The team behind Lara Croft’s smile in the newly launched bestselling Shadow of the Tomb Raider video game are turning their technology sights on the customer service sector following a significant funding boost.

Speech Graphics is an Edinburgh and California based technology business which provides market-leading, real-time audio based facial animation, featuring in productions from video games to music videos and now, with a £2m investment from Archangels, the prominent business angel syndicate, Par Equity and Scottish Investment Bank (SIB) the company is targeting the customer service sector’s Intelligent Virtual Assistant market from its base in the San Francisco Bay area of California.

Green Angel Syndicate has invested in Piclo (formerly Open Utility) in its latest round to finance the expansion of its revolutionary energy trading software system, Piclo Flex.

‘Flexibility’ is the term used in the energy market to describe the balancing of energy consumption or generation in response to a price or an instruction. There is currently no efficient system to trade flexible energy consumption and generation in a dynamic, responsive and – most of all – rapid manner.

Edinburgh-based venture capital firm Par Equity has invested £1.3m in a rapidly growing stem-cell research company that is helping pharmaceutical giants to develop new treatments for diseases including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

A University of Oxford spin-out company which has developed a software platform for broadcasters has secured an £850,000 investment led by the MEIF Proof of Concept & Early Stage Fund, which is managed by Mercia Fund Managers and part of the Midlands Engine Investment Fund.

The funding will allow Covatic to bring its software to market and create six new technical and management jobs. This latest investment, which also includes money from Oxford Sciences Innovation fund, Creative England, management and private investors, brings the total raised by the company to over £1.6million.

Ventrica, a European, award-winning, outsourced contact centre, has attracted a £9 million investment from Mobeus Equity Partners.  Ventrica provides intelligent, multi-lingual and omni-channel outsourced customer contact services to a range of global ‘blue-chip’ brands.

National investment group Mercia Technologies PLC has announced a £1.5million follow-on investment into its direct investment, Voxpopme, to support the further scaling of the business as it is set to double its revenues this year.

Siilo, the secure instant messaging app for healthcare professionals, has raised a €4.5 million funding round. Lead investor in the round is the EQT Ventures fund with participation from existing investors. The funding will be used to scale-up Siilo’s user base across Europe, with a particular focus on the UK and Germany.

Medical professionals are faced with an increasingly fragmented healthcare system and outdated methods of communication, such as fax, pagers and landlines. This often results in key patient data being siloed and valuable time being wasted trying to get access to the right information. To ensure the right teams have access to vital patient data at the right time, healthcare professionals have taken matters into their own hands. According to British Medical Journal research, 98.9% of UK hospital clinicians now have smartphones, with about a third using consumer messaging apps in the clinical workplace.

LIGNIA Wood Company, a producer of sustainable modified wood based in Barry, Wales, has secured £3 million funding from London-based investment manager Downing LLP, to support the construction of its first commercial production facility.

The company is helping tackle issues relating to lack of supply of legal and sustainable hardwoods. It is doing this by modifying the properties of sustainably-sourced, plantation-grown softwoods under the brand name LIGNIA®.

Phytoponics, a multi-award winning start-up specialising in the development of hydroponic deep-water culture technology for sustainable agriculture has secured £300,000 in new funding following on from the £200,000 it raised earlier this year. The funding comes from existing investors and a number of new angel investors lead by Smart Anchor Capital.

The company based in Aberystwyth was co-founded by Adam Dixon and Luke Parkin during Adam’s studies at Cardiff University with the aim of delivering highly optimised hydroponic systems designed to produce better crop yields than traditional systems and with the potential to meet global food demand with sustainability in mind. Phytoponic’s patented Hydrosac technology is ready for high volume commercial growing having proven itself by producing two tonnes of high quality tomatoes through a pilot project housed at the company’s glasshouse facility at Aberystwyth University.

Foresight Group has announced a £500,000 equity investment into Mobile Pay Systems, trading as Swoopos, through the Midlands Engine Investment Fund (MEIF).

Swoopos provides a Mobile Point of Sale (“MPOS”) universal payments system that combines ePOS and cloud-based technology to deliver rich data analysis for businesses operating in the hospitality, and, soon the retail sector. The system includes a mobile wallet, booking system and mobile ordering, as well as a management reporting suite to help the retailer capture and monitor customer data.

ReBOUND, the global returns management platform used by online clothing retailers such as ASOS, Gymshark and Charles Tyrwhitt, has received significant investment from BGF to support international expansion and IP development. 

With offices in Telford and Central London, ReBOUND assists retailers with the management of their UK and international returns service, improving efficiency, traceability and customer experience. Founded in 2015 by experienced logistics operators, CEO Graham Best and COO Phil Smith, the business has grown by 400% year-on-year and revenue will double in 2018. ReBOUND now has over 500 customers and manages 35 million returns transactions a year.

British Business Investments, a commercial subsidiary of the British Business Bank, has made a £25m Tier 2 capital investment in Secure Trust Bank, demonstrating its continued commitment to improving access to capital for UK smaller businesses.Secure Trust Bank focuses on carefully selected segments of the business and consumer markets and this year signed up its one millionth customer.