November Investment Update - £223m raised across the South West

We’re already mid way through December and I’ve only just had a chance to sit down and reflect on November.

And I’m not the only one who’s had a busy start to silly season, the lawyers tell me that they are particularly busy finalising term sheets and closing deals, the commercial real estate crew tell me there’s been an uptick in Q4 and the revellers are definitely out having early festive celebrations too. 

I can’t let November pass without a written update and a celebration of the £223m that has been raised across the South West.

18 companies as far apart as Tewkesbury and Launceston, Exeter and Penryn have raised equity funding between 1 and 30 November. There are two raises important to highlight – Netomnia who closed £123m just 13 months after incorporation, and Ultraleap who is celebrating their Series D investment of £60m.

 In total there are ten companies that have announced their investment news publicly totalling £218m between them – I’ve included a little introduction to these companies, and links to find out more, below:

Sustainable Ventures has made 3 new investments in early-stage high growth sustainability startups that focus on addressing the challenges of climate change and resource scarcity. 2Hand is a second-hand market aggregation platform; essentially a search engine for second-hand items across second-hand marketplaces such as eBay, Gumtree, and OnBuy. 

Animor has secured a £200,000 investment from the Enterprise M3 Growth Fund, managed by The FSE Group as part of a larger funding round from multiple financing partners. Other investors and partners include the Companion Fund (backed by Mars Petcare), The Bayes Entrepreneurship Fund, and more.

ARC Marine has secured £2m in funding during its latest round. The deal was led by the FSE Group, the appointed fund manager for CIOSIF (The Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Investment Fund) and supported by a US impact VC fund Sustainable Ocean Alliance and two technically experienced angel investors. ARC Marine is a Cornwall-based business with a vision to restore and protect the oceans for future generations.

Clue, a SaaS platform for managing investigations, announced growth investment of £5 million from Frog Capital, a leading investor in European scaleup software. Demand for Clue has more than doubled over the last two years, driven by co-owners Clare Elford, CEO, and Thomas Drohan, CCO.

From its roots in policing, the platform is now used across government, private and non-profit sectors to investigate cyber-crime, fraud, child protection, corruption, environmental crime, cheating in sports and much more.

Mineral exploration company Cornish Lithium Ltd has secured £18m in funding from a leading technology metals investor. The Cornwall-headquartered company called the injection from TechMet Ltd “transformational” and a significant step forward for the business which will allow it to step up its mission to create a domestic supply of lithium and other battery metals for the UK.

Crowdcube has raised £10 million led by Circle Internet Financial, owner and operator of SeedInvest, a leading startup fundraising platform in the US. The investment aligns two of the most prominent and pioneering platforms in their respective markets: Crowdcube is the largest equity crowdfunding platform in Europe with 1.2 million members and £1 billion invested.

British Business Investments, a wholly-owned commercial subsidiary within the British Business Bank group, today announces a £7m commitment to FOLK2FOLK, a specialist marketplace lender for rural and regional smaller businesses.

Matter, a tech startup from Bristol, is an innovation company that pioneers technology solutions for capturing, harvesting and recycling microplastics. In a recent development, the company just bagged £150K investment from British Design Fund to scaleup its innovative solutions for the capture, harvest and recycling of microplastics.

Netomnia has today announced that they’ve successfully secured £123 million of funding to support the ongoing UK rollout of their 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network (XGS-PON), which only started fairly recently and aims to cover 1 million homes and businesses by the end of 2023.

Ultraleap, the world leader in interface technologies – hand tracking and mid-air haptics – today announced it has completed a £60 million ($82 million) Series D round of investment. The raise will enable Ultraleap to further develop and commercialise its revolutionary technologies for existing and next generation computing platforms.

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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