The 150 game-changing tech deals of 2024 (part 2)

Deal volumes in the UK tech market may still be a long way from their peak but there’s still been plenty of activity across the sector in the past 12 months.

Unsurprisingly AI businesses have attracted a significant amount of the investment.

This is the second part of BusinessCloud’s review of the year’s 150 game-changing tech deals that we’ve reported on in 2024.

They’re not necessarily the biggest amounts, but they show the variety of the deals that were done in 2024.

The companies are listed in chronological order based on when the story was published in BusinessCloud.

One of the most significant developments was the British Business Bank’s launch of its new Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II, a £660m fund set to cover the entire North of England.

Following publication of part 1 yesterday, part 2 covers the period July-December.

July

• London-based women’s health app Flo Health raised more than $200m in a Series C investment from General Atlantic, which valued the business beyond $1bn. Dmitry Gurski is the co-founder and CEO.
• Female Invest, which is on a mission to close the financial gender gap, raised a record-breaking £8.7m in Series A funding. The fundraise was led by Educapital and Rubio Impact Ventures. Emma Due Bitz, Camilla Falkenberg and Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen set up the EdTech platform in 2019.

Emma Due Bitz, Camilla Falkenberg and Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen, co-founders, Female Invest

• Cambridge-based spinout CorrosionRADAR completed a £5m round of investment. Aramco Ventures were among the backes. Dr Chiraz Ennaceur is the CEO.
• Aveni raised £11m in Series A investment to drive the adoption of AI into financial services. The funding round was led by Puma Private Equity and Joseph Twigg is Aveni’s CEO.
• Manchester-headquartered digital media business KOMI Group secured an additional £5.5m in growth capital investment from BGF. Founded in 2015, KOMI is led by founder and CEO Andrew Trotman, group MD Sam Lenehan and CFO Tom Moran.
• London-based Fractile emerged from stealth with £12m in seed funding. The round was co-led by Kindred Capital, NATO Innovation Fund, and Oxford Science Enterprises. Fractile was founded in 2022 by artificial intelligence PhD Walter Goodwin.
• Addionics, a global leader in battery technology, raised £30m in Series B funding. The round was co-led by GM Ventures and Deep Insight. Moshiel Biton is the CEO and co-founder of the London-based firm.
• Smart money app Plum raised £16m in Series B funding as it eyes profitability in 2025. The round included a second tranche of investment from strategic partner Eurobank. Victor Trokoudes, CEO of Plum, launched the app in 2017.
• Belfast-based Ocula raised £3.25m in Series A investment, led by Praetura Ventures. Thomas McKenna is Ocula’s co-founder and CEO. Ocula provide AI insights to eCommerce businesses.
• Bioniq raised £11.5m in Series B funding for its personalised supplements based on blood biomarker data. The oversubscribed round was led by principal investors HV Capital and Unbound. The London firm was co-founded in 2019 by CEO Vadim Fedotov and has also investment from star footballer Cristiano Ronaldo.
• MedTech Huma completed a £62m Series D round, including backing from AstraZeneca. Dan Vahdat is the founder and CEO of Huma.
• Cardiff-based consultancy firm PureCyber secured a £5m investment from BGF. The deal was led by BGF’s Hannah King and Edwin Davies. CEO Damon Rands founded PureCyber in 2016.
• Advanced manufacturing company Tharsus has launched a new business with an £8m investment. VersaTile Automation, a new robotics business based in Blyth, Northumberland, is led by the team behind Tharsus Group. Joni Rautavuori is the CEO.

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August 

• Cambridge-based BioTech company Mestag Therapeutics were awarded a £1.5m Transforming Cancer Therapeutics grant from Innovate UK’s Cancer Therapeutics program. Susan Hill is the CEO.
• Sunswap, a Surrey-based CleanTech firm aiming to help decarbonise the logistics sector, raised £17.3m in investment. Michael Lowe, Andrew Sucis and Nikolai Tauber co-founded the firm in 2020 and the investment was led by BGF.
• Shopping platform Tilt – which claims ‘eCommerce sites are dead, boring and poo’  – raised £14m in Series A funding that was led by Balderton Capital. Early Revolut employees Neil Shah and Abhi Thanendran, founded Tilt in 2021.
• Fresha, a marketplace platform for beauty and wellness, secured a £24m venture debt facility from JP Morgan. Fresha boasts a network of over 110,000 merchants. William Zeqiri is the CEO and founder.
• BeyondMath, a leader in advanced engineering simulation, raised £6.5m in seed funding. The London startup was founded by Alan Patterson and Darren Garvey and the round was led by UP.Partners.
• Radiology technology company Hexarad completed an £11m growth round of funding, led by HealthTech MTIP. London-headquartered Hexarad was founded in 2016 by a group of NHS consultant radiologists, including CEO Farzana Rahman.
• Edinburgh-based software firm Administrate raised more than £3m to expand globally. John Peebles is the CEO of Administrate, which helps clients to streamline their entire training operation. The backing has come from the Investment Fund for Scotland, Equity Finance, managed by Maven Capital Partners and delivered by the British Business Bank.
• OW Smell Made Digital, a tech startup that can ‘print’, raised £2.2m. Parkwalk Advisors invested £1.5m with an additional £700k grant from Innovate UK. Dr Emanuela Maggioni is the CEO and CTO.
• B2B sales startup trumpet secured almost £5m in seed funding. The London firm was founded by Nick Telson-Sillett and Andrew Webster – who sold DesignMyNight in 2019 for more than $30m – with Hotjar’s Rory Sadler.

Making some noise: trumpet

• Promethean Particles, a Nottingham ClimateTech firm, closed an £8m financing round. The investment was led by Mercia Ventures and Aramco Ventures. James Stephenson is the CEO of Promethean Particles.
• Gaussion, a University College London spinout, raised £9.4m to drive forward its ‘first principles EV charging technology’. Tom Heenan is Gaussion’s CEO and co-founder and the Series A round of funding was led by Autotech Ventures.
• British Patient Capital announced a £70.2m ($90m) commitment to Balderton Capital’s latest funds, investing around £19.5m ($25m) into Balderton IX and £50.7m ($65m) into Balderton Growth II. Christine Hockley is the managing director of British Patient Capital.
• Axle Energy, an energy flexibility platform connecting distributed assets with energy markets, raised £7m in seed funding. Co-founders Karl Bach and Archy de Berker established the company in 2023. A number of notable angel investors participated.
• Cardiff-based travel platform Lovetovisit – founded in 2021 by twin sisters Georgia and Alice Aubrey alongside CEO Fed Pereira – raised £3.2m in VC funding to scale up. The round was led by Venrex and Redrice Ventures. The platform helps people find and book local attractions.

September 

• Car financing FinTech Carmoola announced a major new debt deal with NatWest worth £100m. The London firm now expects to deliver billions of pounds worth of loan originations over next five years to car buyers. Aidan Rushby is the founder and CEO.
• Quin AI – which was founded by sisters Gulsah and Gonca Gulser – raised £1.5m in seed funding to grow its generative behavioural artificial intelligence platform. The round was led by Blackfinch Ventures with support from SFC Capital, Logo Ventures and Finberg.
• Constructive Bio, a pioneering synthetic genomics company, secured £43m in Series A financing to ‘turn living cells into biofactories’. The round was led by Ahren. Ola Wlodek is the CEO at Constructive Bio.
• PACT raised a £9m seed round of funding to advance the development and reach of pioneering biomaterials inspired by nature. PACT was founded in 2020 by scientist and engineer Yudí Ding and physicist and engineer Niels Ramay. PACT’s seed round was joined by Hoxton Ventures, ReGen Ventures, Celsius Industries (formerly UNTITLED) and Polytechnique Ventures.
• Challenger credit reference agency Infact raised £4m in seed funding after securing FCA authorisation. The funding was led by AlbionVC, with participation from 13books Capital, Outward VC, Form Ventures, and Portfolio Ventures. The London startup is led by Will Mason and Andy Milligan, previously from Runpath, which was acquired by Experian.
• Rewards credit card Yonder raised £23.4m in new funding. The round was led by Dan Jones, an early investor in Revolut and Canva, through Repeat (formally Jigsaw), Gareth Jefferies through RTP Global with support from Remus Brett through Latitude, the sister fund of LocalGlobe. Tim Chong is the CEO and co-founder of Yonder.
• RegTech Novatus raised £30m in funding from US-based growth equity firm Silversmith Capital Partners. Founded in 2019 by Andrew Hedley and Matthew Ranson, London-based Novatus was established to create a tech-driven solution to better manage risk and regulation.
• CardiaTec, a spinout from the Han Lab at the University of Cambridge, secured £5m in a seed funding round led by Montage Ventures. CardiaTec was founded in 2021 by Prof Namshik Han, Raphael Peralta and Thelma Zablocki to decode the biology behind cardiovascular disease.
• Purple Transform – an AI data analytics business that helps to identify and prevent incidents such as theft, trespass and antisocial behaviour on railway lines – raised £4.5m in a round led by Mercia Ventures via the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II and backed by Sure Valley Ventures. Gregory Butler is the CEO and co-founder of Purple Transform, which was established in 2021.
• Manchester tech firm MirrorWeb secured growth equity investment worth almost £50m from US firm Mainsail Partners. CEO David Clee co-founded the business in 2016.
• eCommerce fulfilment firm Warehow raised £2.1m in a Series A funding round, led by the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II. Warehow was founded in 2021 by Laurence Guy, Al Gerrie and Pete Harris.

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October 

• Palatine-backed Voly Group received a £2m loan from its growth credit fund towards a key acquisition – the first of two investments in three months. Voly was established in 2016 by former professional tennis player, Ian Flanagan.
• Electronic battery innovator Anaphite raised £10.4m in Series A funding to scale its production technology for battery electrodes. The Bristol firm was launched in 2018 by chemist Sam Burrow and physicist Alexander Hewitt. The funding was co-led by World Fund, Europe’s leading climate VC, and Maniv.
• Robotics and data intelligence company Dexory raised a £60m Series B round of funding. The round into the firm was led by DTCP and Andrei Danescu is the CEO and co-founder.
• Oxford-based software company, FIDO AI, raised an undisclosed amount of Series B investment to ‘create a world without water scarcity.’ The company’s CEO is Victoria Edwards.
• Six universities in the SETsquared Partnership teamed up with regional investment firm QantX to launch a new £300m spinout-focused investment vehicle. The initiative was announced by Sir Richard Olver, co-founder and chair of QantX.
• Nuclera completed a £57m financing round. The fundraise was led by Elevage Medical Technologies and will allow their continued commercialisation of Nuclera’s eProtein Discovery benchtop system. Michael Chen is Nuclera’s CEO.
• University of Leeds spinout MicroLub secured a £3.5m seed funding. MicroLub replaces fats and oils with water without, it claims, any loss in the sensory food experience.. Northern Gritstone, LIFTT and NPIF II – Praetura Equity Finance, managed by Praetura Ventures as part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II, pledged the investment. Professor Anwesha Sarkar is the founder of MicroLub.
• Semble, an integrated clinical system for healthcare, raised £11.5m in a Series B funding round. The round was led by Mercia Ventures. The London-based company was founded by Christoph Lippuner and Mikael Landau.
  

  Semble’s co-founders Mikael Landau and Christoph Lippuner

• Bridgepoint has agreed a £169m deal to take Eckoh private. The private equity investor said that the move would help the secure payments and customer engagement software firm to realise its potential. Nik Philpot is the CEO of Eckoh.
• London firm FullCircl was acquired by Nasdaq-listed US giant nCino, after the companies agreed a £105m cash deal. Andrew Yates is the CEO and founder at FullCircl.

November 

• LDC-backed Aspire acquired CloudCoCo, a managed service provider headquartered in Leeds. The acquisition brought over £10m in additional revenue and 300 new customers to the Gateshead firm. Aspire’s CEO and founder is Chris Fraser.
• FinTech VibePay, which was founded by CEO Luke Massie, raised an extra £5m and hired ex-Klarna executive Conor Tiernan as its new head of insights. Billionaire property developer Nick Candy was among the existing investors to take part in the latest raise, which brings the total investment raised to date to £12m.
• A £500m investment by US firm Prologis into Cambridge Biomedical Campus will create more than 2,000 jobs and help spearhead life-saving breakthroughs.
• TSG, which provides Microsoft tech solutions to mid-market businesses, completed the purchase of Dayta to strengthen its presence in the education market. Their CEO, Rory McKeand, spent five years working at education charity, NCFE.
• Manchester’s CloudGuard secured a multi-million pound backing from Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II. Led by CEO Matt Lovell and CTO Javid Khan, the investment will be used to grow the CloudGuard Cyber Academy, which will provide training and industry experience to talent of all ages and levels.
• Microsoft Partner Advania UK completed its acquisition of CCS Media, an IT solutions provider operating across the UK. The move created a £1.4bn powerhouse. Geoff Kneen is the CEO of Advania UK.
• OpenOrigins, which is combating fake news, is expanding globally with a £3.5m seed investment. The round was led by Galaxy Interactive with participation from Galaxy Ventures and existing investor Unbound. Mansoor Ahmed is the founder and CEO of OpenOrigins.
• London RegTech Kaizen raised £42m in private equity investment from Boston-based Guidepost Growth Equity, representing the firm’s first external funding since it was founded in 2013 by CEO Dario Crispini.
• iwoca secured a new funding line of £200m from Citi and Waterfall Asset Management to support record demand for SME finance. The London firm doubled the size of its core product, the Flexi-Loan. Christopher Rieche is the CEO and co-founder. In May iwoca secured a £270m package of debt funding.
• Cogna raised £12.5m ($15m) in Series A funding. The precision solutions provider uses AI to automate the IT consultancy process. The round was led by Notion Capital, with participation from Hoxton Ventures and Chalfen Ventures. Ben Peters is the co-founder and CEO.
• UK startup Naturbeads secured £7.8m in Series A funding round to develop the worldwide microplastic pollution tech. The company’s co-founders are CTO Professor Davide Mattia, CEO Giovanna Laudisio, and the late Professor Janet Scott. St Andrews-based Eos Advisory led the round.
  

  Naturbeads

• InsurTech Konsileo completed an £8m fund led by long-term shareholders Committed Capital to continue its growth in the UK. John Warburton is the co-founder and CEO of the firm.
• University of Manchester spinout Watercycle Technologies has raised £4.4 million in a Series A investment round. The ClimateTech business was co-founded by Dr Seb Leaper and Dr Ahmed Abdelkarim and its technology is leading the charge to a net zero future. Par Equity led the syndicate.
• The Hollywood record label which last year acquired Music for Pets has snapped up another Manchester MusicTech firm in Ostereo. Howard Murphy, who founded the record label and music publisher in 2016, will exit Ostereo as it joins the Create Music Group stable of companies. Ramin Bostan and Nick Kirkby will now oversee day-to-day operations.

December 

• Bot detection cyber specialist Netacea raised a further £4m from Mercia Asset Management, which is investing from its own funds and the first Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund. The Manchester-based startup was established in 2022 and Mick Bradley is the CEO.
• Digital bank Zopa raised £68m in an equity funding round as it prepares to launch its flagship current account in 2025. The round was led by A.P. Moller Holding, and Jaidev Janardana is the FinTech’s CEO.
• LegalTech startup Lawhive raised £31.4m ($40m) in Series A funding to accelerate its US expansion. The round was co-led by existing investor Google Ventures and TQ Ventures, with participation from Premier League footballers Harry Maguire and Reece James. The London-based scaleup, which uses AI to make legal services more accessible and affordable, was founded in 2019 by co-founders Pierre Proner, Jaime Van Oers and Flinn Dolman.
• IRIS Software Group agreed to acquire bookkeeping automation firm Dext Software in a deal reportedly worth more than £500m. IRIS, a global provider of accountancy, education management, HR and payroll solutions, was valued at more than £3 billion last year as investor Hg sold a stake to Leonard Green & Partners and reinvested in the business. Hg is also a backer of Dext, which is led by CEO Sabby Gill.
• FD Technologies completed the sale of its First Derivative business to US software company EPAM Systems Inc for an enterprise value of £230m. FD Technologies, listed in London and on the Euronext exchange headquartered in Amsterdam, is headquartered in Northern Ireland. Balazs Fejes is the president and chief revenue officer at EPAM.
• HSBC Innovation Banking UK is to provide CoachHub, a Germany-based digital coaching platform, with €40m in growth financing to accelerate its investment in AI. Matti Niebelschütz is CoachHub’s CEO.
• London FinTech 9fin raised £40m ($50m) to expand its AI-powered analytics platform for debt capital markets. The Series B round was led by Highland Europe and Steven Hunter is the co-founder and CEO.
• Inotec AMD, a company behind continuous topical oxygen therapy for advanced wound care, raised £26m in a Series C financing round led by existing investors Amadeus Capital Partners, Meltwind, Puhua Capital and the Wealth Club. Craig Kennedy is the CEO of the MedTech firm.
• Digital savings and mortgage platform Tembo raised £14m in Series B funding. The firm was co-founded by Richard Dana, Eddie Ross and Geoff Wright in October 2020 to aid first-time home buyers and people facing affordability issues. The Series B round was led by Goodwater Capital.
• London firm Nscale has secured £122m in Series A funding to accelerate AI infrastructure expansion. Sandton Capital Partners led the oversubscribed funding. Joshua Payne is the CEO of Nscale.

The 150 game-changing tech deals of 2024