Jake Fox of South East Angels looks at how better collaboration and openness could improve the angel investing market in the UK.

Inicio AI, a Coventry-based FinTech company, has secured £2.6M in seed funding to transform how organisations assess affordability for customers, including for those in financial difficulty. This investment follows their recent victory in the OneToWin pitch competition at Birmingham Tech Week.

The funding round includes a £500,000 investment from the West Midlands Co-Investment Fund (WMCO), managed by Midven, part of Future Planet Capital, alongside £500,000 from Rigby Group PLC, £300,000 fron Haatch Ventures, and further investment from Morgan Stanley, Angel Academe, Mint Ventures and individual angel investors.

The British Business Bank has committed £7 million to a new platform enabling it to invest alongside five of the UK's promising and emerging angel syndicates. The platform will be managed by Haatch, an existing partner of the Bank.

Green Angel Ventures has invested in Arda Biomaterials, a chemistry technology company creating high-performance materials from industrial food waste.

Arda has raised £4.05M in its latest round, led by Oyster Bay Venture Capital, alongside Green Angel Ventures, Clean Growth Fund, and Kadmos Capital. The new funding will enable Arda to make advancements in the R&D of its first product, New Grain^TM, a plant-based, plastic-free, leather-like material derived from spent grain, the byproduct of beer and whisky production.

Materials Market, the innovative online marketplace for heavy side building materials, has raised £2 million in a funding round led by its existing backers Fuel Ventures, with participation from new investors Active Partners (whose investments include household names like Soho House and Honest Burgers) and an assortment of experienced angel investors. In addition to the new funding, Materials Market also welcomed two new directors to the board: James Mackenzie (ex MD of Travis Perkins & Toolstation with extensive experience in the digital building materials space) and Thomas Studd (former partner at Vitruvian whose portfolio experience includes two-sided marketplaces such as AnyVan, Carwow and Lalamove).

Astrato, the cloud-native BI platform that empowers teams to build and share live, self-serve analytics directly on top of their cloud data warehouse, has raised a $5 million seed round led by Big Pi Ventures, with participation from Propelling Tech Ventures and more than 30 strategic angels from the global data and analytics community.

WineFi, a London-based fintech, has raised £1.5m in seed funding led by Coterie Holdings, a British fine wine group, with participation from SFC Capital, Founders Capital and several angel investors. The funding will be used to enhance WineFi's data-driven platform for fine wine investment, aiming to open up the asset class to a wider range of investors.

Mindset AI, an embedded AI agent platform, has raised £4.3 million in funding to expand its operations in the UK and open an office in the US. 

Homemove, the innovative proptech brand which allows users to manage their complete home move process from a single, easy to use platform, has announced the successful completion of a $5 million funding round led by Fuel Ventures with co-investors including the Blandford Family Office, and Oxford Innovation.

Co-founded by James Freestone and Louis O'Connell-Bristow, in a highly fragmented industry, Homemove creates a seamless moving experience, by centralising everything in one place. From research to completion, homemove offers holistic oversight, easy management, and real-time updates, significantly cutting down administrative delays and improving customer confidence.

CSignum, the leading provider of wireless technology extending IoT communications beneath the surface, has completed a £6 million Series A funding round. The investment will accelerate growth of its EM-2 family of products which are transforming the way critical wireless sensor data is transmitted from submerged environments to networks above.

Fuel Ventures has led an investment round for pioneering climate-success company, 51toCarbonZero, the first platform to ensure effective corporate transition to net zero while boosting clients' business performance. The £3 million funding round, which includes contributions from angel investors, follows a previous investment by Fuel Ventures and reflects the significant growth 51toCarbonZero has achieved since then.

Early-career hiring platform Vizzy has raised £3.65 million in a seed round led by Adjuvo, with participation from notable angels including former Workday executive Rob Wells and former England Rugby coach Sir Clive Woodward.