£130m for Kraken, the British Anduril of the Seas, and Loads More UK Hardware
P.S. Dinner on us + NatWest if you raised in H1'26 ↓

The big ones
No captain needed Kraken Technology Group unlocked £130m Series B round led by DTCP for its uncrewed surface vessels and maritime defence platforms
Standing ovation Leo Cancer Care landed £50m Series D led by Yu Galaxy for its upright imaging and radiotherapy platform
Best of the rest
Second-hand fashion on Fleek raised £19m Series B led by Burda Principal Investments to build AI infrastructure for the secondhand clothing supply chain
Robot farmers Dogtooth Technologies secured £14m in funding from VCs to scale autonomous robotic crop harvesting
Mind-of-its-own motor Luffy AI landed £8.1m Series A led by BGF to build neuroplastic AI stack for industrial motor control
Mini current affairs Pixel-Flo raised a £5.3m seed round led by Northern Gritstone to tackle critical bottleneck in MicroLED manufacturing
Salt ba(e)tteries TaiSan unlocked £4.7m in funding led by Eos Advisory and Mercia Ventures for solid-state sodium-ion batteries
Keeping it cool Gyre Energy secured £1m pre-seed funding for its AI-driven thermal energy storage platform for industrial cooling
⌄ Full breakdown below ⌄

The scout
⏳ 6 months ago
Biographica raised £7m in funding led by Faber VC to accelerate the creation of climate-resilient crop varieties
Bloemteknik secured £2.5m in funding led by Foresight Group to scale its autonomous LED lighting system for commercial growers
CLIQ raised seven-figure funding round led by Artesian to scale real-world social media platform
⌛ 12 months ago
Pimloc raised £3.7m in funding led by Amadeus Capital Partners and Edge Ventures to scale AI video redaction platform
Lab Thread landed £750k in funding from Mercia Ventures to launch all-in-one lab data management platform
Quorso secured funding from Summit Partners to expand intelligent retail operations platform
Next events
⏰ Tomorrow: Breakfast for the community-builder-community – For the folk running communities, initiatives and projects that orbit UK VC Sign up on Luma
⏰ Tues 21 July: Soapbox Labs: Preparing for Exit with Sage — A breakfast panel for founders & CFOs who have an exit on the horizon Sign up on Luma
⏰ Tues 21 July: Founders Table: Class of H1 2026 with NatWest — A dinner to celebrate the founders who raises in H1 Sign up on Luma
Now hiring
The hottest roles from the Soapbox UK startup jobs board
Apoha: Platform measuring molecule behaviour hiring engineers
Axle Energy: Virtual power plant software platform hiring across all departments
Fleek: B2B marketplace for second-hand fashion hiring across all departments
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Full breakdown
Check out the Soapbox platform for every story in UK venture funding
Have we missed a round? Get in touch at submit@soapbox.vc
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