Funding

CIBC Innovation Banking announced that it has provided a £5 million corporate debt facility to Landytech, an investment management platform for asset owners, managers, and advisors.

Firefly, the Multi-Cloud Control Plane solution that enables organisations to solve cloud complexity, has raised $23 million in Series A funding. This round was led by Vertex and included participation from Hanaco, SoftBank, InMotion Ventures (the investment arm of JLR), and Redseed.

DeepL, a language AI company, has announced $300 million investment round, at a $2 billion valuation. Led by Index Ventures, the heavily oversubscribed round attracted support from new investors, who plan to bring extensive expertise, connections, and resources to support DeepL’s growth and long-term vision to transform the way companies communicate globally.

Cambridge Future Tech (CFT), a DeepTech venture builder, has announced the successful close of its latest round, raising $5 million to unlock the UK’s tech potential ahead of a crucial election for national industrial strategy.

Helping businesses simplify tax compliance, fintech startup Kintsugi AI announced a $6 million funding round (at $40 million valuation) for its tax automation platform.

OnePlanetCapital, the Climate Change-focused venture capital fund, is launching a Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) fund to invest in early-stage startups across the UK that are accelerating the transition to net zero and a green economy.

Nearly eight in ten brokers (77%) believe that high street banks are scaling back their willingness to fund small and medium-sized businesses, according to iwoca’s latest Q1 2024 SME Expert Index.

Hubl Logistics has secured £2.527 million in funding to accelerate the development and deployment of its innovative and cost-effective technologies.

Abound, a fintech offering affordable loans, has announced its new financing round. The new funding follows the startup’s continued growth, with Abound reaching profitability in April 2024, just three years after launch.

Three in ten SME finance experts (28%) report that the most requested loan amount at the start of 2024 was over £100,000, 56% higher than the same period last year, according to iwoca’s Q1 2024 SME Expert Index.

Swiipr, a travel paytech company transforming the airline industry’s outdated and inefficient disruption payments systems, has secured £6 million in Series A funding, led by Octopus Ventures, to help drive the company’s next phase of growth.

Vizcab, a SaaS platform that calculates the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to reduce the carbon impact of construction projects, has raised an additional €4.5 million in Series A funding, bringing their total round to €9 million. The funding will support its rapid growth and expand its operations into new international markets.

Inspeq AI, a full-stack AI Ops platform, has secured $1.1 million in funding, led by Sure Valley Ventures.

European venture firm Rialto, has publicly announced its first fund, established by AVM Gestioni SGR Spa, has secured funding for more than €55 million and is more than halfway deployed, with eight investments to date already completed.

Eneryield, one of Chalmers Ventures’ portfolio companies, has successfully closed a seed funding round with investment from technology leaders in electrification and automation, ABB and Chalmers Ventures.

Orca AI, the AI-based operational platform for ships, has raised $23 million in new funding, led by OCV Partners and Mizmaa Ventures, taking its total raised to nearly $40 million.

Finnish mycoprotein company Enifer announced the completion of a funding package to start constructing a unique food-grade mycoprotein factory in Kirkkonummi, Finland.

NEC X, the Silicon Valley innovation accelerator backed by NEC’s advanced technologies, announced a new investment in Verdi Expeditions, the world’s first scalable platform for farm automation and personalised plant healthcare.

Gresham House Ventures, a growth equity investor specialising in software and digitally-driven businesses, made a £6.3 million investment into data governance leader ActiveNav and cyber incident solutions provider Actfore, two divisions of Data Discovery Solutions (DDS).

Northstar Ventures invested £300,000 in Polybox to support the development of its innovative AI marketing technology and team expansion.