Ascension Invest in FarmDrive's Pre-Seed Round FarmDrive has closed a £1m pre-seed round to scale its livestock data and supply-chain platform globally. Built from the founders’ lived experience on family farms, the platform now supports more than 1,000 beef and dairy farms across the UK and Ireland, tracking over 150,000 cattle. FarmDrive saves farmers more than six hours a week and enables processors and retailers to achieve full farm-to-shelf transparency through its enterprise product.
Toyosi, Ascension Principal, commented that Ascension is particularly excited about opportunities at the intersection of technology and traditionally overlooked, undigitised (but large) industries like farmtech and construction, where bold, ambitious founders are using new technologies to drive real disruption. |
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Ascension on Tour The team has been on the move. Alex, Ascension Investment Manager, attended Wales Tech Week before travelling to Glasgow for the Round One Investor Showcase, while Toyosi joined an 'Ask Them Anything' panel for the New Baltic Ventures cohort in Liverpool.
The Ascension team, together with RAM Capital, recently hosted an event in Belfast for founders and investors alike. We’re incredibly proud of our Northern Ireland portfolio of eight businesses and are eager to see it continue to grow. Toyosi also attended the Ormeau Labs Demo Day while in town, keeping an eye out for our next great deal. Read more about our trip here. |
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| | Ascension Sponsors AI Hackathon in Manchester |
| We are also excited to share that Ascension is co-sponsoring the Build Like A Pro Hackathon on 6–7 January. An Antler residency is up for grabs for the strongest founder or founding team, ideally pre-product or in the earliest stages of building. The winning team will also have the chance to secure £1m in investment from Antler, Ascension, and Haatch. |
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Raises Across the Ascension Portfolio It has been an exciting period across the portfolio, with several companies announcing significant new rounds. These raises not only validate the exceptional work of the founding teams but also fuel the momentum behind their already impressive growth. |
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| | FreightSuite Secures $4.5m Pre-Series A |
| FreightSuite has raised new funding to continue dismantling the manual inefficiencies that plague the global freight industry. As co-founder Sam Moore puts it, ‘the logistics industry doesn’t need another dashboard; it needs the vast amount of busywork done for them.’ |
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| | Track Titan Raises £5m Seed Round |
| Co-led by Partech and Roger Ehrenberg’s brand-new Game Changers Ventures with participation from Sequel. Launched in 2021, the platform has already surpassed 200k users and grown ARR 10x in the past two years. |
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| | Puma Leads £6m Series A in HubBox |
| HubBox was created to address the increasing frustration caused by failed home deliveries. Its software integrates seamlessly with more than 1,000 retail systems, and the platform now powers delivery options for thousands of retailers across the UK, Europe, and the US. |
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Goodstack Featured in Forbes, About Powering Generosity on a Global Scale |
Goodstack provides an all-in-one platform that enables businesses, platforms, and consumers to donate to verified nonprofits anywhere in the world. They have processed billions of dollars in donations and are trusted by leading brands such as LinkedIn, Canva, and Atlassian. We first led Goodstack’s pre-seed round 2015, and it’s great to see its continued impact being recognised. You can read the full article here. |
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- At the 2025 OBN Awards, Novai won ‘Best Early Stage Medtech Company’, while Neuronostics won ‘Most Transformative HealthTech Company of the Year’
- Congratulations to Tembo for being recognised as Scale-Up of the Year at the Lloyds British Business Excellence Awards
- MapMortar won the UKPA Award for Decarbonising the Built Environment
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Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment, and you are unlikely to be protected if something goes wrong. Read more. |
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You are receiving this email because you signed up to the Ascension Newsletter Ascension is an early-stage venture capital firm built by exited entrepreneurs to back the next generation of tech and impact founders. Since 2015, Ascension has invested in 150+ start-ups across its (S)EIS & Institutional funds - our specialist approach and extensive sector reach allow us to identify and scale pioneering tech enterprises. With over £100m under management, Ascension has been one of London's most active VCs over the past decade, with a particular focus on backing impact businesses leveraging the power of technology to solve some of the world's biggest problems. For more information, ascension.vc.Want to stop receiving messages from us? Unsubscribe |
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