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Cumulus Neuroscience, formerly known as BrainWaveBank, a Belfast, UK – based provider of “real-world” clinical trial data and AI-powered insights, raised £6m in funding.
The round was led by the Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF) joined by LifeArc, a medical research charity, and the UK Future Fund.
The company intends to use the funds to accelerate the development of CNS therapies.
Led by CEO Ronan Cunningham, Cumulus is a provider of “real-world” clinical trial data and AI-powered insights via an integrated biomarker platform co-developed with some of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies.
The company’s integrated solution is a platform capable of:
- capturing frequent, longitudinal measurements of brain activity synchronously with a comprehensive range of functional and symptomatic domains outside of the clinic, and
- providing insights, powered by AI techniques, to support clinical trial decision making and execution
This integrated platform, built on both proprietary expertise and partnerships with proven leaders in their field, remotely captures large amounts of real-world lab-quality data. Across the time-course of a clinical trial, mobile device-based assessments and simultaneous brain activity recordings track the full spectrum of drug mechanisms, neurophysiological functions, and patient symptoms, all in a user’s home.
Cumulus Neuroscience has developed a first-in-class home usable EEG headset that can objectively probe neuronal integrity, network connectivity and the strategies the brain uses to compensate for neuronal damage. Uniquely, these EEG signals are synchronised with mobile device-based functional assessments of 4 neurofunctional domains: cognition, mood, language, and sleep. The platform provides secure cloud-based data storage and a machine learning architecture to safely analyse composite behavioural, physiological, and functional data.
Apple has posted record revenues for its fiscal 2021 second quarter, with sales of its Mac desktop computers hitting an all-time high of $9.1 billion.
Overall revenues hit $89.6 billion for the quarter ending in March 2021, a rise of 54% year-on-year, the majority of which came from sales of the iPhone, at $47 billion.
International sales accounted for 67% of the quarter’s revenue, with fiscal second-quarter sales to China nearly doubling.
Demand for Macs has surged during the past year of mass remote work, although Apple CEO Tim Cook has also suggested that consumers have responded strongly to the new M1 chip, its in-house processor for Mac computers.
"Both of those things happening at once really supercharged the Mac sales. The last three quarters on Mac have been the strongest three quarters ever in the history of the Mac," Cook said, speaking to Reuters.
Despite this, the company warned that the ongoing global chip shortage could affect the supply of iPads and Macs, with CFO Luca Maestri estimating revenues could fall as much as $4 billion as a result.
It emerged earlier this month that Apple was facing significant delays to its iPad and MacBook shipments. Apple had reportedly postponed part of its component orders for its iPad and MacBook devices from the first half of 2021 to the second half.
Cisco’s CEO Chuck Robbins predicted this week that the global semiconductor shortage will last for at least another six months and that supply was unlikely to be fully resolved until 2022. He added the shortage had been caused by unprecedented demand for semiconductors which “go in virtually everything”.
Apple isn’t the only company to have started equipping its devices with its own custom processors in order to rely less on other companies. Amazon is reportedly getting ready to make its own networking chips for its internal IT infrastructure and AWS, it was reported last month.
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TV ad spending in the US reached its highest point ever in 2018, a year that featured the Winter Olympics and a midterm congressional election—except no one realized it was a peak at the time. Linear TV had been stagnating for several years, though in early March 2020, the combo of the Summer Olympics and a big presidential campaign season looked set to generate a record $72.00 billion in US TV ad spending that year.
The political ad spending did come, but nothing else about last year went as expected for TV, and spending on that media type declined by 12.5% year over year, rather than increasing by our pre-pandemic estimate of 2.0%. While TV ad spending will rise again this year, by 6.7%, we don’t expect it to reach 2018 levels ever again.
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Manna is an Irish food delivery startup that builds and operates unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that perform high-speed, last-mile deliveries of food, groceries and pharmacy foods or supplies of up to 3 kg. Now, the UK company just raised $25 million (nearly £18 million) Series A funding.
Draper Esprit, a London-based leading venture capital firm that invests in and develops high-growth digital tech businesses, led the investment round in Manna. The other investors in the drone delivery startup include Team Europe, DST Global and existing investors Dynamo Ventures, Atlantic Bridge, and Elkstone.
Manna sees a huge appetite for a greener, quieter, safer, and faster delivery service. As a result, the company will use the investment to expand operations and offer its services to more customers. Already, it is working with partners to deliver grocery products, takeaways, and pharmaceutical supplies.
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Kry, a Swedish healthcare platform which connects patients with doctors, has raised $300m, which it says will accelerate European expansion plans.
The funding round was led by CPP Investments and Fidelity Management and Research LLC.
Kry uses video consultation technology to allow clinicians to triage patients. The company says it now wants to expand into secure patient messaging, personalised treatment plans and greater mental health triage tools.
“We have played a leading role in the digitisation of healthcare across Europe and will continue to play a leading role in the creation of a global digital healthcare ecosystem,” said CEO and cofounder Johannes Schildt.
But how does Kry, which operates as Livi in the UK and France, compare to the other big European healthtech startups also on a mission to become the healthcare super app?
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The Canadian town of Tumbler Ridge – population 2,000 – had its internet-bearing cable chewed through in the early hours of Saturday.
Beavers were the culprits in this crime against rural information distribution as they got their sizable incisors into the 4.5-inch conduit connecting the town on the edge of the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia.
According to a local news outlet, service provider Telus said internet was down for about 900 customers in the community, presumably interrupting the nocturnal enjoyment of Due South or something.
Spokeswoman Liz Sauvé said in a statement that the incident was "very bizarre and uniquely Canadian" after workers discovered a beaver chewed through cabling near their dam at multiple points.
The semi-aquatic mammals, native to North America and Europe, are known for their dam building, and some have created structures more than 800m in width.
Sauvé said the beaver appears to have dug alongside the creek to reach the buried cable, which they succeeded in severing in several locations.
Photos from the site appeared to show the beavers used the material from the cabling to help create their dam-based dwellings.
Telus said it had restored online services by mid-afternoon on Sunday, although added that mobile signal might be unreliable while repairs continued.
It's not the first time rodents have taken the blame for patchy internet service. In 2017, rats were said to have caused "extensive damage" in South London by chewing through fibre, leaving customers without broadband. Sky and TalkTalk apologised for the loss of service to Tulse Hill, Balham, Brixton, Nine Elms, Streatham, Dulwich, Vauxhall, South Clapham, Forest Hill, and Battersea.
On the other side of the world, rodents caused a similar outage in Auckland, New Zealand. There, an unidentified creature chomped a 144-fibre strand cable operated by Chorus affecting the Massey suburb, as well as those in Swanson, Ranui, Westgate, and parts of West Harbour.
Bloom & Wild, a London-based online flower delivery and gifting platform has acquired the entire share capital of bloomon, a Netherlands-based competitor, for an undisclosed sum.
Post the acquisition, Bloom & Wild has become the largest online operator in the region’s £22 billion flowers and house plant market by a number of deliveries.
“This is a great deal for both companies, all team members and our customers. The acquisition delivers immediate scale across Europe and provides new and exciting opportunities for all staff from both businesses, who will be retained to drive ambitious growth across the continent. The entire management team is fully committed and invested in the long term success of the enlarged business and we are thrilled to invest in both brands as we accelerate our plans for European expansion,” said Bart Troost, CEO of bloomon, who will take up the new role of Chief International Officer.
Patrick Hurenkamp will retain his current position as Chief Innovation Officer and alongside Troost will report directly to Aron Gelbard who will be CEO of the enlarged business.
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Odore, a London, UK-based beauty tech startup, raised $830k in funding.
The round was led by SFC Capital and joined by RLC Ventures.
The company will use the funds to expand the engineering team and further improve their end-to-end marketing solutions for beauty and cosmetics brands.
Launched by university friends Armaan Mehta and Karan Gupta, Odore provides a product sampling and marketing platform that uses data driven methods to ensure products and campaigns reach the right customers. The company works with global brands including Guerlain, Clive Christian and L’Oréal.
Following the deal, the technology will now enable physical marketing such as samples and testers to be integrated alongside social media, email and paid advertising campaigns, as well as offering augmented reality integrations.
Odore, a London-based beauty startup that works with global brands including L’Oréal, Guerlain, and Clive Christian recently bagged $830K (nearly £595K).
The investment round was led by SFC Capital along with participation from RLC Ventures. Odore aims to revolutionise how cosmetics and beauty businesses market their products to consumers. With the fund, the team eyes to expand their technology offering to cover a wider range of beauty marketing needs, thereby enabling clients to launch measurable and tailored digital marketing campaigns that can be run and measured through a centralised dashboard.
This is important at a time when more than half of the spend of $68 billion in the global Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry’s digital marketing last year failed to see a positive return on investment (ROI).
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The nutritional supplement market is no small business as consumers spend upwards of £442 million every year on product purchases. The UK-based health company Feel aims to “clean up” this segment that is apparently rife with supplements offering shoddy quality, fillers and ineffective nutrients. The company has now raised £4.5 million in its latest funding round to further its goal.
The latest funding round for Feel was led by Fuel Ventures and included TMT Investments, Sova VC, Richard Longhurst, LoveHoney.com founder, and Igor Ryabenkiy, founder and GP of Altair Capital.
This funding round will enable Feel to expand its business across EMEA and target new verticals to serve pregnancy, kids, pets and cognition. While the company’s CEO, Boris Hodakel, didn’t tell us exactly where they will offer their services next, he mentions it will be somewhere in mid-Europe, followed by other EU countries.
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