Hundreds of businesses, entrepreneurs, investors and experts descended on St James' Park, Newcastle last week for VentureFest North East.

A series of high-profile national and international speakers and business leaders provided inspiration and practical tools to delegates who gathered at the region's innovation conference to learn from one another before celebrating success at the North East Innovation Awards during a ceremony that brought the event to a close.

Tech Nation, the UK’s leading network for ambitious tech entrepreneurs, has revealed the 33 regional winners of its nationwide competition. Rising Stars represents and recognises the UK’s most exciting and innovative early-stage scaling tech companies. 

Iotic has secured investment of €7.5million to accelerate growth and meet increasing demand for its pioneering digital twin technology. Iotic enables enterprises and their ecosystems of assets, objects, companies and people to interact automatically and securely. The digital software company provides the secure operating environment and tools to create digital twins of any thing, enabling their secure interactions, and building true interoperable ecosystems.  

ClearlySo, Europe’s leading impact investment bank, has helped MyKindaFuture (“MKF”), the leading expert in early careers at apprentice and graduate level, complete a £2.75 million Series A equity round. The new funding, which came from Puma Private Equity, will enable MKF to expand its mission to help employers access a broader and more diverse talent pool, improve retention rates and tackle skills shortages.  MKF empowers young people with ‘employability’ skills, confidence and contacts enabling them to be successful from school and university through to Year-1 in job.

Trouva, the online destination for unique products from the best curators around the world, today announces it has raised £17 million in further investment to accelerate international expansion. The funding was led by Octopus Ventures, alongside C4 Ventures and Downing Ventures, with BGF and LocalGlobe also participating in the round.  

BGF has welcomed the Australian Government’s announcement to establish an Australian Business Growth Fund that will help boost the growth of small and medium businesses.

European venture capital activity saw €5.9 billion invested across 296 rounds during the third quarter of 2019, the strongest quarter on record according to research by Refinitiv.

The UK Business Angels Association is hosting its annual Future Forward event to highlight some of the key areas of development that innovative SMEs can lead from the front in the battle to reverse climate change. 

Foresight Group's award-winning Foresight Capital Management Team has raised £500 million in less than two years since the launch of its first open-ended investment company.  The team cites the growing demand for ESG and sustainable investing, predictable cash yields, and lower market volatility, as key drivers for its success.

IW Capital has invested £2 million in Impact Recycling Limited. The investment will be used as development capital to drive growth by upgrading existing equipment in Newcastle, increasing the level of shift patterns, employing additional staff resource and funding the initial licence opportunities.  Impact Recycling Limited has developed a breakthrough plastic recycling technology which separates the components of post-consumer, mixed plastic waste to recover two consistent streams of plastic; polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), each with over 95% purity. 

Financier and author David Horne will launch the first Funding Focus Conference on 25 November at the London Stock Exchange and will challenge the VC industry to examine why it fails to invest in women.

After only two months since launching, the ‘China-ready’ investment programme for UK and European companies increases by $3 million (£2.330 million), opening up new market segments and industries to the ground-breaking accelerator.