Foresight Group has announced the €17.3 million arrangement and subscription of a Project Bond issued by Pagano & Ascolillo S.p.A. and listed on Borsa Italiana, for the installation of LED street lights in six municipalities in Umbria, Molise and Campania, on behalf of the Foresight Italian Green Bond Fund.

Foresight Group has made a £2.15 million growth capital investment into Sportlabs Technology Limited, trading as ClubSpark, the awarding-winning specialist software company serving participants, sports providers, National Governing Bodies and International Federations.

Founded in 2012 by CEO Dave Ward and CTO Nathan Flood, ClubSpark provides a comprehensive software platform which provides easy access to sports and events for participants, simple to use tools for sports providers, whilst giving National Governing Bodies and International Federations insight into participation and activity levels.

Finatext, one of Japan’s leading trading brokerages, has invested £2 million to support the launch and development of a new and educational FCA-regulated platform, designed to make trading more accessible to a new generation of users.

Beringea has led a £6.5m investment in Exonar, a leading data discovery and management software firm. Downing Ventures, the early stage investor, has also participated in the round alongside notable existing investors, Amadeus Capital Partners and Winton Ventures.

Enterprises are facing a fundamental change in the way they process and store information. An exponential increase in data volume means organisations must find new ways to understand the risk as well as the opportunities in their data. Driven by new regulation, cyber threats and competition, organisations who use data they hold effectively will survive and thrive.

Venture Capital firm Boundary Capital has invested £200,000 in Torsion Information Security, a disruptive cyber security company, delivering Secure Data Access Control. The London start up helps businesses get control of ‘who has access to what’, among massive collections of files, folders and sites.

Inappropriate access to data is a leading cause of information security breaches. Torsion uses Machine Learning to seamlessly engage business users in the security of their own information, to precisely control access and drive robust security outcomes for the business.

Firefly, a suite of school learning tools used in 40 countries and first developed by co-founders Simon Hay and Joe Mathewson while preparing for their GCSEs, has secured £5 million funding from Downing Ventures, alongside BGF and Beringea.  Firefly has the potential to cut school administration by 50 per cent and connect teachers, students and parents to share lesson plans and assign and review homework directly, both in and out of the classroom. In partnership with other best of breed tools, such as content providers, Firefly aims to create one, simple to manage, school ecosystem.

Beringea has led a £9m investment in AccessPay, a Manchester-based fintech firm. The funding round, backed also by US investors True Ventures and Route 66, is one of the largest ever investments in a financial technology company in the North. Maria Wagner, Investment Director at Beringea, led the deal.

The investment also marks the expansion of Beringea’s footprint in the North of England, as the firm has launched its first dedicated office in the region in central Manchester. This expanded presence will enable Beringea to work more closely with the region’s scaling businesses and provide capital to support the acceleration of the region’s digital economy.

InMotion Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover’s venture capital fund, has announced its investment in Urgent.ly, the connected roadside assistance service supported by a cutting edge technology platform.

The Dream Corporation has secured $1.1 million of investment to introduce a new leisure and hospitality concept with immersive entertainment at its heart.

The investment is led by Imbiba, a specialist investor in the UK leisure and hospitality sector via the Imbiba Leisure EIS Fund, and is supported by tech angel investors, with growth plans across major UK cities.

The funding will enable the team, led by alumni from McKinsey, Oval Space and Milk & Honey, to build exclusive virtual reality experiences. The first of these is to be installed in OTHERWORLD, a permanent site scheduled for opening in Haggerston, East London, mid-2019.

EIS & VCT specialist Calculus Capital has invested £2.5m in fintech company Essentia Analytics (see photo), a leading provider of behavioural data analytics and consulting for professional investors. The investment by Calculus will be used to further develop Essentia’s services as it scales its client base of investment management institutions around the world. 

Aberdeen-headquartered SPEX Group Holdings Limited has secured a multi-million pound follow-on investment from its management team and BGF, the UK’s most active investor in growing businesses, to accelerate growth. BGF originally invested £5m in February 2014 to support the company’s expansion in international markets.

SPEX Group’s subsidiaries provide specialist explosive products and services to the oil and gas industry, including for downhole cutting, punching and abandonment.

Israeli startup Hailo, developers of a proprietary processing architecture for deep learning on edge devices, has expanded its Series A funding round to $21 million.