The Rundown: Edition 3
Edition 3: 4 July 2025
Welcome to The Rundown, a snapshot of news, views and intel from the fast-growth tech and investment scene.
AI-powered logistics startup HIVED secures €35m Series B
London-based parcel delivery company will accelerate UK roll-out following investment led by NordicNinja with existing backer Planet A also participating in the round. EU-Startups
Power grid-focused robotics startup AssetCool raises £10m Series A
Funding will see advanced robotics pioneer’s proprietary coating platform used globally to boost capacity of overhead lines by up to 30% in deal led by Energy Impact Partners (EIP), with Northern Gritstone following on. Tech.eu
Celero Ventures opens £20m early-stage software fund
Started by former Databricks executives Dave Wyatt and Nick Cochran, the London and Jersey-based fund will invest in 25 companies in the UK and Europe, with an emphasis on AI, data tooling, and infrastructure software. UKTN
US-based Seraphim portco Xona Space Systems pulls in $92m Series B
Company created to protect the GPS signal essential to many technologies the world relies on – which are vulnerable to intentional jamming and spoofing – backed in round led by Craft Ventures. Payload
Starmer refuses to rule out £40bn tax raid
Welfare reforms chaos and a series of u-turns that leave gaping hole in public finances, has led to likelihood of another ‘raid’ to balance the books, leaving the business world in tears. City AM
AI ‘mania’ continues as sector takes 30% of total £5.9bn UK VC investment
AI sector’s share of VC funding hits record high, half-year figures from HSBC Innovation Banking and Dealroom show, with investment in the UK ecosystem in 2025 more than Germany and France combined. Tech.eu
M&A volumes jump as US bidders snap up UK tech
The value of UK M&A deals rocketed by 353% to £18.5bn in the first half of 2025, with Oxford Ionics’ £1.1bn acquisition by NYSE-listed IonQ one of the most valuable. City AM
UK Space Agency invites firms to bid for £75m space debris mission
Major procurement push to find companies that can safely return pair of defunct British satellites from low Earth orbit while tackling wider space debris challenge, as part of Industrial Strategy spending on sector employing 50,000. UKTN
British Business Bank launches initiative for emerging female investors
The Open Office Hours plan aims to grow the pipeline of female investors applying to its programmes, following previous commitment to invest £50m into female-led funds. UKTN
Tariffs, not Iran, will define Trump presidency
Treble Peak Senior Advisor and author of Trump II: Why He Won. What It Means For The World Tim Hames on why a US-China decoupling would be more seismic than Trump’s Middle East interventions. City AM
AI startups taking greater share of venture debt funding is a concern
Lending to keep up with the high cost of compute in order to reach steady revenue levels is becoming “a tougher proposition” says CIBC Innovation Banking’s Paul McKinlay, as PitchBook data shows 38.4% of $30bn US and European venture debt this year has gone to AI startups. PitchBook
“Dearth of exits has been venture capital’s ‘dirty secret'”
US venture capital exits jump in Q2 to $67.7bn – up from $38.5bn a year before – but represent only “straws of comfort” in slow recovery, says the FT’s West Coast Editor Richard Waters. FT.com
This week saw the Lord Mayor of London Alastair King launch the Scale Up Showcase at Mansion House in partnership with the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists (WCIT). It brought together some of the country’s leading scaleup founders, as well as senior representatives of large institutions such as the London Stock Exchange Group, Lloyds Banking Group and Aviva with the aim of supercharging investment into fast-growth tech startups.
Optalysys’ CFO Stuart Mellis sat down with The Growth Switch podcast to discuss whether the key to unlocking secure, lightning-fast data privacy is light itself. The company uses photonics in a bid to transform blockchain, cybersecurity and more to make private data unhackable.
And following Sam Altman’s UK launch of World last month, with its iris-verification device called the Orb designed to authenticate humans in a world of AI, the FT’s Innovation Editor John Thornhill discussed the battle for our online identities.