Author: Jonathan Symcox

Mike Says is to retire as CEO of GB Bank after leading the challenger brand from pre-authorisation to profitability.

He will be succeeded by Eddie Trahearn, currently chief strategy & financial officer – subject to regulatory approval – at the end of April 2026.

Since joining in 2021, Say has overseen a period of rapid growth and transformation. Under his leadership, GB Bank secured its full banking licence, raised growth capital to support expansion, grew the lending book to approximately £800 million, built an institutional funding line franchise supported by a diversified deposit platform, and increased the balance sheet 7x to over £2 billion. 

Green marine tech firm Sulnox Group Plc has reported record revenues.

The London firm, which aims to deliver measurable improvements in fuel efficiency, emissions and performance, is listed on the Aquis Stock Exchange and traded on the OTC Market in the US.

For the year ended 31st March 2026, revenues topped £2.6 million compared with £1.2m in the prior year – up 134%. It did not report on P&L.

It said repeat sales drove expansion across global marine markets, supported by multiple new customers. It reported engagement with around 100 shipping companies, up from 55 a year ago.

Post period-end, Sulnox raised £2m to support continued commercial expansion and further investment in R&D.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

ZOO Digital Group plc has reported a fall in annual revenues – but profits jumped after it slashed millions off its cost base for the second successive year.

The Sheffield-based firm, which has offices in the United States, works with some of the world’s biggest streaming platforms on subtitling and dubbing content.

For the year ended 31st March 2026, the media group expects to report adjusted EBITDA of at least $3.8 million – in line with market expectations – compared with $1.1m in the previous year. The year before that, it reported a $13.6m loss. 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

North East technology firm Vianet Group plc has named a new CEO alongside steady annual results.

Vianet, based in Stockton-on-Tees, provides data analytics to vending machine companies and pubs, using its technology to link machinery to the internet and to track data and customer spending patterns. Its products include software used by pubs and bars to track information about sales and stock levels.

The firm was founded in 1995 and has been AIM-listed since 2006. It connects 40,000 retail machines and 10,000 hospitality venues – across 300+ customers, with a strong presence in the United States – with technology and insights.

James Dickson will step down as CEO and return to his role as chairman of the board. Craig Brocklehurst, who in 2019 was promoted from commercial operations director to head up the company’s smart zones division – which focuses on its pub work – will become CEO on 31st May 2026.

Author: Bradley Russell, head of Manchester & North West, UBS Global Wealth Management

An exit is rarely just a transaction; it is often a complex process. For founders, it is the moment when years of effort, reinvestment, and concentrated risk are converted into personal capital.

The deal may be the headline, but the more important questions often begin afterwards.

After years spent building and leading a business, entrepreneurs can move quickly from running a company to stewarding significant private wealth. Alongside the financial shift comes a personal one: a change in pace, identity, and long-term ambition. 

Three themes tend to shape that next chapter most clearly: liquidity, longevity and legacy.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

London e-bike operator Forest has secured a further £27 million in funding, taking its total Series B round to £40m.

The investment comes at a time of significant growth for the business, which has cemented its position as a market leader in London’s shared e-bike sector – the largest in the world. 

Forest, which entered London’s bike share market in 2020, has scaled its user base to 1.5m – representing 100% year-on-year growth – and now completes 2m rides per month across 18 boroughs in the capital. 

The funding round sees Forest’s e-bike manufacturer take a minority stake in the company. The strategic partnership with OKAI, a sector first, gives Forest direct input into the design and build of its fleet. 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

LemFi, a financial services platform for underserved communities globally, is investing £100 million in the UK over the next five years as it selects London as its new global headquarters.

The announcement was made by the UK Government during the state visit of President Bola Tinubu of Nigeria.

LemFi serves more than two million global customers, enabling cross-border payments to over 30 countries.

Smart money app Plum has announced that the company reached operational profitability for the first time in January 2026. 

Plum has multiple income streams spanning customer subscriptions, asset-based revenue and transaction revenue, which have together contributed to the company achieving this positive EBITDA milestone.

The app has benefited from steep growth in the last 18 months. Hundreds of thousands of new customers have been actively using Plum to manage their money, taking overall downloads to more than 5 million. 

YFM Equity Partners has invested £7.6m from its Buyout Funds into Swanky, a full-service Shopify Platinum agency headquartered in Exeter.

Swanky specialises in helping ambitious retailers and brands launch, scale and optimise their eCommerce operations within the Shopify ecosystem.

Founded by Dan McIvor and led by Dan Partridge since 2021, Swanky has expanded its team to around 70 employees.

YFM’s investment will support Swanky’s continued growth, including further investment in talent and service capability, as well as pursuing selective M&A opportunities.

As part of the transaction, Chris Hirst (formerly Global CEO at Havas Creative Group) joins Swanky as its chair. Elly Adams (formerly PWC and Oxygen House Group) joins the board as CFO, and Amy Dougan has been promoted to COO. Matt Giles remains an executive board member as co-founder and chief creative officer.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A Manchester delivery tech firm which once raised almost $100 million in investment has been sold for £1 – and the acquirer has endured trials and tribulations of its own.

Sorted Group Holdings has joined Bristol-headquartered Huboo, which itself raised more than $150m funding but was saved from administration just before Christmas 2024 in a £9 deal.

The news comes just two years after Location Sciences completed its reverse takeover of Sorted in a £66.73 deal and it was admitted to the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Idox plc plans to leave the London Stock Exchange’s junior AIM market on 29th May as its £340 million takeover nears.

The firm has urged shareholders to submit their acceptances of the offer from US-based investment manager Long Path, an existing investor in the company, or risk losing out when it re-registers as private company on that date.

The Woking-headquartered software company has been listed in London for a quarter of a century but agreed a deal late last year with Long Path, via vehicle Frankel, to be taken private.

Once the threshold of 90% has been passed, on 29th May any shareholders who haven’t responded may find the liquidity, marketability and value of their holdings are affected, it warned.

IQE plc, a global supplier of compound semiconductor wafer products and advanced material solutions, has raised a combined £81 million.

The Cardiff firm closed a placing and retail offer raising an aggregate of £13m and has also raised investment from MACOM as well as reinvesting existing convertible loan notes.

 The fundraising is conditional on the passing of resolutions by shareholders on 15th May 2026 and on MACOM obtaining clearance.

WPP has reported a 6% drop in first quarter revenues to £3.03 billion.

The agency giant positions itself as a growth partner to world-leading brands and brings its services together via WPP Open, an agentic marketing platform.

“During the first quarter, WPP’s new business momentum continued to build with a number of new client assignments as well as significant client retentions,” it stated to the London Stock Exchange this morning.

“WPP also announced a unique ‘Google Earth AI’ integration in collaboration with Google Cloud, expanded its partnership with Adobe and secured a number of new data partnerships.”

Author: Jonathan Symcox

A UK-headquartered AI superintelligence company has raised $1.1 billion in seed funding.

Ineffable Intelligence has been backed by the Government’s Sovereign AI Fund and the British Business Bank – the latter of which invested £15 million – as well as Sequioa, Lightspeed, NVIDIA, Index, Google, EQT, Evantic, Flying Fish, DST Global and BOND. 

The round represents the largest European seed round in history.

Leeds Digital’s Mini-Fest concluded last week, celebrating a city where tech innovation is creating high-value career pathways and cementing the region’s status as a premier global hub. 

As the digital economy in the city expands 125% faster than the national average, hundreds of delegates gathered to see how Leeds is proactively solving society’s biggest challenges. 

From deploying AI to promote online safety and prevent consumer harm to pioneering preventative health measures and robust cybersecurity defences, the ‘small but mighty’ three-day event served as a powerful showcase of technology being used as a force for good.

Serving as the official curtain raiser to the main Leeds Digital Festival in September, the Mini-Fest (21st–23rd April) highlighted the vital work being done to bridge the gap between education and employment. 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Molten Ventures shares are up more than 100% in the last 12 months.

The investor saw its share price rise 5% today to 560p after issuing a trading update which pointed to strong growth in net asset value and gross portfolio value.

There are several other positive pointers for investors.

Autotrader, the UK’s largest automotive marketplace, has revealed that its AI-powered Co-Driver tools are now used by 85% of retailers advertising on the platform — equating to around 11,000 businesses — saving the industry an estimated 200,000 hours (or nearly 20 years) of manual work in just over a year since launch.

Adoption is even higher among retailers accessing the AI solution via Autotrader’s customer Portal accounts.

Co-Driver uses Autotrader’s vehicle taxonomy, pricing and market data, overlaid with its unique car buyer insight to generate vehicle descriptions, manage images and identify key highlights, significantly reducing the time and effort required to create compelling and highly accurate adverts.

In the last 12 months alone, Co-Driver has generated more than 2.5 million AI-created vehicle descriptions and smart image re-orders, moving AI beyond industry hype to become a standard part of day-to-day advertising for thousands of UK automotive businesses.

Factory automation specialist FANUC has named Andy Armstrong as the new managing director of FANUC UK and FANUC Ireland.

With a long history in the automation sector and over 40 years’ experience in engineering & sales, Armstrong has spent the past two years as vice MD for FANUC UK and FANUC Ireland.

FANUC has a portfolio of industrial robots, robot systems and all-electric injection moulding machines.

Scotland Women in Technology (SWiT) will fund two new cohorts of The Data Lab’s Data and AI Leadership Programme in a bid to boost AI leadership skills among women working in the Scottish tech ecosystem.

This is announced as part of a wider multi-year partnership between SWiT and The Data Lab to create opportunities for early to mid-career women in data and AI across Scotland.

Over the next two years, SWiT will fund places for 40 women to participate in one of The Data Lab’s most successful development programmes.

The course will be delivered through a blend of virtual and in-person sessions extending the reach of the programme and participants across the length and breadth of Scotland.

DeepTech startup Loc.ai has raised £1 million in pre-seed funding, led by Fuel Ventures.

Developing off-cloud AI infrastructure, Loc.ai directly addresses a critical issue threatening AI scalability: the escalating costs and privacy concerns driven by cloud-based inference.

The startup was part of the Google for Startups Accelerator 2025’s initial cohort.