Northern Gritstone is an investment company dedicated to supporting ambitious science and technology businesses in the North of England with a profit with purpose ethos.
The funding round was led by Northern Gritstone with participation from Amadeus Capital Partners, Manta Ray, Mercia Ventures and NPIF, Mercia Equity Finance.
"Sitehop is proving the critical need for future-proof encryption, demonstrated by our early customer traction globally. As a Sheffield-founded company, this investment from Northern Gritstone supports our mission to grow and scale in the region and build world-leading sovereign encryption capability right here in the UK – meaning we can accelerate international expansion while keeping the UK at the forefront of world-class cybersecurity innovation."
The oversubscribed round was led by Energy Impact Partners with backing from several climate and technology investors.
"We are laser-focused on doing the hard yards to improve the physical layer of the grid, specifically overhead systems. The AssetCool team is innovating at the nexus between robotics and materials science to bring meaningful improvements to an aging network. We’ve developed a new range of coatings systematically optimised for overhead lines that makes the grid more efficient and resilient – not by rebuilding it, but by enhancing what already exists."
Northern Gritstone and Mercuri co-led the pre-seed round to help the Newcastle-based artificial intelligence firm commercialise its technology.
"We’re at a pivotal moment for AI with adoption continuing to accelerate alongside sustainability and cost concerns. Our logic-based AI offers a new solution for those that want and need high-performing AI that is faster, more energy efficient and more explainable than what’s currently available via neural networks. This funding comes at a time when we’re ready to significantly speed up our product development and will enable us to bring our first product to market later this year."
BGF led the Series A round with participation from existing backers including Octopus Ventures, Northern Gritstone, and Foresight.
"This funding comes at a pivotal moment as demand for high-speed optical communication systems is growing enormously. By developing world-class, high-performance infrared sensors, we are enabling industries to push the boundaries of connectivity, efficiency, and security by removing a technology bottleneck that has persisted for over 20 years."
Northern Gritstone led the seed round with backing from Finance Yorkshire and NPIF II, Praetura Equity Finance to fund team expansion and product development.
"The robotics market is growing fast, but that growth would be exponentially higher if the tremendous cost and complexity of programming robots were reduced. Robotics has an almost unlimited potential to help humanity solve global challenges, but the world simply can’t afford to wait for robotics to standardise around a single operating system and coding language. BOW’s universal software platform and SDK elegantly solve this intractable problem by enabling any software developer to program various types of robots using the coding language of their choice, make portable applications and enable easy interoperability between any make and model of robot. This £4 million seed investment, led by Northern Gritstone, will be used to build on our strong commercial traction to date, expand our brilliant team and accelerate our product development so we can unleash the full potential of robotics for the betterment of our world."
Northern Gritstone leads Series A round into the Manchester-based manufacturing technology platform.
"Northern Gritstone is delighted to support Partful. This growing Manchester-based tech company has already won large OEM customers thanks to its technology and is set to create more jobs in its North of England team"
Northern Gritstone led the over-subscribed seed round with participation from Empirical Ventures, Praetura Ventures, and private backers.
"Northern Gritstone is delighted to support Exciting Instruments’ internationally renowned team from the University of Sheffield. Their technology will open up a broad range of health-related research and discovery and will also support job creation in Sheffield’s thriving tech cluster."
Northern Gritstone led the seed extension round, which included participation from ACF Investors, Empirical Ventures, Deeptech Labs, and Hamamatsu Ventures.
"The progress made by the Silveray team since our initial investment in 2023 has been phenomenal. Dan Cathie and his team have the enviable combination of innovation and entrepreneurialism having developed a novel digital x-ray solution with numerous applications which are already disrupting the analogue x-ray market. We are delighted to continue our support of Silveray as it builds its commercial traction, helping the team on its path to success."
Northern Gritstone and Parkwalk Advisors backed the seed round to support team expansion and product development.
"Medical devices follow a lengthy evaluation with a tiny amount of scientific evidence currently derived from computer modelling and simulation. The cost is ever-increasing, delaying lifesaving benefits to patients. Northern Gritstone’s and Parkwalk’s investment and support will enable adsilico to offer a scalable solution to the medical device market to produce evidence on an unprecedented scale"
— Alejandro Frangi, Founder and Chief Scientific Officer
The largest European semiconductor venture funding round to date will support the construction of new fabrication lines in the UK.
"This successful Series D round is a clear testament to the massive opportunity for our innovative technology to enable item-level intelligence in virtually any object on the planet. Our global customers value our ultra-thin and flexible form factor, our breakthrough low cost of customisation and rapid production cycles, as well as the lower environmental footprint compared to silicon. Scaling our manufacturing capacity on the UK’s first ever 300mm wafer production lines at our site in Durham will enable us to deliver hundreds of billions of chips to customers worldwide over the coming decade."
Northern Gritstone backed the Hull-based bioplastics developer to support team expansion and commercialisation.
"Everyday oil-based plastics are contributing to the global environmental crisis. Our vision is to offer brands an alternative product and through this transform the global plastics market. We are delighted to partner with Northern Gritstone. Their support, experience and investment will enable us to develop our team and deliver our commercial strategy."
The funding round was led by Lingotto, imec.xpand, and Northern Gritstone.
"Fully Homomorphic Encryption has the power to unlock the full value of data – but despite its advantages, it is currently unviable for anything beyond basic processes – this is where Optalysys comes in. Our Enable technology allows us to turbo boost the workflows and address the underlying bottlenecks that hold FHE back."
The seed round was led by Par Equity with backing from Northern Gritstone and the GMC Life Sciences Fund By Praetura.
"Re:course AI has the potential to disrupt how the healthcare professionals of the future are trained, as the demand for virtual AI-based training is growing,"
Northern Gritstone led the Series A investment, with backing from Mercia and the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund.
"We’re really excited to be backed by the Northern Gritstone team and continue to have the support of Mercia and the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund. With this new funding we can realise our vision more quickly – enabling anyone, anywhere to access the power of digital twins and decision intelligence and make a quantifiable difference to some of the biggest challenges we face today. 2023 will be an exciting year as we accelerate the release of cutting-edge capabilities on this journey."
Octopus Ventures led the seed financing round to help the Sheffield spin-out commercialise its infrared sensors.
"We are delighted to be leading this investment round for Phlux Technology, as this innovative breakthrough is critical to the future direction of transport, communication and emission monitoring systems,"
The funding round was led by ABC Impact to accelerate global deployment of the company liquid cooling technology.
"This significant investment, one of the largest amounts recently invested in liquid cooling, is a testament to the great work of our designers for our customers across the globe, as well as the many technology and channel partners that have placed their trust in our ability to cool data centre servers more efficiently in a vertical rack form factor. Given the global importance of the data centre sector, which can only increase as edge facilities proliferate and extend to the far reaches of civilization, we look forward to accelerating our global deployment plan with the help of our new and existing investment partners."
The round was led by Join Capital with participation from IQ Capital, Northern Gritstone, Seraphim, Episode 1 and Schauenburg Ventures to fund global growth and product development.
"Opteran has built the AI technology required to transform autonomous machines beyond today’s limited use in restricted scenarios to enable more widespread adoption,"
