We may find out next week exactly why Apple was minded to pay up to $100 million for Cambridge speech recognition technology startup VocalIQ in October 2015 – a deal it is fair to say that stunned most hard-wired market watchers.

Online and print technology media across the planet are forecasting that at its Worldwide Developers Conference, which starts in San Jose on June 5, Apple will unveil a Siri-powered home speaker among a suite of new cutting edge products.

VocalIQ was acquired to help Apple catch up Amazon, which also leveraged Cambridge IP in the speech recognition stakes to develop Amazon Echo. Amazon bought Evi (formerly True Knowledge) in 2012 and used it to fashion the Echo product which left Siri in its wake.

With 19 months of VocalIQ technology in its locker at its new base in Cambridge, it is thought that Apple has fashioned a real commercial winner with the new Siri speaker. Cambridge may have a second claim to fame in this play, of course, as Cambridge University dontrepreneur Professor Steve Young also works on the Siri development team.

Tech insiders believe the new speaker will use the Siri voice assistant, bolstered by VocalIQ’s capabilities in the field.

While Apple is one of the most secretive innovators on the planet, the technology media is leaking that the new Siri speaker will hit the ground running with top-of-the-range sound and mic technology and even facial recognition.

It is believed that key employees have been testing the technology in extensive trials.

Big hitting California and Singapore investor Vertex Ventures HC has led a $52 million (£40m) Series B round for Cambridge UK biotech business Bicycle Therapeutics to accelerate development of multiple drug candidates.

Vertex is a US and Asian funding powerhouse and its involvement shows the huge potential of Bicycle’s new class of therapeutics based on its proprietary bicyclic peptide (Bicycle®) product platform. 

The company will now further develop a range of candidates, including Bicycle’s lead molecule, BT1718 – a first-in-class drug for cancers of high unmet need.

Other new investors – Cambridge Innovation Capital and Longwood Fund – joined the round along with existing backers Novartis Venture Fund, SROne, SVLS and Atlas Ventur. 

As part of the financing, Dr Christopher Shen, managing director at Vertex Ventures HC, and Dr Michael Anstey – an investment director at CIC – have joined the Bicycle board.

Dr Shen said: “Bicycle Therapeutics has a highly innovative platform with the potential to transform the course of treatment for patients suffering from a range of diseases, including difficult-to-treat cancers.

“We are delighted to lead this financing and to support Bicycle’s seasoned management team to realise the promise of this new class of therapies.”

Bicycles® can combine properties of several therapeutic entities in a single modality: exhibiting the affinity and selective pharmacology associated with antibodies; the distribution kinetics of small molecules, allowing rapid tumour penetration; and the ‘tuneable’ pharmacokinetic half-life and renal clearance of peptides.

Its lead molecule, BT1718, is the first example of its Bicycle Drug Conjugate® (BDC) technology in which toxic chemical payloads are targeted specifically to malignant tumours, minimising systemic toxin exposure through renal clearance. 

BT1718 targets Membrane Type 1 Matrix Metalloproteinase (MT1-MTP), which is highly expressed in many solid tumours, including triple negative breast cancer and non-small cell lung cancer. 

It is expected to enter the clinic in 2017 in partnership with Cancer Research UK (CRUK). The Series B will also fund additional pipeline programs through early clinical development, the first of which will be selected in the second half of 2017.

Bicycle CEO Dr Kevin Lee said: “This financing represents an important validation of our approach while providing Bicycle with the resources to continue to advance our pipeline and translate our bicyclic peptide technology into important new treatment options for patients.

“We are grateful for the continued strong support from our investors as we move BT1718 rapidly toward the clinic and continue to advance our preclinical programs, including toxin drug conjugates and immune modulators to treat cancer and other debilitating diseases.”

Bicycle Therapeutics’ unique IP is based on the work initiated at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge by the scientific founders of the company, Sir Gregory Winter and Professor Christian Heinis. 

The company is headquartered in Cambridge UK with a US subsidiary in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In March 2017 it became the first life science company to win the Disruptive Technology category of the Business Weekly Awards.

Cambridge superchip architect ARM today launched a new technology suite designed to revolutionise the global use of Artificial Intelligence, delivering virtual reality capabilities to a range of devices at the fastest speeds ever witnessed and in the most secure environment ever engineered.

The first processors based on ARM DynamIQ technology take a huge stride towards boosting AI performance by more than 50x over the next three to five years. And the breakthrough will deliver further growth at an incredible pace for the business as ARM ramps up from its Cambridge UK headquarters.

ARM is confident it can double the number of chips that its technology partners will ship over the next five years to a staggering 100 billion.

To put that into perspective, ARM says 50 billion chips were shipped in the 22 years from birth to 2013 – then came an explosive burst of productivity as 50bn chips were shipped in just four years to 2017. Now ARM says it expects that 100 billion chips will be circulated around the globe between now and 2021 as it accelerates AI experiences “from edge to cloud.”

Nandan Nayampally, VP and general manager at ARM’s Compute Products Group, said that in more than a dozen years with the business he had “never been more excited about a product delivering such a boost to single-threaded performance without compromising our efficiency leadership.”

One element of the comprehensive suite of products – the ARM Mali-G72 GPU – expands virtual reality, gaming and machine learning capabilities on premium mobile devices with 40 per cent more performance. Autonomous driving – one of the red hot nextgen technologies currently in sharp focus – will also benefit from the innovation.

Nayampally said: “AI is already simplifying and transforming many of our lives and it seems that every day I read about or see proofs of concept for potentially life-saving AI innovations. 

“However, replicating the learning and decision-making functions of the human brain starts with algorithms that often require cloud-intensive compute power. 

“Unfortunately, a cloud-centric approach is not an optimal long-term solution if we want to make the life-changing potential of AI ubiquitous and closer to the user for real-time inference and greater privacy. 

“In fact, survey data we will share in the coming weeks shows 85 per cent of global consumers are concerned about securing AI technology, a key indicator that more processing and storing of personal data on edge devices is needed to instill a greater sense of confidence in AI privacy.

“Enabling secure and ubiquitous AI is a fundamental guiding design principle for ARM considering our technologies currently reach 70 per cent of the global population.

“As such, ARM has a responsibility to rearchitect the compute experience for AI and other human-like compute experiences. To do this, we need to enable faster, more efficient, and secure distributed intelligence between computing at the edge of the network and into the cloud.”

ARM DynamIQ technology, which the company initially previewed back in March, was the first milestone on the path to distributing intelligence from chip to cloud.

Today ARM hits another key milestone, launching its first products based on DynamIQ technology, the ARM Cortex-A75 and Cortex-A55 processors. The products are enhanced by a secure foundation for billions of devices – ARM TrustZone technology – to fortify the SoC in edge devices. 

The Cortex-A75 has been designed to deliver a breakthrough single-threaded performance. Nayampally said: “The Cortex-A75 delivers a massive 50 percent uplift in performance and greater multicore capabilities, enabling our partners to address high-performance use cases including laptops, networking, and servers, all within a smartphone power profile. 

The Cortex-A55 is being marketed as the new industry-leader in high-efficiency processing.

Nayampally said: “SoCs based on Cortex-A53 came to market in 2013 and since then ARM partners have shipped a staggering 1.5 billion units, and that volume is continuing to grow rapidly. 

“That’s an extremely high bar for any follow-on product to surpass. Yet, the Cortex-A55 is not your typical follow-on product. With dedicated AI instructions and up to 2.5x the performance-per-milliwatt efficiency relative to today’s Cortex-A53 based devices, the Cortex-A55 is the world’s most versatile high-efficiency processor.

“Software is central to future highly-efficient and secure distributed intelligence. The ARM ecosystem is uniquely positioned to deliver the breadth of disruptive software innovation required to kickstart the AI revolution. 

“To further support our latest CPU and GPU IP, we are also releasing a complete software development environment. Our ecosystem now has the opportunity to develop software optimised for DynamIQ ahead of hardware availability through a combination of ARM virtual prototypes and DS-5 Development Studio.

“As ARM prepares to work with its partners to ship 100 billion chips over the next five years, we are more agile than ever in enabling our ecosystem to guide the transformation from a physical computing world into a more natural computing world that’s always-on, intuitive and of course, intelligent. Today’s launch puts us one step closer to our vision of ‘Total Computing’ and transforming intelligent solutions everywhere compute happens.”

• Picture credit – Getty Images

Cambridge business UltraSoC has completed a £5 million ($6.4m) funding round to drive continued deployment of its technology and realise its vision of embedding intelligent analytics capabilities into every chip.

Atlante Tech leads a strong line up of new investors including Enso Ventures, Oxford Capital, and successful CEO and serial entrepreneur Guillaume d’Eyssautier, who join existing investors Octopus Ventures and South East Seed Fund (FSE Group).

UltraSoC CEO Rupert Baines told Business Weekly the St John’s Innovation Centre company would be growing and recruiting on the back of the raise.

He said: “Hard tech is back in favour with the UK and global investment community, with recent funding for Ultrahaptics, Graphcore and SiFive (a fellow RISC-V proponent), plus successful exits at Movidius and Mobileye. 

“Our investors are excited by the potential of UltraSoC’s technology and are committed to supporting our aim of putting intelligent analytics into every chip.”

As part of the funding, Miles Kirby of Oxford, Kirill Mudryy of Enso and Alvise Bonivento of Atlante will join the UltraSoC board, alongside existing investor representative Luke Hakes (Octopus), board chair Chris Gilbert and non-executive director Chris Wade.

UltraSoC’s semiconductor intellectual property (SIP) enables designers to easily and cost-effectively create complex SoCs (systems on chip) with built-in intelligence that continuously monitors and responds to real-world behaviour. This allows SoCs to optimise power consumption and performance and deal with security threats or safety breaches.

Successful development of the company’s debug tools and increased awareness of the technology’s potential benefits has meant a series of significant commercial engagements, with more in the pipeline.

Amongst others, HiSilicon (Huawei), Imagination Technologies, Movidius (now Intel), and Microsemi all use UltraSoC technology in their designs, delivering proven hardware-embedded benefits to their customers. To ensure these benefits are accessible to customers in all sectors across the globe, UltraSoC partners with leading names in the semiconductor industry including ARM, Baysand, Cadence/Tensilica, CEVA, Codasip, Lauterbach, MIPS and Teledyne LeCroy.

The significant line-up of new and existing investors in this funding round reflects the company’s growing commercial traction and technological progress. Likewise, the company’s potential is being realised as the need for safety, security and performance-tuning becomes critical.

Embedded analytics allows the chip to monitor and optimise its own behaviour at a hardware level and provides insights that enable engineers to make improvements and fix problems.

The same technology can detect evolving real-world threats and problems – for instance those caused by malicious attacks. These features benefit any electronic system but are particularly attractive in the automotive and high-performance computing (HPC) sectors.

The investment in UltraSoC also reflects changes taking place in market areas where embedded analytics offers chip makers and their customers a distinct competitive advantage. 

Dr Alvise Bonivento of lead investor Atlante Tech commented on this point: “UltraSoC has a great team, technology and substantial commercial traction. The time is right for UltraSoC’s embedded intelligence to make a significant difference to mass market and mission critical applications.”

UltraSoC’s flagship product line is a suite of semiconductor IP that allows chip designers to integrate an intelligent analytics infrastructure into the core hardware of their devices. 

By monitoring and analysing the real-world behaviour of entire systems via UltraSoC’s intelligent analytics embedded in the silicon, engineers can take action to reduce system power consumption, increase performance, protect against malicious intrusions, and ensure product safety.

These capabilities address applications in a broad range of market sectors, from automotive and IoT products, to at-scale computing and communications infrastructure.

Silverpeak, the technology investment bank, acted as exclusive financial adviser to UltraSoC in the transaction.

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: Rupert Baines

Cambridge, UK-born technology designed to help mobile phone users suffering from hearing loss is being rolled out globally after Manx Telecom subsidiary Vannin Ventures bought a majority shareholding in Goshawk Communications to underpin international expansion.

The technology is the brainchild of Goshawk co-founder Matthew Turner who is relocating from the UK to the low taxed centre of the Isle of Man to help steer global commercialisation.

Goshawk chairman and co-founder Charles Henshaw said the business will continue to have a presence in Cambridge – it is currently based at Allia’s Future Business Centre – adding: “Our association with Cambridge has always been paramount to our success.”

Goshawk focuses on innovative software solutions to improve speech clarity and intelligibility over modern telecoms networks, in particular for those with addressable hearing needs.

Matthew Turner said: “We are really proud to see our technology become part of something that has all the ingredients and potential to improve the lives of millions of global users. As a hearing impaired person myself, I am passionate about the benefits this technology can bring.”

Turner has been hard of hearing since a childhood illness and has assembled a strong team to deliver enhanced audio/voice services to the hearing impaired as well as those with normal hearing looking for better voice/ speech signal requirements.

Boasting a strong entrepreneurial CV, Turner has been involved in an advisory capacity and or lead financial role in over £6 billion worth of international deals and transactions either as CEO, private equity player or employee.

Nine million people in the UK alone experience varying degrees of hearing loss, affecting their ability to use voice services on mobile phones. 
Using personalised auditory profiles that are created for each user, the new company combines intellectual property originally developed by the Goshawk team, with the commercial and technological capability of Vannin Ventures.

Turner said: “Hearing loss is a subjective sense whose impact varies across individuals and cultures. Today, with modern communications critical to our way of life, the need to talk, to speak, to communicate is essential for a person to integrate with our global society.

“Poor product design, lack of inclusive technology and questionable call signal and quality service has resulted in many with hearing loss feeling isolated, embarrassed, weary, nervous and alone – just some of the responses to our survey about the difficulties people with hearing loss face when using the phone.

“Goshawk seeks to address these issues of poor speech clarity and quality using our software platform that is currently under development in two ways. Firstly, as a service delivered over the telecoms or IP network by providing a call quality specific to a person’s hearing loss when using a phone without the need for hearing aids or expensive accessories.

“And secondly, by incorporating the software as part of the product design to facilitate a new, simpler and more cost effective way for those with hearing loss to communicate with more confidence.”

Tom Meageen, managing director of Vannin Ventures, added: “Through clinical trials conducted in the Isle of Man over the last 18 months we have shown that this technology can have a transformative effect in improving communication for those suffering from hearing loss. There is also a significant global market into which this technology can be extended.”

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: (Left to right) Tom Meageen, managing director of  Vannin Ventures; Charles Henshaw, chairman and co-founder of Goshawk Communications; Matthew Turner, CEO of Goshawk and Gary Lamb, CEO of Manx Telecom.

Scientists set to unveil synthetic yeast believe the technique could be reproduced to engineer mammal cells – paving the way towards personalised medicine and bringing humanity closer to artificial life.

An Essex computer scientist is part of a global research team on the brink of creating completely synthetic yeast for the first time.

The team says the scientific breakthrough will lead to a better understanding of cell biology and further advances in medicine and biotechnology. The project team, led by geneticist Jef Boeke from New York University School of Medicine, set out to design and build a living one-cell microorganism. They had previously created one of the 16 chromosomes which make up yeast. 

They have now successfully created five more and are on track for being able to create completely synthetic yeast by the end of the year.

Dr Giovanni Stracquadanio (pictured above), lecturer at the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at the University of Essex, is part of the research team which has just published its findings in a series of papers published in Science. 

Scientists have used yeast as a model organism because these cells share many features with human cells, but are simpler and easier to study.

The synthetic chromosomes, containing DNA, were entirely designed on a computer, in a very similar way to how we design cars and microchips. The resulting synthetic yeast could be used to produce drugs or new types of fuel.

Dr Stracquadanio said: “We have shown that it is possible to redesign a cell on a computer. As a computer scientist, I designed and developed algorithms to recode and edit the DNA sequence of yeast chromosomes.

“These methods are now part of the open-source software called BioStudio.  A key aspect was to establish the methods to analyse data to check that our edits did not affect the fitness of the synthetic cells. This computer-aided biological design automation approach has reduced the design process from months to weeks and minimised human errors.

“The development of this, and other technologies, is the first step to engineer more complex cells – like mammal cells – and potentially paves the way towards personalised medicine.”

Cambridge data management specialist 1Spatial suffered post-tax losses of £18.3 million despite an increase in revenues from continuing operations in the financial year to January 31. The company had posted a modest £12k profit the previous year.

Despite its already low share price falling over 10 per cent when the UK markets opened on Tuesday, the company says it is well positioned for growth – notably in the United States.

It has renewed a £3m banking overdraft facility with Natwest which it says “should provide sufficient working capital for the business for the foreseeable future.”

1Spatial appears to be pinning its hopes for a financial bounceback on expansion opportunities in the US. The company describes it as “a growth market for 1Spatial working alongside key customers and partners such as US Census and ESRI.”

Last month the group exercised its final option to acquire the remaining 27 per cent of 1Spatial Inc for $0.9m (£0.7m) through the issue of shares – securing 100 per cent ownership to provide the anticipated US growth springboard.

Executive chairman Andy Roberts, said: “1Spatial is well-positioned in a very viable and interesting part of the market and has developed a unique patented technology that we now need to fully extend and exploit.

“We have a strong management team, which combined with our in-depth subject matter expertise and technology-led solutions and services, gives the business the opportunity to develop into a significant force in the market.

“Early trading in Q1 of the 2018 financial year has been strong, and our workforce is fully informed, motivated and energised. 

“This financial year is focused on establishing a sound growth platform for the future in order to fully maximise the opportunity presented by our technology and leverage the key partnerships that we are now fully engaged with.

“I am confident that we are now well placed to grow a substantial, profitable and cash-generative business out into the future.”

Former CEO Marcus Hanke left the business in December 2016 and 1Spatial has disposed of or closed loss-making businesses. On the flip side, it has invested in the US team with key hires in sales – chiefly the appointment of Sheila Steffenson, who was made president of the US business. 
 
She is said to have significant experience in the US geospatial market and of working with 1Spatial’s key customers and partners such as US Census Bureau and ESRI.

Cambridge engineering software pioneer AVEVA Group saw its market cap dip to £1.29 billion and its shares fall 33p after a set of results for the year to March 31 that flattered to deceive despite a return to growth.

Favourable currency exchange rates bolstered revenues that were 7.1 per cent up at £215.8 million. Adjusted profit before tax increased 7.4 per cent to £55m.

The company trumpeted “significant new customer wins in growth markets and industry verticals, with North America and Power performing strongly” and announced a final dividend of 27p  – taking the total dividend to 40p per share, an increase of 11.1 per cent.

While remaining upbeat, CEO James Kidd (pictured) stated that times remained challenging. He said: “AVEVA’s performance was resilient in the context of challenging conditions in our core Oil & Gas and Marine end markets. This demonstrated the strength of our business model, with high levels of recurring revenue and continued strong cash generation. 

“We made good progress in delivering against our growth strategy, with significant new order wins in the Owner Operator market, growing sales of our ‘More Than 3D’ products and success in broadening our end market exposure.

“Although the timing of a return to material demand growth in our core end markets is difficult to predict, I am confident that our strategy will deliver good growth in the medium-term and that AVEVA is well positioned to benefit from a recovery in our end markets.”

Brokers remain split on whether shareholders should stick or twist in terms of buying, selling or holding the stock. Finance News Daily reports that among 16 analysts covering AVEVA, six had a Buy rating, two Sell and eight Hold. 

We all know Cambridge as synonymous with its university colleges and with that, the thousands of students that flock to the city each year.

You can’t walk down King’s Parade without passing several groups of fresh faced students, often with their nose in a book. How we accommodate students however, may be key to the sustainable success of the city. It poses the question: are we doing this as efficiently as possible?
 
Over the last few years there has been a dramatic increase in the number of purpose-built student accommodation rooms in Cambridge to support the sharp rise in students attending the University of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin – some 40,000 students in total between them.

This includes schemes such as CB1 and developments under construction on the former Wests Garage, Newmarket Road as well as rooms proposed on the Cheddars Lane site.

Historically, student direct lets did not exist in Cambridge city centre; it was an asset class investors and developers just weren’t interested in, mainly because it was two risky and the two main universities in the city provided their own accommodation. 

However, in 2012, Brunswick House was developed by McLaren Properties which gave students the choice to live independently in brand new accommodation in a well-connected location.

A year after it opened, McLaren sold the scheme for £26 million at a 6.25 per cent yield, which was ultimately the catalyst for the development of the city’s direct let student housing market. The quality of the stock has steadily improved due to student requirements around the size, services, and amenities that they expect, as well as the location of the accommodation.

Latterly the council has enforced design guidelines that stipulate how large rooms should be as well as the inclusion of standard services, such as managed car parking. However, there is little discussion between the student body, university, council, and developers about the types of housing stock that is required.

Notably, there has been a shift in student demand from a studio apartment to cluster accommodation. Thankfully this has started to result in the universities, when asked to consult on planning applications, recommending that studio based schemes are turned down in favour of what they term, ‘twodios’. These two-bedroom apartments provide more space and ultimately an alternative option which was previously limited by the very over crowded studio market.

Interestingly, rents have risen steadily since 2012 from £165 per week to £210 per week per bedroom. However, demand has in recent months started to taper off, which reflects the variety of choice that students have compared to a few years ago.

September 2016 was the first time that all the student accommodation was not fully let. This has resulted in investors starting to look elsewhere for investment opportunities in the city.

The real issue is that growth in the sector has driven up land values making sites more expensive to develop. This has pushed the development of student schemes to the periphery of the city e.g. North West Cambridge and the creation of ‘student villages’.

While attractive, these villages are often inhabited by the post-graduates and students enrolled in Masters and so unattractive to the undergraduate intake, which prefers to be near the town or university in a more bustling location.

It is harder to develop new schemes in the centre of town because of its historical nature but those that are close to the action and lecture halls obviously have higher rents than those further out in secluded areas, without the basic standards that the students demand and require.

Fundamentally, there is still a disconnect between the students, housing suppliers/developers and the universities. For this asset class to remain resilient the developers need to liaise with the universities to coordinate development that is off campus to ensure that it doesn’t compete so rents are all aligned and helpful for the students.

This, in turn, will provide annual rent income that the developers require and ensure the commitment from funds and investors buying and maintaining adequate student accommodation that they want and need.