TIME Investments, a specialist real assets investment manager focused on secure income strategies, has appointed Tony van Gool 

British predictive analytics platform, DragonflyAI, has completed a £625,000 ($1m) seed funding round. Downing Ventures is the lead investor in the round which includes existing shareholders Capita plc and private investors. Having onboarded and retained brand giants including Diageo and Mitsubishi this year alone, the investment allows DragonflyAI to grow their team across sales and customer success in addition to further developing the research into how companies will be able to take advantage of predictive visual analytics in creative workflow.

Direct.me, the social media platform that connects audiences with influencers’ content, has raised a $2.6m seed round, led by Fuel Ventures, to help people organise their social presence and build greater personal connections with their audiences. 

A  ‘fintech for good’ start-up which has developed a banking platform for credit unions and community banks has completed a £1.75m funding round.  incuto has secured investment from NPIF – Mercia Equity Finance, which is managed by Mercia and is part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF); the government’s Future Fund; Ascension Ventures’ Fair By Design Fund; and the North East Innovation Fund, supported by the European Regional Development Fund and managed by Northstar Ventures.

Maven Capital Partners has realised its VCT investment in Edinburgh-based Symphonic Software (Symphonic) through a sale to PING Identity, a NYSE listed company which delivers Intelligent Identity solutions for enterprise. The exit from Symphonic, Maven’s fourth VCT realisation of 2020, has delivered an impressive 2.9x money multiple return and 90% IRR for investors.

New research (1) from behavioural finance experts Oxford Risk, reveals that during the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis when stock markets fell sharply, 8% of people with savings and investments either sold some of their investments or took their money out of the stocks markets. 

Nozzle.ai, an eCommerce and advertising optimisation platform for Amazon, has raised $2.6 million (£2 million) in funding from Parkwalk Advisors, The Angel CoFund (ACF), UCL Technology Fund (UCLTF), and a syndicate of eCommerce-expert angel investors. The funding will accelerate the company’s growth as it attracts major international brands and agencies to its proprietary AI platform.

Paid has launched to help enterprises transform supplier management with its next-generation procurement platform. Paid raised £2.2m in a seed funding round led by top early-stage tech investors Crane Venture Partners, along with participation from Seedcamp, Techstars and notable angel investors, including Angel Invest Ventures’ Jens Lapinski, GoCardless and Nested Founder Matthew Robinson, Outrun Ventures founder Chris Adelsbach (in a personal capacity), and former Microsoft head of corporate strategy Charles Songhurst. 

Translation platform TAIA, has raised a further €1.2 million in seed funding from venture capital fund Fil Rouge Capital, to expand into the United Kingdom, Europe and the USA with its revolutionary software which bridges the gap between translation agencies and Google Translate.

Fintech business lender MarketFinance has appointed The Rt Hon. Baroness Susan Kramer and entrepreneur Shalini Khemka to the MarketFinance Grant Supervisory Committee. These appointments follow a £10m grant from the Capability and Innovation Fund. The grant will be used to bring more choice and competition to the business lending industry.

Judith Hartley, CEO, British Patient Capital said: “The latest report from the British Business Bank, UK Venture Capital Financial Returns, builds on the findings of last year’s report, and for the first time gives analysis of UK fund manager performance by investment stage, size of fund and location of fund manager. It is an important contribution to increasing the understanding of the asset class.

Fourteen of Sweden’s leading companies have come together to form Restart the Future, a one-year initiative to help build 1000 new companies,