Form Ventures has reached the final close of a £30m ($39m) Fund II at its target fund size. Form invests in startups at pre seed and seed stage in sectors directly shaped by policy and regulation, and helps founders build game-changing businesses while managing the complexity that comes with being on government's radar.

eFront's latest Quarterly Private Equity Performance Overview, covering the period to the end of Q1 2021, shows that following the massive pandemic shock-driven correction in the first quarter of 2020, the following 12 months (Q2 2020 – Q1 2021) brought a persistent recovery and further growth to the global Buyout and VC markets. In the first quarter of this year, VC funds have globally generated a quarterly return of 12.9%, while the Buyout funds produced 9.6% over the same period.

Distil.ai, a UK company whose software platform helps businesses to understand their customers’ behaviour and identify buying signals has raised £400,000 investment from Mercia.

British satellite scale-up Satellite Vu, founded in 2016, has successfully raised £15 million ($20.7 million), as it looks to ramp up its plans to launch seven thermal and infrared imaging satellites into space that will be able to provide real-time data on how green every building on the planet is.

Flexciton, an optimisation technology company that has developed a unique solution to radically improve the efficiency and productivity of fab manufacturing processes, has announced a £15M Series A investment, led by Nadav Rosenberg (Saras Capital). Flexciton’s solution analyses the real-time data that each fab generates and applies cutting edge technology to decide which actions need to be taken to optimise production

Northern Ireland startups and scale up companies have been given the opportunity to meet and pitch their companies to more than 80 venture capital investors from London and the rest of the UK at a two-day event organised by Catalyst.

Primer has closed a Series B funding round that values the payments infrastructure startup at $425 million only 20 months after being founded.

The $50M Series B fundraise was led by ICONIQ Growth, the San Francisco based investment firm that has backed global tech companies such as Adyen and Marqeta to Snowflake and Datadog. Existing investors, including Accel, Balderton Capital, Seedcamp, Speedinvest, and RTP Global all participated in the round.

Alorsfaim, a Paris-based e-grocery company specializing in authentic and high-quality Asian food, has raised €4M in seed funding, enabling the fast-growing start-up to continue its rapid expansion across the vast Asian community in France and Europe. The round was led by iFly.vc with participation from Cathay Innovation and Goodwater Capital.

TrustedHousesitters, the world’s largest pet-sitting network, has secured $10m in Series A funding to continue expanding into the US market and, despite travel restrictions over the last 18 months, is already seeing revenue at twice pre-pandemic levels.

BGF – the UK and Ireland’s most active growth capital investor – has announced its successful exit of Magma Global Limited, the leading provider of composite pipe technology to support the Energy Transition.

The Portsmouth-based company has been acquired by TechnipFMC plc, a leading technology provider to the traditional and new energy industries, delivering fully integrated projects, products, and services.

3DEO, whose new interactive 5D mapping platform that makes it easier to monitor and manage complex infrastructure has raised £750,000 from the North East Venture Fund (NEVF), supported by the European Regional Development Fund and managed by Mercia.

3DEO’s system is already being used by BT on 5G projects and by ports and harbours to monitor and manage day to day operations. The cloud-based system combines data and information from diverse sources such as satellites, cameras, sensors and vehicle tracking, visualising it on a single screen to provide a live 5D model of the area.

DSW Ventures, the venture capital investment business of the Dow Schofield Watts group, has promoted Eleanor Boardman to Investment Manager in a period of significant growth for the regional VC.