SME Snapshot –February 2024

Your monthly update on the latest industry news, opportunities for SMEs, and member's announcements.

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Industry News | Opportunities | Member News

Industry News

The UK government is reinforcing its commitment to supporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with the launch of a new Small Business Council and a new and improved Help to Grow campaign.

Small Business Champion

Shirley Cooper OBE has been appointed as the new Crown Representative for small businesses. The former chair and president of the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply has taken up a key role to promote the needs of small businesses to government and ensure suppliers seize the benefits of the Procurement Act.

Horizon Europe

A new campaign launched to encourage UK businesses, academics and researchers to apply for Horizon Europe funding kicks off today. The average Horizon grant is worth £450,000 to a UK business, and Ministers are determined for UK researchers and businesses to capitalise on the opportunities the programme offers to support vitally important research benefitting all our lives, from health to the environment.

Be the Business

Be the Business published its manifesto, setting out five policy recommendations designed to address productivity of small businesses. The policy solutions aim to shift the government’s focus towards generating demand for business support and maximising the potential of existing resources rather than creating new programmes and networks, as well as seek better access to the information and data that will improve decision-making for both government and business.

Goldman Sachs Small Business Manifesto

Goldman Sachs similarly outlined a range of policy recommendations to support small businesses. Their report, Generation Growth: The Small Business Manifesto, outlined some recommendations based on a survey of 550 small business from their 10,000 Small Businesses programme. The recommendations focused on issues such as examines pressing issues such as the skills crisis, AI, the climate transition, and unlocking finance.

Quantum Investment

The government announced investment of £45 million in the UK's quantum sector. £30 million investment will go to developing and delivering world-leading prototype quantum computers, providing scientists and engineers with a controlled environment for experimentation. Winners of the £15 million Quantum Catalyst Fund announced to accelerate the adoption of quantum solutions by the public sector, on projects from optimising power grids through to improving diagnosis of dementia.

Start-up Loan Scheme

15,000 Start Up Loans worth over £100 million have now been issued to young business founders aged 18-24 since 2012. The Start Up Loan Scheme is government backed finance delivered through British Business Bank, which has delivered over £1 billion in loans to SMEs across the country since the scheme launched in 2012.

Opportunities

DASA Small, Lightweight, Trace Explosives Detector Competition

DASA has launched a new Themed Competition called Small, Lightweight, Trace Explosives Detector. This competition is jointly funded by the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the US Department of Defense (DoD). Up to £600,000 (ex VAT) of funding is available for innovative proposals for the development of novel, lightweight, bioassay systems for the detection of trace explosives.

Public Research Innovation and Market Accelerator Programme (PRIMA)

GOTT has launched a new 8-week part-time customer discovery programme for innovators to test whether there is a market for their idea, product or service. Training, funding, and expert support is available for up to 15 public sector project leads to determine whether there is a market for their Knowledge Assets.

ARTES programme

The UK Space Agency has announced a £10 million funding competition that will help UK companies put their technologies at the forefront of a new generation of global telecommunications services, products and applications.

Member news

Riverlane

Researchers from quantum error correction company Riverlane and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) will work to develop efficient quantum algorithms for the simulation of plasma dynamics under the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) program.

Analysys Mason

Analysys Mason collaborated with Nokia on a research project that revealed optical network automation reduced network lifecycle management operational costs by up to 56 percent, and operational cost savings of up to 81 percent.

Starship Technologies

Starship Technologies announced it has raised $90 million, co-led by Plural and Iconical. The new funding, which brings the total raised by Starship to $230M since its creation in 2014, will be used to expand globally as Starship looks to take advantage of the unstoppable rise in demand for home deliveries.

Boldyn Networks

Sunderland City Council and Boldyn Networks has launched a new Community Digital Health Hubs initiative to drive digital inclusion. The initiative forms part of a wider scheme, Links for Life, which was recently launched across Sunderland to empower communities to improve their physical and mental health and wellbeing.

Boldyn Networks also announced it is extending fibre connectivity to public buildings across the London boroughs of Wandsworth, Richmond upon Thames and Merton. The new network will introduce high speed internet connections to community and youth centres as well as enhanced CCTV image quality to boost public safety.

Additionally, Boldyn Networks reveraled its second partnership with Ørsted, a global leader in offshore wind, to build a high-speed mobile network at Hornsea 3, set to be the world’s largest offshore wind farm once constructed.

Wind River

Wind River® announced that OMRON Corporation, a leading automation company for a variety of industries including industrial automation, healthcare, social systems, and device and module solutions, has selected Wind River Studio to develop its edge platform for industrial operational technology solutions.

Licel

Licel has joined the Grow London Global Programme as part of its third cohort. The Grow London Global initiative from London & Partners is renowned for boosting high-growth businesses based in the UK capital.

Facephi

Facephi announce that their identity verification technology is being utilised at some of AENA’s airports, revolutionising the way passengers access their aircraft with a faster and more secure process.

Farrpoint

Farrpoint released the second edition of the FarrPoint Digital Connectivity Survey, which aims to identify the priorities set by digital leaders across local and to gain insights into the challenges hindering the enhancement of connectivity. The survey found that Gigabit broadband rollout remains the top priority for local authority digital leaders, but 5G continues to divide opinion and there’s not enough focus on net zero.

2iC Care

A successful pilot programme to test a pioneering new health technology between 2iC Care, Wirral Council and Medequip has concluded. The pilot showed that 2iC Care’s innovative technology, Andi, could save the local health care system thousands of pounds per year and free up hospital beds.

2iC Care also collaborated with North Yorkshire Council to pilot a critical alarm system across rural areas of North Yorkshire after connectivity had been lost entirely.

ClimateView

ClimateView and KERAMIDA, a U.S. engineering and consulting company, have announced a partnership to drive strategy innovation in Climate Action Planning across cities, states, and regions in North America. This collaboration merges the data-driven planning software platform of ClimateView with KERAMIDA's consulting experience on Climate Action Plans, aiming to transform U.S. cities' approach to the climate transition.

Egress Group

Egress Group announced the acquisition of Stalis, specialists in healthcare data migration and archiving solutions. The two companies will offer the healthcare sector end-to-end data management services and solutions, from strategic reviews and readiness assessments, data migration, system integration, archiving and data quality, through to advanced analytics for proactive and predictive care.

Rigetti

Rigetti UK has been awarded a Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) grant delivered by Innovate UK and funded by the National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) to develop and deliver a quantum computer to the NQCC. Rigetti proposes to deploy a 24-qubit quantum computer based on the Company’s fourth generation Ankaa™-class architecture.

Blancco

Blancco Technology Group has announced a global collaboration with Lenovo. A part of Lenovo’s ThinkShield security portfolio, Blancco data erasure provides enterprises with proven, audit-ready, and regulation-compliant data sanitisation software and process workflows.

Orca Computing

ORCA Computing has been selected to build and supply a quantum computing testbed for the National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC). Starting early this year, ORCA is developing a photonic quantum computing testbed for machine learning using its novel hybrid quantum/classical neural network architectures and photonic quantum processors. The company will complete delivery and installation of the system at the NQCC’s facilities on Harwell Campus in Oxfordshire by March 2025.

RETN

RETN announced the introduction of a new route from Gdańsk to Warsaw and Poznań. The newly established Point of Presence in Gdańsk at the Artnet Data Centre now offers enhanced connectivity to Warsaw, Poznań and onwards to Berlin, benefitting wholesale customers, ISPs, and enterprise businesses and marking RETN's 12th Polish Point of Presence.

Reversing Labs

ReversingLabs announced the release of Spectra Assure, a software supply chain security solution powered by the industry’s first AI-driven complex binary analysis to uncover material risk. It provides protection against software supply chain attacks for software producers, as well as providing the critical risk analysis for enterprise software buyers.

ReversingLabs also announced the launch of its RL Partner Program, a new initiative to accelerate partnership growth by enabling partners and customers to face new realities emerging from the complex risks of software’s increasingly expanding attack surface.

MLL Telecom

Suffolk Cloud Partnership (SCP) has extended its contract with MLL Telecom for a managed network service by another five years. Suffolk County Council, anchor tenant of the SCP framework, signed the contract, which is open to any other public sector organisation around East Anglia to procure network connectivity services.

D-Wave

D-Wave and Zapata Computing have announced a multi-year strategic partnership to develop and bring to market commercial applications that combine the power of generative AI and quantum computing technologies.

iProov

iProov released their iProov Threat Intelligence Report 2024. The report examines the remote identity verification threat landscape, providing first-hand insights into the anatomy of a digital injection attack and exposing bad actor methodologies, threat trends, and impacts.

Police Digital Service

The Police Digital Service’s National Management Centre (NMC) has been awarded a National Cybercrime Programme Chief Superintendent’s Commendation for its outstanding role in protecting UK law enforcement against cyber threats.

YuLife

YuLife, the tech-driven insurance company, announced that it has won in two categories at the Insurance CX Awards. YuLife was recognized as 'Best Insurtech' and was also named a winner in the 'Outstanding Customer Journey' category.

Virtus Data Centres

Virtus Data Centres announced plans for a new state-of-the-art data centre campus that will be built on a recently acquired 50 acre freehold plot in Saunderton, Buckinghamshire. This strategic initiative is in direct response to the rapidly evolving needs of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and marks a significant leap forward in delivering AI-ready, mega-scale, high-capacity data infrastructure.

Docobo

DOC@HOME, the remote monitoring solution from Docobo, is being used by the Medical University of Vienna to remotely monitor cancer patients’ symptoms during treatment, while patients are at home.

iPLATO

iPLATO, in partnership with Healthera’s national pharmacy network, has announced its latest addition to the myGP app, Click-and-Collect prescriptions. The new partnership means patients can choose to nominate online and collect their medication from a convenient pharmacy.

Keysource

HM Treasury has awarded Keysource a contract to ensure successful operation of its Online System for Central Accounting and Reporting version 2(OSCAR II), a cross-government system, maintained by HMT, which contains a detailed analysis of departmental spending and from which the Whole of Government Accounts (WGA) and Supply Estimates are produced.

D-Wave

NEC Australia and D-Wave are partnering to release two new quantum services to the Australian market, further enhancing their quantum computing offering and options for Australia’s commercial sector, federal and state governments, and academia.

MeVitae

UK-based DE&I startup MeVitae secured €1.7 million in a seed round led by Apex Black. The fresh funds will serve to propel innovation and fuel its rapid expansion across the United States.

Crossword Cybersecurity

Crossword Cybersecurity announced the signing of a Partnership Agreement with TD SYNNEX which will enable the Crossword’s Trillion™ platform to become available through the distributor’s extensive community of small and medium-sized resellers across Europe.

Lenus Health

Lenus Health, a supplier of predictive AI solutions, will roll out its heart failure diagnostic tool at Fleetwood Community Diagnostics Centre. The roll-out of the heart failure tool is the first of a series of implementations of the Lenus Health diagnostics products within CDCs. The company has contracted directly with the trust, using funds locally disbursed under NHS England’s Community Diagnostic Centre Programme.

Picocom

Picocom announced that Wave Electronics, a developer and manufacturer of 5G base station equipment, has designed-in Picocom’s PC802 system-on-chip (SoC) into its latest Open RAN product, the WEH47-TM24B radio unit (O-RU).

SME Connect

With over 600 SME members, techUK understands the issues that are most relevant to the UK SME tech sector. Visit the SME Connect section of the website for all the latest insights, guidance and events, and find out how techUK can help you with a range of services, programmes and advice. If you'd like to discuss further, please contact Ed Bevan, our Head of SME Engagement.