UX-Republic joins Smile, the leading group recognized for its unique expertise in open source technologies, and also known through its brands Neopixl, the mobile applications specialist, and SensioLabs, creator of the world-famous Symfony framework. UX-Republic will continue to operate under its own brand and will benefit from Smile's capabilities to strengthen its customer offering – particularly on the technological side - and roll out its expertise in France and Europe. 

Maven Capital Partners has acquired a 28,000 sq ft building in Nottingham city centre for £3.7 million from a South African-listed property fund. The transaction was funded by Maven Investor Partners, an established network of professional client investors.

University of Birmingham spinout ChromaTwist Ltd has secured £300k of seed funding to develop a new class of fluorescent materials for use in bio-sensing and bio-imaging tests for diseases such as cancer and diabetes.

Welsh-based start-up, Yimba, a multimedia and marketing platform that enhances bank digital wallet integrations, has finalised a bridge round of financing supported by the Development Bank of Wales and a group of private investors. This new funding will support Yimba’s immediate network and bank integrations as well as accelerate the development of next-generation features to its core platform. 

Two of Wales' leading entrepreneurs have been appointed as non-executive directors of the Development Bank of Wales. 

Foresight Group has made a £1.25 million growth capital investment under the Scottish Growth Scheme into FURTHER.SPACE Limited, a luxury glamping pod holiday company, providing outdoor premium short breaks in Scotland and Ireland.

The company is well placed to benefit from the growth in staycations with COVID-19 likely impacting international tourism for some time to come and more broadly to serve a growing segment of consumers concerned about the carbon footprint of air travel.

Growth capital investor, BGF has exited its investment in Nottingham-based life sciences incubation business, BioCity.  

BGF backed BioCity in January 2019 with funding facilitating BioCity’s investment into a number of seed-stage life sciences businesses. BGF has also invested alongside BioCity in deals such as its investment into North West-headquartered proteomic-data science and diagnostics company, Kinomica, in November last year.   

Cornerstone Partners, a leading angel network focused on investing in exceptional black and diverse founder led businesses across the UK, has released a ground-breaking report in collaboration with Engage Inclusivity, Diversity VC and Beauhurst about the barriers to inclusive investment for minority founders in the UK.

The purpose of the research is to identify how many black and minority ethnic founders have achieved VC backing, in addition to unveiling insights into diverse founders’ journeys and experiences of securing funding. The Cornerstone Report takes a closer look at the funding landscape for minority ethnic founders at two specific and critical stages of their funding journey: the seed/pre-VC stage (Cohort 1) and scale up/VC funded stage (Cohort 2).

Osprey Flight Solutions, creators of the most powerful resource for supporting aviation risk management in the industry, has closed a £2.2m investment led by venture capital firm 24Haymarket.

The UK’s first online marketplace for building supplies is relocating to Wales having completed a seed funding round with £500,000 secured from the Development Bank of Wales and BSKG Holdings.

Established in 2016 by the late Rami Naori, Go Banana has relocated from London to Brunel House, Cardiff. Featuring an online platform where tradesmen can buy building supplies from hundreds of trusted merchants, the rapidly growing tech business already lists over 100,000 products on its platform and has over 10,000 customers.

o2h Ventures, a UK based fund manager through investment in its SEIS and EIS human health funds has made an investment into Stingray Bio Ltd, a new spin out from the University of Sussex supported by the Sussex Innovation Centre.

Bristol-based entrepreneurs, who have developed techniques to incorporate graphene into Li-ion batteries to improve battery life and charging times while reducing their cost, have raised roughly £1.2 million from investors in a new funding round. 

Anaphite, based in Unit DX in St. Philip's, Bristol, was founded to look at ways to exploit the potential of graphene by scientists Sam Burrow and Alexander Hewitt after they left university. Their impressive work to develop an inexpensive and scalable process to incorporate graphene into battery materials (improving charge time and battery life) on existing cell production lines has excited investors.