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the best VC news, curated for you
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Our stories today:
- Voima Ventures
- 360 Capital
New VC Funds
🇫🇮 Voima Ventures Raises over €100M for Fund III
Helsinki-based Voima Ventures closes third fund above €100M, targeting 25-30 deep tech startups with investments of €200k-€3M each. The fund meets the EU's Article 8 sustainability standards and is backed by the European Investment Fund, Finnish Tesi, VTT, and Swedish Saminvest. Voima's focus is on university spin-offs and ESG-aligned investments.
🇫🇷 Paris-based 360 Capital raises €140M in the first close of climate tech fund (360 LIFE II), targeting final close of €200M to invest in Series A/B startups across Europe
The new fund is supported by strategic partners A2A (€40M), an Italian utility company, and De Nora (€10M), an electrochemistry specialist. It is classified as an Article 9 fund, concentrating on sustainability. 360 Capital plans to invest €2M to €10M tickets in as many as 20 startups focused on renewable energy, hydrogen, and pollution reduction. This fund builds on the success of 360 LIFE I (2020) and aligns with COP29 agreements. 360 Capital anticipates that deal flow will come from France and Italy while allocating up to 40% across Europe.
New VC Rounds
🇨🇭 Anybotics - €57 Million - Series B
Swiss robotics company Anybotics has raised €57 million in a Series B funding round led by NGP Capital. Anybotics develops autonomous legged robots for industrial inspection and maintenance. The company aims to improve worker safety and increase efficiency in hazardous and challenging environments.
🇫🇷 Aqemia - $38 Million
Aqemia, a French startup that is meshing "quantum-inspired physics" with machine learning to discover new drugs, has raised $38 million in a new funding round led by the San Francisco-based VC firm Cathay Innovation. The company plans to open a new office in London to "access the UK's rich talent pool".
🇫🇷 Biomemory - $18 Million - Series A
Biomemory, a Paris-based company, has successfully raised $18 million in Series A funding, with the round led by Crédit Mutuel Innovation. The funding was also supported by several investors, including the French Tech Seed Fund, Blast, and the Deep Tech 2030 fund, along with Paris Business Angels and others. Biomemory is focused on developing innovative DNA-based data storage technology, which involves creating bio-sourced DNA fragments that have the capacity to store data for thousands of years without any energy input.
🇸🇪 Corsmed - $3.5 Million
Sweden-based Corsmed secured $3.5M for its innovative MRI technology. Its digital twin software reduces scan time from 45 minutes to just 3 minutes and provides measurable, high-resolution 3D brain scans 10 times faster. Luminar Ventures and Big Pi Ventures led the funding.
🇩🇪 Dealfront - €30 Million - Debt
Germany-based Dealfront, a B2B sales intelligence platform, has raised €30 million in debt financing from Ashgrove Capital. The platform helps businesses identify and connect with potential customers. It claims to have over 100 million contacts and 12 million companies in its database.
🇬🇧 Embeddable - $6 Million - Seed
A London-based embedded analytics platform has raised $6 million in seed funding. The platform allows businesses to integrate analytics directly into their applications. OpenOcean led the seed round, and existing investors Four Rivers and TechStars also participated.
🇩🇪 Gigs - $73 Million - Series B
Gigs, a San Francisco-based company founded in 2020 in Germany, has raised a $73 million Series B led by Ribbit Capital. This platform helps tech companies start mobile services in just a few weeks with one easy setup. It offers features like a connection API, a secure checkout process, support for multiple currencies, and AI-powered customer service. This means there is no need for telecom experts, complicated rules, or managing different vendors.
🇬🇧 Loadar - $4 Million - Seed
Belfast-based Loadar secured $4 million in seed funding led by Frontline Ventures, with participation from Techstart Ventures. Loadar provides a comprehensive freight management solution that addresses the inefficiencies and outdated practices prevalent in the shipping industry.
🇩🇪 Maisa - €5 Million - Pre-Seed
Berlin-based Maisa has raised €5 million in a pre-seed round led by EQT Ventures. The company is developing a platform designed to make AI decisions traceable and explainable. Maisa's technology seeks to build trust and transparency in AI applications, addressing concerns over "black box" algorithms.
🇸🇪 Mynt - €22 Million
Mynt, a Swedish company that has developed an AI-driven platform for corporate cards and spend management aimed at SMEs, has secured €22 million in funding after its customer base expanded to 12,000 SMEs from only 3,000 a year ago. Existing investor Vor Capital is leading the round, including participation from previous backers CNI and Incore. To date, Mynt has raised approximately €50 million in total.
🇬🇧 Nscale - $155 Million - Series A
Nscale, a company that develops sustainable AI-ready data centers and GPU infrastructure, has raised $155 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Sandton Capital Partners, with participation from Kestrel, Bluesky Asset Management, and Florence Capital.
Since launching from stealth in May 2024, Nscale has experienced high demand for its AI infrastructure. Its pipeline of planned data centers across Europe and North America has quickly grown from 300MW to 1.3GW, with 120MW planned for 2025 development.
🇭🇷 Orqa - €5.8 Million
Croatian drone maker Orqa has raised €5.8M, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and with participation from Radius Capital, Decisive Point, and Day One Capital. The company develops advanced autonomous drone systems for defense and enterprise markets and specializes in manufacturing all core drone components in-house. As NATO and allied nations seek Western-made drone alternatives, Orqa positions itself as a potential "DJI of the West."
🇱🇹 Pixevia - € 0.34 Million - Bridge
The round was led by Coinvest Capital, which contributed €170k, with the remainder coming from business angels, including Vladas Lašas, Renaldas Zioma, Rita Sakus, and Vytenis Benetis. The Lithuania-based company leverages standard video cameras enhanced with AI to analyze store operations, including customer behavior tracking, product availability monitoring, and performance metrics. Current expansion targets Taiwan, Belgium, Italy, and Poland.
🇩🇪 Upvest - €100 Million - Series C
Berlin-based Upvest raised €100M in a Series C round led by Hedosophia and Sapphire Ventures, with Bessemer and BlackRock participating. The company offers trading infrastructure for European fintechs like N26, Revolut, and Bunq, providing fractional stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds via its API. Processing over 1 million trades weekly for 50 million users, Upvest plans to add crypto, derivatives, and multi-currency bonds. The company also secured UK FCA authorization, positioning itself for growth in the British market.
🇳🇱 Ver-ID - € 2Million - Seed
Ver-ID, a Dutch digital identity platform, has raised €2 million in seed funding from angel investors. The platform streamlines identity verification for businesses, using AI-powered technology to automate the process. This funding will fuel Ver-ID's expansion across Europe, with a focus on the UK and German markets.
🇨🇭Waterfall Network - $11.6 Million
A Swiss blockchain startup is creating a smart contract platform that utilizes Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) technology for enhanced scalability. It can process 12,778 transactions per second and permits validator nodes to operate on standard devices such as laptops. The project has received funding from Bolt's Capital, Alpha Token Capital, and Enflux.
Might Have Missed or MHM News
🔝 2024 was a pivotal year for AI: let's recap
Last year marked yet another pivotal moment for AI. Looking ahead to 2025, competition in the AI sector is expected to intensify as established enterprises like Salesforce (with Agentforce 2.0) are now competing directly with AI-native startups. Meanwhile, European AI startups are flourishing, with 25% of funding in the region—approximately $13.7 billion)—directed towards these companies, up from 15% four years ago. This has resulted in several new unicorns and a significant increase in the value of European AI firms, now reaching $508 billion.
OpenAI has expanded its capabilities and range of services
- OpenAI released its o1 model in September, specifically engineered for enhanced reasoning in science and coding tasks, followed by o3 in December, which achieved a breakthrough 87.5% score on the ARC-AGI benchmark.
- The company also Introduced ChatGPT Search for real-time web information retrieval, and Canvas, a workstation-like interface for dynamic content editing and coding.
- Last but not least, OpenAI announced plans to become a Public Benefit Corporation to raise capital while maintaining its mission focus, facing legal challenges from Elon Musk, who alleges violation of the original non-profit mission.
Open Source closed the gap to closed-model providers
The gap between closed and open-source AI narrowed significantly in 2024. This democratization gives companies more options beyond OpenAI/Google, potentially lowering costs while maintaining quality.
- Meta Dominates: The newly released Llama 3 series culminated in version 3.3, which achieved GPT-3.5-level performance at a fraction of the compute cost. The 405 billion parameter Llama 3.1 now powers Meta's AI assistants across WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook.
- Chinese Models Surge: Alibaba's Qwen-2.5 family topped benchmark charts in multilingual tasks while DeepSeek launched V3 with 671B parameters, outperforming Meta's Llama 3.1 and matching some GPT-4 capabilities.
Google Strikes Back
With its Gemini series, Google shifted from an AI underdog to a strong competitor, particularly after addressing initial criticisms regarding image generation and bias.
- The launch of Gemini 2.0 Flash brought advanced multimodal capabilities and real-time video analysis, marking significant advancements in AI technology.
- In healthcare, Google's AI system achieved diagnostic accuracy and empathy that matched or exceeded human doctors.
- Google introduced Project Astra, a next-generation, real-time, multimodal AI assistant. This project represents a significant advancement from the current Google Assistant, designed to be more capable and seamlessly integrated into users' lives. It can understand and respond to the world in real time by processing various inputs—such as video, audio, and text—simultaneously. As a result, it engages in more natural conversations and proactively assists users by understanding their environment.
🔛 European eVTOL is facing bankruptcy
Two leading European companies that build electric flying taxis - Lilium and Volocopter - have recently hit major financial troubles. These companies are developing what's called eVTOL aircraft (electric vertical takeoff and landing), which are essentially electric aircraft that can take off and land like helicopters but fly like planes. They're seen as a potential future solution for urban transportation.
Lilium nearly went bankrupt and had to lay off 1,000 workers, but managed to survive and plans to rehire its personnel after a group of investors from Europe and North America stepped in to buy parts of the company. Shortly after this news, its competitor Volocopter also encountered difficulties and filed for bankruptcy protection, despite being known for careful spending and having recently raised substantial funds ($182M in November 2022 and $170M in March 2022).
Volocopter now needs to find new funding within eight weeks to keep operating. While they're still running their day-to-day business, they're working on a plan to restructure the company by the end of February 2024
🔛 New carbon batteries offer Power, Unlimited Power
A new carbon-14 battery developed by UKAEA and Bristol University could power devices for thousands of years, ideal for medical devices, space exploration, and extreme environments. These diamond batteries can replace conventional batteries, powering active RF tags for years, reducing costs and extending their lifespan. Their biocompatibility makes them suitable for ocular implants, hearing aids, and pacemakers, while their durability makes them perfect for spacecraft and payloads.
🔜 Smoltek's Iridium Breakthrough Could Boost Green Hydrogen Production
Smoltek, a Swedish nanotech company, created a nanofiber catalyst that uses 70% less iridium in making hydrogen. Iridium, a rare metal, is vital for PEM electrolysis and crucial for green hydrogen. This reduction lowers costs a lot, helping green hydrogen be more affordable. Green hydrogen is important for reducing carbon in industries that are hard to electrify, like heavy transportation and steel.
🔜 New AI risks emerge at a crossroads between self-rewrites and bio research
Advancements in AI, especially in autonomous scientific research, pose risks if not managed carefully. Last August, Sakana AI's "AI Scientist" attempted to rewrite its own code. Meanwhile, Stanford's virtual laboratory system designed nanobodies against SARS-CoV-2. While research speeds up, limited human control in such systems raises concerns, especially in the context of gain-of-function research. An accidental AI-enhanced virus leak could have devastating effects, highlighting the need for strong safety rules and a better understanding of AI decision-making.
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