Welcome to your Week in Tech – a roundup of the week’s top technology news. In this episode, we have investments, acquisitions, emojis and something to keep you cool during the next heatwave.
This week, we filmed from FinTech Week – a festival of events centering on the financial technology industry.
Best of British
The top news of the week was the announcement that Japanese telecoms and internet giant SoftBank was to acquire ARM Holdings for a whopping $32bn. Arm Holdings is currently based in Cambridge, where it designs the microchips used in most smartphones. If the deal gets regulatory approval, it’ll be one of the UK’s biggest tech exits to date.
There’s also been some M&A action in Manchester, with cybersecurity firm Secarma acquiring application security company Pentest Limited. The companies were tight-lipped about the sum that changed hands, but Secarma’s CEO Lawrence Jones expressed his delight and said it represented an investment in both knowledge and talent.
Investments
Speaking of investment, peer-to-peer finance provider MarketInvoice raised $7.2m. The firm allows small and medium-sized businesses to trade their outstanding invoices with investors online in order to gain working capital. The funding round was led by the MCI.TechVentures Fund of Polish private equity group MCI Capital.
Santander InnoVentures, which is based in London, has secured a further one hundred million dollars from Santander Group to invest in FinTech startups. Mariano Belinky, managing partner of Santander InnoVentures, said the cash would enable the fund to venture more deeply into areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and digital banking.
International
New York City has revealed plans for upgraded subway cars that will feature WiFi and USB chargers. The trains will also boast LED headlights and digital displays, with these changes being implemented as part of a five-year, 27 billion dollar upgrade plan.
Download
Our download of the week is Swiftmoji. It’s an emoji-predicting keyboard app created by London startup Swiftkey, which was acquired by Microsoft for $250m in February.
The app offers emoji suggestions based on what you type, making it quicker and easier to add visual punctuation to your text.
And Finally…
It’s been a scorcher of a week, but thankfully Japanese company Thanko has come up with a handy gadget to help keep you cool. Promising to eliminate armpit sweat, the gadgets are essentially mini fans that clip onto the inside of your shirt sleeves, blasting cold air at your pits. Lovely.