Growth capital investor VGC Partners has provided £150,000 funding to VozLab, the creator of a self-serve development platform for the next generation of flexible voice apps.  This is the first investment that VGC Partners has made from its Technology Seed Fund IV. VozLab is also the first start-up to join Amazon’s UK Alexa Incubator Programme, which provides technical and business mentorship support from the Amazon Alexa team.

Maven Capital Partners has invested £1m into Fintech platform, Pockit Ltd as part of Pockit’s £15m Series B funding round. The business has secured £1 million funding through the North East Development Fund,supported by the European Regional Development, and £1.3 million via private investors, Crowdcube and the Future Fund, a government scheme backed by the British Business Bank.  

2150 has announced the first close of its flagship €200m fund. Based in London, Copenhagen and Berlin, the fund will back technology companies that seek to sustainably reimagine and reshape the urban environment. 

Limited Partners in 2150’s first fund include a mix of institutional capital and family offices including Chr. Augustinus Fabrikker, Denmark’s Green Future Fund and Novo Holdingsalongside an ecosystem of partners building or managing over ten million square meters of real estate, who will help evaluate and accelerate the adoption of the sustainable technologies that the fund backs.

StorageOS, a leader in cloud native storage management, has closed a $10 million Series B funding round to build on growth, which has seen more than 4,000 customers globally implement its software-defined storage solution. Led by Downing Ventures, existing investors Bain Capital Ventures, Uncorrelated Ventures and MMC Ventures also participated in the round alongside new investor, Chestnut Street Ventures. This brings the total funding raised to date by StorageOS to $20 million.  The company will now invest further in its go-to-market strategy and scale its sales and customer facing technology teams to build its customer base and revenue. 

Reflaunt, a disruptive Resale-as-a-Service (RaaS) technology company empowering global fashion brands to embrace circularity, has announced that it has secured $2.7 million in pre-Series A funding, led by the investment arm of MadaLuxe Group, a leading worldwide distributor of luxury fashion. Participating investors include former Jimmy Choo CEO and Coty Senior Advisor Pierre Denis, Ganni founder and former CEO Nicolaj Reffstrup, Textile Innovation Fund, Piquadro, Bluebell Group and sustainable fashion accelerator Fashion For Good. The investment will enable Reflaunt to add top talent to its technology and business development teams as it executes its growth strategy and offers a variety of resale models to more leading global brands.

Worker tech start-up Orka Technology Group has raised £29 million in its latest funding round and will use the capital to fuel the rapid growth of its earned wage access product Orka Pay.

The fundraise was a mixture of debt financing from Sonovate and equity funding involving the British Business Bank Future Fund and existing investors, including former UK CEO of Adecco Peter Searle. This takes the total raised by Orka to £31.5m since the company launched in 2017.

The University of Birmingham has announced a three-year research project with Bentley Motors to deliver a sustainable source of rare earth magnets for electric and hybrid vehicles for one of the most sought after luxury car brands in the world.

The £2.6m RaRE (Rare-earth Recycling for E-machines) project is funded by the Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV) and delivered in partnership with Innovate UK, and involves six partners who will work together to establish the first end-to-end supply chain of recycled rare earth magnets in the UK.

Acceleris has invested in Power Roll, a developer of a game-changing, ultra-low-cost and lightweight flexible film for energy generation and storage, as part of a further £3m round, taking total investment in the firm to £5.8m over two funding rounds completed in the last six months. ?

NVM Private Equity investee company QV Systems has announced its latest partnership with the Licence Bureau. This partnership completes QV Systems’ fleet management solution, by including the ability to check drivers licences alongside other compliance checks. 

Ally.io, a hypergrowth technology company specializing in goal-setting and business execution software, announces today a $50M (£36.5M) Series C funding round led by Greenoaks Capital. Tiger Global, who led the company’s Series B round, and Madrona Venture Group also joined the round, as well as previous investors Accel, Addition Ventures, Founders’ Co-Op, and Vulcan Capital. 

Cambridge GaN Devices (CGD) has raised $9.5 million in Series A funding. The investment was co-led by IQ Capital, Parkwalk Advisors and BGF, and includes investment from Foresight Williams, Cambridge Enterprise, Martlet Capital, Cambridge Angels and Cambridge Capital Group. The funding will be used by CGD to expand its product portfolio of energy-efficient power devices and to double the size of its team.

Intelligence Fusion has secured a £400,000 investment from a number of sources to continue its growth in the expanding global intelligence market.  Led by Maven Capital Partners, the funding has been provided by the Finance Durham Fund, The Future Fund and existing investors.  The follow-on investment will support the business as it enters its next phase of growth after it successfully developed and launched its intelligence data feed platform two years ago.