Two former senior figures at Manchester-based AI software business Peak AI have hit the ground running with a new venture helping to fuel growth for SMEs through share option schemes.

John Fraser and Rachel Westwell were finance director and head of legal respectively at Peak, and managed the company’s sale to UiPath earlier this year.

Before that they designed and ran Peak’s share option schemes though $120m of investment rounds.

Now they have set up equiCraft, using their experience to design, implement, maintain and optimise company share option schemes.

They say these are increasingly being seen as a valuable compensation and reward tool among ambitious startups and scaleups, especially in the tech sector, as a way to attract, retain and incentivise top talent.

Digital bank Zopa Group PLC has entered the investments market.

Zopa, which has 1.6 million customers, says it is offering simple solutions for long-term financial planning.

Zopa Investments sits alongside its other products such as the Zopa Cash ISA and Biscuit Current Account.

At launch, Zopa will offer two funds, Balanced and Bold, with a track record of 4.5% and 9.3% average annual returns respectively, available in General Investment and ISA wrappers.

West Ham United has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AI specialist Crayon to develop what is being described as one of football’s most advanced scouting platforms. 

The Premier League club says the generative AI-powered system will overhaul how it identifies and evaluates talent across global markets.

It makes The Hammers the first in world football to deploy an end-to-end generative AI scouting tool tailored specifically for its first team and academy.

Built using AWS technologies including Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Bedrock, the platform will combine AI, machine learning and generative AI to analyse large volumes of player data. 

Novidian, a startup focused on helping early-stage tech companies scale, has been awarded a competitive grant from Innovate UK, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

The funding will accelerate the growth of Novidian’s flagship platform, CTO in Your Pocket, which provides flexible, on-demand technical leadership for startups navigating the critical MVP-to-scale phase.

CTO in Your Pocket was designed to solve a common founder pain point: how to access strategic technical guidance without the cost or commitment of a full-time CTO.

The platform offers tailored support across architecture, delivery, hiring, and tooling, helping founders make smarter decisions, avoid costly missteps, and build scalable systems from day one.

Swansea HealthTech Cosi Care has secured $1 million in US investment after being named one of five winners of the 43North startup competition in Buffalo, New York.

Founded by Lauren Bell in 2018, Cosi Care has developed the world’s first safe scratching medical device designed to relieve the symptoms of eczema and chronic skin irritation.

The company has already generated £3m in revenue and served over 50,000 UK customers, and now plans to use the investment to expand into the US market.

Cosi Care was the only UK company to win this year’s competition and also took home the People’s Choice Award, adding a further $25,000 to their prize.

Risers:

CMC Markets – +29.88%

Halma – +13.04%

Games Workshop Group – +11.93%

Atalaya Mining Copper – +6.49%

NCC Group – +5.93%

Fallers:

Paypoint – -17.54%

Senior – -9.68%

Dr Martens – -9.31%

Foresight Solar Fund – -7.19%

Johnson Matthey – -4.60%

Shares in CMC Markets have rocketed today as the company now expects FY2026 net operating income to be around 10% ahead of market expectations. It has also signed its largest-ever institutional deal, partnering with Westpac, Australia’s second-largest bank. Net operating income is up 5% year-on-year to £186.2 million with increases in net trading and investing revenues.

Halma is also up as the company is on for its 23rd consecutive year of record growth, whilst Paypoint has dipped after results showed that underlying profit before tax dropped 4.5% year-on-year to £25.7m.

Other notable movers are:

NCC Group – +4.94%

Pinewood Technologies Group – +4.79%

JD Sports – -2.96%

Vodafone – -2.09%

Independent payment orchestration provider BR-DGE has partnered with THG Ingenuity to deliver BR-DGE Vault – a PCI-compliant hybrid tokenisation solution.

The Manchester-based company will implement BR-DGE Vault across more than 250 online stores in an attempt to reduce PCI compliance overheads while delivering measurable gains in authorisation rates.

The solution is designed to enhance payment performance and stability during high-volume trading events such as Black Friday.

Edinburgh-founded BR-DGE’s platform processes millions of transactions each month, helping clients boost payment performance and resilience at scale.

Tracsis plc has reported its results for the year ended 31st July 2025.

The transport technology provider, headquartered in Leeds, saw revenue climb 1% to £81.9m, while profit before tax was up 60% to £1.6m.

Adjusted EBITDA was down 1% to £12.6m.

everplay group plc, an independent games developer and publisher, has appointed Mikkel Weider as group CEO and to its board.

The appointment will take effect from 1st January 2026.

In 2016 Weider founded Nordisk Games, holding the role of CEO until 2023. Under his leadership, Nordisk Games grew from zero to over 1,300 employees across Europe and the United States, delivering organic growth alongside the acquisition of a number of European based games studios.

He is currently a partner in Delphi Interactive, chair of Outlast Games, and a board member of M2 Animation and NASDAQ-listed Trophy Games.

He has held board roles at Avalanche Studios Group, Supermassive Games, Raw Fury, Starstable and Trustpilot, as well as senior roles with both Bookatable and Match.com.

Frank Sagnier, current interim executive chair, will revert to non-executive chair.

IP Group plc has completed the £20m extension to its share buyback programme.

Since commencing its buyback programme, the Group has purchased 157,968,634 shares at an average price of 47.5 pence per share for an aggregate consideration of £75m.

All shares acquired under the Buyback Programme have been, or will shortly be, cancelled.

Accountancy firm MHA has reported an increase in revenue, profits and EBITDA for the six months ended 30th September 2025.

The results are the first since admission to trading on AIM in April 2025.

Group revenue was up 13.2% to £121.3m, while adjusted EBITDA grew 10.7% to £21.8m. Adjusted profit before tax was up 8.8% to £18.5m.

Manchester University spinout Nanoco Group plc has settled its legal action with LG.

The listed Runcorn firm develops and manufactures cadmium-free quantum dots and other nanomaterials. These are used in monitors, TVs and infra-red sensors.

In 2023 it won $150m in a legal dispute with Samsung, settling on a no fault basis for the alleged infringement of the group’s intellectual property. In February this year it commenced litigation against another multinational electronics corporation in LG Technologies, alleging that it has willfully infringed on a number of its patents in production of its televisions.

This morning it said the gross amount agreed to be paid by LG to Nanoco is $5m. Litigation costs incurred by Nanoco to date total $600,000.

Digital managing general agent Ripe has acquired holiday homes insurance specialist Schofields Limited.

The deal, subject to customary closing conditions, marks Ripe’s first entrance into the holiday homes space, building upon its expertise in leisure products including motorhomes, caravans, park homes, golf and boat insurance.

Established in 1984, Schofields is a family-run business, based in Bolton, offering a personalised service for specialist holiday homes insurance for properties in the UK and overseas. With over 10,000 policyholders, the company has a strong 40-year heritage in the sector.

Jonathan and Philip Schofield, who have been instrumental in driving the business over the past two decades will continue to lead the business on a day-to-day basis alongside the Ripe team. Keith Schofield will remain as a consultant to the business to support the transition of ownership.

It is Ripe’s third acquisition following private equity backing in 2021.

Emm has raised £6.8m in an oversubscribed seed funding round to bring the world’s first smart menstrual cup and connected app to market.

Emm will equip users to understand their individual menstrual baseline and track key metrics for personalised, actionable insights into their menstrual health.

The round was led by Lunar Ventures, with additional participation from the Labcorp Venture Fund, Tiny VC, BlueLion Global, Alumni Ventures (investor in Oura & Levels), and a network of high-profile angels, including Amar Shah (co-founder of Wayve), Vivek Garipalli (founder of Clover Health and Wormhole Capital), and Harpreet Rai (former CEO, Oura). Emm has also received non-dilutive funding, including grants that support innovation in women’s health technology.

Despite affecting half the global population, menstrual and women’s reproductive health remain among the most under-served areas in healthcare. 1 in 3 women will experience severe menstrual or reproductive health symptoms in their lifetime, yet both clinicians and individuals lack reliable tools for baseline measurement and tracking until now.

Emm is addressing this gap with a breakthrough wearable device that objectively measures menstrual flow volume and tracks key cycle metrics, such as duration, frequency and regularity – offering users accurate, personalised health insights for the first time, together with an absolute commitment to privacy.

The University of Liverpool has unveiled an ambitious plan to position the Liverpool City Region and the UK as a global leader in AI-driven materials research, development and innovation.

Announced at the University’s annual Vice-Chancellor’s Conference, the new £100 million AI Materials Hub for Innovation (AIM-HI) will be a flagship national facility dedicated to accelerating the application of artificial intelligence in materials chemistry.

Focusing on areas such as catalysis, materials for net-zero, soft matter and product formulation, AIM-HI will drive innovation in sectors crucial to the UK economy and the transition to net zero.

AIM-HI will feature state-of-the-art research and translational spaces, as well as an innovation incubator designed to foster collaboration between academic and industrial researchers.

Keyzy, a UK FinTech helping aspiring homeowners get onto the property ladder, has secured asset-backed funding to acquire over £130m worth of homes over the next 18 months.

The investment comes from Crayon Partners, a real estate private equity firm specialising in alternative living sectors, and will enable Keyzy to expand its portfolio by 250+ homes across Greater London by 2027, specifically targeting young professionals and key workers.

Keyzy and Crayon Partners are already acquiring £30m of properties in Q4 2025. This OpCo-PropCo partnership is the first of its kind in Europe, establishing a scalable model that allows Keyzy to bring on additional capital partners to fund future growth of its rent-to-own portfolio.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Shares in Sage Group plc have climbed 3.4% today.

The rise followed the announcement of a share buyback programme, commencing today, and the publication of strong annual results.

The share buyback is for aggregate consideration of up to £300 million, which will run no later than 19th March 2026. Sage is also increasing its full-year dividend by 7% to 21.85p.

However on 31st March 2026, after almost five years at Sage, Walid Abu-Hadba will step down as chief product officer and take on a new role as technology advisor to the group in a part-time capacity. The search for a successor is underway.

Dost, an AI-powered financial automation platform, has launched in the UK market following a £6 million Series A funding round led by Octopus Ventures.

Barcelona-based Dost says that it is bringing ‘battle-tested’ technology to these shores as it is already deployed across 150+ European enterprises across food, retail, manufacturing and other sectors. It has processed more than 4m accounting transactions since its foundation in 2021.

It is aiming to tackle a challenge plaguing British mid-market businesses: finance teams mired in manual invoice processing, data entry errors and approval bottlenecks.

Following a successful pilot phase with early UK enterprise customers across manufacturing, construction, logistics, and automotive sectors, Dost is now formalising its UK presence with a dedicated seven-person local team for sales, marketing, and customer success. 

The company’s CEO and co-founder, Adam Barbera, has relocated to London to lead the expansion.

SAPI, a payment-linked financing platform, has raised around £60 million in debt and equity funding. 

The funding – more than £57m in debt and almost £4m in equity – will be used to scale SAPI’s repayment-at-source technology and expand its global footprint.

The round was led by Hudson Cove, a US-based alternative credit asset manager, marking one of the firm’s inaugural UK transactions as it looks to expand beyond the United States – and received continued significant support from existing equity investors, Triple A Capital and Passion Capital. 

With offices in Hanoi and London, SAPI has recently established a financial technology entity in Vietnam to accelerate growth across Asia-Pacific markets.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Par Equity and Praetura Ventures have completed their merger to create PXN Group.

Billed as the  fastest-growing venture and investment firm outside of London and the South East, PXN has secured Financial Conduct Authority approval and set itself the target to unlock £1 billion in funding for high growth companies across the North of the UK by 2030.

This would see investment into promising Northern businesses boosted by 50%.

The firm will operate from offices in Manchester, Edinburgh, Yorkshire and London.