Sapien kicked off its venture ambitions by leading a six-figure funding round for Manchester based sports VR company, Rezzil to support the development of its consumer platform, launching on Facebook’s Oculus Quest platform.

In today’s increasingly digital-led way of life, retailers, service providers and other businesses are digitalising more of their operations and dealing with customers across a range of channels - whether it’s via a website, mobile app, email and other messaging formats, social media, or even the old-fashioned phone call.

Finnish eco-sneaker startup, Rens, has announced its ambition to raise up to $1m via Kickstarter for the manufacture of its new Nomad performance shoe.

Following the inaugural Virtual Interiors Event in February 2021, which saw approximately 4,000 industry professionals from 83 countries gather online, a new thought leadership festival will take place 20th – 24th September named VI:Insights.

Xilinx invests in semiconductor startup to drive further collaboration on Open Compute Project-compliant device security for data centres.

It’s fair to say investment banks don’t have the best reputation for offering employees the perfect work/life balance, but one such firm - Numis - is setting out to change things.

Monta, the electric vehicle (EV) charging app, has announced its expansion into the UK today to help meet a national shortage of charge points.

Live Tech Games today announces that ITV has injected a £2.5 million investment into the pioneering tech startup, via the Studio 55 Ventures arm, for a minority stake. The ITV team selected Live Tech Games as part of its wider strategy to enhance ITV’s reach amongst 16-34 year olds.

 A recruitment company that's shaking up the international space industry, Britain's first carbon negative ice cream company, and a key disruptor in sustainable fashion-tech are all among the finalists in the Lloyds Bank British Business Excellence Awards 2021.

European travel startup, Framey has closed a $1M Seed funding round led by ICE Capital from Dubai, and backed by Europe based JECO Capital. The company, planning to disrupt the way people plan their trips, will use the funds to invest in its technology, scale up its operations and launch globally.

A study of 250 business owners in London and Greater South East England by Vistage, the CEO coaching and peer advisory organisation for small and medium sized businesses, has revealed that the majority of respondents remain positive in spite of ongoing challenges, with 84% claiming they are optimistic about the next 12 months.

New data from European small business lender, iwoca, revealed how embedded finance will play a vital role for small businesses as they look to recover from the pandemic.

A British AI tech startup Kortical, which helps companies use Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities, has improved 10x their success rate of generating positive outcomes across their organisations vs the industry average.

An online brand protection business, SnapDragon Monitoring has raised £1.2m in its latest funding round, bringing the total raised to just over £3m, from ACF Investors, Mercia, and Scottish Enterprise, to help brand owners identify and remove fakes, copycats and online threats, using intellectual property to do so.

It’s back – the ideas incubator programme that launched the 2021 drinking water initiative of the year and delivered the UK’s reigning top Tech Innovator.

Over 80 budding entrepreneurs from across the UK are participating in the Santander X Entrepreneurship Awards 2021 and are in with a chance of receiving up to £75,000 of business development support at the competition final, due to take place at Wembley Stadium in London in October.

As part of a new edition of ICT Spring (September 14th and 15th), the renowned global tech conference organised since 2010, Mastermind Summit & Competition will take place on September 15th at the European Conference Center Luxembourg. This event - dedicated to the startup ecosystem - aims to promote and spread best practices, foster emulation between entrepreneurs and VCs and offer recognition to the best international startups of the ecosystem. Mastermind is composed of a one day conference and a startup competition where three key categories will be represented: FinTech, DeepTech and NewSpace.

Innovative business travel company TapTrip has teamed up with Trainline Partner Solutions (TPS), Trainline’s B2B arm and a leading distributor of global rail content, to further elevate and streamline its service to business users as rail becomes the primary source of travel for more and more domestic business customers post-Covid.

Xero has unveiled its most comprehensive improvements to bank reconciliation on the platform in a decade, to help give small business owners more time back in their day.

The latest Microsoft Inspire event proved once again to be an insightful and valuable event for all of Microsoft’s partners. It has proved to be an invaluable tool to measure the company's future and where it sees itself in a post-pandemic world.