Oxford Space Systems raises £6.7m to make it quicker and cheaper to launch satellites

Oxford Space Systems has raised an additional £6.7m in funding, bringing the total amount raised since the company’s launch in 2013 to £10m.

Oxford Space Systems (OSS) builds SpaceTech, including deployable antennas and panel systems, that are lighter, less complex and costly than those that are currently available – according to the firm.

This Series A funding, which was led by Longwall Ventures, makes OSS one of the most highly funded UK SpaceTech start-ups. 

A syndicate of investors including IQ Capital, Foresight Williams, OTIF, Midven and Wren also contributed to the current round. The money will be used to open its new headquarters at the Harwell Space Cluster and to develop OSS’s technology, which uses light materials and origami engineering techniques to reduce storage volume.

OSS’ tech is important for a number of reasons. Satellites are expensive; it currently costs approximately £30,000 per kilo to launch into orbit (according to stats from OSS), so reducing the weight can save a lot of money.

Launching satellites is also a slow process. OSS claim to have reduced the time it takes to launch a satellite into space from 10 years (as estimated by NASA) to 30 months.

Mike Lawton, CEO and founder, said this is an exciting time for OSS: “Closing the latest round and moving to our own facility at the Harwell Space Cluster puts us in an excellent position to address the global opportunities we’re being approached with.

“I launched the company after realising that deployable antennas and structures are often a neglected area of a spacecraft – an area ripe for innovation. With OSS, we’re creating a step change by using innovative materials and a new approach to volume product build – and this investment is as much a recognition of our successes in delivering on this vision to date,” he continued.  

He went on to say that commercial space is a large and rapidly growing market that will be worth trillions of dollars over the next decade. David Denny, partner at Longwall Ventures, added: “We are delighted to see what the OSS team have achieved since Longwall first invested in 2013.  We have valued working with IQ Capital along with the other major investors in this and earlier funding rounds.”

Ed Stacey, partner at IQ Capital concluded: “It’s been a pleasure to work with OSS as the company has moved from strength to strength over the past few years. Having proven the value and reliability of its technology in space flight, and having made the transition from start-up to scale-up with this latest round of funding, OSS is now able to respond to the growing global demand for deployable space structures. ”

OSS’ current round is still open until September 2018, and the company hope to raise up to an additional £1.3m.

University of Cambridge sensors spin-out raises £1.2m

A sensors technology gamechanger spun out of Cambridge University’s engineering department  has raised £1.2 million seed funding from Cambridge Enterprise, the Cambridge Angels and Cambridge Capital Group.

Sorex Sensors Limited has developed a novel mass sensor which is based on Film Bulk Acoustic Resonator (FBAR) technology. It is said to have immense potential in areas such as the Internet of Things.

It is said to have several advantages over existing sensors: (1) it has high mass sensitivity, down to 1 femtogram (the weight of the average virus particle); (2) it is extremely small, being about the same as a human hair in diameter, and can be arranged into arrays on the same chip to measure different targets simultaneously; and (3) the sensors have an incredibly low power requirement, allowing them to be operated from a coin cell, battery, mobile phone or even by energy harvesting from an RFID device.

FBARs are manufactured using standard CMOS processes and are currently produced in their billions for the telecoms industry each year as filters and multiplexers, rather than sensors.

Sorex Sensors is initially focusing on film thickness measurement in deposition systems, particle monitoring and specific gas molecule sensing in consumer goods. 

However, the numerous advantages and versatility of this technology open up a wide range of opportunities in a variety of fields, from explosive detection to biological sensing research equipment. 

With the low power requirements and the possibility of combining different sensor targets on a single chip, such as particulates and gases, Sorex Sensors have the potential to deliver unique advantages in emerging markets around the Internet of Things.

The company has licensed patents from Cambridge Enterprise and the University of Warwick and will have ongoing collaborations with the University of Cambridge, the University of Warwick and the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. Its core IP has been granted in the US and EU.

Sorex Sensors’ CEO Dr John Pritchard said: “The Sorex Sensors technology is uniquely well-suited to address pressing problems, such as the need for widespread, accurate and inexpensive monitoring for particulate air pollution, and the need for precise measurement of material thickness in the electronics industry to reduce cost and increase throughput.”

Elaine Loukes, investment director at Cambridge Enterprise and Richard Parmee of the Cambridge Angels will be joining the board.

Sorex Sensors was founded by Professor Andrew Flewitt, Dr Mario de Miguel-Ramos and Professor Bill Milne from Cambridge with co-founders Dr Marina Cole and Professor Julian Gardner from the University of Warwick and Professor Enrique Iborra from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

Professor Flewitt said: “The really exciting aspect of the Sorex Sensors’ technology is that the same device can be tailored to specifically detect a wide range of targets. 

“This allows detection of combinations of targets to be simply realised on a single chip at low cost, such airborne particulates and pollutant gases. Coupling this with a mobile phone could allow a personal air quality monitoring device.”

The strawberry-picking robots doing a job humans won't

With strawberry picking season well under way - but migrant labour in short supply in several countries - we look at the various robots being developed around the world to help producers harvest this most popular fruit.

Next time you buy strawberries take a look a good look in the punnet. Do the berries still have the stem attached or has it been plucked off leaving only the green hat of leaves called the calyx?

You may not think that matters, but it's a key consideration for growers as they contemplate the merits of a range of robotic prototypes that promise to pick strawberries as fast and as carefully as humans.

Whether the berry is plucked or whether the stalk is snipped through and kept attached is one critical difference between the concepts that Spanish, Belgian, British and US engineers are testing, ready to roll out in fields as soon as next year.

Fragile fruits

Harvesting soft fruit mechanically represents a huge challenge - each berry needs to be located, even if it's behind a leaf, assessed for ripeness and then harvested and boxed with enormous care to avoid bruising.

But recent developments in visual sensor technology, machine learning and autonomous propulsion have brought the goal within reach.

"If you can put a man on the moon you can get a machine to pick a strawberry," says Tom Coen, founder of Octinion, a Belgium-based start-up conducting a final phase of field trials this summer in partnership with growers in the UK and continental Europe.

"Today we can say we have a [robotic] arm that is competitive with a human in terms of price and speed," he says.

Octinion's arm is mounted on a self-driving trolley. It reaches up from below and, using 3D vision, grips a ripe berry between two cushioned plastic paws. The gripper then turns the fruit by 90 degrees to snap it off its stalk, mimicking the technique a human picker would use.

The prototype is picking one strawberry every four seconds, says Mr Coen, and depending on the cultivar, will collect between 70% and 100% of the ripe fruit - results that he says make it competitive with human pickers.

The berry is left with only the calyx, which is the way European consumers are accustomed to buying their berries.

"We don't believe in cutting," he says. Stalks risk bruising other berries in the punnet, he argues.

Stem subject

But Cambridge-based start-up Dogtooth is taking a different approach.

Founders Duncan Robertson and Ed Herbert have just returned from Australia where they've been testing a picker that delivers berries with a centimetre or so of stem still attached, the way UK retailers prefer, because it extends shelf life.

Dogtooth is cautious about giving away too much about how its robot works, but like Octinion it is based around robotic arms mounted on a mobile platform.

It uses computer vision to identify ripe fruit and machine learning to evolve efficient picking strategies. After picking, the robot grades berries to determine their size and quality, and places them directly into punnets.

Dogtooth also prides itself in working around the needs and current practices of UK growers.

So while Octinion's machine will only work on fruit grown on raised platforms, usually in polytunnels, Dogtooth's will pick traditional British varieties in the field.

"Adopting robotic practice will be a big ask, so I don't want to ask growers to pull out existing infrastructure to support our robot," says Mr Robertson.

"We're trying to reinvent an important part of how soft fruit is grown, not reinvent the whole thing."

Rotting fruit

Robots can operate at all times of the day or night - harvesting during the chillier night hours can dramatically lengthen shelf life and avoid bruising.

But developers emphasise the motivation is not to replace migrant labour with cheaper, more efficient robots. In fact, it's not proving easy to replicate the standards that human pickers deliver.

Strawberry farmers say they are increasingly struggling to find people to do the work. They need the robots.

In the UK, the fall in the value of sterling following the EU referendum vote has made it increasingly difficult to recruit overseas workers. UK citizens seem reluctant to do such seasonal, physically laborious work.

In the US, growers say they have had to let fruit rot in the fields. Tighter immigration rules, a rise in the minimum wage, and a dwindling birth rate in Mexico, have all meant there just aren't the workers available to harvest them.

Necessity

So producers will have to scale up robotic picking if they're to survive, many argue.

Agrobot, built by Spanish entrepreneur Juan Bravo, should be commercially available in California next year. And in Florida, the Harvest Croo team, led by former Intel engineer Bob Pitzer, is also close to launch.

Both of these are much bigger than the robotic arms being developed by Dogtooth and Octinion.

Both boast tractor-like vehicles spanning several rows of plants with arms that reach down to locate and pick fruit.

Each Agrobot arm grabs a stalk and snips, carrying the fruit off by its stem to minimise damage.

The Harvest Croo (Computerized Robotic Optimized Obtainer) uses paddles to gather up the plant's leaves to expose the fruit. Rotating grippers then grasp and snap the berries off the stalk. Americans, like most Europeans, are accustomed to stemless fruit.

Mr Pitzer says two thirds of the country's strawberry production is backing the move to mechanisation.

"Growers advertise and pay a lot of money - a good picker can make $30 (£22) an hour [in Florida]; in California it's $50 an hour," he says.

But they still can't recruit enough workers.

"People like to say if you paid them more they'd do the job, but it's just not true. We know in future that labour won't be available."

Undersea tech company backed with £1.2m investment

A Bristol-based undersea technology company is to triple its workforce after receiving a £1.2m investment, enabling it to launch a new live 3D subsea survey system.

The investment in Rovco comes from Green Angel Syndicate, Cambridge Angels and Bristol Private Equity Club.

Following two years of extensive research and development, Rovco's new technology will begin field trials this month.

The system has been developed to manage the increasing complexity of subsea operations, using real-time 3D vision and AI data analysis to cut the cost of underwater inspections and maintenance.

To meet an increased market demand for subsea inspection around offshore windfarms, pipelines and cables, Rovco also plans to add three new remotely-operated vehicles to its fleet within the next six months.

Brian Allen, founder and chief executive at Rovco, said: "We have entered the second quarter of 2018 with a strong pipeline of sales and we are extremely confident in our ability to grow our client base both in the UK and overseas.

"Despite the ongoing market challenges, we have continued to invest in R&D to ensure we deliver high quality and efficient services in several key and growing international markets.

"This latest financial backing will not only allow us to accelerate our growth plans, but it will see us work alongside some of the UK’s most well-established and knowledgeable business leaders whose industry experience will be extremely valuable in the next stage of our development."

Eagle Genomics Announces Senior Leadership Changes

CAMBRIDGE, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Eagle Genomics has appointed Executive Chairman Anthony Finbow to the post of Chief Executive, with founder Abel Ureta-Vidal moving to become Chief Product Officer.

The change in management structure marks a new phase for Eagle Genomics as the organisation rapidly shapes for scale to meet customer demand. The company has won 11 enterprise customers since its last funding round and has most recently been selected as one of just 12 companies in the latest cohort of the Microsoft Scale-Up program, opening it up to the global Microsoft customer network.

Eagle’s knowledge discovery platform, the e[automateddatascientist], transforms scientific data into actionable insights that drive product decision making. The knowledge gained from the platform enables companies to quickly assess product potential, accelerate market entry and mitigate risk.

CEO of Eagle Genomics Anthony Finbow commented:

“I am delighted to become CEO at Eagle Genomics at this formative stage as we shape the organisation for scale and execute on our growth strategy. Over the last two years we have made significant strides in building our software platform and have a clear product market fit in some compelling growth markets. When applied to microbiome research, the platform is enabling new insight that will shape the consumer and healthcare products of tomorrow; this is something we are particularly excited about.”

CPO and Founder Abel Ureta-Vidal commented:

“I've worked very closely with Anthony over nearly 3 years. Working together with our complementary skills and vision, we have transformed the company and brought it to where it is today. I'm delighted to move into the role of Chief Product Officer; closer to customers, the market and product management where I can add the most value and make a difference.”

There have also been non-executive board appointments, Cliff Meltzer has become Non-Executive Chairman, while Simon Thorpe becomes Non-Executive Director.

Cliff Meltzer is the CEO at Excelicare and brings a wealth of experience from previous senior roles at some of the world’s leading tech companies. Cliff spent 11 years at Cisco Systems holding numerous executive level positions, as well as 2 years at Apple where he was responsible for the platform dependent software for Macintosh products.

Cliff commented: “I am delighted to be taking on the role of Non-Executive Chairman to help the company grow operationally and strategically. Eagle Genomics is at the leading edge of this crucial technological domain.”

Simon Thorpe is an investor in UK companies with a focus on the technology sector. He was voted UKBAA’s Angel Investor of the year 2016/17.

To further support company growth, Eagle Genomics raised $1m within 3 weeks of the launch of its latest investment round. Made up of a diverse range of investors, the round remains open until the end of June.

Oracle acquired Grapeshot, a ‘brand safety’ marketing provider, sources say for up to $400M

CIn the era of fake news and controversies over how brands’ advertising — via programmatic platforms — unwittingly ends up alongside content with which they’d rather not be associated, Oracle has made an acquisition to beef up its ability to help customers with these marketing challenges.

The company has announced that it will acquire Grapeshot, a startup out of Cambridge, England, that has developed a platform to help ensure “brand safety”, along with solutions to help brands, agencies, publishers and ad platforms to match ads to more specific placements overall.

The startup will become a part of the Oracle  Data Cloud, Oracle said, working specifically in the area of Audiences and Measurement, which already provides a number of other tools to marketers, such as data for custom segmented audiences.

The terms of the deal have not been disclosed but one of the investors tells us it was in the multiple hundreds of millions of pounds. Conservatively assuming at least £200 million, this means Grapeshot  has sold for at least $280 million; but the source said it would be safe to assume a higher multiple, so I’m now thinking it was for between $300 million and $400 million. However, another source said it was for around $150 million. Assuming both are “right” the higher number might be including an earn-out. Still trying to find out more.

In either case, it is a strong exit for the company that speaks both to how timely this issue is right now, and also the strength of Grapeshot’s technology and existing business. For some context, Pitchbook notes that Grapeshot’s last pre-money valuation was around $56 million (£40.2 million) in May of 2017, while Crunchbase notes that the company has raised only $22.4 million from investors that include IQ Capital Partners, Draper Esprit and Albion. It’s “an outstanding return”, said the investor.

Grapeshot, via its Contextual Intelligence Platform, says it works with some 5,000 marketers globally, covering some 38 billion programmatic ad impressions. It’s been growing at a rate of over 100 percent year-over-year, it says. It looks like it will continue to work with existing customers, who will in turn become potential targets for the cross-selling of other Oracle services.

The rise of Grapeshot and its acquisition by Oracle speaks to a growing challenge in the area of adtech and corresponding marketing technology: while programmatic advertising has largely become the norm across the web, there are some unintended consequences from all that automation.

For one, it’s harder to specifically match ads to content in every case — and this might potentially become even more difficult with the rise of stronger data protection and increased scrutiny on how are data is used for ad targeting. One of Grapeshot’s services helps marketers solve this with technology that helps match ads not just to basic sites, but to keywords on pages.

But in the worst-case scenarios, brands are finding their ads running alongside content that is outright damaging to their images. In a recent scandal, advertisers were forced to freeze some ads on YouTube when they were found to be running alongside videos of kids with obscene comments from viewers.

Ideally both for the brands and YouTube, the ads would have never been there to begin with — and that is the kind of outcome that Grapeshot (and now Oracle) is going to be helping achieve.

There are, of course, a lot more controls in place now to try to prevent situations like this, and products aimed at generally making it easier to match ads to content. Search giant (and YouTube owner) Google, the world’s biggest online advertising company, earlier this year launched a new AdSense product that uses machine learning to “read” content on specific pages to understand the context before it serves an ad to it.

The interesting thing about Grapeshot is that it’s working a layer back before this. By not being tied to any specific ad platform, Oracle has the potential to play a strong hand as an unbiased helper to customers to achieve the best results.

Oracle has made a number of acquisitions to expand its digital marketing and advertising solutions business, to tap into the rise of social media and also to compete better against Salesforce. They have included Compendium, Moat, Involver, Vitrue, Netsuite, Market2Lead and many more.

Additional reporting Josh Constine

Featurespace wins Anti-fraud Solution at FStech Awards

The real-time machine learning solution from Featurespace has been recognised as Anti-fraud Solution of the Year.

Featurespace, the leading multinational machine learning company for fraud prevention and risk management, has been awarded Anti-fraud Solution of the Year at the FStech Awards. 

The FStech Awards, now in their 18th year, recognise excellence and innovation in the field of information technology within the UK and EMEA financial services sector. 

Martina King, Featurespace CEO, commented:  "Our clients want to keep their own customers safe from fraud attacks and we continue to innovate and develop our world-class product to defend them. 

On behalf of our customers, this award recognises the impact that our real-time, machine learning, fraud prevention technology is making to the financial services industry.” 

Featurespace is the world leader in adaptive behavioural analytics, delivered via its machine learning ARIC platform. ARIC uses anomaly detection to analyse complex data streams in real time, building individual statistical profiles for each customer. 

The ARIC platform models a pattern of normal or ‘good’ behaviour and detects anomalies, which enables it to identify fraud attacks as they happen, reducing the costs associated with managing fraud. Simultaneously, ARIC reduces the number of genuine transactions incorrectly declined, enabling businesses to accept more revenue.

Spectral Edge Secures $5.3 Million in Further Funding

Cambridge UK, 11 April 2018: Spectral Edge, the image fusion technology specialists, has secured $5.3 million in further funding from existing investors Parkwalk Advisors and IQ Capital. Based in Cambridge with deep academic roots, Spectral Edge combines cutting-edge imaging science with machine learning to improve pictures and videos on mass market devices. This is done in real time with a pixel-level, embeddable technology that can be implemented in software or in silicon.

The technology behind the process can be used across a range of potential applications that rely on image quality for either function or aesthetics – from mobile to security, and from automotive to on-demand video or live broadcast.

Over the past year, Spectral Edge has continued to build its management team, following the appointment of Rhodri Thomas as CEO in February 2017. Rhodri joined the business from predictive keyboard technology pioneer SwiftKey which was successfully sold to Microsoft in 2016. Most recently, Dr Ilya Romanenko has joined as CTO from ARM Holdings, bringing a wealth of experience in applicable technology and deep learning. He heads up the R&D department which currently includes 5 PHDs, including 3 image fusion experts who were heavily involved in the creation of the company’s patents.

The new funding will enable expansion of the R&D team to 12, with specialism in image processing, machine learning and embedded software development. It will also support the development of real world applications in key areas of focus, in particular smartphones, webcams and security applications alongside the existing products for the TV & display industries.

CEO Rhodri Thomas commented “We are delighted to have the continued support of IQ Capital and Parkwalk Advisors as Spectral Edge moves to the next phase of growth and we see our technology reaching the marketplace. The opportunities for market application of our technology are hugely exciting, in particular in smartphones, TV picture processing and in security surveillance devices. This funding will allow us to continue to realise real world applications as we further strengthen our technical team.”

Alastair Kilgour, CIO at Parkwalk Advisors, stated “The technological progress at Spectral Edge in developing next generation image fusion has been substantial since we made our first investment and with this fund raise commercial engagement with companies and industries looking for an edge in image enhancement, such as smartphones and security cameras, will be escalated.”

Max Bautin, Managing Partner at IQ Capital, noted “Spectral Edge continues to pioneer in the imaging sector, with market opportunities across a broad range of sectors. We are proud to have Spectral Edge within our portfolio of deep tech companies, all developing leading-edge AI and generating strong IP.”

Cambridge ‘has fastest growing economy in the UK’

Cambridge had the fastest-growing city economy in the UK across the third quarter of 2017, according to a new report which also revealed that both of the country's most famous university cities are expected to thrive in the next 12 months.

These findings are a huge boost for Cambridge and highlight how the city is benefitting from industrial parks which are leading the way in fields such as wireless technology, display technology, and mobile telecommunications.

The UK Powerhouse study is produced by Irwin Mitchell and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) and provides an estimate of GVA* growth and job creation within 45 of the UK’s largest cities 12 months ahead of the Government’s official figures.

Published this month, the research revealed that Cambridge’s GVA growth rate of 2.2% made it the top-performing city economy in the UK, with forecasts suggesting that the city’s predicted year-on-year growth rate of 2.19% in 2018 will also be the best of any major location.

Neighbouring Oxford is also set to have a strong 2018, with the city expected to be second on the table of top-performing economies with a growth rate of 1.99%. It also took sixth place in terms of Q3 2017 GVA performance with a growth rate of 1.9%.

Victoria Brackett, chief executive of Business Legal Services at Irwin Mitchell, said: “These findings are a huge boost for Cambridge and highlight how the city is benefitting from industrial parks which are leading the way in fields such as wireless technology, display technology, and mobile telecommunications.

“The city is also of course close to London which is hugely beneficial with the capital remaining a key economic hub.”

This latest edition of UK Powerhouse examines the impact that the education has on city economies across the UK, with Oxford being behind only London in terms of the GVA generated by its education sector. The city’s education sector grew by 4% between 2012 and 2015 to reach a value of £500 million.

In comparison, Cambridge’s education sector GVA stood at £319 million after achieving zero growth during the three-year period analysed.

The report notes the education sector makes a major contribution to economic growth within many areas surrounding universities and also offers recommendations on how it can continue to do so. These include:

• Engaging in the work of Local Enterprise partnerships, particularly in support for innovation
• Ensuring cities with a strong outflow of graduate age young workers have policies for retaining talent, with the Government also providing incentives for graduate recruiters to hire more in those areas
•  Encouraging cities to improving infrastructure to optimise the movement of workers
• Introducing large-scale affordable housing projects to appeal to graduates

Image: Top and bottom five cities by annual GVA growth, Q3 2017

Source: Office for National Statistics, Cebr analysis

*GVA = Gross Value Added

To read more information, click here.

New Angel Investor Hub at the Bradfield Centre, Cambridge

Cambridge Angel Hub in partnership with The Bradfield Centre

The angel hub offers opportunities for both existing and would-be angels to drop in and learn from fellow investors, attend training workshops, develop new syndicates and to meet and potentially invest in local entrepreneurs.

Members of The Bradfield Centre and the wider Cambridge ecosystem will benefit from a rich programme of content to help grow their business – including mentoring and guidance, pitching events, coffee mornings and fireside chats.

The UKBAA is the national trade association for angel and early-stage investment, representing over 180 member organisations and around 182,000 investors. 

Business angels in the UK collectively invest an estimated £1.6 billion per annum and represent the UK’s largest source of investment for startups and early-stage businesses seeking to grow. 

UKBAA’s members include angel networks, syndicates, individual investors, early-stage VCs, equity crowdfunding platforms, accelerators, professional advisers and intermediaries. 

The association acts as the voice of the angel investment community and strives to build and connect the angel investment ecosystem to ensure a coherent landscape for financing high-potential entrepreneurs.

Jon Bradford, director of The Bradfield Centre said: “Capital, advice, connections – these are all essential ingredients to grow a successful tech business. Bringing more of these ingredients into the Cambridge ecosystem is a key part of our mission at The Bradfield Centre and the establishment of a UKBAA angel hub here represents a real boost for local entrepreneurs and investors alike.”

Jenny Tooth, CEO of the UK Business Angels Association added: “Angel investors bring so much value to startup and scaleup businesses and by partnering with The Bradfield Centre we are creating a dynamic environment for these crucial relationships to flourish. 

“This new angel hub should also attract new investors to engage with the entrepreneurial community here in Cambridge.”

In a seminal week for The Bradfield Centre, it has also announced significant partnerships with three Cambridge University organisations to help forge and foster mutually beneficial links: Cambridge Judge Business School's Entrepreneurship Centre, ideaSpace and the Cambridge University Technology and Enterprise Club (CUTEC).

These organisations will benefit from access to the newly created partner lounge in The Bradfield Centre which will enable their members to work from its state of the art facilities, host meetings, connect with the membership, engage with event, and create their own programming to be delivered at the centre.

Hanadi Jabado, executive director of Cambridge Judge Business School's Entrepreneurship Centre, said: “This exciting new partnership with the Bradfield Centre complements the School’s aims to serve the successful development of the Cambridge Cluster and entrepreneurial community through effective entrepreneurship teaching, mentoring and facilitated networking.”

The Bradfield Centre, Cambridge Science Park, Cambridge Enterprise and Cambridge Judge Business School are all sponsors of the UK-leading Business Weekly Awards which are underway and attracting a superb array of candidates reflecting the cluster’s excellence for innovation.

Featurespace, the adaptive behavioural analytics technology company raises £16.5m

Featurespace, the leading machine learning company for fraud prevention, has raised £16.5 million ($21.6 million) from a funding round led by Highland Europe, the venture capital firm that invests in growth businesses.

Worldpay Group plc, a leading global payment processing company, and Invoke Capital also participated in the round as new investors.

The round also includes further funding from existing investors including Touchstone Innovations plc, NESTA, TTV Capital and Robert Sansom.

The funds will be used to support Featurespace’s international expansion and continued development of the company’s software capabilities.

Featurespace’s real-time, ARIC™ platform uses Adaptive Behavioural Analytics to detect anomalies in individual behaviour for fraud and risk management.

Featurespace was created out of Cambridge University’s Engineering Department, co-founded by world-renowned experts in applied statistics, the late Professor Bill Fitzgerald and Dave Excell, Featurespace CTO.

Martina King, Featurespace CEO, commented:

"This funding round will enable us to continue to protect our expanding client base and their customers from real time fraud attacks.

“These additional funds will also help support our continued international growth following the successful launch of our US offices earlier this year.”

Laurence Garrett, partner at Highland Europe, commented: 

“Featurespace is one of the most exciting artificial intelligence companies we have seen, with huge potential for international expansion, since it offers one of the most advanced technologies in this area on the market.

“The demand for Featurespace’s products is great and I am delighted that this funding will help support its rapid growth in the US and other international markets. Martina King is an exceptional leader and we are truly looking forward to working with her and the team.”

Mike Lynch, Founder at Invoke Capital, commented:

“At Invoke, we aim to identify companies that can commercialise technologies with a demonstrative advantage over the competition. Featurespace is one such company. Its machine learning capabilities are hugely impressive, while it operates in a market that is potentially massive given the ubiquity of online fraud. We look forward to supporting the company’s further growth and technology development.”

To read more information, click here.

Manage fraud, risk and compliance with world-leading Adaptive Behavioural Analytics. Featurespace is pioneering a new machine learning approach to analysing and predicting the behaviour of people in commercial and social environments to make informed business risk decisions in a wide variety of applications.

Myrtle, Deep Learning Technology Funding Round

Deep Learning Technology Funding Round

Myrtle Software has secured seed funding from the Cambridge Angels Group led by technology investor Robert Sansom. A number of well known business angels participated in the round including serial entrepreneur Robert Swann, artificial intelligence entrepreneur William Tunstall-Pedoe, IQ Capital and Dr. Adrian Weller of the Machine Learning group at Cambridge University.

Myrtle has been working on efficient hardware based deep learning technologies for a global auto maker, and has recently won contracts to further their research with the MoD as well as under the UK government’s autonomous systems program. The funding round will enable Myrtle to expand its core development team and launch a number of new technologies in the year ahead.

Lead Investor Robert Sansom, said “We are very impressed by the achievements of Myrtle’s team – by their unique blend of hardware, software and mathematical skills – and by the results they have demonstrated under existing contracts. Deep learning is having a big impact on data owners, so we’re excited to be participating in this round of company growth for Myrtle and to help them release their solution at-scale within data centers.”

Myrtle’s team of PhD mathematicians, computer scientists and hardware engineers have developed software to automatically realize deep learning algorithms as efficient silicon designs, capable of very high performance and low power usage. Demand for power efficient deep learning algorithms is well established and the market is expected to be worth more than $10B by 2024 (Tractica).

Myrtle’s technology constructs efficient neural network circuit designs automatically, without the need for FPGA hardware expertise. Christiaan Baaij, Lead Architect explains “It’s a unique approach that produces bespoke designs for each specific network and avoids the inefficiencies of existing methods that use intermediate languages such as OpenCL.” The approach is also highly scalable in terms of the resources that can be targeted on the FPGA: an important factor in commercial applications where running multiple neural networks together is becoming common.

Peter Baldwin, Myrtle’s CEO says “We have a fantastic team of talented engineers who have developed some unique capabilities here in Cambridge. Myrtle can provide a key component of the future cloud infrastructure that will radically improving speed and minimize costs. We are delighted to secure this investment round and anticipate rapid adoption of Myrtle’s technology”.

The advisors on the deal were Greenwoods and Taylor Vinters.

Wazoku Raises £2.3M in Funding

Wazoku, a London, UK-based idea software management company, raised £2.3m in funding.

The company received new venture debt finance from Barclays of £680k as well as equity financing from existing investors Cambridge Angels and Fig.

Wazoku, which has raised £3.6m to date, will use the funds for product development and corporate expansion efforts.

Led by Simon Hill, founder and CEO, the company provides a cloud-based idea management software platform, Idea Spotlight, which allows organisations encourage internal and external crowdsourcing initiatives that allow organizations to draw on ideas from employees, suppliers and other partners to enhance their businesses.
Customers include Aviva, Waitrose, John Lewis Partnership, Virgin Trains East Coast and Avis Budget Group.

FinSMEs

10/03/2017

AMS acquires CCMOSS to become world leader in gas and infrared sensing.

Premstaetten, Austria (16 June 2016) - ams (SIX: AMS), a leading worldwide manufacturer of high performance sensor and analog solutions, has signed an agreement to acquire 100% of the shares in Cambridge CMOS Sensors Ltd (CCMOSS), the technology leader in micro hotplate structures for gas sensing and infrared applications, in an all-cash transaction.

CCMOSS’ micro hotplates are MEMS structures that are used in gas sensors for volume applications in the automotive, industrial, medical, and consumer markets. The company’s deep expertise in this area is highly synergetic with ams’ technology leadership in MOX gas sensing materials to detect gases like CO, NOx, and VOCs. CCMOSS’ manufactures these MEMS structures on CMOS wafers allowing the creation of complete monolithically integrated CMOS sensor ICs. This makes CCMOSS’ solutions highly cost-efficient, besides offering other significant advantages over competing technologies like low power consumption, small footprint and the ability to integrate additional sensor modalities like relative humidity, temperature, and pressure.

In addition, CCMOSS commands an industry-leading portfolio of IR technology comprising high performance IR radiation sources and detectors for sensor applications. Highly complementary to ams’ spectral sensing strategy for next generation optical sensor technologies, CCMOSS’ IR sensing is based on the same monolithic CMOS structures as for gas sensing, enabling miniaturized implementations and efficient integration with other on-chip functions. Applications include CO2 gas sensing and human presence detection and will extend into spectroscopic identification of organic materials.

Founded in 2008 as a spin-off from Cambridge University, with the start of technology development dating back to 1994 in collaboration with the University of Warwick, CCMOSS has built an outstanding expertise in micro hotplate design and manufacturing for gas and infrared sensing over more than 20 years. CCMOSS’ corporate headquarters are located in Cambridge, UK, and the company has 33 employees. The Cambridge region has become a center of innovation for sensor technologies globally so ams values the ability to gain direct access to this attractive ecosystem going forward. CCMOSS currently has product revenues on a small scale but is not yet profitable.

The parties to the transaction, which is expected to close within a week given that no regulatory approvals are needed, have agreed to keep the consideration confidential. ams plans to fully integrate CCMOSS’ activities into its existing environmental sensor business, which has development locations in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, and Reutlingen, Germany.

Alexander Everke, CEO of ams, commented on the transaction, “The addition of CCMOSS makes ams the clear leader in gas and infrared sensor technology worldwide, and completes ams’ portfolio of products and technologies for the environmental sensor market. This highly strategic acquisition is therefore another key step in making ams the world’s leading provider of sensor solutions for consumer, automotive, industrial, and medical applications.”

Cambridge Innovation Capital and IQ Capital co-lead £1M funding of Audio Analytic Ltd

LISTENING LIGHTBULB USES AUDIO ANALYTIC’S SMART HOME TECH

Cambridge Innovation Capital and IQ Capital co-lead £1M funding of sound recognition company

A smart lightbulb that can recognise the sound of an intruder breaking a window has won a major industry award. This has fuelled further demand for Audio Analytic, the world’s leading sound recognition company. To address its growing order book and fund new developments, the company has raised £1 million from investors including IQ Capital Partners, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Cambridge Angels.

In January ‘Sengled Voice’ won the 2016 CES Best of Innovation in the Smart Home category*. It is a light bulb with an integrated microphone and speaker that allows the detection of noises, such as glass breaking or a smoke alarm, to be analysed using Audio Analytic’s ai3 (acoustic intelligence 3) technology and communicated to the homeowner via a mobile alert.

The Smart Home market is growing rapidly and Audio Analytic is working with the leading brands to incorporate its unique sound recognition and identification software into products – such as sophisticated baby alarms, net cams, smart home hubs, intelligent lighting – that can identify sounds associated specifically with safety and security and alert the home owner.

Dr Chris Mitchell, founder and CEO of Audio Analytic, says that the company has pioneered this technology: “I have always been interested in how sound can be detected and identified so when I finished my PhD and found there were no companies addressing this market I set up Audio Analytic.”

The Cambridge-based company is now 17 strong and the new funding will be used to bring on new people to manage the sales pipeline and to invest in further R&D.

Mitchell continues: “The Audio Analytic Labs really are the technological brain to Audio Analytic; where fundamental research is undertaken. We are leading the way at the technology level and this further investment will help keep us there.”

As leaders in the field of Automatic Environmental Sound Recognition, Audio Analytic software is much in demand and the £1 million investment will support this.

Mitchell comments: “We have a strong client-base in the smart home space. This includes Sengled, a global innovator in LED lighting, integrating our software into their product helped them win the prestigious innovation award at CES.”

The company so far has catalogued seven sound types, including breaking glass (comprising four different types), baby cries and smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, and has the world’s most extensive reference-base of these noises, allowing high precision recognition.

Mitchell explains that there are considerable differences between the different brands of alarms, so creating the database has involved importing hundreds of alarms, mostly from the US.

He says: “A major challenge was creating the world’s first sound libraries designed for sound recognition. This resulted in us breaking panes of glass at the “Hush House” at Alconbury, which was previously used for testing jet engines, or setting off smoke and carbon monoxide alarms in lots of houses.”

A report by Markets and Markets in February 2015** estimates the smart home market will reach $58.68 billion by 2020.

Victor Christou, Chief Executive Officer at Cambridge Innovation Capital, comments: “Recognition of the importance of smart audio in the home automation market has grown massively recently.  With the world’s largest audio database and key customer relationships already established, Audio Analytic is the category leader in this sector.  CIC is very pleased to be supporting another world class, home-grown, Cambridge business.”

Max Bautin, Managing Partner at IQ Capital, added: “We have tracked impressive progress at Audio Analytic over several years and are delighted to be part of this exciting company at a time when IoT and smart home tech is starting to grow so rapidly.

“It is also great to see Cambridge investors working together yet again to fund an exceptional Cambridge start-up with global potential.”