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Happy Easter for people who celebrate it - this week (delayed) Sunday CET is a lil’ Easter gift: the premium edition covering the most comprehensive intel you can get from the European VC market - we have already sent it to our customers.

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This week:

• Swedish AI startup backed by Benchmark + other early stage AI deals

• more series A money in Europe

• EU regulation makes running AI startups 10X more expensive in Europe

Interesting deals 

Sweden

🇸🇪 ​Leya Law​, doing an AI assistant designed for legal professionals, adept at answering complex legal questions and optimizing workflows, raised seed in a round led by Benchmark Capital via its GP ​Chetan Puttagunta​.

• part of YC this winter, pre-seeded by Swedish angels last summer.

• 50+ paying customers in four countries.

• Benchmark's first European deal in ​quite some time​.

🇸🇪 ​Agteria Biotech​, developer of a novel molecule that cuts cows' methane emissions by 70%, raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding from Norrsken VC.

🇸🇪 ​Buddywise​, developing a SAAS platform that uses computer vision and ML to automate industrial safety monitoring, raised $3.8 million seed round co-led by Kvanted Ventures and J12 Ventures, joined by Aligned Ventures, Antler and angel investors. 

🇸🇪 ​Terra labs​, developing a tool used to monitor land & forest in real-time from space, raises $4.3 million in a seedround led by Norrsken VC.

🇸🇪 ​Dema​, doing marketing analytics SAAS helping small online retailers to automate commercial data aggregation, cleaning and structuring, secured $7.6 million in a seed round led by J12 Ventures and Daphni.

• pre-seeded by J12 alongside angel investors in 2022.

France

🇫🇷 ​Viqthor​, developing control technology for large-scale quantum computers, raised $1 million pre-seed from angel investors.

🇫🇷 ​Airthium​, producer of industrial heat pumps, raised $3 million in a seed funding round backed by Daphni, Eren Groupe and Polytechnique Ventures.

• the French went to Y Combinator 7 years ago, in the summer of 2017.

🇫🇷 ​The Mobile-First Co.​, a developer of B2B apps targeting small startup operations, raised $3.8 million in a pre-seedfunding round co-led by Lightspeed and Emblem.

🇫🇷 ​Surge​, developing a product that uses ML algorithms to decode a patient's immune system from blood sample, raised $8.1 million in a series A round led by Eurazeo, joined by Kima Ventures, Teampact, MH Innov', Boutique Venture, HCVC, and 50 Partners.

🇫🇷 ​900 care​, D2C retailer selling refillable bathroom products, cleaning and personal hygiene using recycled plastic and refill pills, raised a $23 million Series A round led by Lombard Odier, joined by White Star Capital, Swen Blue Ocean and Founders Future.

The UK

🇬🇧 ​Ayora​, developing revenue management software for law firms, raised $1.6 million in a pre-seed funding round led by J12 Ventures and joined by Twin Path Ventures.

🇬🇧 ​iCustoms​, developing an all-in-one platform automating complex customs procedures for cross-border trade, raised $2.2 million in a seed round with Fuel Ventures, Plug & Play, Outrun Ventures et al.

🇬🇧 ​Belong​, building a consumer investment practice focused on professionally-employed millennials, raised $3.8 million pre-seed with Octopus Ventures, Viola Fintech, Connect Ventures, Portage Ventures, and January Ventures. 

• founded by two ladies, ​Avion Gray​ and ​Samantha Rosenberg​, still in stealth. 

• it looks similar to another British startup called ​Prosper​, which was seeded also by Connect Ventures last year, alongside MMC and a bunch of angels. 

• another notable investor, besides Connect, is one of the founders at Prosper - ​Ricky Knox​, who also founded ​Tandem​, a British challenger bank for consumers. 

🇬🇧 ​FLock​, developing a decentralised privacy-preserving solution for AI, raises $6 million seed in a round co-led by Lightspeed Faction and Tagus Capital.

🇬🇧 ​Metaview​, developing a tool that automatically transcribes interviews and uses them to help teams hire better, raised $7 million in a post-seed round led by Plural, joined by Coelius Capital, Vertex Ventures US, Seedcamp, and Village Global.

• seeded with $6 million back in 2021.

🇬🇧 ​Oriole Networks​, developing a piece of technology that improves the performance of AI systems and speeds up data centers while substantially lowering energy usage, raised $12.6 million seed co-led by UCL Technology Fund, Clean Growth Fund, XTX Ventures and Dorilton Ventures.

🇬🇧 ​Ember Bus​, developing an electric bus transportation service across the UK, raised a $14 million Series A funding co-led by Inven Capital, 2150, and AENU.

• seeded with 2 million in 2022.

• coincidence or not, that's the second bus transportation startup that raised outside money in this period - ICYMI, ​Twiliner​ from Switzerland also raised for building an electric night bus operation across Europe.

• Ember is more advanced though as it counts 24 buses in operation, and 14 on the way for making a fleet of 38 vehicles doing Scotland routes, for now.

🇬🇧 ​Pelago​, running a digital clinic for treating nicotine, alcohol and opioid addictions, raised $58 million series C led by Atomico, joined by Kinnevik, Octopus Ventures, YC, Eight Roads and GreyMatter Capital.

Other geographies

🇩🇪 ​ai|coustics​, developing generative AI speech technology, made public its $2 million seed round closed last year with Connect Ventures, Inovia Capital, FOV Ventures and angel investors. 

🇮🇹 ​DataKrypto​, developing a cloud encryption platform using homomorphic encryption for data and transaction protection, raised $3.2 million seed with P101 and Cysero.

🇩🇰 ​Scaleup Finance​, developing a digital tool sold as CFO-as-a-Service, announced an $8 million Pre-Series A round co-led by Inveready and Crowberry Capital, joined by Seed X, PROfounders, Fin Capital and CircleRock Capital.

• seeded with the same amount in 2022.

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

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Investors 

Powder

🇬🇧 Ascension VC announced a ​£17 million​ first close of a new impact pre-seed fund.

🇬🇧 Blossom Capital is near closing of its ​fourth fund​.

• Blossom is a series A investor currently deploying from a $432 million fund closed in the winter of 2022.

More deals 

🇩🇪 Coparion, Inkef, Sunstone, Hadean, LSP, HTGF and others exited from Cardior Pharmaceuticals, acquired for ​1.1 billion​ by Novo Nordisk.

• Cardior is a clinical-stage biotech developing non-coding RNA-based therapeutics for patients with cardiac diseases.

• it last raised $76 million series B in the summer of 2021.

🇸🇪 EQT Ventures led and Metaplanet joined American investors in financing a ​$50 million​ Series B raised by NY-based Hume AI, developer of an advanced API toolkit for measuring human emotional expression. 

🇬🇧 Plural co-led a ​$25.5 million​ Series A round raised by PipeDreams, a West Coast startup done by an ex-Nextdoor exec and rolling up mom-and-pop HVAC and plumbing companies. 

🇬🇧 Index Ventures led a ​$20 million​ series A with Vizcom, another West Coast startup doing AI for industrial product visualization and design.

Also notable

🇪🇺 Vitruvian, the European PE with €16 billion of assets under management, is looking ​for liquidity​.

🇺🇸 Sequoia Capital hired ​Dean Meyer​ as an Israel-based partner, as he moved on from Vine Ventures.

🇬🇧 a16z announced the list of ​25 startups​ it funded via a crypto startup accelerator based in London.

• less than ten of them are European - from Poland, Romania, Switzerland and the UK.

🇬🇧 Inside Stability AI’s ​bitter breakup​ with investors Coatue and Lightspeed Ventures. 

🇺🇸 Microsoft and OpenAI are building supercomputer infra that could cost ​$100 billion​.

🇪🇺 ​Napkin calculation​ showing that the EU regulation makes running AI startups 10X more expensive in Europe.

🇪🇺 Spain, UK, and Canada hired the most skilled migrants ​in 2023​ - sales, software development, product, and data professionals. 

🇺🇸 Amazon is investing another ​$2.75 billion​ in AI startup Anthropic, following its initial $1.25 billion investment last year. 

🇳🇱 The Netherlands has become the ​world’s second largest​ exporter of agricultural products by value behind the United States.

🇺🇸 Robinhood launched a credit card against a ​$5/month sub​ providing i) 3% cash back on everything ii) 5% cash back on travel and iii) no international fees.

🇺🇸 Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to ​25 years in prison​ for stealing $8 billion from customers of crypto exchange FTX. 

💲 ​Expectations​ for early DPI from seed & pre-seed funds. 

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