News
The online fashion retailers were expected to the winners over the crucial Christmas trading and boohoo proved the point doubling its sales in the four months to 31 December.
During the period the group, which also includes the Nasty Gal and PrettyLittleThing brands, achieved total group revenue up 100% to £228.2m.
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UK tech startup Redux has been acquired by technology giant Google.
According to Bloomberg, the international tech firm quietly acquired the Cambridge-based startup, whose proprietary technology creates surfaces which transform phone displays into speakers.
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There are a number of services that let you sell your used watches or simply purchase new watches but few have the funding war chest of Chronext. This online services lets you buy and sell fancy watches for a fraction of the price and, as evidenced by their performance and the performance of competitor Crown and Caliber, it looks like that market is heating up.
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The developing robotics sector presents an exciting opportunity for investors. Back in 2015, companies spent £55 billion globally on robotics; this figure is expected to double to nearly £105 billion by 2019, while the number of domestic household robots is set to increase to 31 million between 2016 and 2019, up from just 3,700 in 2015.
The reality is that many of us will in the next two – five years be working alongside a collaborative robot (cobot), whether that’s a physical robot or a virtual AI bot, such as British firm Botskill’s chatbot that mimics human conversation using artificial intelligence.
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Software-as-a-service (SaaS) and shadow IT have an almost perfectly symbiotic relationship. Individual business units can easily sign up for cloud-based SaaS offerings without purchasing and deploying hardware and – often – without consulting their corporate IT departments.
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FinTech firm Goji has raised a ‘seven figure’ Series A from investors including Anthemis’ Venture Fund 1 (AVF1) and AXA Strategic Ventures (ASV).
Goji will use the cash to continue developing its platform and product pipeline, including its diversified P2P lending bond.
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BloomThat, an on-demand flower startup, has sold itself to flower giant FTD, Axios reports. FTD, which offers same-day delivery flowers for a variety of occasions, reportedly paid a small amount of money for the startup.
Prior to this reported acquisition, BloomThat had raised $7.5 million from investors like Rothenberg Ventures, Forerunner Ventures, Sherpa Capital and others, with the most recent round in April 2015.
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Hometree, which is seeking to change the way in which consumers buy a new boiler, has raised £2.9m in new funding as it looks to expand across the smart home space.
The London-based technology startup received cash from Literacy Capital, chaired by Paul Pindar, the former Capita CEO and chairman of Purplebricks and Eve Sleep.
Other new investors include former joint chief operating officer and board member of Capita, Dawn Marriott-Sims; and Anthony Gutman, head of UK at Goldman Sachs.
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Scientists have successfully built artificial intelligence that can diagnose patients with heart disease and lung cancer much earlier than human doctors.
The ability to accurately pick up these problems at a less advanced stage could not only save people from the fatal diseases, but cut huge costs to the health service.
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London-based CityStasher is building what it calls an ‘Airbnb for luggage’, a network of brick and mortar businesses across Europe that will store your luggage for a few hours after you have checked out or are waiting to check into your travel accommodation.
To help with this mission, CityStasher has raised $1.1 million in seed funding in a round led by Venture Friends, with participation from Howzat Partners, Charlotte Street Capital, and various angel investors. One of those is Big Yellow Storage CEO James Gibson, who was also an earlier backer of the startup.
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