News
Oxford-based QuantrolOx has raised £1.4m in a seed funding round to develop its artificial intelligence (AI) software that tunes and stabilises quantum computers.
The Oxford University spinout is aiming to improve the slow load up time of quantum computers using machine learning.
While quantum computers are much quicker at solving certain problems than a traditional computer, they take much longer to set up, resulting in shorter use times.
Quantum computers use qubits, or quantum bits, instead of binary bits to store units of information. When booting a quantum computer, these qubits currently require human expertise to set up before the machine can be used. As quantum computers use more and more qubits, this problem will become increasingly important as the computers will require more time and people to set them up.
Founded in 2021 by Andrew Briggs, Vishal Chatrath, Professor Natalia Ares and Dominic Lennon, QuantrolOx is creating hardware-agnostic software that can automate the tuning of qubits.
Its seed funding, announced last week, was led by Nielsen Ventures and Hoxton Ventures. Voima Ventures and Remus Capital provided further capital, along with angel investors Dr Hermann Hauser, and Laurent Caraffa.
Charles Seely, partner, Hoxton Ventures said: “Successful tuning, optimising and stabilising of many thousands of qubits, regardless of their variability, requires intelligent automation. Current solutions that depend on human expertise are not good enough and will not scale.”
QuantrolOx wants its software to run on any quantum computer but is currently focusing on solid-state qubits.
“I am excited to be backing a world-class team and a technology that has the potential of establishing itself as a category leader in the new and rapidly growing quantum ecosystem,” said Niels Nielsen of Nielsen Ventures.
London-based cybersecurity firm Red Sift has closed $54m (£40m) in a Series B funding round to fuel its global expansion, which includes a new headquarters in Austin, Texas.
European growth investor Highland Europe led the funding round, while other investors included Sands Capital, Oxford Capital and MMC Ventures.
Rahul Powar and Randal Pinto founded Red Sift in 2015. The company provides an integrated cloud email security and brand protection platform. It automates BIMI and DMARC processes to stop email compromise and secures domains from impersonation to stop attacks.
The company says it has doubled annual recurring revenue in the past 12 months and now has more than 700 brands among its customers, including Domino’s Pizza, Wise and ITV.
Red Sift will also use the additional capital for growth in Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East. It will also increase its headcount.
Sam Brooks, partner at Highland Europe, and Michael Graninger, partner at SANDS Capital, will join Red Sift’s board of directors.
“With phishing attacks now ubiquitous, there is a necessity in the enterprise for Red Sift’s cloud security platform which prevents domain impersonation and provides inbox protection,” said Brooks.
Graninger added: “Phishing, ransomware and cyber-disruptions have become significant threats that affect every human in today’s world. Red Sift continues to be a genuine partner to its customers in countering the bad guys by offering a platform to protect organisations from multiple, varied and interconnected threat vectors.”
Red Sift has offices in the UK, North America, Spain and Australia. Last September it raised $8.8m in its Series A round bringing its total funding at the time to $69.8m.
The investment follows a record year for UK cybersecurity investment, with £1bn invested into UK companies in 2021.
OCR Labs, a London, UK-based provider of a verification technology platform, raised $30M in Series B funding.
The round was led by Equable Capital.
The company intends to use the funds to expand its team in North America and EMEA.
Originally founded in 2016 by Matthew Adams and Daniel Aiello and led by John Myers, CEO, OCR Labs is a technology leader in the digital identity verification space. The solution supports Anti Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations and improves customer identity verification while reducing fraud.
The company supports clients across industries including financial services, government, telco, crypto and a variety of platform-based businesses, including SaaS providers. Customers include the Australian Government, Vodafone, ZIP and BMW.
Since announcing its Series A last year, OCR Labs has continued to scale into the UK and European markets. As part of its Series B, it is bolstering its international growth with a new office in North America, a direct sales force, and hiring a global Chief Revenue Officer. The company is headquartered in London, UK with offices in Australia and Turkey.
UK fintech company Wise has placed restrictions on money transfers to Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine on Thursday morning.
Wise, formerly known as TransferWise, told UKTN that it is also capping transfers on its platform to Ukraine so that it can continue providing its service there.
“As long as we are able to do so, we will continue providing our service to people needing to send money to Ukraine,” a Wise spokesperson told UKTN. “Recent developments in the region mean it’s more difficult to operate our service.”
The spokesperson added that it is aiming to remove the Ukraine cap “as soon as we’re able to” and that it’s “monitoring the situation closely” to “comply with any sanctions”.
On Thursday morning Ukraine said that “[Vladimir] Putin has launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine”. The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said that Russia has launched strikes against Ukraine’s military infrastructure and sent tanks across the border.
The UK, US, EU, Japan, Australia, and others have ramped up sanctions against Russia, including financial sanctions against its banks and individuals.
Wise was founded by Estonian businessmen Kristo Käärmann and Taavet Hinrikus in 2011 and is used for international money transfers.
The UK-listed company said that it is keeping its measures “under constant review”.
A spokesperson for London-headquartered digital bank Revolut told UKTN that it’s “monitoring the situation in Ukraine carefully” and that it’s “prepared to take any necessary steps to ensure we continue to operate in compliance with applicable sanctions laws and legislation”.
When asked what specific measures it was taking to stay in line with regulation, the Revolut spokesperson said: “We cannot comment on engagements with regulators.”
SoftBank has led a $230m (£172m) secondary placing investment into London-based recipe box startup Gousto.
The investment, which comes via SoftBank’s Vision Fund II, follows a previous $100m (£73.8m) backing by the Japanese conglomerate in January, which valued the company at £1.25bn.
Gousto has not raised additional money with SoftBank’s placing. Instead, SoftBank and investors Fidelity International, Grosvenor Food & AgTech and Railpen have “partially replaced” some of Gousto’s early-stage backers as “larger institutional investors.”
A Gousto spokesperson told UKTN that the new investors are “better suited to support the next stage of Gousto’s growth – the deal represents a maturing of Gousto’s shareholder base and is a milestone transaction”.
“This successful placing follows the primary capital raise announced in January and is further testament to the relevance and appetite for Gousto’s leading recipe box solution, as we meet an accelerating consumer need to eat healthily and sustainably, at value,” said Timo Boldt, co-founder and CEO of Gousto.
Boldt and James Carter founded Gousto in 2012 to provide a meal subscription service, which comes with premeasured ingredients and simple recipes.
Gousto uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automate parts of its fulfilment centres in Lincolnshire and Warrington. It also uses AI algorithms to recommend new recipes to its customers.
Max Ohrstrand, investor for SoftBank Investment Advisers, said: “We have been closely watching the growth and performance of Gousto for the last few years and have been greatly impressed with what Timo and his team have achieved. We believe they have succeeded in disrupting the traditional grocery channel when it comes to how we consume the evening meal and are excited to be joining the Gousto journey.”
Gousto is also aiming to reduce food waste, with a recent study by environmental services company Foodsteps revealing that Gousto meals produced 23% fewer carbon emissions than the equivalent meals from supermarket stores.
Intimates brand Pour Moi saw saw sales surging 200% during the pandemic, echoing the experiences of some other lingerie specialists that appeared to benefit from consumers seeking to add interest to their lockdown lives.
The company saw total sales rising 46% to £31 million in the year to last September, an increase that followed impressive leaps in previous years. It webstore sales rose 154% last year on a two-year basis and the first quarter of the current financial year (October to December 2021) saw 297% two-year growth.
The company’s primary focus is on its webstore, although it also has a physical store in Chester and plans to open more in the UK. Additionally, it sells through Next, Very, ASOS and Zalando, although its own DTC sales account for almost 60% of the business.
As well as the 17-year-old business making the most of the unprecedented opportunity lockdowns presented, it has managed to retain large numbers of the new customers it attracted during the pandemic period.
Founder Michael Thompson told the PA news agency that profits jumped 75% in the latest year to £2.7 million, easing his initial fears that the pandemic would be devastating for the business.
He said that “like a lot of people, for the first couple of months of the pandemic we were terrified,” repeating what many in the fashion sector have told us in the past year.
Its biggest problem was that 80% of its business when the pandemic started was swimwear. And with holidays cancelled, sales in that segment at all price levels dropped off a cliff.
The firm was clearly able to pivot to more lockdown-relevant categories with Thompson saying that “if you’re stuck at home, your entertainment has limited resources, it was either streaming something, playing Scrabble or buying lingerie.”
He said online sales of “sexy lingerie” spiked early in the lockdown and that “every customer need changed overnight”.
Importantly though, the need to be agile remains paramount as he also said that purchasing behaviour quickly moved towards more everyday lingerie.
That’s also been clear since Covid restrictions were eased last summer with Thompson saying shapewear sales online increased 420% and strapless bra sales rose140% as more people were able to socialise, attend events and go on holiday.
Scottish retailer Quiz said on Tuesday that it has implemented a number of sustainability initiatives across the business to reduce its energy consumption and environmental footprint, and will continue to focus and improve on this area.
The business has switched to 100% carbon-free renewable energy in its head office, distribution centre and 67 stores in the UK and Ireland.
In recent years, the company had already moved to energy-saving lighting across its distribution centre and HQ and it said that the new renewable energy switch will save more than 900 tonnes of carbon each year. This figure will also increase through the introduction of other “smaller-scale initiatives, including the switch to zero-carbon paper and carbon-neutral water dispensers across of the business”.
In addition to this it’s dramatically reducing the amount of waste produced across its supply chain and has launched 100% recycled and recyclable bags for all e-commerce orders and in-store purchases. That’s cut its annual virgin plastic use by 40 tonnes.
It has put in place more stringent recycling practices too and said this has diverted almost 60 tonnes of material from landfill each year.
Commercial chief Sheraz Ramzan said the announced measures “by no means signal the end of our efforts. We will be continuing to look at how we can improve and are excited to build on this good progress into 2022.”
UK cybersecurity firm Darktrace has acquired Cybersprint in a cash and equity deal valuing the Dutch attack surface management company at €47.5m (£39.6m).
Cybersprint is based in the Hague, Netherlands, and provides real-time cybersecurity insights for businesses and detects potential security risks.
Darktrace said it will integrate Cybersprint’s attack surface management tools with its own detection and response products.
The deal is expected to close on 1 March 2022 and will see Darktrace acquire Cybersprint for 75% in cash and the remaining 25% in equity.
The total transaction value is worth more than 12 times the annual recurring revenue of Cybersprint.
Cambridge-based Darktrace will also gain a second European R&D centre via the acquisition, which it said will be used to support its UK software engineers.
Cybersprint’s ethical hacking and real-time internet data insight will be used to expand Darktrace’s existing detect and respond products. The company said it will accelerate its entry into the proactive AI cybersecurity market.
“Bringing inside-out and outside-in visibility together is critical and having access to the robust, rich, real-time external dataset combined with Darktrace’s Self-Learning AI means that customers get a holistic view of prioritised cyber risks to harden the parts of their organisation that are most vulnerable,” said Darktrace CEO Poppy Gustafsson.
Pieter Jansen, CEO of Cybersprint, said: “We believe attackers never sleep and operate without scope. When we began conversations with Darktrace, we felt an instant connection on vision, culture and technology.
“That’s why we are looking forward to joining Darktrace and working together to accelerate state-of-the-art innovations to make organisations more cyber secure.”
The acquisition comes just under a year after Darktrace became a public company, listing on the London Stock Exchange in April 2021 with an opening valuation of £1.7bn.
Its market cap has since increased to £2.47bn in a sign that investors are unfazed by Darktrace’s ties to disgraced tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, who was a founding investor of the cybersecurity firm and recently lost a multi-billion pound fraud case over the sale of software company Autonomy to HP in 2011.
Darktrace’s successful IPO and subsequent acquisition of Cybersprint follow a record year for UK cybersecurity investment, with companies receiving more than £1bn in capital in 2021.
Investment in UK cybersecurity companies surpassed a record £1bn in 2021, a 25% increase on the year prior.
Government figures show that UK cybersecurity investment last year was spread across 84 companies.
Among those were Bristol-based Immersive Labs, which raised £53.5m in a Series C round, and London’s Tessian, which secured more than £52m in an extended Series C.
The UK’s cybersecurity companies generated a combined £10.1bn in revenue – a 14% increase on the 2020 financial year.
That additional capital helped create an additional 6,000 jobs, bringing the total UK cybersecurity workforce to 52,700.
The DCMS Annual Cyber Sector Report, published Wednesday, found that the UK cybersecurity sector contributed around £5.3bn to the UK economy in 2021, up from £4bn in the previous year.
According to the report, there were 1,838 active cybersecurity companies in the UK in 2021, with more than half of those based outside of London and the South East.
“Cybersecurity firms are major contributors to the UK’s incredible tech success story,” said Digital Secretary Nadine Dorries. “Hundreds of British firms from Edinburgh to Bristol are developing and selling cutting-edge cyber tools around the world that make it safer for people to live and work online.”
It comes amid a record year for cybersecurity investment globally, with $21.8bn (£16bn) poured into companies.
“It’s so encouraging to see such impressive growth in the UK’s cybersecurity sector,” James Hadley, CEO at Immersive Labs, told UKTN. “As cyber risk grows and evolves, it’s more important than ever that individuals and organisations alike are prepared and confident to stand up to whatever threat comes next.”
He added that he’s “confident” that growing cybersecurity investment will help protect more businesses from cyberattacks.
This was echoed by Jake Moore, former head of digital forensics at Dorset Police and now global cybersecurity advisor at ESET: “The cybersecurity industry is booming and the increase in expenditure is a sign that decision-makers are acutely aware of the importance of investment.”
Last year, in a boost for UK tech listings, Cambridge-headquartered Darktrace completed its IPO on the London Stock Exchange at a £1.7bn valuation.
The 2021 cybersecurity investment figures come amid a bumper year for overall UK tech investment, which surpassed £26bn across all sectors.
Out of that, fintech companies attracted £8.5bn, the largest of any sector.
January saw another slowdown for online retail sales with the latest IMRG Capgemini Online Retail Index — which tracks the online sales performance of over 200 e-tailers — showing the worst growth figures ever recorded with a decline of 24.4%.
But coming up against a boom in January 2021 when the UK was in lockdown, that reversal is no surprise. And at least fashion performed well.
E-sales have understandably slowed since the pandemic when webstores were the only option for consumers buying non-essential goods.
2021 had ended with 2.7% total growth in the market, which was the lowest annual growth rate ever. Continuing this pattern, January 2022’s drop is a direct result of retailers competing against a staggering growth rate of 61.8% in locked-down January 2021.
Fast-forward 12 months and not only are retailers up against this steep growth rate, but restrictions have been lifted, enabling consumers to carry out as much in-person shopping as they want.
Online retailers that assumed the e-sales growth rate would continue at levels closer to those seen during lockdowns and post-lockdown periods seem to have come unstuck. News this week of Studio Retail preparing to call in administrators after over-ordering January stock on assumptions of stronger trading only underlined what happened across the wider industry last month.
But while January seems to have been a weak month at a headline level, average spend was actually up over £20 year-on-year, although part of this could have been due to inflation that was running close to 5%.
Breaking the index’s figures down further, the average basket value (ABV) rose to £115 in January after dropping to £106 in December. In the first half of 2021 the ABV saw huge increases, but it had been falling since August. January was the first month since then that it has started to go back up again.
At a category level, fashion saw the highest rate of growth in January, with clothing up 5.4% year-on-year, and womenswear (+25.2%), menswear (+16%) and footwear (+19.4%) all reporting positive performances.
The same was not true, however, for the rest of the categories IMRG tracks. Those with the poorest growth included skincare, which was down 48.2%, make-up (-45.7%), and electricals (-36.7%).
Andy Mulcahy, Strategy and Insight Director at IMRG, said: “The first quarter of 2021 had a severe lockdown in place which drove huge online growth, so the year-on-year comparisons for the early months in 2022 are going to be harshly negative as a consequence. This can make it seem like online sales are in freefall, whereas actually it is just a natural rationalisation of the 50%-60% increases we saw this time last year.”
Lucy Gibbs, Senior Manager, Retail lead for Analytics & AI at Capgemini, added: “January was mixed story for retail; our Online Index reported the largest YoY fall in sales ever, and the high street claimed the opposite. This is due to the now familiar Yin Yang effect on YoY revenues when comparing to last year’s lockdown store closures. As we emerge from the pandemic, the annual results will start to normalise and 2022 will hopefully bring a much more stable trading period, however the outlook still remains uncertain as we realise the fall out of economic and logistical challenges from the last two years.
“The drop in orders this month is greater than revenue as ABV has increased by 24%. This could be an early indicator of increased prices, reflecting the ongoing supply chain disruption and underlying cost challenges. The major purchase index has also fallen four points (GSK) in January, as economic pressures add to consumer concerns. Capturing share of wallet amongst increasing bills and also pent-up demand for travel, events and eating out will continue to prove to be the focus as we navigate 2022.”