Welcome to our weekly South West Tech News roundup, where you can get all the headlines from the past week in one place.
What has our busy tech and digital community been up to this week? From award wins and innovative breakthroughs to unmissable events and capital raised, take a moment to reflect on the hive of daily activity taking place in our region.
If you have a story to share, wizz it over to will@techspark.co – I look forward to hearing from you!
Last night the techSPARK team took over Green Park Station for the SPARKies 2025. Over 300 founders, entrepreneurs, startups, scaleups and community supporters came together at the annual awards night to discover who would take home the eighteen SPARKie trophies.
The likes of Ghyston, Signable, and Astral Systems claimed some of the evening’s top honours, winning Best Place to Work, Scaleup of the Year and Startup of the Year, respectively.
Meanwhile, Taught By Humans, Gather Round and NPK Recovery shone in the new categories, picking up Best Use of AI, Marketing Campaign of the Year and Best Engineering Product.
And finally, the live SPARKies audience crowned Neuronostics as this year’s People’s Choice Award winner.
See The Full List of Winners Here.
Bristol-based Neuronostics were crowned the winner of the People’s Choice Award at the 2025 SPARKies. Earlier in the evening, they had already taken home the Healthtech Business of the Year Award before going on to claim the final SPARKie of the night.
They were up against PawPass, Ilumno Digital and IngeniumAI for the People’s Choice Award, which was decided live on the night by the SPARKies audience.
Neuronostics are no strangers to SPARKies success. Their founder, John Terry, won Founder of the Year at the 2024 awards.
Bristol is officially home to the UK’s most powerful AI supercomputer. The Isambard-AI, a £225m national facility, launched earlier this week at the Bristol & Bath Science Park, promising to supercharge breakthroughs in health, climate, clean energy and more.
This new machine, developed by the University of Bristol in partnership with HPE and NVIDIA, can process in one second what it would take the entire global population 80 years to achieve.
Researchers and businesses from across the UK are already lining up to tap into its power, with over 80 teams applying so far.
Communications technology leader Smartbox has acquired German AI eye-tracking specialists GazeFirst, its third acquisition in six weeks, in a move the company is calling ‘game changing’ for future product innovation.
The Frankfurt-based GazeFirst team will form a dedicated eye gaze division within the Smartbox Research and Development team, significantly bolstering its capabilities with AI-powered assistive technologies.
The work of the new eye gaze division will be dedicated to improving devices for AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communications) users, enabling people who have difficulty speaking to communicate more easily.
The UK Tech Cluster Group has been chosen by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to deliver the brand new £1M Regional Tech Booster programme. This national initiative is a huge vote of confidence in the power of local tech ecosystems to drive innovation and growth.
Over the next year, the Regional Tech Booster will support 10 regionally-led pilot projects offering mentoring, funding access and business support to tech founders.
It will also launch a regional investment initiative to connect more capital with startups and scaleups and run ecosystem workshops to share best practice and strengthen collaboration nationwide.