• Euro fintech consolidation moves
• American talent poaching
• Europeans in US raise from tier 1 funds
• more exit tax adoption across Europe
• Singapore notes

 

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Interesting deals

Nordics

🇩🇰 ​ChurchDesk​, developers of a cloud-based church management platform, raised funding with Osprey Investors of London.

🇳🇴 ​DB​ (formerly Douchebags), D2C producers of premium luggage and travel bags, raised an undisclosed amount in a first institutional round with the French from LVMH.

🇳🇴 ​Prosper AI​, developing an AI-enabled backoffice tool for real estate transactions, raised capital funding from Söderberg & Partners from Sweden.

🇸🇪 ​Big Audience Machine​, developing an AI-powered platform for setting up omnichannel marketing campaigns, raised $400k pre-seed with local angel investors.

🇩🇰 ​Endless Food Co​, manufacturer of alt food chocolate products, raised $1 million pre-seed with Nordic Food Tech, EIFO and Rockstart. 

🇫🇮 ​Zero​, developing an AI-powered CRM and sales automation stack for growth companies, raised a $2.7 million pre-seed round led by 20VC, joined by Discovery Ventures, Illusian, Greens Ventures, Tiny VC and angel investors

🇸🇪 ​Talentium​, developing an AI-enabled recruiting platform, raised $3.8 million in seed funding led by EQT Ventures.

🇸🇪 ​Cerve​, developing an infrastructure platform that automates wholesellers’ sales operations, raised $4.5 million in a seed funding round led by SuperSeed, with participation from Zenith, Ponderosa and The First Thirty.

🇸🇪 ​Bardo​, developing a platform using advanced AI technology to automate the tracking and reporting of carbon footprints, raised $5 million pre-seed with Cherry Ventures, Stegra and angel investors.

• deal closed earlier this summer, when the startup was spun off of Stegra (aka H2 Green Steel)

 

Germany

🇩🇪 ​NetBird​, building an open-source platform to simplify the deployment of Virtual Private Networks, raised a $4.2 million seed round co-led by InReach Ventures and Nauta, joined by Antler.

🇩🇪 ​Carbmee​, providing carbon emission intel to companies with complex supply chains, raised $21 million series A led by CommerzVentures, joined by Fly Ventures.

🇩🇪 ​FibreCoat​, producing thermoplastic-coated glass fibres for use in fibre composites on rented glass fibre drawing machines, raised $22.5 million series B with NewSpace Capital, Goose Capital, Nova Saint-Gobain, 212 NexT, Otto Krahn New Business, Convergent Ventures and TiE. 

🇩🇪 ​Planet A Foods​, producer of alternative chocolate products by using precision fermentation, raised a $30 million Series B round co-led by Burda Principal Investments and Zintinus.

 

The UK

🇬🇧 ​Wexler AI​, provider of AI-powered fact extraction and analysis for legal and compliance teams, raised $1.4 million pre-seed with Myriad Venture Partners, joined by EF.

🇬🇧 ​Synthera​, developing ML-based models for financial portfolio analysis, raised $1.9 million pre-seed led by Motive Ventures, joined by Entrepreneur First, Transpose Platform, KDX, BuenTrip Ventures, Robin Capital,and Angel Invest. 

🇬🇧 ​Stackfix​, developing an AI assistant for making personalized B2B software recommendations, raised a $3 millionround led by Chalfen Ventures, joined by Seedcamp and helloworld.

🇬🇧 ​Briefcase​, using AI to automate bookkeeping data entry and financial reconciliations, raised $3 million seed led by Earlybird, joined by Entrepreneur First and Tiny VC.

🇬🇧 ​Lawhive​, operating a legal marketplace connecting consumers with appropriate UK solicitors, raised a $40 million series A led by Google Ventures and TQ Ventures, joined by Balderton Capital, Jigsaw, Episode 1 and angel investors.

• the platform is powered by a SAAS tool helping lawyers with workflow management, compliance and payments.
• founded in 2019 and seeded only at the beginning of this year with 10 million by GV - proceeds will be used to build business in the US.

🇬🇧 ​9fin​, operating a predictive analytics platform for debt capital markets, raised $50 million in a series B investment deal with Highland Europe.

• deal led by Highland’s co-founder Fergal Mullen and done at a value of $500 million on current annual recurring revenue of about $25 million.
• series A was led by Redalpine with 11 million in 2021, extended with 23 million by Spark at the end of 2022.

 

France

🇫🇷 ​Klart AI​, developing AI agents used for corporate efficiency, raised $500k pre-seed from Startup Wise Guys. 

🇫🇷 ​Objow​, building white label SAAS for employees engagement used by 25k users, raised $2 million seed with Edenred Ventures, HUB612, Crédit Agricole, Holnest and Bpifrance. 

🇫🇷 ​Otrera​, developers of new-generation nuclear reactors, raised $2.5 million from Audacia and a group of local industrial players.

🇫🇷 ​Orakl Oncology​, developing a techbio platform that integrates best-in-class biology with real-world patient data at scale to accurately model tumors and accelerate oncology drug development, raised $11.7 million in a seed deal led by Singular, joined by Bpifrance and Grand Prix i-Lab. 

🇫🇷 ​Omnidoc​, operating a tele-expertise platform for healthcare professionals to exchange medical opinions, raised $6.4 million in a round led by Alven, joined by Kurma and Newfund.

🇫🇷 ​Oplit​, developer of an industrial production planning on top of ERPs, raised a growth round led by Vi Partners, joined by OSS Ventures, Newfund, Evolem, and BACS Innov.

• the French were seeded with ​$2.8 million​ back in 2022 and now have their SAAS used in 100 productions sites.

 

Other geo

🇳🇱 ​Recall​, doing an AI app organizing information into a personalized knowledge graph, automatically tagging and connecting content based on key entities, raised $1.5 million pre-seed in a round led by Jason Calacanis, joined by Blockchain Founders Capital and Rocket Capital.

🇵🇱 ​Imagene​, developing a SAAS platform for actionable genomic insights, raised $1.5 million pre-seed with NCBR and Aban VC. 

🇮🇹 ​Neuronova​, developing low-power chips for AI on the edge, raised $1.6 million seed from 360 Capital and Tech4Planet.

🇮🇪 ​Bounce Insights​, developing a market research platform using AI, raised $4.5 million seed led by ACT VC, joined by Irrus Investments, Enterprise Ireland, and Digital Irish Venture Fund. 

 

Please note that this is just a selection of interesting venture transactions, all deals (many more!) are available ​here​. 

 

 

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Investors

On the move

🇸🇪 ​Otto Donner​ joined Nuveen Private Capital as head of Nordics, after four years spent with M&G Investments in Stockholm.

• fwiw, Nuveen is a $75 billion PE fund formed in March 2023 following Nuveen’s majority acquisition of Arcmont Asset Management, which it merged into Churchill Asset Management.

 

Powder

🇩🇰 Heartcore Capital announced Fund V closed at ​$180 million​, aiming to be the first institutional money into startups.

🇩🇪 Alstin Capital announced closing a ​€175 million​ commitment for a third fund to be spent on Series A investments in European B2B software companies, with initial investments ranging from €2-7 million.

🇩🇪 Fly Ventures announced kicking off a third fund at ​€80 million​, to be deployed on seed-stage European startups within enterprise and deep tech.

🇬🇧 LocalGlobe is in the process of raising a ​new investment fund​. 

 

Liquidity 

🇫🇷 Balderton, Kima and a bunch of high profile angels including Tom Blomfield, Didier Valet or Alex Prot, exited from Numeral, a French payment automation startup, acquired by Mambu from Germany for an ​undisclosed amount​.

• Numeral was seeded with 13 million at the end of 2021 and is processing transactions of €10bn annually.

🇬🇧 Deel acquired Atlantic Money for an ​undisclosed amount​ - the Brits were working on a international money transfer, and have raised about $8 million from the likes of Index Ventures, Ribbit, Kleiner Perkins and Amplo.

🇬🇧 Sorkin acquired Settle (fka Auka) from Norway, also for an ​undisclosed amount​. 

• the Norwegians are selling B2B payment tech and have been funded by local banks and private investors.

 

Also notable

🇪🇪 Taavet+Sten rebranded their fund into ​Skaala​ and will focus from now on investment projects supporting education, entrepreneurship and freedoms.

🇨🇭 OpenAI poached a bunch of engineers from Google in order to have them set up and operate a Zurich office - ​1​, ​2​, ​3​

🇫🇷 A bunch of French investors led by Skip Capital financed a ​$4.5 million​ seed raised by Growl, a startup based in US (Austin), founded by a French, ex-Cathay Capital analyst, and developing sensors for boxing bags tracking data and providing coaching advice.

🇪🇸 A Spanish crew building an ​agentic AI platform​ for logistics operations, raised ​$15.6 million​ in Series A funding led by a16z - moved to the US (San Francisco) in 2022, and incubated the idea at YC.

🇬🇧 Revolut founder confirmed in ​a podcast​ that it won't list in London as it's a highly uncompetitive market with no liquidity and calls the stamp duty on shares as being a feature that makes the UK completely non viable for any serious business.

• meanwhile, the London Stock Market ​is shrinking​ at fastest pace in over a decade.

🇳🇱 After Norway's exit tax stirred a lot of debate as it is directly affecting startup people, the Netherlands has in the works ​a similar one​ for the Dutch residents to be taxed for 5 years after leaving the country.

🇪🇺 The EU countries are discussing a ​€500 billion​ joint fund for common defence projects and arms procurement.

• the financing vehicle for defence would issue bonds backed by national guarantees from participating countries rather than the EU as a whole.

🇺🇸 OpenAI and Anduril will ​jointly​ develop AI for US anti-drone systems to improve their ability to detect and respond to aerial threats.

• also OpenAI's Sam Altman says that ChatGPT has surpassed 300 million weekly active users.

🇪🇺 The Euro currency is ​close to parity​ with the US dollar, something it’s done just a handful of times since its launch in 1999.

🇺🇸 BlackRock acquired HPS Investment Partners in a ​$12 billion​ deal, that's 25X of expected 2025 profits.

• HPS was founded in 2007 by three ex-Goldman Sachs bankers, and has $150 billion in loans negotiated directly with corporate borrowers.

🇦🇪 Mubadala Capital paid ​$10 billion​ for 42% of Silver Rock Financial, a US credit fund backed by the family office of onetime “junk bond king” Michael Milken.

• deal involves also the Americans taking an equity position in Mubadala, which is a first for the Arabs.

🌏 And since I am writing this from Singapore, here's some closing notes from Asia:

• Bangladesh’s central bank says that about ​$17 billion​ was siphoned from the country’s financial system in the 15 years before the government of Sheikh Hasina collapsed in August.
• A local government in China has sold its sky for ​$130 million​ against a 30-year concession allowing a local Chinese company operate and maintain its low-altitude economic projects. 
• South Korea becomes first country to replace 10% of its workforce ​with robots​, due to its low birth rate - the current population of the country in 2024 is 51.7 million.
• Singapore’s birth rate has also hit a ​rock bottom​ - just 0.97 kids per woman, far below the 2.1 needed to sustain a population. 
  • the government is urging more hiring of older workers and turning to robots - Singapore has the world’s second-highest robot density - to plug the gaps.
  • fwiw, Singapore has 5.9 million residents living in one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet.
• More Singapore:
  • startup ecosystem is roughly at the ​same size of Paris (which is a 11 million people city, 2 million of which residents, in comparison) - in ​2023​ there were done about 500 VC deals totalling $6 billion, leading by far the surrounding ASEAN 6 countries
  • median seed is $2.3M, series A is at $10M and series B at $20M - data also for 2023
  • four of the top VC-backed startups valued at more than 500M are in fintech - ​Fazz​, ​Tonik​ (first neo-bank in South East Asia launched in 2020, technically founded by an Ukrainian in the Philippines, then moved to Singapore), ​Thunes​ and ​Shopback​
  • also just like in Europe, digitalisation, health, energy and manufacturing are the common investors themes, centred on deep tech - basically advanced technology applied vertically.
  • local unicorn hero is Silicon Box, which raised ​$200M​ series B earlier this year to be spent on factories producing semiconductor packaging.
  • other significant names are in spacetech (raised ​$100M seed​) or AI engineering (​$31M seed​)
  • everybody speaks English, is very helpful and polite. Life is more expensive than in London or Switzerland in Europe, or in NYC or San Francisco in US - i.e. an Americano in a casual coffee shop is $6, a beer in an upscale bar/resto starts from $15-20 for 33cl, and a bottle of water at 7/11 is $4.5 (alas Singapore has ​a water situation​). 1 euro buys you 1.4 SGD (Singapore dollar).
  • most of the things can be paid for by card - physical or phone taps - but there's an underground economy where prices are about half or even less, which is crazy because it is actually legit but you can only pay cash or by a local app called PayLah, which you cannot onboard or use unless you have a local security number. 
  • nobody heard of Revolut or Wise, for that matter, and I have seen a few Stripe POS terminals among other local names. It makes for an interesting case for consumer p2p payment apps such as ​Sling​ - I actually tried it out but withdrawals to local banks in Singapore are not working, so I had to go old school at the ATM and take cash out. 
  • overall, it is a very sensorial experience for consumers, very different than you will find in Europe or US, much similar to I what I have seen in Tokyo or, to a lesser extent, in Seoul or in Hong Kong. In general, most of the brands around are local or Asian (a lot of Japanese), and there's not really too many American ones visible, advertised or on site, other than the usual McDo or Starbucks. Europe is quasi-inexistent here, including in beer conversations. :-) 
  • speaking of which, I've had a few with the local community (founders and VCs are my crowd) - Singapore is the place to be if you build a startup in Asia, which are taxed at a flat rate of 17% in the first three years of incorporation, and as talent is scarce, it's fairly easy to do near shoring in Indonesia, Philippines or Malaysia. 
  • one friend even told me that he relocated his entire devel team from Pakistan to Indonesia, as Pakistan is not stable politically and Indonesia is a Muslim-friendly country. His top paid PM was making somewhere around $200 (American dollars) monthly net and upon relocation he was given a 50% raise. Yes, you read that right.
  • there's 280 million people living in Indonesia, btw, almost as many as in Europe or USA. 
  • general consensus is that given the malaise in the Western world, particularly Europe, there's an opportunity for Singapore/Asia to evolve fast and change its status of a sweat shop type of place, particularly Singapore which is fairly advanced in many ways, compared to its peers in South East Asia. Finding PMF and then scaling in the US is still where it's at, make no mistake though. 
  • interestingly enough - as US/Europe are at trade war with China, the Chinese moved fast with a solution and now export raw materials and supplies to near countries not affected by the China blockade, assemble or re-package and then export directly from local companies. Vietnam is one of those benefactors of this scheme, up and coming overall, btw, its GDP growth is around 8% per year and if that keeps up for the next 7-8 years, it would double. Crazy interesting, will go there next week.
  • one last anecdote - everybody's bullish on crypto and they're either all in or have a crypto gig on the side. 

 

Europeans hate GDPR

 

ICYMI

Crypto is so back as the Trump administration has it high on the agenda - this week, Donald Trump ​named​ crypto friendly Paul Atkins to run the SEC.

 

 

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