Welcome to the Week in Tech, your roundup of the week’s top UK technology news. There’s no video this week, as we’re taking a hiatus while we rebrand some of our video content.
This week, we have a $9m Series B, a £60m fund for UK tech, news of a WhatsApp payments function and much more.
Investments
At the time of writing, there had been eight funding rounds recorded this week on the Tech City News Investment Tracker. Let’s take a look at who raised what this week:
TravelTech startup Triptease closed a $9m Series B round led by BGF Ventures. Existing investors Notion Capital and Episode 1 Ventures also participated in the round, which comes after the startup closed a $7m Series A last year.
Cybersecurity startup CheckRecipient raised $2.7m in a round co-led by Accel Partners and LocalGlobe. Winton Ventures, Amadeus Capital and Crane also participated in the round.
Cambridge-based startup Repositive closed a £2.5m Series A funding round. This brings the total raised to date by the human genomic research data portal to £3.3m. Ananda Social Venture Fund led the round, which also featured contributions from Force Over Mass Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners and entrepreneur and investor Jonathan Milner.
Cortexica, a visual search technology firm spun out of Imperial College, raised £2m from existing investor Touchstone Innovations, formerly Imperial Innovations. Cortexica’s AI-based technology mimics the processes found in the human visual cortex to recognise content from digitally captured videos and images.
Consumer tech firm Friction Free Shaving raised £1.25m in Series A funding from Athene Capital LLP. This round follows the startup’s £150,000 equity crowdfunding raise on Seedrs with backing from business Angels.
Personal savings app Oval Money raised €1.2m in funding backed by Italy’s Gruppo Intesa SanPaolo. It also received investment from b-ventures, an incubator from Japan’s DOCOMO Digital, and Bertoldi Group Family Office.
Other investments this week include PropTech firm Built-ID’s £1.1m from investors including Pi Labs, London-based startup Fat Lama’s £1m, and Belfast-based HealthTech startup Axial3D’s £230,000.
£60m fund for UK tech
London-based VC firm Forward Partners raised a £60m fund to invest in UK pre-Seed and Seed-stage startups.
The firm, which has backed British startups including Lost My Name, AppearHere, Thread and Big Health, was founded four years ago.
Yahoo to become Oath
As and when Verizon completes its acquisition of Yahoo, it will be combined with AOL and renamed ‘Oath’.
AOL chief executive Tim Armstrong confirmed the move on his personal Twitter account.
Verizon is buying Yahoo for around $4.8bn (£3.6bn) in cash, with the deal expected to close this quarter.
Billion+ Consumers, 20+ Brands, Unstoppable Team. #TakeTheOath. Summer 2017. pic.twitter.com/tM3Ac1Wi36
— Tim Armstrong (@timarmstrongaol) April 3, 2017
WhatsApp payments
WhatsApp is rumoured to be on the brink of introducing peer-to-peer payments in India.
According to a report from India-based subscription media company The Ken, WhatsApp plans to use UPI, a cross-bank payment system, to facilitate payments between users within the next six months.
Download of the Week
Our Download of the Week is the SmartInsights app from employee engagement company Reward Gateway.
It is designed for busy HR professionals, giving them access to detailed analytics to see how every element of their engagement programme is performing.
And Finally
Swedish startup hub Epicenter is implanting its workers and startup members with microchips the size of grains of rice. These chips function as swipe cards, enabling members to open doors, operate printers, or buy smoothies with a wave of the hand.
The injections have become so popular that Epicenter is holding special parties that people can attend if they want to receive an implant!
That’s it for this week’s round up. For a daily summary of the news, commentary and analysis published on Tech City News, subscribe to our newsletter.