Startup Monday: Latest tech trends & news happening in the global startup ecosystem (Issue 69- August 28)

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Top startups news to follow this week:

1. SoftBank-Backed Agri Startup Turns Unicorn With $2.7 Billion Tag

South Korean agriculture and food trading platform Tridge Co. raised 50 billion won ($37 million) at a 3.6 trillion won valuation, becoming the latest billion-dollar startup in SoftBank Group Corp.’s stable

DS Asset Management was the sole investor in the Seoul-based company’s Series D financing, joining earlier backers including SoftBank Ventures and Forest Partners and taking Tridge’s cumulative funding to 150 billion won.

Founded in 2015 by Shin Hoshik, a former senior portfolio manager for Korea’s $200 billion sovereign wealth fund, Tridge has grown into a global platform for food and commodity trading with about 28,000 sellers and 100,000 buyers. It also operates a fulfillment service that distributes food and other products in 90 countries, saying it helps customers save about 20% on logistics and trading costs. About nine-tenths of its clients are foreign retailers.

Tridge -- an amalgam of “transaction” and “bridge” -- plans to use the funds to expand overseas and establish new services, it said in a statement to Bloomberg News. It said it seeks to solve problems ranging from supply chain disruption to agricultural inflation.

2. Seattle mental mealth startup Alongside raises $5.5M, aims to test app with schools

A new startup is emerging in Seattle with plans to partner with schools to support adolescent mental health.

Alongside?is developing an app that interacts with students through a chatbot and guides them to resources like videos of other students experiencing similar issues. Users can access therapy exercises and journaling tools, as well as soothing music or breathing techniques.

The app also connects to outside support and refers students in crisis to their school’s support team. The company has lined up pilot programs with public and private middle and high schools this fall, and is?signing up more.

Alongside launched this April and recently completed a $5.5 million seed funding round, CEO?Jay Goyal?told GeekWire. The round was led by Trilogy Equity Partners, with Trilogy Managing Director Amy McCullough joining Alongside’s board. Other backers include Pack VC, Madrona Venture Labs, and individual investors.

“My co-founders and I are motivated to break down barriers for youth reaching their full potential,” said Goyal, who was previously CEO and founder of Seattle-based curriculum platform?Actively Learn, which?was acquired?in 2018 by Achieve3000 and is now owned by McGraw Hill.

3. Biotech Startup Loopworm Raises $3.4 Mn Seed Round From Omnivore & WaterBridge

Indian insect biotech startup Loopworm has raised a USD 3.4 million seed round co-led by Omnivore and WaterBridge Ventures, with participation from Titan Capital and angel investors such as Nadir Godrej (Godrej Agrovet), Sanjiv Rangrass (ex-ITC), and Akshay Singhal (Log9 Materials).

Loopworm is optimizing insect farming for smallholders while producing value-added nutrients and ingredients for B2B customers, said a statement. The company plans to use the seed funding for talent acquisition, R&D (including building world-class laboratories), and to launch their first factory for scaling up production, added the statement.

Loopworm is Omnivore's second investment under its OmniX Bio initiative, which backs early-stage agrifood life science startups. Over the next 5 years, the startup aims to produce 300,000 MT of sustainable insect-based protein per annum, creating value from 7.5 million MT of food waste and agricultural byproducts.

"We are thrilled to have Omnivore, Waterbridge, Titan Capital, and several experienced angels, including Nadir Godrej, as investors in Loopworm. We plan to use the new funding to set up our first Loop Factory in North Bangalore, hire talent, and accelerate R&D," said Ankit Alok Bagaria and Abhi Gawri, co-founders, Loopworm.

4. Consortium to invest NIS 300 million in medical startups

Peregrine Ventures, an investment firm dedicated to supporting healthcare opportunities, announced this week the establishment of a consortium of leading companies and research institutes that have joined its Incentive Technology Incubator and will invest NIS 300 million in medical startups.

The new members include global pharmaceutical leader Bristol-Myers Squibb, medical devices and diagnostics company BD (Becton Dickinson and Company), international high technology company Elbit Systems, and institutional leaders Tel Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and Shaare Zedek Medical Center.

The consortium will jointly develop and invest the funds in startups operating in and graduates of Peregrine's technology incubator, focusing on the disciplines of targeted medical therapeutics, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, advanced diagnostics for identification, monitoring, and personalized medication, alongside breakthrough medical devices, such as AI-integrated robotics and sense-based specific therapies, among others.

The incubator's model has yielded extraordinary results to date, with 34 out of the 60 companies that were established in the incubator, remainign active. Some of the partnership's most noteworthy include Valtech Cardio which was sold to Edwards Lifesciences for $690 million, CartiHeal, which was acquired by Bioventus for $500 million, Cardiovalve, which was recently sold to Venus, Eximo Medical which was sold to AngioDynamics and Neovasc

5. Octopus Energy’s €220 million renewables fund makes first investment in UK-based Exagen

Exagen, a batteries startup from the UK, has become the first beneficiary of?Octopus Energy’s new renewables fund, which sits at a total of €220 million. The fund, Octopus Energy Development Partnership (OEDP) aims to support the transition to renewable energy sources.?

The cost of living is spiralling, energy prices are skyrocketing and anxiety surrounding energy supply as winter draws closer is growing. At the same time, the environmental crisis and climate change aren’t going anywhere and governments are scrambling to pull Europe to NetZero. It paints a pretty gloomy picture.?

The push to use more renewable energy sources is more urgent than ever. It’s essential for the health of our planet and to promote sustainable ways of living. Octopus Energy has announced a €220 million fund – Octopus Energy Development Partnership (OEDP) to build a new future of green energy and it just made its first investment.?

The fund will focus on investing in the early stages of building green energy tech. The aim is to find those businesses and innovations that are helping to reduce Europe’s dependence on gas imports – thereby making Europe more independent when it comes to energy, more sustainable, more green and reducing energy bills for consumers.?

Octopus Energy is particularly targeting projects related to solar, onshore wind and energy storage projects.?

Zoisa North-Bond, CEO of Octopus Energy Generation, explained:?“This fund is helping to unlock huge amounts of new renewable energy across Europe, turbocharging the journey to greater energy security. The more new green power we can build, the faster we can reduce our dependence on gas imports and drive down energy bills for people in the UK and the rest of Europe.”

6.thirdweb raises €24 million for its platform enabling users to build and launch Web3 projects

Pioneering tech platform for building NFT and Web3 apps,?thirdweb, has just raised an additional €24 million, taking its valuation to over €159 million. The startup, built by serial entrepreneur Steven Bartlett is now expanding to meet growing demand.?

The growth of Web3 has taken the world by storm over the past year. It’s become a growing market and there are no signs of it slowing down.?thirdweb?offers a game-changing platform that provides a suite of tools for creators, artists, and entrepreneurs to easily build, launch and manage a Web3 project. It’s just closed its Series A round after an exciting first year.?

Announcing a €24 million Series A funding round,?thirdweb?now has a valuation of over €159 million.?

This new round was led by Haun Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Shopify and Polygon. It comes off the back of its €4.9 million seed funding round when it launched in 2021. This was supported by over 20 industry entrepreneurs including Gary Vaynerchuck and Mark Cuban.

Founded in 2021 by Steven Bartlett and Furqan Rydhan, thirdweb is on a mission to provide the infrastructure layer for Web3 – influencing the future of tech development. The platform empowers users to unlock a full stack Web3 development kit to significantly reduce the time and cost required to build and launch applications. thirdweb facilitates the creation of Web3 apps across the most-popular blockchains, including blockchain games, NFT drops, DAOs, token gated membership clubs and more.?

What makes the startup stand out is that it enables creators, artists and innovators to build these projects and add features such as NFTs, marketplaces, and social tokens to their Web3 projects without writing a line of code. thirdweb’s intuitive, robust and open-source software is created by top-class engineers, developers and marketers.

7. Danish startup Neurons lands over €6 million to help brands understand and predict customer behaviours

Neurons?has secured over €6 million in one of Denmark’s largest seed round deals. The startup is shaping the consumer insight space through a blend of neuroscience knowledge and AI tech.?

Understanding consumers is fundamental to sales and marketing teams worldwide. Knowing the target audience, and then being able to tailor strategies that can win over clients is a sales and marketing team’s bread and butter. It’s crucial for customer success and business development as well – without happy customers, businesses aren’t so happy either.?

Neurons Inc has been shaping this space since 2013. Instead of simply understanding the customer and their wants and needs, Neurons enables businesses to predict consumer behaviour using AI and neuroscience.?

Last week, the Danish startup has announced a seed investment of over €6 million – an impressive number given that globally seed rounds tend to be around the €5 million mark.?

Fairpoint Capital joined V?kstfonden and Finance Zealand to make up this investment.

Filip Petersson, Fairpoint Capital, Investment Director, said: “We are focused on investing in amazing deep tech and making it accessible to the global market, so the decision to partner with Neurons was an easy one, even in these challenging economic times.?We are thrilled to be playing a part in bringing something truly ground-breaking to businesses the world over.?The ability to predict customer behaviours in a matter of seconds will revolutionize the way brands do business for many years to come.”

Operating since 2013, Neurons has been a forerunner in the consumer prediction space. The startup applies neuroscience tools and insights to help =businesses understand both unconscious and conscious responses of consumers – giving actionable insight into consumer attention, focus, cognitive responses and engagement. All of this is provided with a reported 95% accuracy in a matter of seconds.?

8. German startup Dryad secures €10.5 million for its wildfire detection tech

Berlin-based?Dryad?has raised €10.5 million in new funding. The startup is developing solar-powered environmental sensor networks that provide rapid wildfire detection.?

Across the globe, one impact of global warming is being felt every summer season with more and more urgency – wildfires. From Europe to Australia, wildfires are happening with more frequency and intensity and are having massive consequences on the environment, people and wildlife.?

Dryad, a Berlin-based provider of solar-powered environmental sensor networks wants to improve wildfire detection and forest monitoring. The startup has just picked up €10.5 million for its tech.?

The €10.5 million Series A funding round follows the company’s first equity seed stage, which raised €1.8 million. It saw investment from STIHL Digital.?

This Series A round was led by eCAPITAL. Additional investors include US-based Toba Capital, Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures, and strategic investor Semtech.

Rapid wildfire detection

Founded in 2020 by Carsten Brinkschulte, Marco Boenig, and Cherian Mathew, Dryad has developed an ultra-early wildfire detection and forest monitoring system. It uses low-cost sensors which are solar-powered and operate on a LoRa-based mesh networking infrastructure and a cloud analytics platform.?

Wildfires are more common than ever before and the impacts are devastating. It’s reported that the wildfires are actually causing 20% of global CO2 emissions, alongside the obvious impacts on habitats, environmental structures and people.?

Dryad is making a real difference with its tech. It’s enabling rapid and ultra-early detection of wildfires as well as health and growth monitoring of forests, using solar-powered gas sensors in a large-scale IoT sensor network. By taking this approach, the sensors can detect wildfires as well as provide valuable insights into the individual micro-climate and health of a forest.?

Dr Paul-Josef Patt, CEO of eCAPITAL, commented:?“Wildfires represent a huge global problem that has not been resolved effectively for too long. With Dryad’s highly scalable technology, we believe that from now on wildfires will be detected before they can cause damage. We, together with our co-investors, support the company on its mission to save millions of hectares of forest, significantly reduce the threat for humans and animals and avoid the emission of over a billion tonnes of CO2.”

9. Advanced geothermal heats up with $138M?round for startup Fervo Energy

A leading geothermal energy startup just raised $138?million to build and run a?fleet of power plants fueled by the Earth’s heat.

Fervo Energy?announced the new funding?on Monday. With the latest round, which was led by venture capital firm?DCVC, the Houston-based startup has raised $177?million in total investment since launching five years?ago.

Fervo aims to lower the cost of developing geothermal power by making it easier to tap heat deep within the Earth to make steam and produce clean electricity. The startup uses the same horizontal drilling techniques and fiber-optic sensing tools as the oil and gas industry, with the goal being to access geothermal resources that are otherwise too expensive or technically complex to reach using existing technologies.

A leading geothermal energy startup just raised $138?million to build and run a?fleet of power plants fueled by the Earth’s heat.

Fervo Energy?announced the new funding?on Monday. With the latest round, which was led by venture capital firm?DCVC, the Houston-based startup has raised $177?million in total investment since launching five years?ago.

Fervo aims to lower the cost of developing geothermal power by making it easier to tap heat deep within the Earth to make steam and produce clean electricity. The startup uses the same horizontal drilling techniques and fiber-optic sensing tools as the oil and gas industry, with the goal being to access geothermal resources that are otherwise too expensive or technically complex to reach using existing technologies.

The company is part of a?growing effort by startups, research institutions and government agencies to harness geothermal energy from deeper wells and hotter sources. In February,?MIT?spinoff?Quaise Energy?raised $40?million to?develop high-frequency beams?that melt and vaporize rocks, in theory allowing developers to extract heat virtually anywhere in the world. In May,?Schmidt Futures?— the philanthropy run by former Google?CEO?Eric Schmidt and his wife Wendy Schmidt — backed a?new nonprofit,?Project InnerSpace, to accelerate geothermal development worldwide.

“Power buyers are interested in geothermal power because they are actively looking for reliable energy sources that can address climate change and rising energy prices,” Tim Latimer,?CEO?of Fervo, said in a?press release.? “Our mission is to meet that growing demand by putting gigawatts of?24/7?carbon-free energy on the?grid.”?

10. Bitcoin has crashed 68% from its peak — but one bull says the latest crypto winter is a 'warm winter'

A crypto winter is here but it’s going to be a “warm winter,” according to one crypto bull.

Bitcoin?may have fallen by more than half from record levels, but “there’s so much more than that,” said Edith Yeung, a general partner at Race Capital.

“In some sense, the ‘warm winter’ is basically going to push out everybody who really [wants to be] there for short-term gain,” she told CNBC’s?Street Signs Asia?last week, highlighting that cryptocurrency is a long-term play.

Bitcoin, the world’s biggest digital coin, is about 68% off its all-time high of nearly $69,000 in November.

Yeung said she remains bullish long-term on digital tokens because its appeal lies in the fact that “crypto is really about Web3.”

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