The prevalence and severity of cyber-attacks/breaches has damningly increased over the last few years. 

MMC Ventures has backed Cloudsmith as the team build for the next stage of software development. Cloudsmith’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offers an advanced logistics platform for software developers, operators and vendors, who need to secure, manage and accelerate their product development and distribution.

GP Bullhound acted as exclusive financial advisor to Croud on a £30 million minority investment from private equity house LDC.

Founded in the UK in 2011, Croud provides tech-enabled digital marketing services to leading brands via an innovative and disruptive service delivery model. Croud uses its proprietary technology to support planning, automation and execution of digital marketing campaigns - and then scales this capability via its global network of 2,400 on-demand digital marketing specialists. It operates from offices in London, New York, Sydney and Shrewsbury.

ScaleUp Group has supported exclusively its client Active Navigation, a leader in Data Privacy & Governance, inc. attracting growth funding from Mobeus VCT and members of SUG itself together with the setting up of an Employee Benefit Trust.

Active Navigation, a UK registered business with Angel Funding of only £1.5 million net to date has achieved profitable growth of 60% CAGR in the last 3 years. It’s 100+ clients include some of the largest organisations, predominantly in the USA, in both the commercial and Federal sectors, helping to manage their data and to recover from or avoid serious breaches, often stimulated by GDPR and similar regulations, such as CCPA in California.

Startup Funding Club has led a £250,000 seed round into fintech company Ember. The accounting software startup strives to make business simpler for contractors and SMEs by automating the entirety of the business administration and tax process.

Ember believes in an economy powered by small business and is creating a future where independent workers and companies can thrive without the need for an accountant. Its software helps businesses manage their financial obligations by automating the entire accounting process from bank transaction through to tax submission. Ember allows its users to see all the relevant numbers in one central feed – and even replaces technical terms for language that is easy to understand.

ABN AMRO's Digital Impact Fund (DIF) has doubled its assets under management from EUR 50 million to EUR 100 million and will continue its activities under the name ABN AMRO Ventures. 

Capitolis, the innovative FinTech company reimagining and reshaping how the global capital markets operate, has announced the successful completion of its Series B round of $40 million, led by Spark Capital and SVB Capital. Existing investors, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital and S Capital also participated in the round, bringing the total capital raised to date to $70 million. The investment will support Capitolis’ next phase of rapid growth, including the expansion of its technology platform, functionality and product offering. 

Albion Capital, the leading independent investment manager, has announced the first close of its new asset-backed private equity fund, Albion Real Assets Fund (ARAF). The first close investors are the £9bn Merseyside Pension Fund and several high net worth families.

Foresight Group LLP, a leading independent infrastructure and private equity investment manager, has announced the successful sale of Idio Limited to Episerver Inc, a customer-centric digital experience company. The acquisition is expected to enhance Episerver’s analytics and personalisation capabilities to deliver customer-centric digital experiences.  Idio is a content personalisation and analytics platform powering the digital buying experience of some of the world’s largest enterprise organisations. 

Funds advised by YFM Equity Partners, the specialist private equity fund manager, have backed a £4.5m investment into SharpCloud Software Limited to support the continued growth and roll out of its enterprise SaaS product. YFM’s investment comes from its two advised VCTs, British Smaller Companies VCT plc and British Smaller Companies VCT2 plc, alongside YFM Equity Partners Growth II LP.

SharpCloud was founded in 2012 by Sarim Khan and Rusty Johnson, following the successful sale of their previous software business to Oracle Primavera. Having spent some time within the Business Intelligence (‘BI’) and data analytics space, they noted a lack of powerful top-down software tools that could allow large organisations to visualise complex data across siloed lines-of-business and built SharpCloud to solve this.

Snowplow Analytics, the company that helps businesses to collect and own their customer data, has closed a £4m funding round from research-led VC MMC Ventures. The funding will support the company’s continued expansion in the US and Europe, and will help to further develop the technology behind its product.

Bioplastics company Teysha Technologies has successfully raised £1.2m of investment, supported by Angel Investment Network (AIN), the world’s largest online angel investing platform. London-based Teysha has created a patented, renewable, fully biodegradable plastic substitute, using waste from landfill to creating polymers for hundreds of different applications.