Author: Jonathan Symcox

Pri0r1ty Intelligence Group PLC has rescued employee benefits startup Pirkx from administration.

Pirkx was co-founded in 2018 by Stella Smith and aimed at the gig economy – a sector which employs millions of people in the UK alone but does not generally offer many employee benefits.

In 2022 it set an ambitious target of reaching a million people by 2025. Total funding in the business to date is £5.4m.

However it fell some way short of that million-person target, with just 10,800 active paying members in the UK as of June this year. 

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Apple is facing a £2 billion lawsuit in the UK after being accused of imposing ‘unfair’ app tracking rules on third-party developers.

The legal action was filed at London’s Competition Appeal Tribunal on Thursday by ATT Collective Action Limited, led by Ann Pope, a former senior official with UK regulator the Competition and Markets Authority.

The App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework, launched in 2021, requires user authorisation to access data tracked across other apps. Developers say it has significantly hit their ability to generate revenues through advertising, while increasing the cost of attracting new users.

The lawsuit argues that Apple has applied less restrictive standards to its own advertising and data collection activities. It also claims that Apple did not consult app developers on the changes.

Author: Chris Maguire

River Capital has provided a £500,000 funding package to Cortus Advisory Group, the multi-award-winning M&A advisory firm.

The money will be used to support its next phase of growth and the creation of a significant number of new roles.

Founded in the North West in 2020 by CEO Nicola Merritt – who was included in BusinessCloud’s 2025 Northern Leaders list – Cortus has grown to a team of 60+ in six years, with revenues climbing significantly over the same period.

The firm now operates from six offices across Manchester, Preston, Leeds, Nottingham, Birmingham and London, delivering transaction services, corporate finance, financial modelling, data analytics and value creation advice to mid-market businesses with enterprise values typically between £10m and £50m.

Author: Chris Maguire

CN Corporate Finance – the North West-based corporate finance advisory firm formerly known as CN Strategic Advisors – has marked its third anniversary with a new name following another year of growth in turnover, headcount and deal activity.

The firm, founded in 2023 by former RSM and Forvis Mazars dealmaker Dave Baggott, alongside his brother Andy, has changed its name to CN Corporate Finance to better reflect its specialism in corporate finance and M&A.

CN, which has offices in Manchester and Cheadle, has grown to a team of 12, including a five-strong deal advisory team. In the last 12 months, the firm has advised on 11 transactions with a value of more than £85m, as well as a host of other strategic advisory projects.

Established as a boutique corporate finance advisory firm, CN’s focus is on supporting founders, management teams and shareholders through the key stages of their business lifecycle, from growth and acquisition through to succession and exit.

Dave Baggott, partner at CN Corporate Finance, leads the firm’s deal advisory team together with brother Andy, also a highly experienced accountant and corporate finance professional, and the team also includes Syme Anwar and James Cox. The firm is planning further recruitment over the next six months.

Baggott said: “We’re incredibly proud of the progress the business has made over the past three years. Our growth has been driven by a clear focus on delivering high-quality, partner-led advice and building long-term relationships with our clients.

“The last 12 months has seen us increasing capacity and experience within our advisory team and we’re now dealing with more and larger mandates for both buyside and sell-side transactions.”

Recent deals the firm has advised on include the sale of Manchester-based commercial heating and cooling specialist Kool It to Nordic Climate Group, the sale of Stockport-based audio-visual integration specialist Pioneer Group to global AV and digital experiences specialist Trison, and the acquisition of Bastion Security Services by high-security and tactical training provider BeaverFit.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

easyJet has soared back into the FTSE 100 – but it is expected to only be there temporarily.

The airline returned to the top tier of London Stock Exchange companies after a six-month absence as its share price rebounded.

However easyJet  is set to be taken private in early 2027 after agreeing a £5.7 billion deal with Apollo following a bidding war also featuring fellow private equity firm Castlelake.

Uber and Wayve have today launched supervised autonomous rides in London, marking the first time autonomous trips are available in the United Kingdom. 

Starting today, Londoners requesting an UberX, Uber Electric, or Uber Comfort may be matched with a Wayve ride at no extra cost.

They will be able to travel anywhere within London, apart from airports. Riders will have the option to accept or switch to a non-AV ride before the car arrives.

 

Origin, an enterprise benefits intelligence platform, has announced that Martine Ferland has joined the company as an angel investor and strategic adviser.

Ferland brings four decades of experience in global benefits and human resources consulting, including five years leading Mercer, the world’s largest HR consulting firm.

She currently serves on the boards of WSP Global and the Adecco Group. Ferland has known Origin’s co-founders, Chris Bruce and Pete Craghill, since Mercer acquired Darwin (formerly Thomsons Online Benefits), the global benefits technology company they founded and led, and worked closely with them in the years that followed.

For Paul Hallett, the road to reshaping global pet care began right in the lecture theatres of Leeds University. 

Spending over two decades building high-growth ventures, including his first agency, Perfect Marketing, paved the way for close collaborations with prominent local tech minds like Sleepcogni’s Rich Mills and Ash Patel. 

These formative years eventually culminated in 2018, when Hallett joined forces with experienced veterinarian Robert Dawson and veterinary dermatologist Sarah Warren to launch Vet-AI, a research-driven startup on a mission to make animal healthcare affordable and accessible for everyone.

Today, the business anchors a global team of over 120 professionals, has raised more than £20 million in strategic capital from major industry investors like Hill’s Pet Nutrition, and has expanded its footprint into the competitive US market. 

 

The British Business Bank has agreed to commit up to £46 million to Zinc Capital Management’s second institutional fund.

The Science-for-Impact Fund is aiming to accelerate the creation and growth of innovative UK DeepTech startups tackling critical health and environmental challenges. It is targeting a £70m fund size and building of a portfolio of 80 new DeepTech companies. 

The British Business Bank’s commitment, made through the Enterprise Capital Funds programme, follows its previous commitment to Zinc II in 2022 and will enable Zinc to expand its support for founders.

 

Gotobeat, a music promoter driven by technology, is to expand into the festival market next year after making a heavyweight appointment.

The London firm, founded by serial entrepreneur Max Busin to fill grassroots venues with promising artists, has appointed Mike Lightford, former director of music at Boardmasters and NASS Festivals, as head of festivals.

Gotobeat, which recently expanded into arena offerings, has also confirmed details of its first festival programme, taking place at Beckenham Place Park in July 2027. The six-show series will span two weekends, with more than 10 artists performing each day across two stages and capacity for 12,000 attendees per day.

ALT has launched a Manchester office as the creative media agency expands beyond its Glasgow base. 

The news follows the installation of a new leadership team in May and reflects the strong growth of ALT since it was founded by husband-wife duo David and Laura Haggerty in 2019 with the goal of putting creativity at the heart of media planning. 

The agency now boasts 25 full-time employees serving a roster of global clients, including UEFA and Whyte & Mackay.

Celerity, a Manchester-based managed IT services provider backed by investor BGF, has acquired Insight 2 Value (I2V).

Based in Warwick, I2V is a specialist in intelligent automation and enterprise content management, with expertise in IBM FileNet and Cloud Pak for business automation.

The acquisition will strengthen Celerity’s capacity to provide solutions that improve customer onboarding, complaints handling, case management and regulatory compliance, connecting content seamlessly to improve service delivery and accelerate customer-facing operations.

Renalytix plc, a precision medicine diagnostics company focussed on kidney disease, has raised £10.1 million in a share placing.

It has also issued conversion shares to Heights Capital Management Inc at the issue price of 6p, increasing the transaction value to £13.6m.

Renalytix’s official HQ is in London, with operational teams based in the US.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Edinburgh firm pureLiFi has crashed into administration with all of its 42 staff made redundant.

The company was behind the development of a light-based alternative to WiFi. It had raised £35 million in funding.

The firm was founded in 2012 by Prof. Harald Haas and Dr Mostafa Afgani as a spin-out of the University of Edinburgh and used the light spectrum to send data rather than radio frequencies. 

By making small adjustments in the intensity of light, it claimed to deliver an internet connection with a bandwidth far beyond the capabilities of conventional wireless communications. 

With data traffic increasing exponentially every year and causing a ‘spectrum crunch’ headache, the potential for easing the burden on existing technologies is massive, then-CEO Alistair Banham told BusinessCloud in 2020. He retired last year.

fulfilment.com, a data-driven platform connecting eCommerce brands with third-party logistics fulfilment providers, has appointed James Moore as a non-executive director.

The appointment follows the company’s £4m late seed investment round in February 2026, led by Blackfinch Ventures with participation from Haatch Ventures.

Moore brings nearly two decades of experience building and scaling fast-growth technology marketplaces. His career spans senior roles at Betfair, EA Games’ Origin, eBay, and Amazon, before joining Trainline as General Manager of the UK consumer business. 

He formed part of the executive team that took Trainline to IPO in June 2019 at a valuation of £2.1 billion.

Following Trainline, Moore worked alongside the founding team at YourParkingSpace, supporting its scale-up through to a successful £125m exit. 

He is currently CEO of Shift, the large item delivery marketplace and lockers business, and operates as a non-executive director and angel investor across a number of technology businesses.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Battery startup Nexeon has secured backing from the National Wealth Fund as part of a £100 million funding round.

The National Wealth Fund has committed £52.6m, with other new investors in the round including the Korea Development Bank and Honda Xcelerator Ventures.

Nexeon, headquartered in Abingdon near Oxford, is developing silicon anode materials which enable production of higher energy density lithium-ion batteries, helping to reduce charging times and extend the range of electric vehicles.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Tim Cook has stepped down as the CEO of Apple after 15 years in which he grew the iPhone maker into a $4.5 trillion company.

After a transition period this summer, he has now been succeeded by John Ternus and moved into the role of executive chair.

Ternus inherits a company with record $100 billion profits. So why has Cook and Apple’s board of directors turned to the hardware engineering executive?

Author: Chris Maguire

The UK has created 14 new unicorns in 2026 – just one fewer than in the whole of 2023-2025 combined.

According to research by Tracxn Technologies, a leading data intelligence platform, the UK has created 97 unicorns in total.

The list is made up of companies that achieved a $1bn equity valuation at any point prior to acquisition or IPO.

According to Tracxn, July alone saw four new unicorns created – Moneybox, Humanoid, CuspAI and Kraken Technology Group.

Another striking trend from the research is the speed at which companies are achieving unicorn status.

UK robotics firm Humanoid and CuspAI, a platform developing new materials to tackle global sustainability and clean energy challenges, were both founded in 2024 but became unicorns in 2026.

Ineffable Intelligence, led by David Silver, a professor at University College London, was founded in 2025 and became a unicorn after raising a record $1.1bn in its Seed round in April.

By comparison, music app Shazam was founded in 2000 but didn’t become a unicorn until 2015, while global travel search and comparison platform Skyscanner took 13 years to reach a $1bn valuation in 2016.

Aquis Stock Exchange, the UK’s challenger market for listed companies, has announced the inaugural cohort of the Aquis IPO Academy, the UK’s only public markets readiness programme run by an exchange.

The Academy, in partnership with Barclays Eagle Labs, is a long-term investment in the UK’s growth economy at a pivotal moment for scaling businesses, aiming to act as an engine for IPO activity while addressing the perception gap around accessing public markets. 

It draws on the expertise of Barclays Eagle Labs and SIX, which acquired Aquis in 2025, combining domestic scale-up expertise with European IPO Academy experience.

The first cohort is made up of over 25 ambitious UK growth companies, half of which are founded by women.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Dutch FinTech Mollie has completed its €1.1 billion acquisition of UK rival GoCardless.

When originally announcing the deal in December 2025, the firms said that more than 90% of the consideration will be paid in shares, with the remainder in cash.

GoCardless was founded by CEO Hiroki Takeuchi, Monzo co-founder Tom Blomfield and Matt Robinson in 2011. A few years later Takeuchi, its chief executive, was paralysed from the chest down following a cycle crash.

In the year ending June 2025, its last published accounts, it narrowed losses before tax to £24.2m, and recently posted its first profitable quarter. This followed a series of cutbacks. Meanwhile Mollie achieved EBITDA profitability in 2024 and reported €147 million in net revenue in 2025.

The deal creates Europe’s leading payments and financial services partner, with more than 350,000 business customers across 30+ markets.