Wow, what a month – it certainly should be a time for a celebration as Spring has arrived and nearly £19m equity investment has been secured in the last few weeks in the West of England. We have seen companies from pharmaceuticals to radio technology, and much more between, announcing their new funding publicly, read on to find out more.
Of the almost £19m raised by companies in the West of England in March, £18,500,000 was publicly disclosed and gives us lots to celebrate:
- Neighbourly, an award-winning community investment and engagement platform launched in 2014, secured Series A funding from Guinness Asset Management to the tune of £3m. As one of the UK’s founding B Corporations, the investment follows three years of strong growth and will help accelerate product development, expand the team and respond to demand for international expansion. Read more about their achievement and plans for the future here.
- Cytoseek, a University of Bristol spinout company announced £3.5 million seed funding to accelerate the commercialisation of its Artificial Membrane Binding Protein (AMPB) technology, which will be used to discover the potential of immune cell therapies for treating solid tumours. Their funding round was led by the newly established deep tech fund Science Creates Ventures.
- eXmoor Pharma Concepts is an expert cell and gene therapy (CGT) services company. They announced £12 million in funding from MVM Partners, a specialist healthcare investment firm earlier this month. The investment marks a key milestone in the company’s international growth strategy and will enable a renewed focus on international expansion plans.
- A little further from home, but an adopted fintech nonetheless, Lumio announced a brilliantly successful crowdfunding campaign which overfunded to the tune of £1.15m. Lumio is a “personal finance brain that grows your money on autopilot” and received backing from a handful of renowned angel investors amongst the crowdfunders on the rosta. Lumio might be registered in London but you might recognise them from Silicon Gorge or perhaps one of their co-founders who is a long-standing member of the startup ecosystem in Bristol hence my enthusiasm to share in their good news.
Across the wider South West there were more good investment news stories to report – Invstr (registered in Devon) announced a $20M Series A for its social investment app. You might remember Data Duopoly (a Cornwall based tech company that works to improve the visitor experience in venues worldwide) from Silicon Gorge 2020 also shared news of funding success thanks to match funding unlocked from Aerospace Cornwall and the European Space Agency.
If you are an investor and you’re interested to find out more about the investment opportunities that are available in the South West, do join us for Silicon Gorge – our bi-annual pitch competition – where 10 local companies will pitch for £100k – £2m. 2pm on 29th April If you can’t make it for the event, sign up for our newsletter (details below) and we’ll be sure to share more information in due course.
This month we welcomed nearly 70 community members into our virtual event space for the first Quarterly Investment Briefing of 2021. These events are an opportunity for investors to network, share and learn and the focus of our event was ‘angel investment.’ We heard about Michelmores MAINstream angel group, and learnt about Envestors perspective on investment. To expand our perspective internationally we also welcomed JPIN Venture Catalysts to tell us a little about how they have made themselves the third most active incubator globally. You can watch the event back and check out the slides here!
This article is written as part of the Investment Activator Programme (IAP) in the West of England. This programme is run by TechSPARK and is kindly sponsored by TLT LLP, delaware, West of England Combined Authority, UWE, Sanderson, Engine Shed and Rocketmakers. Find out more about the IAP here.
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