Cambridge startup Decorte Future Industries has won £50k from Innovate UK to fund final R & D trials of advanced technology intelligent clothing in care homes to help combat coronavirus.

It is the maximum Innovate UK was mandated to award in the ‘Business-led innovation in response to global disruption’ competition.

As Business Weekly revealed in February, DFI (then in stealth) has developed intelligent, always-fitting clothing with embedded AI controls, which is machine washable and can be tumble dried – stealing a march on rival products from US and Korean tech giants.

The business, spearheaded by coding ace Dr Roeland Decorte, has now put its foot on the gas to secure venture investment having applied the brake temporarily following the March 23 UK lockdown.

Dr Decorte said he was thrilled beyond belief at the Innovate UK grant which further validated the groundbreaking technology.

“It is fabulous to know that our core technology could help to continuously monitor and empower the elderly and vulnerable in care homes.

“Innovate UK let us know they were astounded to receive over 8600 applications, their highest number ever; in fact, they say, this is more than all competitions in the 2019/20 financial year put together. This was possibly the most competitive grant in Innovate UK’ history.”

Decorte Future Industries, officially launched in August 2019, builds body-adaptive (always-fitting) intelligent clothing that allows single-platform remote monitoring of multimodal biometrics (vitals, including body-temperature, coughing) of the wearer. 

It further enhances the mobility of the user by allowing them to employ the same embedded hardware to remotely control devices through voice, gesture and touch commands, e.g. through touching their sleeve, using existing third-party AI. 

The business consists of Cambridge PhDs and engineers, advised by the Director of Engineering at Raspberry Pi; Cambridge University research, amongst other sources, has demonstrated that wearables can detect, and at times even predict and prevent, health issues.

While the product was initially conceived in the context of the defence sector, a retired care home CEO and adviser recognised the need for such single-platform remote monitoring and mobility-enhancing technology in the care sector, investing £5k+ – prompting FFI to start exploring that market in early 2020. 

Dr Decorte says that just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the UK, the company and its EEN-awarded adviser – also the incoming head of innovation for a UK care home chain – investigated deploying the technology to render care more efficient and effective. 

In response to COVID-19, the company is now seeking to supercharge existing R & D to build and deploy as swiftly as possible the most basic, cheapest version of its technology, to allow remote monitoring of the elderly and vulnerable during the crisis.

Dr Decorte says: “Lives are being actively lost due to the lack of technologies enabling comprehensive 24/7 monitoring of vulnerable people in care. 

“Our proposed project is a six-month trial and final R & D process to take place in a single care home, to test efficiency, effectiveness of, as well as response of residents to such biometric monitoring and enhanced mobility through intelligent clothing. 

“In a recent SEHTA survey investigating the lack of technology in care, care home administrators and authorities responsible for over two million individuals ‘all seemed to agree that the ideal solution is a single platform into which all stakeholders, sensors and individual devices can feed and access data, and which records and manages everything in a single environment.’

“Intelligent clothing, covering the whole body, renders such a centralised gathering, sending an AI-automated analysis of resident data possible for the first time.

“Our solution would directly address industries and people that have been severely impacted by COVID-19 and hopefully save lives. 

“This will be achieved by making the process of monitoring the elderly and vulnerable in care (and elsewhere) much more efficient and effective, moving away from physical interactions that take place only occasionally at specified time intervals.

“The prevailing process often fails to provide the swift response needed in emergencies such as caused by COVID-19, leading to lost lives. Our solution transforms this lottery to the certainty of tech-enabled 24/7 remote care.

“Our technology would provide a much more responsive and holistic companion to physical monitoring and triage by nurses, carers, NHS staff, or individuals themselves (self-monitoring), allowing algorithms to track body temperature patterns and coughing, using the same criteria as the NHS call centres to flag worrying patterns and to suggest when medical help may need to be sought, or is critical. This would furthermore seriously alleviate pressure on nurses, care workers and other staff. 

“Introducing intelligent clothing that monitors the wearer’s biometrics is clearly an innovative and ambitious project – only possible because of our existing patent-pending, lightweight, low-cost exoskeleton allowing such clothing to fit any body-shape or size. 

“Our clothing would not be a medical device and thus able to be deployed much more quickly, as it does not diagnose or treat, instead being a typical wearable, offering a 24/7 overview and additional protection alongside physical third-party or self-monitoring, especially during those intervals when no monitoring is normally taking place.”

Dr Decorte says third party devices can be integrated into the company’s smart-clothing architecture: these devices simply need to be combined into a single care-focused product in the final R & D process. 

“This grant allows us to immediately start this process and begin engagement with the care industry. The nature of the tech also means that our work can, by definition, be done remotely, with clothing sent to care homes and data processed by the company at home. 

“This Innovate UK success represents the potential birth of a new intelligent clothing industry dramatically enhancing care.”

At present care homes do not have the resources to continuously monitor residents’ health and vitals. Checkups are infrequent, with long intervals, and often rely on simple visual recognition by staff of residents in distress. 

Care home staff – particularly in homes without nursing – are not routinely required to take observations on residents (British Geriatrics Society). In case of sudden-onset or rapidly worsening conditions like COVID19, critical rapid response often comes much too late.

Dr Decorte reasons that the lack of continuous monitoring also means that patterns are hard to establish for staff and the wrong action may be taken: care residents are ‘some of the most complex patients in primary care, with a high rate of unplanned hospital transfer, over half of which may be avoidable’ (Barker et al. 2020, in Age and Ageing 49, 142). 

“This puts unnecessary additional strain on staff and homes – and the NHS. The £16.5 billion-sector, with around 426k residents, is unprepared for the ageing population; demand will outstrip supply by 2022. Unavoidable shifts to home/remote-care  means demand for telehealth will explode, way beyond COVID19- distancing.”

AstraZeneca is scaling manufacturing capability of a new Oxford University COVID-19 vaccine to one billion doses to supply countries worldwide at no profit during the pandemic.

The Cambridge business wants to ensure a vaccine is available across the planet – not just the UK – and its altruism has today been rewarded with a $1 billion windfall from a US power player.

The investment has come from the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) for the development, production and delivery of the vaccine, starting in September.

That development programme includes a Phase III clinical trial with 30,000 participants plus a paediatric trial.

AstraZeneca recognises that the vaccine may not work but is committed to progressing the clinical program with speed and scaling up manufacturing at risk.

Only a week ago the company was targeting 100 million doses of the vaccine but the landscape has changed dramatically and ambitions have been ramped accordingly.

The first agreements are now to supply at least 400 million doses and the company reveals it has total capacity sourced for one billion doses through 2020 and into 2021 and continues to seek opportunities to further scale capacity.

AstraZeneca says it is advancing its ongoing response to address the unprecedented challenges of COVID-19 and collaborating with a number of countries and multilateral organisations to make the Oxford vaccine widely accessible around the world in an equitable manner.

It has secured total manufacturing capacity for one billion doses so far and will begin first deliveries in September. AstraZeneca aims to conclude further agreements supported by several parallel supply chains, which will expand capacity further over the next months to ensure the delivery of a globally accessible vaccine.  

The company is also engaging with international organisations such as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), Gavi the Vaccine Alliance and the World Health Organisation (WHO), for the fair allocation and distribution of the vaccine across borders. 

AstraZeneca is also in discussions with governments around the world to increase access and talking to the Serum Institute of India and other potential partners to increase production and distribution.

CEO Pascal Soriot said: “This pandemic is a global tragedy and it is a challenge for all of humanity. We need to defeat the virus together or it will continue to inflict huge personal suffering and leave long-lasting economic and social scars in every country around the world. 

“We are so proud to be collaborating with Oxford University to turn their ground-breaking work into a medicine that can be produced on a global scale. 

“We would like to thank the US and UK governments for their substantial support to accelerate the development and production of the vaccine. We will do everything in our power to make this vaccine quickly and widely available.”

AstraZeneca has now finalised its licence agreement with Oxford University for the recombinant adenovirus vaccine. The licensing follows the recent global development and distribution agreement with the university’s Jenner Institute and the Oxford Vaccine Group. AstraZeneca has also agreed to support the establishment of a joint research centre at Oxford University for pandemic preparedness research.

A Phase I/II clinical trial of the vaccine began last month to assess safety, immunogenicity and efficacy in over 1,000 healthy volunteers aged 18 to 55 years across several trial centres in southern England. 

Data from the trial is expected shortly which, if positive, would lead to late-stage trials in a number of countries. 

AstraZeneca’s comprehensive pandemic response also includes rapid mobilisation of its global research efforts to discover novel coronavirus-neutralising antibodies to prevent and treat progression of the COVID-19 disease, with the aim of reaching clinical trials in the next three to five months. 

The company has also quickly moved into testing of new and existing medicines to treat the infection, including CALAVI and ACCORD trials underway for Calquence (acalabrutinib) and DARE-19 trial for Farxiga (dapagliflozin) in COVID-19 patients.

AstraZeneca said the scale-up to a billion doses was not anticipated to have any significant impact on its financial guidance for 2020; expenses to progress the vaccine are anticipated to be offset by funding from governments.

Technology hothouse Cambridge Consultants is fielding enquiries to use a new ventilator that it designed for the UK’s fight against COVID-19 from overseas territories where ventilator capacity is limited. 

The international interest in Veloci-Vent makes up for the Government’s decision not to continue funding the device as it deemed that UK demand for such apparatus had already been met.

Business Weekly recently flagged that the sophisticated technology looked set to find global markets as world governments sat up and paid attention to the innovation.

Now, for the first time, Cambridge Consultants has revealed the enormous effort and professionalism that its team poured into developing Veloci-Vent for the national effort.

The device was designed and built at the request of the UK Government for use in the treatment of COVID-19 under the Ventilator Challenge in which several Cambridge innovation teams were involved. 

Created as a new design in a little over six weeks and praised by a panel including ministers, clinicians and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), Veloci-Vent is an achievement to rank alongside any in Cambridge Consultants’ 60-year history, the company said today.

Cambridge Consultants initially received the Government’s call on March 13. Faced with the biggest crisis in decades and the risk that the UK’s ventilator capacity would be overwhelmed, the company said it was proud to assist in the rapid development and manufacture of ventilators to meet the unprecedented challenge faced by NHS hospitals dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. 

This ‘Ventilator Challenge’ involved multiple concurrent streams, with leading technology and engineering firms engaged to build existing, modified or newly designed ventilators at speed.

Despite the company’s long track record in pioneering medical device development, the team knew they’d taken on the challenge of their professional lives: to design and build a completely new ventilator, from a blank sheet of paper to manufactured units – and in just six weeks. 

The team also needed to base their design around components available at scale in the UK, due to supply chain disruption. As a safety-critical medical device it would normally take five or six years to develop a system to the levels of safety and clinical utility necessary for patient deployment. 

High volume supply and extremely rapid manufacture were key objectives, while remaining subject to testing and approval from the MHRA and without compromising the integrity and focus on patient safety that sits at the core of the company’s quality system. 

A team was convened within hours, bringing together a range of disciplines including mechanical engineers, electronic engineers, software engineers, regulatory affairs specialists, physicists, mathematicians, human factors, design and more.

This team, that quickly grew to 185 people, began a programme of work that would run day and night without pause, despite the working constraints of a national lockdown, for a further 46 days.

In the early days of the Ventilator Challenge, when the clinical understanding of COVID-19 was less developed, and urgency superseded all else, the team was guided to design and build an ultra-minimalist device. 

But with an improved clinical understanding of the disease, so the need and direction from government was refined. 

Working with an advisory team that included front line clinicians, the guidance was to develop a robust device fit for as many patients as possible – COVID-19 has no one specific phenotype – aiming for maximum versatility. 

Veloci-Vent was designed from the outset as a fully-featured ventilator, capable of a range of sophisticated and technically challenging functions tailored to the reality of the COVID-19 patient journey. 

While this evolution caused fundamental difficulties to some ‘minimum viable product’ type approaches within the broader programme, a highly flexible underlying architecture and massively parallel work streams meant that the Cambridge Consultants team could respond to changing needs and timescales while never stepping outside of the normal regulatory framework.

Veloci-Vent is based on the design of established ICU pressure-controlled ventilators. It is suitable for long term use, has a familiar user interface and allows standard clinical workflows. 

The device enables the ‘basic’ mandatory ventilation originally envisioned and expands well beyond that, providing a system that responds to patients as they begin to recover and breathe for themselves. 

Patient-triggered ventilation is capable of assisting through various spontaneous breathing modes, supports aspiration (suction) and, ultimately, weaning. 
These more advanced modes provide a system suitable for the longer period of intubation described by both the UK Government’s specification and the team’s discussions with clinicians.

To the relief of the whole country, social distancing measures put in place during March flattened the peak COVID-19 infection rate. The result is that the NHS retained spare critical bed and ventilator capacity and the  Government now expects to meet demand using existing ventilator designs. 

Honouring the huge achievement of the Cambridge Consultants team, Michael Gove MP, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, said: “Thank you for the extraordinary efforts that Cambridge Consultants made to address the increased need for ventilators as a result of COVID-19. 

“The ingenuity and commitment that your team and suppliers have demonstrated is incredible. You brought pace, collaboration and innovation to this challenge, and that is recognised and appreciated across Government. The commitment that you have shown has been truly inspirational.”

Eric Wilkinson, Cambridge Consultants’ CEO, added: “When the country necessarily went into lockdown, our team went to work and I, and all our staff, feel an immense sense of pride in their achievement. 

“I thank the project team and the wider group of colleagues that supported their work, enabling them to focus solely on project delivery. Right from the start, the team used their considerable medical technology skills to fill in gaps in the evolving specification, meaning that many of the later, high-performance requirements were already designed in. 

“As well as producing a fully-working, production-ready ventilator in just 46 days, the team followed all of the necessary quality management systems and microbiological standards required for a safety critical device. 

“Veloci-Vent is not just a working ventilator, but a robust system, built without compromise to safety and all achieved in an almost unbelievable timeframe.”

Joint administrators at BDO are confident of rescuing some money for the two main creditors hit hardest by the collapse of Cambridge Broadband Networks Ltd. But the payout is likely to be a drop in the ocean compared to the £14.5 million the duo are owed. 

Five years of falling sales sent CBNL into a tailspin in 2019, its 20th anniversary year, and BDO was unable to find a buyer after being appointed to attempt a rescue.

The two main preferential creditors – TriplePoint Venture Growth BDC Corp and BMS Finance (UK) Ltd were owed £7.288m and £7.23m, respectively, when CBNL entered administration.

In a report to all creditors, joint administrators Antony Nygate and Colin Haig – appointed on February 6 – expected that there would be sufficient funds to enable a distribution to both the secured and preferential creditors but they  could not say how much or when. They say the company will be dissolved once the administration process is complete.

Global broadband technology specialist CBNL was incorporated in November 1999 and established by 10 Cambridge University engineers who secured private equity funding to develop innovative mobile communications. It based the venture at Cambridge Business Park and had African subsidiaries.

BDO’s report says that CBNL experienced a decline in sales revenue over the past five years. Due to the need to invest in infrastructure and the level of overheads combined with a decline in revenue the company was loss making. Revenue decreased from $37.2m in 2017 to $23.7m in 2018 with an operating loss of $8m. 

During 2019 cash flow pressure continued to mount owing to a trend of continued declining sales in the period. Sales revenue declined to $14m during the nine-month period to September 30 and the business incurred a loss of $7.7m.

In December 2019 management implemented certain measures to restructure operations including a reduction in office space, with the landlord agreeing to reduce rental costs going forward.

In January 2020 revised cashflow forecasts indicated that significant funding would be required in the short term to keep the business afloat. During this period cashflow pressure intensified as key suppliers refused to release stock without payment. 

The shareholders were unable to provide additional investment so the directors sought independent legal advice as to the options available.

BDO had originally been introduced to the company on October 31, 2019 and on November 7 was engaged to conduct an accelerated mergers and acquisitions process and to review the short term cashflow forecast.

A campaign was launched in early November offering the company and/or the business and assets for sale but no offers capable of completing were received for the shares of the company or the business and assets, says BDO.

BDO was further engaged by CBNL on January 22 to undertake contingency planning work and another review of short term cashflow forecast. Due to intensified creditor pressure, a deteriorating cash position and no offers received for the business the directors decided to file a notice of intention  to Appointment. On Jan 30 an application for the appointment of joint administrators was made by the directors.

The joint administrators say it has not been possible to sell CBNL as a going concern “due to the high levels of secured and unsecured debt and lack of funding to allow the company to trade in the longer term.”

The next objective – achieving a better result for creditors as a whole than would be likely if the business was wound up without first being in administration – is said to be “not achievable as we do not anticipate that there will be distribution to unsecured creditors other than via the prescribed part.”

That left the final option which is being pursued – realising property to make a distribution to one or more secured or preferential creditors.

Staff were made redundant immediately after BDO was appointed for the administration process – save six employees retained to help with the wind down of operations and realise the company’s assets.

Cambridge Broadband Networks Group Ltd offered to acquire certain assets and on March 19 a deal was agreed for an initial consideration of £195k – including £60k for Intellectual Property and business rights, and 12k for certain plant, machinery and office equipment.

BDO hopes to sell remaining customer contracts and the share capital of the company’s subsidiary CBNL Nigeria and an offer has been accepted subject to contract. The identity of the buyer and amount agreed is not being disclosed until the sale is completed.

Other book debts of $459,432 and €7,470 will be collected by the administrators with the help of a former employee. The recovery of the residual book debts is at this stage uncertain.

BDO is in the  process of realising £1.265m from the company’s main bank account and around $2k from Silicon Valley Bank accounts.

The value of the company’s net property after allowing for payment of preferential claims will be $3.948m, the administrators say.

CBNL’s website remained operational at the time of writing with no mention of the administration process as far as Business Weekly could determine.

Where now for our promising life sciences and medtech relationship with China and the Chinese? The coronavirus crisis seems to have polarised our opinion of them but strengthened their opinion of us, writes Dr Simon Haworth, head of The Sino-UK fund.

China’s appetite for UK health technology has never been greater. Investment capital awaits us in China if we could only access it, and the vast and growing Chinese market offers us the opportunity to generate the best form of company financing of all – revenue. 

But have travel quarantines and personal prejudice now extinguished any lingering aspirations to re-engage? I think not. There is a way forward, building on what we have learned.

But let’s start with that polarisation of opinion. “Stop eating bats”; “confess to errors made”; “China has shown its true, dark and foreboding colours”; “leave well alone” say some. 

“China’s turn to lead”; “America’s loss is Britain’s gain”; “strong central government has some merit”; “Come to China” say others. 

Both sides are broadcasting their messages with equal vigour, whilst the dangerous oaf blunders on, frightening scientists and others with his unending stream of self-promotion at the expense of all else (Dangerous Oaf? what a beautifully succinct moniker that is for America’s 45th President, as coined by this esteemed newspaper’s CEO Tony Quested).

Board opinion of China has polarised too, depending on how a particular company has traded with China in the past. 

Companies that engaged with ‘old’ China as a sub-contract manufacturing base treat the crisis as a catalyst for change. Worried that too much manufacturing power was concentrated in one geography, many boards had been considering whether to spread manufacturing capacity more widely. 

The crisis galvanises these fears into action and we will see many companies moving manufacturing to different locations. Interestingly one potentially attractive option that is apparently being considered by many, due to its low labour costs and an increasingly stable environment, is Mexico. I can almost hear the US President’s reaction from here.

But companies linked to the innovation economy see the crisis as a catalyst for change in the opposite direction. It is time to take the growth opportunities unique to the Chinese market. Take healthcare, for example, to understand the opportunity. 

Only around 15 per cent of the Chinese population currently accesses Western medicine, whilst the majority still rely on Traditional Chinese Medicine. The Chinese government has set a target of 80 pr cent access to Western Meds as an important commitment of government policy. 

With a population of around 1.5 billion this provides an extraordinary opportunity for our pharma and life sciences companies. Imagine, then, if the world goes into a deep recession. Where will new revenue come from? With the statistics above, China will represent one of the few growth opportunities globally, even if China’s GDP goes backwards. 

Personally, I come from the ‘It’s China’s turn’ camp and have a biased view. We held the baton of world leadership once. America took it from us. China is stepping up to run the next leg – and of course the US is resisting handing it over. 

But new China will surpass US GDP before long and whilst I don’t expect a world dominated by one superpower I do believe that China will be the strongest force in years to come – whether we like it or not.

Much of my China experience has been centred around the now-famous city of Wuhan in Central China. I had never heard of Wuhan before my first visit there but was shown round by a friend at a Chinese contract research firm that I was talking to and he and his colleagues helped me participate in a major local funding competition called the 3551 Talent Program. 

We didn’t win in the first year but in the second year we did – generating hundreds of thousands of pounds of what the Chinese call ‘free money’ ie non-dilutive funding from Chinese government sources designed to attract companies to a particular location. 

As it happens I was in Wuhan – a city that I have been visiting every two months or so for the last eight years – on January 14 this year then flew up to Beijing for meetings with Chinese government ministers before flying back to the UK on January 17 as the crisis took hold. Friends in Wuhan and across China have been giving me a running commentary on the crisis and China’s response since then.

In Wuhan right now one’s degree of lockdown depends on the incidence of COVID-19 in your community – the group of apartment blocks in the gated community you live in. Those with high incidence continue to have strict lockdown measures in place. 

Meanwhile in Beijing – where lockdown measures were almost as stringent as those in Wuhan – travel and quarantine restrictions for those travelling within China have at last been lifted. 

International visitors flying into Beijing still need to spend 14 days in quarantine but visitors arriving in Beijing from within China do not. Life is slowly returning to normal.

But here is the problem. As any China enthusiast can tell you, doing business in China is all about personal relationships and these must be developed face-to-face.

It seems that Zoom might come to the rescue, however. Many of us have been re-trained to make initial contacts by videoconference over these last few weeks. 

Just today I have met a tech team on Zoom to discuss use of their cloud service, had a team meeting that would normally have been held in Nottingham UK and had a 1:1 Zoom update with a friend in Wuhan whom I have always previously met face-to-face. 

He tells me that Zoom and WeChat video conferencing are being embraced but we are yet to prove that the Chinese will accept their use for first meetings once the dust has settled. 

But I believe that the promise is there. More importantly we have confirmation that UK companies can participate in upcoming funding events in Wuhan by video conference. This would be genuinely useful and valuable. 
Meanwhile the most frustrating consequence of the crisis for my colleague Richard Leaver and me is that we have been forced to put our new growth capital fund on hold. 

It will come back, but we have decided to develop a new advisory business to lead the way in the short term which will run alongside the fund once it is back on stream. The Dynastybio advisory business is helping UK companies access China, using our local teams in China to make the local connections and making maximum use of Zoom et al.

The louder the Dangerous Oaf complains, the stronger the relationship between China and Britain becomes. Grant funding, equity funding, subsidiary set up, market access, accelerated clinical trials and industry partnering are all on offer for our biotech, medtech and pharma companies prepared to make the effort. 

We are already in discussion with a number of listed and private life science companies who want to lean on our personal networks in China and our first virtual delegation will be ready soon.

It is time for empathy, virtual engagement, humility and basic common sense on all sides. Much of that will be difficult for some world leaders. 

We have to ensure that we are not amongst them, start looking ahead and preparing for the next big issue of antibiotic resistance, allow ourselves to generate real benefit for UK companies and technologies by re-engaging with new China, and hope that the market realities post COVID-19 help us deliver on the promise of the UK-China relationship.

Cambridge technology innovators Riverlane, Hitachi and Arm are at the heart of a £7.6 million initiative to deliver a highly advanced quantum operating system.

A consortium led by Riverlane, a quantum computing software developer has been awarded the multimillion pound grant from the Government’s Industrial Challenge Strategy Fund.

The project will deliver an operating system that allows the same quantum software to run on different types of quantum computing hardware. 

By working together the quantum operating system, Deltaflow.OS, will be installed on every quantum computer in the UK accelerating the commercialisation of the sector nationally.

Joining the consortium are the UK’s most innovative quantum hardware companies – SeeQC, Hitachi Europe, Universal Quantum, Duality Quantum Photonics, Oxford Ionics, and Oxford Quantum Circuits, along with UK-based chip designer Arm, and the National Physical Laboratory.

Dr Steve Brierley, CEO of Riverlane, said: “We are delighted to have been awarded this grant to build and install the quantum operating system Deltaflow.OS on all leading hardware platforms in the UK.

“Together with consortium partners, we have a unique opportunity to accelerate the commercialisation of the UK quantum technology sector and overtake global competitors in this space.”

Dr M. Fernando Gonzalez Zalba, head of Quantum Computing at the Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory, added: “At Hitachi Europe, we are building a quantum computer based on the very same microprocessor technology that we can find in our laptops, cars and mobile phones. 

“Deltaflow.OS will enable us to deliver a full stack solution that will help solve customer’s greatest computational challenges.”

In the very same way that regular computers need an operating system, quantum computers need one, too. However, there is no quantum version of Windows, IOS or Linux. 

Without an operating system computers would be much less useful. By automating the scheduling of tasks and allocation of resources, such as memory and disk space, operating systems simplify the use of computers so everyone can benefit from them. 

Quantum computers are expected to outperform conventional computers at specific tasks, such as predicting the properties of a new medicine or vaccine. 

To get the best performance out of quantum computers, elements of conventional computers and quantum computers have to be integrated tightly, which makes it difficult to design an operating system.

Deltaflow.OS is the first of its kind. While competitors typically present quantum computers as a ‘black box’, Deltaflow.OS exposes the different elements of the full quantum computing stack. 

This gives users the power to schedule tasks in an optimal way, improving the performance of quantum computers by orders of magnitude compared to other leading approaches. Once the hardware and software are tightly integrated, the performance is expected to improve even further.

Riverlane, which specialises in quantum software, will lead on the development of a dataflow framework, a runtime and powerful quantum applications. 

Leading hardware companies ≠ SeeQC, Oxford Quantum Circuits, Hitachi Europe, Universal Quantum, Oxford Ionics and Duality Quantum Photonics – will evolve their technology and develop firmware for their quantum processors that will later interface with Deltaflow.OS. 

Arm will develop specific control systems emulators. A prerequisite for delivering a portable yet hardware-aware system is a standardised hardware abstraction layer. 

The National Physical Laboratory will coordinate the definition of this standardised interface based on its expertise in developing technical standards for breakthrough technology and will hence play a vital role in delivering the project.

• PHOTOGRAPH: Dr Steve Brierley (centre) with members of the Riverlane team

Featurespace, the Cambridge company that uses AI technology to help financial institutions detect fraud, has raised £30 million of new growth capital.

CEO Martina King says the cash will be used to support continued expansion in the UK, the US, Singapore, Europe and Australia. 

The round was led by Merian Chrysalis Investment Company Limited and also included further funding from a number of existing investors. 

King said: “During these challenging times our machine learning models have automatically adapted to the shift in consumer, business and criminal behaviour. 

“It is our continued focus to deliver industry-leading, fraud and anti-money laundering solutions to our customers and partners.

“We are grateful to our existing investors for continuing to back our growth and we are delighted to welcome Merian Chrysalis to our investment community.”

Richard Watts, portfolio manager at Merian Chrysalis, added: “Featurespace has developed truly innovative technology and provides financial institutions with a world-class solution in the fast-growing fraud detection and prevention market. 

“We are delighted to announce this fantastic addition to the Merian Chrysalis portfolio and we look forward to supporting the Featurespace team as they continue to grow and develop the business.”

The seeds of Featurespace’s Adaptive Behavioral Analytics were sown within the University of Cambridge. The technology takes a unique approach to spotting anomalies to catch fraud and money laundering. 

It’s a real-time, machine-learning software platform for fraud prevention and anti-money laundering risk and scores transactions and other events in more than 180 countries. 

The technology learns the ‘normal’ digital behaviour of each entity at every interaction with a business, spotting anomalies while simultaneously reducing friction and improving customer satisfaction.

Featurespace raised £25m in January 2019 in a round led by Insight Venture Partners and MissionOG and that helped a push into Atlanta where headcount has virtually tripled. The company continues to recruit on both sides of the Atlantic.

UK video games company Frontier Developments is basking in an unprecedented surge that is taking it closer to the magical billion dollar valuation mark.

Its share price has surged on the back of recent announcements to nudge its market cap to almost $816m. 

The company, which is anchored at Cambridge Science Park, recently clinched an exclusive IP licence with Games Workshop to develop and publish a real-time strategy game within the rich and extensive world of Warhammer Age of Sigmar.

Frontier now expects revenue to be towards the top of the previously stated range of £65-73 million for the current financial year ending May 31 with operating profit, as reported under IFRS, anticipated to be within the range of £11-13m.

To offer even more cause for optimism regarding continued growth, a fresh report says global videogames sales rocketed 63 per cent in March alone.

Inspirational CEO David Braben said: “Like many companies selling mainly online in the digital entertainment industry we have seen increases in demand for our products.

“This started in China from February and in much of the rest of the world from Marc, and is likely related to global lockdown conditions. We believe the immersive and creative nature of our games and the engaging play times of hundreds of hours makes them particularly popular in today’s uncertain world.”

The Warhammer licence is another massive coup for the business. Warhammer Age of Sigmar is Games Workshop’s most recent iteration of the globally renowned fantasy setting in which the four Grand Alliances of Order, Chaos, Death and Destruction vie for control of the Mortal Realms. 

Unique and distinct in style, and endless in scope, this ever growing universe sits alongside the far future dystopia of Warhammer 40,000 as the most successful tabletop miniatures games in the world.

Frontier has the exclusive rights to develop and publish a real-time strategy game worldwide on PC and console platforms, together with the rights for streaming services. The game is planned for release in Frontier’s financial year ending May 31.

Frontier’s development roadmap is now stronger than ever, with two major releases from internal development teams now confirmed for each of FY22 and FY23. 

FY22 will benefit from the multi-platform release of a game based on an as yet unrevealed major global IP and the release of Frontier’s first Formula 1 multi-platform management game alongside the 2022 F1 season. 

FY23 will see the release of the 2023 Formula 1 management game and the Warhammer Age of Sigmar multi-platform real-time strategy game.

For the current financial year two internally developed major releases are also planned: Planet Coaster expanding onto PlayStation and Xbox, and a major new paid-for release for Elite Dangerous.

FY21 and beyond will also benefit from releases from Frontier’s third party publishing initiative. Two games have been signed for release in FY21, with a further three already signed for FY22 and scope for more. Five or six third party game releases per year are expected from FY23 onwards.

Frontier acted quickly to transition the majority of its 500+ staff to homeworking during March, prior to the lockdown. Despite this, Frontier was able to release both the Elite Dangerous: Fleet Carriers Beta update and the Planet Zoo: South America Pack on schedule before Easter and to a positive reception.

Braben said it was too early to judge the long-term effect of homeworking on efficiency and there remains significant uncertainty regarding how long the lockdown may continue but the company does not foresee a permanent loss of efficiency.

Braben said: “The company is in a strong position and while the board continues to monitor closely the impact of COVID-19, we do not currently expect to use government employment support or apply for grants. 
“We continue to recruit and we already have a number of new joiners who have started with us by working from home. The business has a strong, debt-free balance sheet with cash of approximately £40 million, which allows us to continue to invest in our strategy of developing and nurturing high quality games.

“We are delighted to announce this licence with Games Workshop. I personally think it’s great news that two such well-established and world-class creative UK companies with global reach are collaborating on a new project. 

“Our roadmap is looking stronger than ever with two games from our internal developments for each of FY22 and FY23 and an exciting portfolio coming up from our third party publishing initiative, starting in FY21.

“I am incredibly proud of the positive reaction of our staff to the challenges of COVID-19 and would like to thank them all for their dedication.”

The coronavirus outbreak hit the entertainment industry hard, causing enormous losses for the companies operating in this sector generally. However, as millions of people started spending more time indoors and online, the last few months have witnessed a surge in video gaming.

According to data gathered by GoldenCasinoNews, from March 16 to March 22, the global video games sales jumped 63 per cent with a total of 4.3 million games sold worldwide. At the same time, like-for-like game sales rose by 44 per cent globally.

In that period, the global console games sales surged by 155 per cent and spending hit $1.5bn in March. The United States ranked as the leading country globally and a recent survey in the US showed that one in five respondents expected to spend more on gaming due to the coronavirus outbreak.

French gamers ranked second with a 38 per cent increase in time spent playing video games. The UK and Germany followed with respective 29 per cent and 20 per cent increases.