Symbe, an AI-powered platform that helps sales teams win more deals by automating the creation of tailored business cases, has raised a £1.2m pre-seed round led by Concept Ventures and joined by Pact VC, Notion Capital, and a range of leading angels through Nodes Ventures. Angels include Resolv Labs Founder, Fedor Chmile, Founders Capital CEO, Richard Hadler, and a series of angels from Stripe.

ITALY: Club degli Investitori has invested in Glaut’s $1.4 million pre-seed round. Glaut, founded by Matteo Cera and Giovanni Del Gallo in late 2023, aims to help the Marketing areas of large B2C companies make better business decisions through a new market research methodology: conversational surveys, using artificial intelligence to conduct in-depth market research at scale.

Insurtech PeppercornAI has raised £3.25 million in its latest funding round. The funding, of which Wealth Club raised £1.9m, included high net worth investors, existing investors EHE Capital and Angels Invest Wales. The round was heavily oversubscribed despite reports showing investment into UK fintech and insurtech was down 34% last year. 

Clean Growth Fund has invested in the £10m seed round of Oriole Networks, a new company that revolutionises the performance of AI systems and data centres. The investment was made alongside UCL Technology Fund, XTX Ventures and Dorilton Ventures, and with support from the Innovate UK Investor Partnership.

Onfido, an innovative start-up created by students at the University of Oxford which uses artificial intelligence to verify customer identities, has been sold to Entrust Corp, a global leader in trusted payments, identities and data security.

Bridgend-based AI technology firm Clinithink is helping to improve patient care, relieve workloads for stretched clinicians and deliver significant savings to the NHS with investment from the Development Bank of Wales.

Meysey, a fraud protection startup that utilises artificial intelligence (AI), has successfully raised £250,000. This funding will be used to develop AI-powered fraud protection software specifically designed for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Global digital video consumption grew 24% in the previous year, according to a recent report [1], and now accounts for 82% of all Internet traffic according to Cisco [3]. Meanwhile, investment in artificial intelligence also grew at an exponential rate, from 11% of VC funding dollars in 2022, to 26% in 2023 [2]. However, the majority of AI research continues to be confined to written inputs and outputs.

Algor Education has received investment from the Investors Club.

AI audio content pioneer Wondercraft has raised a $3m Seed round to scale its ‘Canva of audio’ platform in a round led by Will Ventures and backed by Y Combinator,  ElevenLabs, Steven Bartlett and other Angels. The technology enables anyone to create studio-quality audio productions - whether it’s for podcasts, ads, audiobooks, meditations or training materials - in any language, by simply typing.

BULGARIA: Nasekomo, the European scale-up focused on insect bioconversion for sustainable high-quality protein production, has raised €8 million in growth capital.

NumberEight, a London-based startup using on-device AI to deliver ‘privacy-first’ identity solutions for the advertising industry, has raised $2.7 million in Pre-Series A funding led by ACF Investors. The investment will be used to drive commercial growth, bolster product development, and expedite US expansion following significant inbound market interest.