SLAMcore, a UK company developing spatial artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms for robots and drones, has raised $5m in funding led by global technology investor Amadeus Capital Partners. Existing investors Mirai Creation Fund and Toyota AI Ventures joined the round alongside newcomers MMC Ventures and Octopus Ventures.

“The robotics revolution may seem just around the corner but there is still a big gap between the videos we see on the internet and real-world robots,” said CEO, Owen Nicholson. “SLAMcore is helping robot and drone creators to bridge the gap between demos and commercially-viable systems.” 

Nosto, a leader in ecommerce personalization and artificial intelligence (AI) tools for retail, has raised USD $7.4 million led by European investment companies Tesi, Open Ocean and Idinvest. Nosto’s innovative retail personalization solutions have fueled a three-year growth rate of 260 percent in North America driven by deep relationships with 2,500 of the world’s fastest growing retail brands. To date, Nosto has raised more than $25 million from investors to further expand its leadership in artificial intelligence and deep learning for retail.

Spotinst has raised $35 million in a Series-B funding round for its AI based workload management platform, which helps companies to manage and optimize their cloud computing spend across several cloud providers.

The funding round was led by Highland, with participation from existing investors Leaders Fund, Intel Capital, and Vertex Ventures. Spotinst has now raised approximately $52m since launch.

Founded by Amiram Shachar, Liran Polak and Aharon Twizer in 2015, Spotinst helps businesses to manage their compute infrastructure across different cloud providers, while also achieving savings of 80% on average on regular cloud computing costs, by tapping into excess compute capacity in data centres operated by Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

On the dot, the machine learning-driven last mile delivery start-up, and part of CitySprint Group, has announced today it has received an additional investment of £8 million from its parent company, which is itself PE-funded. This new round will help fund On the dot’s further growth: product development, senior hires and international expansion, and builds on the £17.7 million invested in On the dot since its establishment in 2015. Globally, more than $11 billion (£8.5 billion) has been invested in start-ups disrupting the last mile delivery market since 2007.

Electric autonomous vehicle company, the Academy of Robotics, has closed its latest funding round in under six hours. Investment came in so quickly that founder William Sachiti turned down an additional £500,000 that was offered.

The Academy of Robotics is currently developing Kar-Go, the autonomous delivery vehicle. Kar-Go hopes to shake-up the delivery market by removing 90% of the costs involved in making a delivery – helping to increase profits for logistics companies and decrease costs for consumers.

By using a combination of advanced robotics and driverless vehicle technology, Kar-Go is designed to autonomously drive on unmarked roads such as residential areas. Unlike many driverless vehicles that are best-suited to main roads and highways, Kar-Go is specifically designed with small, residential side-streets in mind.

Hazy, the London-based AI company enabling ethical, effortless and GDPR-compliant data sharing for responsible businesses, has announced an additional $1.8 million seed funding led by UCL Technology Fund, alongside Nationwide Building Society, Pentland, Amadeus Capital Partners, AI Seed and other investors.

This takes Hazy’s total seed funding to $2.8 million following a $1 million investment from M12 and Notion, awarded to the company in May, after Hazy was declared the European winner of global startup competition Innovate.AI.

Hazy, founded less than 18 months ago, was spun out of UCL (University College London), and raised £340,000 pre-seed in October 2017 in a round led by the UCL Technology Fund, which is managed by Albion Capital in collaboration with UCLB.

A.I.-powered reputation management and decision support platform, Signal Media, has announced a $16 million series B funding round. The funding round was led and priced by GMG Ventures LP. MMC Ventures was the largest investor in the round, which included a debt facility from Kreos Capital. Other investors include Frontline, Hearst Ventures, Reed Elsevier Ventures and LocalGlobe.

Other Mind, Inc. the first intelligent assistant that simplifies your digital life, has closed its seed funding round. The capital raise closed at USD $640,000. Other Mind will use the funding to finalize platform development and drive product enhancements and testing, with a view to launching in late 2018. 

Aistemos, the leading provider of patent analytics software, has today announced it has secured an investment of £3m. Beringea, the international growth capital investor, led the Series A funding round. The funding will support the expansion of Aistemos’ core product, Cipher, and the development of a range of products focused on specific sectors, designed to enable businesses to access data about patented technology with greater speed and accuracy.

Leading deeptech VC, IQ Capital, has held the first close of its £125m third fund, IQ Capital Fund III, at £92 million. The fund will invest at Seed and Series A stages into UK deeptech companies with transformational deep-tech, AI or disruptive algorithms at their core and led by visionary founders.

Matr, the online teaching platform, has announced it has closed a £4.75 million Series A investment round led by the UCL Technology Fund and Downing Ventures, with follow on investment from Ananda and innovation charity Nesta, and Sherry Coutu joining as an angel investor. The company has now raised £8.25 million in funding.

By Robert Whitby-Smith, Albion Capital