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Neupulse raises £3m to accelerate delivery of Tourette’s wristband

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Neupulse Device

Neupulse, a University of Nottingham spin-out developing a wrist-worn neurotherapeutic device to help manage the symptoms of Tourette Syndrome, has secured £3m in new funding to scale sales and accelerate its path to market.

The round was led by Eos Advisory and the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II, through appointed fund manager Mercia Ventures, with participation from both new and existing investors. The funding will support the Nottingham-based company as it advances towards commercial launch.

Neupulse’s product is designed to address critical gaps in current treatment options. The company first secured funding from the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II in 2024. The latest round enables it to move from development towards commercial launch in mid-2026, while continuing to build the evidence base required by clinicians, regulators and healthcare systems.

Paul Cable, CEO, Neupulse said: “This investment underlines the unmet need in providing people with conditions like Tourette Syndrome a solution to manage their condition, and as a company, we are driven to improve the lives of individuals with these conditions.”

Ian Rhodes, Chair of the board at Neupulse, added: “This is a great example of advanced biomedical research from a leading UK university creating an initial UK market launch during 2026. This will increasingly benefit the UK economy as the technology scales out globally.”

David Tindall, Senior Investment Manager at the British Business Bank, said: “Neupulse’s growth over the past year, following investment from the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II, has been impressive. By addressing a clear gap in the market and delivering a much-needed solution for those affected, the business exemplifies the Fund’s commitment to backing ambitious, high-growth companies. This latest round of funding will further support Neupulse in developing and launching new treatment options.”

Andrew McNeill, Investor Director at Eos, said: “We are delighted to support the next chapter of Neupulse as they move towards commercialisation. This is exactly the kind of company and science we like to back. Passionate founders and technology with the potential to positively impact the lives of people across the globe.”

Sandy Reid, Fund Principal, Mercia Ventures added: “Tourette Syndrome is believed to affect up to two per cent of all children worldwide but currently the only treatments are medication and behavioural therapy, neither of which are ideal solutions. Neupulse’s device offers a genuine alternative that could transform lives.”

The £400m Midlands Engine Investment Fund II covers the entire Midlands region and provides debt finance from £25k to £2m and equity investment up to £5m to help a range of small and medium sized businesses to start up, scale up or stay ahead. The purpose of the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II is to drive sustainable economic growth by supporting innovation and creating local opportunity for new and growing businesses across the Midlands. The Midlands Engine Investment Fund II will increase the supply and diversity of early-stage finance for smaller businesses in the Midlands, providing funds to firms that might otherwise not receive investment and help to break down barriers in access to finance.

Image courtesy of Neupulse.

University of Nottingham spin-out MatAlytics secures investment to transform industrial asset monitoring

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Decorative image of lives through space

MatAlytics Ltd is redefining how industrial operators understand, monitor and extend the life of critical assets. The company applies physics-informed artificial intelligence (AI) to deliver real-time, high-fidelity insight into structural health, enabling faster and more confident decision-making across asset-intensive industries. 

The investment round is being led by Momenta Ventures, a leading industrial impact venture capital firm, alongside the University of Nottingham and other contributors. The funding will enable MatAlytics to scale its technology and accelerate deployment across asset-intensive sectors, including energy and power generation. 

MatAlytics was founded on more than a decade of applied research undertaken at the University of Nottingham, focused on understanding how materials behave under complex mechanical and thermal conditions. The company’s flagship CITRUS platform, initially prototyped with funding from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), applies physics-informed neural networks to deliver real-time insight into structural integrity, enabling engineers to monitor stress, fatigue, and damage accumulation during operation. 

CITRUS has benefited from early validation and technical feedback through exploratory studies with leading industrial organisations, including EDF and Uniper UK. These engagements focus on fatigue-sensitive, high-value components in power generation and energy infrastructure, where both downtime and over-conservatism incur high costs. 

Dr Benedikt Engel, CEO and Co-Founder of MatAlytics, said: 
“Most asset failures don’t happen because engineers lack models. They happen because those models stop at the design phase, while the asset keeps aging in operation. What we’ve built at MatAlytics brings engineering truth into live decision-making. By combining physics with real operational data, operators can see damage accumulating as it happens and act before risk becomes failure. That shift, from periodic assessment to continuous integrity, is what unlocks both safety and performance.” 

While many industrial analytics platforms rely on data-driven prediction or offline simulation, MatAlytics operates in a distinct category. Traditional monitoring solutions depend on sparse historical data and black-box models that struggle with rare but catastrophic failure. At the same time, other physics-based AI approaches primarily focus on accelerating design workflows and stop short of live operational use. 

MatAlytics is deploying physics-informed AI in real operating environments, where temperature, load and fatigue continuously affect component integrity. By generating its own high-fidelity simulation data and embedding true mechanical behaviour directly into its models, the platform avoids bias, remains robust even when data is limited, and delivers real-time insight that operators can trust. 

This positions MatAlytics ahead of incumbent monitoring vendors and emerging digital twin providers as industrial markets shift from descriptive analytics towards continuous, decision-grade integrity intelligence. 

“MatAlytics closes the gap between models and machines. They bring the rigour of finite element analysis into a real-time, accessible workflow, enabling engineers to validate decisions with speed, traceability and fidelity,” said Jerry O’Gorman, Partner at Momenta Ventures. “We are excited to support their journey and help scale their impact globally.” 

With Momenta Ventures backing, MatAlytics is poised to bring real-time engineering insight into day-to-day industrial decision-making, strengthening asset integrity, resilience and performance at scale. 

Read the full announcement on Momenta Ventures website. 

BLUESKEYE AI selected for Google for Startups – AI in Health

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BLUESKEYE AI, a global leader in ethical artificial intelligence to objectively MEASURE social, emotional, and medically relevant expressed behaviour, BETTER than ever before, today announced it has been selected for a prestigious spot in the Google for Startups’ Growth Academy: AI for Health—an exclusive, game-changing program that supports promising AI-powered health innovation companies with the goal of enabling a positive impact on global healthcare systems.

The programme saw 25 companies from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa chosen after a rigorous selection process. Blueskeye is one of only three companies participating in the programme from the UK. In May, two of Blueskeye’s founders will head to Poland to kick off the three-month hybrid programme.

BLUESKEYE AI measures what was previously unmeasurable. Whereas the current gold standard for mental health assessment typically relies on infrequent and subjective self-reports or lengthy in-person clinical interviews, Blueskeye provides objective, honest, and fast measurement of the severity of anxiety, depression, fatigue, and other medical conditions that change the way you express yourself through face and voice behaviour. This will help prevent costly treatment through early intervention, and enable precision medicine. 

Today, Blueskeye provides face and voice analysis to customers in the Automotive, Health, and Social Robotics markets. In the Health space, its B-Healthy Platform supports clinical trials with clinical grade app-delivered tasks that let pharmaceutical companies collect ecologically valid data of previously unavailable digital endpoints. B-Healthy can help healthcare professionals and life science companies collect objective health measures, better understand patient conditions, and design personalised responses which could provide wider access to Blueskeye’s innovations.

Professor Michel Valstar, founder and Blueskeye’s Chief Evangelist and Scientific Officer said: “The Google For Startups program is a fantastic opportunity for BLUESKEYE AI as we continue to strengthen our position in the market. With ongoing clinical trials and increasing adoption of our technology, the program’s access to global experts, peer innovators, and ongoing mentorship will provide invaluable support as we continue our commercial growth and prepare for team expansion.”

Noam Feinstein, Senior Startup Partner Manager and Campus Lead at Google for Startups, added: “We’re excited to welcome BLUESKEYE AI to the Growth Academy: AI for Health. Their integrated approach to transforming healthcare with AI stood out in our selection process. Google is proud to support their mission and connect them with other visionary companies who are redefining the future of health.”

Participants in the program will benefit from virtual and in-person sessions focused on AI best practices, product design, leadership, responsible innovation, and customer growth, with ongoing technical support from Google’s expert teams—even after the programme ends.

About BLUESKEYE AI:

BLUESKEYE AI uses machine learning to objectively MEASURE social, emotional, and medically relevant expressed face and voice behaviour, BETTER than ever before. This helps clinicians, patients and their friends and families assess, treat and monitor health, mood and mental state. Its solutions span across healthcare, automotive, social robotics and other industries.

Learn more at www.blueskeye.com 

Face and voice recognition technology set to transform diagnosis of perinatal depression

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Artificial intelligence (AI) technology developed to use face and voice recognition to help recognise and predict depression in pregnant women and new mums has received funding to develop it as a clinical tool.

University of Nottingham Spin out company BlueSkyeye AI Ltd has secured £3.4 million to pursue its mission to improve people’s quality of life through the use of its proprietary face and voice analysis technology with the development of a tool to help diagnose peri and post-natal depression.

Perinatal mental health (PMH) problems are those which occur during pregnancy or in the first year following the birth of a child and affect up to 27% of new and expectant mums and covers a wide range of conditions. However, research has shown that negative attitudes and stigma towards diagnosis and treatment can result in women avoiding seeking help.

The research team have developed the Avacado app that can use face and voice recognition to predict the indicators of depression in women from 3 months pregnant to 6 months post-partum. The app can detect facial muscle actions,speech rate, and tone of voice, which is fed into the artificial intelligence technology alongside questionnaire data to analyse emotional state and provide an indication of the risk of depression.

At present the app is used as an indicator of persistent low mood, the next stage is to develop it into a clinical device that can be used to aid the diagnosis of depression and signposting for help and treatment. The team have worked with the Institute of Mental Health to develop the Avacado app and over the next year will work with them and Nottingham University Hospitals to conduct a clinical trial with volunteers early next year.

This emerging technology has multiple applications and the funding will also be used to serve the rapidly growing needs of the Digital Health & Wellbeing and Automotive sectors. From 2024 all new cars sold in the EU must have camera-based driver safety monitoring systems installed. The team will research how these cameras can be used to detect inattention or health events to enhance safety and wellbeing for the drivers and passengers of vehicles.

Founded in 2019, BlueSkeye AI is an Award winning, early stage Healthtech spin-out from the University of Nottingham’s School of Computer Science. It was established by Professor Michel Valstar (CEO) and Dr Anthony Brown (CTO), and Chief Machine Learning and Software Engineer Dr Timur Almaev. The funding was led by XTX Ventures, which invested alongside Foresight Group, the University of Nottingham and a consortium of other VCs and high-net-worth individuals.

“The demand for alternative pathways to access mental healthcare is enormous, and continues to grow by the day. We’re committed to disrupting traditional approaches to healthcare to help improve the quality of people’s lives, and we’re particularly focused on the perinatal mental health sector. With the support of XTX Ventures, Foresight Group and other investors, we’ll strengthen the rollout of new clinical trials and product development, and champion the benefits of technology for reinforcing healthcare provision on a national, regional and global basis.” Professor Michel Valstar, Co-Founder and CEO at BlueSkeye AI and Honorary Professor at the University of Nottingham

For more information please visit Blueskeye AI

Steve Cliffe joins BlueSkeye AI as it scales the development of its technology and customer portfolio

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BlueSkeye AI appoints Steve Cliffe to its board of directors.

BlueSkeye has deepened the deep tech expertise on its board by appointing former CEO of Ultraleap, Steve Cliffe as a Non-Executive Director and special advisor.  Steve Cliffe joins BlueSkeye as the company scales and advances its ethical AI technology, partnerships and customer portfolio.

Rebecca Ganz, Chair of BlueSkeye board and Non-Executive Director at Bolton NHS trust, said “we are really looking forward to having Steve join us. BlueSkeye has ambitious plans to apply its proprietary technology within clinical and industry contexts in pursuit of transforming lives and improving global mental health. We anticipate benefitting significantly from Steve’s broad experiences and knowledge.”

Steve brings more than two decades of executive leadership experience to BlueSkeye. In September 2021, Steve won the TechSpark LifeTime Achievement Award in recognition of his contribution to  leadership of Ultraleap, the global leader in hand tracking and haptics technology. Steve was founding CEO of Ultraleap, during this time his achievements included growing the company to a global team of 170, overseeing several successful funding rounds, leading international expansion and managing acquisitions.

“It is wonderful to welcome Steve to our Board and have him support our growth and ambition”, said CEO of BlueSkeye, Professor Michel Valstar.  “Steve will bring a wealth of industry experience to BlueSkeye as we focus on our long -term goal of becoming one of the most impactful companies in the social robotics and health and wellbeing sectors”.

“I am delighted to join the BlueSkeye Board and look forward to working with Michel and the BlueSkeye leadership team, and the entire board as BlueSkeye moves to an exciting new phase of growth”, Steve Cliffe said.  “There has never been a more exciting or appropriate time for ethical AI and machine learning to inform the developing Social Robotics and Virtual Assistants sector and to contribute to the evolution of the delivery of healthcare.  I am excited to bring my experience to transform these markets with BlueSkeye”.

As leader of Ultraleap, Steve Cliffe has overseen a number of strategic investments and  acquisitions including San Francisco’s Leap Motion which significantly enhanced Ultraleap’s IP portfolio and product offering. Steve’s leadership of Ultraleap saw the company recognised as one of the 50 most innovative in the West of England and he was instrumental in securing major deals that have seen Ultraleap’s technology installed in virtual reality, augmented reality, automotive markets amongst others.

An alumnus of Nottingham University, Steve studied Electronic and Electrical Engineering and is delighted to be supporting BlueSkeye, an SME spin-out from Nottingham University. “It is good to be back in Nottingham after many years and to the commercialisation of innovative world-leading technology based on Michel’s rigorous evidence-base”.

Steve Cliffe’s appointment to BlueSkeye follows several other recent hires that have joined to support the rapid expansion and extension of the company.

More about Blueskeye