Funding

Investment in any startup comes with a degree of the unknown, and investors will do all the due diligence they can before making a decision. Pre-seed investors come in at an early stage – when companies are a little more untried and carry greater risk of failure.

YAi, a platform helping marketing agencies and brands create, evaluate, and improve AI-generated content at scale, has raised £250,000 in Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) funding from Jenson Ventures.

OpenOcean, a pan European venture capital firm specialising in early-stage investments in business software that drive AI innovation, has announced its fourth main venture fund.

Blackwall has announced that it has raised a €45 million Series B round led by B2B investor, Dawn Capital. Already deployed across more than 2.3 million websites and applications, Blackwall defends web ecosystems from malicious automated threats.

Alloyed has announced the completion of a £37m Series B funding round. The fundraise will be used to expand Alloyed’s manufacturing facilities in Abingdon, UK, and Seattle, USA, as well as accelerating the development of its digital platforms for the design and processing of improved alloys and alloy components.

The United Kingdom has an evolved startup ecosystem, with over 73,000 active tech companies, of which more than 4,600 are led by women. The region ranks third globally for startups led by women. However, funding for women-led tech companies in the UK has seen a downward trend since its peak in 2021 at $2.9 billion. Ongoing economic challenges, such as rising inflation and geopolitical conflicts, have impacted investments.

Aviva Investors, the global asset management business of Aviva, announces it has completed a £15 million investment with Oxford Science Enterprises, an independent billion-pound investment company that finds, funds, and builds transformational science and technology companies – across life sciences, healthtech, and deeptech –from Oxford’s world-leading research.

An invention improving microscopes to battle diseases like cancer and a tool ensuring financial AI models are unbiased are ideas that have won £20,000 for their female founders.

While venture capital funding shows signs of bouncing back in 2025, funding for early-stage startups is unfortunately still lagging since reaching a high in 2022. To increase runway and build a sustainable business, startups should find alternative ways to secure funding beyond traditional VC firms. As the founder and CEO of an early-stage startup myself, here are the best options we’ve found for increasing runway amid a VC slowdown.

eBrands, a Nordic-based export platform enabling international growth for consumer brands, has raised €7.5 million in its latest equity funding round, bringing its total funding raised to €50 million. The funding round was led primarily by Veikko Laine family office, Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company, and operative shareholders.

The Founder Institute is reportedly raising $15 million for a new venture fund, named Founder Capital. This development, which has been revealed in a recent regulatory filing, marks a significant milestone for the Silicon Valley-based accelerator, which first opened its doors in 2009 and has since spread to over 100 countries.

Wearable tech startup UNA Watch has secured more than £300,000 investment from the backer of some of the UK’s most exciting consumer brands as it prepares to take on industry giants Apple and Garmin with the world’s first repairable modular GPS sports watch.

As we celebrate International Women’s Day, there’s still a lot of progress to be made in closing the female investment gap. Despite one in five startups having a female founder, by the time you get to venture funding, a shocking 2% goes to all-women founded teams. According to the latest Virgin StartUp Founder Barometer, over a fifth (22%) of women shared that the biggest challenges when it comes to running their own business today is access to funding.

The European Commission (EC)’s CLIMOS project has partnered with global innovation network F6S to establish an AI-powered early warning system for outbreaks of tropical diseases in Europe. CLIMOS (Climate Monitoring and Decision Support Framework for Sand Fly-borne Diseases Detection and Mitigation) seeks to reduce model uncertainties for better prognosis of the current and potential spread of Sand Fly-Borne Diseases (SFBD). This, in turn, provides socio-economic and risk assessments for a diversity of stakeholders.

MISSION – a natural energy drink and performance tea company – has announced it has successfully extended its equity fundraising round to  £2 million, inclusive of investment from F1 driver Pierre Gasly.

In recent years, the global fintech revolution has not slowed down, especially in Europe and the UK. The advent of PSD3 (Payments Services Directive), other tenants of fintech regulation and innovation have almost guaranteed expansion in the sector, and we can trace more than $2.26 trillion of the cumulative value of fintechs across the world from Europe.

HackerPulse, a platform that gives technical leaders advanced visibility into engineering team performance, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding. The round was led by AltaIR Capital, with participation from Antler, DVC Fund and angel investors including 15 engineering leaders from Uber, Cloudflare, Deel, SpaceX, Google. The company equips engineering leaders with ML-powered tools to identify inefficiencies, streamline workflows, and optimise team structures.

Whisper, an AI-driven sales and behavioural cloning technology for content creators, has raised $1 million in a recent funding round led by investors, including AngelList Early Stage Quant Fund and a consortium of high-net-worth content creators. Content creators make up the largest shareholder group, reinforcing Whisper’s mission to develop AI-powered sales tools designed specifically to serve their needs.

A new report developed by National Women’s Enterprise Week (NWEW), launched ahead of International Women’s Day, reveals a staggering inequality in investments and the disproportionate success rates between male and female entrepreneurs’ funding applications.

Epoch Biodesign, a company using enzymes to make recycled plastics cheaper and higher performing than virgin materials, has announced it has raised $18.3 million in Series A capital in an oversubscribed round.