Scaleup Finance has raised an $8million (£6.4million) pre-Series A round to ‘solve the challenge of financial management’ for startup and scale-up companies.

Led by Inveready, alongside Crowberry Capital, Seed X, PROfounders, Fin Capital and CircleRock Capital, the funds will be used to help drive continued growth in the UK and prepare for future expansion into the US. 

Funding London, the successful early-stage institutional investor bridging the funding gap for London-based SMEs, jhas reached the end of the investment period for its fund of funds, Greater London Investment Fund (GLIF).

Catalyst’s 2024 INVENT competition officially opens for applications today, with a top prize of £25,000 up for grabs for the overall winner and six new categories to enter.

Organised by science and technology hub Catalyst with headline partner Bank of Ireland, the prestigious INVENT competition is the main event in the calendar year for early-stage startups and aspiring entrepreneurs to showcase their innovations to a panel of expert judges.

Newly launched angel network, Lifted Ventures, is on a mission to drive change in the female founder space.

Oxford Innovation Space, which already runs 32 centres in the UK and Ireland, have come on board to run and operate the Wellsprings Innovation Centre.  The team has over 35 years’ experience in supporting economic growth through a focus on advice, finance, and space.  In that time, Oxford Innovation Space has helped in excess of 7,000 small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to become more sustainable businesses.

After growing to support a membership of 200 Angel Investors in the last five years, the Newcastle Angel Hub was relaunched last night (Thursday 8^th February) as the ‘Northern Investor Hub’.

Dorset Business Angels received 27 expressions of interest from investors at their most recent angel investing pitch event held at the Bournemouth Carlton Hotel on Monday evening.

London-based angel syndicate, Veridian Ventures, completed a £150,000 investment in Maji, “a market leading financial wellbeing and open finance platform that educates and coaches employees to build their financial resilience, confidence and ability to save for the future”. This investment forms part of Maji’s £500,000 seed funding round, demonstrating Veridian Ventures’ commitment to supporting innovative ventures tackling challenges like financial stress and lack of financial literacy.

Italian Angels for Growth (IAG), the leading investor network in Italy, has strengthened its presence in the U.S. territory and on the West Coast, where it has already been active for several years.

Operated via Sixth Wave Angel Group (SWAG), the fund invests directly in early-stage companies developing proprietary technologies that tackle fundamental global challenges using science-backed approaches.

Most recently, Sixth Wave Ventures led the seed round of D-time Ltd, helping them fund the development of their Dtechtive platform. The £245,000 raised will enable D-time to build technology that will generate enormous value for data search engines like Google.

Northstar Ventures has launched its first EIS fund, the Northstar EIS Growth Fund, which is now open for subscriptions. The first close of the fund is targeted for 31st March 2024, with investment then being made into a diverse portfolio of technology companies during the 2024/5 tax year. The fund will invest in the North East's highest potential technology scale-up companies, focusing on the clean tech and healthy ageing sectors, where the region has global competitive advantage.

Edinburgh-based investment syndicate, Archangels, invested more than £13.8m during 2023 in eleven of Scotland’s best early-stage tech and life science companies.