- Hamburg’s?1KOMMA5°?has raised €430 million - and just become a unicorn at just 23 months oldThe German solar panel system start-up has been busy acquiring companies right, left and centre. It has raised €430 million in a Series B round. The company is valued at over $1 billion
- The German spacetech planning to fire stem cell 'organoids' into orbit The €4m raised by ATMOS will help mini-organs be grown and tested on in a low-gravity environmentNVision Imaging, a Ulm, Germany-based developer of MRI polarizers and hyperpolarized imaging agents, raised $30M in Series A funding, with an additional $19.5M in funding from the German Government. The round, which brought the total amount to $35M, not including the government funds, was led by Playground Global, with participation from return investors b-to-v and new participation from Pathena Investments, Entree Capital, Lauder Family, ES Kapital, and Sparkassenkapital Ulm.
- Swiss start-up?DePoly?converts PET plastics and polyester textiles back to their main raw materials. The climate tech is reacting to the waste plastic issue where only clean plastics and sorted waste is recycled. Its energy efficient chemical recycling technology requires none of the ‘preparations’ before recycling products.?It has raised a $13.8 million oversubscribed Seed round which was co-led by?BASF Venture Capital?and?Wingman Ventures?and includes Beiersdorf,?Infinity Recycling, CIECH Ventures, Angel Invest, and others.
- Focused Energy, an Austin, TX and Darmstadt, Germany-based laser-based fusion startup, raised additional $11M in Series A funding. The round, which brought the total amount to $82M, was led by Prime Movers Lab, and previous investors?VCP Capital and?Tony Florence.
- Canada’s Investment Management Corporation of Ontario has invested $400 million in Stockholm-based sustainable lithium-ion battery maker?Northvolt?via convertible notes ahead of a potential IPO. "This investment fuels our expansion efforts, allowing us to further extend our global footprint and drive sustainable progress in our mission to deliver the world's greenest battery," said Northvolt CFO Alexander Hartman.
- Thinksurance, a Frankfurt, Germany-based InsurTech company specializing in digital insurance consultations for commercial and industrial clients, raised $24M in funding. The round was led by Viewpoint Ventures and M-Tech Capital as well as Venture Capital Fonds Segenia Capital. Existing investor Eight Roads Ventures, a global venture capital firm, and Columbia Lake Partners also participated.
- Nelly, a Berlin, Germany-based health tech company, raised €15M in Series A funding. The round was led by Lakestar, arc investors, b2venture and Motive Ventures. The company intends to use the funds to further accelerate its growth in Germany, develop additional products, deepen its fintech capabilities, as well as to expand into new medical verticals and markets.
- ?Mistral AI, a Paris, France-based startup developing generative AI models, raised USD113m in seed funding. The round, which reportedly brought the valuation of the company to over USD260m, was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from JCDecaux Holding, Exor Ventures, Sofina, Xavier Niel, Eric Schmidt, and Rodolphe Saade.
- B2B Tech Start-up FINDIQ raises €1 million to become the all-knowing service assistant for industrial machines.? €1 million in pre-seed financing for expansion into further industries and regions comes from renowned investors such as High-Tech Gründerfonds, Auxxo Female Catalyst Fund and Notion Capital.
- ?Synthesia, a London, UK-based provider of an AI video creation platform for enterprises, raised $90M in Series C funding. The round, which valued the company at $1 billion, was led by Accel with investment from NVentures, NVIDIA’s venture capital arm, and participation from existing investors Kleiner Perkins, GV, Firstmark Capital, Alex Wang, Olivier Pomel, and Amjad Massadr.
- hema.to?raises €3.6M to bring precision diagnostics to immune medicine using AI-assisted analysis of single-cell blood data
- Squake, a Berlin, Germany-based climate tech startup powering carbon calculations, providing compensation for travel and logistics emissions, raised €3.5M in Seed funding. The round, which brought the total amount to €5M, was led by Simon Capital, with participation from?Schenker Ventures, Rivus Capital, Neosfer?and?Backbone Ventures, and business angels Michael Riegel and?Matth?us Niewodniczanski.
- Sparetech, a Stuttgart, Germany-based provider of a data platform for industrial spare parts, raised $10M in Series A funding. The round was led by Insight Partners with participation from Headline and angel investors such as Christian Gaiser, Carsten Thoma, Christian Reber and Frederik Pfisterer.
- ElevenLabs, a voice technology research company and world leader in audio AI software, has raised a €17.3 million Series A to continue its voice AI research and product deployment, part of its mission to make all content universally accessible.?The round was co-led by Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and Andreessen Horowitz,?with further participation from Credo Ventures,?Concept Ventures,?and an array of strategic angel investors including Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger, Oculus VR co-founder Brendan Iribe, Deepmind & Inflection co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, Perplexity AI co-founder Aravind Srinivas, Vercel founder Guillermo Rauch, O’Reilly Media founder Tim O’Reilly, Creator Ventures and SV Angel. Storytel and TheSoul Publishing also join this round as investors.?Andreessen Horowitz is taking a board seat.?
- ?Contec S.A., a company that specialises in producing sustainable raw materials by upcycling end-of-life tires, has successfully secured a total of EUR 15 million in funding this year. The largest Polish manufacturer of steel roofing and facades – Pruszyński – has contributed an additional EUR 5 million to the funds already provided by VINCI and the Warsaw Equity Group. These two entities had initially invested EUR 10 million in Contec back in March 2023.
- ?Meshcapade, a Tübigen, Germany-based startup specializing in AI solutions for modeling, analysis and synthesis of 3D digital humans in motion, raised $6M in Seed funding. The round was led by Matrix?with participation from a number of tech founders and investors, including?Nate Mitchell?(Co-Founder of Oculus),?Matthew Ball?(Author of “The Metaverse”),?William O’Farrell?(Co-Founder of BodyLabs),?Andrew Hamel?(Former VP Machine Learning at Amazon),?Gary Bradski?(CSO at OpenCV), and CLO.?Diana Kimball Berlin?of Matrix will join Meshcapade’s board.?
- Enpal, Germany’s fastest growing energy company has successfully obtained EUR 430 million in funding from BlackRock’s private markets platform, ING Germany and DWS, on its way to connect humanity to a renewable community. BlackRock, via its Infrastructure Debt business, has increased their funding commitment by another EUR 100 million, including EUR 50 million pledged by Phoenix Group. Furthermore, ING Germany added an additional EUR 150 million to their existing debt commitment, accompanied by further ancillary RCF & VAT facilities worth EUR 80 million in total.
- deepc, a Munich, Germany-based digital medicine company, raised a €12m Series A funding. The round was led by Sofinnova Partners, with participation from Bertelsmann Investments and Winning Mindset Ventures. In conjunction with the funding, Simon Turner, Partner at Sofinnova Partners, joins deepc’s Board of Directors.
- German company?Fernride?has successfully closed a Series A funding round, raising a total of $31 million. The funding will be used to accelerate the transition to automated and sustainable logistics.
- SURAG Medical successfully completes pre-seed financing and advances revolutionary audio-based surgical support systems for minimally invasive procedures
- Digital marketplace for wind farms: Caeli Wind wins High-Tech Gründerfonds as investor
- The TGFS is investing a seven-figure sum in?ReViSaltGmbH. The Freiberg-based tech start-up specializes in the chemical solidification of glass - a complex process that is currently used primarily for the production of high-quality display glass.
- Warsaw-based VC firm?Inovo?closes its third fund at €105 million to support start-ups in CEE The VC firm wants to become a 'key contributor' to raising unicorns in the CEE region by supporting 'ambitious founders' primed with a global focus
- Brighteye Ventures, an edtech venture capital firm, closed its second fund, at €100M. New investors in the fund include the European Investment Fund (EIF), Jacobs Foundation, Partners in Equity, as well as Family offices from Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The capital, which brought the total assets under management to €150M, solidifies the firm’s commitment to investing in promising early-stage Edtech companies at Seed and Series A stages across Europe.
- Munich’s Yttrium closes new fund at over €400 million Formerly known as Digital+ Partners, VC firm Yttrium has closed its second growth fund at €403 million as it continues to support European B2B technology scale-ups.
- France’s?Frst?announce first close of new fund at €72 million. Frst says that they’re well on their way to reaching the funds’ upper limit of €100 million, and aims to deploy over the next four years in around 30 companies.
- Voima Ventures, a Helsinki, Finland-based early-stage investor focusing on science-based companies across Nordic and Baltic countries, announced the first closing with a new €90m fund. Investors in Fund III include among others European Investment Fund EIF, Finnish Tesi and its fund of funds KRR, VTT of Finland, Saminvest from Sweden, and pension funds Nordea Life and Elo, as well as established foundations, and family offices.
- Isomer Capital announces first close of €250 million Isomer Capital III fund The London-based independent private investment firm says the first close came quicker than expected - British Business Investments committed up to €60 million
- ff Venture Capital?(ffVC), a New York- and Warsaw-based international venture capital firm, has launched ff Red & White, a new €60 million fund to support startups in Central Europe. The fund will focus on Series A and late seed investments in startups tackling the most pressing challenges facing enterprises and society, in areas such as enterprise software, industrial tech, and sustainability transformation.?
- IQ Capital, a London, UK-based deep tech venture capital firm,?closed its fourth fund, at $200m, taking its assets under management to more than $1bn.? Investors in Fund IV include global institutions, funds-of-funds, family offices, corporates and tech entrepreneurs of whom several were previously backed by IQ Capital, as well as British Patient Capital.?The firm has also launched its second $200m Growth Fund to provide later-stage funding to outperforming companies, primarily in its venture portfolios. This enables IQ Capital to deploy capital at multiple stages, investing an additional $30m in individual companies as they internationalize.?
- Europe to Open Artificial Intelligence ‘Crash Test’ Centers
- Intel to build $33-billion chip plant in Germany after government pledges to cover 1/3rd of cost
- NATO’s innovation accelerator becomes operational and launches first challenges
- TITANS OF TECH 2023
- Do VCs need a geopolitical policy? With geopolitical tensions rising and tech sovereignty on the European agenda, more VCs are scanning for geopolitical risks. For a long time, VC has been blissfully separate from geopolitics.?In Europe, the continent’s ecosystem wasn’t mature enough to come up against policy. And despite the bloc’s reliance on US giants for crucial infrastructure, tech sovereignty was low on the agenda.?Now, that’s changing. The war in Ukraine has raised questions about?sources of VC?cash; Russia itself?banned investors from the CIA’s VC arm?from entering the country last month in retaliation against sanctions. US VC giant Sequoia recently split off its Chinese operation amid rising tensions.?
- HSBC rebrands, expands its SVB UK buy as HSBC Innovation Banking. Acquired by HSBC in an emergency sale?for just ￡1 in March?as SVB was melting down, SVB UK is now getting a rebrand and expansion under its new owner. Today the banking giant launched?HSBC Innovation Banking, a new unit focusing on banking services to the startup, investor and wider tech community. Rumored for weeks leading up to today, and now officially announced at the kick-off to London Tech Week, the new division — technically a subsidiary of HSBC UK — will be bigger than just the SVB UK assets: HSBC has added teams in the U.S., Israel and Hong Kong to the operation, with more than 700 people employed in the operation. For now, it sounds like the clientele is mostly U.K. — some 3,000 customers in all out of its home country, HSBC said.
- Hyperloop Vision Gets a Jolt of Energy With Italian Deal for HTT Hyperloop Transportation Technologies’ contract win comes as the allure of building a superfast highway had?dimmed
- German biotech companies?have been raising significantly less capital since the corona pandemic.
- Infarm quits Europe as vertical farming withers on the vine Could a move to the Middle East be on the cards?
Thanks for covering our big news!