Hello and welcome to The Week in Tech, your roundup of the latest top tech news from across the UK.
This week, we bring you the latest on Anaplan’s and WorldRemit’s funding rounds, the European Commission’s warning over extremist content posted online and more.
Investments
TravelNest’s Seed
Edinburgh-based TravelNest, an advertising optimisation platform for holiday rental owners, raised £3m in Seed funding.
Early-stage venture firms Pentech, Mangrove Capital Partners and Frontline Ventures participated in the round.
Mark Logan, former COO of Skyscanner, also invested and will be joining the firm’s board.
Anaplan raises again
Software firm Anaplan has closed a $60m Series F round.
The round was led by Premji Invest alongside Salesforce Ventures, Top Tier Capital Partners and other existing backers.
Anaplan, which was founded in a Yorkshire barn by CTO Michael Gould and is now headquartered in the US, has raised $300m to date and is valued at $1.4bn.
The funds will be used to expand internationally and expand its development team.
WorldRemit closes Series C
Digital money transfer service WorldRemit raised $40m in funding, bringing its total raised to date to $220m.
Customers using WorldRemit can currently transfer money from more than 50 countries to just over 140 destinations.
The money will be used to expand WorldRemit’s service into new operating markets, deliver new products and services and scale its proprietary technology.
WorldRemit’s round was led by LeapFrog Investments alongside participation from Accel and TCV.
Chattermill’s £600,000
London’s deep learning startup Chattermill raised £600,000 in Seed funding.
Entrepreneur First, Avonmore Developments and angel investors, including Jeff Kelisky, the CEO of Seedrs, participated in the round.
Chattermill was co-founded by Mikhail Dubov, a Cambridge and LSE educated software engineer, and Dmitry Isupov, a Maths graduate with deep knowledge and experience in machine learning.
Cytora’s latest raise
Cytora, an AI spinout from Cambridge University, landed £4.4m from investors including Starr Global Holdings.
QBE Ventures, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Cambridge Enterprise, Parkwalk Advisors and angel investors Ilkka Paananen, CEO of Supercell; and Paul Foster, co-founder of Indeed.com, also participated
Cytora is gearing up to deploy its Risk Engine, which helps insurers transform the way in which they select, target and price risk by leveraging AI.
The firm has spent the past year working with a selective consortium of commercial insurers, including QBE, XL Catlin and Starr – all of which have gained access to Cytora’s proprietary technology before it gets released to the wider market.
Uber’s issues in Sheffield
Uber has had its operating license revoked by Sheffield City Council.
The ride-sharing company’s license was suspended last week after it failed to reply to questions about the management of its app.
Uber will be able to operate until 18th December and can appeal the decision. If it does, it will be able to continue running until the appeal is heard.
“If it decides against an appeal the suspension will come into force,” the council said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Uber has said it submitted an application for a new license in mid-October, which is yet to be processed by local officials.
“While we are in regular contact with the council, we did not receive the correspondence the council refers to as they sent the letters to an incorrect address,” a spokesman for the company added.
“We hope this administrative error can be quickly resolved so we can continue serving tens of thousands of riders and drivers in Sheffield.”
EU issues warning over extremist content
The European Commission has told tech giants such as Facebook, Google and YouTube to amp their efforts to counteract the propagation of extremist content if they don’t want to be subject to regulation.
Increased pressure from governments across Europe has resulted in companies making some progress and boosting their dedicated resources to remove extremist content as quickly as possible.
Earlier this week, though, Julian King, the EU’s security commissioner, said: “We are not there yet. We are two years down the road of this journey: to reach our final destination we now need to speed up our work.”
SoftBank rumours
SoftBank is reportedly gearing up to invest approximately $300m into DoorDash, a food delivery startup, according to sources familiar with the deal.
If it goes through, the investment would mark SoftBank’s largest from its Vision Fund –a $98bn mountain of cash.
Latest figures suggest DoorDash is valued at $720m. The firm is competing against several companies in the food delivery space, including the likes of Postmates, GrubHub and UberEats.
3D tattoos
Researchers have come up with a new 3D printing technique to create temporary “living tattoos”.
The new method uses ink created from genetically programmed living cells, which then light up in response to different stimuli.
The tattoos can bend and stretch alongside the body’s natural movements and could eventually be used to sense potential hazards.
And finally
Emoji authorities have scrapped plans to include a sad poop face in their upcoming update.
The plans to introduce the emoji have not been included in the Unicode Consortium’s – the group charged with the symbol’s creation – latest proposals.
The symbol was initially floated as one of the many to be launched next year, but seemed to have upset some typographers who said it was “embarrassing” to the group.
The symbol has, however, been put forward as a potential candidate for an emoji sequence.
Who knows, we may get our frowning poo after all.
That’s all for today … see you next Friday!