Welcome to The Week in Tech, we filmed this episode from Canaletto, a residential tower designed by world-renowned Dutch architect Ben van Berkel of UNStudio.
This 31-storey building sits at the crossroads of the capital’s most exciting and diverse district: East London’s tech cluster off Silicon Roundabout. The building features a restaurant, cinema room, swimming pool, gym, and a 24th-floor private club with sky terrace.
The apartment we filmed in is owned by a successful tech entrepreneur with the interiors designed by Johnson Naylor. Each apartment in the building comes with advanced-level home automation and its very own server so residents can tailor their tech to the space.
In this week’s roundup, we bring you a strong lineup of UK tech investments, BA’s catastrophic IT failure, new woes for Uber and much more.
Investment news
Zopa’s £32m
FinTech firm Zopa raised £32m from investors as it gears up to submit its banking license application later this year. The round was co-led by Wadhawan Global Capital Pvt Ltd, an India-based financial services group; and Northzone, a European VC fund.
RateSetter’s £13m
In investment news this week, FinTech firm RateSetter raised £13m, valuing the firm at more than £200m. The peer-to-peer lending platform’s backers include Woodford Investment Management and Artemis.
YOOBIC’s £4.1m
RetailTech startup YOOBIC raised a £4.1m Series A from VC firm Felix Capital. The London-headquartered startup has created a B2B mobile solution enabling retailers to monitor their operations in real time.
Panaseer’s £2.52m
Cybersecurity firm Panaseer raised $3.25m (£2.52m) from existing investors including Albion Ventures. Notion Capital and Winton Ventures also took part in the round.
Further rounds
Other funding rounds this week include the $2m (£1.55m) Seed secured by CrowdJustice, the £1.2m raised by Hubble, the £1m pound Seed raised by Ebb3, the £1.5m by Zzish, and the £250,000 raised by Airsupply.
BA’s IT issues
British Airways experienced a catastrophic IT failure that grounded hundreds of flights. The company claimed it was down to a “power surge”, however experts have rubbished this theory. Multiple data centre designers have said a power surge should not be able to bring down a data centre, let alone a data centre and its back-up.
Uber woes
Overseas, Uber fired Anthony Levandowski, the engineer and ex-Google employee leading Uber’s self-driving vehicle efforts. This is the result of a legal battle between Uber and Waymo, the self-driving tech unit spun out of Google. Waymo claims Uber is using trade secrets stolen from Google to develop autonomous vehicles.
Download of the Week
Our Download of the Week is AirHelp. The app is designed to help you gain compensation for flight delays, cancellations and diversions. It features an in-app boarding pass scanner allowing you to check instantly whether you’re eligible for compensation.
And finally
And finally, for those of you in the capital you soon won’t even be able to enjoy some quiet time on the tube. That’s because Transport for London is seeking bids to provide mobile coverage on the Underground. This would mean commuters could make calls and browse the web from anywhere on the network, not just at certain stations.
That’s all for this week’s episode. For more information on the beautiful building we filmed from, visit Canalettolondon.com and for more of the latest tech headlines, follow Tech City News on Twitter.