Swiipr, a travel paytech company transforming the airline industry’s outdated and inefficient disruption payments systems, has secured £6 million in Series A funding, led by Octopus Ventures, to help drive the company’s next phase of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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Kevin Wright is Chief Brand Officer and business strategist at Showerkap, a tech company on a mission to change how people use water and energy. Its platform combines engineering and behavioural science in a first-of-its-kind smart technology, enabling users to reduce water waste, carbon emissions and costs.

imagino, a Paris-based marketing technology provider, announced a €25 million Series A investment led by Cathay Innovation and joined by henQ. This investment will accelerate its UK growth and support its US launch.

Dutch startup Neople, a software solution that creates AI co-workers for e-commerce customer support teams, raised a €6 million investment round led by Newion and Simon Capital.

Storyblok, the modern content management system (CMS) for all teams, has announced the close of its $80 million Series C financing, bringing the total amount raised to $138 million. Brighton Park Capital led the round, with participation from existing investors HV Capital, Mubadala Capital, 3VC, and firstminute capital.

Sofant Technologies, the Edinburgh-based wireless technology business, has successfully raised £3.4 million in additional funding. The funding, from EMV Capital, Scottish Enterprise, and Kelvin Capital, will be used to complete the development of Sofant’s core technology and support the production and shipment of beta versions of its satellite antenna to lead customers.

Ittybit, a developer tools company, has announced the successful closure of a £1.5 million oversubscribed funding round, led by Mercuri and Sure Valley Ventures. This investment will enable Ittybit to further its mission of making  AI-led media pipelines accessible to developers worldwide.

Spike, a B2B data technology and AI startup, has successfully closed an oversubscribed $3.5 million seed funding round co-led by Practica Capital and TheVentureCity, with participation from Silicon Valley, New York, and Berlin-based investors including CEAS Investments, Plug & Play Ventures, Geek Ventures, and Axel Springer Porsche (APX).

The mental health app Voda has raised £270,000 in pre-seed funding to help combat the UK's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual and plus+ (LGBTQIA+) mental health crisis.

Signapse, a company developing generative AI software for sign language translation, has secured a £2 million seed funding round. The investment comprises £1.5 million from investors and £500,000 from the UK Government.