Mid-Week Tech News Roundup – November 17th to November 21st 2025
18 Nov, 20256 minutesN Brown Group Strengthens Leadership with New Trading and Marketing DirectorManchester-based...
N Brown Group Strengthens Leadership with New Trading and Marketing Director
Manchester-based retailer N Brown Group has appointed Arfan Sabir as its new Trading and Marketing Director. This is a newly created role that brings the Trading and Marketing teams together to support the company’s commercial plans and overall customer experience.
Arfan has more than 25 years of experience transforming and scaling digital and omnichannel businesses. His previous senior roles include positions at LEGO, Mothercare, Dreams and, most recently, VP of E-Commerce at Avnet.
N Brown Group operates some of the UK’s best-known retail brands, including JD Williams, Simply Be and Jacamo, and is one of the country’s top digital platforms for clothing, footwear and home. With a heritage of more than 160 years and over 1,400 employees across the UK, the business aims to be the most inclusive retailer in the UK. Its financial services products also support accessibility by offering customers flexible ways to spread the cost of purchases.
The company says Arfan’s experience will support its commercial focus and help deliver more value for its customers as the business continues its growth plans.
Liquid Voice Appoints William Hopkins as Chief Growth Officer
Liquid Voice has appointed William Hopkins as its new Chief Growth Officer, bringing more than 30 years of experience in sales leadership across the recording, storage and analytics sector. In his new role, he will lead the company’s growth strategy, including customer acquisition, partner relationships and wider commercial direction.
Hopkins has previously held senior positions at organisations including Kerv, Trusted Data Solutions, IPC Systems, NiCE and Red Box. His background in building and guiding high-performing sales teams is expected to support Liquid Voice as it enters its next phase of expansion.
Led by CEO Chris Burden with Andrew Barrett as Chief Information Officer, Liquid Voice provides interaction analytics technology designed to help organisations review and understand voice and text conversations at scale. Its tools are used across financial and capital markets, public safety and contact centres, supporting compliance, operational insight and customer experience.
The company says the appointment will help strengthen its leadership team as it continues to develop its products and broaden its market presence.
Intellect Acquires Manchester-born Zaptic to Strengthen Its AI Quality Management Platform
Intellect, a US-based provider of AI-powered Quality Management System software, has acquired Zaptic, the Manchester-founded Connected Frontline Worker platform that has become a recognised name in UK manufacturing technology. The deal marks a major step in Intellect’s global expansion and will broaden its capabilities across food and beverage, consumer goods and wider industrial operations.
Born and built in Manchester, Zaptic has earned a strong reputation for digitising complex frontline processes, from production checks to continuous improvement programmes. Its platform is used by manufacturers including Berry and Asahi to support efficiency, safety and compliance across factory sites.
Born and built in Manchester, Zaptic has earned a strong reputation for digitising complex frontline processes, from production checks to continuous improvement programmes. Its platform is used by manufacturers including Berry and Asahi to support efficiency, safety and compliance across factory sites.
By bringing Zaptic into the business, Intellect plans to unite frontline operations with its existing AI-powered QMS tools, creating a single system that connects planning, execution, compliance and performance. The combined platform is designed to give manufacturers real-time visibility across the production line while improving collaboration between quality, safety and operations teams.
Intellect CEO Heather Preu said the deal brings together people, processes and AI to deliver stronger compliance and faster insights across manufacturing. Zaptic CEO Richard Milnes added that joining Intellect will help scale the company’s vision and increase its impact across global markets.
Zaptic’s team will continue to operate from the UK, supporting Intellect’s customers across Europe.
The acquisition also builds on Intellect’s backing from Strattam Capital, the private equity firm that invested in the company in 2022 to support its expansion in regulated industries and its development of AI-enabled quality solutions.
Causaly partners with Manas AI to accelerate AI-driven drug discovery
Causaly has partnered with Manas AI, the New York-based AI-native drug discovery company co-founded by Reid Hoffman, to bring agentic AI into the development of treatments for rare and complex diseases. The collaboration aims to combine Causaly’s science-grade AI capabilities with Manas AI’s neuro-symbolic foundational models to help researchers make faster, more informed decisions across drug target identification, mechanism of action analysis, competitive intelligence, and evidence validation.
Founded to address the inefficiencies of traditional drug development, Manas AI says its approach is faster, cheaper, and more precise than conventional methods. The company unites world-class biology, chemistry and medicinal expertise with advanced AI to cover the full drug development pipeline, from target identification through preclinical testing to clinical trials.
Manas AI CEO Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee said: “Partnering with Causaly allows our teams to leverage science-grade AI in ways that improve decision-making, speed up R&D and ultimately bring better treatments to patients faster.”
Causaly, which has spent eight years developing AI specifically for biomedical research, said its goal is to help scientists reach well-reasoned and evidence-backed conclusions more efficiently, while respecting the rigor of scientific methodology.
The news follows Manas AI’s announcement of a $26M seed extension and the appointment of Ujjwal Singh as Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer. Singh joins from Multiverse, having previously held senior roles at Meta and Google, where he led major engineering efforts including Google Hangouts and the expansion of YouTube into Kids, Music and Gaming platforms. The funding will support the development of Manas AI’s foundational models and accelerate its ongoing therapeutic programmes.
Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder of Manas AI, said: “It is excellent to work with Ujjwal again. Together with Causaly, we can bring cutting-edge AI to bear on one of the most important problems in medicine, making drug discovery faster and more precise.”
🎯 Find the Leaders Who Drive Growth
Scaling a tech business requires leaders who can deliver vision and results. With MRJ’s Executive Search, we help companies across the UK & Europe recruit CTOs, CPOs, VPs of Engineering, and Product Directors who transform strategy into action.
For tech professionals, we connect you with senior roles that leverage your experience and leadership skills.
💡 Discover how our Executive Search team finds the leaders your business needs: 👉 Executive Search
💡 Specialists In: Product & Engineering | SaaS | HealthTech | FinTech
🚀 Ready to secure top tech leadership or elevate your career?
👉 Contact MRJ | View Senior Roles
