The London company, which featured on our TransportTech 50 ranking before Christmas, is a pioneer in artificial intelligence for self-driving vehicles.

Eclipse Ventures, a long-time supporter of Wayve, led the round with participation from new global financial investors including D1 Capital Partners, Baillie Gifford, Moore Strategic Ventures and Linse Capital.

Additional support came from Microsoft and Virgin plus early-stage investors Compound and Balderton Capital.

TransportTech 50 – UK’s most innovative transport technology creators for 2021

They join strategic investor Ocado Group and a prominent list of angel investors that include AI and industrial leaders, such as Sir Richard Branson, Rosemary Leith, Linda Levinson, David Richter, Pieter Abbeel, and Yann LeCun.听

It takes total equity raised to over $258m since inception.

Scientific breakthroughs

鈥淲e were the first team to develop the scientific breakthroughs in deep learning to build autonomous driving technology that can easily scale to new markets using a data-learned approach,鈥� said co-founder and CEO Alex Kendall.听

Wayve says its AV2.0 technology is designed to be the most adaptable AV system for fleet operators – quickly and safely adapting to new cities, different use-cases and vehicle types. It learns from its partner fleets including Ocado Group, Asda and DPD.听

The conventional AV approach typically relies on an expensive and complex array of sensors and is operationally limited by HD maps and rules-based control strategies.

鈥淭oday, we have all of the pieces in place to take what we have pioneered and drive AV2.0 forward,鈥� Kendall continued.听

鈥淲e have brought together world-class strategic partners in transportation, grocery delivery and compute, along with the best capital resources to scale our core autonomy platform, trial products with our commercial fleet partners, and build the infrastructure to scale AV2.0 globally.鈥澨�

Seth Winterroth, partner, Eclipse Ventures, said: 鈥淎s the industry struggles to solve self-driving with traditional robotics, it is becoming increasingly clear that AV2.0 is the right pathway to build a scalable driving intelligence that can help commercial fleet operators deploy autonomy faster.听

鈥淲ayve is breaking new ground by building AVs that can adapt to driving in new cities, previously unseen in training. As the leaders in this field, they have assembled an exceptional team of machine learning experts and AV veterans to drive AV2.0 to reality.鈥�

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Founded by Manchester-born businessman Ron Burges, BiP Solutions has grown from humble beginnings in a Portakabin to a multi-million-pound firm.听

The second-generation family business, founded in 1984, now employs 160 staff across the UK including corporate offices at Digital Park, MediaCityUK and Glasgow鈥檚 Pacific Quay.听听

What started life as a journal of local government tenders, which the Flixton man painstakingly cut out of his local paper, has grown into a tech-led procurement powerhouse.

With a client base of hundreds of UK public sector organisations BiP Solutions works with the likes of the Crown Commercial Service, Ministry of Defence, NHS, Scottish and Welsh Governments and numerous local authorities.听

Now the business, which is headed up by his son Simon Burges, is making a foray into artificial intelligence with the launch of Health Contracts International (HCI).

As a next generation business intelligence platform, HCI helps suppliers increase their share of more than 拢36bn in promised UK healthcare spend.听

Developed by procurement, research, and technology experts at BiP Solutions, HCI allows suppliers to stay one step ahead of their competition in the complex and fast-growing healthcare market.听

The platform uses a ground-breaking AI to increase search relevance, boosting the visibility of current and future tender opportunities across the entire healthcare sector.听

And it is being hailed as an 鈥榠ndispensable tool鈥� for ambitious healthcare suppliers with a growth mindset.听

鈥淗CI is a hugely exciting product for us, especially when NHS spending is increasing dramatically; both in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the long-term commitment to invest more in healthcare, as outlined in the Government鈥檚 recent Spending Review,鈥� said Simon Burges.

鈥淏y surfacing more opportunities than ever before, we believe HCI will enable this investment to be accessed by a far wider supply base, providing buyers with a greater choice of innovative and high-value products and services.

鈥淚t is a proud moment to see all our development work come to fruition and the business grow to what it is today; connecting suppliers with the health sector at such a critical time in its history.鈥�

Chris Barre, product owner at BiP Solutions, added: 鈥淗CI uses advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence to tailor healthcare tender opportunities results to our customers specific needs.听

鈥淯ltimately this saves them time, money and resources as they are able to engage earlier in the procurement process and future proof their opportunity pipeline.鈥�

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Working with AI startup Futr, CALM has been able to engage users at all times of the day and night, triage queries and connect them with the appropriate live agent.听

The AI and automation tool has supported 26,000 users and answered around 52,500 Q&As.

Use of the AI chat has enabled CALM to become a 24/7 support service with a near-immediate response time – where previously callers waited to speak to an available agent during specified opening hours.

At a time when the demand for mental health support is at an all-time high – especially as a result of the pandemic – CALM had to be able to direct resources towards those most in need, provide access 24 hours a day, and reach service users on the channels and apps they are comfortable with.听

As the charity鈥檚 chief executive officer, Simon Gunning, pointed out, it 鈥渨ill be able to radically scale our service provision through one route only 鈥� technology鈥�.

This meant embarking on a multi-year digital transformation programme so that it could make sure it helped as many people as possible. As part of that, CALM used Futr鈥檚 automated chatbot as the basis for a bespoke service, known as QBOT, which routes users down specific decision trees, providing support and guidance throughout.

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Gunning said: 鈥淔utr has already helped us with this massive task through the development of a simple bot to assist people in our helpline queue and out of hours. We鈥檙e confident our relationship will continue through automated content discovery and AI-driven triage and that together, CALM and Futr will help huge numbers of people.鈥�

In the 11 months since the partnership began, a huge amount of traffic has been coming through, with QBOT having more than 26,000 connected users and 1.3 million messages The automated service has helped answer 52.5k questions with an average response time of 1.2 seconds, helping to reduce queue times.听

This is in addition to the 47.7k conversations that have already taken place through QBOT.

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Seun Akindele, head of data and innovation at CALM, said: 鈥淭he ability to provide our users with support in and out of live service hours, has been critical for us. Whether it is via live chat, Q&As or through our content, it is the first step in providing a best-in-class that suits our individual user needs.鈥�

Andy Wilkins, Co-founder and CEO at Futr said: 鈥淭he need for the right mental health support has never been more recognised, but people in need of help have to be able to access those services in ways that suit them, at the time they need it. They can鈥檛 wait for office hours, which means organisations like CALM have to provide support every minute of the day. CALM鈥檚 commitment to its users is exemplary, and we are honoured to be able to support its vital and important work.鈥�

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Over the past 12 months, techspert.io has onboarded many customers from across the healthcare, investment, private equity, advertising, consultancy and corporate sectors, and expanded into the energy and industrials sector.听

The team has grown to more than 50 people while the Cambridge-headquartered company increased its global footprint with the opening of a new office in Houston, Texas.

The funding round was led by BGF and existing investor Nauta Capital.

鈥淲e founded techspert.io after experiencing the pain points and inefficiencies in connecting to experts for product development and investment needs in the healthcare sector,鈥� said co-founder and CEO David Holden-White.

鈥淲e鈥檝e made great progress developing a platform that delivers value for both customers and experts and we are excited for the next phase of growth.鈥�

The volume of online data, information and misinformation is growing exponentially, as is the speed with which markets and products evolve. It is therefore increasingly challenging and important for businesses to cut through all the noise and get the rapid insights they need for smart decision making.

techspert.io maps and predicts expertise across over 200 million experts worldwide, using a knowledge graph covering millions of expertise areas. This enables businesses to access expert insight more rapidly, precisely, and conveniently than ever, whether they need to understand the treatment landscape for a rare disease or the latest application of drones in agriculture.

IT must remain a boardroom priority

Currently growing at more than 150% year-on-year, techspert.io will use the new investment to transform its platform, expanding into new expertise verticals including consumer goods, technology, media and telecommunications, as well as enabling customers to get instant expert recommendations, and providing experts with a more convenient way to manage their expert engagements.听

Mike Adam, the company鈥檚 chair, is also investing in this round. 鈥淲e are incredibly pleased to have BGF on board as a long-term partner for our business,鈥� he said.听

鈥淭hey share our aspiration to empower decision-makers in businesses of all sizes with precise, on-demand access to the best domain knowledge experts worldwide.听

鈥淲e look forward to embarking on the next phase of the journey with them as we strive to have a significant impact in the global knowledge economy.鈥�

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Mark Nunny, investor at BGF, said: 鈥淲e have tracked techspert.io鈥檚 achievements over the past 24 months and been impressed that it has hit its technical and commercial milestones.听

鈥淚ts technology platform automates the mapping and categorisation of knowledge and experts, while connecting them to consulting firms, private equity houses and corporates. techspert.io is unique in the industry as it addresses the problem of intensive human capital that is required in the traditional search process. The business delivers better experts, more efficiently and we are delighted to back David and his team at the next stage of growth.鈥�

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Shareholders will be asked to vote on an offer of 1,125 pence per share from US private equity firm Vista Equity Partners for Blue Prism, one of the largest tech firms on the London Stock Exchange鈥檚 junior AIM market.

The offer represents a 35.2% premium on the closing share price a month ago when the offer period commenced.

Earlier this year, shareholders blocked the appointment of a new CEO and chairman, causing Blue Prism to invite meetings with senior shareholders – many of whom then urged the board to explore a sale.

A leading player in automation of back office tasks for enterprise companies, Blue Prism has users globally in more than 2,000 businesses, including Fortune 500 companies.

However, the Warrington-headquartered company has seen its share price dip 30% this year and has come under fire in recent times for a perceived lack of investment in future products.

“Blue Prism has become a leading player in the RPA sector since it was founded in 2001, when it first pioneered the technology,鈥� said Jason Kingdon, an early investor in Blue Prism who became its chairman and CEO in April 2020.

鈥淲e have made excellent progress in creating a company with a robust global customer base and rapid revenue growth – rising from 拢6 million when we listed in 2015 to an expected reported revenue of over 拢160m this year.鈥�

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Vista, which has more than $81bn in assets under management, plans to combine Blue Prism鈥檚 product and R&D investment with that of its portfolio company TIBCO.

TIBCO provides integration, data management and analytics software for enterprises. It has a blue-chip enterprise customer base of more than 10,000 companies.

鈥淰ista and TIBCO recognise the strength of what we have built and the exceptional products and services we provide our customers,鈥� continued Kingdon.听

鈥淐ombining with Vista and TIBCO will ensure we remain at the forefront of the next generation of intelligent automation: we can expand the range of products we offer our customers, with TIBCO’s global footprint and technologies; and, as a privately owned company, we will also have greater access to capital to pursue new growth opportunities via product investment and other potential M&A.”

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Monti Saroya, senior MD at Vista and co-head of the Vista Flagship Fund, said: “Vista views the acquisition of Blue Prism and combination with TIBCO as an exciting and transformational moment for the growth of enterprise-grade intelligent automation and robotic process automation.听

鈥淲e are pleased to extend this offer for Blue Prism and believe the combination will yield significant synergies and market differentiation, combining the product and R&D investment of the two businesses and enabling the marketing of a broader product offering to existing and new customers.”

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The six-month government-backed Applied AI programme was created to support and accelerate the UK鈥檚 highest-potential AI scaleups who are applying AI in practical areas to create real-world impact.听

This year鈥檚 successful companies were assessed by over 35 judges across key industries, including government, investors and senior representatives from companies such as Microsoft, Google and PwC, including Sana Khareghani, Head of UK Government Office for Artificial Intelligence, Azeem Azhar, Creator of Exponential View, and Jem Davies, VP Fellow and GM of Machine Learning Group at Arm.

The programme forms part of the Government’s AI Sector Deal, announced in 2019 to realise the social and economic benefits of AI and harness its potential to transform people鈥檚 lives for the better.听

AI is already a strategic strength to the UK economy, with 1,344 AI companies and a number of well-known and established AI unicorns, including Darktrace, Benevolent AI and Graphcore.听

New data from Tech Nation and Dealroom reveals AI is one of the UK鈥檚 fastest-growing tech sectors, with VC Investment in AI for the year 2021 (Jan-Aug) at $3.3bn, already surpassing the $3bn invested in all of 2020.听

Nearly a third (10 out of 32) of the companies are using AI to transform the healthcare sector. Other companies are applying AI to tackle real social and environmental problems including climate change, and the lack of female representation in medical research.听

This year鈥檚 growth programme is joined by 15 companies based outside of London (47% of the cohort), with the highest representation from the South East and East of England, closely followed by the North West.听

This year鈥檚 successful applicants will gain access to 11 compact insight sessions over 6 months delivered by later-stage founders, all focused on key scaling challenges, as well as 6 coaching sessions (intimate Founder Circles with a startup coach to develop leadership skills and peer connections), and regular networking opportunities (with investors, VCs, corporates and peers).

Sam Beni, Applied AI Programme Lead, said: 鈥淔ollowing the turbulence of 2020 with the global pandemic, the number of Applied AI scaleups focussing on transforming the world of healthcare is a beacon of hope for the coming years, and the breadth of industries that these AI scaleups are disrupting is testament to AI鈥檚 power to shape the world we live in.鈥�

Applied AI 3.0 cohort

– Oxford – Healthtech

Akrivia Health is a data-driven discovery company, specialising in real-world data on mental health and dementia disorders. Powered through artificial intelligence and robust governance, the company brings together engineers, researchers, clinicians, patients and industry to build massive multi-dimensional datasets and powerful analytic tools to accelerate the development of new treatments and service improvements in mental health and dementia.

– Manchester – Healthtech

AINOSTICS is an award-winning artificial intelligence (AI) enabled analytics and diagnostics company, commercialising over two decades of world-leading research into the diagnosis of various neurological conditions, such as dementia, multiple sclerosis (MS), stroke, brain tumours, traumatic brain injury (TBI) by the company’s founding team and globally renowned scientific advisors. The solutions represent breakthroughs that can provide affordable, automated, extensible and personalised healthcare platforms for assisting the clinical diagnosis of various hard-to-diagnose tissue modifying neuropathologies. AINOSTICS aims to become the global leader in the provision of solutions for remote monitoring and clinical assessment in such conditions.

– Cambridge – Healthtech

AI VIVO combines systems biology and machine learning/AI, to create an entirely new drug discovery paradigm. By looking beyond single molecular targets, AI VIVO considers the whole cell and provides a new platform to understand cellular dynamical behaviour. The AI VIVO proprietary prediction engine is optimised to predict interventions that change cellular behaviour from dysfunctional behaviours (disease) towards normal behaviours (healthy) significantly faster, cheaper and more accurately.

– Belfast – Data Analytics & 老九品茶 Intelligence

Analytics Engines enables organisations to easily and quickly adopt data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence as a core part of their business and accelerate conversion of data into valuable business insights and outcomes. To better enable this, the company has developed an innovative insight and discovery platform MINERVA which seeks to solve a key challenge of understanding complex interrelationships between datasets and surfacing previously unseen (or obfuscated) connections within this data. MINERVA enables users to enhance, query, search and explore their data to find hidden patterns and relationships between individuals, organisations, places and documents to better understand risk, find opportunities, or locate anomalies.

– St Albans – Proptech

Managing places and real assets is time-consuming, high-risk and human resource intensive. askporter was founded out of the belief that human time is precious. The askporter platform enables people to interact with their real-world environment effortlessly by helping organisations manage their customers, places and real assets autonomously with AI.

– Birmingham – Transport tech

Conigital is a driverless vehicle & intelligent mobility-as -a-service company offering on-demand driven and (retrofitted) driverless vehicles. Conigital offers a turnkey, automated and optimised integration of CAVs into a local transport system. Utilising AI and machine learning techniques, Conigital鈥檚 integrated solution improves asset management, customer experience and operational efficiency. This means increased safety, higher efficiency and a reduction in wasted time and a significant step towards on-demand MaaS (Mobility as a Service) and FaaS (Freight as a Service) solutions.

– Didcot – Agritech & foodtech

Deep Planet, a startup from Oxford University, helps winemakers and growers build resiliency against the effects of climate change. Deep Planet鈥檚 VineSignal is a SaaS-based AI platform using satellite imagery and IoT sensor data, to help growers decide where and when to harvest. Deep Planet helps to monitor maturity and predict optimal harvest dates and identify areas of quality to meet the needs of higher value wines. Features include vineyard health monitoring, highly accurate hands-off weekly yield prediction, enhanced irrigation capability, early disease detection, and soil carbon monitoring.听

– London – Adtech & Marketing

Dragonfly AI is a predictive analytics platform designed to help creative, marketing and insights teams improve the effectiveness of content and experiences across any channel. Dragonfly AI uses cutting-edge neuroscience to accurately and instantly show what grabs audiences’ attention first across any content. Using an algorithm based on a decade of scientific research, Dragonfly AI simulates how attention works in the brain to show instantly what an audience sees first.听

– London – Transport tech

For autonomous vehicles (AVs) to become a commercial reality, AV developers are starting to realize that they must learn to handle huge numbers of edge cases — the countless high-risk scenarios which are individually unlikely, but together make up the bulk of the risk. dRISK is solving this problem with a full-stack technology suite for training and testing AVs on the most diverse collection of edge cases. This product, the first true driver鈥檚 test for self-driving cars, is funded by a major grant from the UK鈥檚 Department of Transport.

– London – Healthtech

Dyad is building an AI-powered knowledge graph that enhances and accelerates the adoption of value-based care. Upon this foundation, they develop applications that help healthcare providers optimise their workflows and maximise income under pay-for-performance schemes, while payers are able to optimise risk adjustment, revenue cycle management, master member indexing, and more.

– Windsor – Data Analytics & 老九品茶 Intelligence

Salesforce doesn鈥檛 work for retail sales. eebz is a data-first approach to help brands increase their sales at retail. eebz sources data from retailers鈥� websites and API鈥檚 and then uses AI to make recommendations to the teams who sell to these retailers.

– London – Data Analytics & 老九品茶 Intelligence

Etiq is developing a software solution that enables businesses to identify and mitigate biases, which are inherent within all automated decision-making systems. Founded in 2019 (London, UK), Etiq鈥檚 product comprises algorithms that assess how robust the models employed by their business clients are, based on a deep understanding of the factors which constitute best practice definitions of fairness and accuracy in AI solutions. Etiq鈥檚 analysis, testing and modelling process is then able to provide uniquely innovative solutions to mitigate the biases identified, resulting in greater market opportunities, and decreased compliance and reputational risk for their clients.

– London – Gaming / Immersive

Future Anthem is the market leader in Game Data Science. The company uses machine learning to provide actionable intelligence to help their customers grow responsibly with measurable improvements that enhance the player experience for everyone. Future Anthem鈥檚 AI solutions personalise and protect the player experience in real-time. The company also helps operators and games studios apply data to product design decisions and optimise performance. Future Anthem calls this Game Data Science.

– Alderley Edge – Healthtech

Gendius

Gendius鈥� mission is to be the World鈥檚 leading solution provider at preventing and managing the complications of Chronic Disease through the use of AI. Gendius has developed algorithms from 10 year longitudinal data sets that enable earlier identification of an individual鈥檚 risk of developing complications and earlier intervention by the healthcare team and patient. The team at Gendius have developed an award winning platform, Intellin(R), to deliver algorithms directly to the healthcare team and patient.

– London – Data Analytics & 老九品茶 Intelligence

Headlight AI鈥檚 vision is to be the leading company globally in the development and deployment of smart digitalisation and assessment tools for critical infrastructure across Utilities, Transport, and Construction. Headlight AI鈥檚 mission is to help organisations digitise and assess their critical infrastructure, across the most extreme environments, in all weather conditions, any time of day, above and below ground. The company has started with underground environments, and integrated sensors and electronics with its proprietary software to enable robots to operate where it is unsafe or challenging for humans, thereby improving health and safety during data collection, and providing a scalable solution with enhanced survey information for infrastructure inspection and maintenance. This can ensure projects run on time, on budget, all whilst reducing carbon emissions.

– London – Data Analytics & 老九品茶 Intelligence

Humanloop is a low-code platform to rapidly build state-of-the art natural language AI models and immediately deploy them. Using Humanloop, software teams can do in hours what previously took weeks and save tens of thousands in annotations costs and data science expertise.

– London – Healthtech

iamYiam is an award-winning, personalised digital platform focused on preventing physical and mental health problems. Given a global healthcare cost of $8 trillion, of which $6.1 trillion is purely linked to preventable or manageable diseases, the company aims to empower people to manage or prevent diseases and mental illnesses such as stress, anxiety, obesity, diabetes, back-pain, hypertension and depression. Combining big health data, artificial intelligence and genetic and academic research covering more than 2.5 million clinical trial subjects, iamYiam delivers a personalised, performance-focused health plan facilitated by sydTM, a personalised AI companion. Alongside this, the iamYiam LifeQuality Index measures impact in preventive health using data insights to deliver a personalised-health recommender-engine and population-insight health dashboard for outcomes-based health planning.听

– Reading – Healthtech

KYMIRA is an innovator in the smart wearable textiles industry. It combines AI with cutting-edge electronic-textiles – both of which are developed internally – to provide game-changing healthcare solutions. KYMIRA’s garments aim to improve patient outcomes and reduce the burden on healthcare providers.

– Aberdeen – Agritech and Foodtech

LiberEat makes food safer and easier for people with dietary restrictions including veganism, vegetarianism, allergies & intolerances. Its unique AI-based technology can identify mistakes in food data from suppliers and its allergen safety technology also significantly outperforms methods used by even the largest food businesses to check the accuracy of allergen information in food labels, menus and supplier data. The consumer app helps users by providing bespoke menus, supermarket grocery options, and recipes, with options filtered by their dietary requirements and their family’s requirements. The app also helps businesses such as restaurant chains, supermarkets and food producers by making them more accessible to a large rapidly growing customer group and providing unique, industry leading analytics and insights.听

– London – Healthtech

Micrographia Bio is a next-generation life sciences business which applies machine learning to microscopy to lower barriers to drug discovery. Micrographia turns drug discovery on its head; instead of asking the question ‘which of these millions of molecules cures this specific disease?’ it asks the question: ‘for this molecule, which disease is it best suited to cure?’

– London – Entech

OilX counts the world’s oil, one barrel at a time with one bold target: zero missing barrels. OilX enables traders and analysts to gain intelligence that is facts-based and helps them to draw conclusions faster via intuitive and accurate real-time oil data analytics and market intelligence reports that facilitate confident decision-making. With OilX, traders and analysts get a comprehensive view of the global oil markets enabling them to spend more time trading rather than analysing, and make better, faster, data-driven decisions as a result.

– London – Agritech & foodtech

Modern greenhouses are critical to the future of agriculture but the industry cannot scale to meet demand due to the reliance on highly-skilled growers. Optimal’s autonomous growing system overcomes this final barrier to scale, enabling the rapid global transition towards greenhouse agriculture. By 2030, Optimal will be a technology-enabled operator of 60 greenhouses with revenue of $3bn.

– Cambridge – Healthtech

PharmEnable is an AI drug discovery company unlocking challenging targets by mapping unexplored chemical space. It reproduces the specificity of biologics in the powerful form of a small molecule. The company is passionate about making a difference to patients through developing life-changing drugs.

– London – Lawtech

Robin AI is a legal tech company which uses machine learning and other software to automatically review and amend legal contracts. A ‘human-in-the-loop’ approach uses a combination of AI and expert human reviewers to ensure that documents are processed with the quality of a lawyer but faster and at a fraction of the cost. The company has focused on the private equity and M&A industry where the processing of high-volume and routine but important documents is a real pain point in the deal-making process.

– Southampton – Retail tech

Sparkbox is a cloud application that helps retailers sell more inventory, more profitably by optimising their pricing and merchandising decisions. It pairs machine learning and predictive analytics with a simple planning application to help busy retail teams leverage their data, understand the impact of their decisions, and maximise the value of their inventory. Sparkbox is relevant for ecommerce and physical retail – in a most recent trial the company onboarded a 拢800m retailer in 34 days and improved their sale profit by more than 50%.

– London – Advanced manufacturing

TOffeeAM software optimises engineering component designs to achieve the highest possible performance. The company specialises in fluid structure topology optimisation, with applications in heat exchanges, robust optimisation and valves. The complex designs produced can be manufactured using additive manufacturing.

– London – Data Analytics & 老九品茶 Intelligence

TurinTech is a leader in evolutionary AI optimisation. Its vision is to empower businesses to scale AI efficiently by automating the whole data science lifecycle with multi-objective optimisation. It aims to drive enterprise AI transformation with minimum human effort, at large scale, high speed and low cost.

– Cambridge – Data Analytics & 老九品茶 Intelligence

Versed AI uses natural language processing to map companies’ multi-tiered supply chains by processing vast quantities of publicly available text documents. Understanding extended supply chains is important for managing disruption risk, reputational risk, and compliance risk such as the Modern Slavery Act 2015.

– London – Fintech

Waymark Tech develops and supplies regulatory intelligence solutions for organisations operating in highly regulated industries. The cost of complying with regulations continues to increase and represents a growing burden on businesses; compliance practitioners identify their biggest challenge to be managing and coping with regulatory change. The platform is an award-winning, natural language processing solution that helps compliance teams drastically reduce their current manual processes, improve oversight and provide transparency.

– London – Femtech

Biologically, women are not the same as men – but the medical research world fails to accommodate this. 80% of the medical research is still done exclusively on male mice.‘s extensive research on women’s health is translated into an app, serving women from menstruation to menopause.

(registered as Method Analytics Ltd) – Leeds – Retail tech

Hyper uses AI and data science to help retailers and brands understand the deep relationships between their customers and products, and enables them to use this insight to make more profitable, customer-led decisions about product range, pricing and personalisation. This is done via a SaaS platform which combines AI & data science, business intelligence and decision intelligence. Hyper gives non-technical people the ability to uncover powerful insights and make better decisions via a highly intuitive, visual user interface, reducing the need to recruit expensive and hard-to-find data scientists.

– Norwich – Healthtech

The e-Pharmacy API platform works with third-party companies to offer more people access to prescription medication and on-demand pharmacist support. A patient simply needs to go on a website, choose the medication they need, fill in a simple health questionnaire and pay for their item. The service empowers patients to take control of their health in a safe and regulated way and, ultimately, reduce the burden of illness on the wider healthcare system.

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At a time when the Daily Mirror saw fit to run the story with a picture of a Terminator, you might have been forgiven for being a little worried by the new age of machines.听

Fast-forward six years and the news agenda has moved on somewhat – first Brexit then a global pandemic saw to that – but rapid gains in artificial intelligence capability have continued regardless.听

鈥淎utomation has developed a lot in the last five years,鈥� David Wright, intelligent automation partner at Deloitte, tells 老九品茶Cloud.

鈥淚t has moved from nascent robotic process automation – RPA – software that could automate simple rules-based tasks to include AI components that perform many functions, like understanding images and identifying sentiment.鈥澨�

In tech you need feet on the ground, eyes on the horizon

According to the latest data from IDC consultancy, 40% of global enterprises are increasing their demand for automation as a response to the COVID-19 crisis.听

Whether helping call centre agents overwhelmed by requests to clear backlogs or simply freeing up employees to do more meaningful, value-added work, automation has proven to be a trustworthy ally for businesses in their efforts to rebound from the pandemic, says Gavin Mee, area vice president sales for the UK and Ireland at .听

鈥淯nsurprisingly, COVID has created a lot of new demands on the workforce and that鈥檚 been a learning curve for everyone,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut if anything, the pandemic has shown businesses how instrumental automation is and has acted as a catalyst for digital transformation in many cases.鈥澨�

New York-headquartered UiPath, which has more than 9,000 private and public sector customers, generates close to $1 billion annual revenue from its low-code platform which it says allows any employee to create, deploy and manage automated tasks.听

The Romania-founded giant works with 80% of the Fortune 10 and more than 60% of the Fortune Global 500.听

鈥淢uch like how self-driving cars emulate human drivers, our software robots emulate how people perform a business process on a computer,鈥� explains Mee. 鈥淓mployees today spend billions of hours executing manual tasks every day that could be automated. We believe that what can be automated, should be automated.听

鈥淪upported by robotic assistants, workforces can more quickly secure the insights they need to make decisions and take actions that propel their businesses, and industries, forward.鈥澨�

James Penny, CTO at UK-based cloud hosting and IT managed services provider SysGroup, agrees that automation is essential for businesses of any size.听

鈥淲hen we speak to clients, we discuss the new services which are emerging – AI, machine learning, intelligent use of data – and how we can help them to take advantage,鈥� he says.听

SysGroup is using standard templating tools in its cloud platform to automate deployment of anything from simple virtual machines all the way up to a pure environment.听

鈥淲e can deploy software in a Kubernetes container and place it into our enterprise cloud: your data doesn’t go anywhere and it’s more secure because it doesn’t have to move around,鈥� says Penny.听

鈥淚f we go into the public cloud, we’ll use the Azure or AWS equivalents of those templates and orchestration models.鈥澨�

He adds: 鈥淢achine learning is all about spotting patterns and understanding repetitive stuff to better serve the end-users, while AI is just a very complicated extension of ML where it tries to take action in response to those patterns.听

鈥淚 don’t think we have actually reached real intelligence yet in machines. But the idea of not using automation, and then not turning that into something that machine learning can move into, is a folly – you just won’t be able to move quick enough to provide the services that your customers need.鈥澨�

Far from taking away jobs, London-listed SysGroup – which is increasingly delivering automation solutions to customers – has increased its headcount during the pandemic to 127.听

鈥溊暇牌凡鑕s like SysGroup are embracing automation while our customers are also looking to adopt it into their businesses,鈥� says Penny.听

鈥淥nce the operating system and the applications have been deployed to do this, people can then focus on the smart piece that sits on top of the automation.听

鈥淧eople make decisions because they are good at being creative and thinking outside the box. Machines at the moment aren’t quite in that situation and arguably never will be, because they’ll never have the consciousness that humans have.鈥澨�

Deloitte鈥檚 Wright cites sales, entertainment and hair and beauty services as areas where humans will always thrive. 鈥�Algorithms will never supplant humans in circumstances where people value human to-human contact, relationships or creativity,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut we are seeing intelligent automation make a real difference right across many areas of business: for example in HR, supply chain, operations, legal and customer services.鈥澨�

Treat your people like your best customer

Deloitte has developed an advanced analytics and automation tool, Markdown Edge, which helps retail clients maximise their return on stock investment by providing the best discount price recommendations. 鈥淢erchandisers can accept the recommendations from the tool or adapt these based

on their own expertise,鈥� Wright explains. 鈥淲e typically see this tool deliver a 5-15% margin improvement through markdown optimisation.鈥澨�

Human-robot collaboration has been found to be 85% more productive than either humans or robots working alone, according to research from leading US technology university MIT.听

Mee says that when an automation includes decisions that a human should make 鈥� such as approvals, escalations and exceptions 鈥� UiPath makes it easy and efficient to hand off the process from robot to human – and back again.听

鈥淭he co-bot operates much like a virtual assistant for the employee – but it first needs to be programmed and needs maintenance,鈥� he adds.听

With 鈥楻obotics Engineer鈥� one of the fastest-emerging job roles globally – LinkedIn reported a 40% compound annual growth rate in job postings from 2015 to 2019 – Mee says automation is a 鈥渘et job creator鈥�.听

鈥淒emand for automation has created demand for automation jobs and skills,鈥� he says. 鈥淲hile some jobs will evolve 鈥� as they have throughout history 鈥� automation enriches the employee experience by unlocking opportunities for human creativity.听

鈥淎 great example of this is AutonomyWorks, which leverages the talents of people with autism 鈥� attention to detail, focus through repetitive tasks, and dedication to quality 鈥� to provide their clients with essential services.听

鈥淭hey are using our platform to help adults with autism do their jobs more efficiently and precisely鈥� these individuals have greater career opportunities than they otherwise might not.鈥�

The post Robots aren鈥檛 taking our jobs – they鈥檙e empowering us appeared first on 老九品茶Cloud.

Mobius Labs employs 30 people, with two in the UK, after doubling in size in the last 18 months.

It has aggressive plans to double its headcount during the next 12 months, expanding its geographical footprint with a strong focus on Europe and the United States.听

鈥淲e have plans to open up an office in the UK – we’re in the process of getting everything sorted out,鈥� the firm told 老九品茶Cloud.听

鈥淲e have plans to add a few more employees towards the end of the year. The intention is to open a UK office early next year at the very latest.鈥�

The company plans to enhance its Superhuman Vision technology, which includes no-code AI where the software can be trained by any user within an enterprise and then applied to multiple new applications and sectors.听

It is also looking to develop further algorithms for edge computing that can be deployed in many devices and scenarios including cameras, mobiles or satellites.

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The firm is led by Appu Shaji, CEO and chief scientist.

鈥淲e’re investing heavily in the UK and are focused on building our network there. So much so that Appu will be in London for his first in-person event speaking opportunity in almost two years at the AI Summit London,鈥� added the company.

The latest funding round was led by European Venture Capital pioneer Ventech VC. Other investors in the current round also include Atlantic Labs, APEX Ventures, Space Capital, Lunar Ventures and additional angel investors.听听

鈥淚 am very proud of what we have achieved at Mobius Labs so far but there is still a lot to be done. This new round of funding will help accelerate our plans and expand quickly as a company,鈥� said Shaji.

鈥淭he last 18 months has been very challenging for many firms, but we have continued to grow throughout the pandemic while retaining all existing customers and look forward to enhancing our product and taking computer vision technology to the next level.鈥�

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The latest round into the Manchester-based firm was led by Japanese tech giant SoftBank鈥檚 Vision Fund 2. All existing investors, including MMC Ventures, Oxx, Praetura Ventures, Arete and Octopus Ventures, also participated.

It will fuel an ambitious global expansion, with new offices opening in both the USA and India, as well as increasing R&D investment in Peak鈥檚 Decision Intelligence software. As a result, Peak is planning to create more than 200 new jobs globally in the coming year.

After topping 老九品茶Cloud鈥檚 100 eCommerce Trailblazers ranking last year, co-founder and CEO Richard Potter outlined plans to grow the team to 250 by the end of this year.听

鈥�We are on track to meet our now extended goal of reaching a 300-strong global workforce by the end of the year,鈥� Potter told us in an update this week. 鈥淲e have grown our workforce to over 200 as of August 2021, making 80 new hires in total during UK lockdowns, and are on target to reach this latest goal.

鈥淥ur targets for growing the team this year are focused on expanding to the US and opening another office in India, supercharged by part of this Series C funding. There is a huge opportunity for Peak to continue growing its roots in India, in particular as well as opening up opportunities in other parts of APAC with our newly formed partnership with SoftBank.听

鈥淎dditionally, the US is the single largest homogenous market for enterprise software in the world, making it a critical market for Peak to break into in order to cement themselves as the leader in the 鈥榙ecision intelligence鈥� category.鈥�

/new-platform-to-boost-independent-ecommerce-retailers/

Peak鈥檚 software platform enables companies to embed AI into the core of their decision-making and operations. By making AI accessible to more businesses, Peak has seen strong demand for this 鈥榙ecision intelligence鈥� platform over the past 12 months, with revenues more than doubling thanks to new customer wins in Europe, the USA, Middle East and India.听

Peak has adopted a hybrid work policy to ensure more flexible hours and locations, requiring employees to work from one of its 鈥榗lubhouses鈥� only three days a week with the remaining two being remote from wherever they choose.听

Potter says this aims to foster collaboration whilst also maintaining the flexibility desired by employees.听

鈥淲e are in the process of redesigning our Manchester hub, to facilitate a more hybrid and flexible working model based on employees鈥� changing needs following the pandemic,鈥� Potter explains to 老九品茶Cloud.

鈥淭he conventional desk layout has been ripped out, and the space will instead offer different environments for different phases of work, such as cocoons for periods of deep concentration, and the 鈥榗loud jungle鈥� indoor garden for creative thinking and inspiration. This new 鈥榗lubhouse鈥櫶� model will be replicated across our offices in India and the US.鈥�

/hybrid-working-and-the-future-role-of-the-office/

He adds: 鈥淲e鈥檙e also offering the opportunity for Peak employees to work anywhere in the world for one month a year. This means our Peak team can go and experience other cultures or stay with their families abroad; we believe this is the new frontier of hybrid working.鈥澨�

Peak鈥檚 platform is used by retailers, CPG, direct-to-consumer and manufacturing businesses to drive transformational results, including examples such as a 5% increase in total company revenues, a doubling of return on advertising spend, a 12% reduction in inventory holdings and a 5% reduction in supply chain costs. These gains are adding millions to the top and bottom line of these companies. Customers include Nike, PepsiCo, KFC, PrettyLittleThing, Superdry and CJ Group.

鈥淲e鈥檙e proud to be working with some of the biggest brands in the world,鈥� said Potter. 鈥淢odern businesses are complex and operate in an ever-changing world. It鈥檚 becoming impossible to run them without AI, which is enabling them to make consistently great decisions, faster and more accurately than ever before.

鈥淣o other software company offers a platform like Peak. We uniquely simplify the task of data scientists and engineers, who use Peak to rapidly create and deploy AI applications to business users. These applications empower day-to-day decision makers across businesses to achieve transformational gains.

鈥淲e鈥檙e delighted to welcome SoftBank as our new lead investor. The funding will help us empower many more businesses with Decision Intelligence over the coming years. It will further catalyze our growth and global expansion plans.鈥�

Peak鈥檚 total funding raised to date now stands at $119m.

Max Ohrstrand, senior investor for SoftBank Investment Advisers, said: 鈥淚n Peak we have a partner with a shared vision that the future enterprise will run on a centralised AI software platform capable of optimising entire value chains.听

鈥淭o realise this a new breed of platform is needed and we鈥檙e hugely impressed with what Richard and the excellent team have built at Peak. We鈥檙e delighted to be supporting them on their way to becoming the category-defining, global leader in 鈥榙ecision intelligence鈥�.鈥�

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Monolith AI says its mission is to democratise machine learning for product development by building an intuitive coding-free software which empowers engineers to understand, predict and optimise products faster using artificial intelligence algorithms.

The round was led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners, with existing investors Pentech and Touchstone supporting the round.听

Also joining the round is the founder of Formula E and Extreme E, Alejandro Agag, Apex Black and the Stanford Angels of the UK.

The investment will allow Monolith AI to grow its international client base and continue to develop its groundbreaking 3D machine learning technology that accelerates product development workflows through virtually predicting product performance.听

鈥淒eriving insight from data for decision-making is a complex but necessary challenge for engineering organisations,鈥� said CEO and founder Dr Richard Ahlfeld.听

鈥淓ngineers understand the data, they are embedded in the business and have the intuitions necessary to know why to process and model data.听

鈥淒emocratising Al, by empowering engineers to be self- sufficient in building and deploying Al solutions, helps engineering organisations drive digital transformation more efficiently than other currently available solutions.鈥�

Monolith AI was founded in 2016 by Dr. Richard Alhfeld following years of research at world-leading universities, including Stanford University and Imperial College London and collaboration projects with NASA and Rolls-Royce. The business also works with clients such as BMW, Honda, BAE Systems and Siemens.

Josh Fredberg, managing director at Insight Partners, will join the company鈥檚 board.听

鈥淲hether we talk about aircraft, automotive, electronics or any engineered product, engineers make high-impact decisions that drive revenue, cost, safety and sustainability,鈥� he said.听

鈥淩ichard and the team at Monolith have created an incredible offering that allows engineers to learn from data from across the entire product development phase and make better decisions earlier in the process.听

鈥淲e鈥檙e delighted to have the opportunity to work closely with the company as it continues to grow.鈥�

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