Tech News: 3rd May

Boris Johnson has joined a final push to convince chip designer Arm to list in London, as UK government officials grow concerned over the lasting damage if Britain’s best-known tech company chooses New York for its initial public offering. Ministers and executives from the London Stock Exchange have launched a charm offensive to persuade Arm’s Japanese owner SoftBank to rethink its strong preference for listing in New York, the default destination for the world’s biggest tech groups.  The stakes are high for the government not just because Arm, founded and headquartered in the UK, was previously listed in London before SoftBank acquired it for £24.6bn in 2016. There are also rising fears that a Wall Street listing would deal a blow to efforts to foster a tech sector in the UK, according to people familiar with the lobbying effort. Financial Times

Revenue was down one per cent to $234.6m (£187.3m) for cyber security firm Avast as the firm rolls out new products and makes strategic acquisitions for in growth. For the first quarter, Adjusted EBITDA was $127.9m, resulting in an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 54.5 per cent. The FTSE 100 firm has made two recent acquisitions to underpin its growth in recent months. The first, in December 2021, was US-headquartered Evernym, who are a pioneer in the field of decentralised digital identity. The second, in March 2022, was Canada-headquartered SecureKey, who are a provider of federated digital identity and bank-centric identity and authentication services. The SecureKey transaction completed on at the start of April. City AM

Cloud-based property management platform Re-Leased has raised $15m (£11.9m) in a funding round led by JLL Spark. Re-leased is a platform for real estate firms to manage property portfolios, providing a technological boost to a traditionally slow-moving industry. The portfolio dashboard gives developers and landlords greater visibility and control of their properties, as well as supporting building maintenance, reporting, invoicing and document storage. The platform is already in use for the management of more than 50,000 properties and 100,000 leases worldwide, Re-Leased said. Founded in New Zealand in 2013, the company has established an international presence with the opening of a UK office in Birmingham and a headquarters in London. With the addition of the new funds, the company has now raised a total of $24.8m, with the previous funding coming from an angel investment of $4.1m. UKTN

Venly, a blockchain wallet technology provider, has secured over €21m ($23m) in Series A funding, to scale its web3 strategy. The cash will fund Venly’s new strategy centred around Web3 users, with a focus on gaming as well as eCommerce.It creates tools and products for Web2 businesses to allow them to try out Web3 processes via an API. Clients include The Sandbox, Aavegotchi, Bondly, Shopify. The Belgium fintech company is also set to launch an accelerator track for game studios and Web3 startups who will be able to use Venly licenses at a discounted rate while getting guidance. Altfi

 Medtech startup 52 North Health has raised £1m in its first funding round, led by Cambridge Enterprise. Cambridge-headquartered 52 North will use the capital to fund clinical trials for its NeutroCheck device. It also plans to pursue partnerships with the UK Sepsis Trust and Macmillan Cancer Support. Founded in 2018, 52 North Health aims to improve healthcare with a medical device that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to determine the risk of neutropenic sepsis for patients undergoing chemotherapy. The portable device lets at home patients determine their risk, through a blood finger-prick. Its platform can be used for both soluble and insoluble biomarkers to be found from a single biological specimen using an app supported device the NeutroCheck. UKTN