Arm and CuspAI grab glory at Business Weekly Awards as Raspberry Pi wins double

Previous double Business of the Year winner Arm was elected Champion of Champions as the outstanding enterprise from all previous competitions since the competition launched in 1990.

Raspberry Pi, the microcomputer pioneer, won two awards – Quoted Company and International Trade. Other trophy winners were AnthroTek, Cambrionix, Cambridge Consultants, Quantinuum, Cambridge Intelligence, SKC Games Studios, Wave Photonics, Nyobolt, Nuclera, Constructive Bio, Goncalo de Vasconcelos for the sale of Rnwl to Go.Compare, Alchemab, Neobe Therapeutics, Eyesea Green and Susan Hill of Mestag Therapeutics who won the inaugural Cambridge Spark Female Leader in AI Award.

Zickie Lim, of lead forensic sponsor Mills & Reeve, a UK law firm, said: “CuspAI describes itself as the 'frontier AI company on a mission to solve the breakthrough materials needed to power human progress.' Its website states: While nature took billions of years to perfect molecules, we are harnessing AI to unlock trillion-dollar materials breakthroughs in months, not millennia.'

“Led by Dr Chad Edwards, its founding group is arguably the most cited in the world, comprised of world-class researchers in AI, chemistry and engineering. It is convinced that we’re on the cusp of the on-demand materials era.It has already raised $100m from world-class sources. CuspAI is taking a 'time will tell' approach. We like to back potential and CuspAI has it in spades!"

Unveiling Arm as Champion of Champions, Lim said: “Arm officially spun out of Acorn Computers in November 1990 but its success had been hatching within the quoted business thanks to the efforts of a brilliant engineering team who went on to found and grow a superchip architect that is now quoted on Nasdaq, steers an ecosystem of global greats from heart to edge and which to date has despatched worldwide well over 330 billion chips that drive an incredible array of technologies.

“Arm remains an inspiration and a wonderful business model for Cambridge and the UK in a critical segment."

Long-term angel investor and all-round entrepreneur Sherry Coutu gave an upbeat and inspirational talk to guests. Over many years of business and philanthropy input, Coutu has helped launch and support a great many successful companies as well as matching companies with outstanding talent through a number of initiatives such as Founders4Schools.

She has pledged to work with Business Weekly and contact companies on an exciting new initiative. Coutu outlined the many positives that Cambridge should be proud to spearhead and handed out 19 Awards to East of England star executives.

Startups did well in the competition. AnthroTek won the Young Company of the Year accolade. Barnaby Perks, who heads up St John's Innovation Centre, introduced the category and explained that AnthroTek was collaborating with a diverse team of technical, scientific, and domain experts to advance applications in medical training, SFX, prosthetics, and robotics.

These partnerships bring together specialists in material science, engineering, medical simulation, and cinematic effects, allowing the company to create hyper-realistic, functional silicone solutions tailored to each field. Hollywood has already come calling, he added.

Wave Photonics won the Young Company award and John Gourd of Cambridge Network explained that the company's cutting-edge design technology drove the advancement and mass adoption of integrated photonics. It empowers engineers to design their chips for a wide range of wavelengths and many challenging applications, including telecom/datacom, space-comm, sensing, quantum, optical computing, plus diagnostic and healthcare sensing.

Aline Charpentier unveiled Neobe Therapeutics as winner of The Pathfinder Award. She said the company was transforming cancer treatment through engineered live biotherapeutics and building a synthetic biology platform to design programmable microbial trojan horses engineered to disrupt the microenvironment of solid tumours.

Mark Taylor of Savills unveiled the Disruptive Technology Award winner Cambridge Intelligence, explaining that the company builds the most powerful data visualisation technologies to make the world safer. Its clients include law enforcement, agencies, cyber security and fraud detection specialists and a host of other key organisations. Thousands of analysts rely on its technology 24/7 to synchronise data and uncover hidden threats. The well funded business is ready to exploit an exciting new wave of growth, Taylor added.

Nyobolt was named Sustainability Champion by Cambridge Science Park Director Jane Hutchins who said the misunderstanding that Nyobolt just built super-fast batteries undersold the company's turnkey capabilities. Nyobolt was already transforming industries and accelerating progress where high-power and high uptime are mission-critical, she said, adding that its solutions define success for industries such as AI data centres, autonomous robotics, commercial and passenger EVs, grid infrastructure and heavy industrial fleets. It is playing a key role in keeping the National Grid alive and kicking, she added.

The Sir Michael Marshall Engineering Excellence Award was presented to Cambrionix by Christopher Walkinshaw from Marshall of Cambridge. Cambrionix was also a contender for Business of the Year and is set for a surge in business with upgraded technology.

Walkinshaw said that Cambrionix had arguably built the most powerful and reliable USB hubs and software on the planet and was set to unveil a new solution which should prove to be in even greater demand. Not unlike Marshall Group, the innovation journey started in a garage. The judges believed Cambrionix would be lauded even more widely as organisations deployed its new iteration to reliably charge, connect and manage devices for the benefit of users worldwide.

The inaugural Cambridge Spark Female Leaders in AI Award morphed from an original idea to honour women founders in the sector and was expanded to meet demand. Cambridge excels in this regard compared to many other areas of the UK and Hanadi Jabado, introducing the prize, hailed Susan Hill, CEO of Mestag Therapeutics, as the winner.

Mestag is a biotech company harnessing fibroblast immunology for the benefit of patients with inflammatory disease and cancer. As CEO, Hill is steering the use of artificial intelligence and advanced data analytics in Mestag's integrated biology platform to support its therapeutic programs and target discovery, Jabado explained. The company applies these computational approaches and capabilities to identify novel drug targets and advance its pipeline of therapies for cancer and inflammatory diseases, she added.

Ann Davidson introduced the increasingly popular Cambridge Judge Business School Graduate Business accolade which was won by an exciting company - Eyesea Green. As Davidson explained, Eyesea Green's AdaptiveHeat platform demonstrably slashes carbon at scale where other solutions fail.

Over the past year, Eyesea Green has leveraged every strand of the Cambridge ecosystem to scale responsibly. Its AI-driven Eyesense platform is now saving 25-35 per cent energy across multiple Cambridge Colleges, while four local graduates and students (Cambridge & ARU) have joined the technical team, now 75 per cent female.

The company collaborates with the Department of Engineering and co-supervises three MEng/MPhil projects, opening its one-billion-row anonymised building-data lake for joint publications and a national damp-and-mould and decarbonisation study that it leads. All manufacturing is Cambridge-based, revenues have tripled and the company donates sensor kits to the RAEng–Churchill College Ingenious outreach.

Raspberry Pi brought up the first leg of its double-winning feat by claiming the International Trade Award, introduced by Marco Ng of London Stansted.

Marco explained that, as of March 2025, Raspberry Pi had sold 68 million units worldwide. It is the best-selling British computer of all time. He added that Raspberry Pi has widespread international appeal due to its mission to democratise computing and digital skills globally, its affordability, and its extensive community support through platforms like Code Club and Coolest Projects, which operate in over 100 countries. The Raspberry Pi Foundation's educational initiatives and the device's widespread use in diverse sectors from education to industry contribute to its global adoption and impact, he added.

Steve Brown of Barclays introduced the AI Innovation category which was won by SKC Games Studio. The company creates AI-driven characters that aren’t just interactive, they’re designed to connect with customers and visitors on a deeper level. It has developed an Alan Turing avatar for the code breaking capital that is Bletchley Park, has other famous characters in the pipeline across a range of sectors and has just signed on to an NHS contract to help transform patient outcomes and experiences. It has offices at The EpiCentre in Haverhill and also in Dubai and South America.

The newly re-introduced Cambridge Torchbearer Award was hotly contested and Cambridge Consultants edged out Wellcome Sanger to lift the trophy. Both companies have spun out significant enterprises over many years and continue to trailblaze innovation.

Paul Williamson of Arm, introducing the category, said Cambridge Consultants was founded in 1960 by three graduates to put the brains of the University at the disposal of industry. It was the first company to establish facilities at the Science Park and spun out world-leading businesses, Domino and Xaar in coding & marking and Cambridge Silicon Radio, sold to Qualcomm, just three of many.

Now the DeepTech powerhouse of Capgemini, the company is helping world leading businesses improve their propositions in multi disciplines spanning SpaceTech, Life Sciences, robotics and pretty much every sector from Aerospace to AgriTech. Truly a torchbearer for Cambridge and the UK, he said.

Nicholas Bewes from the Howard Group introduced the Technology Scale-Up category, won by Quantinuum which recently raised $600m at a $10bn pre-money equity valuation. He said Quantinuum was a full-stack quantum computing provider, accelerating commercially useful quantum computing with commercially available quantum computers that are the undisputed leaders in performance.

Along with some of the most used developer tools and end-applications, the company’s solutions are driving breakthrough scientific discoveries, economic growth and sustainable development and have been praised by the UK Government, Bewes said.

Sheena Desai of Aviva Investors, representing Chesterford Research Park, introduced the Life Science Scale-Up Award which was won by Constructive Bio. There was immense competition with Expression Edits and a host of Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst companies in the mix.

Sheena explained that Constructive Bio was a genuine pioneer of genome writing and genetic code reprogramming. The company explores uncharted chemical space to build programmable molecules way beyond what nature can achieve and with applications across industries, she said.

Shaun Grady, UK chairman of pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, introduced the major biotech award, Life Science Innovation which was won by the prolific Nuclera. Grady explained how Nuclera was founded in 2013 by PhD students at the University of Cambridge. Working on their dissertations, they identified protein inaccessibility as the number one obstacle to improving human health. The company is now a world leader in delivery of the first thought-to-protein prototyping system that reduces the timelines and hurdles to acquire target proteins in drug discovery programs.

Simon de Young of PwC had the pleasure of welcoming Raspberry Pi back to the stage to collect its second prize of the evening – Quoted Company of the Year.

He explained that Raspberry Pi floated on London Stock Exchange in June 2024 at 280p per share and the price soared 40 per cent overnight. It has a year high of 428p per share. It became part of the FTSE 250 index a year ago. In April CEO Eben Upton revealed that Pi had released more products in the second half of last year than in any full 12 months in its history.

The company was awarded LSE's Green Economy Mark, based on the significant energy efficiency benefits of its microcomputers. It has only ever lost two engineers to date, demonstrating incredible staff loyalty, and is set to roll out more products globally from a UK base stemming from an upsurge in IP from its Cambridge HQ, de Young revealed.

Andrew Williamson of Cambridge Innovation Capital introduced the Deal of the Year category won by Gonçalo de Vasconcelos for scaling insurance app Rnwl to the point where Go.Compare stepped in with a massive figure to acquire the business.

He said that 13 years ago Cambridge MBA graduate de Vasconcelos won Start Up of the Year in these Awards with his first company Syndicate Room. Having sold his controlling interest, he founded app-based car insurance company Rnwl (pronounced Renewal) and flew in from Portugal to accept his award for the deal.

In March of this year he sold Rnwl to Go.Compare in a deal destined to be worth £63 million in five years. Rnwl's digital insurance wallet and renewal service will be provided to millions of Go.Compare customers.

Williamson stayed on stage to introduce the new Collaboration of the Year prize to Alchemab. Williamson explained that in May it was revealed that a collaboration between Alchemab in Cambridge and Eli Lilly and Company, headquartered in Indianapolis, stood to be worth $415m to the UK company in what was clearly a landmark piece of business.

The haul comes through a licensing agreement for ATLX-1282, Alchemab's first-in-class IND-ready programme for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and other neurodegenerative conditions. Alchemab uses the power of human immune evolution to identify and develop naturally occurring therapeutic antibodies from resilient individuals. Alchemab is taking the programme through early Phase 1 clinical trials after which Lilly will lead all further development and commercialisation.

As Williamson explained, the Lilly alliance marks a true collaboration which benefits sick people all over the world and puts the bottom line of the corporate partners involved in good health. In fact, as we recently revealed, Alchemab has now advanced the collaboration further and at the same time raised a further $32m to take its Series A round past the $114m mark.