London-based energy technology company Tem has raised $75 million in fresh funding as it looks to expand internationally and accelerate the rollout of its AI-driven platform designed to cut business electricity bills by up to 30 per cent. The funding round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and is understood to value the four-year-old company at around $300 million. Tem plans to use the capital to further develop its technology and scale its operations in...
Official Budget forecasts were accessed almost 25,000 times before their formal release after a leak at the Office for Budget Responsibility, according to a new investigation by the UK’s cyber security authorities. A report by the National Cyber Security Centre found that documents prepared by the Office for Budget Responsibility were downloaded on “at least” 24,701 occasions in the hour before Rachel Reeves delivered her Budget speech on 26 November. The figure is far higher...
Barclays is turning to artificial intelligence to power the next phase of its turnaround, as the bank targets around £2 billion of cost savings and commits to returning more than £15 billion of surplus capital to shareholders by the end of 2028. C.S. Venkatakrishnan, the chief executive, widely known as Venkat, said the bank would pursue about £2 billion of gross efficiency savings over the next three years, alongside increased investment in technology, including AI,...
The UK Government has confirmed a new wave of onshore renewable energy projects under the Contracts for Difference scheme, following last month’s record-breaking offshore wind auction. Results from Allocation Round 7 (AR7) show 4.9GW of solar and 1.3GW of onshore wind capacity secured across Britain, reinforcing the pace at which clean power is being rolled out across the country. Solar projects were awarded contracts at a strike price of £65.23 per megawatt hour (in 2024...
Innovate UK has awarded more than £300,000 in funding to a collaboration between the NIHR HealthTech Research Centre in Sustainable Innovation and UK healthtech company Sanome, to accelerate the development of an AI-enabled system for the early detection of hospital-acquired infections. The 18-month SMART grant will support the co-design and roll-out of MEMORI, a Class IIb CE-certified software-as-a-medical-device (SaMD) platform that analyses real-time clinical data to predict infection risk up to seven days before symptoms...
A High Court judge has ruled that thousands of people affected by a major data breach at Capita can continue with their legal action against the outsourcing group, in a decision being described as a landmark for large-scale data privacy claims in the UK. In a judgment handed down on 9 February, Master Dagnall rejected arguments from Capita’s legal team that solicitors acting for more than 8,000 claimants had abused the court process. Capita had...
The business secretary, Peter Kyle, has urged small businesses to rediscover Britain’s exporting spirit, calling on entrepreneurs to take a “leap of faith” and start selling overseas with the backing of government finance and advice. Speaking to an audience of small business owners at the UK Trade and Export Finance Forum in London last week, Kyle warned that the UK was losing momentum as an exporting nation. Official figures show that the proportion of UK...
Training workers to use artificial intelligence will be “critical” to managing disruption in the UK labour market, according to Andrew Bailey, who said there were already signs that AI was reshaping careers and hiring patterns. Speaking at a conference in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, Bailey said the long-term impact of AI on employment remained “highly uncertain”, but warned that early indicators pointed to meaningful change. “In the UK, in the last three years, new online...
Ocado is preparing plans that could see up to 1,000 jobs cut as part of a renewed effort to rein in costs, following a difficult year for its automated warehouse technology business. Up to 5 per cent of the group’s global workforce could be affected, according to people familiar with the discussions, although talks remain at an early stage and no final decision has been taken. An announcement could come as soon as this month....
Royal Mail has urged small and medium-sized businesses to apply for its £1 million apprenticeship levy fund during National Apprenticeship Week (9–15 February), as it steps up efforts to help address skills shortages across the SME sector. Applications are open for the second round of the fund, which is available to businesses with up to 250 employees that sell products online. The funding can be used for any government-accredited apprenticeship, spanning areas from industry-specific roles...
