O2 Daisy has rebranded as O2 Business following the merger of Virgin Media O2’s business unit and Daisy Group.

The new brand brings together a business serving hundreds of thousands of UK customers, from small firms to larger organisations. Its customers include Sainsbury’s, British Sugar, the RFU and Southampton Football Club, as well as organisations across policing, education and the NHS.

The rebrand comes as new research points to mounting pressure on UK business leaders. In a survey of 502 leaders, 66% said technology decisions are becoming harder to navigate, while 49% said their technology set-up is more complex than necessary.

That complexity is feeding broader concerns about performance. The survey found that 30% said technology challenges had increased operational costs over the past year, 26% said they had put pressure on leadership time and focus, and 19% said they had slowed growth.

A confidence gap also emerged between smaller and larger businesses. Just 68% of sole traders and very small businesses said they were confident in long-term growth, compared with more than 90% of mid-sized and larger organisations. Overall, 16% said they were not confident in their organisation’s long-term prospects.

Pressure points

The findings suggest many firms are trying to balance cost control with technology investment amid wider commercial strain. The survey found that 76% of business leaders had experienced increased personal pressure over the past two years, while 33% reported rising costs.

O2 Business will focus on simplifying how customers buy and manage connectivity and communications services. Plans include fewer product choices, a more streamlined onboarding process, and more consistent service and support.

The business combines Virgin Media O2’s network infrastructure with Daisy’s service and support operations. Its portfolio includes connectivity, communications and IT products, including cloud-based services and Teams Phone Mobile.

Jo Bertram, Chief Executive Officer of O2 Business, said: “Most businesses don’t feel short of technology – they feel weighed down by it. Too many systems, too many suppliers and too much time spent trying to make everything work together.

“At O2 Business, we think it should be simpler than that. We’re breathing simplicity into the way business works by bringing connectivity and communications together in one joined-up experience that just makes sense. When technology is easier to deal with, businesses get back time, focus and confidence – and that’s when real growth happens.”

The rebrand marks the next stage in integrating the two businesses after their combination. It is intended to present a more unified offer to organisations that need a mix of mobile, fixed-line, cloud and IT services.

For Virgin Media O2 and Daisy, the move also reflects a push to strengthen their position in the UK business telecoms market. Operating under a single business brand should reduce fragmentation in how services are sold and supported across customer segments.

Market context

The UK business telecoms and IT services market has become increasingly competitive, with providers seeking to combine connectivity, collaboration tools and managed services. For many customers, the challenge is less access to technology than handling multiple contracts, platforms and support arrangements.

That issue appears especially acute for smaller organisations, which often have less in-house technical expertise and less room to absorb added costs. The survey findings suggest complexity may be weighing more heavily on small firms than on larger businesses with bigger technology budgets and dedicated teams.

Matthew Riley, Chairman of O2 Business, said: “UK businesses are the engine of our economy, but too many are being slowed down by complexity they never asked for. When organisations are tied up managing systems instead of strategy, productivity and growth suffer.”

“Simplifying that landscape isn’t just a technical challenge – it’s a commercial opportunity. With our combined scale and expertise, O2 Business is uniquely positioned to help organisations operate more efficiently, unlock real value and compete with confidence in an increasingly demanding market.”

BioOrbit has raised £9.8 million in seed funding for in-space pharmaceutical manufacturing, which it describes as the sector’s largest seed round to date.

The London-founded company will use the funding to scale production of biological drug crystals in microgravity and move those programmes into commercial work with drugmakers. It says the approach could help convert some intravenous medicines into self-injectable treatments for home use.

The round was co-led by LocalGlobe and Breega, with backing from Auxxo, Seedcamp, Type One, 7 percent and angel investors. BioOrbit was founded by Dr Katie King and Dr Leonor Teles and is focused on using low-Earth orbit as a manufacturing environment for pharmaceutical products.

Manufacturing model

Much of its pitch centres on treatment delivery economics. According to BioOrbit, 70% of the world’s highest-grossing drugs are still administered intravenously in clinical settings, and reformulating some of them for subcutaneous use could shift more care away from hospitals.

Its manufacturing system, BOX, is a compact autonomous unit designed to carry out crystallisation in microgravity. The hardware is intended to move the process from experimental work to larger-scale production, with the resulting crystals returned to Earth for use in drug formulations.

The company is focused on antibody therapies, which can be difficult to adapt for self-administration because high-concentration formulations are often too viscous for injection outside a clinic. BioOrbit says its microgravity crystallisation process produces highly ordered crystalline forms of protein-based drugs, creating formulations not achievable on Earth.

Clinical impact

That is relevant in areas such as cancer treatment, where therapies often require regular hospital visits for infusions. BioOrbit says a shift to home use could cut drug-related hospital expenses by as much as 90%, since treatment would no longer need to be administered in a clinical setting.

The funding will also support an expansion of BioOrbit’s leadership team as it moves from research into commercial execution. The company has appointed Dr Molly Mulligan as President of BioOrbit Inc and Dr Ken Savin as Chief Science Officer.

Dr Mulligan has worked at the intersection of pharmaceuticals and space for more than a decade and was involved in the first pharmaceutical royalty agreement conducted in orbit. Dr Savin brings experience from Eli Lilly and later roles in International Space Station research and commercialisation at CASIS and Redwire.

BioOrbit is also working with UK bodies including the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the Regulatory Innovation Office and the Civil Aviation Authority on regulatory questions around pharmaceutical production in space.

Investor view

The company says it has drawn interest from the NHS and the UK Space Agency and has secured letters of interest from large pharmaceutical groups, although it did not identify those companies or disclose terms.

Dr Katie King, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of BioOrbit, said: “This is a huge step-change in drug delivery and economics. Our focus from day one has been scale, moving beyond experimental results to industrial production, where no existing solution has succeeded. We are now enabling the creation of more perfect, highly ordered crystals that unlock drug formulations not achievable on Earth. It is a paradigm shift for cancer therapies and for the pharmaceutical industry at large, as we’re enabling manufacturing at scale in orbit for the first time.”

Julia Hawkins, General Partner at Phoenix Court, said: “BioOrbit turns space into pharmaceutical infrastructure. By using microgravity to create drug formulations that aren’t possible on Earth, they can shift cancer treatment from hospital to home. This is a fundamental rewrite of how medicines are manufactured and delivered. We’re proud to partner with Dr Katie King and Dr Leonor Teles as they build the future of medicine.”

Vallin, Breega, said: “We couldn’t think of a better use of space than to advance cancer treatments. Katie and Leonor are building a world-class team to harness the unique properties up there that are irreproducible on Earth, we’re excited to see them make this a reality.”

Tim Peake said: “BioOrbit is turning bold imagination into real-world progress, pioneering the future by using exciting innovations in crystallisation of protein drugs in space to improve life on Earth. Their record-breaking seed round demonstrates the real market potential of what space-manufacturing can bring.”

Lord David Willetts, Chair of the UK Space Agency, said: “Manufacturing in space is one of the big new opportunities opening up as launch costs fall and robotics advance. BioOrbit is an exciting British start-up well-placed to take advantage of this, with innovations in the efficacy of cancer immunotherapies.”

Lloyd said: “In-orbit manufacturing is a priority capability for this government, and BioOrbit is a compelling example of what UK innovation looks like in practice. By harnessing the unique environment of space to make pharmaceutical-grade materials, BioOrbit is advancing the UK’s position in the global space economy and could transform outcomes for cancer patients. This funding round is a strong signal of international confidence in UK space manufacturing expertise, and I look forward to seeing BioOrbit take this science to the next stage.”

UK transport and storage companies are increasing their use of artificial intelligence, with new Office for National Statistics survey data showing adoption in the sector has risen by 11 percentage points since December.

The figures show 27.1% of businesses in the category, which includes logistics, parcels, haulage and warehousing, now use AI in some part of their operations. That means 72.9% still do not use the technology, down sharply from 83.9% at the end of last year.

Parcelhero said the data points to a rapid shift in attitudes across the sector as operators test where AI fits into day-to-day business tasks. Compared with other industries, transport and storage does not appear notably behind similar parts of the economy in adopting the technology.

Manufacturing recorded the same share of businesses not yet using AI, at 72.9%, while retail was slightly further ahead, with 67.7% yet to adopt it. This leaves transport and storage broadly in line with sectors facing similar pressures around cost control, service delivery and administration.

Current uses

Among transport and storage companies already using AI, the most common application is improving business operations. Survey figures cited by Parcelhero show 29.8% of adopters use AI for that purpose.

A smaller group, 15.7%, uses the technology to provide or personalise products or services, while 10.2% say it is helping them explore new markets.

The data also highlights where businesses say AI is changing work inside their organisations. The roles most affected so far are data analysis, cited by 16.4% of respondents, followed by administration at 11.3% and creative or design roles at 11%.

Training is already part of that adjustment, with 28.5% of transport and storage firms using AI saying they are training or retraining existing staff in the technology.

On staffing levels, the survey does not suggest widespread cuts linked to AI adoption in the sector. Among businesses already using the technology, 31.3% said there would be no change in workforce numbers, while the share saying AI would definitely reduce headcount was too small to register in the published figures.

Investment choices

The figures show no single dominant model for deploying AI. Some businesses are building their own tools, while others rely on bought-in or free software.

Among companies in the sector that have already adopted AI, 12.4% said they had developed AI programs in-house. A slightly larger 13.3% said they had purchased external software or ready-to-use solutions, while 12.6% said they were using free software.

The split suggests an early-stage market in which companies are still weighing cost, control and ease of implementation. For operators with limited internal technical resources, ready-made products may offer a quicker route, while larger groups may prefer systems tailored more closely to internal processes.

Next steps

The survey suggests more investment is likely in the near term, with many businesses planning to expand AI use over the next three months. The focus remains on internal operations rather than more ambitious transformation projects.

Some 20.6% of respondents said they planned to use AI to improve business operations. Another 12% said they intended to adopt it to develop a new product or service, while 10.3% planned to use it to provide products or services for customers.

Reservations remain, however, among both adopters and non-adopters. Of the companies already using AI, 11.8% said they were concerned about the level of adequate business knowledge surrounding the technology within their organisation, 11.5% cited ease of use and 5.4% pointed to affordability.

Among businesses that have not yet introduced AI, 4.9% said cost was the main reason for holding back. A further 3.6% said they had difficulty identifying a business use case.

David Jinks, Head of Consumer Research at Parcelhero, said the latest figures show a marked change in uptake.

“The number of transport & storage firms now reporting they are making use of AI is still surprisingly small: 72.9% admit they are not yet using it. However, there has been a sharp jump in uptake since last December, when a frankly shocking 83.9% of transport & storage firms said they weren’t using the technology. In other words, 27.1% of companies in the sector are now using AI, an increase of 11 percentage points.

“Incidentally, that 72.9% of transport & storage sector firms not yet using AI is exactly the same as the number of manufacturing sector companies that haven’t yet adopted the technology, and only slightly more than the 67.7% of retailers yet to take the plunge. That means transport & storage firms are not lagging notably behind equivalent sectors in their uptake of AI.

“The data gives a fascinating insight into the areas transport & storage businesses are focusing their AI use on, what impact they think it will have on their business, and where they see their AI investment focusing in the future.

“29.8% of transport & storage companies that have adopted AI say they are using it to improve business operations, 15.7% are using it to provide or personalise products or services, and 10.2% to explore new markets.

“Of course, adopting AI has an impact on businesses in terms of training and work practices. Some 28.5% of firms in the sector are training or retraining their existing staff in the use of AI. Contrary to recent headlines from some industries, it does not look as if the increased use of AI in transport & storage will lead to reduced headcount. In all, 31.3% of companies now adopting AI said there would be no change in workforce numbers, and the number reporting that it would definitely reduce headcount was so small it did not register in the figures.

“Predictably, the roles transport & storage companies said have been most affected are data analysis (16.4%), admin (11.3%) and creative/design roles (11%).

“Whether to develop AI in-house or outsource or use off-the-peg AI solutions is a question many companies have been considering. Some 12.4% of transport & storage businesses that have already adopted AI say they have developed AI programs in-house, while 13.3% have purchased external software or ready-to-use solutions and 12.6% are using free software.

“Many more transport & storage companies are planning to adopt AI technologies in the next three months. Some 20.6% plan to use it to improve business operations, 12% plan to adopt it to develop a new product or service, and 10.3% to provide products or services for their customers.

“However, a number of companies in the sector still reported reservations about the new technology. Of those already using it, 11.8% are concerned about the level of adequate business knowledge surrounding AI within their organisation, 11.5% about its ease of use and 5.4% about its affordability.

“For companies that have not yet adopted AI, 4.9% said cost was the main reason they have not yet taken the plunge, while 3.6% said they had difficulty identifying a business use case.”