Latest edition: 22 September 2026London — published continuously since 2026Free forever
The Founder Gazette
Startup news, held to newspaper standards

Filed under: london

28 stories

The archive, indexed. Every story carries its tags at the foot of the page.

Startup news

Imperial alumni fund opens with £100k-£300k cheques

Project Ventures has launched a £5m debut fund for pre-seed and seed deeptech founders connected to Imperial College London. Three companies are already in.

258 · 22 September 2026
Startup news

Vivobarefoot's falls research is five years old. Its campaign stars an NFL player

Two peer-reviewed papers put the shoemaker's footwear in front of people who had already fallen. Its September 2026 global campaign is built around a professional footballer.

255 · 21 September 2026
Startup news

Big Picture Bio leaves stealth with £2.2m, £700k of it non-dilutive

The London biotech split its pre-seed between two co-leads and an Innovate UK programme, keeping roughly a third of the money off the cap table.

248 · 20 September 2026
Startup news

NatWest puts £100,000 on its London pitch final in November

Five finalists will pitch at the bank's Bishopsgate office on 19 November. Entry is limited to UK companies incorporated in the past five years with revenue up to £1m.

243 · 16 September 2026
Startup news

GoHalves opens founding membership before matching begins

The London startup wants tech brands to file a partner profile and pay up to £249 a month for co-marketing matches.

236 · 13 September 2026
Founder story

Pippa Murray swapped a London flat for a shed and won £120,000

She entered a competition whose prize was rent-free accommodation in a garden shed. Eleven years on, Pip & Nut says 1.6 million British households buy its peanut butter every year.

224 · 12 September 2026
Startup news

CloudNC raises $20m to put AI on the shop floor

The London company says its software is used by more than 1,000 machine shops, and Lockheed Martin is both a customer and an investor. A quoting product follows later this year.

220 · 11 September 2026
Founder story

He found his way out of a hostel on page six of Google

Carlo Weaver left school with no GCSEs and was homeless at 15. He is now building the apprenticeship directory he needed at 16.

206 · 8 September 2026
Startup news

Molten raises £175m growth fund, £75m of it from the state

The British Business Bank has cornerstoned Molten Ventures' new scale-up fund with £75m. Molten wants to double the fund to £350m.

200 · 8 September 2026
Startup news

Claret Capital closes fourth growth debt fund at €575m

The London manager beat its own €500m target. What founders can borrow, and at what stage, has not been disclosed.

198 · 7 September 2026
Startup news

AI Score raises €4.6m seed to police companies' AI agents

The London company sells a control layer for businesses putting agentic AI into their workflows. Fuel Ventures led the round.

195 · 7 September 2026
Startup news

Pharosyn raises €2.5m to read pharma's competition for it

The London company, founded last year, sells AI competitive intelligence to drug makers' commercial teams. Moonfire led the round.

181 · 3 September 2026
Startup news

Victoria Beckham brand posts first operating profit, £7.3m, after 2008 launch

Revenue at Victoria Beckham Holdings rose 15 per cent to £129.8m and operating profit reached £7.3m, against an operating loss of £1.6m a year earlier. Accumulated losses before the turn exceeded £66m.

176 · 2 September 2026
Startup news

Scan.com raises $220m and books a meeting with the LSE

The London imaging company has $90m of equity and $130m of debt to fund a US push. It earns most of its money in America and is still weighing where to list.

167 · 1 September 2026
Startup news

OnlyFans owner Fenix made $715m profit with 47 staff

Accounts for the London company behind OnlyFans show revenue of close to $1.6bn for the year to 30 November 2025, an average payroll of 47 people, and more than $700m paid out in dividends before its owner died.

154 · 27 August 2026
Startup news

Chiswick startup signs US government deal on nuclear cargo ships

Core Power has a first-of-its-kind agreement with the US Maritime Administration, $200m from three Japanese conglomerates and a 2028 target for its first propulsion systems. None of the shipbuilding will happen in Britain.

152 · 27 August 2026
Startup news

Embedd raises €2.3m to write chip drivers with AI agents

The London startup sells semiconductor firms an automated route into software ecosystems. Seedcamp led the pre-seed; the founders started it after chip shortages wrecked their last company.

144 · 26 August 2026
Startup news

Boldr raises €4.2m to sell heating tech through US contractors

The London company will spend a pre-Series A round on North American expansion and software for the HVAC installers it treats as its route to market. Unconventional Ventures led.

142 · 25 August 2026
Startup news

Start Up Loans hits £100m to London's female founders

The British Business Bank has confirmed 10,853 loans to female-founded businesses in the capital — and quietly reopened the scheme to firms that have been trading for up to five years.

140 · 25 August 2026
Startup news

Pickle sparkling water sells out and lands six-month Ocado exclusive

YEW Drink put brine, dill and cucumber in a can, ran out of it, and talked a national grocer into six exclusive months at £1.69.

113 · 22 August 2026
Startup news

Medly raises $8m seed for AI exam tutoring

Felix Capital led a €6.89m round in the London platform, which says it has passed 400,000 UK users 18 months after launch. Two former NHS doctors run it.

105 · 20 August 2026
Venture capital

QuantumLight closes $500M second fund, doubling its first

Nik Storonsky's venture firm now has €432 million to test whether software can pick startups better than partners can. Founders pitching it are pitching a screening system called Aleph.

97 · 19 August 2026
Startup news

Lancaster spinout Mindgard raises $30m to secure enterprise AI

The AI security company, spun out of Lancaster University and now split between London and Boston, has closed a €26 million Series A led by Album VC.

77 · 14 August 2026
Hiring

Permanent hiring index hits 50 after 45 months of decline

The REC-KPMG placements index stopped falling in July for the first time since autumn 2022. London did the lifting; the north of England did not.

58 · 12 August 2026
Startup news

Edgify raises $9m to cut shop losses at the till

The London company runs its loss-prevention models on hardware already sitting in the shop. Total funding now stands at $25m.

51 · 11 August 2026
Startup news

Oshun says one unflavoured bottle has won 8,000 subscribers

Two founders sold a 15-product supplement brand, then built a company around a single pump-top electrolyte. Their argument: any habit that needs willpower eventually loses.

49 · 11 August 2026
Startup news

Teen influencers pick the products in indu's £50 skincare bundle

London skincare brand indu beauty gave three teenage sisters control of its first creator collaboration: they chose the contents, named it, and one of them designed the box.

29 · 9 August 2026
Startup news

Sovereign AI takes equity in chip startup OLIX, its fifth deal

The government's venture arm has joined a nine-figure round in a two-year-old London chip designer. It is the fund's fifth equity cheque, and the announcement says nothing about how other founders get one.

21 · 8 August 2026