• vertical deals are being closed at early stages
• fresh powder poppin' outta new funds closing
• Euro VCs active in the US

 

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Interesting deals

Nordics and Baltics

🇸🇪 Mëtta, a D2C producer of functional meals, raised angel funding.
🇸🇪 Dropmed, operating a medical marketplace, where healthcare providers can customize their own platform and purchase products directly from registered medtech vendors, raised seed locally.
🇩🇰 Lun Energy, providing consumer thermal rennovation by selling heat pumps, raised a late seed international round.
🇳🇴 Li-tech, producing sensors for detecting flammable batteries, raised $400k pre-seed.
🇩🇰 Lightnovo, producing spectrometers and microscopes based on Raman related technologies, raised $500k pre-seed.
🇸🇪 Scrintal, developing a visual note-taking and collaboration tool aka Miro meets Notion on top of a knowledge base, raised $1 million seed.
🇳🇴 Equality Check, building a community-based platform of employee reviews rating equality in companies, raised a bridge round of $1.6 million.
🇱🇹 Oxipit, developing AI tools for radiologists and global medical imaging, raised $4.9 million.

 

DACH

🇩🇪 C1 Green Chemicals, developing an ultra-efficient catalysis to mass-produce green methanol, raised a growth round of undisclosed amount.
🇩🇪 InPlanet, producer of silicate rock powders, targeting farmers to restore their soils and help them to transition to a low carbon agriculture, raised $1.3 million pre-seed.
🇨🇭Yeekatee, developing a social investing app, raised $1.9 million in angel funding.
🇨🇭 Obligate, developing electronic promissory note infrastructure, raised a $2 million bridge round. 
🇩🇪 Slay, startup building a mobile social network for teens that takes after Gas from US (acquired by Discord this week), raised $2.6 million pre-seed.
🇩🇪 Vialytics, doing AI-based SAAS for road maintenance management, raised $11 million series A.

 

France

🇫🇷 MO-KA, developing a SAAS securing fraud and error at self-checkouts, raised angel funding.
🇫🇷 Metahood, developing services for discovering, purchasing, and selling land in the open metaverse, raised $3 million seed.
🇫🇷 Betterway, fintech developing employee mobility accounts. raised $4.4 million.
🇫🇷 Fairbrics, producers of carbon-neutral fabrics for the fashion industry, raised $7.2 million.
🇫🇷 Shark Robotics, doing terrestrial robots for defence and space sectors purposes, raised $11 million series A. 

 

Other geographies

🇧🇪 Yoda, developing a 100% electric moped that weights 22 kilos, raised $500k pre-seed.
🇳🇱 Avata, insurance startup for digital assets, NFTs and Web3 or gaming-specific digital assets, raised $650k.
🇮🇪 Inclusio, developing a data-driven, science-based platform for measuring, tracking, and acting on diversity and inclusion across an organization, raised $2 million.
🇬🇧 Kuai Commerce, selling a SAAS-enabled tool for brands looking to enter the Chinese ecommerce market, raised $2.4 million pre-seed. 
🇬🇧 The Edit LDN, operating a marketplace for limited sneakers & streetwear that's doing $12 million in revenue, raised $4.8 million.
🇵🇹 Habit Analytics, selling end-to-end insurance solutions embbeded into other distributors portfolios, raised $5.3 million.
🇳🇱 Sprinque, operating a B2B checkout platform for merchants & marketplaces, raised $6.5 million.
​
​Please note that this is just a selection, all deals are available here.

 

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Active investors

Powder

🇳🇱 Waterland Private Equity Investments raised €3.5 billion for its ninth flagship fund and €500 million for a new fund that will take minority stakes in Waterland portfolio companies after they’re exited.

🇪🇸 Galdana Ventures closed on over $650 million for its third fund, which is seeking to hold a $700m+ final close in August.

🇩🇪 Flex Capital closed its second fund of €300 million targeting 11,000 medium-sized internet and software companies from DACH that generate between €5-30 million in sales a year.

🇺🇸 Sequoia Capital launched a $195 million dedicated seed fund, its fifth, used to back founders across the United States and Europe.

🇩🇪 NRW.BANK has launched the fourth generation of its venture fund, NRW.Venture, closed at €150 million.

🇬🇧 Steven Bartlett of BBC show Dragons' Den fame, announced launching a $100 million fund aimed squarely at supporting the next round of European startup success stories.

🇫🇷 October, the French startup operating a SME lending platform in continental Europe, did a new closing for a €100 million debt fund to invest in small businesses across France, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and Spain. 

🇬🇧 Imbiba announced the first close at £70 million of its new £90 million fund to support the UK’s leading leisure, lifestyle & entertainment growth brands.

🇩🇪 PropTech1 Ventures announced the first closing of its second fund at €44 million - it targets 100 million to be deployed pre-seed to series A in real estate technology startups from Europe.

🇧🇪 Nuketech is a newly launched VC fund focused on early-stage startups in the nuclear energy sector.

 

Exits

🇬🇧 Speedinvest, Google's Gradient Ventures and a bunch of angel investors (i.e. Tom Blomfield, Andy Leaver) exited from London-based Sona, developer of SAAS used to manage frontline workforces and acquired by British occupational mobile messaging app Yapster for an undisclosed amount. Sona had last raised $6.8 million seed in March 2022.

🇬🇧 Old College Capital and Scottish Enterprise exited from Blackford Analysis, a British AI radiology imaging platform acquired by Bayer for an undisclosed amount. Blackford Analysis had raised less than $10 million since 2010.

 

On the move

🇩🇪 Moritz Baier-Lentz has joined Lightspeed Ventures as partner - he is a German former professional gamer, ex-Bitkraft Ventures.

🇸🇪 Hanel Baveja has joined Creandum as a principal in the London office, after a three years stint with Union Square Ventures in New York.

🇮🇹 Vittorio Colao, ex-CEO at Vodafone, rejoined General Atlantic as vice chair for EMEA.

🇩🇪 Wanjiru Chabeda and Julia Flaig were promoted to principals at Join Capital.

🇳🇴 Sanjot Malhi joined Northzone from Hong Kong's Tybourne Capital to lead growth-stage deals out of London.

 

Also notable

🇩🇪 Bitkraft Ventures led a $27 million pre-Series B round raised by Carry1st, a South Africa publisher of social games and interactive content across Africa. Other backers include Andreessen Horowitz, Konvoy Ventures, TTV Capital, Alumni Ventures, Lateral Capital and Kepple Ventures.

🇳🇱 Dutch early-stage VC 1kx invested $3.5 million seed alongside Shima Venture et al in US-based Sleepagotchi, a mobile application with gamification and social elements that helps users improve their sleeping habits across the world.

🇵🇹 Portugal-based Bright Pixel co-led a $15 million series A extension round raised by NY-based Chord, developers of a commerce-as-a-service software.

🇨🇭 Highland Europe (HQ-ed in Switzerland), followed on a $13 million round closed by Oro, an US and Europe-operated open source e-commerce platform co-created by Magento’s cofounder Roy Rubin.

🇸🇪 Volvo’s VC arm invested an undisclosed amount in Waabi, a Toronto-based maker of self-driving trucks.

🇫🇷 A couple of serial French founders who moved to San Francisco to build Scenario, an AI platform for generating gaming art assets, raised $6 million in a seed funding round led by Play Ventures, joined by Anorak Ventures, Founders Inc. and The VR Fund.

🇫🇮 Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds, received an acquisition offer for $813 million from Playtika, a Nasdaq-listed Israeli company mostly known for its mobile casino games. That's 55% on top of what Rovio is currently trading - it was valued at around $1.1 billion when it went public in 2017.

🇩🇪 Ionos, a German web hosting company owned by United Internet and Warburg Pincus, plans to raise €500 million via an IPO on Frankfurt's public market.

🇺🇸 Whirlpool agreed to divest most of its European (EMEA) businesses via transactions with Turkish home appliance rival Arcelik. 

🇮🇹 Iberdrola agreed to sell a 49% stake in its Spanish solar plant and onshore wind farms business to Norway's sovereign wealth fund for €600 million.

 

Portfolio digging

🇫🇷 Serge Alleyne

• serial founder - Nomao, TokTokTok, Shipfix
• venture scout for Lakestar since 2021
• 28 deals in porfolio, 6 of which in 2022:

🇫🇷 Caravel - D2C insurance for retirement savings
🇧🇪 Eqwin - mobile app used for fantasy horse racing and tracking. 
🇫🇷 Feels - dating app
🇫🇷 Rapsodie - fantasy record label game, focused on French rap.
🇫🇷 Spot Wallet - a secure & friendly self-custody wallet (aka non-custodial wallet) for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polygon, Solana
🇫🇷 Wildsense - tools that monitors forest health using satellite imagery

 

🇩🇪 Gloria Bäuerlein

• ex-investment banker, ex-Index Ventures (principal 2016-2018)
• ex-strategy head for Kry (Sweden), ex-COO Back (Germany) 
• 10 deals in portfolio, 7 added in 2022:

🇩🇪 Exakt Health - a mobile app helping with sport injury diagnostics and treatement.
🇩🇪 Pile - crypto-as-a service platform that will help fintechs and neobanks to integrate crypto offerings such as wallets or trading into their product.
🇸🇪 PocketLaw - legal services as well as a SaaS platform used for contract creation and management with multiple contract templates.
🇩🇪 Procuros - SAAS developer of a digital networking hub connecting industrial suppliers and their trading partners.
🇳🇱 Rise - calendar tool used for collaborative work.
🇳🇴 Tana - collaboration tool, a la Roam Reseach.

 

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