Black Swan, a tech and data science firm based in London, has received £3m in funding in a round led by Mitsui.
CharlieHR, which provides free has raised £1m in seed funding from Connect Ventures and early-stage fund Seedcamp.
Blockchain intelligence firm Elliptic has closed a $5m Series A funding round led by Paladin Capital Group, a Washington-based VC specialising in disruptive security applications.
Apperio, has secured £1.7m in seed funding. GoCardless has brought in $13m to build out its global bank-to-bank payment network. The company says it is now processing $1bn in annual payments for over 16,000 merchants.
Dyson developments
Dyson will invest £1bn in new battery technology after reporting a 20% rise in profits thanks to their continuing expansion in China.
The company have invested in a University of Michigan spin-off called Sakti3, who’ve managed to develop a solid-state technology that can store twice as much energy as traditional rechargeable batteries.
Dyson’s move into the battery field means they’ll now be competing with the likes of Tesla.
Uber causes controversy
Uber is continuing to cause controversy across the world by upsetting local taxi drivers.
Thousands of taxi drivers have caused traffic chaos in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta this week.
It is the second major protest by taxi drivers this month. They say competition from ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Grab, has severely reduced their income.
Many of the drivers come to Jakarta from other parts of Indonesia to support their families as taxi drivers. The main problem for taxi drivers is that the tech companies don’t face the same costs and regulations as they do.
Download of the week
Our Download of the Week is Cuvva. It’s an on-demand app that lets you book car insurance on a friend’s car in a matter of seconds and aims to revolutionise the way that people think about driving. The team are currently on the Barclays Techstars accelerator.
And finally
Twitter celebrated its 10th birthday this week. The past decade has seen the microblogging site play a part in world events including the Arab Spring, created the hashtag and has shared news, posts GIFs and Vines amongst its 300 million strong network. The most popular tweet of them all? Ellen DeGeneres’ 2014 Oscar selfie.