• early stage money for applied-AI projects - people coach, patents, financial assets, customer intel, health data
• B2B BNPL from Norway pre-seeded by Sequoia closes series A
• more emerging investment vehicles deploying very early stage across the continent

 

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This past week we've had a number higher than usual of early stage announcements, a good sign in the bad economic environment context that doesn't show short term improvement potential. 

The one that caught my eye is 1X from Norway, which raised a series A extension (they dub it A2) to accomodate OpenAI (which led), Tiger, Sandwater, Alliance and Skagerak in the captable. 

1X started about 8 years ago by developing a consumer robot helping the elderly and was making money by selling them to research institutions to test them for other purposes. Business moved slow, and only started to pick a couple of years ago, as soon as they worked the American market, which also led them to expand the scope of the robots with a generic android capable of human-like movements and behaviors and targeted for the enterprise market. The Open AI deal is likely strategic, and frankly an exiciting move for them, as I can only guess implementing a white label ChatGPT in the neural system of their androids. But if the tech seems cool and solid, the business development part is more tricky, as the autonomous robotics market has exploded in the past years and is quite competitive. TBD - being in the US gives them a fair chance to build something special. Really cool company from a small country that I believe it's under rated for the startup quality it can produce.

 

 

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Interesting deals

Nordics

🇳🇴 Slowly, online grocery delivery operator for non-perishable goods, raised $500k from local angel investors.

🇸🇪 Collecct, aggregating various recycling and reuse services in a marketplace for consumers, raised $600k from local angel investors.

🇸🇪 Scaleout System, a vendor agnostic platform providing developers with AI-based regulatory compliant solutions, raised $700k from local angel investors.

🇸🇪 Mystic Games, a mobile gaming studio from Stockholm, raised $1.3 million in a seed round led by Shima Capital joined by 32-Bit Ventures, SevenX Ventures, MEXC, TA Ventures and Mainstreet DAO.

🇸🇪 Focalpay, doing a SAAS payment platform for retail operations in use by 30 Nordic customers, raised $1.5 million in an extended seed round backed by Skel Investors. 

🇩🇰 Kanda, a AR/VR software company selling training in heavy industries (maritime, energy, airline, manufacturing), raised $1.6 million in a round led by Ugly Duckling Ventures.

🇩🇰 Humani, developing an AI-based people coach, raised $2.2 million seed from Dreamcraft Ventures.

🇳🇴 Mainteny, doing SAAS for facility management companies, raised $2.9 million in a seedfunding round led by Cusp Capital.

🇫🇮 MVision AI, doing radiotherapy SAAS, raised $5.8 million in a post-seed round led by J12 Ventures and Voima Ventures. MVision previously raised $1.7 million more than 3 years ago.

🇫🇮 IPRally, doing a SAAS platform building knowledge AI graphs for patents, raised $10.8 series A led by Endeit Capital, joined by Join Capital, Spintop Ventures and Icebreaker.vc. It was seeded with 2.4 million in 2021.

🇳🇴 Alva Industries, manufacturer of next-generation electric motors working with 14 different customers, including Lockheed Martin and The Boeing Company, raised $11 million series A from NRP Zero, Statkraft Ventures, Drone Fund and Jakob Hatteland.

🇳🇴 Two, building a B2B BNPL business, raised $19 million series A co-led by Shine Capital and Antler, joined by Sequoia Capital, Day One Ventures, Alumni Ventures, LocalGlobe. 

🇳🇴 1X Technologies, developing androids capable of human-like movements and behaviors, raised $23.5 million series A2, led by OpenAI (yes, that company), joined by Tiger Global, Sandwater, Alliance Ventures and Skagerak Capital.

DACH

🇨🇭 Covalo, operating a data platform for personal care ingredients and formulation-driven products, raised a seed round from HTGF, seed + speed Ventures, the Gekko Group and angel investors.

🇩🇪 Lift.OS, developing a modular productivity platform integrated with popular SaaS software, raised $1 million seed from BackBone Ventures, Pitchdrive and German angel investors.

🇩🇪 Hermone, developing a cycle tracking app for women, raised $1 million pre-seed from local angel investors.

🇩🇪 ampere.cloud, doing SAAS for park control and data logger for solar plants and wind farms of any size, raised $5.4 million Series A financing round led by Point Nine Capital, joined by Helloworld.vc, Vireo Ventures, HGDF and Berlin Angel Fund.

🇩🇪 Metycle, operator of a trading platform for scrap and recycled metals, raised $1.6 millionin a pre-seed funding round led by Market One Capital and DFF.

🇩🇪 Monite, doing a finance management platform that automates the admin and accounting processes with banks, raised a $5 million seed extension led by Third Prime, and joined by S16, Audeo Ventures, and Long Run Capital. 

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Other geographies 

🇪🇸 Wealth Reader, developing an API-based tool that provides standardised, real-time access to any type of financial asset held by any entity, raised $500k from local angel investors.

🇫🇷 Differ, Dataiku alumni startup developing an AI-based customer intelligence service, raised $400k pre-seed from French angels including an Accel scout.

🇮🇹 Quisto, building a B2B marketplace for food procurement, raised $900k in a pre-seed round led by StartupGym.

🇫🇷 CarbonAble, building a carbon capture investment platform via the blockchain, raised $1.2 million seed from Ethereal Ventures, La Poste Ventures and French angel investors. 

🇵🇱 Epinote, developing a platform used for data annotation and collection services, raised $1.5 million pre-seed in a round co-led by Movens Capital, Kogito Ventures and Next Road Ventures joined by Corvus Ventures.

🇬🇧 PocDoc, a consumer health startup doing testing via blood sample collection, announced a $3 million seed extension round from Forward Partners, MMC Ventures and Simplyhealth. 

🇬🇧 Patch, real estate startup that transforms empty local high street shops into “collaborative cultural spaces”, raised $3.7 million from JamJar Investments, Blue Wire Capital, Vectr7 Investment Partners, Active Partners and Triple Point Ventures.

🇫🇷 Sifflet, developing a cloud native solution for Data Observability, delivering actionable insights to Data Engineers and Data Consumers, raised $12.3 million series A led by EQT Ventures, joined by seed investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Mangrove Capital Partners.

🇪🇸 Qida, building a business out of a social enterprise for quality home care for people with dependencies, raised $19.4 million series A in a round led by Kibo Ventures joined by Ship2B Ventures, Creas and Fondo Bolsa Social. 

🇫🇷 XXII, developing a SAAS platform used for deploying and configuring algorithms for video stream analysis, raised $23.7 million series A from Bpifrance, 574 Invest, CIB Développement, Techmind, Kima Ventures and the Duval Group. 

🇵🇱 Vue Storefront, developers of frontend e-commerce infrastructure SAAS, raised $20 million in Series A extension round led by Felix Capital, joined by Creandum, Earlybird Digital East, SquareOne and angel investors. 

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Please note that this is just a customised selection, all deals (many more!) are available here.

 

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Investors

Powder

🇩🇪 IBB Ventures announced a fifth €120 million fund, composed of a 90 million continuation and 30 million dedicated to buy into Berlin-based impact startups.

🇫🇷 Emblem is a new early stage VC founded by two French - Bénédicte de Raphélis Soissan and Guillaume Durao - and deploying from a fund that announced a €50 millionfirst close.

• Both have been quite active angel investors for some time now - we have tracked 19 deals for Bénédicte and 20 deals for Guillaume, with some overalap (i.e.Growblocks, Gourmey or Payflows). 

🇪🇸 Bullnet Capital, a Spanish deep-tech investment firm, held a €40 million first close on its fourth fund, which is targeting a total of €80 million.

🇪🇸 Pere Hospital, founder at Cloudways sold to Digital Ocean for $350m in 2022, put together a €20 million fund called Secways, to be spent on early stage startups from Spain.

🇫🇷 Neo Founders is also a new early stage vehicle launched by alumni students from Neoma Business School in France and deploying from a €2 million fund, with a tentative target raise of €15m-20m until the end of the year.

Also notable:

🇦🇹 Calm/Storm Ventures announced that it will no longer make new investments out of its €20 million fund closed in 2019 and which consists of 60 startups.

🇸🇪 Techstars shut down its accelerator programme in Stockholm right in the middle of it.

🇬🇧 British advisory Campbell Lutyens signed a strategic partnership with JP Morgan to work together on GP-led secondaries.

🇫🇷 Inter Invest announced the launch of a new private equity fund specializing in the food & beverage sector and for which is yet to raise capital. 

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On the move

🇬🇧 Carina Namih joined Plural as General Partner, after four years in the same position for Episode 1. Prior to that she co-founded a biotech startup.

🇩🇪 Sebastian Schäfer was promoted to partner by Picus Capital. He joined the firm as an associate in 2018.

🇫🇷 Josépha Montana joined Partech as chief sustainability officer, moving on from Turenne Capital.

🇺🇸 Drew Loucks will lead the new London office opened by Great Hill Partners, a Boston-based PE firm.

🇩🇪 Blackstone opened an office in Frankfurt, Germany, led by existing senior managing directors Juergen Pinker (private equity) and Jurij Puth (credit).

🇬🇧 Robin Rousseau and Barry Weir were named as co-heads of European M&A at Citigroup in London, succeeding the departing Alison Harding-Jones, who'd been five years on the job.

Also notable:

🇨🇭 Klaus Hommels, founder of Lakestar VC, will chair the board of directors of NATO Innovation Fund. The board will consist of 9 members - Klaus will join Dame Fiona Murray, from the MIT; and Roberto Cingolani, former Italian Minister for Ecological Transition. The NATO Innovation Fund will have €1 billion to deploy within 15 years, and will be HQ-ed in The Netherlands. 

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Other pointers

🇩🇰 Lun Energy, a Danish consumer heat pump startup, made public its €10.3 million seed round led by Lowercarbon Capital (we announced it back in January)

🇩🇪 Cavalry Ventures and 🇬🇧 Stride VC exited their position in WhenThen, acquired by Mangopay from France for an undisclosed amount. WhenThen, Irish startup founded in 2021, sells a no-code payment operations platform and has raised less than 10 million. Mangopay is controlled by PE house Advent.

🇸🇪 EQT Ventures exited its equity position from Baffin Bay Networks, as it was acquired by Mastercard for an undisclosed amount. Baffin is a Swedish cybersecurity startup founded in 2017 and producing sales in the $5 million range.

🇬🇧 London-based influencer agency Goat was acquired by WPP for an undisclosed amount. Goat's raised money from the PE house Inflexion in a minority stake deal closed in 2021. 

🇸🇪 VNV Global spent $27 mlllion in a secondary deal for buying shares into 🇫🇷 BlaBlaCar, where it already had a 10% position.

🇩🇰 Kompas and 🇪🇸 Cemex Ventures backed a $8 million seed raised by Israeli-founded, USA-based StructShare, doing a construction procurement and inventory platform.

 

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