London's Fulfilment.com secures £4M in late seed funding

- The £4 million investment into Fulfilment.com was led by Blackfinch Ventures with participation from Haatch Ventures and will be used to scale its technology and expand its team to support growth in the UK, EU, US, Canadian, and Australian markets. The company, founded by James Olsen in early 2024, aims to replace manual processes for finding third-party logistics (3PL) partners with a data-driven marketplace. - For engineering leaders scaling teams past the 20-person mark, a common challenge is a decrease in development velocity; strategies to counteract this include implementing robust onboarding processes, creating smaller autonomous "squads" with clear ownership, and establishing scalable processes with automation. - Enterprise adoption of AI agents is moving beyond simple task automation to "agentic process automation," where multiple AI agents collaborate to handle complex, end-to-end workflows with minimal human supervision, potentially automating 50% or more of operations. - In programmatic advertising, a key 2026 trend is the intense focus on Supply Path Optimization (SPO), which aims to reduce costs and increase transparency by eliminating redundant intermediaries between advertisers and publishers. This push for efficiency is driving more media buyers to seek ownership of their technology stack, rather than renting access through third-party platforms. - After years of delays, Google officially ended its Privacy Sandbox initiative in October 2025, ceasing efforts to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome. For now, third-party cookies remain, and advertisers will continue to rely on existing user privacy settings within the browser. - The UK's tech funding landscape in early 2026 has seen a 24.23% drop in capital raised compared to the same period in 2025, with $2.62 billion raised across 120 rounds. Despite the drop, significant rounds are still closing, particularly in AI, such as Stanhope AI's $8 million seed round. - The 2026 Formula 1 season is facing controversy over its new power unit regulations, with drivers like Max Verstappen expressing concerns that the reliance on electric power is inefficient on straights, leading to a difficult driving experience. Meanwhile, teams are engaged in pointing fingers over the early pecking order, with Mercedes claiming Red Bull-Ford has a significant advantage. - Initial construction on London's long-delayed Crossrail 2 project is scheduled to begin in 2026 as part of the British Library's £1.1 billion expansion, which will integrate infrastructure for the future Euston/St Pancras station. The full north-south rail line is projected to be operational by the 2030s, though it has not yet received final approval.