Funding Rounds
Dach
Compa, the Berlin-based developer of SaaS financial solutions for the construction industry, raised a $3.6m Seed round led by LocalGlobe, including contributions from Discovery Ventures as well as angel investors. Read more.
Elinvar, the Berlin-based fintech helping wealth managers and private banks digitise by managing core processes like client relationship management, online onboarding, onsite advisory support, portfolio management, reporting, invoicing, online client access and communication as well as third party connections, raised €25m from Toscafund Asset Management, including contributions from existing shareholders Ampega Asset Management, finleap and Goldman Sachs. Read more.
HiPeople, the Berlin-based provider of an automation tool for reference checking, raised a $3m Seed round from Moonfire, with participation from Capnamic Ventures and Cherry Ventures. Read more.
Wingcopter, the Darmstadt-based developer of a remote-controlled drone designed to facilitate aerial package delivery, raised a €18.3m Series A led by Xplorer Capital and Futury Regio Growth Fund. Futury Ventures and BMH Beteiligungs-Managementgesellschaft Hessen also participated in the round. Read more.
Remagine, the Berlin-based financing platform offering banking services to high-growth companies with an ‘impact’ twist, raised a €20m Seed round in the form of debt and equity from Jonathan Weiner, Michael Vaughn and other undisclosed investors. Read more.
Softr, the Berlin-based no-code platform to create powerful websites & web-apps from Airtable in 10 minutes, raised a $2.2m Seed round led by Atlantic Labs, along with Philipp Moehring (Tiny.VC) and founders from GitHub, SumUp, Zeitgold, EyeEm and Rows. Read more.
Archlet, the Zurich-based provider of an AI-based strategic sourcing platform, raised a $2.8m Seed round from Senovo and La Famiglia, with participation from the founders of sennder and existing angel investors. Read more.
Mirai Foods, the Zurich-based developer of cultured meat intended to offer meat products from animal stem cells, raised a $2.4m Seed round led by Paulig Group. Read more.
COMPEON, the Duesseldorf-based developer of an online comparison platform built for selecting and availing a range of business financial products, raised a €15m Series B from Iris Capital, Qatar Development Bank and NRW.Bank. Read more.
Moonfare, the Berlin-based developer of an investment technology platform designed to revolutionize private market investing, raised €25m of venture funding from Hedosophia, putting the company's pre-money valuation at €200m. Read more.
France
Alma, the Paris-based instalment payments platform, raised a €49m Series B from Cathay Innovation, Bpifrance, Seaya Ventures and Picus Capital. Read more.
Blobr, the Paris-based developer of a no-code API technology intended to expose and monetize a company's APIs, raised a c. $1.7m Pre-Seed round led by Seedcamp, with participation from New Wave, Kima and various angel investors. Read more.
Kili Technology, the Paris-based annotation tech startup, raised a €5.7m round from Serena Capital and e.ventures, who invested alongside renowned business angels such as entrepreneurs Olivier Pomel (CEO Datadog), Nicolas Dessaigne (CEO Algolia), the founders of PeopleDoc, Stanislas de Bentzmann (CEO Devoteam) and Gus Robertson (CEO NGINX). Read more.
Ringover, the Montrouge-based developer of a cloud communication platform intended to serve businesses, raised a €10m Series A from Expedition Growth. Read more.
Vulog, the Nice-based provider of a mobile car sharing platform intended to reshape the future of shared mobility, raised a €26m Series C from Bpifrance, ETF Partners, Frog Capital and Inven Capital, as well as the European Investment Bank. Read more.
UK
Token, the London-based open banking payments platform, raised a $15m Series B from Innovation Growth Ventures and SBI Investment. Read more.
Genflow, the London and LA-based provider of full-service brand creation and management intended to build and launch brands for social influencers, celebrities and athletes across industries, raised a $11m round led by UK investor BGF. Read more.
Glimpse Protocol, the London-based developer of a privacy-preserving ad platform created to protect and secure private data, raised a £1.28m Seed round from Force Over Mass Capital, Simon Franks and Eric Salama putting the company's pre-money valuation at £2.71m. Innovate UK also participated in the round. Read more.
Perchpeek, the London-based operator of an AI-based rental platform designed to connect tenants to room providers more efficiently, raised a £2.14m Series A led by Episode 1 Ventures, putting the company's pre-money valuation at £5.30m. Kevin Felix, Jahed Rahman and Kris Rudeegraap also participated in the round. Read more.
Obrizium, the Cambridge-based B2B corporate learning and knowledge management platform, raised a $2.4m Seed round led by PWC. Read more.
Omnipresent, the London-based provider of human resource and onboarding services intended to efficiently operate global teams, raised a $15.8m Series A from Playfair Capital, Episode 1 Ventures and TrueSight Ventures and other undisclosed investors. Read more.
Sano Genetics, the Cambridge-based developer of a user-centric personal health and genomic data sharing platform designed to facilitate a direct connection between users and researchers, raised £2.5m through the combination of debt and Seed funding in a deal led by Episode 1 Ventures putting the company's pre-money valuation at £6.93m. Seedcamp, January Ventures and Cambridge Enterprise and other undisclosed angel investors also participated in the round. Read more.
Riverlane, the Cambridge-based developer of quantum computing software designed to transform experimental technology into commercial products, raised a $20m Series A led by Draper Esprit. Cambridge Innovation Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners and Cambridge Enterprise also participated in the round. Read more.
Volta Trucks, the Hertford-based full-electric commercial vehicle manufacturer, raised a $20m Series A from Luxor Capital. Read more.
ROI Media, the Manchester-based developer of a lead generation technology company which allows small businesses to rent a highly optimised website which attracts more leads and ultimately boosts sales, raised a further £4m from BGF seven months after their initial investment. Read more.
Nordics
Wolt, the Helsinki-based online food ordering platform designed to help users discover and get quality food dishes, raised a $530m pre-IPO round led by Iconiq Growth with participation from new investors Tiger Global, DST, KKR, Prosus, EQT Growth and Coatue and existing investors 83North, Highland Europe, Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, EQT Ventures and Vintage Investment Partners. Read more.
Sproud, the Malmö-based maker of pea-made milks, raised $6.5m of funding from VGC Partners. Read more.
Miinto, the Copenhagen-based online sales channel for more than 1,800 fashion brands and designers, raised over €20m in Series D funding. The main investor in this round is reported to be Anders Holch Povlsen, the billionaire behind the clothing retailer Bestseller. Read more.
Critical Force, the Kajaani-based gaming company, raised a $10m round. The money was raised from undisclosed investors. Read more.
Others
Kevin, the Vilnius-based payment infrastructure platform for online & physical sales, raised a €1.5m Seed round from a number of European business angels from the finance and insurance industries. Read more.
idealista, the Madrid-based online real estate classifieds platform in southern Europe (Spain, Italy, and Portugal), raised €175m in funding from Oakley Capital. The management team of idealista and EQT also participated who will remain the majority shareholders in the company. Read more.
Clubhouse
No point in discussing Clubhouse - everyone is on it and everyone is loving it. If you want to know how Clubhouse started, I suggest that you read Andrew Chen’s investment note. Read more.
Bernie Sanders
Bernie Sanders became the meme king of the 59th presidential inauguration when a picture of him sitting alone in a practical winter outfit. The internet went wild putting Sanders in all sorts of situations:
Startup Of The Week
Product
Real-time video auction enabled consumer-marketplace for collectibles
Investors
Liquid 2 Ventures, Operator Partners, Scribble Ventures, Toy Ventures, Twenty Two Ventures, Wonder Ventures, Y Combinator
Revenue Model
Take rate on GMV
Investors
Coatue (invested in Wolt & Gorillas) is raising up to $500m for a new fund that will invest in both private and public fintech companies. Read more.
Octopus Ventures announces new healthtech team and €112.5m global fund. Read more.
TCV raised $4bn for its eleventh flagship venture capital fund. Read more.
Sapphire Ventures promoted Cathy Gao and Laura Thompson to partners. Read more.
Intelligence
Gorillas is valued at €160m pre-money and is currently out raising another €100m to expand its footprint across Europe.
Thought Of The Week
Cloud gaming aims to do for video games what Netflix has done for movies - make them available on any device with an internet connection. Instead of a console or PC, a powerful server will run the game and pipe the results to users over the internet. In other words, users will be able to play cutting-edge games that typically require a powerful gaming tower on anything from an old Android to an underpowered MacBook Air.
The technology that cloud gaming uses has been around for many years so it’s not a lack of tech that has kept cloud gaming from becoming mainstream. No - the problem is of a different nature. There are still significant concerns in terms of network bandwidth and costs associated, becoming bottlenecks for game developers and users, particularly under scarce bandwidth availability.
Netflix can use several tricks to manage the end-consumer experience, one of which is to pre-load extra content to devices by using spare bandwidth. Should there be a temporary network outage the user wouldn’t even notice as the video just keeps playing. Absolutely marvellous! Unlike movies, this obviously doesn’t work for video games as it is interactive and the events haven’t happened yet.
Cloud gaming also suffers notoriously from input lags - how quickly a player’s commands can traverse the internet to reach a data-centre to be processed, and then how quickly the resulting video can be sent back.
Input-lag comparison between 2 monitors from executed command to update on display.
Input lags can disrupt the flow of game play, resulting in annoying moments for gamers. It can also cost a gamer the game since that can disrupt eye and hand coordination - obviously not ideal when you are competing professionally.
Such technical glitches are one reason that previous attempts at cloud gaming, by firms such as OnLive (founded in 2009 and shut down in 2015), failed to catch on.
Despite this, it’s a mistake to suggest that our cloud-based future is far beyond the horizon in some unreachable place. Actually, it’s not quite so distant, and it’s growing ever-closer thanks to the major investments numerous large tech companies are making in their respective services:
We are of course just scratching the surface in this article, but if you want to know more about cloud gaming, we suggest that you pop over to Matthew Ball’s blog - he’s got some really good thoughts on cloud gaming. Read more.