THG also delivered its strongest Q1 cash flow performance in three years and has reiterated full-year guidance for FY 2026.

THG shares are down 14% in the year to date but 37% up last 12 months.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Shares in Trustpilot Group plc rose today after it announced an addition to its board.

John-Paul Savant, who is stepping down as CEO of listed Auction Technology Group after a decade in the role, will become a non-executive director from May.

Before ATG, Savant built 20 years of experience in digital marketplaces and commerce.

He spent almost 10 years at eBay/PayPal, serving in a number of leadership roles, latterly as PayPal’s vice president of product, experience and consumer engagement for EMEA.

He then held the role of CEO of Think Finance UK.

 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

AI video platform for business Synthesia has revealed global expansion plans after it saw enterprise contracts triple.

The London-headquartered business will open new bases in Austin and Berlin, alongside an expanded presence in Paris and Zurich.

The company has tripled its contracts over $100,000 in the last 12 months and says it has a net revenue retention rate of more than 140%. The expansion follows Synthesia’s $200 million Series E raise at a $4 billion valuation in January 2026.

Founded in 2017, Synthesia is expanding its global footprint to support growing demand from enterprise customers. The company is scaling its teams across go-to-market and customer success functions, with plans to increase global headcount by more than 70% in 2026.

Newcastle-based finance startup CO4CH has launched a free Finance 4 Founders (F4F) community, which provides structured financial support to founders at each stage of their business journey.

The community brings together peer support, practical financial insight and pathway programmes designed to help early-stage entrepreneurs become investment-ready.

The launch will effectively introduce Cohort 1 of the Fund programme, featuring live sessions that take members through a structured curriculum focused on the process of raising capital.

Participants will develop the skills needed to raise external funding by building financial models, understanding the investor landscape, and preparing for due diligence.

Delivered on a cohort basis three times per year, the Fund programme forms a core part of CO4CH’s signature Start | Fund | Scale system. 

 

Manchester FinTech Firenze has raised £6m a year after its £2.5m seed round.

The firm aiming to redefine Lombard lending said the round was led by AlbionVC, with follow-on participation from all major existing investors, including Outward VC and Form Ventures.

Firenze, launched in January 2024 by co-founders David Newman and Anna Curtis, is an embedded finance platform allowing wealth managers to offer loans from as little as £65,000 secured against clients’ investment portfolios.

Because borrowing is secured lending with highly liquid collateral, Lombard lending offers lower interest rates compared to typical unsecured loans and allows decisions to be made in hours rather than weeks or months.

These so-called Lombard loans have typically only been available to clients of private banks who have, as a minimum, £1m of investments.

 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

YFM Equity Partners has led a £3 million investment round into talent tech innovator inploi.

The London startup, founded by Matthew de la Hey and Alex Hanson-Smith in 2016 to serve the recruitment needs of the hospitality and leisure sector through a marketplace, was forced to pivot hard to enterprise SaaS when COVID wiped out its customer base and pipeline. 

With customers including Compass Group, wagamama, Gail’s and NHS trusts, inploi has facilitated millions of applications across over 70,000 vacancies since that pivot.