Green Angel Ventures has completed an investment in heata, a home heating innovation coming from data centres. Heata is a groundbreaking green distributed computing network that uses the waste heat from cloud computing to heat the water in people's homes. Founded in 2017 as a British Gas innovation project aimed at supporting people living in fuel poverty, heata enables companies to significantly reduce their carbon footprint while saving families up to £450 per year on their energy bills.

Turquoise, the UK merchant bank specialising in energy, environment and efficiency, has announced an investment by Low Carbon Innovation Fund 2 (LCIF2) in Archipelago Technology Group. This forms part of a capital raising round of nearly £1.5 million comprising both equity and an Innovate UK grant provided under the Future Economy Programme. Co-investors in the equity round included members of the management team, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Business Growth Company and several angel investors.

The British Business Bank is launching its new £150 million Investment Fund for Scotland unlocking additional funding to help smaller businesses to prosper and thrive.

The Government has appointed Stephen Welton CBE as the new Non-executive Chair of the British Business Bank.

Stephen Welton takes over from Lord Smith of Kelvin, who has held the position for six years since September 2017. In 2013, Stephen was appointed as an advisor to the UK Government regarding the establishment of the British Business Bank and, in 2017, served as a member of the Industry Panel advising HM Treasury on the Patient Capital Review. He was also a member of the Prime Minister’s 2021 Business Council and member of the Innovate Council 2018-2021.

The final of the Business Angel of the Year Award has just ended: Roberto Marsella is the "Best Angel Investor of Italy 2023".

The OnePlanetCapital Climate Change EIS fund has led a £1.7m round into the groundbreaking technology company MDFRecovery. MDF Recovery has a patented solution for the only effective industrialised process to recycle Medium Density Fibreboard (MDF) at scale.

The Gower Electric Company started life as part of Gower Power and has grown into an independent Community Interest Company that supplies locally produced electricity to a small number of customers in Swansea and the surrounds.

Venture capital investor Northstar Ventures celebrates the milestone of investing over £95m into small and medium-sized businesses and social enterprises across the North East of England since 2010.

Renew Risk, a London-based clean-energy risk analytics SaaS startup, has raised £1.7 million seed funding to improve the financing, planning and insurance for renewable energy assets. The funding round is led by strategic investor Insurtech Gateway with participation from ClimateTech fund One Planet Capital, the University of Surrey, and super angels Chris Adelsbach and Rahul Munjal.

StudentCrowd, a company which aims to be the ‘Tripadvisor of higher education’ has raised over £2.5m through the MEIF Proof of Concept & Early Stage Fund, which is managed by Mercia Ventures and part of the Midlands Engine Investment Fund (MEIF), Mercia’s EIS funds and existing private investors.

StudentCrowd’s platform provides in-depth information on universities, courses and accommodation and produces its own league tables based on reviews from existing students. The funding will enable the Wolverhampton-based company to enhance its platform and expand it to cover other student services.

Kelvin Capital, the Scottish based investment syndicate, has closed the first half of 2023 having concluded record investment totalling £7.8m, 22% higher than the same period in 2022.

Nearly 7 in 10 (69%) SMEs say that recruiting and developing adequately skilled staff is their biggest barrier to growth, a think tank has revealed.