老九品茶

Author: Megan Stachini, Intrinsic MA

On the face of it, I had it all.

As a single mother at 26 I’d built up a multi-six-figure business from nothing – winning awards and plaudits in equal measure.

By the age of 30 I was generating millions of pounds when I gave birth to my second child – but in a moment I did not see coming, everything came crashing down around me: I stood on the side of a mountain, needing solace from everyone, and finally understood the cost of the path that had got me here.

Fast forward a few years and I’m now running three businesses, with a combined turnover of more than 拢1m collectively – and I鈥檓 about to have my third child – but this time it鈥檚 different.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

鈥淭here are way too many lawyers in the world.鈥�

David Richards MBE, founder of Yorkshire AI Labs, is unequivocal in his view of where the legal profession is heading – and intends to be at the forefront of the disruption.

Yorkshire AI Labs operates a sweat equity and cash model. Among the startups being incubated within it is Lexcelerate, a LegalTech which is targeting remortgages initially but has grander plans long-term.

LEXcelerate has been launched by Yorkshire AI Labs and aims to do for conveyancing what Uber did for taxis. Mark Hewitt, architect of the firm鈥檚 proprietary AI platform, has spent the last 30 years helping manufacturing, legal, insurance and property companies to transform their operations using tech.

It is led Paul Firth 鈥� a highly respected figure in British commercial property law who built DLA Piper into one of the world鈥檚 largest law firms and also served as UK regional managing partner at Irwin Mitchell for almost seven years.

InsurTech Open GI has appointed James Barnard as group CEO.

The transition, to take place in the coming weeks, will see Simon Badley take up an advisory position.

鈥淭his is the right time for me to step back and for the business to move forward with leadership focused on that next chapter,鈥� said Badley, who joined the Worcester firm in 2019.

Barnard joins Open GI from Aviva General Insurance, where he most recently served as its COO, leading a team of over 1,500 and accountable for technology, transformation and change delivery of the largest general insurance business in the UK.

Specialist SME lender Praetura has secured a 拢150 million back-to-back asset-based lending facility with NatWest.

The facility empowers Praetura to increase the funding capacity of its sales finance division, which backs businesses with a range of products including invoice discounting, asset-based lending and cash flow loans.

Praetura鈥檚 latest announcement builds on an existing relationship with NatWest, which was the inaugural funder in Praetura鈥檚 sales finance division – first launched as Praetura Commercial Finance in 2016.

The business has trebled its loan book to 拢600m in the past five years, including support for more than 1,500 UK SMEs in 2025, with 拢328m worth of funding.

Its 150-strong team has offices across the North West, with additional presence in London, the Midlands, the South and the North East.

Last year Praetura鈥檚 venture capital division Praetura Ventures announced a merger with Par Equity, creating PXN Group.

The owner of the Daily Mail has agreed to sell its US property data arm for $1 billion in cash.

Trepp was founded in 1979 and acquired by the Daily Mail and General Trust plc in 2004.

It has grown into a provider of data, insights and technology for the structured finance, commercial real estate and banking industries.

A Cambridge firm turning earbuds into health monitors has raised 拢1.5m funding.

auryx says that a year ago, its tech – to turn everyday devices, starting with earbuds, into continuous health monitors using sound – was a pub conversation.

Now it is using machine learning to turn regular existing earbuds into health and fitness sensors, tracking heart rate, HRV, respiration and advanced cardiovascular parameters.

The microphones inside the devices people wear every day can pick up signals from the heart, lungs and blood flow, it says, but none of that information is being used today.

The round was led by Celero Ventures, with participation from EWOR, Cambridge Enterprise Ventures, Vento, PurposeTech, Playfair, ET Capital Limited and a syndicate of angel investors.

accesso Technology Group plc, a technology solutions provider for attractions and venues, has appointed a new CEO in Lee Cowie.

The planned transition sees Steve Brown step down both as CEO and as a director of the Twyford-based company.

Cowie joined accesso in January 2025 as COO under a structured succession plan. His experience includes the CTO role聽at Merlin Entertainments, where he provided technology leadership to more than 125 visitor attractions across 28 countries.

Author: Mike Allen, managing director, Cambria Private Capital

Something structural is shifting in FinTech, and it’s bigger than any single trend. The businesses gaining ground aren’t the flashy consumer disruptors or balance sheet lenders that dominated the last decade.

The firms gaining ground are infrastructure plays: payments platforms, compliance tools, and CFO systems. 老九品茶es that sit inside their customers’ operations rather than on top of them. And the geography of this should give everyone pause.

For years, the assumption was simple: innovation flows from the US outward, with Europe following at a distance; however, that dynamic is breaking down. London and Manchester now sit at the centre of global FinTech activity. European hubs are expanding while US hubs have contracted. But this isn’t just a story about capital. It’s about how companies are being built.

Europe’s strongest FinTech performers share a common trait: they operate in complex, regulation-heavy, data-intensive environments. These were once seen as obstacles, but they’re now proving to be advantages.

Complexity creates stickiness, and regulation raises barriers to entry. Data intensity embeds businesses directly into their customers’ workflows.

The result is a fundamentally different growth model. One where the goal isn’t rapid user acquisition but deep integration. Where the real value lies in becoming difficult to replace, not just easy to adopt.

Author: Rosie Christie, director, Fusion Surfaces

When you start a business, you might think the hard part will be getting customers. I certainly did.

We had to build everything from scratch: case studies, credibility and trust before we could scale. Looking back, that part wasn鈥檛 the hardest though. The hardest part has been people.

I came from a teaching background, where getting people to do their job well didn鈥檛 feel like such a battle. In business, it鈥檚 very different.

Without clear structure, things slip. Jobs don鈥檛 get finished properly, standards drop, corners get cut. It鈥檚 taken us years to find the right people.

At the same time, we started the business when our daughter was just two years old. That brought a completely different layer of pressure.

Jade Mitchell and I are not just business partners. We鈥檙e a couple, raising a family and running a company together.

From the outside, it can look like flexibility. In reality, it often means you never really switch off.

And because we鈥檙e both in the business, there鈥檚 no safety net. If things go quiet, it鈥檚 on us. That pressure sits there all the time.

A management buyout of North East digital marketing agency Podium has been completed, with ownership transferring to three long-standing members of its senior team.

Ownership of Podium, a digital marketing agency specialising in SEO, PPC and social media management, has transferred to Sarah McKevitt, Lia Gordon and Katie Toman.

Founder and managing director Andy Thevarokiam, who set up the company in 2012, is stepping back from day-to-day leadership.

Author: Jonathan Symcox

Irish digital transformation firm Version 1 has swooped for Scottish counterpart CreateFuture.

Dublin-based Version 1 said the deal – for an undisclosed amount – creates one of Europe’s largest digital transformation leaders with revenues of more than 鈧�500 million and 4,250 employees.

Version 1 was founded in Ireland in 1996. It has 3,700 employees globally with revenues exceeding 鈧�400m.

CreateFuture, formerly known as xDesign, is a technology services firm of 550 professionals working with clients in highly regulated industries including iGaming, financial services and utilities. It has offices in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, London and Sofia.

Nervecentre Software has announced the expansion of its UK footprint with the unveiling of a major new operational office in the Spine building in Liverpool.

The new office has been strategically located in central Liverpool to support Nervecentre鈥檚 large-scale Electronic Patient Record (EPR) contract with Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Establishing a presence in the region will enable closer collaboration with clinical and operational teams, the Wokingham firm says, ensuring responsive, on-the-ground support and strengthening delivery of the programme.

Northern Ireland鈥檚 leading property portal has partnered with uFurnish.com to launch a brand new virtual 鈥楽hop the Look鈥� experience.

PropertyPal sees more than 130,000 daily visitors exploring the homes advertised on its portal. Users can now enhance that experience by discovering and shopping interiors influenced by the properties they browse.

uFurnish.com uses AI product-matching technology to source items from more than 100 home retailers. Since launching on the PropertyPal website, the feature has been used more than 17,000 times.

Hypervision Surgical has closed a 拢17 million Series A raise. The raise marks a meteoric rise for the King鈥檚 College London spin-out pioneering hyperspectral imaging for surgery.

The round, led by Heal Capital with participation from Angelini Ventures, IP Group, Daycrest, HERAN Partners, Redalpine, LifeX Ventures, and ZEISS Ventures, also includes strategic investment from the SINC Fund managed by SAGES Ingenuity, and Macmillan Cancer Support.

Surgeons have always made critical decisions based on what the human eye can see. Hypervision Surgical changes what’s visible.

The company’s Hyperspectral Intelligence platform moves beyond the visible spectrum by giving surgeons real-time, pixel-level insights into tissue physiology.

This new intelligence layer for the operating room is already cleared by the FDA and certified in the UK.

Maven Capital Partners has led a 拢4.4 million investment in Third Space Learning, an online education platform.

Funding was provided by the British 老九品茶 Bank鈥檚 South West Investment Fund, managed by Maven, alongside Blackfinch Ventures and existing investors Foresight and Nesta.

Swindon-based Third Space Learning (TSL) delivers curriculum-aligned, online one-to-one maths tutoring to primary and secondary school students in the UK and US via its spoken AI tutor, Skye.

The investment will enable TSL to invest in Skye, fuelling product development to improve learning impact through AI, and expanding distribution across geographies, subjects, and languages.

Funding will also support the business as it scales, building a dedicated US function to accelerate international growth.

Corgi Insurance, a Y Combinator-backed AI insurance carrier, is expanding to London.

Corgi, which raised $108m from YC, Kindred Ventures, Contrary and SV Angel at a $630m valuation, is generating $40m+ annual recurring revenue.

The San Francisco firm, founded in 2024 by Nico Laqua (CEO) and Emily Yuan (COO), is now hiring 10+ roles in London across finance, operations, engineering and recruiting.

Online Oceans, a Dorset-based company building autonomous surface vessels and fleet software for defence and maritime security, has raised 拢4 million in funding.

The round was led by Seraphim Space and includes participation from investors including Peter Rive, co-founder of SolarCity, Frank Thieser and Florian Seibel, founders of Quantum Systems, and Koro Capital.

Online Oceans is building a new model for persistent maritime coverage. Its autonomous surface vessel, Scout, and fleet command platform, Tether, enable operators to deploy dense, always-connected fleets for missions including anti-submarine warfare, protection of subsea infrastructure, border security and counter-drug smuggling.

The firm was founded in early 2025 by George Morton and Alistair Douglas. Together, they have moved from first builds to production ramp in little over a year.

HousingAI, a new AI-powered knowledge platform built specifically for the social housing sector in England, has officially launched.

Developed in close collaboration with housing providers, sector experts and in partnership with Healthy Homes Hub, HousingAI has been designed to reflect the reality of how decisions are made across housing – often under pressure, across multiple systems, and with significant regulatory and resident implications.

It aims to turn complex regulation into clear, structured guidance that housing teams can access and help inform their decision-making.

Dex, an AI-powered recruiter aiming to redefine how top software engineering talent connects to opportunities, has raised $5.3 million in seed funding.

The round is led by Notion Capital, with participation from a16z Speedrun, Concept Ventures 2100, and angel investors from OpenAI and other leading organisations. It follows a $3.1m pre-seed round聽in 2025.

The company says it will accelerate its mission of empowering individuals to find meaningful work through the use of humane AI technology.

Hulme Grammar School has announced plans to spearhead a national shift to AI-centric learning.

The independent co-educational day school in Oldham, founded more than four hundred years ago, is to fully integrate AI through everything it does.

From September 2026, every pupil will be taught AI as a subject in its own right. In addition, all subjects will explicitly consider how AI can be effectively incorporated within the established traditional curriculum to further enhance the outcomes and prospects of all students.