Funding

European venture firm Backed VC has closed its third fund, Backed 3, at its $100 million cap, alongside making its 100th investment. Backed partners with outlier founders building generational frontier technology companies, who have made a fundamental technological or conceptual breakthrough.

Ahead of the Autumn Budget, with small business owners already worried about the prospect of tax hikes, 53% of UK small business owners say they need to secure funding or finance in order to invest in growth plans for 2026.

A new report released at Web Summit, Lisbon, by one of the UK’s fastest growing fintech lenders, Juice, uncovers the hidden behavioural forces driving the UK’s £65 billion SME funding gap, and how lenders, fintech’s, and policymakers must act to close it.

PitchBook has released findings from its latest investor survey, conducted in partnership with Web Summit. The 10th annual survey captures investor sentiment and trends shaping technology investment and AI adoption.

FALKIN, a digital safety company that helps people stop scams before payments happen, has announced it has secured $2 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by TriplePoint Ventures, with participation from Notion Capital, BackFuture Ventures, Aviva/Founders Factory, Haatch, Found Capital, and Founders Capital.

Swish Solar, a cleantech company based at Velocity, the University of Waterloo’s startup incubator, has closed an oversubscribed $1.5 million pre-seed round. The new financing will accelerate market adoption of its self-cleaning solar technology that helps make renewable energy more efficient and sustainable.

Every month, Zubr Capital publishes a report on the European venture capital industry, examining everything from surface-level developments to emerging trends and maturing signals.

Limetrack, the London-based food waste technology company that helps businesses cut costs, reduce carbon, and meet regulatory requirements through its patented ‘SMART Bin’, announces it has successfully raised over £1.3 million to fund its next growth phase.

Leil Storage, a specialist data storage-infrastructure software company, has raised €1.5 million in seed funding to help organisations store enormous datasets more cost-efficiently and with lower energy use. The round was led by Karma Ventures, with participation from Specialist VC.

A Midlands-founded healthtech scaleup has landed £1.4 million in new funding from two leading venture capital firms. Securing cheques from both the Borski Fund and Future Planet Capital Regional, Rem3dy Health’s latest funding has reaffirmed growing investor confidence in the region’s innovation ecosystem, whilst also highlighting the impact and importance of cross-border investment relations.

Balnord, an early-stage investor for the Baltic Sea Region, has announced that it has oversubscribed its €70 million fund target and is well on its way to achieving a final close of €100 million by mid-2026.

Aquark Technologies has announced it has been awarded a £1,409,702 contract by Innovate UK. The contract will facilitate the future deployment of Aquark’s cold atom-based atomic clock, AQlock, at a major telecommunications site in the UK.

arcoris bio, a Swiss life science research tools and in vitro diagnostics company, has secured CHF 6.3 million in an oversubscribed seed financing round to advance the development and commercialisation of its breakthrough MUSE biomarker detection platform. The round was co-led by Ventura Ace and ZEISS Ventures, with participation from Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB) and both existing and new private investors.

Cambridge Photon Technology (CPT), a deeptech spin-out from the University of Cambridge, has raised £1,556,000 in new funding to accelerate the commercialisation of its photon-multiplier technology. The pre-Series A round combines £926,000 in equity investment with a £630,000 grant from Innovate UK’s Investor Partnerships: Clean Energy and Climate Technologies programme.

In today’s venture world, deals move at lightning speed, but what if founders could match that pace in the way they pitch?

Legal complexity is one of the biggest hidden barriers to growth for UK startups and SMEs. GitLaw, founded by UK entrepreneur Nick Holzherr, has raised a $3 million pre-seed round to power the launch of its agent – part of GitLaw’s platform built for startups and small businesses, not law firms – that helps teams draft, review, and negotiate contracts in minutes, for free.

Swiss battery startup BTRY AG has raised $ 5.7 million in an oversubscribed seed round. The funds will accelerate the industrialisation of its ultra-thin solid-state batteries – a new category of energy storage combining fast charging, extreme temperature stability, and intrinsic safety in one of the world’s thinnest formats.

Bumblebee Power, an Imperial spinout pioneering next-generation wireless charging, has been awarded funding support by the UK Space Agency for a project with MDA Space, a trusted mission partner to the rapidly growing space economy, to advance the use of wireless power in space.

LambdaVision, a biotech innovator leveraging microgravity to manufacture its investigational protein-based artificial retina to help patients regain sight lost to retinal degenerative diseases, has closed a $7 million seed funding round co-led by Seven Seven Six and Aurelia Foundry Fund, with additional support from Seraphim Space, providing runway into 2027.

Fashion technology startup Fit Collective, founded by Savile Row-trained designer Phoebe Gormley, has raised £3 million in pre-seed funding, marking the largest round ever raised by a solo female founder in the UK.