News

Avenue HQ, a flexible workspace provider, has marked its fifth anniversary at St Paul’s Square. A major milestone celebrating half a decade of innovation and growth within the city’s booming business district. The anniversary was commemorated with a whole week of events, bringing together Avenue HQ’s community of current members, alumni and supporters from the local ecosystem.

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions into front-line healthcare services in the UK is set to grow exponentially over the next decade, providing opportunities for faster, more accurate diagnosis and treatment. However, risks exist and there are concerns around patient data management, according to an expert group in Leeds.

DeepL, a global Language AI company, has announced it will be among the first to commercially deploy the NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD with DGX GB200 systems. The NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD, which is expected to be operational at DeepL by mid-2025, will be used to power research computation.

The Startup World Cup regional finals have crowned a new champion. Lithuanian startup Traxlo, with its platform “Tasku.app” – a short-term gig work portal offering flexible tasks in local stores, has won the opportunity to represent Central and Eastern Europe in Silicon Valley’s grand finale and compete for the $1 million prize. The event took place during the Engaged Investments conference, hosted by DEPO Ventures and J&T Ventures in Prague, Czech Republic.

The Access Group, a provider of business management software to mid-market organisations in Europe, USA and Asia Pacific, has announced that it has acquired HireAra, a UK based AI-powered candidate presentation platform that automates the process of formatting and presenting candidate CVs/resumes for recruiters.

UK small business sales growth continued to slow over the last quarter (July to September), not helped by rising late payments times, according to the latest Xero Small Business Insights (XSBI) data from Xero, the global small business platform.

Open access publishing startup DeSci Labs has won the Best Automation & Data Innovation – Organisation prize at this year’s Lab Awards, held at Lab Innovations 2024. The award recognises the innovation behind DeSci Publish, the world’s first open science publishing infrastructure based on Web3 technology.

More than half of C-level leaders (58%) want to ‘completely overhaul’ their approach to data in 2025. That’s according to new research from data streaming platform Confluent.

Xiphera, provider of highly-optimised, hardware-based cryptographic security, has announced its partnership with Crypto Quantique, a provider of quantum-driven IoT device security.

On the 30th October, the long awaited Autumn Budget was delivered by Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves.

For yet another edition, Tourism Innovation Summit (TIS) has held the world’s largest entrepreneurship competition in the tourism industry. More than 400 startup companies have applied as candidates for the Touristech Startup Fest 2024, of which 40 have been the finalists and have presented their business models in front of investors in Travel Tech in Seville, Spain. This year, the international participation of entrepreneurs has grown with projects from countries such as Spain, Argentina, the United States, Slovakia, Australia, Germany, Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Mexico, Bhutan and Italy.

HP commissioned a survey via YouGov, polling around 1,200 UK workers to understand what keeps them busy at work, and how often they’re able to take lunch breaks. It found that 2 in 5 (40%) surveyed never take an hour-long lunch break, and almost 1 in 3 (30%) would skip lunch to catch up on admin tasks such as compiling meeting notes and filling in time sheets.

Invoice finance company Stenn has released new findings highlighting that US SMBs are cash-strapped heading into the festive period, betting big on the holiday season to top up reserves that are running dry.

Entrepreneur, early-stage investor and philanthropist Dr Ewan Kirk has called on the Government to introduce a blanket 10-year visa for all STEM graduates in a move to boost entrepreneurship, drive growth, and encourage more of the world’s brightest and best to choose the UK for their graduate and post-graduate STEM education

Ahead of the Chancellor’s Budget announcement, the CIPD is calling on the government to increase apprenticeship opportunities for young people, encourage innovation, and improve labour market enforcement.

Showcasing cutting-edge technological solutions, LG NOVA, the North America Innovation Center of LG Electronics, has announced the winners of the 2024 Startup Pitch Competition, co-sponsored by LG Chem. This year’s event, held during LG NOVA’s annual InnoFest in San Francisco, featured standout startups focused on Life Sciences, Open Innovation, HealthTech, AI, Smart Life and CleanTech, with three companies recognised for their potential to drive impactful change.

ekko and Market Harborough Building Society (MHBS) have joined forces to launch PlanetSaver in a first-of-its kind move for building societies and sustainability focused financial products.

Logical Biological, a provider of biological critical materials for diagnostics, therapeutic research, and IVD reagent manufacture, has settled into larger, upgraded laboratory space at Discovery Park, marking its third move within the science and innovation campus. This expansion reflects the company’s remarkable growth, which has seen a 170% increase in international trade over the past three years.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) welcomes back Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta, as a keynote speaker for CES 2025. On stage at Sphere, the next-generation entertainment medium that is redefining live experiences, Bastian will take the audience on an immersive journey highlighting Delta’s vision for using technology to enrich human experiences. This will mark the first CES keynote ever hosted at the groundbreaking venue.

Vertical Future, a UK-based Controlled-Environment-Agriculture technology company, has announced a range of Crop-Science-as-a-Service (“CSaaS”) services for different sector archetypes, including food, fodder, forestry, and pharmaceutical-based products.