European intellectual property law firm, Mathys & Squire, has become an official partner of British Design Fund (BDF), an early-stage investment fund dedicated to supporting the growth of UK engineering and manufacturing start-ups.

Founded in London, British Design Fund backs product-focused start-up enterprises who are ready to scale-up and build thriving standout businesses. Alongside capital investment, BDF provides expert mentoring to support such companies to accelerate their growth plans.

Kaydiar, a Welsh business using pioneering technologies to create an innovative range of footcare products has received the backing of a group of angel investors, along with the Development Bank of Wales, the Welsh Government, University of Wales Trinity St David and Innovate UK.

A holistic metabolic disease management start-up, Dia Beta Labs Ltd has been named the overall winner of the 2024 INVENT Awards, after securing top spot of the brand new BioBreakthrough category.

Organised by science and technology hub Catalyst with headline partner Bank of Ireland UK, INVENT is the highlight event of the year for early-stage start-ups and aspiring entrepreneurs to showcase their innovations to a panel of expert judges.

A young entrepreneur whose AI social enterprise will help medical professionals save time, money and lives has won £20,000 after wowing the judges at a hotly contested funding competition at The Shard.

Talha Mehmood, a medical student at Anglia Ruskin University, is the founder of Medily AI - a suite of digital tools that support more efficient management of patient care. Talha, 22, was last night declared the first winner of Ignite, which has been launched by social enterprise philanthropists The Ford Family Foundation in partnership with Durham University. All six highly impressive finalists are undergraduates or recent graduates from leading UK universities.

USA: Vytala, a US-based food technology company dedicated to advancing nutrition, has announced its launch and the initial close of its pre-seed financing. For the past year, Vytala has been in stealth, recruiting a highly experienced executive team, refining its initial product formulation, putting in place key partnerships and preparing for commercialization. Its mission is now clear: Vytala will help people with GI diagnoses achieve their best health through the power of nutrition.

USA: Singulate, a generative AI marketing platform, has raised a $2.3 million pre-seed round of funding from angel investors and venture capital firms. The early-stage startup sees the next era of email marketing using generative AI and LLMs to unlock far easier segmentation and better personalization in large-scale communication, beginning with email marketing.

SPAIN: Anyformat, the Spanish startup aiming for a new era of collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence, has raised €520,000 in a pre-seed funding round. This round, led by 4Founders Capital, Abac Nest Ventures, and prominent business angels, will allow anyformat to accelerate the development of its generative AI platform, designed to transform how companies manage and analyze unstructured data.

clock.bio, a healthspan biotech, has raised $5.3 million in seed funding led by LocalGlobe, with participation from BlueYard Capital, Onsight Ventures, and Dr. Jonathan Milner, the Founder of Abcam. The company has made significant progress in decoding the biology of human rejuvenation, identifying more than 100 genes that jointly constitute an "Atlas of Rejuvenation Factors."

The Development Bank of Wales has taken an equity stake in Cardiff-based Llusern Scientific as part of a substantial six-figure funding round that is helping the University of South Wales spinout to commercialise its testing for Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs).

Llusern Scientific is one of six University spinouts that have collectively secured £1.7 million in equity funding from the Development Bank of Wales to date in 2024 as the Bank focusses on boosting innovation in Wales. The others include Swansea-based Corryn Biotechnologies and Grove Nanomaterials along with Awen Oncology, a spin-out of Bangor University and Cardiff University. Cardiff Metropolitan University spinout Kaydiar and Cardiff University spinout Optimise.ai have also had equity investments.

DSW Ventures, the venture capital investment arm of DSW Capital, has led a pre-seed investment into TheNextLevel, a Manchester-based innovator redefining mobile commerce through community engagement. TheNextLevel is pioneering "Community Commerce", allowing online brands to leverage the power of social commerce without being reliant on Big Tech.

Richard Hong, the cofounder of e-commerce personal care brand owner, Pangaea Holdings, and technology and logistics platform, OpenBorder, also contributed to the round. Elizabeth Gooch MBE, a prominent non-executive and angel investor, has joined the board as Chair.

Nesti, a platform designed to equip sales development teams to exceed their targets with personalised outbound videos at scale, has secured £250,000 in a competitive pre-seed funding round, led by SFC Capital.

Medtech startup Corryn Biotechnologies Ltd has secured a £150,000 investment from British Design Fund, as part of a £550,000 seed funding round