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Over $20m UK investments, Microsoft acquires Swiftkey, new Safe Harbour deal & more in your week in tech

Bookkeeping software company Receipt Bank has closed a $10m Series A round from equity firm Kennet Partners.The company, which was founded in London in 2011, has now raised a total of $15m.

In other investment news, Brighton based SaaS provider Intelligent Positioning has raised $3.7m and programmatic advertising platform Admedo closed a $6m round from MMC Ventures.

London-based Farmdrop closed a $4.4m round led by Atomico – the investment company founded by Skype co-founder Niklas Zennström.

In other news …

London-based artificial intelligence startup SwiftKey has been acquired by tech giant Microsoft in an undisclosed deal.

Swiftkey was founded eight years ago by friends and co-founders Jon Reynolds and Ben Medlock and it produces keyboard apps for iOS and Android devices.

Tech Hub and Google for Entrepreneurs have partnered to expand to India, Latvia and Romania. The programme will give Tech Hub members access to programmes, assistance and mentoring from Google. Tech Hub with its HQ in London is also present in Madrid, Swansea and Warsaw.

Taxi app Gett, urban cycling company Blaze and technology education startup ‘Technology Will Save Us’ are among the fifty companies joining the Mayor’s International Business Programme. The initiative was launched this week and will aim to help the capital’s high growth firms expand overseas.

The European Commission and the United States have agreed on a new ‘Safe Harbour’ framework to make it easy for organisations to transfer data across the Atlantic. The EU – US Privacy Shield will not only protect individuals rights but will also try to establish legal certainty for businesses in a bid to improve the global digital economy. Back in October, The European Court ruled against Safe Harbour following Edward Snowden’s claims about the US spying on personal data. For privacy campaigners, the new agreement will still have a cause for concern with such different attitudes to data protection in the US and the EU.

Download of the week

Our Download of the Week is Readbug. Readbug aggregates over fifty of the coolest magazine titles so you can subscribe to them all in one place. This week they’ve added the US giant Paper to their offering.

And finally, think you know your Simpson’s quotes? Well not as much as this website. Frinkiac is a search engine that allows you to peruse over 3m Simpson quotes and matches it with the exact screenshot from when it happened. Now it’s possible to track down every d’oh, yoink and diddly.

This has been your week in tech, for more check out Tech City News and follow us on Twitter

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