As it reaches the second anniversary of its launch, the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF) is celebrating having directly invested £100m in 385 Northern-based SMEs, in deals that have attracted an additional £84m of investment from the private sector.

Beauhurst report celebrates the UKs top 'serial entrepreneurs'.

Maven Capital Partners, one of the UK’s most active SME finance providers, has invested £150,000 in cloud-based project management system, Collabor8Online on behalf of NPIF – Maven Equity Finance, part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund.  The funding will support the expansion of the senior management, including the appointment of a Chief Technology Officer, strengthen the sales team and invest in extensive product development. Collabor8 will also use the funds raised to commence a targeted contact marketing campaign to better penetrate its customer base in niche sectors, principally construction and associated professional services.

London-based VC fund Fuel Ventures has expanded its portfolio of early-stage companies and invested £1 million in Capdesk, a progressive private equity management platform.

WarDucks, the Dublin-based augmented reality (AR) game development studio, has announced a €3.3 million funding round. Lead investor in the round is the EQT Ventures fund, with participation from Suir Valley Ventures and other investors. The funding will be used to drive the development of WarDucks’ new location-based AR game and expand the company’s development team. WarDucks’ is the latest investment to be discovered by AI platform Motherbrain. The proprietary platform is used by EQT Ventures to leverage data to identify and proactively contact promising start-ups.

Since 2010, £120 million has been pumped into UK mapping businesses, a third of which was invested in 2018. Beauhurst has looked at the 21 companies exploring new ground in the UK's mapping sector.

UKCloud, the multi-cloud experts dedicated to making transformation happen across UK public sector, today announced a significant £25m investment from Digital Alpha Advisors, LLC, that will enable accelerated digital transformation of UK public services through its unique multi-cloud platform.

Leading estate agency comparison business GetAgent has closed a £2.2m super-seed round from a consortium of investors led by Marchmont Ventures, backers of Motorway.co.uk and joins the Channel 4 Commercial Growth Fund, the investment arm of Channel 4 Television which invested in 2018.  GetAgent is the estate agency comparison website, comparing the performance of every UK estate agency via multiple, third party data points to reliably help potential home sellers choose the right agent based upon performance.

Private investor Rcapital has completed a Franchisee-led Buyout of Cash Generator, a successful and well established retail business, focused on being the first place customers come to sell and buy second hand items.

Luke Davis, CEO and Founder of IW Capital, and Small business expert, comments on the Spring Statement.

“The Chancellor rightly recognised the importance of the UK’s fantastic entrepreneurs, small businesses and investors, as they lead the way in our private sector economy. Brexit has dominated the political and economic landscape recently but despite this we have seen a huge amount of investor confidence and deal-flow at IW Capital in supporting small businesses.

Belfast-based health tech company, Neurovalens, has secured one of the largest ever Series A investments generated by a Northern Irish technology company.

The company specialises in using neuroscience to solve everyday health issues.

The £4.6 million raise was led by London-based Wharton Asset Management along with Cambridge based IQ Capital. The round was also supported by Techstart Ventures, through its Invest NI-backed fund, The UU Fund, Co-Fund NI managed by Clarendon Fund Management, Beltrae Partners and the Angel CoFund.

Bowmark Capital is backing the buy-out of Pirum Systems, the leading provider of post-trade market infrastructure technology for the global securities finance industry, from Five Arrows Principal Investments.  The transaction, which is subject to regulatory approval, is expected to complete in April 2019.