£2.5m seed funds Bloemteknik to commercialise autonomous LED lighting for growers
This article covers Bloemteknik, a greentech startup, which has raised a £2.5m seed funding round led by Foresight Group through the British Business Bank’s Investment Fund for Wales and Foresight’s Growth VCTs. The funding aims to accelerate commercial roll-out of its GreenFingers autonomous lighting platform, support international expansion and local hiring in Wales, and support growers in controlled environment agriculture.
Foresight Group has led a £2.5 million seed funding round into Bloemteknik, a Cardiff-based greentech startup, to accelerate commercial roll-out of its autonomous lighting platform GreenFingers, expand into new international markets and support local hiring in Wales. The round was made through the British Business Bank’s Investment Fund for Wales and Foresight’s Growth VCTs.
Why it matters
Controlled environment agriculture relies on precise light control to balance plant health and energy use. Bloemteknik says it has already deployed more than 25,000 lighting fixtures since its 2023 founding, a level of traction that suggests demand for more efficient, data-driven lighting control in commercial greenhouses and vertical farms.
The funding combines private capital with UK public support channels: the Investment Fund for Wales aims to increase early-stage finance in the region, and Bloem has also secured more than £700,000 of Innovate UK grant funding following a nomination from Foresight. The deal is the seventh Foresight has made from the fund, underscoring continued flow of investment into Welsh technology companies.
Inside the product
Bloem’s GreenFingers platform uses algorithms to control LED lighting in real time, adjusting intensity and spectrum to maintain a target daily light integral, or DLI. The company positions the system as an autonomous, self-optimising control layer that can be paired with its modular LED fixtures, which are configured for different crops and growing environments.
In practice the platform aims to reduce manual intervention and improve consistency across production cycles — outcomes that matter to growers focused on yield stability and energy efficiency. Bloem says Foresight’s backing helped advance final development, testing and commercial deployment.
Who are the investors?
The round was led by Foresight Group and made through the British Business Bank’s Investment Fund for Wales (IFW), alongside capital from Foresight’s Growth VCTs. The IFW was launched in November 2023 to boost supply of early-stage finance to Welsh small and medium-sized businesses. Foresight acts as appointed fund manager for the IFW and oversees equity investments up to £5 million. This is its seventh investment from the IFW.
The investment is intended to support product launch, strengthen delivery capacity and fund international expansion, while bringing board-level guidance and access to Foresight’s network. Bloem has also secured Innovate UK grant funding of over £700,000 via the Investor Partnership Programme to continue product development.
In the announcement, Bethan Bannister, Senior Investment Manager, Nations and Regions Investment Funds at the British Business Bank, said:
It’s great to see how the Investment Fund for Wales is accelerating the rate at which innovative businesses like Bloem, are able to bring new products to market. Bloem’s development journey is impressive and with their strategic growth ambitions being supported with this funding, we look forward to seeing their ongoing success.
In the announcement, Ashley Rogers, Investment Manager at Foresight, said:
Bloem has demonstrated strong early traction in a fast-growing market, with a differentiated product and experienced team. We’re pleased to support their growth and innovation, particularly as they expand into new geographies and continue to build on their market leading proposition.
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Founder perspective
In the announcement, James Fleet, CEO of Bloem, said:
Bringing GreenFingers to market simply wouldn’t have been possible at this pace without Foresight’s backing. Their investment has enabled us to turn an ambitious concept into meaningful value for growers. GreenFingers creates a truly autonomous self-optimising lighting ecosystem, using advanced algorithms to determine the optimal supplementary intensity and spectrum. It automatically adjusts LED fixtures in real time to maintain a consistent DLI under a balanced cultivation environment.
Fleet’s comments highlight the common early-stage trade-off between product development speed and commercial readiness; external investment and grant funding can compress that timeline but will be tested by adoption across different crops and regions.
The bigger picture
The deal sits at the intersection of greentech and foodtech: growers and investors are focused on technologies that reduce energy use while increasing predictability in production. Lighting control is one of several interventions — alongside climate control and nutrient delivery — where automation and analytics can deliver measurable returns.
For Wales, the investment aligns with a wider push to channel more seed and growth capital into regional tech companies, and the mix of public and private funding in this round is a recent model being used across the UK.
This transaction illustrates how UK public funds and private managers are working together to back commercially minded greentech startups scaling from regional bases into global markets, and it may encourage similar deals across the UK and Europe as demand for efficient controlled environment agriculture grows.
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