Welcome to The Week in Tech, your roundup of the latest top tech news. This week, we have more than £115m in UK tech investment, a $170m tech fund, an acquisition by Viber, a drowning robot and much more.
Investments
UK tech investment round announcements have been keeping us busy again this week with a flurry of funding going into companies in various verticals and numerous locations.
Receipt Bank’s £38.4m
Automated bookkeeping platform Receipt Bank landed $50m (£38.4m) in Series B funding from Insight Venture Partners.
Launched in 2010, Receipt Bank says it will use the money to accelerate its growth and to boost product developments.
Graphcore’s £23m
Bristol-based machine intelligence company Graphcore closed a $30m (£23m) Series B round, led by Atomico.
Also participating in the round were existing investors Amadeus Capital, Robert Bosch Venture Capital, C4 Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital, Draper Esprit, Foundation Capital, Pitango and Samsung Catalyst Fund.
WaveOptics’ £12m
Augmented reality firm WaveOptics closed a £12m Series B from existing backers Octopus Ventures, Touchstone Innovations and Robert Bosh Venture Capital.
Shanghai-based Gobi Ventures also joined the round, which comes after an undisclosed Series A in October 2015.
Privitar’s £12m
Privacy engineering software firm Privitar closed a £12m ($16m) Series A round led by Partech Ventures.
The London-based company also drew investment from CME Ventures and Salesforce Ventures. Existing backers IQ Capital, 24Haymarket and Illuminate Financial also participated.
Perkbox’s £6.6m
London-based Perkbox, a digital employee engagement platform, raised $8.6m (£6.6m) from Draper Esprit.
The company, launched in 2015, has to date attracted $12m (£9m) in funding from Draper Esprit and now employs more than 165 people.
Reach Robotics’ £5.7m
Bristol-based Reach Robotics raised a $7.5m (£5.7m) Series A co-led by Korea Investment Partners (KiP) and existing investor IGlobe.
The firm, which specialises in robotics, AR and mobile gaming, also drew investment from NCSOFT, Kin Yat, London Venture Partners, Passion Capital, Qualcomm Ventures and Hardware Club.
Virtualstock’s £4.5m
Virtualstock, a chain automation company, raised $6m (£4.5m) in a round led by Notion Capital.
Based in Reading and founded in 2004, Virtualstock is currently focused on the retail and healthcare sectors but is looking to broaden its offering.
Other investments
Further UK tech investment rounds this week include Form3’s $5m Series A, the £3.5m raised by Oxfordshire-based Contego Fraud Solutions, London-based Learnerbly’s £1.6m Seed, InsurTech startup Zego’s £1.2m Seed, Belfast HealthTech startup Neurovalens’ £1.1m, PetTech startup Butternut Box’s £1m Seed, SeedLegals’ £1m, and London HealthTech startup drfocused’s £323,000 crowdfunding round.
For all the latest UK tech funding announcement data, check out the Tech City News Investment Tracker.
Tech investment funds
Mangrove’s $170m
Mangrove Capital Partners, an early-stage VC firm which has invested in UK tech startups including Divido, raised the $170m “Mangrove V Fund” to continue backing firms across Europe and Israel.
Mangrove, based in Luxembourg, has made more than 130 investments in the past 17 years.
Finstar’s $150m
Finstar Financial Group, a private equity firm headquartered in Moscow, is to invest $150m in FinTech startups over the next five years.
The group is seeking to close between three and six deals per year of $500,000 to $30m in Seed to Series B-stage companies.
It aims to target financial technology-enabled models within the AI, data science, AdTech and MarTech spaces.
LinkedIn Lite launches
LinkedIn has released a LinkedIn Lite, a pared-down version of its original mobile app that is developed for users in markets where data networks and phones are slower.
The Android app is now live now in India, and LinkedIn says it plans to roll it out in over 60 more markets in the coming months.
Viber acquires Chatter Commerce
Communications app maker Viber has acquired Chatter Commerce, the company behind mobile shopping keyboard ShopChat.
ShopChat is an iOS app that replaces user’s default keyboard app enabling them direct access to shopping inventory from major retailers. It allows people to easily search for and share products with friends.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Chatter Commerce’s team of seven engineers, who are based in San Francisco, are joining the company.
Download of the week
Our download of the week is Skrite, The app lets users sketch their pictures and messages and, through the power of AR, save them in the sky forever.
Skrites – the pieces of content, users upload to the sky – can only be created in a user’s current location and they are created in zones, with a maximum of 25 Skrites per zone. The first user to create a Skrite in a zone gets that zone named after them.
The firm’s CEO and co-founder Rishab Jain said: “This allows users to virtually own a piece of the sky, whether it be the airspace above their home, business, or any location that brings value to larger companies that can potentially use this space for advertising.”
And finally
Robocop has had a bit of a nightmare this week having been found face down in an office block’s fountain.
The Knightscope K5 security robot was built to autonomously patrol offices and shopping malls. However, after being deployed to a Washington DC office block, it fell foul of a set of stairs and toppled to its watery grave.
That’s all for this week’s episode. For more top tech news, make sure you follow us on Twitter and Facebook, plus subscribe to our newsletter.
Featured image by Markus Spiske on Unsplash