Business confidence has dropped 5% in September, showing a score of 36% meaning confidence has taken a dip and businesses are feeling less optimistic than in August, according to the latest Lloyds Bank’s Business Barometer survey.

The employment charity, Generation UK, has released its first Social Impact report, which demonstrates how Skills Bootcamps can improve the job prospects and the lives of three million UK people who are out of work.

In Good Company, a tech-for-good startup committed to promoting ethical, sustainable, and socially-conscious businesses in London, has announced the official launch of its new web platform, now available to the public at ingood.app.

Sustainability and ESG management and reporting platform FuturePlus is working with AI-driven Climate Action Platform Expect AI, to solve the complexities of carbon accounting and data accuracy across all industries, and in businesses of all sizes. Expect’s mission is to reduce carbon by 500mt (megatonnes) this decade - the equivalent of 22 years’ worth of annual emissions from a company like Apple Inc.

Based on industry research it conducted during Sibos, payments and transaction data management company, Intix, has announced new findings that examines the biggest challenges facing financial institutions when it comes to compliance, regulations, and gaining actionable insights from transaction data.

INTEMA, a venture fund and consulting company based in Luxembourg, renowned for its AI and deeptech proficiency, is introducing The INTEMA Platform.

The electric vehicle charging company Rightcharge has appointed automotive industry veteran David Betteley and business growth experts Grethe Skundberg and Julia Stent to its board, to further accelerate its UK operations and set sights on international expansion.

Employees are behind a widening gap in the cybersecurity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) a new survey released today reveals, as over three-quarters of SMEs’ C-suite and senior managers admit they have no confidence their teams are operating their own devices securely.

Togggle, a KYC startup from the UK, has been crowned the winner of the Fifty Founders Battle at TechChill Milano, 2023. The Fifty Founders Battle received 316 applications from 39 countries, making it the most international pitch battle in TechChill history, with applicants from the USA and Canada to Indonesia and Ghana.

The world of Research and Development (R&D) tax relief has undergone significant changes as of April 1, 2023, and these transformations have particularly impacted businesses in the technology sector.

Sitehop, a Sheffield-based technology company has released its flagship product, the SAFE100, which is setting new standards for the cybersecurity industry. This follows an initial round of investment from NPIF – Mercia Equity Finance, which is managed by Mercia and part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF).

Hexagon's Manufacturing Intelligence division has announced the nine manufacturing startups chosen for its third Sixth Sense cohort. The selected companies were chosen from a highly competitive pool of hundreds of applicants, distinguishing themselves with groundbreaking solutions addressing critical manufacturing challenges, with a focus on sustainability and digital reality.

Thirteen life science startups have been accepted onto Discovery Park’s new business support programme and competition, Discovery Spark. The eight-week Discovery Spark programme will equip the early-stage companies with the necessary skills to catalyse their business growth plans and gives them the chance to win a business support package worth over £100,000.

Sigma Software Group launches the UNICORN Startup Competition for startups from Ukraine and the EU. The contest is structured to guide startups through different stages, offering an intensive two-week program to support dynamic interaction.

Vagaro, a comprehensive business management platform for the beauty, wellness, and fitness industries has officially launched a partnership with Liberis, a global embedded business finance platform, to offer revenue-based finance to more than 220,000 service providers.

Set against a year of erratic financial challenges, research from Novuna Business Finance reveals that small businesses remain steadfast and resolute in their commitment to being green.

Amazon has confirmed its plans to invest up to $4 billion into AI safety and research startup Anthropic. Anthropic is currently seen as OpenAI’s main rival, and was even founded by former OpenAI employees.

Mangopay, a platform-specific payment infrastructure provider and VTEX, the enterprise digital commerce platform for premier brands and retailers, have partnered to offer an integration that will enable marketplace operators to cover both pay-in and pay-out on a single solution.

Digma has launched the world’s first Continuous Feedback platform to enable developers to continuously analyse their code at runtime to identify issues and regressions, preventing bad code from making it to production, including GenAI-generated code.

Harper James, the commercial law firm purpose-built to enable entrepreneurial and ambitious businesses to succeed, has bolstered its intellectual property and trademark practice with the appointment of three new hires from top-50 law firm Blake Morgan LLP. The new appointments form part of the firm’s ambitious plan to double its number of lawyers by hiring 60 new solicitors by 2025.