This week we talk about vision-driven projects from Sweden, quantum deals and the latest VC marketing initiatives launched in Europe.

 

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🔥 Interesting deals

Nordics

🇸🇪 Klarna raised $639 million and Softbank joined in the captable. You know why.
🇩🇰 Lenus, operator of a digital B2B platform for health and sport practicians, raised $60 million+ in "series A round".
🇸🇪 Curb Food, building a dark kitchen operation, raised $24 million.
🇫🇮 Pixieray, which develops an adaptive eyeglass lens solution capable to adjust automatically to the eyes' focus point, raised $4.4 million. (the tech is supersmart)
🇫🇮 Brinter, developer of a bioprinting platform, raised $1.5 million.

DACH

🇨🇭 Nexxiot, specialized in digitizing non-powered cargo transport assets, raised $25 million.
🇩🇪 wajve, a pre-product startup looking to launch a financial service for Gen Z, raised $6 million.
🇩🇪 Resourcify, a neutral cloud platform that enables businesses to manage waste, collections operations, and recyclers in one place, raised $4 million.
🇩🇪 RobCo, developer of a robot manufacturing kit, raised $1.2 million.

UK

🇬🇧 Fresha, operating a SAAS marketplace for beauty and wellness companies, raised $100 million.
🇬🇧 Circulor, provider of supply chain traceability and dynamic CO2 tracking, raised $14 million.
🇬🇧 Hokodo, which sells white label BNPL products, raised $13 million.
🇬🇧 Electric Gamebox, developer of hyper-immersive games in interactive digital pods, raised $11 million.

Other hubs

🇭🇷 Gideon Brothers, manufacturer of robotics and AI solutions, raised $31 million.
🇫🇷 Pasqal, manufacturer of a full-stack quantum computer, raised $30M+
🇫🇷 C12 Quantum Electronics, developer of quantum processors, raised $10 million.
🇨🇿 Time is Limited, developer of a B2B SAAS analytics platform, raised $5.6 million.
🇮🇹 Cyber Guru, developer of a cybersecurity awareness training platform, raised $4.4 million.
🇪🇸 Fuell, which does a B2B automated expense management solution associated with a business card, raised also.

 

You can access (a whole lot) more dealflow here, where you can filter it by country, check size or industry - please note that it’s a service available for Nordic 9 customers.

 

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✍️ Notes

🇸🇪 Northvolt is probably one of the more interesting and vision-driven projects coming out of Europe in the past few years. 

It just announced a $2.75 billion capital raise and it already has in excess of $27 billionworth of contracts from key customers - it is yet to start the production of electric batteries in what is aimed to be one of the more important manufacturing facility in the world.

Also remarkable, it managed to get under the same umbrella a number of European stakeholders from the start, which is a bit unusual for a project emerging from Scandinavia. 

That’s what a vision-driven person does, namely Peter Carlsson, who convinced people to finance his ideas. 

In the same category, watch out for H2 Green Steel, which has a similar all-in approach for building a fossil-free steel factory. Also from Sweden, also mission and vision driven.

🇭🇷 Since we’re at vision-driven people from Europe, there’s a guy in Croatia who’s been working for three years in stealth for developing electric robotaxis. Well, not just any guy.

🇬🇧 The Americans from Honeywell merged their quantum computing unit with the Brits from Cambridge Quantum Computing, and invested $300 million in the new entity.

Speaking of quantum stuff, quite a few announcements coming out of Europe lately, you may have noticed the two French ones in the deal section from above.

🇪🇺 The top brass of Delivery Hero, Bolt, Glovo, and Wolt ganged up for working with the EU in order to get it to change outdated legislation not fitted for doing business in the 21st century.

A smart move, which you will see quite frequently in the US actually and which in Europe is done mostly by old school business people with strong ties with politicians. 

Also interesting to note whether other industry players will join, as the egos (and competition) are quite high with those guys. Just a few weeks ago the Takeaway CEO felt the need to take Uber’s CEO to task just because he decided to enter the German market.

🇪🇺 Stripe launched a tool that helps businesses structure and automate their taxes associated to getting online payments. 

A smart move, at least in Europe this is a pain in the ass - anecdotical, our accountants made us consider 7 distinct tax cases for processing online payments for an EU-based company.

🇮🇪 Speaking of Stripe, the CEO Patrick Collison is quite optimistic about Europe’s future. 

🇬🇧 Revolut hired an Investor Relations manager, a move you usually do when you prepare for an IPO.

🇪🇺 Google on a PR spree in Europe, launched a program that gives free money to black-led startups. 

On the same note, Softbank also announced an inbound marketing program for “underrepresented startups”, operated with local investors as part of its European business development efforts.

Softbank has been quite active in Europe for the past 6 months, where they made 9 growth equity deals and they just did a good job to sneak into Klarna’s captable. 

Klarna is their 5th Nordic deal closed recently - we looked into it in an intel update made for the N9 customers a few weeks ago.

🇬🇧 More from the marketing department - two young guys working for Index Ventures started a personal TikTok account that now has become a marketing driverfor the company.

🇬🇧 Goldman Sachs quietly launched Marcus in the UK (announced in January) - Marcus is yet another retail investment platform that facilitates automated stock buys.

🇳🇱 Would you speak for free at events? 

Events are a content business which media companies treat as an extension to their core. Even though doing it is actually a different cup of tea requiring different sets of skills, more often than not journalists wear two hats i.e. write and do events.

And so, if you’re invited to contribute to an event, would you create content for free joining a bunch of employees working to produce a revenue-generating happening? 

Boris of TNW has a good take on it.

 

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💡 Charts and data

Top ten email clients

European countries with a population smaller than London

 

 

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🚀 Quickies

🚚 We analysed truck stop locations from 400,000 trucks all over Europe.

💲 TikTok ad rates go as high as $2 million a day - in line with its audience share.

🤥 Apple consistently ranks its own apps higher against competitors in the App Store, and simply lies when asked whether this is true.

🧵 Work from home v hybrid v HQ

🤔 The new standard for fundraising is LZR.

✔️ The super non-obvious guide to raising a Series B.

📜 A table of universities attended by founders of unicorns.

🦸 Creators who are really serious about building a career on the Internet should own their own software

🔀 a16z has invested in 11 creator economy startups so far this year

💰 Netflix to launch an online store in order to sell limited-edition apparel, lifestyle merchandise and collectibles related to popular shows.

⛵ There’s a new ocean now—can you name all 5?

🎵 Goldman CEO is also a musician that goes by the name DJ D-Sol.

He thinks it makes him look cool, but people resent it.

 

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