London Stansted Airport and Savills among four new Awards sponsors
Cambridge Spark is sponsoring a new AI category and Chesterford Research Park – set for a new spurt of significant expansion – also join the sponsor pantheon.
A glittering presentation banquet will be held on Monday, September 15, 2025 at Queens’ College, Cambridge. Special guests are being invited from both sides of the Atlantic to attend, joining contenders for a stunning range of categories.
Cambridge Spark emerged from the University of Cambridge, disrupting talent recruitment and enabling thousands of professionals to retrain for 21st century work opportunities.
The company is a leader in AI and notably AI apprenticeships training. Chairman and founder Dr Raoul-Gabriel Urma built Cambridge Spark into a major operation with 150 employees and stellar clients such as the NHS, AstraZeneca, GSK, Lloyds Banking Group, the FCA and many others.
In an especially exciting move, Cambridge Spark is sponsoring a new ‘Female Founder in AI’ category which morphs from Woman Entrepreneur of the Year. This Award is for an inspirational female founder or co-founder of a growing company deemed successful in the sphere of Artificial Intelligence.
‘Female Founder in AI’ award sponsor created first website aged 8!
Chesterford Research Park, on the cusp of further expansion, offers advanced lab & office space within 250 acres of idyllic parkland, providing modern, dynamic, flexible facilities perfectly appointed for biotech, pharma and technology R & D companies of all sizes.
The Park is set to increase capacity to around one million sq ft, of which approximately 350,000 sq ft is already occupied. The new three-storey Sidney Sussex Building, which will be ready for occupation from Q4 2025, will deliver an additional 60,000 sq ft across 10 individual, flexible R & D suites ranging from 2,226 sq ft to 8,409 sq ft.
One or two of the Awards categories are still being refined. For example, University of Cambridge Judge Business School is again sponsoring the Graduate Business prize but the criteria has been broadened.
The prize will be presented to a venture that in the last 12 months has benefited from engagement with the wider Cambridge ecosystem – in terms of support and giving back – and is retaining graduate talent.
Cambridge Innovation Capital will be sponsoring a special Champion of Champions accolade chosen from the Business of the Year winners from the start of the competition in May 1990.
The important thing is to get those entries rolling in now so Mills & Reeve, our lead forensic sponsor, can start the interviewing process on a strictly confidential basis. Entries are open until 11.59pm, June 30, 2025. You can enter online at the link below or by emailing: tquested@businessweekly.co.uk. We may suggest additional or alternative categories to any you may enter. You can vie for multiple prizes.
The 2024 competition saw IQGeo walk away with Business of the Year and Quoted Company of the Year prizes, while Sano Genetics co-founder Charlotte Guzzo was named Woman Entrepreneur of the Year.
Category winners were Bicycle Therapeutics (Investment of the Year), bit.bio (Life Science Innovation), Cambridge Mechatronics Ltd (Disruptive Technology), Cellular Origins (The Pathfinder Award), CMR Surgical (International Trade), Echion Technologies (Tech Scale-Up), Ethicronics (Graduate Business of the Year), Healx (Life Science AI), Levidian (Sustainability Champion), Luminance (AI Innovation), Nuclera (Life Science Scale-Up), QPT (Young Company) and Secondmind (Sir Michael Marshall Engineering Excellence).
The 35th Business Weekly Awards are sponsored by Arm, AstraZeneca, Barclays, Bruntwood SciTech, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Cambridge Judge Business School, Cambridge Network, Cambridge Science Park, Cambridge Spark, Chesterford Research Park, Marshall of Cambridge, Mills & Reeve, Murray Edwards College, PwC, Savills, Stansted Airport, St John's Innovation Centre, and Unity Campus.
For the full list of this year’s award categories and to enter online visit: https://www.businessweekly.co.uk/awards-submission
