Author: Jonathan Symcox

Investment firm AshGrove has completed a senior secured financing in yachting tech platform Voly as the latter makes its fourth acquisition since its private equity takeover.

€1 billion AshGrove specialises in bespoke capital and financing solutions for B2B software and services businesses.

Voly, which provides software and services used to manage the financial and operational requirements of yachts and other high-value assets, was acquired by Magenta Partners in 2021.

AshGrove’s financing is supporting Voly’s investment in Oceanskies, a major provider of maritime employment and yacht registration services, extending the group’s strength in yacht crew employment, payroll, HR, compliance and registration services.

Independent online pharmacy The Family Chemist has announced rapid growth, with turnover expected to reach £50 million this year – and ambitions to double that to £100m next year.

The business attributes its rapid growth – having outgrown four sites since launching its weight-management service and currently looking for another – largely to soaring demand for GLP1-s and the expanding role pharmacies are playing in weight management.

Clinical director Sunny Dhain claims the soaring demand of GLP-1 weight-loss treatments is changing far more than the way obesity is treated. Instead, it is fundamentally reshaping the role of pharmacists and the services they provide.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Shares in FTSE 100 firm Melrose Industries have risen 10% today after it escaped criminal charges linked to a chemical incident in May.

The Birmingham-headquartered aerospace firm, which is listed in London, bought parts supplier GKN in 2018.

This summer, GKN’s Garden Grove site in California was evacuated after a ‘thermal issue’ was discovered in one of three tanks containing methyl methacrylate, a chemical used to manufacture high-strength aeroplane cabin windows. Once that was lifted, a restricted zone was kept in place around the facility.

Despite reports estimating that the incident affected more than 50,000 nearby residents, investigations by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office found no injuries, leaks or contamination resulting from the incident.  It has said that no criminal charges will be filed.

The firm is set to launch a $100m compensation scheme – remaining open into 2027 – which will “reimburse [residents and businesses] eligible for costs associated with the evacuation, including hotel stays, meals, transportation, loss of wages, and loss of use”.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

The acquisition of sports nutrition brand Huel by food giant Danone in a deal worth €1 billion has been cleared by UK competition regulators.

The deal was originally announced in March but last month the Competition and Markets Authority launched a merger inquiry which could have potentially scuppered it.

In the UK, the two businesses overlap in the supply of ready-to-drink meal replacement products to grocery retailers – Danone through its Alpro Meal-to-Go (M2G) meal replacement offering and Huel through its RTD ‘complete nutrition’ products.

The CMA found evidence that two businesses had monitored one another’s products and competed directly for customers.

However, it continued: “Taken together, the evidence indicates that whilst the merged entity will have a strong position in RTD meal replacement products and that the parties pose a degree of competitive constraint on each other, sufficient competitive alternatives will remain to constrain the merged entity.

“On this basis, the CMA has found that the merger would not give rise to a realistic prospect of a substantial lessening of  competition… in the supply of RTD meal replacement products to grocery retailers in the UK.”

 

 

Itoflow, an AI platform helping professional investment teams scale research and portfolio management, has raised $2.5 million in pre-seed funding led by Balderton Capital and including angel investors such as Cleo founder Barney Hussey-Yeo.

Founded this year, Itoflow is building AI agents that learn how each investment firm researches opportunities, manages risk and reviews portfolios. The platform does not impose a particular investment philosophy: it turns each team’s own approach into governed workflows that can operate continuously across global markets and asset classes, including equities, bonds, ETFs, commodities and digital assets.

Built from the ground up, its agentic infrastructure gives Itoflow greater control over the security and reliability of agents designed to operate for months or years as markets change.

Co-founder and CEO Aditya Jha spent nine years as a quantitative researcher at JPMorgan, RBC and most recently Tower Research Capital. The wider founding team previously built large-scale infrastructure at Apple, Google and Microsoft and also brings quantitative research experience from JPMorgan.

Public Digital, a global digital transformation consultancy, has appointed Alex Jones as senior director in its global impact team, strengthening its senior expertise in AI and technology-led transformation.

Jones joins PD after more than 20 years leading digital, data and technology work across the UK government and internationally through roles in global development.

Most recently, he served as interim director of the Government’s AI incubator, i.AI, leading the development of AI applications for public services and building partnerships with Google DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic.

He previously served as executive director for insights, research and AI at Ofsted, head of emerging futures and technology at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, and as head of evidence and transformation at No.10, where he advised the Prime Minister and Cabinet and founded 10DS, its first data science team.

Clarus Networks Group has appointed Stuart Castell as chief revenue officer as the business accelerates its global growth strategy and strengthens its position in enterprise connectivity and low Earth orbit technology.

Castell returned to Clarus earlier this year as commercial director, having previously worked with the business and built much of his career in satellite communications and technology. He has held several C-suite positions and has also founded, owned and operated his own successful satellite communications business.

Phones 4u founder John Caudwell and former Marks & Spencer boss Lord Stuart Rose have joined over 150 business leaders & parliamentarians calling on ministers to ‘stop the creep of taxes on Britain’s businesses’.

The two men are the most prominent of a wave of influential backers of founder group Helm’s Stop the Creep campaign, alongside Christos Angelides, CEO of fashion retailer Reiss, and Charlie Mullins, who founded Pimlico Plumbers.

In an open letter they say they want the Government to make the Autumn Budget on 28th October the moment it delivers on its pro-growth promises.

 

Board Intelligence, the board technology and advisory firm, has appointed Christopher Tacey-Green as its first chief technology officer.

He joins from international bank and wealth manager Investec, where he was head of engineering.

A former founder who has built and scaled technology from the ground up, Tacey-Green combines deep expertise in AI, cloud, and machine learning with over ten years’ experience leading high-performance development teams.

Board Intelligence recently expanded into AI-powered legal technology with the acquisition of Juristic in July 2026 and the promotion of Anders Gröndahl to senior vice president, AI transformation & performance.

Two new schemes are to launch in Barnsley to help residents use AI in simple, practical ways – from applying for jobs and preparing for interviews, to training for roles where digital and AI tools are becoming part of day-to-day work.

AI Career Launchpad will offer flexible training and paid work placements with employers, while the Getting Job Ready with AI pilot will support jobseekers.

This comes six months after Barnsley became the UK’s first government-designated Tech Town.

Oxford Nanopore Technologies plc has appointed a new chief development and product officer.

The nanopore-based molecular sensing firm said David Miller will join at the start of next month while Conor McKechnie will join as chief marketing and communications officer on 1^st October.

Miller joins Oxford Nanopore from Pacific Biosciences, where he served as head of research & development and vice president, global marketing. Prior to that, he held senior product leadership roles at Illumina, including responsibility for major platform launches.  

McKechnie​ joins from Cytiva, where he has served as group vice president, marketing. He previously held senior marketing, communications and public affairs roles at GE Healthcare.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A Madrid tech firm has acquired Manchester-headquartered Skyrise.

Taptap Digital says Skyrise complements its AI-powered location intelligence platform with one of the UK’s most advanced privacy-first audience design capabilities.

The combined offering enables advertisers to identify, activate, and measure audiences more effectively without relying on cookies or personal identifiers, delivering deeper insights and stronger business outcomes.

Skyrise will operate under its own brand as part of Taptap Digital. CEO Paul Barnard, who has led the business since 2023, will remain in his role alongside the existing management team. 

The acquisition will see Skyrise founders Ian Vint, Michelle Vint and Alex Petrie exit the business.

Leeds Digital Festival has unveiled plans for its 11th edition, placing the event at the heart of economic and commercial expansion across the city region’s thriving technology sector.

The organisers are preparing to deliver the most varied schedule in the festival’s history, bringing together domestic businesses, international tech firms and investors to build on the area’s reputation as a primary engine for northern innovation.

A new study by The Data City shows the sector’s growth is also outpacing the national picture when compared with any other local authority outside London. Leeds tech companies are expanding at an estimated 8.3% a year, compared with a UK average of 8.1%, while almost one in eight (13%) are classified as high-growth, posting annual growth rates above 20%. 

Altogether, the Leeds tech sector is estimated to contribute £1.67 billion in gross value added, at a scale and pace of growth that the city’s digital community will put centre stage at Leeds Digital Festival.

Taking place from 21st September to 2nd October, the UK’s largest open-platform tech event will bring together thousands of entrepreneurs, tech leaders, software developers and global investors. The 2026 programme aims to eclipse previous attendance records and build on a decade of growth that has established Leeds as one of the premier technology hubs outside London.

This year marks a significant transition for the festival leadership team, with Deb Hetherington taking charge for the first time as director, succeeding long-serving founder Stuart Clarke MBE, who is now chair.

Embedd, a startup building infrastructure for physical AI, has raised £2 million in pre-seed funding led by Seedcamp. 

It is already working with multiple semiconductor firms, most recently partnering with Microchip Technology. 

From cars to medical devices, nearly $19 billion has been invested in robotics and physical AI so far this year. Yet every intelligent machine encounters the same bottleneck before it can operate – the software running underneath it must communicate reliably with dozens of different chips, none of which share a common language.

Embedd automates that layer. Instead of engineers reading thousands of pages of documentation and hand-writing the code, Embedd creates a digital twin of the hardware, giving its AI agents the context to run the integration, and generates the code that makes each chip usable by the software above it.

The London-based deep tech company says it has enabled customers to deliver production-ready software for chips up to six times faster.

Embedd was founded by Ukrainian tech entrepreneurs Michael Lazarenko, Maxim Gorinov and Valentin Gololobov after their previous hardware company was hit by chip shortages during Covid and later disrupted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Forced to repeatedly rewrite software for newly sourced components, the founders recognised a bottleneck they believed would only worsen as AI moved into the physical world.

SCALE has appointed Amy Knight as chief communications officer and director.

Knight has been promoted from her previous role as communications director and has also become a shareholder in the business.

The move recognises Knight’s contribution to SCALE’s development, including her work founding and developing its female-focused platform, Women Who Scale.

Five of the UK’s most innovative startups have been selected to compete in the live Cambridge Tech Week Pitching Competition this September.

The finalists were selected from a shortlist representing 20 of the UK’s most exciting, DeepTech innovations across artificial intelligence, biotechnology, sustainable energy, MedTech and AgriTech.

They are HotHouse Therapeutics, HutanBio, Lambda Energy, Myonerv and Xplore Intelligence.

Law firm Freeths has announced the appointment of John Jones as its new CTO.

Jones will work across Freeths’ 12 UK offices. With more than 30 years’ experience in technology and professional services, he brings a strong track record in leading complex IT environments and large‑scale transformation programmes.

He began his career as a software developer, working on business‑critical applications before progressing into senior leadership roles within professional services firms. Most recently, he served as CTO at Forvis Mazars, having previously held senior technology positions at BDO.

Contollo Group has strengthened its senior team with the appointment of Matthew Mackey FRICS as director.

The firm says it signals a major step in the group’s ambition to redefine the UK construction consultancy market.

Mackey joins Contollo following nearly three decades in senior commercial leadership roles across the UK and Australia, bringing deep expertise in cost planning, procurement reform, benchmarking, Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) strategy, digital transformation and commercial leadership. 

His advisory work spans major programmes and developments across healthcare, aviation, commercial offices, sport, education, retail banking and infrastructure in both the UK and Australia.

Ripjar, the provider of smarter screening and risk intelligence solutions, has appointed Conrad Nicholas as chief product officer and Katie Miller as VP marketing.

Nicholas joins from Droit, where, as head of product for pre-trade compliance, he led the product line through a period in which the company’s revenue doubled, ahead of its acquisition by FIS. Previously, he spent 12 years at UBS and began his career at Accenture.

Miller spent over seven years at AML Analytics as group head of marketing and communications, spanning the financial crime, RegTech and supervisory technology sectors.

Made Smarter has bolstered its North West team with four new specialists as SME manufacturers accelerate investment in technology and skills.

Mike Richards-Brown and Tabs Khojani will help firms find practical ways to digitalise their operations, while Jane Duffy and Mike Connolly will help businesses prepare their people and develop the leadership needed to deliver change.

Together they bring decades of experience from some of the region’s leading manufacturing, technology and business support organisations.

Richards-Brown joins following roles at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre North West (AMRC NW) and the North of England Robotics Innovation Centre (NERIC).

Khojani brings 20 years of experience in Greater Manchester’s innovation and business support sector and also joins from NERIC at the University of Salford.

Duffy previously supported businesses through the Business Growth Hub across Greater Manchester, while Connolly, a Mechanical Engineer, has spent more than three decades with global manufacturer Hubbell, working across engineering, quality, operations and HR.

Their recruitment to the Government-backed adoption programme comes as manufacturers face growing pressure to become more productive, overcome skills challenges and keep pace with rapidly evolving technologies.

New registrations rose 49% last year, with a further 128 manufacturers coming forward in the first five months of 2026/27.

The new recruits will work alongside Made Smarter’s existing team to help companies develop a digital roadmap and decide where and how to invest, including accessing match-funded grants of up to £20,000.