Funding

The Royal Academy of Engineering’s Enterprise Hub has opened a new round of applications for its Regional Talent Engines programme to support entrepreneurial mid-late career engineers with an innovative concept to bring to market.

Today Foundamental, the global early-stage construction-tech investor, can announce that it has closed its second Fund II, taking its total AUM to over $150m.

As part of the EU’s space policy, the European Union is developing two major space programmes: the Galileo Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and the Copernicus Earth observation system

Apheris, the platform for creating collaborative data ecosystems, has raised €8.7m to further develop its unique technology and build on its growing list of customers and partners, including BASF, Boston Consulting Group, BMW Group and JLABS, Johnson & Johnson’s innovation division. The platform enables organizations to extract value from each other’s decentralized data sets in a way that helps them overcome regulatory, technical, and commercial challenges because the data never moves from the owner’s secure environment.

Samir Parkash, interim CEO of UKEF, has today announced that Virgin Money is the latest financial institution to be onboarded onto the General Export Facility (GEF), opening up access to financial support to their business customers.

constellr, a space data and services company building the world’s first globally scalable crop water monitoring system to help ensure global food security, today announces $10M in seed funding. Lakestar and VSquared co-led the financing round, with participation from early and new supporters FTTF, IQT, Amathaon Capital, Natural Ventures, EIT Food, OHB Venture Capital, Next Humanity, and Seraphim. With this investment, constellr will develop its first two satellites, conclude its existing pilot programs and develop its processing platform.

If you’re like most startup founders, you’re always on the lookout for ways to fund your business. Several options are available to help you finance your business growth, whether you need seed money to get started or need ways to finance expansion. In this post, you will discover some of the most common funding options for startups, including traditional options like angel investors and government grants, as well as some more innovative options.

With many experts predicting that the UK economy is on course to enter a recession before the end of the year, research from ForrestBrown, the UK’s leading R&D tax credit consultancy, has found that businesses will turn to innovation to weather the economic downturn.

Silveray, an X-ray technology spin-out from the University of Surrey, has raised £2.2M in a seed funding round led by the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S). ACF Investors, R42 Group, UK Future Tech Investment (UKFTI), InnovateUK, Cambridge Angels, and SyndicateRoom’s Access fund were also involved in the funding round.

As interest rates increase and tech stock multiples come down, accessing growth capital is becoming more expensive for startup founders.

Optellum, an Oxford-based medtech company that provides a breakthrough AI platform to diagnose and treat early-stage lung cancer, has raised $14 million in a Series A funding round. The investment will enable the company to scale its base, operations and commercial launches in the UK and USA, accelerate its research and development, and expand its platform into personalized therapy decisions, integrating imaging with molecular data, robotics, and liquid biopsies.

Cello’s pioneering product, backed by byFounders, TinyVC, Possible Ventures, and Notion Capital enables SaaS businesses to make word-of-mouth their
most valuable growth channel.

Prewave, the AI platform that helps businesses predict, find, understand and categorise the risks affecting their suppliers, has raised €11m in Series A funding. The round was co-led by KOMPAS and Ventech, who renewed its support after the company’s Seed round, with participation from early-stage investors aws Gründerfonds, IST cube, seed + speed, Segnalita, Speedinvest and Working Capital Fund. The investment follows a strong year for Prewave with ten-fold revenue growth over the last ten months, a team that has tripled in size and an impressive roster of clients including ABinBev, AUDI, BMW, Porsche, PWC, Toyota and Zurich Insurance.

Alarm bells are ringing. We’re heading for another financial crisis. Geopolitical tensions and fluctuating markets have led to a soaring cost of living in Ireland, a threat of recession, and a slowdown in investment. Early-stage investors have pivoted from the bull run of 2020 and 2021 to a bearish approach to funding in 2022.

‘Debt’ is a loaded word in the world of business that has few positive connotations. It smacks of always playing catch-up, constantly being on the back foot and receiving calls from financial institutions that are polite but firm and extremely insistent that money is owed and that the calls won’t stop until it’s paid back along with any interest owed.

Latana, an AI-Powered brand tracking and consumer insights platform, has raised a €36M Series B equity and debt financing to scale its SaaS offering, which provides companies with consumer data and key insights to help track brand and campaign performance.

At any stage of business, choosing the right investor can be one of the hardest and complex decisions you can ever make. This individual will more than likely not just contribute financially but often operationally meaning choosing the wrong person could be detrimental to your business.

The UK’s Research and Development (R&D) tax relief scheme incentivises businesses to spend money on innovation. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can receive a payable cash credit up to 33% of their eligible R&D spending which presents a strong opportunity for startups to reduce the cost of overcoming scientific or technological problems.

It’s not for nothing that the tech ecosystem can resemble an extreme sport at times.