Big Society Capital and Guy’s and St Thomas’s Charity have partnered to fund Good Food Fund, a new Accelerator and Venture Fund which will be backing food and drink challenger SME and start-up brands to help tackle childhood obesity. Business owners are invited to apply for a cut of the £1.8m Good Food Fund to come together in the fight against childhood obesity. The prototype fund will provide business support and allocate finances to brands committed to bringing healthier children’s brands to market. The Accelerator will be run by Mission Ventures and the Venture Capital Fund will be managed by Ascension Ventures.

A syndicate of investors including Banque des Territoires, Caisse des Dépôts, Engie Rassembleur d'Énergies, A/O PropTech, and Groupe Casino, have invested €6 million in Qarnot Computing to support its future growth. 

Gilde Healthcare has closed its $450 million venture and growth capital fund Gilde Healthcare V. The new fund, which was oversubscribed, targets growth opportunities in a broad range of healthcare sectors including digital health, medtech and therapeutics both in Europe and North America. The fund will have a special attention for private healthcare companies enabling improved care at affordable cost.

With vast swathes of the world in lockdown, the one question on everyone’s minds is how long will it take to develop a vaccine against COVID-19? The Association of Investment Companies (AIC) has spoken to investment company and VCT managers about the prospects for a vaccine and how their portfolio companies are contributing to the fight against coronavirus.

BetaDen, Worcestershire’s dynamic commercial technology accelerator, has selected the next eight emerging technology entrepreneurs to join them for cohort 3.0, starting June 2020. 

Symvan investee UnderPinned has hit its £500,000 crowdfunding target. The freelance career platform, launched its crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube less than two years after launching and has so far raised just under £1.5 million.  UnderPinned provides freelancers with a one-stop career management platform, covering everything from building a portfolio and creating watertight contracts to automating invoices and payments. Members are also granted access to partner services through Open Banking, including Digital Risks, which offers self-employed insurance and 24/7 legal counsel.

Air Doctor, a technology platform providing a global medical outpatient network that connects travelers with local doctors, has raised a Series A funding round of $7.8 million from Kamet Ventures – the AXA-backed venture builder – and The Phoenix Insurance Company.

Yorkshire based SME funding specialist One Stop Business Finance has expanded its client servicing team with the appointment of Carey Scargill as Business Development Manager for South and West Yorkshire.

Kernel Capital through the Bank of Ireland Kernel Capital Growth Funds II and Infinity Capital have led a €1.2m investment in Code Institute, a global EdTech provider. Founded in 2015 to tackle the widening ICT skills gap across Europe, Code Institute is now a leading global provider of online coding education with customers including BT, Facebook, Google and Hubspot. 

Iconic British ceramics brand Emma Bridgewater has secured an £8m investment from BGF, the UK and Ireland’s most active investor in growing businesses, to support further UK growth and international expansion.

QVentures has launched a petition to the UK government to increase tax reliefs for the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS) by an additional 30% for the next 12 months.

Added Value Solutions (AVS) Ltd, a world-leading designer and developer of bespoke equipment for large science and research infrastructure, has signed up to the national SPRINT business support programme to develop new valve technology for water-based satellite propulsion systems. AVS will work collaboratively with SPRINT partner, The Open University, on a project that will focus on delivering cleaner and greener alternatives to chemical propulsion systems for satellites, through the use of water.