Agri-hedging platform Stable harvests £48m Series B round

Stable, a hedging platform for agricultural commodities founded in a Somerset cow shed, has closed a $60m (£48m) Series B investment. Acrew Capital led the round with Greycroft, Notion Capital, Syngenta Group and Continental Grain Company also participating. Founded in 2017, Stable lists over 500 untraded commodities that can be hedged on the platform. Its clients range from multinational food and drink companies to family farms across the Americas.

Founder Rich Counsell said: “Businesses of every size, sector and location should have the ability to understand and manage their price risk so they can invest in the future with confidence.”

Manchester life sciences gets £20m cash injection

Life sciences start-ups in the Greater Manchester area, Cheshire and Warrington, will be able to apply to a new £20m fund. The GM&C Life Sciences Fund has been raised by partners including Bruntwood SciTech, Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) and Cheshire and Warrington Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP), while Praetura Ventures will run the fund. Early-stage businesses can apply for investment of anything between £50,000 up to £2m.

Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham said: “The region’s life sciences sector continues to turn heads on the global stage … this fund’s aim is to find, fund and scale the next generation of life science entrepreneurs.”

Urban Jungle drums up another £17m Series A

Insurance technology start-up Urban Jungle has raised £16.5m in its latest Series A funding round. North America-based venture capitalist Intact Ventures led the round, alongside an investment from Ingka Group, the world’s largest IKEA franchise. This Series A round brings the total amount raised by the business to £32m. Urban Jungle has recently hit the milestone of helping 100,000 customers get arrange home insurance.

Foodsteps walks away with £3.3m seed round

Foodsteps, a start-up which allows companies to calculate, label and reduce their environmental footprint from farm to fork, has raised $4.1m (£3.3m) in seed funding. Octopus Ventures led the round. Foodsteps is already working with restaurant chains including PizzaExpress, Wagamama, Ask Italian, Coco Di Mama, as well as food delivery services allplants, Mindful Chef, and caterers at Kew Gardens.

Flexa recruits £2.3m seed funding

Flexa Careers, a recruitment platform which flips the hiring process on its head, has raised a £2.3m in a seed round. Ada Ventures led the round, joined by Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund, angel syndicate HERmesa and other angel investors. Flexa enables companies to showcase what their working-environment offer when it comes to flexibility and benefits to candidates who want to know how the company operates and its culture before applying for a role. Flexa Careers now has over 450,000 users, and more than 150 companies headquartered all over the world have been approved to feature on the platform.

Location Live finds £2m investment

IW Capital has arranged a £2m investment in Location Live, a locations-planning service for the live marketing sector. The investment will be used to expand its LO:LIVE platform – a tool which allows users to source, plan and book locations – into eight countries across Europe this summer, and into the USA and Asia next year.

 Crowd Data Systems banks £850,000

 Triple Point Ventures has led a €1M (£850,000) seed round for Crowd Data Systems, a B2B SaaS platform which provides data-driven decision support to corporate treasury. The platform enables corporate treasurers managing a company’s liquidity, funding, capital and allocation of financial resources to work more quickly and efficiently in alignment with their firm’s overall strategy.

Unreasonable Collective makes first UK investment

Unreasonable Collective, the investment platform of US-based socially aware accelerator Unreasonable Group, has made its first UK investment, taking a £550,000 stake in London-based cleantech pioneer Greyparrot. The scale-up, which uses AI to make waste and recycling processing more efficient, raised £8.9m in this Series A round. Last year, the Unreasonable Collective invested $5.8m in eight scaleups globally and intends to double that sum in 2022.

Nova turns page for Resurgence Novels

Nova Growth Capital, the Liverpool-based venture builder, has invested £195,000 in Resurgence Novels, a streaming-style service for book readers where chapters are dropped weekly. The start-up will provide avid readers with new work by some of the world’s best serialised authors.

More Deals of the Week

Deals of the Week 16 May to 20 May – a Growth Business round-up