Rita Sakus, co-founder of the Lithuanian Business Angel Network (LitBAN) & board member of the European Business Angel Network (EBAN), talks about the significant difference angel investors can make to the businesses they invest in.

FRANCE: Pathway – the female-led deeptech startup unlocking the power of real-time data  – has announced it has made its machine learning platform free and open to all developers worldwide.

To understand the barriers facing high-growth female founders, the Female Founders Forum has brought together a panel of the UK’s most successful female entrepreneurs.

EcoSync, an Oxford University start-up offering innovative dynamic, room-by-room energy management solutions for commercial buildings, has raised close to £1m in its second seed funding round. At a very exciting stage in its development, the energy management technology start-up is looking forward to expanding into new sectors beyond higher education, bringing its energy saving benefits to other commercial buildings such as offices, schools and hotels.

Hearing Diagnostics, the Edinburgh-based healthtech company, is eyeing commercialisation in the domestic and US markets following a £1.1m fundraise.

Led by Archangels, the world’s longest continually running angel investment syndicate, the funding will unlock the spatial hearing screening technology’s market potential. Other funders in the raise include Scottish Enterprise through its Scottish Co-Investment Fund.

A collaborative new partnership between Catalyst and Techstart Ventures is offering 10 entrepreneurial teams who take part in Catalyst’s Co-Founders programme the chance to each win a £10,000 proof of concept grant. Receiving a proof of concept grant will help new start-ups validate their business offering and set them on the path to commercialisation.

A HR Tech company, which helps organisations design and structure jobs that improve diversity and skills-based hiring, has raised £1.75m in a funding round led by Mercia and including existing backer Qantx and private investors.  The funding will enable Exeter-based RoleMapper to further develop its AI-powered platform and continue to grow its client base in the UK and US.

Maven Capital Partners and YFM Equity Partners, have announced the completion of a £6.5m Series A investment for Biorelate. A group of angel investors from the Manchester Tech Trust also participated in the round.

Founded in 2014 and led by Daniel Jamieson, Biorelate curates dark biomedical knowledge to empower drug discovery with its proprietary AI platform, Galactic AI™. Galactic AI’s innovative technology uniquely combines natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) to capture highly valuable biomedical data that pharmaceutical and life sciences organisations can utilise to improve decision making in their drug discovery programs.

Sustainable shopping platform Greenr.co.uk has raised £260k supported by Anglia Capital Group members.

Plant-based food brand Huel has closed a $24 million funding round led by Highland Europe, welcoming SAG-winning actor, musician, filmmaker and philanthropist and UN Goodwill Ambassador Idris Elba OBE to the team, alongside a star-studded line-up of new investors. 

Idris and his wife, Sabrina Dhowre Elba, also a UN Goodwill Ambassador, are joined in the latest round by award-winning TV presenter, Jonathan Ross and sustainable activewear brand TALA’s CEO, Grace Beverley.

Climate tech start-up IPG has secured £1 million investment following a successful crowdfunding campaign on equity funding platform Seedrs, led by its existing shareholders and private investment fund GreenTribe.

Entelechy is the world’s first EdTech/HRTech platform that enables the development of the Character Qualities that underpin the development of all human/soft skills.  

Entelechy has raised over £3.5 million (in this and a previous round) and an additional £500,000 being made available to UK angel investors.