London-based startup Loby, founded by Adrian Zabica, Christian Brown, Julio-Cezar, and Andrey Dobrov, has developed an app that helps Gen-Z find apartments and roommates in order to reduce their rental costs.

NEW YORK: The final numbers are in, and 2024 was a very successful year for New York Angels (NYA).

A UK company whose energy management app rewards consumers for switching off appliances at peak times has raised a further £700,000 from the North East Venture Fund, supported by the European Regional Development Fund and managed by Mercia Ventures, and private investors.

British oral care brand Waken (www.wakencare.com) is shaking up the industry with a major new signing: much loved TV and radio broadcaster, podcaster and number one bestselling author, Rylan.

Flock Mobility, the UK cleantech startup transforming how organisations run shared transport, has secured £1 million in funding to fuel its next phase of growth. The round includes backing from Skyscanner founder Gareth Williams and a Boston-based family office, signalling strong investor confidence in Flock's mission and momentum.

Grid Edge, a UK company whose AI-powered software helps reduce carbon emissions and energy costs in commercial buildings has raised over £2.8m from the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II and Mercia Ventures, Centrica, bp Ventures and private investors.

A technology spin-out of the Alacrity Foundation has closed a significant six-figure equity investment pre-seed round led by SFC Capital, the Development Bank of Wales and a syndicate of business angels.

Ryft, a PSD2 and FCA-approved decentralised payments innovator, has successfully raised £5.7 million Series A funding for the development of technology that will empower acquiring banks, like Clearhaus, to compete with Stripe Connect, Adyen, and similar payment providers in the market. The round, which takes total investments in Ryft to £7.4 million, was led by EdenBase, with participation from GPOS Investments, British Business Bank, Pembroke VCT, Sidebyside, and Ingenii VC. The fundraising round was also joined by strategic angel investors, including executives at PayPal.

Dealstack has closed a $5.5 million seed funding round, 

nettle, an AI-powered risk assessment platform, has raised £1.45M in pre-seed funding led by Project A, alongside top angel investors from major insurers, startups, and insurance & AI leaders. With this funding, nettle is scaling out the core engineering team and bolstering a platform already cutting risk engineering turnaround times for early partners.

UK-based startup Matoha, manufacturers of AI-powered material identification scanners, have completed a first phase of Seed funding which will enable them to solve the problem of textiles sorting for recycling. The round was led by Archipelago Ventures and the Circular Plastics Accelerator with additional investment from Conduit Connect, British Design Fund, Fashion for Good and others.

Neuranics, an award-winning Scottish deep-tech semiconductor company pioneering the future of human-machine interaction, has raised $8 million in seed funding to accelerate global growth and the commercial adoption of its Tunnelling Magnetoresistance (TMR) magnetic sensing technology.