NVIDIA Launches $2.5B UK AI Investment Drive

NVIDIA has officially announced a landmark £2 billion investment to supercharge the United Kingdom’s AI startup ecosystem — a move hailed as a “major vote of confidence” in the UK’s tech future.

Key Highlights of the Investment

• Purpose: Catalyze globally transformative AI businesses via capital, compute, and talent.
• Target Regions: London, Oxford, Cambridge, and Manchester as AI growth zones.
• Strategic Partners: Accel, Air Street Capital, Balderton Capital, Hoxton Ventures, Phoenix Court.
• Beneficiary Startups: Wayve, Nscale, Revolut, Synthesia, PolyAI, Latent Labs, Basecamp Research.

Major Investments

Startup	Sector	Investment
Wayve	Autonomous Driving	£500 million
Nscale	AI Data Centers	£500 million
Others (Revolut, Synthesia, etc.)	Fintech, Generative AI, Bioinformatics	Undisclosed

Why It Matters

• UK’s AI talent pool is strong but scaling has been hindered by infrastructure and funding gaps.
• NVIDIA aims to democratize access to supercomputing and connect VCs with academic hubs.
• Energy costs and regional VC concentration have slowed growth — this investment addresses both.

Leadership Voices

“This is the age of AI — the big bang of a new industrial revolution.” — Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA
“This partnership will create jobs, spark new industries and ensure the UK remains at the forefront of global AI leadership.” — UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer

Global Context

• Microsoft: £22 billion commitment to UK AI infrastructure.
• OpenAI: Launch of Stargate UK supercomputing initiative.
• Blackstone: £100 billion pledge over 10 years for UK tech and infrastructure.

UK’s Innovation Agency backed FrontM to Pave the Way for AI Enabled Edge Applications for Maritime

FrontM is on a mission to be the EDGE-intelligent app marketplace where the world goes to connect, inform and care for remote teams and customers. The innovation focuses on overcoming digital poverty in remote and isolated environments, such as the Blue Economy. The World Bank defines the blue economy as the “sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs while preserving the health of the ocean ecosystem.”

FrontM’s initial use cases include the maritime commercial shipping market, particularly transforming shore-ship team collaboration, automation of workflows, crew safety and welfare.

FrontM is proud to be recognized by Innovate UK and receiving a grant to study the feasibility of integration of Edge AI enablement technology from Hammer Of The Gods (HOT-G). HOT-G is a Palo Alto, California based deep-tech startup, building the infrastructure and developer experience tools for observability, security and monitoring for edge computing. This integration accelerates FrontM’s distributed software infrastructure and paves the way for innovative AI-enabled edge applications in its app-marketplace.

A market research report, written during 2021 by consultancy company Thetius and sponsored by the Inmarsat Research Programme, estimated that by 2030 the digital maritime industry will be worth $345 billion, up from a previous forecast of $279 billion. It reported an explosion in the use of IoT and digital tools in maritime due to massive growth in consumer demand for e-commerce and the use of online booking platforms for shipping freight.

Centralising data in the cloud is a big challenge in maritime due to a combination of factors – the bandwidth constraints in transporting the entire data set from ship to shore, the proliferation of IoT and the generation of more data from each sensor than what is required. While enabling inference from data at the edge can address some of the challenges, deploying AI on constrained devices is today prohibitively complex and expensive compared to developing and deploying AI models on the cloud.

HOT-G’s embedded machine learning orchestration tools combined with FrontM’s programmable app framework seek to address these technological challenges by taking advantage of FrontM’s tools to accelerate maritime digitalisation across a broad range of applications ranging from safety, remote assistance, surveys, predictive analytics and crew welfare.

Enquiries: Anne-Marie Barclay, anne-marie@frontm.com

About Innovate UK

Innovate UK is the UK’s innovation agency. It works with people, companies and partner organisations to find and drive the science and technology innovations that will grow the UK economy. For further information visit innovateuk.gov.uk.

London-based Fintech Firm Sokin Enters India with Razorpay Partnership

Sokin, the new generation fintech payment firm, has signalled its intention to become a market leader in India, as it inks a significant deal with Razorpay, the leading full stack financial solutions company to enter the Indian market.

Sokin will work with the RazorpayX, the fintech giant's Neobanking arm, to provide its clients with a fully operational business banking service including current accounts which can be seamlessly integrated with Sokin's simple app, or online-based platform, which allows multiple international transfers with no hidden costs, all for a fixed monthly fee.

Vroon Modgill, CEO at Sokin, knows the link with RazorpayX will offer significant cost savings for Indian nationals and businesses based around the world. He commented: "The remittance and transfer market into India is very important. The deal we have signed, for the first time, will allow anyone to send money home with no additional or recurring hidden costs. We offer users monthly one off subscription fees to enable money transfers from over 150 countries and in more than 35 different currencies, without adding repeat costs or marking-up exchange rates. Through this partnership with Razorpay, the service will now be available for everyone in the Indian market to use."

The Sokin and Razorpay payment gateway will give clients a fast, secure and compliant way to move money back into their home country. It is the first partnership between Razorpay and a European based payments company, which will help millions of people who have family members working overseas.

Shashank Kumar, CTO and Co-founder of Razorpay said, "The Indian payments and money transfer market is undergoing significant change driven by innovation and fintech investment, which is improving the services and products available to customers. The Indian FinTech sector is at its exciting best right now and we are very excited about developing this relationship with Sokin at such a ripe time. With our association with Sokin, we hope to together make real-time, intelligent business banking solutions accessible to the businesses and people living overseas who will be able to save money and time when making remittances."

Sokin allows users to make unlimited payments and transfers for one low monthly fee, starting as low as INR 499. There is no mark-up on transactions and average prices are 20% lower than other existing payment solutions. Fast and secure payments are made through Sokins app covering a range of business and consumer clients.

For more information, please go to www.sokin.net.

About Sokin

Sokin is a next generation financial service provider which enables global payments for both consumers and businesses. Sokin believes in giving consumers the power to make payments and transfer money as many times as they want per month for one fee. Whether it's sending money back home or transfers to friends or even settling with businesses using Sokin is quick and easy.

The current options for transferring money internationally are often complicated and expensive, with often a lack of transparency in the fees being paid. Sokin's transparent fixed monthly cost, with no hidden charges, allows users to make payments in over 200 countries and exchange money in over 150 countries in more than 35 different currencies.

The Sokin app is available to download and customers can sign up to receive service updates.

About Razorpay Software Private Limited

Razorpay, a full-stack financial services company, helps Indian businesses with comprehensive and innovative solutions built over robust technology to address the entire length and breadth of the payment and banking journey for any business. Established in 2014, the company provides technology payment solutions to over 1Mn+ businesses. Founded by alumni of IIT Roorkee, Shashank Kumar and Harshil Mathur, Razorpay is the second Indian company to be a part of Silicon Valley's largest tech accelerator, Y Combinator. Marquee investors such as Tiger Global, Sequoia India, Ribbit Capital, Matrix Partners, Y Combinator and MasterCard have invested a total of $106.5 Mn through Series A, B and C funding. Around 33 angel investors have invested in Razorpay's mission to simplify payments and banking and redefine how finance works in India.

UK-based Fintech Wiserfunding Enters India

Z-Score founder launches new credit assessment to improve small business lending in Indian economy

UK based fintech Wiserfunding announced its entry into India, launching its Artificial Intelligence (AI) backed cloud-based credit risk assessment tool targeted for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Wiserfunding arrives at a time when SMEs across India are struggling due to the COVID-19 impact and the available models in the lending sector are not specific to SMEs, are largely non-technology based and have low prediction accuracy. 

The London headquartered fintech aims to invest USD 3 – 5 million over the next three years to tailor credit risk models specifically towards Indian SMEs to reach an accuracy level above 80 percent. The investment will also be towards creating technology to connect to various public and private databases to source all inputs to fully automate its models as they already do in Europe. The company plans to partner with 3 - 4 banks and 8 - 10 NBFCs in India and cover 8.5 million Indian SMEs through its models by end of the financial year.  

The fintech is backed and co-founded by Professor Dr. Edward Altman, one of the pioneers of credit risk analytics since the late 1960s and the inventor of the famous Z-score.

The new SME Z-score by Wiserfunding uses AI to provide accurate, reliable and unbiased credit risk assessment tools to assess the credit quality of SMEs using financial history as well as publicly available structured and unstructured data such as corporate governance, management experience & macroeconomic indicators. The model is unique as it provides geographical and sectoral segmentation to maximize prediction power and is tailored specifically for SMEs.

Dr. Edward Altman, Creator of the famous Altman Z-score methodology for assessing the financial health of companies and Co-founder, Wiserfunding said, “Our mission is to empower SME growth in India and there isn’t a better time than now. Typical to any economic shock, bank lending is expected to reduce for SMEs, making it more difficult for them to survive. It will be important to have a reliable and accurate assessment of businesses’ viability and technology will be central to such analysis. Indian banks and financial institutions will definitely see a significant benefit in using a more independent and unbiased risk assessment platform with the entry of AI powered models.” 

NPAs in the SME sector is a growing concern in India and it has adversely impacted the balance sheet of the banks. Wiserfunding’s solution will help lenders and investors tailor their pricing and increase the efficiency of their lending. This could further increase the availability and quicken the disbursal of funds to SMEs and reduce the high NPA issue faced by the industry.

This is Wiserfunding’s first international office outside Europe with Ms. Avantika Goel, relocating from London to Mumbai, as the Country Head of India. 

Dr. Gabriele Sabato, Co-founder and CEO, Wiserfunding said, “We are delighted to have the opportunity to enter the Indian market in a moment when support to SMEs is so critical. Our models and technology will be a substantial help to lenders and investors to select the most resilient SMEs and provide them with the necessary funding to overcome the current crisis.

We are fortunate to have Ms. Goel supporting us on the ground to build a strong local team. We strongly believe that India will quickly become one of our most important markets.”

Ms. Avantika Goel, Country Head of India said “We’re very excited to launch Wiserfunding in India and committed to set up a successful operation in the country. India is a large market with 42.5 million SMEs and there is an urgent need for an unbiased credit risk assessment service that can provide the business credit score and risk profile of any company within a few seconds using the cloud-based platform. This would help SMEs looking to learn about their own and competitors’ credit profiles as well as banks, NBFCs, insurance companies, funds and investors looking to invest in these SMEs.”

Wiserfunding aims to target bank and non-bank lenders, investors, funds, insurance companies and SMEs. Wiserfunding has been operating globally across 38 countries with clients in the UK, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Latvia, Singapore, Thailand and South Africa. The company’s solution has been adopted by more than 40 bank and non-bank lenders and investors across the world. 

About Wiserfunding

Wiserfunding was founded by Professor Edward Altman and Dr. Gabriele Sabato to assess the credit risk of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Wiserfunding uses past financial history and a range of publicly available structured and unstructured data to assess the credit worthiness of SMEs. This empowers businesses to obtain finance and lenders and insurers to assess the risk of business applicants by providing more accurate data to make better decisions quicker than ever before.

MYPINPAD the World’s 1st to Achieve PCI Accreditation for Contactless Payments on Mobile and Tablet

MYPINPAD, the global leader in secure personal authentication solutions is the first company in the world to achieve Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards Council (SSC) certification for its Android software-based Contactless Payments on Commercial off-the-shelf (CPoC) solution, enabling contactless payments on smart devices. As the first solution globally certified to accept contactless payments on these devices without requiring additional hardware, this significant step accelerates unparalleled possibilities in customer experience innovation for merchants and other businesses in the payments chain.

Accreditation for MYPINPAD’s contactless payment solution follows the company’s recent PCI SSC SPoC certification for its software only PIN Entry solution for iOS and Android (PIN on mobile), also a global first. The combined capability of tap and PIN on smart mobile devices means a 100 percent software-based payments future. It enables all merchants globally to democratise payments with integrated, scalable digital customer experiences, replacing traditional POS terminals with smart mobile devices.

This announcement is fantastic news for face to face retailers and service providers, creating access to a lower cost, highly secure PCI certified contactless solution. This is especially timely with contactless limits around the world being raised in response to COVID-19, which has seen cash usage reduced by half. With long-term effects of the pandemic uncertain,MYPINPAD is taking steps to help future proof retailers by creating a face-to-face payment system that is more flexible, safer, and available to businesses of all sizes.

MYPINPAD’s goal is to help drive mobile device acceptance exponentially from 100 million currently to over 400 million by 2024.

CEO of MYPINPAD, Colin Greene, commented: “With each new accreditation we get closer to the true democratisation of payment acceptance. This ultimately means more secure digital payment experiences for merchants and consumers worldwide. That’s why we are delighted to be the first company in the world to have achieved PCI certification for our contactless solution, especially after our recent announcement of being the first to achieve PCI accreditation for our PIN-entry software only solution on IOS and Android. By increasing access to lower cost, highly secure and innovative globally certified payment solutions for the industry and our partners, we promote both growth and financial inclusion."

Blake Rosenthal, Executive Vice President of Acceptance Solutions at Mastercard, adds; “Consumers and merchants are looking for fast, safe, and secure checkout experiences,” “MYPINPAD’s PCI accreditation is a key milestone to the growth, diversification, and scale of contactless payment solutions, increasing speed at checkout and reducing operational costs by eliminating all hardware accessories."

MYPINPAD’s solution is easily integrated intothird party applications and delivered ‘As-a-Service’. It reduces cost across the entire face-to-face payment ecosystem by meeting PCI security standards through software updates alone. This relieves pain-points like the cost of traditional payment and POS hardware for smaller retailers, while serving larger retailers by significantly reducing maintenance, replacement costs of aging hardware-centric POS systems and improving CX with trusted and familiar devices.

Visit www.mypinpad.com to discover more about this transformational technology.

MYPINPAD is the global leader in secure personal authentication solutions residing on commercially available smartphones and tablets. MYPINPAD’s proprietary and globally patented technology removes the reliance on specialised hardware for personal authentication.

London Startup FrontM partners with Inmarsat and VIKAND to Develop COVID-19 Healthcare Information Hotline for Maritime workforce

FrontM, a collaboration software provider to the maritime and aviation industries, announced their collaboration with global satellite telecommunications giant Inmarsat and VIKAND, a global, maritime medical operations and healthcare solutions provider, to provide seafarers with immediate access to a COVID-19 healthcare hotline. This service will deliver vital frontline medical information to the shipping industries and seafaring workforce at a time when they need it the most.

The London based startup was approached by their partners Inmarsat and VIKAND to provide a telemed collaboration platform that would enable medical staff to provide remote and isolated maritime workers with access to COVID-19 related medical advice and support. This will help more vessels and shipping firms navigate the uncharted territories that their workforces face. In order to facilitate the hotline key development staff were directed from new projects to develop a scalable, secure and reliable web based video-conferencing solution that runs over a dedicated connectivity allocation connecting seafarers across the Fleet Xpress Inmarsat fleet with medical experts within a 2 week timeframe.  

“I am sure you are all aware of the battle the maritime industry has waged against COVID-19 to ensure that vital medical supplies and food shipments reach our shores whilst we all adhere to ‘Staying at home, to ‘Protect the healthcare system and Save lives' said Pradeep Roonwal, VP delivery and operations at FrontM. “That is why we are proud to announce the collaboration with our partners to provide seafarers with this hotline to ensure the immediate well-being and safety of our mariners. This is also a remarkable achievement for our development team who went above and beyond in order to meet the tight delivery timeframes”.  

Technology can sometimes be seen as having a detrimental impact on people’s well-being, however, FrontM focuses on building solutions that have a positive impact on society and the world at large, actively promoting tech for good. 

“By answering the call to arms by our partners Inmarsat and VIKAND we have been able to develop a powerful telemed solution that will help provide commercial seafaring vessels and their employees with quick and easy access to the COVID-19 medical information they need during these difficult times.  The longer-term collaboration with Inmarsat and VIKAND will help to provide a stable platform that will allow mariners to connect with expert telemed services, in order to improve the quality of their care and life whilst at sea.” said Kiran Venkatesh FrontM’s CEO. 

“We are delighted that FrontM and VIKAND will join Inmarsat in delivering this timely, relevant and requested information service to our Fleet Xpress clients,” said Marco Cristoforo Camporeale, Head of Digital Solutions, Inmarsat Maritime. 

“This is fully in line with our wider partnership vision to help resolve medical concerns quicker and allowing companies to respond earlier in case of medical emergencies,” said Mr. Camporeale. 

Brief Summary Bio about VIKAND & Inmarsat 

“By urgently providing this information hotline along with Inmarsat and FrontM we will offer vessel owners and Captains all over the world easy access to information to help give relevant medical information around COVID-19 at this difficult time. Over the longer term, our shared vision for the partnership with Inmarsat is to ensure a healthier environment onboard ships, early intervention when seafarers are not well and a rapid support system in the event of an emergency, utilizing the communication strength of Inmarsat.” said Peter Hult, CEO of VIKAND.

VIKAND is a leading global maritime healthcare solutions provider offering 24/7 medical management, consulting, biomedical equipment maintenance and sales, case and claims management, medical escort service, and air and surface decontamination solutions to the industry. 

VIKAND’s vision is to be the world’s leading expert in Maritime Health Care and VIKAND’s mission is to provide the highest quality, timely and most cost-effective Maritime Health Care possible. VIKAND strives to provide reliable services by skilled professionals supported by the most current technology. For more information, visit http://www.vikand.com.


Inmarsat is the world leader in global, mobile satellite communications. It owns and operates the world’s most diverse global portfolio of mobile telecommunications satellite networks, and holds a multi-layered, global spectrum portfolio, covering L-band, Ka-band and S-band, enabling unparalleled breadth and diversity in the solutions it provides. Inmarsat’s long-established global distribution network includes not only the world’s leading channel partners but also its own strong direct retail capabilities, enabling end to end customer service assurance.

The company has an unrivalled track record of operating the world’s most reliable global mobile satellite telecommunications networks, sustaining business and mission critical safety & operational applications for more than 40 years. It is also a major driving force behind technological innovation in mobile satellite communications, sustaining its leadership through a substantial investment and a powerful network of technology and manufacturing partners.

Inmarsat operates across a diversified portfolio of sectors with the financial resources to fund its business strategy and holds leading positions in the Maritime, Government, Aviation and Enterprise satcoms markets, operating consistently as a trusted, responsive and high-quality partner to its customers across the globe.

This London-Based Startup Has Chosen India To Set Up INR100/day Hotel

London-based technology startup Chototel having a tagline - "The People's Hotel", has chosen the Indian land as its destination to set up its pilot "super-budget" hotel.

According to whispers going round in the hospitality industry, the startup is currently in final level talks of acquiring lands in Chakan, Goa and Gujarat so as to get started with its next round of projects in the Asian country. Chototel aspires to build some 100,000 rooms on the Mumbai-Pune-Goa corridor in the period of next five years.

There are various factors that distinguish a Chototel hotel from any other. For example: in its super budget Chototel hotel, the tariff will start at a minimal 100 rupees per day and facilities such as uninterrupted water, electricity, gas and social infrastructure like gardens, community kitchen, daycare and infirmaries etc. will be provided. In order to make the project successfully deliver efficiencies from construction through to maintenance and hotel operations, a diverse array of Internet of Things, closed loop, real-time cash transfer, digital health and Big Data technologies are being employed.

In a statement to a website, Chris Phillips, Chairman, Chototel, divulges what made the company choose India over any other country. According to him, the country's diversified economy and promising growth prospects helped it make the cut. Further, Phillips also added that, he is hopeful the country's policy-makers will take suitable actions to enhance the country’s economic strength and, in turn, its financial strength in the coming years.

[caption id="attachment_105915" align="aligncenter" width="628"] Chototel's Typical Room [/caption]

Rhea Silva, Managing Director, Chototel, describes the upcoming Chototel project as a technological super machine. According to her, the company would make use of innovative technologies to build, operate and manage in such a way that will allow them to keep the tariff low and the efficiencies being provided to the customers high. She also talked about the company's plan for India and added that they're committed to make India the cornerstone of their market entry strategy.

Chototel's first project has already hit the ground and is currently under-construction in the Nagothane area, an industrial town located on the newly constructed Mumbai-Goa expressway. Spread spread across 1.5 acres and 75,000 square feet of constructed area, the 240-room hotel will be able to host upto 1,000 guests. According to the figures made available to IndianWeb2, the project will cost around GBP 1.75M (or INR 175 million), meaning a price of approximately GBP 7000 (or INR 700,000) for a 290 square feet room.

The first Chototel situated at the large bank of industrial workers, is looking to target people
within its 15-kilometre radius, and also travellers, tourists travelling on the National Highway 17 (Mumbai – Goa) expressway.