• another 1 billion fund ready to be deployed in Europe
• the 260 million angel fund that doesn't want to be a VC
• French HNWI buys into an American VC

 

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Interesting deals

Nordics and Baltics

🇸🇪 Yangi, building an open-source turnkey solution for packaging manufacturers, raised strategic investment,
🇫🇮 Equel Social, building a group chat social network for professionals, raised $1.3 million pre-seed.
🇩🇰 Kanpla, doing canteen SAAS for big corporations, announced their $2.3 million seed closed at the end of last year.
🇸🇪 n-Ink, developing environmentally friendly ink for printed electronics, raised $1.3 million seed.
🇸🇪 Hailey, doing HR SAAS, closed a $3 million bridge round.
🇸🇪 Viking Analytics, selling SAAS for predicting expensive machine downtimes and performance degradations, raised $3.3 million.
🇳🇴 Favrit, selling a B2B app that allows horeca guests to order and pay for food without using cards, payment machines or apps, raised $4 million at the end of last year.

🇸🇪 SuperNormal, developers of an AI platform for business video recordings, made public their $10 million seed round we announced earlier this month.
🇫🇮 Elo Health, doing a sub-based wearable-powered protein powder, raised $10 million series A.

DACH

🇨🇭 Revendo, operator of a marketplace for used electronic equipment in Switzerland, raised seed.
🇩🇪 Moonblock, developing a tool used to navigate Web3 with the right insights with a Web3 Brand Intelligence platform, raised angel funding.
​🇩🇪 Blockbrain, developing a tool that analyzes millions of transactions on the blockchain to proactively detect threats, raised $2.7 million seed.

🇨🇭Acodis, developers of a no-code platform that allows business users to set up and customize AI models for any document type and in any language, raised $6.5 million series A. 
🇩🇪 Senken, developing an online marketplace for on-chain credits based on verified climate projects, raised $7.5 million series A.
🇩🇪 Kewazo, developing a smart robotic logistics system, which provides autonomous transportation of materials on construction sites, raised $10 million series A.
🇩🇪 Kittl, operators of a SAAS marketplace for stock graphics that you can also have printed, raised $11.8 million series A.

The UK

🇬🇧 Frow, building a really cool marketplace helping record stores, collectors and artists to host their own shows live in order to sell vinyl records in real-time, raised angel funding.
🇬🇧 Tranch, YC alum doing BNPL for SaaS sellers and professional services, raised $5 million equity and $95 million debt.

🇬🇧 Entocycle, developing technology used to enable efficient and scalable insect farming, raised $5.4 million series A.
🇬🇧 Multus, producer of cultivated meat, raised $7 million series A.
🇬🇧 Calimero Network, developing blockchain infrastructure that helps clients in controlling data, raised $8.5 million seed.

Other geographies

🇪🇸 Argilla, building an open-source platform for data-centric NLP, designed for modern MLOps, raised $1.6 million seed.
​🇫🇷 Agenium, selling simulation solutions for the space industry, aeronautics, defense and security, raised $2.4 million.
🇳🇱Chainels, developing a tenant experience app for multi-tenant shopping, mixed-use, transport, office and residential destinations, raised $3.3 million.
🇫🇷 Hemea, operating a SAAS-based marketplace connecting homeowners with rennovation contractors & architects, raised $11 million series A.
​
​Please note that this is just a selection, all deals are available here.

 

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Active investors

Powder

🇬🇧 Highland Europe raised €1 billion for its fifth flagship VC fund. Highland did about 30 deals in Europe the last 2 years, mostly growth.

🇫🇷 FJ Labs closed on $260 million combining two new funds across a pre-seed fund and an opportunity-style “Series B and beyond” fund. At a glance:

• FJ was founded as an angel gig by Fabrice Grinda, French serial founder from the 2000s.
• It now employs 34 people led by 4 partners. Fabrice stubbornly stays away from the VC way of doing business: 👇

• In 2020-2022, FJ did more than 100 deals in Europe, mostly marketplaces - and is in the top 5% most active investors on the continent.

🇸🇪 Monterro announced the final close of new small-cap fund at €150 millionhard cap, designed to enhance its first look position in the lower mid-market Nordic B2B SaaS segment across minority and majority positions.

🇫🇷 HelloWork, the French provider of online job search, recruitment tools and skills training, announced a €50 million M&A budget for the next four years.

🇫🇷 Go Capital announced kicking off the Impact Océan Capital investment fund, with a €30 million first close and targeting €70 million to back startups in the maritime industry.

Exits

🇩🇪 Redstone VC, FJ Labs, Picus Capital, VR Ventures et al exited from Flexcavo, a German construction SAAS developer acquired by the Denmark-based Trackunit for an undisclosed amount. Flexcavo raised some 15 millionsince 2020, while Trackunit is owned by PEs Gro Capital and HgCapital.

🇬🇧 InMotion Ventures, 83North, Episode 1, Capnamic, ACF et al exitedfrom Fatmap, a London-based 3D mapping app that was acquired by Strava. Fatmap raised $28 million since 2013, has 50 employees and less than 1 million active users.

🇳🇱 A bunch of Dutch angel investors including Mollie founder Adriaan Mol, exited from Formitable, a local startup doing restaurant software and acquired for an undisclosed amount by French ZenChef, owned by private equity co PSG. Formitable raised 8 million last September.

On the move

🇬🇧 Dan Chaplin was promoted to principal at Dawn Capital in London. 

🇸🇪 Linus Dahg, Stockholm-based partner at the Finnish seed fund Inventure, is the firm's new CEO.

🇬🇧 Hillary Ball and Andreas Helbig were promoted as partners at Atomico in London.

🇬🇧 Bao-Y Van Cong and Lina Chong were promoted to partner at Target Global, out of the London and Berlin office, respectively.

🇪🇸 Delfin Rueda has been appointed general partner and chief financial officer of Madrid-based VC Mundi Ventures.

🇬🇧 Stewart Hay joined Northleaf Capital Partners as vice chair of global investor solutions out of the London office, jumping ship from abrdn.

🇸🇪 GP Bullhound opened two new offices in Germany: one in Munich headed by Ivo Polten, and the other in Frankfurt, operated by Martin Rezaie.

Also notable

🇫🇷 Xavier Niel, one of the more active investors in Europe through all sorts of vehicles (Kima, Newfund etc), acquired together with other HNWI a 3.3% stakein Thrive Capital, an American VC fund founded by Joshua Kushner in 2009. 

The deal values the venture firm at $5.3 billion. Niel joins other investors including Walt Disney Co. CEO Robert Iger, KKR & Co. co-founder Henry Kravis, the Brazilian food magnate Jorge Paulo Lemann, and Indian magnate Mukesh Ambani. 

🇺🇸 NEA became the latest VC firm to apply to become a registered investment advisor (joins a16z, Sequoia, Bessemer etc) as it closed on approximately $6.2 billion across two funds split in half for early stage and growth. Its CEO also said to expect VC firms begin buying and selling portfolio company shares to each other, much as private equity firms have long done. 

In Europe in past couple of years, NEA was mostly involved at the late stage and notably did a few early stage deals: Nordsense (DK - $5M), Bliq (DE - $13.5M) and SeMI (NL - $16M).

🇺🇸 Sapphire Ventures, the former corporate venture arm of German SAP, launched a second $181 million Sport Fund, backed by the likes of Adidas and Manchester City and which focuses on early-stage startups at the nexus of tech and culture.

 

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Portfolio digging

🇺🇸 Lowercarbon Capital

• founded by Chris Sacca - ex-Google, first angel in Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Twilio.
• Chris started Lowercase Capital in 2010, retired in 2017, returned in 2021 to launch Lowercarbon Capital, focused on climate issues.
• invests from 2 funds: an $800M closed in 2021, and a $350Mannounced last year
• 17 deals in the European porfolio, 6 of which in 2022 and one in 2023:

🇳🇴 Enode - a software tool powered by APIs that connect EVs, solar, batteries and heating to energy providers.
🇬🇧 Entocycle - developers of technology used to enable efficient and scalable insect farming
🇬🇧 Epoch Biodesign - botechnology company producing enzymes that transform plastics into circular chemicals.
🇩🇰 Lun Energy - decarbonization services provider intended to reduce carbon emissions by selling consumer heat pumps used for thermal renovation of homes.
🇫🇷 Renaissance Fusion - developer of a high-temperature superconductor and stellarator.
🇬🇧 Seabound - carbon capture solution used to recycle the 1 Bn tons of CO2 emanating from the shipping industry.
🇬🇧 Tesseract - energy reseller to households and businesses via blockchain-enabled transactions.
🇬🇧 TrueCircle - marketplace to support waste processing facilities in selling the verified material they reclaim.

​

🇺🇸 Khosla Ventures

• founded in 2004 by Vinod Khosla, at the time with Kleiner Perkins
• has $1.4 billion to invest in early-to-late stage startups - $400 million for seed deals and $1 billion for later-stage companies.
• 37 Euro deals in portfolio, 8 added in 2022-2023:

🇬🇧 Calimero Network - developers of blockchain infrastructure that helps clients in controlling data.
🇬🇧 Charm Therapeutics - biotech startup using deep learning on 3D molecular configurations to develop molecule therapeutics to target pathogenic proteins.
🇵🇱 Enso - WYSIWYG data processing language, using a no-code interactive ELT and data-driven process automation tool that lets you load, blend, analyze your data.
🇫🇷 Finnt - consumer mobile app helping people seeking financial advice and enabling them to benefit from decentralized financial products in a safe and simple way.
🇵🇱 Nomagic - robotics startup manufacturing smart pick and place robotic solutions for order fulfillment.
🇬🇧 Ochre Bio - biotech company developing RNA medicines for chronic liver diseases by using deep phenotyping in order to digitize liver biology at scale
🇬🇧PolyAI - a machine learning platform for conversational artificial intelligence, used to build and deploy voice assistants for automating customer services. 
🇬🇧 Relation Therapeutics - health startup engaged in drug discovery and development 
🇩🇪 Worldcoin - developer of a new global digital currency.

 

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