Unlike the US or China, the UK tech sector now has a combined market value of $1 trillion. Amidst the high inflation, layoffs, and recession caused by various factors, including the Russia-Ukraine war, the tech ecosystem of the UK welcomed new measures by chancellor Jeremy Hunt as he presented his first budget.
As a part of the UK spring budget 2023, the Chancellor announced the creation of new investment zones, clustered around universities. Each of these zones will benefit from around £80 million in funding, which is intended to help boost business growth in key areas.
Earlier this month, the UK government pledged over £370 million to support tech investment in a bid to make the country a science and technology superpower by 2030. The plan includes a £250 million investment to back startups in AI, quantum technologies, and engineering biology. While the economic downturn, SVB collapse and everything else circled upon us, the British startups are still standing strong and gaining investors’ interest. Today, TFN has listed some of the most interesting UK tech startups which secured funding rounds in March 2023 that you should know about.
Zedify
Founder/s: Rob King, Sam Keam
Founded year: 2018
Total funding: $8.2M
Recently, the last-mile sustainable delivery service Zedify secured £5 million in funding in a round led by Barclays Sustainable Impact Capital and MEIF Proof of Concept & Early Stage Fund and existing investor Green Angel Syndicate.
Zedify intends to use the funds to roll out the delivery service to more locations in the UK – Manchester and Birmingham, and increase its team by over double by increasing over 120 jobs, including 20 in the Midlands. Also, it will move its headquarters to Birmingham.
The electric cargo bike delivery network Zedify works with the aim to make urban deliveries better. Operating across 10 cities in the UK, it revolutionises the way parcels arrive at urban doorsteps.
Fundpath
Founder/s: Jamie Hinchliffe, Tom Porter, Rod Boulogne, Allan Goodridge
Founded year: 2021
Total funding: $5.3M
A fintech startup, Fundpath scored £4 million in seed funding led by Fuel Ventures. The company intends to use the funds to extend the breadth and depth of its systems and data, and to invest in new technologies.
The London-based firm harnesses the power of collective data, AI, and technology to modernise the fund-buying process. It lets buyers and sellers of funds have more relevant, meaningful, and timely conversations via its next-gen mobile application.
Perspectum
Founder/s: Rajarshi Banerjee, Matthew Robson, Michael Brady
Funded year: 2012
Total funding: $140M
After raising $36 million in January, the Oxford-based medtech startup grabbed $19 million in the second close of its Series C funding. With this, the total value of the Series C round is now $55 million. The latest investment round was led by New York-based VC Oppenheimer. Perspectum intends to use the funds to accelerate its product pipeline for multiorgan conditions and oncology.
The medtech delivers digital technologies and precision medical imaging tools that help clinicians provide better care for patients with liver disease, diabetes, and cancer.
Gener8
Founder/s: Sam Jones
Founded year: 2017
Total funding: $9.5M
The London-based software startup Gener8 backed by ex-football manager Harry Redknapp and musician Tinie Tempah recently picked up £5.1 million in funding led by former cricket captain of the West Indies Chris Gayle, ex-chief executive of the British Olympic Association Simon Clegg CBE, and investor Shane Ryan alongside a slew of angel investors. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate growth and expand operations.
Gener8 is a privacy startup with software that lets people block websites from tracking them. It has a browser, browser extensions, and an app that are used by over 500,000 people.
Scrumbles
Founder/s: Aneisha Soobroyen, Jack Walker
Founded year: 2018
Total funding: $7.9M
The natural pet food brand, Scrumbles, gobbled £6 million in funding from London-based VC firm BGF this month. With this investment, the company plans to expand its team and continue to grow its omnichannel business model. It will also make key hires, including a new Finance Director, and increased marketing to support the ongoing expansion across the sales channels.
Founded by a husband-wife duo, Scrumbles is an online store that manufactures and delivers daily food and nutritional products for in-home pets.
Intrinsic Semiconductor Technologies
Founder/s: Anthony Kenyon
Founded year: 2017
Total funding: $12.3M
A memory technology company, Intrinsic Semiconductor Technologies also raised £7 million in funding led by multi stage European venture capital Octopus Ventures. Further, the investment also was supported by IP Group and the UCL Technology Fund. The company further £1 million in grants from InnovateUK, the innovation agency which provides funding and support to organisations to make new products and services. The investment will be used to expand its engineering team to bring its product to market and enable a new generation of smart devices and self-contained systems with embedded intelligence.
The University College London spinout solution aims to create a new generation of small devices with embedded intelligence. The technology will also make it easier to store and process data locally, which can enhance privacy.
Cado Security
Founder/s: Christopher Doman, James Campbell
Founded year: 2020
Total funding: $31.5M
A cybersecurity startup Cado Security also recently received $20 million funding in a round led by global VC Eurazeo alongside Silicon Valley’s cybersecurity-focused, global, stage-agnostic investment firm, Ten Eleven Ventures. The startup aims to use the funds to fuel its global expansion and continued innovation through product development, accelerating go-to-market strategies, and growing sales and marketing.
The London-based cloud investigation platform is building a cloud forensics and incident response platform. By leveraging the cloud, the solution automates forensic-level data capture and processing across cloud, container, and serverless environments.
Geothermal Engineering
Founder/s: David Bridgland, Ryan Law
Founded year: 2008
Total funding: $18.7M
Geothermal Engineering, a climate tech startup from Cornwall, developing and operating geothermal plants, has scored £15 million in funding. The funds came from a private equity firm focused on international energy, Kerogen Capital and Thrive Renewables PLC. The fresh funds will be used to build UK’s first deep geothermal plant at United Downs in Cornwall.
As part of its mission to provide 25MWe of baseload electricity and 100MWh of heat energy across its geothermal portfolio by 2028, Geothermal Engineering will use the funds to deliver electricity at the site by 2024.
Yoti
Founder/s: Duncan Francis, Noel Hayden, Robin Tombs
Founded year: 2014
Total funding: $20.1M
A digital identity company, Yoti, has received a £10 million investment from Lloyds Banking Group. The company intends to use the funds to develop its technology that protects customers’ identities and personal data online.
The digital identity comany enables people to prove who they are by verifying identities and The London-based startup offers a free Digital ID app, which allows individuals to prove their identities instantly using their phones, without the need to show ID documents or reveal a lot of personal information.
Patchworks
Founder/s: David Wiltshire
Founded year: 2014
Total funding: $11.6M
Another startup from London, Patchworks, which provides a business app integration platform for retailers picked up £4 million in funding led by Gresham House Ventures this month. The company will use the investment to accelerate product development and innovation. Also, it will focus on enhancing its low code/no code self-serve integration platform, complete its microservice, API-first, cloud native roadmap and further improve within the professional services and support teams.
Patchworks is an integration platform that connects core business applications such as the e-commerce platform, warehouse software, ERP, 3PL, or anything in between.
CanSense
Founder/s: Adam Bryant, Cerys Jenkins, Peter Dunstan, Dean Harris
Founded year: 2018
Total funding: $2M
Swansea-based biotech company, CanSense, which works on innovations in cancer diagnostics, also netted £1.5 million. The investment was led by Mercia, the Development Bank of Wales, and Nonacus. CanSense plans to deploy the funds to develop its product further and carry out clinical trials to meet regulatory requirements and bring it to market.
It is faster, cheaper, and less invasive than a colonoscopy procedure, and more acceptable for patients than faecal blood detection kits based on laser spectroscopy and artificial intelligence. By detecting bowel cancer at an early stage, it will be much easier to treat and more likely to survive.
DiffusionData
CEO: Gretha Bowen
Founded year: 2006
Total funding: $1.3M
DiffusionData, a data provider platform that offers real-time data streaming and messaging solution, has picked up £1 million from The North East Development Capital Fund. The platform announced that it would channel the funds for its product development.
The Reading-based startup provides a platform to reduce network bandwidth and allow customers to expand their businesses.
SteadyPay
Founder/s: John Downie, Ivan Istomin, Victor Pawley
Founded year: 2017
Total funding: $11.8M
A British progressive lending platform with a co-founder from Ukraine, SteadyPay grabbed $3 million in seed funding this month, The round was led by N1 alongside participation from Ascension and The Future Fund. It announced that the funds will be used to accelerate growth and expand its operations.
Dubbed “Netflix for credit,” SteadyPay is a UK-based progressive lending platform for people with unstable incomes. By analysing open user data, the AI-based solution predicts the creditworthiness of users. As a result of these forecasts, Steadypay tops up the bank account of an incredibly reliable and trusted platform user if their earnings fall below the average monthly income. The algorithm determines how much money can be loaned to a particular client. Users can have a maximum balance of £1000 on SteadyPay at any given time, and their average monthly replenishment is about £250.
Ramp
Founder/s: Angus Lovitt, Dan Marcus, Jan Pickard,
Founded year: 2018
Total funding: $5M
With an investment round, led by Albion VC and Eurazeo, London’s forecasting analytics startup Ramp also secured $5 million in seed funding this month. The funding round also saw participation from Triple Point Ventures and angel investors – Barnaby Hussey-Yeo CEO at Cleo, and Stephane Kurgan to be used to expand operations, business reach, and further development.
Ramp is a SaaS analytics company that empowers strategic business for finance teams through the informed use of data science and forecasting. Its cohort-based forecasting platform enables teams to predict customer behaviour and future revenue with speed, accuracy and context.
Mendelian
Founder/s: Fran Garcia, Ignacio Hernández Medrano, Rudy Benfredj
Founded year: 2015
Total funding: $2.5M
This month, Mendelian, a healthtech company, was awarded over £1.4 million from Artificial Intelligence in Health and Care Awards (AI Awards) run by the NHS AI Lab in partnership with the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and the Accelerated Access Collaborative (AAC).
Mendelian intends to use the funds to further develop and roll out its solution. It will enable further trials of MendelScan in GP practices across the UK and carry out real-world efficacy testing.
The UK-based company has developed the MendelScan software, an AI case-finding tool, which enables doctors to help patients earlier, by finding the undiagnosed and treat rare diseases that are difficult to diagnose.
OnePlan
Founder/s: Paul Foster
Founded year: 2019
Total funding: $15.1M
An events planning software company, OnePlan raised £5 million in funding led by Elysian Park Ventures and Verance Capital. The funding round was announced the same week, the UK-based startup partnered with the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games to build data-driven ‘digital twins’ of the events’ major competition venues.
The investment will be used to continue to expand in the US market where it already has an office in Laguna Beach, California. OnePlan offers a collaborative, real-time platform that provides the full suite of event planning, design, and management tools. It also offers proprietary 3D digital mapping tools that allow venue planners to expertly organise all sizes of live events – from marathons to music festivals.
Attio
Founder/s: Alexander Christie, Nicolas Sharp
Founded year: 2017
Total funding: $31.9M
The London-based startup building data-driven CRM of the future, Attio secured $23.5 million in a Series A in the first week of March. The funding round led by led by Redpoint Ventures. The round also saw participation from existing investors – Balderton Capital and Point Nine. Attio announced that it will use the investment to accelerate engineering and product development and expand its presence globally.
Attio provides a new CRM featuring a data model, which syncs with a business’ email and calendar systems to create a global view of every relationship a business has. It lets teams sort and filter millions of customer records in milliseconds.
Antiverse
Founder/s: Ben Holland, Murat Tunaboylu, Rowina Westermeier
Founded year: 2017
Total funding: $5.3M
Welsh biotech startup Antiverse netted $3 million in funding from InnoSpark, AngelHub, Kadmos Capital and Tomorrow Scale alongside existing investors. The company plans to use the investment to develop antibodies with the highest affinity-blocking function in-house.
Antiverse combines machine learning and phage display techniques to model antibody-antigen interactions. It uses sequencing and AI to curate diverse antibody candidates for any given target. It will enable the discovery of biologics for difficult-to-drug targets associated with cancer, heart, and lung diseases.
