UK fintech Sprive raises £5.5M in funding to help millions repay their mortgage faster, saving a fortune in interest
Sprive, the UK’s only independent mortgage overpayment app, has raised £5.5M in a funding round led by impact-driven investor Ascension, with backing from Channel 4 Ventures, Velocity Capital, and Two Magnolias. The investment will accelerate Sprive’s mission to help UK homeowners pay off their mortgages faster—an urgent need as household debt hits record highs and millions grapple with rising interest rates. The app has already helped users collectively save over £100M in interest, with the average user reducing their mortgage term by three years.
Unlike traditional mortgage players, Sprive uses automation and behavioural nudges to help users make overpayments through everyday spending and spare cash, while scanning for better deals. The startup’s approach has earned industry recognition, including selection for NatWest’s fintech growth programme. With growing concern about long-term mortgage debt extending beyond retirement age, Sprive offers a timely and innovative solution to improve financial resilience and reduce dependency on high-cost borrowing.
Investors see Sprive as a standout in a sector where other fintechs have struggled. Ascension, with a strong track record in consumer fintech, views Sprive as a critical tool for financial wellbeing, while Channel 4 Ventures and Velocity Capital will help the brand scale nationally through targeted media investment. With a clear consumer benefit, low acquisition costs, and growing traction, Sprive is positioning itself as a transformative force in the UK mortgage landscape.
AI drug discovery company AMPLY raises £1.3Mm seed to outpace evolution in fight against aggressive cancers and drug-resistant pathogens
AMPLY Discovery, a Belfast-based AI-driven drug discovery company, has raised £1.3M in seed funding to accelerate the development of novel therapies for aggressive cancers and drug-resistant pathogens. The round was led by Twin Path Ventures, with participation from Venture Science, Co-fund NI, the British Business Bank, and QUBIS Limited. AMPLY aims to develop gene-silencing therapies for cancers like triple-negative breast cancer and acute myeloid leukaemia, while also focusing on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) by creating nebulised treatments for chronic lung infections.
The company’s platform combines AI, Next Generation Sequencing, and Synthetic Biology to rapidly discover effective treatments. By addressing genetic diversity in diseases, AMPLY’s approach promises a faster, cheaper, and more scalable drug discovery process. Its work tackles critical healthcare challenges, including AMR, which is responsible for millions of deaths annually, as well as aggressive cancers with poor survival rates despite advances in treatment.
Dr. Ben Thomas, CEO and Chief Architect of AMPLY, shared the personal inspiration behind the company, citing his father’s death from a drug-resistant infection. AMPLY’s platform is designed to proactively address global health challenges by developing new, effective treatments. Katie Lockwood, Partner at Twin Path Ventures, commended AMPLY’s AI approach, highlighting the potential to transform drug discovery for complex diseases with high unmet needs.
Materials Market raises £2M to cement its position as the UK’s leading building materials marketplace
Materials Market, a UK-based digital marketplace for heavy side building materials, has secured £2M in funding led by existing investor Fuel Ventures, with new participation from Active Partners and a group of seasoned angel investors. The round also sees the appointment of two high-profile board members: James Mackenzie, former MD of Travis Perkins & Toolstation, and Thomas Studd, ex-partner at Vitruvian with expertise in two-sided marketplaces. This investment will fuel team expansion across sales, marketing, product and operations as the company scales its marketplace model.
Addressing a £40B sector plagued by analogue processes and fragmented supply chains, Materials Market provides a much-needed digital solution to a traditionally inefficient and opaque industry. By streamlining the procurement process and offering fairer, transparent pricing, the platform enables builders and DIY customers to access materials quickly and affordably. For suppliers, the platform provides a low-barrier entry to online trading, bypassing the need for costly tech investment. The startup has grown significantly since 2020, now connecting 750+ supplier branches with over 2,000 monthly customers.
Co-founders Samuel Hunt and Andrew Haehn launched the business after experiencing the frustrations of construction procurement firsthand. With government housing targets and economic pressure demanding greater efficiency, the founders believe their technology offers a vital answer. Backers and new board members see Materials Market as a clear leader in bringing digital transformation to an industry long overdue for change, with the potential to replicate the success of online marketplaces seen in other sectors.
Trusted secures £1M pre-seed investment to revolutionise B2B customer advocacy
Trusted, a UK startup redefining how B2B enterprises leverage customer advocacy, has raised £1M in a pre-seed round led by Fuel Ventures. The funding will accelerate development of Trusted’s SaaS platform, which helps businesses convert satisfied customers into brand advocates to fuel revenue growth. Already revenue-generating, Trusted is working with global enterprises to improve customer retention, deal size, and sales velocity by embedding advocacy at the core of their go-to-market strategies.
Founded by seasoned industry leaders Emma Roffey (ex-Cisco), Paul Button, and Roger Barr (who previously sold their agency Mediablaze to iCrossing), Trusted offers a unique blend of expert advisory and scalable technology. The company believes that the future of B2B growth is customer-led, and aims to help clients unlock the commercial power of trust through authentic customer voices. Its growing advisory board—featuring leaders from ServiceNow, Fortinet, Freshworks, and BNP Paribas—ensures product-market alignment with enterprise needs.
Fuel Ventures' Mark Pearson praised Trusted’s vision and leadership, describing it as a customer-first business poised to lead in a high-growth market. With a strong founding team, early enterprise traction, and a timely proposition, Trusted is positioning itself to become a category-defining player in the evolving customer advocacy space.
Astrato raises £3.75M to accelerate AI-native BI, replacing legacy dashboards with live cloud analytics
Astrato, the cloud-native business intelligence platform, has raised £3.75M in a seed round led by Big Pi Ventures, with participation from Propelling Tech Ventures and over 30 strategic angels from the global analytics community. Founded by the team behind Vizlib (acquired in 2023), Astrato is redefining BI for the modern data stack, enabling teams to build live, interactive data apps directly on top of cloud warehouses like Snowflake, Databricks, and BigQuery — without duplication, IT bottlenecks, or licensing friction.
Unlike legacy BI tools that rely on static dashboards and steep user training curves, Astrato’s no-code, usage-based platform empowers non-technical users to collaborate in real time, automate workflows, and embed governed analytics into their daily tools. Customers like IAG Loyalty and PetScreening are already seeing dramatic improvements in speed-to-insight, with one doubling its product footprint thanks to embedded self-service dashboards.
With revenue growing 5x year-on-year, the new funding will fuel Astrato’s go-to-market expansion and accelerate the rollout of AI-native features for data exploration and intelligent decision-making. “Business intelligence is entering a new phase — beyond dashboards,” said Big Pi Ventures Partner Nick Kalliagkopoulos. “Astrato is helping teams do more with their data, faster.”
Arondite raises £9M to connect defence systems with AI
Arondite, a UK-based startup building AI infrastructure for autonomous systems in defence, has announced over £9M in funding to accelerate its mission of enabling safe, scalable human-machine teaming. The $10M seed round was led by Index Ventures, following a previously undisclosed $2.25M pre-seed round from Concept Ventures and Creator Fund. Arondite’s platform connects disparate autonomous hardware — from drones to sensors — into a unified system that improves oversight, reduces operational risk, and enhances decision-making for defence organisations and security operators.
Founded by Will Blyth, a former British Army Officer with experience at Palantir and Helsing, alongside Rob Underhill, a former BAE Systems engineer, Arondite’s software acts as both a control interface and data layer for autonomous operations. Designed to be hardware-agnostic, it enables real-time coordination between machines from different manufacturers while surfacing critical insights via AI and machine learning. Blyth’s battlefield experience inspired the company’s mission: to ensure front-line teams have access to the right information, at the right time, without sacrificing safety or control.
Initial applications include autonomous minefield clearance and counter-intrusion operations protecting critical infrastructure. “Defence systems that don’t talk to each other make operations far more dangerous,” Blyth said. “Our vision is to give people working on the front lines the oversight and understanding they need to make use of machines and AI, without compromising safety.” Index Ventures partner Hannah Seal called Arondite’s approach a “connective tissue” for the autonomous age, adding that Blyth and Underhill are uniquely positioned to reshape how humans and machines collaborate in high-stakes environments.
Navro raises £30M to accelerate global expansion
Navro, the London-based fintech simplifying international payments, has raised £30M in a Series B round led by Jump Capital, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Motive Partners, and Unusual Ventures. The funding will fuel Navro’s global expansion, with plans to scale operations across the US, Dubai, Hong Kong, and India, while integrating 30+ digital wallets, more ACH corridors, and new real-time payment options into its unified platform.
Designed to help businesses “transact like locals,” Navro’s platform streamlines cross-border collections, currency conversion, and global payouts through one API and contract, reducing working capital needs by up to 70%. CEO Aran Brown said the company is seeing surging demand from compliance-driven sectors such as global workforce payments and pensions, and that the investment will support further licensing, product integrations, and customer growth.
Already supporting over 1,000 pension schemes and hundreds of large enterprises, Navro enables clients to collect funds locally in 35 regions and make payouts in over 200 countries and 140 currencies—over half delivered in real time. “Navro not only grasps the complexity of global payouts,” said Jump Capital partner Robert Hutchins, “it’s building the infrastructure to solve it.”
Aktiia secures £31M in Series B funding round and rebrands to Hilo
Aktiia, the pioneering blood pressure intelligence platform, has announced an oversubscribed £31M Series B round and a bold rebrand to Hilo, marking a new chapter in its mission to tackle hypertension worldwide. The round, co-led by Earlybird Health and Wellington Partners with support from new and existing investors, brings Hilo’s total funding to over $100M. The investment follows key milestones including regulatory approvals in Canada, Australia, and Saudi Arabia, CE marking for its phone-based monitoring tech, and 76% CAGR revenue growth.
With over 120,000 devices sold, Hilo is leading the emerging cuffless blood pressure monitoring category. Its foundation ML model, trained on tens of billions of optical signals, delivers continuous, clinically validated insights without the need for traditional cuffs. The rebrand signals global ambitions to deliver frictionless, medical-grade health tools to both consumers and enterprise customers – a move that aligns with its upcoming FDA application and planned market expansions.
CEO Raghav “Rags” Gupta said the funding reflects investor confidence in Hilo’s vision of convenient, accurate blood pressure tracking. “With billions affected by hypertension and only 20% in control, the need for smarter solutions is urgent,” he said. Backers praised the company’s ability to blend clinical rigour with usability: “Hilo stands at the intersection of medical-grade precision and consumer-centric accessibility,” added Christoph Massner of Earlybird Health.
In other investment news
Volution launches $100M UK fund to tackle the global productivity challenge
Volution, a UK-based venture capital firm, has launched a new $100M fund aimed at scaling high-growth FinTech, AI, and SaaS businesses that tackle productivity challenges in capital markets and enterprise. Partnering with Japanese venture capital investor SBI Investment Co., Ltd., this fund targets businesses that have established strong revenue streams but require additional capital to expand. The launch comes at a time when UK companies are facing significant funding challenges, particularly at the Series A and B stages, with Volution aiming to bridge the gap by investing at the crucial inflection point of international growth.
Volution’s first fund has already delivered impressive results, with portfolio companies like Signal AI, Flagstone, and Cognism achieving significant revenue growth, three exits, and the emergence of a unicorn in Zopa Bank. The new fund has already begun deploying capital, with initial investments in a FinTech and AI company. James Codling, Managing Partner at Volution, highlighted the gap in funding at the inflection point of international growth and emphasized the firm’s ability to support companies with product-market fit and solid revenue streams, propelling them to the next stage.
In addition to financial growth, the new fund incorporates an ESG-focused initiative, Carbon Carry, to encourage sustainable practices within its portfolio companies. This initiative will support responsible growth by incentivizing founders to adopt best practices across ESG, while reinvesting a portion of profits into carbon offset efforts, acknowledging the environmental impact of AI-driven businesses. The collaboration between Volution and SBI Investment comes at a time when the UK and Japan are strengthening economic ties, reinforcing the global appeal of the UK’s FinTech and AI sectors.
Aldea announces the close of €50M towards its targeted €125M Fund II
This new fund will focus on early-stage managers at the frontier of deep technology, including AI, next-generation computing, and robotics. Aldea aims to capitalize on a sector forecasted to grow 42% annually, far outpacing the 3% growth expected from traditional tech. The fund will target companies that aim to solve major global challenges like climate change, health, and cybersecurity risks, by backing fund managers with specialized expertise.
Aldea's strategy for Fund II is to build a concentrated portfolio of Micro-VCs (<€100M funds), complemented by investments in Nano-VCs (<€25M funds). The fund will also allocate a minority of capital to selective co-investment or secondary opportunities. Aldea has already made investments in several Micro-VCs, including Moonfire II, Amino II, and Lunar Ventures II, while adding new members like Concept Ventures and First Commit. The team has also committed to Nano-VCs such as 201 Ventures and Possible Ventures, continuing their focus on deep tech innovation, particularly in Europe with selective exposure to the US.
In line with its growth strategy, Aldea has made key team changes, promoting Daniela Cavagliano to Partner and hiring Gabrielle Cummins as Principal. Cavagliano, with a background at UBS, brings over a decade of experience to the firm, while Cummins' expertise in strategy for climate tech further strengthens Aldea’s focus on addressing pressing global challenges through innovative technologies. The firm’s successful approach, which has already supported 891 startup investments, continues to align with its mission to drive innovation at the intersection of deep technology and entrepreneurship.
