Partech has expanded its Growth Equity team with the appointment of Paul Vidier.

Before joining Partech, Paul worked in London at Kennet Partners, a transatlantic tech growth equity firm, where he invested in growth-stage European SaaS and fintech companies for five years. Prior to working in growth equity, he spent nine years in finance, strategy and operational roles in financial services at Oliver Wyman, EY and Barclays.

AlbionVC has led a £2.6m Series A investment round in Clear Review, the UK HR technology scale-up. AlbionVC invested £1.85m with existing shareholders Mercia Technologies and angel investors also supporting the round.

Clear Review is a cloud-based performance management platform that promotes frequent employee feedback and continuous employee-manager conversations. It has experienced rapid growth since launching in 2016, increasing revenue and headcount by 100% and attracting more than 200 customers with its simple, yet engaging user interface. 

Earthworm Group welcomes four new hires to its expanding team, coinciding with the move to its new head office at Milton Park, Abingdon.

Ingenious has led an investment round into Over-C Limited, a London-based analytics company focused on operational performance in the workforce management market. Ingenious helped raise an additional £5.5 million in equity funding, bringing the total raised to £10 million.

Panoramic Growth Equity, a leading equity investor in fast growing, entrepreneurial UK companies, has announced that it has invested £1.5m of growth capital into healthy snacking company Freed Foods Limited, which provides a range of premium plant based gluten-free snacks made with natural ingredients.  Founded by David Ventura and Tomas Mesa, Freed Foods brands include Mister Free’d Tortillas, a range of vegan tortilla chips with innovative flavours and carefully selected super food ingredients.

Qualis Flow, the environmental management platform that tracks, monitors, and predicts project environmental risk, has raised £725,000 in seed funding. This round of investment is being led by Pi Labs, the proptech VC specialist, alongside Entrepreneur First, MMC Ventures and Rising Tide Europe. 

Machine Labs, has announced £800,000 equity funding received from Techstart Ventures, the founders, angels investors with additional grant funding from Scottish Enterprise.  The seed funding will be used to recruit a team of eight based in offices opposite Edinburgh Castle.

Andrew Veitch, Founder and CEO of Machine Labs said: "For most of us database marketing is spam or junk mail. Machine Labs want to use machine learning to make marketing messages relevant, so consumers get the right offers at the right time instead of being irritated by marketing they are not interested in."

Vesalius Biocapital III, the specialist life sciences venture capital investor, has closed its VBC III fund securing EUR 120 million of equity commitments. This includes commitments of EUR 30 million from the European Investment Fund (EIF) and new and existing investors from Europe, the Americas and MENA. The fund is a validation of Vesalius’ proven approach to invest in later-stage European life sciences companies, providing capital to support their development. Vesalius Biocapital III has executed three investments to date.

Private capital is growing in significance as a source of funds for private equity funds, new research carried out by Guernsey Finance has revealed.

WeGift, the digital rewards platform, has secured £4 million in Series A funding, led by Fred Destin at Stride.vc, who also joins the Board of Directors, and other high-profile investors including SAP.iO fund and Unilever Ventures. WeGift also announced new angel investors including James Hind, founder of Carwow and Eamon Jubbawy at Onfido. This investment round will help WeGift deliver on its vision of creating the world’s first real-time infrastructure for digital rewards and incentives. The funds will be used to further scale WeGift’s operations, as well as to support the company’s expansion to the US, and for further investment in its technology platform. 

NVM Private Equity has invested £7 million in Chemigraphic, a leading provider of Electronic Manufacturing Services (EMS) to the fast-growth medical technology, defence and power systems sectors. Chemigraphic has a particularly high presence in the radiology and medical imaging sector that in the UK has seen recent annual growth of between 8% and 10%. The investment from NVM will help to accelerate Chemigraphic’s international growth and drive continued development of its technology and expertise, particularly in the medical sector.

UltraSoC plans to substantially grow its worldwide operations to address emerging opportunities in the cybersecurity, high-reliability and safety-critical systems markets. This latest expansion follows the successful closing of a £5m equity funding round, in which cybersecurity-focused venture capital firm eCAPITAL, and Seraphim Capital, a specialist investor in the space ecosystem, joined existing UltraSoC investors Indaco Venture Partners, Octopus Ventures, Oxford Capital, Techgate, and business angel Guillaume d’Eyssautier.