• early stage for AI agents, native vertical LLM, stealth, and (some) nice traction at the seed stage.
• active dealers last month, dealflow still on a downward trend yoy
• exits, secondaries, new gigs and Europeans in USA.

 

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Deals

Highlights

1. 🇬🇧 ​Converge​, building a tech platform for CMOs, raised $5.6 million seed with General Catalyst, Uncorrelated Ventures and Y Combinator.
   • USP: holistic analytics tool replacing a bunch of SAAS that's layered on top of each other i.e. Tag Managers, Consumer Data Platforms and reporting solutions like Google Analytics.
   • traction: $1 million ARR from 180 customers - with a team of four.
   • technically it's a French startup - they're all French based in London - incubated at YC in the summer of 2023. 
2. 🇫🇮 ​Cactos​, developing smart energy storage systems out of refurbished Tesla and other EV batteries, raised $7.3 million in a deal led by Union Square Ventures, joined by Superhero Capital. 
   • USP: they started with solutions for refurbished Tesla and other EV batteries, now doing the entire value chain for energy storage systems - manufacturing, installments, operations, optimizations, maintaining, and financing.
   • traction: market leader in Finland, making dents in Sweden.
   • deal led by USV's veteran ​Brad Burnham​ -> USV's third in Europe in the past year, alongside 🇳🇱 ​Sling​ and 🇸🇪 ​Blixt​.
   • prior to this round, the Finns had raised some $26 million worth of equity with the Finnish Climate Fund and a local pension fund.
3. 🇩🇪 ​Prior Labs​, developing foundation models for spreadsheets and databases, raised $9.3 million pre-seed led by Balderton, joined by Atlantic Labs, XTX Ventures and angel investors.
   • based just across the Swiss border, in the city of Freiburg counting some 200k souls and a good university.
   • Freiburg also hosts a highly-priced VC startup, ​Black Forest Labs​, which in the spring of 2024 has raised $30 million pre-everything for another AI product.
   • this is not a coincidence in such a small town where basically nothing happens - just when BFL closed its money round, a ​professor​ teaching ML at the local university quit his tenured job and, together with a PhD student from Berlin and a ​Canadian fellow​ who'd done a Stockholm startup and then did VC work for ING, jumped on the let's do-something-with-AI-and-raise-VC-money trend.
   • ended up with a niched AI LLM model specifically trained on tabular data, a discrete yet hard-to-solve problem that apparently larger, general LLMs are not able to figure - easy to relate if you ever had thrown an Excel file into ChatGPT and asked it to do things. 
   • the product's pretty good - btw, Neuralk is working on a similar one in Europe (see further down) as well as ​Ikigai​ in the US. It's the type of product that makes you ponder whether the established LLM builders will get to solving it as well, eventually. 
   • they say to have gotten encouraging initial traction within six months with an open source GTM model, in a similar fashion to Mistral's GTM approach in the early days.
   • will this work for scaling in the German case? $9.3 million says it will - Balderton's ​James Wise​ is in the lead seat for this one, same British investor inundating his social media with screenshots from another early stage AI startup he invested in. AI enthusiasm and VC value add ftw. :-)
4. 🇳🇴 ​Tana​, developing a SAAS management tool, raised a $14 million Series A led by Tola Capital, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Northzone, Alliance VC, and firstminute capital. 
   • USP: AI-native workspace combining an automated-list builder and a note taker, part application enabler, and part organizer - some sort of a Google Wave for those old enough to remember that product.
   • traction: 30k beta testers and 160,000 users on a waitlist - core target market: tech savvy professionals. 
   • not the usual KPIs to sell for a series A round - the startup does have though one of the Google Wave makers in the captable, alongside other high profile American angels, as the Norwegians moved on the West Coast already. NB: Google Wave failed ​spectacularly​.
   • in stealth for four years and funded by an $11 million seed led by La Famiglia (now GC), during which AI has become a thing and forced them to pivot the product - namely they incorporated OpenAI into their product. 
   • series A led by ​Sheila Gulati​, founder and MD of Tola Capital - she used to work for Microsoft for 10 years. Besides Tana, Tola has four other Euro startups in portfolio, ​all from Germany​, per our N9 tracking.
5. 🇩🇪 ​Avelios Medical​, building new gen hospital systems covering end-to-end for all things administrative, raised a $31 million series A led by Sequoia Capital, joined by High-Tech Gründerfonds and Revent.
   • traction: 12 hospitals chains in Germany.
   • market data: interesting macro alignment creating considerable ​pent-up demand​ -> i) urgent need in Germany for more than 1,000 hospitals to replace their software systems; ii) local regulators push for digitalisation in the health system - €4.3B allocated by German government alone per year; and iii) siginificant AI needs market pull. 
   • current deal led by Sequoia's partner ​Anas Biad​ who was introduced to the founders via existing backer ​Revent Ventures​ - a €60 million fund founded by Otto Birnbaum, Lauren Harrison Lentz, Emily Brooke and Henrik Grosse Hokamp in Berlin in 2020.
   • prior to this, the Germans have raised 5 million seed back in 2021. 

 

More deals 

Nordics

🇫🇮 ​Koll​, building a mobile app used for making phone calls with verified identity, raised a $400k seed funding with Superhero Capital.

🇮🇸 ​Dala Care​, developer of enterprise SAAS for home care facilities, raised $1.4 million with Omega Funds and LSV.

• money used for setting up biz in the US as they acquired an American SAAS company. 

🇸🇪 ​Green 14​, manufacturer of hydrogen plasma technology transforming quartz into high-purity silicon with significantly lower emissions, raised a $2 million seed investment financing round with Ingka Investments.

🇸🇪 ​Energi Engagemang​, developers installers of solar cell projects on commercail scale roofs, raised $2.6 million with AxSol.

🇩🇰 ​Pandektes​, building an AI-powered assistant on top of an all-in-one legal knowledge hub, raised a $3 million seedround led by People Ventures alongside Interface Capital and angel investors.

• 100 paying customers in both Denmark and Germany
• ICYMI, Interface Capital is an investment company from Germany founded by Christian Reber and Niklas Jansen - did some ​15 deals​ since late 2022, when Reber pivoted from his CEO job at ​Pitch​. 

🇱🇻 ​Trace Space​, developing an AI-native productivity platform for development engineers building complex hardware products in automotive, industrial, aerospace, and defence, raised $4 million seed led by Cherry Ventures, joined by Outlast Fund, Nebular, Fiedler, and Change Ventures.

🇩🇰 ​Enduro Genetics​, building a platform for industrial biomanufacturing, raised $12.4 million in Series A funding from Supernova Invest, Noon Ventures, and Sandwater.

• a spinout from the Technical University of Denmark, seeded by Noon Ventures in 2022 - it's been also soft funded with local grants and EU money.
• TAM: €400 billion consisting of biomanufacturers from all sorts of verticals aiming to replace existing production means with a platform able to decarbonize and create sustainable alternatives to fossil-based products, such as bio-based fuels, bioplastics, specialty chemicals, alternative proteins, and pharmaceuticals.

Also notable

🇸🇪 ​Froda​, which does micro-SME financing, secured EU funding worth ​€100 million​, building on an existing €50 million facility.

• founded in 2015, the Swedes have raised equity financing from local private investors.

 

UK

🇬🇧 ​Fern Labs​, developing a framework used to deploy and direct teams of AI agents to complete complex tasks, raised a $3 million pre-seed funding deal led by Air Street Capital.

🇬🇧 ​Astral Systems​, building a Multi-State Fusion (MSF) reactor for on-demand neutron production, raised $5.5 million seed with Speedinvest and Playfair VC.

🇬🇧 ​Modern Synthesis​, biomaterial manufacturer of alt leather products, raised $5.5 million seed led by Extantia Capital, joined by Artesian and Collaborative Fund.

🇬🇧 ​Model ML​, developing an AI tool that speeds up financial due diligence for investors and advisors, raised $12 million seed in a deal co-led by LocalGlobe and Y Combinator.

• founded by siblings Arnie and Chaz Englander of ​Fancy​ and ​Fat Llama​ fame in 2023, did YC during that summer and this week out of stealth with the seed round.
• the PR says they have 20 paying customers but it's unclear how the product actually specifically works or what does, other than some generic testimonials from on the ​website​, which might as well have been generated with AI. :-) 
• ​Ziv Reichert​, partner at LocalGlobe, was lead investor of this round.

🇬🇧 ​Ionate​, building a business producing and selling next-gen electricity transformers, raised $17 million in Series A led by AlbionVC.

🇬🇧 ​Salience Labs​, developing photonics for AI datacenter infrastructure, raised $30 million series A co-led by Applied Ventures and ICM HPQC Fund, joined by Oxford Science Enterprises, Strategic Investment Fund, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Silicon Catalyst and Braavos.

 

DACH

🇨🇭 ​LogicStar​, building a business by selling an AI agent used to autonomously manage bug fixes, raised $3 million pre-seed with Northzone alongside angel investors and scouts.

🇩🇪 ​octonomy​, building a framework for deploying AI agents for support services, raised $5.2 million pre-seed in a deal done with Capnamic.

🇨🇭 ​Saeki Robotics​, developer of robotic digital manufacturing units and hardware and software automation tools, raised $6.7 million seed led by Lightbird, joined by Founderful, 2100VC, and Danobat.

🇨🇭 ​Largo ai​, providing data-assisted AI intelligence for film projects, right from script choice and development, through filming, post-production and theatrical release, raised $7.5 million series A co-led by TI Capital and QBIT Capital, joined by Atreides, DAA Capital and angel investors.

🇩🇪 ​hallo theo​, developing a next gen SAAS for property management, raised a $10.4 million seed round with Insight Partners.

🇩🇪 ​Comstruct​, operators of a B2B marketplace platform for purchasing construction materials, raised $13 million seedco-led by GV and 20VC, joined by Booom and Puzzle Ventures.

• traction: 13,000 construction sites across Switzerland and Germany connected to 5000 suppliers from Sweden, Norway, France, Poland, the Czech Republic and Austria.
• pre-seeded by Rivus Capital, another vc and angel investors in 2023.

🇩🇪 ​Solaris​, selling bank-licensing embedded finance SAAS, raised $145 million in Series G funding co-led by SBI Group and Börse Stuttgart.

• pretty big deal for the Japanese group, as they will take control of the major equity package - they're ​fairly active​doing deals in Europe
• traction: 130 million net revenue for 2022, supported by 750 people at ten locations in Europe and India.

 

France

🇫🇷 ​Fraktion​, developing a white label SAAS tool used for launching an investment platform, raised $1.1 million pre-seed with Cabrit Capital, Tezos, Vox Capital, Bpifrance and angel investors.

🇫🇷 ​Crown​, building a digital auction platform for procurement, raised $2 million in a seed deal led by Heartfelt, joined by Kima Ventures, Backbone, Another vc, Apok Invest, ZAS Ventures, Prequel VC and Bpifrance.

🇫🇷 ​Epyr​, developer of thermal energy storage solutions, raised $3 million pre-seed financing round co-led by AENU and Daphni, joined by OVNI Capital, WEPA Ventures and business angels.

🇫🇷 ​Neuralk AI​, developers of AI embedding models specialized for structured data representation i.e. tabular data, raised $4 million seed with Fly VC, Stem AI and angel investors.

🇫🇷 ​The Packengers​, operating a platform dedicated to the packaging and transport of fragile objects and works of art, raised $14.5 million with Transolution, Weber Investissement, and Reflexion Capital.

🇫🇷 ​Stockly​, operating a B2B marketplace that connects e-commerce websites with real time inventory data, raised $27 million in series B led by 83North and joined by Eurazeo, Square Capital, Daphni, Anyma Capital.

• traction: 1 million transactions handled for merchants from 25 countries, yet to be profitable.
• founded in 2018, $12 million series A led by Eurazeo back in 2022. 

🇫🇷 ​Riot Security​, developing a security platform designed for fighting phishing attempts, raised a $30 million Series Bround led by Left Lane Capital, joined by Y Combinator, Base10 and FundersClub.

• traction: $10 million ARR produced out of 1500 customers for 2024
• valuation: $170 million post money
• the company's been long operated from the US - seeded by Frst immediately after going to YC in winter of 2020, raised series A led by Base10 in 2023.

 

Other geo

🇮🇹 ​Ydun​, developing a studio that combines technology with sports to create personalised fitness programmes, raised $4.1 million pre-seed with Limestone Capital in Switzerland and angel investors in Norway.

• USP: custom, AI-enabled training programs based on comprehensive assessment of members’ health, stress levels and lifestyle - pretty much aligned to a whole new trend emerging for consumer health, both in Europe and the US.
• pre-launch deal, startup founded by a ​Norwegian guy​ in Italy, hence the related investors.

🇹🇷 ​Fimple​, developing a cloud-native composable core banking platform for financial institutions, raised $12 million series A co-led by DN Capital and Smartfin joined by APY Ventures and Tera Portfolio.

• deal co-led by ​Guy Ward Thomas​ of DN and ​Jürgen Ingels​ of Smartfin.
• scarce traction intel - the Turks have opened a London office for raising VC funding (5.5M since 2022) but the core market is Turkey and adjacent countries. Money will be used to expand in MENA.

🇮🇪 ​Protex AI​, building computer vision software that monitors existing cameras in the port, logistics, and manufacturing industries to ensure compliance and identify safety issues, raised $36 million Series B investment from Hedosophia and followed by Salesforce Ventures.

 

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Investors

Active last month

We have tracked the activity of about ​​​900 investors​​​ involved in more than 300 VC deals worth $4 billion for the month of January. That's about 30% less compared to last year's January dealflow and in line with the past 24 months deflation rate in terms of VC spending in Europe. 

Some of the more active investors below.

VCs 🇬🇧 Atomico 🇬🇧 Firstminute capital 🇬🇧 Fuel Ventures 🇬🇧 Highland Europe 🇬🇧 Notion Capital 🇬🇧 Seedcamp

🇫🇷 Axeleo Capital 🇫🇷 Demeter 🇫🇷 Elaia

🇨🇭 Founderful 🇨🇭 Lakestar 🇩🇪 HV Capital 🇦🇹 Speedinvest 🇪🇸 KFund 🇪🇸 Inveready

🇮🇹 CDP Ventures 🇸🇪 Creandum ​Full list​ is interesting to dig through, there's more than 100 names with at least two transactions.

 

Americans 🇺🇸 a16z 🇺🇸 Cathay Innovation 🇺🇸 Endeavor Catalyst 🇺🇸 General Catalyst 🇺🇸 Left Lane Capital 🇺🇸 NEA 🇺🇸 Sequoia Capital Full list ​here​.

Angels

🇫🇷 Nicolas Dessaigne 🇫🇷 Thomas Wolf 🇬🇧 Dan Cobley 🇬🇧 Jonathan Milner 🇸🇪 Ulf Bokelund Svensson 🇮🇹 Riccardo Zacconi 🇳🇴 Davide de Picciotto 🇺🇸 John Doerr

Full list ​here​.

 

On the move

🇬🇧 ​Rockman Law​ joined the investment team of Merantix in their London office, after having worked for Intel Ignite and Seedrs, prior to. 

🇬🇧 ​Hannah Leach​ joined Antler as a partner, after five years as GP at Houghton St Ventures.

🇬🇧 ​Chris Buchanan​ was hired by Permira as a global head of capital formation and relocated to London, after he had spent fifteen years with Apollo in NYC.

🇸🇪 ​Emma Hernmarck​ switched her VC scouting from Sequoia Capital to Andreessen Horowitz in Europe, and also just got a paying gig in the GTM team at ElevenLabs. 

🇸🇪 ​Martin Jacobsson​ was promoted to an operations lead position at Nordic Capital after eight years, ​Henrik Johansson​made partner after six years, while ​Elin Ljung​ and ​Henrik Sandreus​ were both made operating partners after eight and nine years, respectively. 

• all are based in Stockholm.

🇸🇪 ​Max Larsson​ joined as analyst for the local investors Backing Minds.

🇩🇰 ​Kenneth Christensen​ was promoted to a partner position at Procuritas, after seven years spent in the Copenhagen office.

🇩🇪 ​Fabian Krautwurst​ re-joined Cavalry Ventures as principal after he spent eight months in a similar position at World Fund in Berlin.

🇮🇹 ​Marco Bellino​ joined PAI Partners from rival private equity firm ​Ardian in order to lead Italian investments for its flagship buyout fund.

Also notable:

🇬🇧 ​Bruce Macfarlane​ ended his CEO role at Sifted at the end of last year, after less than two years on the job.

• Sifted is a new media outlet covering news about startups and investors in Europe - it raised £4 million from ScaleUp Capital and FT in 2021, and is yet to be profitable, with a £2.5 million loss for 2023, according to the ​Gov UK data​.

 

Powder 

🇩🇪 Cherry Ventures closed ​$500 million​ in commitments for its fifth fund.

🇩🇪 Hitachi Ventures launched a fourth CVC fund at ​$400 million​.

🇫🇷 ISAI did a second closing at ​€300 million​ hard cap, a year after a first 100 million close of its third tech growth and buyout fund.

🇮🇱 Angular Ventures announced closing its third fund at ​$125 million​ at the end of 2023, to be spent on Israeli and European early stage startups.

🇫🇷 Emblem resumed a ​€80 million​ second close for their debut fund kicked off in 2022.

🇸🇪 Course Corrected also announced a first close at ​$66 million​ for a second fund focused on early-stage climate positive technology companies. 

 

Liquidity

🇬🇧 General Catalyst and Mubadala paid ​$300 million​ for an equity stake in the payroll SAAS startup Deel, at a $12.3 billion pre-money valuation.

• that's a 16X multiple - the Brits also announced reaching $800M ARR, +70% yoy.
• Deel last raised $425 million D round led by Coatue in 2021. Other captable investors include a16z, Spark Capital and YC.

🇬🇧 M&G Investments acquired a ​majority stake​ in P Capital Partners, a credit investor and loan provider from Sweden.

🇩🇰 ByFounders, Dreamcraft Ventures, Tiny and Nordic Web exited from Rig dev, a Danish startup building an DevEx & Application layer for Kubernetes for enterprises that was acquired by an American competitor for ​an undisclosed amount​.

• the Danes had raised $2.2 million pre-seed less than two years ago.

🇫🇷 Odyssée Ventures exited from Evoliz, a startup from France selling invoicing SAAS tools for SMBs, acquired by Visma for ​an undisclosed amount​.

• the French had raised $3 million seed two years ago.

🇩🇪 Yttrium exited its equity position from Ftapi, a German company managing a data exchange product, sold in a ​$67 million​ deal to Armira and Tikehau Capital.

• Yttrium had entered the captable via a $15 million capital raise transaction closed in 2021.

🇬🇧 BlackFin Tech, Molten, Amadeus Capital and Passion Capital exited from Ravelin, a British company selling a SAAS fraud prevention platform and acquired by Worldpay for an ​undisclosed amount​. 

• Ravelin had raised more than 30 million since its 2015 founding.

 

Europeans in USA

🇳🇴 Northzone, Sofina, and FJ Labs invested in a ​$50 million​ series B raised by ​Berry Street​, an American startup operating a nutrition counseling platform. 

🇮🇪 Frontline Ventures invested alongside Lightspeed and other American VCs in a ​$30 million​ series B raised by Archive, a San Francisco startup that develops profitable resale programs for more than 50 brands globally.

🇬🇧 Illuminate Financial led a ​$14 million​ Series A funding raised by  FileAI​, a Singapore startup doing enterprise AI.

🇩🇪 Foundamental contributed to a ​$8 million​ seed raised by Desteia, a NY-based logistics startup that provides end to end visibility to the US-Mexico trade, where companies move over $850 billion worth of goods annually.

🇩🇪 BlueYard co-invested with USV ​$3 million​ seed in Miren, an American startup building a software deployment platform challenging AWS.

 

Also notable

🇫🇷 ​Stem AI​ is a new accelerator-like early stage investor, focused on AI and doing $250k SAFE checks plus perks - operated by Nicolas Granatino, Mehdi Ghissassi and Severine Gregoire out of Paris.

🇬🇧 Entrepreneur First is doing a 2-month ​residency program​ to build a startup bridge to the US - participants get $250k in equity money.

🇸🇪 ​Ode Growth Partners​ is a newly launched investment company in Sweden co founded by ​Tim He​ (ex-Summa Equity) and ​Miriam Grut Norrby​ (ex-Alfvén & Didrikson).

🇩🇪 Cavalry Ventures ​announced​ changing their name into NAP.

🇩🇪 OpenAI will open a German office ​in Munich​, alongside Paris, Brussels and Dublin. 

• Germany is the country with the most OpenAI subs in Europe.

 

Elsewhere

• General Catalyst announced ​GC Wealth​, a new line of business providing wealth management services to HNWI, families, and organizations from their network - $2.3B AUM, backed by 20 people led by ​Dave Breslin​.

 

• ​Asya Bradley​ joined Stripe in San Francisco in charge of Startup & Venture Capital partnerships.
• ​Yan-David Erlich​ joined B Capital as a GP, after spending three years in a similar role at Coatue in San Francisco.

 

• First Round led, with Y Combinator, SV Angel, and BoxGroup contributing, a ​$6.5 million​ seed round raised by &AI, an American startup doing AI designed to assist patent attorneys.
• USV led a $15 million seed raised by ​Presto​, Americans building Stripe for EV charging.
• Battery Ventures led a $20 million Series A round raised by ​Jump​, an American startup doing AI note taking for wealth advisors.
• Greylock Partners, Spark Capital, and CRV have invested in a ​$36 million​ seed deal raised by 7AI, a Boston startup that uses AI agents to automate repetitive security tasks, such as analyzing alerts and investigating potential threats
• Accel made two deals in India i) led a $3 million seed round raised by an ​AI startup​ building ChatGPT for presentations and ii) contributed to a pre-IPO deal done by a ​seafood supply chain platform​.
• Goldman Sachs led, joined by General Catalyst and Forerunner, a ​$50 million​ series B at $500 million post raised by Fay, a San Francisco startup that connects individuals with registered dietitians for personalized nutrition and lifestyle counseling.
• Lightspeed Venture Partners is in talks to lead a ​$2 billion​ round raised by Anthropic at a $60 billion valuation - the startup does $1 billion ARR, 10X yoy.
• Founders Fund to lead a ​$2.5 billion​ Series G round at a $28 billion valuation in Anduril, the American defence tech startup.

 

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