50 of the leading investors from across Europe will be arriving in Edinburgh next week looking for attractive startups to invest in at Turing Founders, and there are still a handful of spaces for entrepreneurs to attend in order to learn, network and pitch their businesses.

The Bank of Ireland Kernel Capital Growth Fund (NI) has led a £2m investment in Belfast-based Silform Technologies, in syndication with private investors.

There are billions of tonnes of coal waste around the world today, causing environmental problems and giving rise to significant ongoing costs to mining operators and government agencies.

Silform have developed a unique environmentally clean, high volume, low cost pelletizing system for the conversion of coal waste deposits into pellets which have economic value.  The company is currently developing a metallurgical coal pellet for use in the steel industry and the production of an enhanced BioCoal, being 30% less CO2 than coal but with a 70% increase in calorific value compared to pure wood Biomass pellets.

Two female tech entrepreneurs who have developed the UK’s first software as a service (SaaS) platform to help companies manage rebate and pricing schemes have secured £950,000 from investors.

Leanne Bonner-Cooke MBE and Colette Wyatt have received funding from Mercia Asset Management, the MEIF Proof of Concept & Early Stage Fund, which is managed by Mercia and part of the Midlands Engine Investment Fund, and private investors. The funding will allow them to expand their sales and marketing activities and roll out e-Bate to a wider audience, creating a number of new jobs at their office in Leicester.

SpotQA a leader in automated software testing, today announces the general availability of its flagship product Virtuoso. Virtuoso tests web and mobile web apps to identify bugs, inconsistencies and errors in a fraction of the time taken using traditional manual and automated testing. Using intelligent automation powered by Machine Learning (ML) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Virtuoso increases the speed of testing by up to 25X, bringing down the costs of QA by 80-90%.

In addition, SpotQA has secured a $3.25M round of seed funding, led by Crane with participation from Forward Ventures, Downing Ventures and Acequia Capital. 

Antler, the global startup generator and early-stage VC, has appointed Edward Knight as a Global Partner and Annette Wilson as European Chair and Advisor of Antler. 

Beauhurst has published its overview of the high-growth ecosystem in Scotland. There are almost 2,000 active ambitious companies in the country, most of which are buoyed by fairly different methods of support than the rest of the UK. Although private equity and venture capital funds dominate the funding scene across the UK, it is devolved government bodies and angel investors which are pulling the most weight in Scotland. So what do funding trends look like, and which other means of support are high-growth Scottish businesses drawing on?

Maven Capital Partners has invested £160,000 in data analysis business, Innotech Insights, on behalf of NPIF – Maven Equity Finance, part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund. The funding will support the expansion of Innotech’s sales team, invest in product development and in the roll out of the company’s flagship analysis system product, Crowded.

Innotech provides both public and private sector organisations with the information they need to make major planning decisions by accurately monitoring pedestrian movements in an area, indoors or out. 

Leading global delivery software business Sorted Group has raised £15 million in a Series B funding round led by Merian Chrysalis Investment Company Limited, alongside Praetura Ventures and NVM Private Equity LLP. The investment takes the firm’s total funding to more than £35 million since its launch in 2010.

Graphite Capital, a leading UK mid-market private equity specialist, has backed the management buy-out of Hanson Wade, the market-leading conference organiser and provider of information services, focused primarily on the pharmaceutical and biotech industries.

Hanson Wade’s management team is led by Tom Richardson, who has overseen a period of rapid expansion since being appointed chief executive in 2015. Between 2016 and 2018, the company’s portfolio of events almost doubled to 108 and its revenues increased by 117% to £22.6 million.

MoA Technology Limited, the crop protection discovery company, has secured £6.3m ($8m) Series A round to develop its unique crop protection discovery platforms in a bid to avert the global herbicide resistance crisis.

The funding round into MoA was co-led by Oxford Sciences Innovation, the world’s largest university venture fund, and Parkwalk Advisors, the largest EIS growth fund manager focused on university spinouts. Oxford University Innovation, the University’s innovation arm, assisted in spinning the company out in 2018.

In this article, Beauhurst highlights the top fund raisings in 2019 by companies that were founded in the same year.

Maven Capital Partners, one of the UK’s most active private equity houses, has invested £2 million in high-growth FinTech provider Delio Limited. The funding will support the business scale its international sales team across key global financial locations in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North America.