A sleep scent, a children's chatbot, a diesel card and AI optics: last week's raisers

Hynt, a Cambridge company, works with scent. The company says its technology can design and deliver targeted scents, and its own line on what comes first is short: "Today we are focused on scent for sleep." Emanuela Maggioni is the chief executive, chief technology officer and co-founder, with Marianna Obrist as chief scientific officer and co-founder. Hynt raised £1.4m in September, with shares allotted on 23 Sep 2026. Its previous round, £1.5m, was allotted in Jun 2024, and its latest accounts show staff growing from 10 to 12 people.

Askie began with a question about snakes. The company says the founder's son asked about dangerous snakes in the UK, got an answer describing how the world's most dangerous species kill, and "didn't sleep properly for weeks". Saar Benodiz, the founder and chief executive, built Askie in response: a voice-first AI companion for children aged 4 to 15. The company says it gives age-appropriate answers, runs safety checks on each reply and offers parents a dashboard. It describes itself as a London team, and its registered office is in Kidlington. Askie raised £2.3m in October, with shares allotted on 1 Oct 2026, and says it has just raised a $3M seed round.

PostTag, registered in London, offers a diesel card in partnership with Radius Fuels and says the card is free to use. The company says it works at over 4,500 petrol stations and that drivers pay only for the fuel they use, with no subscriptions or hidden fees. Drivers settle up by Direct Debit once a week. PostTag raised £2.5m in October, with shares allotted on 27 Oct 2026. It was incorporated in 2013, and this is its first priced round in our data.

Porotech has gone from displays to moving data. Founded in 2018 as a spin-out from the University of Cambridge, it began with microLED displays and has expanded into optical I/O for AI. The company says the bottleneck in AI is shifting from how fast data can be processed to how efficiently it can be moved, and that its approach uses many low-power optical channels in parallel instead of fewer channels at higher speeds. Tongtong Zhu is the chief executive and founder, with Rachel Oliver as chief scientific advisor and co-founder. Porotech raised £1.5m in October, with shares allotted on 16 Oct 2026, its fourth priced raise of 2026; the four come to £6.4m. Its latest accounts show staff growing from 48 to 51 people.

All four filed their share issues at Companies House last week. They were among 145 companies that filed priced share issues from 2 to 8 Nov 2026, worth £213.5m together. Companies with a registered office in London accounted for 77 of the 145 and £138.9m of the cash.

Learn more at bradshawdata.com. Corrections are listed with their dates.