There is a staggering $2.5 trillion global trade finance gap that mainly affects SMEs in emerging countries, limiting their ability to access new business opportunities. Helping businesses to bridge this finance gap, supply chain fintech Twinco Capital announced on Tuesday, in the sixth edition of the Valencia Digital Summit (VDS), it has secured an additional €50 million facility with BBVA Spark to accelerate growth.
The Crypto Dashboard, created by the Gillmore Centre for Financial Technology at Warwick Business School, has been launched to revolutionise monitoring capabilities for various cryptocurrency assets, providing users with enhanced real-time insights and advanced analytics.
Despite tentative jobs growth, small businesses experienced slow sales growth and rising late payment times in the three months to September, according to the latest data from global small business platform Xero.
Elon Musk’s biotech startup, Neuralink, has received approval from an independent review board to begin recruiting for its first human clinical trial. Neuralink is set to begin offering brain implants to paralysis patients as part of its PRIME study.
Multiple startups have been recognised at the Touristech Startup Fest 2023, the global entrepreneurship competition hosted annually by TIS – Tourism Innovation Summit. The event, which has positioned itself as the key event for the tourism and technology entrepreneurial ecosystem, received more than 4,000 applications from startups from countries such as Spain, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.
MacDonald grew up on a farm in New Zealand and was always active in the environmental scene there. He ended up doing a teacher’s qualification thinking he could go and teach for a period of time while travelling. He came over to London in 1999, teaching Geography and Maths at a school in London, and never left the country! He commented that in 2016 he “wanted to move to an electric car but struggled with being able to charge it. So, I ended up working on a little side project whilst teaching, moved to part-time and eventually left teaching in 2021 and took this on full-time.”
Robert Rizea and Bogdan Demeny are the Co-Founders of Racketpal. As two passionate tennis and squash players, Rizea and Demeny realised there was no obvious and easy way for them to meet other players who were also up for a game. But they knew there had to be a way to fix that. Then one evening in September 2018, the pair were enjoying a pint in The Cleveland Arms in Paddington when the eureka moment struck. They decided it was time to create an app to help racket sports players meet each other, and started working on plans for the app that became Racketpal the very next day.
Upfront Diagnostics, a healthcare company focused on discovering novel biomarkers that can be applied to medical diagnosis, has started the last phase of clinical evaluation of a point-of-care rapid blood test designed to rapidly identify when stroke is caused by a blood clot blocking a main blood vessel within the brain. This is known as large vessel occlusion (LVO).
multifi, a UK startup specialising in finance for small and medium-sized businesses, has secured a substantial capital injection of £10 million from Fasanara Capital, a $4 billion London-based asset manager and technology platform. This initial injection will support the growth of UK businesses that can access a credit facility of up to £200,000 with a fixed monthly access fee of 0.3% and an interest rate of 1.99% per month on used credit.
Finnish biotech startup Enifer has contributed to a new study on farmed salmon that was done in collaboration with the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). The study utilised Enifer’s PEKILO®Aqua mycoprotein, and it was conducted by a group of researchers led by Professor Margareth Øverland.
LG NOVA, LG Electronics’ North American Innovation Centre, has launched the next version of its Mission for the Future programme designed to discover, build and grow highly impactful mission-driven new businesses in collaboration with startups and entrepreneurs.
Global startup accelerator, ZEBOX has opened the doors of its UK hub in Manchester as it continues its ambition to support and develop the sustainable innovations of tomorrow.
Almost 80% (77%) of leaders from European financial services expect Gen AI to have a significant impact on productivity and roles, according to the EY European Financial Services AI Survey. Yet, many firms still lack plans to train their workforce.
King’s College London, a British university, and Kvantify, a Danish quantum computing software company, are proud to unveil their strategic partnership. Together, they will explore novel methods to integrate classical and quantum computing tools in drug discovery for neurological conditions.
InterLnkd, the travel industry’s intelligent shopping mall partner, has announced it has raised £1 million in seed funding to accelerate its growth and international expansion.
This year’s edition of Tourism Innovation Summit (TIS) featured some fantastic traveltech startups on a mission to revolutionise the travel industry. The event finished up with the Touristech Startup Fest, where 40 startups pitched their businesses to a jury of industry leaders and investors. Of those, we have rounded up a highlight list to share these businesses with you.
Engine B, a next-generation AI-driven professional services technology company, has created its first scalable Copilot, using the latest tools from Microsoft and the Azure OpenAI Service.
A pioneering new semiconductor technology developed by scientists at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) has been selected as one of the first twelve UK semiconductor innovations to receive support from ChipStart UK, a new incubator programme set up by Silicon Catalyst.UK and funded by the UK Government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).
Canva has launched a suite of new primary and secondary school education products as part of its Canva for Education platform, making it the first company to introduce AI-powered tools at scale.
Frame is an AI-enhanced collaboration software with a mission to provide a framework for focus. Project managers utilise Frame as a unified platform to streamline task assignments, centralise communication, and monitor project progress in real-time, ensuring teams stay synchronised and projects remain on track. Remote teams use Frame to stay connected and organised, simplifying collaboration across all their tools in one unified space.
