Oxwash, the space-age laundry and dry-cleaning startup overhauling the traditional laundry service, has raised £1.4m investment from TrueSight Ventures, Biz Stone (co-founder of Twitter), Paul Forster (founder of Indeed.com), Founders Factory and other angel investors. Oxwash’s service is taking medical-grade laundry technology typically used in spaceship and hospital sterilisation and making it accessible to all.  The new investment will be used to expand Oxwash’s reach across South East England and scale the team.

A Carmarthen carpenter has led his management team to complete a multi-million management buy-out of the double glazing company that he set-up in 1989. 

A Liverpool-based chemical technology company that is helping in the fight against dementia, cancer and respiratory illnesses has secured £2.25m in a funding round led by the VC firms Deepbridge Capital and Praetura Ventures.  Liverpool ChiroChem (LCC), the developer and manufacturer of chemical components that are critical to the research and development of new drugs, also saw investment from NPIF - Maven Equity Finance, managed by Maven and part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund.

QVentures is to lead the funding round in Glean.ly, a scalable repository for user experience research and insights.

Almost all companies rely on user experience and there is a growing need for companies to produce a unique user experience. Very few companies have the tools to allow employees to easily access and understand research previously carried out in their companies which often leads to duplicating work.

TransFICC, the specialist provider of low-latency connectivity and workflow services for Fixed Income and Derivatives Markets, has closed its Series A investment round for £5.75 million. Led by AlbionVC, it included new strategic investments from ING Ventures and HSBC.

A Newcastle-based company which provide the UK’s fastest-growing text donation service has secured a second round of investment funding worth £350,000.

Expa, a company founded by serial entrepreneur and Uber co-founder Garrett Camp to help entrepreneurs create and launch new companies, has hired industry veteran David Clark as its newest Partner.

Social impact investor Nesta Impact Investments (NII), part of Nesta, and London-based investment manager, Downing, have led a £2m growth funding round in Empiribox Ltd. The rapidly growing science education provider supplies resources for primary school teachers to teach practical science lessons. 

Bot-Hive, a digital marketplace for robotics and AI solutions has successfully completed a six-figure equity funding round.

Bot-Hive is a digital marketplace which connects SMEs with the right automation technology for their business and shows them the best way to introduce robots to their workflow processes.

Kluster has received a $1m investment from VCs Newable and SuperSeed, alongside Cognism CEO James Isilay. The announcement comes in the same week GoCardless signed up as their latest enterprise client.  Two years since their AI platform went live, Kluster have raised funds to capitalise on surging demand for revenue analytics on both sides of the Atlantic, with current customers already spanning Europe, US and Canada.   

The British Business Bank has allocated an additional £23.7m to Maven Capital Partners from the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund.

Maven was first awarded the Northern Powerhouse Investment mandate for Equity investments in the North West of the UK in 2017 and since then has invested £33m into 49 small and medium SME’s, creating 382 roles within the North West Region.

Leeds-based investment non-profit NorthInvest supported three investment rounds in the first quarter of 2020. The investment facilitator has helped IP-rich start-ups based in the North of England raise almost £2m through its funding network, and has already hosted two virtual pitch events since lockdown began.