South Yorkshire Tech Investment Q3 Insights

We've been tracking deal flow in the region using Dealroom and Beauhurst data platforms, so we're uncovering investment activity for tech companies over the summer. Fundraising was at £17 million this quarter, twice as much as Q2 in 2025 and similar to Q1, which was higher than the previous two quarters of 2024 at £20.9 million. This year’s Series A funding is already the highest since 2021.

Quarterly funding rounds in South Yorkshire startup companies excluding grants

The largest funding rounds include a Series B extension round for Buy Now Pay Later vehicle fintech Bumper, raising an additional £8 million in equity funding. This brings the total Series B investment to £20 million from leading automotive investors, including Autotech Ventures, Suzuki Global Ventures, Porsche Ventures, JLR’s InMotion Ventures and Shell Ventures.

Sheffield-based clean energy company MOPO has secured a £5 million growth equity investment from Norfund, Norway’s development finance institution. The funding strengthens MOPO’s push to scale its solar-powered battery rental service across Sub-Saharan Africa, bringing its VC funding this year to over £10 million.

Tickets for Good is a leading platform providing free and discounted event tickets to healthcare staff, teachers, and charity workers. The Sheffield startup announced the launch of its Belgian business and a new funding round of £3 million by Leansquare, having already distributed over a million tickets in the UK, Europe and the USA.

AI manufacturing spinout based in Rotherham, Productive Machines, and hyper-personalised gaming platform Immersely, both received seed funding rounds from deeptech innovation agency Digital Catapult. Barnsley's cybersecurity startup Optimise Cyber Solutions received early VC funding from Copier Systems.

New spinouts from the University of Sheffield were announced: SilVia Bio, which deconstructs and analyses cell factories for biomanufacturing, and RNA Forge, which bridges the critical gap in mRNA drug development. New and growing startups are moving into workspaces along the Sheffield Innovation Spine, such as Pennine Five and Sheffield Technology Parks.

TECH SY has been deploying our Idea Validation Grants into early-stage tech companies with groundbreaking ideas, allowing them to validate their market potential. The experienced team at Trove Ventures have been supporting some of the founders with their MVP programme to develop their vision into a clean business plan. We'll be sharing more about their progress in the months ahead.

We launched our Scaleup Dashboard at Climb25 in July, integrating Beauhurst and Dealroom datasets to showcase startups with 10–20% growth. This work was done to help investors and stakeholders identify high-potential businesses across South Yorkshire, interpreting data to predict future trends.

Are you looking to be part of the growth story? Join the South Yorkshire Equity Platform for investor visibility and keep your Dealroom profile up to date. You can also use shipshape.vc, a free investment search engine, and share your scale-up news with us to be amplified.

VC Industry Funding Heatmap in South Yorkshire