Condense Reality, a virtual reality startup developing technology to transform how viewers watch live entertainment and sports, has raised a seed round of more than £800,000, including £220,000 from SFC Capital, the most active seed-stage investor in the UK. The remaining funds come from two grant awards, together worth almost £500,000, as well as smaller commitments from RLC Ventures and angel investors. The investment will see Condense Reality increase its R&D capabilities and commercialise its technology over the next 12 months.

Traveltek, an innovative Scottish software business that provides a comprehensive booking platform for the leisure travel sector, plans to launch a suite of data technology products designed to help travel agents and tour operators to gain vital insight into which parts of the sector are seeing the fastest and most sustained recovery in order to better plan their businesses going forward.

Downing Ventures has appointed Joe Raffa as a Venture Partner as it scales up for global expansion and sector specialization. Joe is an investor and executive with extensive expertise in early stage and Fortune 100 technology companies bringing with him a wealth of knowledge to the Downing team and portfolio companies, as Downing Ventures continues to increase value added across the board.

Rockley Photonics, a leading integrated optics solutions provider, has closed an additional $50m of growth funding from leading deep-tech VCs, strategic investors, and institutional funds including Credit Suisse backed SIG-i Capital and Applied Ventures, LLC, the venture capital arm of Applied Materials, Inc., as well as existing shareholders. To date, Rockley has raised over $225m of financing to develop its unique silicon photonics platform.

Great Point, the media investment business run by Jim Reeve and Robert Halmi, has entered into an agreement with the Welsh Government to lease and manage the Seren Stiwdios complex in Cardiff, Wales. 

Great Point will manage the studio for 10 years, with an option to acquire and expand the large studio complex. The deal closely follows Great Point’s recent announcements of the building of Lionsgate Studios in Yonkers, NY, as well as a second studio complex in Buffalo, New York. This third studio signals Great Point’s commitment to expanding its efforts to build and manage state-of-the-art production facilities in key production cities, where pressure on existing studio space is ever-increasing.

BioAccelerate, AberInnovation’s flagship accelerator programme for early-stage businesses and start-ups, across the UK, is back for its third year and seeking participants for its next cohort.  Applications are now open, and close on October 14.

Simply, the non-bank SME lender, has raised a fourth financing tranche from the British Business Bank to add to its existing ENABLE Funding facility. In total, the four rounds of financing will provide more than £230m of funding to smaller businesses across the UK.  This is now the largest facility under the Bank’s ENABLE Funding programme, which aims to improve the supply of asset and lease finance to smaller UK businesses.

London startup, Jelly Drops, has launched in the UK to help boost the water intake of the elderly and 850,000 Britons living with dementia that have been amongst the hardest hit by the pandemic. Dehydration is especially common amongst the elderly, especially those  with dementia, as they often forget to drink. In fact,  37% of older people admitted into hospitals are acutely dehydrated.  

Spoon Guru, the London-based AI powered food search and discovery technology start-up, has has secured a Series A funding round with W23, the Venture Capital arm of Australia’s largest retailer, Woolworths Group. The multi-million dollar investment will be used to expand Spoon Guru’s footprint with retailers across APAC, North America and Europe, at a time when governments are putting a greater focus on the importance of food and health to boost national health. 

Seedrs and Crowdcube are to merge, in a move that will accelerate their shared plan to create the world’s largest private equity marketplace and further democratise investment. By joining forces, thousands of ambitious fast-growth businesses and millions of investors will be able to benefit from the best expertise, services and returns offered by Crowdcube and Seedrs’ investment platforms.

A new study published by Foresight Group into the resilience of infrastructure to global pandemics reveals that renewable energy, telecoms and primary care have proved to be the most pandemic resilient.

The analysis, which examines 23 infrastructure sub-sectors spanning economic and social infrastructure, shows that while infrastructure as an asset-class has proved to be highly pandemic resilient, with many sub-sectors largely immune to the impact, there are substantial differences in the performance of various infrastructure sub-sectors.

Foresight Group and Elgin Energy have formed a joint venture to develop a pipeline of greenfield solar projects across the UK. The JV aims to develop six projects located in England, Wales and Scotland, with a total generating capacity of 200MW.