Its tech is helping organisations prevent workplace injuries and long-term health conditions by monitoring exposure to hazards
Spacebands.(Image: )
Workspace hazard wearables company Spacebands is poised for further expansion on the back of a £1.1m equity investment round.
The Cardiff-based business has developed wearable technology that helps organisations prevent workplace injuries and long-term health conditions by monitoring exposure to hazards such as noise and hand–arm vibration.
Its devices alert workers in real time and provide health and safety teams with clear data to help prevent problems before they arise.
The funding will be used to further enhance its wrist-worn wearables and continue developing its online analytics platform, helping employers identify harmful exposure earlier and intervene before injuries become irreversible.
READ MORE: Welcomed £45bn rail investment for the North of England but what about WalesREAD MORE: Three holiday parks in west Wales sold in deals worth nearly £17m
The identity of the backers in its latest equity round has not been disclosed. It comes on the back of £1m investment round in 2024 which was led by US investor Evergreen Mountain Equity Partners.
Its technology is already being deployed by Network Rail, M Group Highways, Kier Group and Balfour Beatty, where managing long-term exposure risk is both a legal requirement and a moral imperative.
New data from the Health and Safety Executive highlights the scale of preventable harm still occurring across UK workplaces. The HSE estimates that around 12,000 workers each year suffer hearing loss caused or made worse by work, while millions remain exposed to hazardous noise level.
Conditions such as noise-induced hearing loss and hand-arm vibration syndrome develop gradually and silently, often going unnoticed until workers face lifelong impairment, time away from work, or legal claims. Unlike acute accidents, these injuries develop gradually over time and are often missed by traditional assessments or static monitoring and by the time symptoms appear, the damage is often permanent.
Spacebands’ device is designed to close that gap. Its wrist-worn devices monitor personal exposure to hazards such as vibration and noise in real time, alerting workers as risk builds and creating a clear data record for health and safety teams. This allows organisations to act early by rotating tasks, adjusting tooling, or changing processes before exposure reaches dangerous levels.
Ronan Finnegan, co-founder of Spacebands, said: “The new funding will also support a nee device pioneered by direct engagement with health and safety professionals. As organisations face increasing regulatory scrutiny and rising costs linked to occupational ill health which costs the UK economy tens of billions of pounds each year.
“Too many workers only discover the impact of noise or vibration exposure years after the damage is done. By then, it’s too late. The funding allows us to keep building tools that help employers see risk as it develops, not after the harm has already occurred. Prevention has to happen in real time, on the person, not retrospectively in a report.”
The company is also one of four based in Wales to make the Startups 100 index for 2026, which is ranked of the measures of finance, external validation, size of opportunity, innovativeness of idea and strength of concept.
Spacebands is ranked 32th. The other Welsh firms on the list are Burbank (8th), Hair Syrup (30th) and Zero Fintech (81st).
