Coalville-based children’s clothing business, Tiny Explorer Apparel, trading as the Töastie Kids brand, has secured a £300,000 investment to develop a new product range and support a comprehensive marketing campaign.

British Business Investments, a commercial subsidiary of the British Business Bank, has announced a £30m commitment to UK focused small cap specialist, Mobeus Equity Partners to its Fund V.

Par Equity’s investments in high-growth technology businesses have smashed through the £100m mark. The milestone was passed when the company completed five investments in a week earlier in October.

Par, from its headquarters in Edinburgh, backs emerging technology stars across the North of the UK. This strategy sets it apart from 80%-85% of its VC peers, which are London-based and channel most of their investments into the capital and surrounding area.

The renowned University of Cambridge Impulse Programme, created to nurture the brilliant minds of international academia, business and research organisations, opens applications for 2022. The sixth edition of the programme will focus on deep tech – empowering entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs with the skills and resources to accelerate their game-changing innovations into commercial success stories.

Forensic Analytics, a digital forensics company whose communications analysis software is used by police forces throughout the UK, has secured a £4.5m investment from Mercia Asset Management PLC.  The funding, which comes from Mercia’s own balance sheet and the Northern VCT Funds managed by Mercia, will allow it to further invest into its innovative cloud-based software platform and expand its sales internationally.

Permutive, an audience platform for publishers and advertisers, which enables media to be traded in a privacy-safe way, has secured $75M in Series C from SoftBank Vision Fund 2. It brings Permutive’s total raised to date to $105M, with previous investors EQT Ventures, Octopus Ventures, and ACE & Company also participating. The funding will enable Permutive to grow its patented on-device technology and scale its Audience Platform to create a global privacy-first infrastructure for programmatic advertising, now a $155B industry. 

Ripe Thinking Limited (Ripe), a UK-based digital underwriting and insurance distribution platform, has entered into a definitive agreement for Aquiline Capital Partners LLC to acquire a majority stake in the company. Aquiline is a private investment firm based in New York and London with $6.9 billion in assets under management, specialising in investments at the intersection of technology and finance. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

AutoFill, a Dutch deep tech company revolutionising inspection workflow processes for the automotive and rail industries, has secured €2.6 million in pre-series A funding.

Scottish AI software company Aveni has announced the appointment of Elizabeth Gooch, MBE, as the company’s Chief Revenue Officer. Hot on the heels of its recent funding round, the speech analytics company also announced a raft of key design and engineering appointments from some of the world’s leading technology companies.

UK-based Unlock, a SaaS-enabled marketplace to build culture among remote teams, has raised a $2m seed round.  The round was lead by La Famiglia, with other investors including Kima Ventures, Antler, GuideStar Ventures and well-known angels Eduardo Ronzano, Thibaud Elziere, Frederic Montagnon, Julien Romanetto, Nicolas Steegmann, Philipp Moehring, Andy Chung, Ville Vesterinen and Deepali Nangia from Atomico Angel Network, Richard Faern, Ian Hathaway, Lu Li, co-founders of Personio and Foodora, VP Product at Malt and more.

After an impressive pitch to the Anglia Capital Group Angels, Fox Robotics successfully received investment to help them fill their round of £750,000 alongside other investors. This is ACG’s 8th investment into local businesses so far in 2021, with several awaiting round closure, cementing their commitment to growing opportunities for companies within East Anglia.

Global venture capital firm Antler has invested in eight new portfolio companies as part of its Stockholm cohort. The startups focus on industries including recycling electrical devices, impact investing, and sustainable packaging, improving mental wellbeing, monitoring data centres and making communication more efficient with AI. This is Antler’s fifth cohort out of Sweden, and it has now supported 700 entrepreneurs and invested in 75 early-stage startups in the Nordics.