Ten technology rich early stage businesses in Wales are a step closer to developing their innovative products and services having secured equity investment from the Development Bank of Wales.

£2.4 million has been secured by ten companies in just ten weeks since the UK went into lockdown. Those to benefit include £625,000 for Flintshire based Reacta Biotech to further develop their diagnostic tool for food allergies. 

Livingbridge, one of the UK’s leading mid-market private equity investors, has invested in TitanHQ, a fast-growing, global, cloud security vendor. Headquartered in Galway, Ireland and with offices in Tampa, Florida, TitanHQ provides Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and businesses with advanced web filtering, email security and email archiving solutions.  The company has over 20 years’ experience in the cyber security sector and protects over 8,500 businesses and 2,500 MSPs across 150 countries, including Virgin, O2, ViaSat, Pepsi and Datto.  It has demonstrated year on year growth with this momentum propelling ARR to more than $15m today.

Axiom is launching with an enterprise-grade solution to manage and analyse machine data at any scale, across any type of infrastructure. Axiom gives DevOps teams a cloud-native, serverless solution to store and query their data all the time in one intuitive interface - without the overhead of maintaining and scaling data infrastructure. 

SilviBio, a company developing a ‘survival capsule’ that will improve the survival of tree seedlings by 40 per cent in drought conditions, is the overall winner of the GROW 2020 agri-tech business plan competition. The result was announced by Calum Murray of Innovate UK, one of the judges.

Dr Belinda Clarke, Director of Agri-TechE, also announced that SilviBio had been the audience choice. The announcement came at the end of an exciting final in which four early-stage agri-tech companies pitched their business plans to the judges via Zoom.

Maven Capital Partners, one of the UKs most active private equity managers, has invested an undisclosed amount in Zing Dev Limited, a technology services business.  Zing is a specialist implementation partner for Twilio, a market-leading cloud communication platform. As one of a small number of accredited implementation partners across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Zing offers consultancy and managed services for Twilio’s fully programmable cloud-based contact centre software.

Start-ups faced with an entirely new trading environment are being encouraged to use the next 100 days to carefully align their shifting commercial goals with an effective approach to IP or risk being left behind by innovative competitors.

Flusso, a semiconductor company spun out of the University of Cambridge, has raised a $5.7 million Series A funding round to scale up production of the world’s smallest flow sensor. The round was led by existing investor Parkwalk Advisors and new investor Foresight Williams Technology EIS Fund, with participation from 24 Haymarket, Cambridge Enterprise, Martlet, and Cambridge Angels. With products already commercially available, the investment will also enable Flusso to widen its product and technology portfolio.

ROI has secured a £3m investment from BGF, the UK and Ireland’s most active investor in growing businesses, to support its expansion into 12 cities across the UK and Europe. ROI is a lead generation technology company which allows small businesses to rent a highly optimised website which attracts more leads and ultimately boosts sales for these companies. ROI’s innovative proposition has had success in the home improvement and maintenance sector and is scaleable across different geographies and sectors.

BGF has invested £6m in Amdaris, an industry-leading software developer and digital transformation specialist, to support its organic and acquisitive growth strategy.

Headquartered in Bristol, Amdaris is one of the UK’s fastest-growing technology companies, employing more than 200 developers averaging 40 percent revenue growth per annum over the past three years to £7.2m. The firm’s key sectors of operation include real estate, recruitment, education, financial services and energy.

Climeworks has successfully raised CHF 73 million (USD 75 million) in equity from private investors.  This is the largest private investment into direct air capture to date. The funding will help to drive forward the company’s scale-up roadmap and expand its carbon dioxide removal capacities.

Although the world is struck by a global pandemic, the urgency of the climate crisis does not subside. Investment in the large-scale deployment of climate solutions provides the opportunity to stimulate economies and build a more resilient world – meaning every dollar invested works harder, bringing additional benefit.

Tech Nation, the UK’s leading growth platform for tech companies and leaders, has appointed Stephen Kelly as the new Chair.  Stephen Kelly succeeds Eileen Burbidge MBE who has served as Chair since 2015.

Inflexion has sold Glide, the UK’s leading provider of infrastructure to difficult to serve markets, like high-density accommodation, to US infrastructure investor Alinda Capital. The sale follows a six-year period of transformational growth for the business, which became the clear UK market leader during its partnership with Inflexion.