Headstart, the HR tech company using data science to remove bias when hiring, has announced a $7million seed investment round, led by FoundersX, the Silicon Valley VC specialising in AI. Headstart’s fresh approach to large enterprises fighting the ‘war for talent’ uses sophisticated software to find the right candidate for the right job - regardless of background, gender or ethnicity. The investment will help the company to develop its platform further, grow the team and move into international markets. 

Ad-Lib, a UK-based marketing technology SaaS platform that helps global brands manage and automate the production and activation of creative assets in their digital advertising worldwide, has closed $6million in Series A funding from San Francisco-based Fog City Capital. 

Copenhagen-based Forecast has announced new funding to grow its AI-powered project management software company. London-based Crane Venture Partners led the $5.5m funding round with participation from existing investors SEED Capital and Heartcore. With the new investment, Forecast has raised $10m in total funding.

Launched by Britbots earlier in 2019, the British Robotics Scale-Up Fund is soon to close, raising funds to accelerate a select set of fast-growing businesses encompassing a wide range of business sectors.

Disperse, the leader in AI-powered construction transformation systems, has raised $15 million of Series A funding in a round led by Northzone. The company’s solutions capture and process visual data from physical sites and deliver actionable insights, freeing project teams from repetitive administrative tasks and providing management with the resources and digital capabilities to fundamentally change the way their companies operate. 

Ingenious's Infrastructure Ventures EIS Service has invested in Winnow, the technology company behind Winnow Vision, the artificial intelligence tool helping chefs cut food waste in half, as it completes its series B round of funding at $12m. Other co-investors in this fund raising round include Ingka Investments, Mustard Seed, Circularity Capital, D-Ax in addition to Ingenious.  This follows a recent loan from The European Investment Bank (EIB) and in total means the firm has raised $20m in the last month, allowing it to focus on global markets.

Unprecedented volumes of data and advances in AI are transforming the marketing services industry, according to a report released today by leading technology advisory and investment firm GP Bullhound. 

AI and the Services Revolution reveals that investments in marketing-related AI have grown steadily, with $2.5bn of investments in emerging companies in 2018 – and $1 billion invested in Q2 2019 alone. A total of $11bn has been invested in the sector since 2014.

Maven Capital Partners has led a £4 million investment in language understanding business, Relative Insight Ltd. The transaction comprises a £3 million package from Maven’s VCTs alongside £1 million from NPIF – Maven Equity Finance, part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund. The funding will support the company’s growth strategy as it expands into the USA and develops its technology platform to help companies drive business value from language data.

Quantum machine learning company Rahko has raised a £1.3m (USD1.6) seed round led by Balderton Capital, Europe’s leading Series A tech investor. Balderton usually invests at Series A but makes rare seed investments when it discovers exceptional teams like that at Rahko. Balderton is joined in the funding round by venture firm AI Seed and angel investors Charles Songhurst (former Microsoft Head of Corporate Strategy), Tom McInerney (Founder, TGM Ventures), John Spindler (CEO, Capital Enterprise) and James Field (CEO, LabGenius). 

FNA has closed a $5.5m Series A investment round led by IQ Capital, with participation from GETTYLAB. The funds will be used to further develop the FNA platform and solutions to help financial regulators and institutions operationalize advanced data analytics, identify fault lines in the financial system and prepare better for financial crisis and cyber threats.

Standard Cognition, which is building the next interface of retail, has raised a $35M Series B funding round led by the EQT Ventures fund with participation from existing investors Initialized Capital, CRV and Y Combinator. This brings Standard’s total funding to date to more than $86M, and its post-money valuation to $535M - more than a 2x increase since the company raised its Series A in Nov. 2018.

Machine learning start-up Futr. has secured £2.4m in seed funding in a round led by VC firm Praetura Ventures. The funding will be used to accelerate delivery of the firms’ ambitious tech road-map, with the team more than doubling this year to meet the large demand for Futr.’s products. Founded in 2017 by Andy Wilkins and Lee Skyrme, Futr.’s conversation-as-a-service is already powering clients across a range of industries, including the police, central and local government and a number of leading private sector organisations. Futr.’s technology simplifies how organisations deliver their services on the channels that their staff and consumers use every day, like Alexa, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, in over 100 languages.