Bite-size news and insight from UK business and tech – including funding, deals and appointments
Author: Chris Maguire
Power Tool World, one of the UK’s leading online retailers of professional tools, is to invest up to £5m in a new 36,000 sq ft automated warehouse facility in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham.
The move will more than double the company’s footprint as it scales up operations following double-digit year-on-year growth.
The company currently operates across two sites totalling 30,000 sq ft. The addition of a third facility will more than double its fulfilment capabilities.
The rapid growth follows a strategic turnaround led by managing director Liam Rafferty, who joined the business just over a year ago.
Under Rafferty’s leadership, Power Tool World has restructured key operations across e-commerce, procurement, IT and data analysis.
The changes have helped increase revenue from £40m to a forecast £58m this year.
Established in 1997, the business now employs 50 people and processes between 800 and 1,500 orders a day across its two existing Newton Aycliffe sites.
Author: Chris Maguire
A near-death experience was the catalyst for Ian Hudson to try to create a business with a turnover of £100m.
The entrepreneur is the founder of IT support provider commited and was recently included in BusinessCloud’s inaugural Founder 250 list.
After 20 years of growth and the successful acquisition of 14 businesses, the company has increased its turnover to £25m and recently rebranded from Hudson Hill Consulting.
Hudson is all about new beginnings and admits that it is a miracle he is here at all.
In 2019, he collapsed with Covid – before it had been declared a pandemic and the world went into lockdown.
He spent three weeks in intensive care, and his family was advised to say their goodbyes – but Hudson had other ideas.
After recovering from Covid, he took 18 months off before realising retirement was not for him and set out his stall to build a business with a turnover of £100m.
“After nearly dying, it made me focus on living in the moment and enjoying every minute,” he said.
Author: Chris Maguire
Former Dragons’ Den star James Caan CBE has been appointed as a strategic adviser to an AI-powered recruitment platform following its £1m seed funding round.
London-based Alfa AI was founded by Alfie Whattam, Ed Godshaw and Dr Linda Yu in 2025.
Its AI-powered tool automates the hiring process by finding and screening top candidates and connecting them with employers.
The latest £1m seed funding round was led by Sake Bosch, with participation from FirstDegree, Golden Egg Check and Black Green Capital. The funding will be used to accelerate product development and support the company’s expansion.
Caan’s appointment comes at a pivotal moment for the technology startup as organisations increasingly adopt artificial intelligence to improve hiring outcomes, reduce recruitment costs and address growing talent shortages.
Author: Chris Maguire
London-based AI chip startup has been valued at $3.3bn (£2.5bn) Olix after announcing a $312m Series B financing round.
The valuation is remarkable as Olix was only founded in 2024 by 25-year-old James Dacombe – who famously dropped out of sixth form after just two days.
The round included Fundomo, Arm and Hudson River Trading, alongside angel investors including Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix, with existing investors all increasing their commitments.
Olix, which is designing the next generation of AI chips, has also secured backing from the UK Government’s Sovereign AI venture fund.
Based in London and with offices in Bristol, Olix is developing faster, cheaper and more energy-efficient AI chips and is one of the UK’s newest unicorns.
Alongside the round, Olix has appointed Professor Nick McKeown to its board of directors.
Author: Chris Maguire
Matillion, the AI data automation company, has appointed veteran enterprise data executive Girish Pancha as its new chief executive.
He’ll succeed founder Matthew Scullion, who will remain an ‘active member of the company’s board of directors’.
The company has also appointed Sanjay Krishnamurthi as its new chief development officer.
Scullion, who co-founded Matillion with Ed Thompson in 2011, said: “The handover is real: Girish is the CEO, the company is his to lead, and he has my complete support.
“I am immensely proud of what the Matillion team has built and deeply confident about the opportunity ahead.”
Matillion achieved unicorn status in 2021 when a $150m Series E funding round took its valuation beyond the magical $1bn mark.
Author: Chris Maguire
Unseen Group has completed its 12th and 13th acquisitions with deals for early-careers recruitment business The Ladder Group (TLG) and HR tech advisory firm The Udder Group (Udder).
The future talent partner for enterprise employers now has more than 145 full-time equivalent employees globally.
Zac Williams, CEO of Unseen Group, said: “Welcoming both The Ladder Group and Udder to Unseen is a huge moment for us.
“We have spent years building and acquiring hiring technology platforms, with our solutions supporting some of the world’s largest employers across every stage of the talent journey. These two acquisitions take that even further.”
The acquisition of The Ladder Group strengthens Unseen’s early-careers recruitment and delivery capabilities.
Daniel Ball, founder of The Ladder Group, said: “Combining The Ladder Group’s expertise with Unseen’s technology platforms means we will be able to deliver even more innovative, end-to-end solutions for our clients while accelerating our impact.”
Alan Walker, co-founder of Udder, said: “What drew us to Unseen was a shared belief that technology should make hiring better and more human, as well as a real appreciation for what makes Udder different.”
Enablis, an AI-native technology consultancy based in Leeds, has expanded into London.
The Leeds firm, led by Sarah Pawson – star of our Founder 250 list – has opened an office in Farringdon and appointed two senior leaders to support its next phase of growth.
The new office, which opened on 13th July, is joined by the appointments of Matt Feeney as chief AI officer and Mark Melvin as client partner.
Author: Jonathan Symcox
Transport technology provider Tracsis has disposed of one of its divisions days after agreeing an £48 million acquisition.
The listed Leeds company has sold its events transport planning and management business to Connection Capital for £7.25m cash.
Last week Tracsis said it had agreed to acquire Mistral Data, a wholly owned subsidiary of FirstGroup plc.
Author: Jonathan Symcox
RWS Holdings plc has agreed a £22.4 million deal to acquire a French rival.
RWS is a London-listed AI content localisation services firm headquartered in Berkshire which turned over almost £700 million last year.
It said this morning it will acquire Acogroup, the parent company of Acolad, a global provider of language and content solutions headquartered in the Paris region.
Author: Jonathan Symcox
The leader of Mind Gym plc is to step down due to ill health.
Octavius Black CBE will leave his role as executive chair at the behavioural science company and also step down from the board, it said.
Black co-founded MindGym in 2000 with Dr Sebastian Bailey and has led the company throughout its 26-year history, including its admission to London’s junior AIM public market in 2018.
Under his leadership MindGym has grown into an international behavioural science business that has worked with the majority of the FTSE 100 and S&P 100 and changed the way millions of professionals think, feel and behave at work.
Author: Jonathan Symcox
A technology-led motor finance firm has been rescued shortly after it appointed administrators.
On Thursday Blue Motor Finance was placed into administration. Simon Edel, Richard Barker and Alan Michael Hudson of Ernst & Young LLP were appointed as joint administrators.
The firm had been running at a loss for a number of years and faced significant compensation liabilities it could not meet, according to the Financial Conduct Authority.
However shortly afterwards it was announced that a pre-pack sale of the business and the majority of its assets to bank Hodge had gone through.
The firm has been led by former 118 118 Money CEO and Sainsbury’s executive Ali Chaudhry for the last two years. He is now listed on LinkedIn as the interim MD of motor at Hodge.
Author: Jonathan Symcox
Ian Johnson has retired from the board and as CEO of Big Technologies plc amid the firm’s boardroom battle with its founder Sara Murray OBE.
The company – trading as Buddi – confirmed this morning that Johnson, who only joined the company 16 months ago, has departed as planned following a handover period with acting CEO Charles Lewinton.
Big said it is undertaking a formal process to find a permanent CEO and that it had created and issued new shares to Lewinton.
The company is currently suing Murray for hundreds of millions of pounds after accusing her of forgery and deliberate falsification of documents to push through the company’s £577m IPO in 2021. Murray was dismissed as CEO in March 2025 over the accusations, and her assets have been frozen amid the subsequent and ongoing £320m High Court battle.
She continues to hold 25% of the voting rights in the firm and last month was successful in removing Camilla Macun as a non-executive director at its AGM. She and her supporters however failed to remove three other directors.
Rightmove plc is to commence a share repurchase programme up to a maximum aggregate consideration of £350 million.
The property portal aims to reduce the company’s share capital. As such, all ordinary shares repurchased under the programme will be cancelled.
For the first six months of the year, it has reported 7% revenue growth to £225.8m, while profit before tax climbed from £146.5m to £149.1m.
Rightmove expects to return over £400m to shareholders by 31st July 2027, including share buybacks of around £330m.
TaskHer has raised £650,000 in funding to expand its platform connecting homeowners with verified, skilled tradeswomen.
The round was co-led by Trust for London, Resolution Ventures, Ufi Ventures and Second Century Ventures (as part of the REACH UK programme), alongside participation from angel investors from Daring Capital.
The investment will support the next phase of TaskHer’s growth, including expansion into B2B partnerships with housing associations, women’s refuges and lettings agencies.
Funding will also support platform development, initiatives designed to bring more women into skilled trades, and the continued growth of its network of verified tradeswomen, helping make home services hiring safer and more transparent.
TaskHer was founded in 2022 by Anna Moynihan and Paul Moynihan after their experience managing a home renovation highlighted the lack of female tradespeople on site, sparking a wider conversation about visibility, access and gender imbalance in the industry.
The British Business Bank contributed £19 million to a £225m Series C round which valued PhysicsX at £1.8 billion.
The UK company is developing and deploying its AI-native engineering platform to accelerate hardware innovation and drive engineering and manufacturing productivity in industrial organisations.
The firm is headquartered in the United Kingdom, with offices in London and New York, and an expanding presence in San Francisco’s Bay Area and Singapore.
The round was led by Temasek, with participation from new investors M&G Investments and Intrepid Growth Partners, alongside existing investors including Applied Materials, Atomico, General Catalyst, July Fund, NGP, NVIDIA, Radius and Siemens.
It also included the fourth investment made the British Business Bank’s British Growth Partnership Fund I since its £200m first close.
The BBB said M&G Investments’ contribution demonstrated how the British Growth Partnership’s co-investment model can bring additional pension fund capital into UK venture. Pension funds can increase exposure to fast-growing UK companies while businesses can tap into large pools of domestic institutional capital, it said.
The Competition and Markets Authority has launched an investigation into Microsoft following concerns that customers may not have been given clear information upfront about subscription options when changes were made to Microsoft 365 Personal and Family plans – including adding new features such as Copilot.
It said the investigation focuses on changes made to these Microsoft 365 plans, which provide people across the UK with access to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Copilot, among other features. These plans can be purchased on a monthly or annual basis.
From January 2025, Microsoft automatically gave existing customers access to new features, such as Copilot, at no extra cost for the remaining subscription period. The CMA says that when the subscription ended, customers were automatically rolled on to a plan with the additional features at a higher price, unless they took steps to either pick another plan or end their subscription.
Microsoft stopped offering Personal and Family plans to new subscribers without these new features.
For existing customers on Personal and Family plans, Microsoft introduced a time-limited option to switch to a ‘Classic’ plan. Classic plans offered customers the same features they had access to before the changes, at the same price. For annual Microsoft 365 Personal and Family Plan customers, the plan was £25 a year more than the Classic versions of these plans.
Author: Chris Maguire
Fashion brand ARNE has announced plans for a café alongside its flagship store at Liverpool ONE.
ARNE was founded by Liverpool brothers Ryan and Reece Broadhurst in 2018, and the pair now have an estimated fortune of £110m.
The brothers have been included in BusinessCloud’s Founder 250 list, which recognises 250 of the UK’s best founder-led and founder-influenced businesses.
The online clothing and footwear brand successfully opened its first-ever permanent bricks-and-mortar flagship store in Liverpool ONE last September.
Following the success of ARNE Bites, which offers a mix of ice creams, milkshakes, coffee and freshly baked goods, the company will launch its first Café ARNE, offering an outdoor dining experience
A spokesman said: “For anyone wondering why, Café ARNE allows us to give more than just a shopping experience.
“It’s a chance to tell the story of the brand in a more intimate way, a chance for us to give back to you for all of your custom over the years and still today (free drinks and bites for amounts spent in-store), a chance to enjoy amazing bites and beverages in an elevated environment, and a chance to build a community and something we’ve always envisioned as being part of the brand.”
ARNE now has stores in Liverpool and Manchester, while its head office is at Birchwood Park, near Warrington.
Author: Jonathan Symcox
A FinTech company which took investment from Manchester United legend Rio Ferdinand early on has disclosed its financials for the first time.
Sokin, which in January secured a $100 million long-term debt facility from Oxford Finance – having announced a £38m Series B fundraise in December – said it had closed the first half of 2026 at $90m in run-rate net revenue.
Sokin was unveiled as United’s official global business payment solutions partner in August.
Author: Chris Maguire
Rob Waller has joined Happl, an AI-native employee benefits platform for global companies, as its new director of technology.
Happl was founded by tech entrepreneur Ben Towers, who was just 27 when he was awarded an MBE in the King’s New Year Honours List.
The company, which has offices in London and New York, is backed by Y Combinator – the Silicon Valley incubator that helped launch Airbnb and Reddit – as well as notable investors including Tom Blomfield, co-founder of Monzo and GoCardless.
Towers, who has been included in BusinessCloud’s Founder 250, was awarded an MBE for services to the startup business community after founding his first business at the age of 11.
He was identified as ‘one of the UK’s most exciting entrepreneurs’ by Richard Branson while still a teenager.
Waller, who previously worked at TELUS Health, said: “It’s about time I shared that I’ve joined Happl as director of technology. The more I learned about what they’re building, the more I had to be part of it.
“Happl’s using technology and AI to totally change what employee benefits can do for both employees and employers. They’re not bolting AI onto an old system, but rethinking that system entirely.
“I’m grateful to Ben Towers for trusting me with such an important role as we grow Happl into the best benefits platform on the market.”
In May, Happl raised £8.1m in an oversubscribed Series A funding round led by Portage Ventures.
The digital car finance platform was founded by brothers Reg and Louis Rixin 2006, who were included in BusinessCloud’s Founder 250 list.
From 1 September, the new office will initially be home to 12 team members, including existing employees based in the Bournemouth area, with plans to scale quickly by early 2027. The company is actively recruiting as it responds to growing customer demand.
Car Finance 247’s new home is within Victoria House in Westbourne, a landmark office building that has recently undergone a £5m refurbishment.
The move marks a major milestone for the business, which has over 500 employees at its HQ and a field-based sales team across the UK.
Bournemouth was chosen for its strong pool of financial services and sales talent. The office will focus on direct-to-consumer sales, supporting customers nationwide while working alongside the company’s centralised operations in Manchester.
Louis Rix, chief operating officer at Car Finance 247, said: “Bournemouth offers access to a strong talent pool and we already have colleagues based in the area. As the business continues to grow, it made sense to establish a permanent base that allows us to attract and develop more sales talent.”