Welcome to the Week in Tech – your roundup of the week’s top technology news.
Filmed from the Startupbootcamp IoT | Connected Devices demo day, this week we bring you the $35m Series D round closed by Atlas Genetics, a £1.5m Seed raised by new pay-as-you-drive InsurTech startup Cuvva and Theresa May’s Industrial Strategy.
Watch the video, or read on, for all this and more.
Demo day
First up, we spoke to Raph Crouan, MD of Startupbootcamp IoT | Connected Devices. He said: “In the last three months at Startupbootcamp IoT | Connected Devices, we have been helping nine teams from five different countries to get to an extraordinary stage for their hardware IoT product.
“It’s extremely exciting to see where they are right now. Of course today is a culmination of that – we have about 500 people showing up to our demo day, which, for our first year, is extremely satisfying,” he added.
UK investments
In investment news, HealthTech startup Atlas Genetics closed a $35m Series D round. The Wiltshire firm has developed technology that can detect and diagnose sexually transmitted infections.
Online mortgage broker Habito raised £5.5m in Series A funding this week. Led by Silicon Valley investor Ribbit Capital, the round also drew support from Mosaic Ventures.
Pitchero landed a £3.1m Series A round. Based in Leeds, the startup provides sports organisations with the tools to build their own websites.
Pay-as-you-drive InsurTech startup Cuvva raised £1.5m in a round led by LocalGlobe. Participating investors also included Techstars Ventures, Seedcamp and Tekton Ventures.
British news
Theresa May revealed the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund to support UK tech.
Part of the £4.7bn initiative announced by the prime minister back in November, the Strategy will focus on backing innovative technologies including AI, robotics and 5G wireless internet. The strategy also promised to boost technical education by providing £170m of capital funding to create new Institutes of Technology.
International story
Overseas, Verizon’s acquisition of Yahoo has been delayed following the two data security breaches recently revealed by the search giant.
In addition to a breach in 2014, in December last year Yahoo admitted an attack which took place in 2013. Consequently, Yahoo said the deal will now be pushed back to the second quarter of this year.
Download
Our download of the week is Fllike. The free app enables users to rate and share their flight experiences.
Scores are then tracked by the app, so that users can search for the highest rated flights and airlines around the world. You can also share your flight reviews on social media and keep track of your travel by seeing exactly how long you’ve spent in the air.
And finally…
And finally, calling all redheads! Apple is due to host a meeting to discuss adding red-haired characters to the emoji keyboard.
This comes after several social media campaigns, including a petition started in Scotland with 20,000 signatures, have demanded ginger emoji. There’s no time like the present when it comes to embracing diversity!
That’s all for this week’s episode of The Week in Tech. For more technology news, follow us on Twitter and subscribe to receive our latest print magazine – Issue 13, The HealthTech Edition.