Funding

DeepMatter & Onzo

Glasgow-based DeepMatter and data analytics business ONZO are to share in a six million pound portion of the Scottish-European Growth Co-Investment, which has part one of a total commitment worth £16.26 million.

Delivered by the Scottish Investment Bank (SIB), the investment arm of Scottish Enterprise, and in partnership with the European Investment Fund (EIF), it is backed back the Scottish Government through the Scottish Growth Scheme.

DeepMatter CEO Mark Warne said: “The investment allowed us to cement DeepMatter’s long-term development strategy, providing funding that ensures we remain at the forefront of the digitisation of chemistry, whilst also helping the company to secure additional institutional investment.

“We remain committed to building a sustainable business in Scotland and this year plan to expand our workforce, adding further software developers and data scientists to our team of visionary experts.”

ONZO CEO Steve Daniels said: “The new investment and our existing shareholders’ support has enabled us to take a significant step forward in accelerating the development of our business.

“We have already set up an office in Edinburgh, concentrated on speeding up the delivery of our product road map, in terms of existing requirements. Importantly, the calibre of the team we have begun to recruit will also enable us to develop product and service features for the future requirements of the energy sector.”

Kerry Sharp, director of the SIB, said: “ONZO and DeepMatter are exactly the type of ambitious companies our innovative programme is designed to support. By understanding the financing needs of our businesses, introducing new investors to the Scottish market, and actively filling the gap in funding availability, SEGCP has enabled the companies to deliver their growth ambitions.

Global Open Finance Centre of Excellence

The Global Open Finance Centre of Excellence (GOFCOE), which will be based in the University of Edinburgh, has been awarded development funding from the Strength in Places Fund.

The GOFCOE is one of the 24 shortlisted projects to have been awarded up to £50,000 in early-stage funding to enable them to develop full-stage bids.

The University of Edinburgh, FinTech Scotland, Scottish Enterprise and the Financial Data And Technology Association (FDATA) worked together on the grant application.

Stephen Ingledew, chief executive at FinTech Scotland said: “The GOFCOE builds on Scotland’s heritage of financial services and enviable entrepreneurial track record combined with an enlightened and progressive culture which aligns the social and economic benefits of innovation.

“Going forward the Centre of Excellence focused on data-driven innovation will support the inclusive growth objectives of Scotland, leveraging the ongoing role of international collaboration across Europe and globally with the private sector, consumer groups, academia, regulators, governments.”

Danny Cusick, director of Multi Sectors at Scottish Enterprise, said the project has the potential to bring substantial economic benefits through increased innovation and inclusive growth to firmly establish Scotland’s reputation as a world leader in Open Finance.

“Scotland already has exceptional capabilities in fintech and data and the Centre of Excellence demonstrates what we can achieve through collaboration to create competitive advantage for Scotland.”

Jarmo Eskelinen, director of the Data-Driven Innovation initiative at the University of Edinburgh, said: “The University of Edinburgh is delighted to support the GOFCOE and to be developing this exciting project in partnership with FinTech Scotland, FData Global, Industry and Academia across the central belt of Scotland.

“The success of the Strength In Places Fund bid is confirmation of the importance of innovation for industrial strategy in the UK and we look forward to engaging with the consortium to develop the GOFCOE in the coming months”.

Partnerships

Exscientia

University of Dundee spinout, Exscientia has formed a landmark partnership with biopharma company Celgene. Exscientia will receive an initial £18.8m payment and eligibility to receive substantial milestones based on the commercial and clinical success of the programme.

The collaboration will use AI to accelerate the discovery of small molecule therapeutic drug candidates for three therapeutic programmes for Celgene; specifically in the areas of oncology and autoimmunity.

Professor Andrew Hopkins, CEO of Exscientia, commented: “We’re incredibly proud to collaborate with Celgene and to sign another partnership with a key industry player, reinforcing our place at the forefront of AI drug discovery.

“Today, patients can wait more than ten years from initial drug discovery to its availability as a treatment. With autoimmune diseases and cancer rates increasing, the pharmaceutical industry’s R&D productivity needs to dramatically improve – and technology is a key part of this.”

Dr Lawrence Hamann, corporate VP, Chemistry at Celgene, added: “We are tremendously excited to collaborate with such leaders in the development and application of AI tools to accelerate drug discovery.

“Exscientia have a proven track record of success in this emergent field, and we believe that reducing the number of iteration cycles in optimising structure-activity and developability relationships through their platform will very favourably impact our ability to deliver high-quality development candidates.”

FinTech Scotland

FinTech Scotland has announced it will partner with FinTech North to support innovation and growth within the sector. This year the pair will collaborate on a number of initiatives, one of which will see the two host a joint conference in Scotland.

Julian Wells, Director of FinTech North, said: “It’s a pleasure to welcome Stephen and FinTech Scotland to our first two major conferences of 2019. We have enjoyed a mutually supportive relationship since the creation of FinTech Scotland in 2018 and the progress made by Stephen and the team in that time is highly impressive.

“We look forward to developing even stronger links with FinTech Scotland over the coming months and are excited to run our first event north of the border later this year.”

FinTech Scotland’s chief executive Stephen Ingledew, who will deliver presentations at FinTech North’s conferences in Manchester and Leeds, said: “FinTech Scotland is delighted to be working with the FinTech North team, with whom we share a common passion for the development of strong and vibrant FinTech communities and economy across the country.

“In Scotland, over the last year we have made significant progress in bringing together the innovative Scottish fintech community across multiple cities, organisations and universities and I look forward to sharing our journey with the FinTech North community.”

Modulr

Fintech firm Modulr has partnered with Sage, a multinational enterprise software company with the goal of simplifying the job of managing accounts payable and payroll payments for businesses across the UK.

It’s hoped that the pair’s new offering, Sage Salary and Supplier Payments, will disrupt the UK’s small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) banking and payment market by improving the payments services available to both SMEs and accountants.

Seamus Smith, executive VP Global Payments & Banking at Sage, said: “Modulr brings significant industry expertise that offers us the opportunity to expand the capabilities of our solution with new functionality and geographies, together with specific support for the development of our partner channels.

“Customers and accountants will further benefit from real-time visibility of payments, seamless reconciliation of payment data into Sage’s Accounting and Payroll products and role-based access controls, meaning that they can track and manage a full audit trail of activity pertaining to outgoing payments, which will give them full control of a crucial part of their business.”

Myles Stephenson, chief executive of Modulr, added: “Our Payments as a Service API platform enables our partners to quickly and easily integrate new payment services into their core products.

“Our innovative partnership with Sage will enable SMEs to address the significant burden created by existing inefficient payment processes. Our fully integrated service provides a fast, easy and reliable alternative to processing payments via traditional business and corporate banking.”

ScotlandIS

ScotlandIS has partnered with private sector economic development body, Opportunity North East (ONE). The partnership is expected to further develop the digital company base and ecosystem in the North East of Scotland and provide additional resources for the region, helping to support cluster growth and increase the profile of the North East’s tech capabilities.

A co-funded digital development manager position has been created as part of the collaboration between the organisations, Jen Scott will assume the role on the 22nd of April. Her new role will be based at the ONE Tech Hub in Aberdeen, led in partnership with CodeBase, where a £1.5m investment is creating a dedicated hub for digital and entrepreneurship activity in the region.

Commenting on the announcement, ScotlandIS CEO Polly Purvis said: “We’re delighted to be working in partnership with ONE Digital & Entrepreneurship. Jen Scott’s appointment will enable us to provide additional support to tech companies in the region and working closely with the wider ONE team, help businesses across the North East exploit digital technologies to create new products and services and improve their productivity”.

Sir Ian Wood KT GBE, chair of ONE’s Digital & Entrepreneurship sector board, added: “Digital is one of the key transformational factors in our economy and ScotlandIS shares our regional ambition to make North East Scotland a dynamic environment for new and established tech businesses with high-growth potential.

“We are now co-investing to bring additional resource into the ecosystem to support company and cluster growth.”