This week’s UK tech funding deals include AI customer support company PolyAI, remote and freelance worker management platform Native Teams, sustainable fintech Ekko and more. UKTN tracked £99.8m worth of UK tech investment this week (13 May to 17 May), a 95% week-on-week decrease across 12 funding rounds. Here’s your weekly roundup of UK tech ... Read more ›
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Sainsbury’s has agreed a partnership deal with Microsoft to incorporate generative AI into the supermarket chain’s operations. The five-year deal will see the British retail giant incorporate Microsoft generative AI to “improve customers’ search experience” for online shopping and AI customer support, Sainsbury’s said it will also use Microsoft AI to improve the efficiency of ... Read more ›
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A £4.6m fund has been launched by the UK’s innovation agency to back sustainable aquaculture ventures from academia and industry. The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) – part of the government agency UK Research and Innovation – investment fund will support 10 projects addressing challenges to British aquaculture. The projects include using AI-powered ... Read more ›
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Damien Gillman is the co-founder and chief strategy officer at Luscid, a startup that has developed a software platform for brands to find and track sponsorship opportunities. Gillman founded Luscid in 2022 with Harry Coe, son of Olympic champion distance runner and now World Athletics chief Lord Sebastian Coe. The pair launched Luscid with the ... Read more ›
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A climate-focused fintech startup that plants trees and supports conservation projects when customers use its debit card has raised $2.5m (£2m) in funding. Ekko, which was founded in 2019, said it plans to use the funding to hire “leading industry experts” who can support product development and international expansion. Investment firm Fuel Ventures led the ... Read more ›
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Multinational businesses including Siemens and Thales have called on the prime minister to protect graduate visas to prevent damage to UK research and innovation. In a letter from the National Centre for Universities and Businesses, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was warned that “financial pressures” from cutting off international graduates from coming to Britain could “undermine ... Read more ›
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PolyAI, a London-based startup that creates AI voices for use in call centres, has closed a $50m (£39.4m) funding round valuing it close to $500m. Founded in 2017, PolyAI builds conversational virtual assistants for customer support. The company lists Volkswagen, Marriott and Caesar’s Entertainment among its clients. The company’s co-founder and CEO Nikola Mrkšić previously ... Read more ›
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Darktrace is the UK’s largest homegrown success story for public tech stocks in recent years. The news that it will soon be an asset owned by US private equity firm Thoma Bravo has led to another round of despair in the UK public market and tech and investment communities. This take-private is, rightly, yet another ... Read more ›
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Payments firm GoCardless has appointed former PepsiCo and Headspace executive Jolawn Victor as chief growth officer. Victor will lead the London fintech unicorn’s “growth group”, focused primarily on SME customer acquisition, incremental revenue growth and brand marketing and communications. “It’s an honour to join GoCardless as the company enters an exciting and pivotal phase of ... Read more ›
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Scotland is rich in entrepreneurial history, home to inventors of everyday things we take for granted like the telephone and TV. More recently, Scotland has been growing its reputation in newer technologies across a range of sectors including AI, space tech and climate tech. It is home to 8,860 technology companies, which accounts for 5% ... Read more ›
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Computer manufacturer Raspberry Pi has confirmed plans for a London IPO in a boost to UK public markets. The Cambridge-based firm, which offers low-cost computing equipment to encourage people to develop technical skills, said on Wednesday it intends to list on the main market of the London Stock Exchange. Raspberry Pi last year teased a ... Read more ›
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Edinburgh-based AI startup Malted has raised £6m to turn large language models (LLMs) into focused smaller models for enterprises. The startup was founded in 2023 looking to solve the problem that LLMs like ChatGPT are too broad and general with answers. Malted works with clients looking to benefit from generative AI by distilling the output ... Read more ›
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With just three days to go before applications for KPMG’s Tech Innovator in the UK competition closes, we share some tips from the experts on how to make your business stand out from the crowd. Fast growth businesses are an important and exciting part of the UK economy – but the sector is also an ... Read more ›
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Accel, the Silicon Valley-based investor that has backed the likes of Monzo, GoCardless and Synthesia, has raised a $650m (£519.5m) European startup fund. The fund, which is the eighth early-stage European fund from Accel, will back new firms in the UK, Europe and Israel. “Our belief almost 25 years ago that Europe and Israel’s entrepreneurs ... Read more ›
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The UK Space Agency has announced a £9m investment supporting a series of projects focussed on monitoring the Earth’s atmosphere. The funding, which is the largest investment from the agency in an early-stage tech programme, will back 12 projects featuring private businesses and research institutions. The projects include a prototype unfolding space telescope for small ... Read more ›
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Melissa Snover, founder and CEO of Nourished, discusses how the advent of modern scientific data analysis has birthed the personalised health boom, why as an American expat she fell in love with Birmingham as a startup hub, and how women founders can fight the odds to close the funding gap. Snover is the founder of ... Read more ›
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A favourite phrase at the Startup Coalition is “there’s no such thing as an SME”. The term too often ends up as a catch-all for very different types of small and medium enterprises – from a single plumber to the mid-market firm where they get their supplies, or a family-owned corner shop to a Series ... Read more ›
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Childcare startup Tiney, which recruits, trains and supports the establishment of ‘micro-entrepreneur’ child minding businesses, has raised £7.2m. Founded in 2019, Tiney is a platform looking to expand the availability of childcare in the UK. Lack of access to childcare is a major factor in cutting off parents from the workforce. The charity Fawcett Society ... Read more ›
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The UK has joined a European scheme granting businesses and researchers access to supercomputer resources and funding. The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC) is a collaborative programme of 35 countries, offering access to facilities as well as enhanced access to funding, provided by Horizon Europe. The UK joined Horizon Europe in September 2023 ... Read more ›
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After a challenging 2023, there were higher hopes for what this year may hold for UK startups looking to raise investment and grow their operation. Did the first quarter live up to expectations? According to a new report from Dealroom, UK startups raised $3.9bn in Q1 of 2024, with early-stage investment closing higher than the ... Read more ›
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Most popular sources
Business Insider
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28% 5 |
MacRumors
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21% 10 |
Android Authority
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6% 1 |
The Verge
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6% 0 |
Ars Technica
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6% 1 |
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18.05.2024 14:19
Last update: 14:10 EDT.
News rating updated: 21:12.
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