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This week for the (delayed) Sunday CET you will get an early Xmas 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.

Kind reminder, if Euro VC intel is your thing and want to get the most of my work please consider purchasing a Nordic 9 Pro account - thanks.

Highlights for this week's intel:

- expensive seed and series A deals keep popping out
- the investor which backed competing startups this week
- Sweden has a new emerging investor
- two VCs announced startup accelerators

Interesting deals

The Nordics

🇳🇴 Over Easy Solar, manufacturer of pre-assembled PV-Units for easy solar installations on green- and flat roofs, raised $900k with Hafslund, Eidsiva, Stratel, Aura Energi and angel investors.

🇸🇪 Zymego, doing SAAS helping healthcare providers with appointments being unfilled due to late cancellations and reschedules, raised a $2 million seed funding round with Spintop Ventures and Icebreaker.

🇩🇰 proemial, developing an open platform that connects researchers to a larger audience through personalized summaries of research papers, raised $2 million seed with Dreamcraft Ventures and People Ventures.

🇸🇪 PlasticFri, developing plastic replacement packaging materials out of agricultural waste, non-edible plants and other renewable resources, raised a $3.2 million pre-seed round with Norrsken VC and local angel investors.

🇸🇪 Minut, selling smart alarms to property managers and hosts, raised a $5 million series B extension with Smedvig Capital. 

• series B was initially closed for raising 14 million 18 months ago

Tangent:

• a small Danish startup from Odense also doing smart alarms but for the consumers market raised angel funding this week as well.

• the investment rationale was to grow it by building a back-to-back sales channel mix with an insurance company from the angels portfolio.

🇸🇪 Fedelta, provider of financial loans for SMBs, raised $5.6 million in a first time capital raise for the company.

• the transaction values Fedelta at $39 million.

• the equity complements a $300 million lending facility secured earlier this year, to be re-deployed into loans.

• founded in 2018, Fedelta expects to produce $5.7 million in revenue this year, up from 3.6m in 2022.

🇩🇰 Lotus Microsystems, a fab-less semiconductor manufacturer of efficient and compact microchips, raised $8.7 million in grants and equity with Noon Ventures and the EIC Fund.

🇸🇪 Insurely, developing an open finance SAAS platform for insurance and pension solutions, to raise $8.7 million series A extension in a convertible note with a new investor CNI, joined by Opera Tech Ventures, Insight Partners, and SEB.

• initial $21 million series A was led by Insight Partners in March 2022.

• at the end of 2022, the company registered sales of $800k with the local authorities and most of the equity money was in the bank.

🇪🇪 Woola, packaging company using wool waste for replacing plastic bubble wrap, raised $2.7 million in a round led by Metaplanet, joined by Future Ventures and Lemonade Stand. 

🇳🇴 Photoncycle, doing solar energy storage solutions enabling next gen distribution, raised a $3.2 million pre-seed round led by Lifeline Ventures.

🇪🇪 Arbonics, developing a carbon and ecosystem platform for forest and landowners in Europe, raised $6 million seed with NordicNinja, Plural, and Tilia Impact Ventures.

🇮🇸 Meniga, doing white-label Personal Finance Management (PFM) and next-generation online banking solutions, raised $16.2 million in Series D funding with existing shareholders.

• part of the capital injection will help clear existing debt, rendering Meniga almost debt-free.

• Meniga has been around for about 15 years and is mostly controlled by strategic investors aka Swedbank, Unicredit, Banco Agricola etc.

DACH

🇨🇭 4QT, specializing in manufacturing high-power drives for heavy equipment and construction vehicles, raised a $2.1 million seed round led by Unruly Capital, joined by Tiny VC, Climate Capital and Ciri Ventures.

🇨🇭 Cortexia, developing an AI-based automatic measurement system for assessing urban cleanliness, raised $2.6 million seed with Spicehaus, Capital Risque Fribourg, Bloomhaus and Kurrant Ventures.

🇩🇪 Annea, developing the next generation of condition-based predictive maintenance and underperformance detection for renewable energy assets, raised $2.9 million seed round led by Voyager Ventures, joined by Innoportand Faber Ventures.

🇩🇪 nuvo, developing an universally applicable AI-powered API for external imports of onboarding data, raised $3.2 million seed capital round led by La Famiglia, joined by FoodLabs, APX, Collective Ventures, Exxeta Venturesand business angels.

🇩🇪 NeoCarbon, doing technology used for Direct Air Capture, capturing CO2 directly from the air, by retrofitting existing infrastructure, raised $3.2 million seed with Raise Venture, joined by Proptech1 Ventures, Speedinvest and Antler.

🇨🇭 Metafuels, producers of synthetic jet aviation fuel, raised a $8 million seedinvestment round led by Energy Impact Partners and Contrarian Ventures.

• the product is dubbed aerobrew and is generated from converting green methanol into an electro-sustainable aviation fuel (eSAF).

• the fuel can be used with existing aircraft and will not require re-engineering or retrofitting of planes.

• the seed money will be used for developing a pilot facility in Switzerland for developing and testing the new fuel to prepare for scaling.

• coincidence or not, there's an American startup in the same space (producing SAF from carbon dioxide emissions and water) that raised $20 million series A also this week.

🇩🇪 German Bionic, producer of electrically powered back exoskeletons for industry, logistics, and healthcare, raised a $16.2 million series A extensionwith Mubea, Benhamou Ventures, Bayern Kapital, IT Farm, Kailua Ventures, Cumberland VC and Family Office Klein.

🇩🇪 Ecoworks, producer of modular, climate-neutral prefabricated facade and roof elements for the housing industry, in a $19.5 million series A extension led by World Fund, joined by Haniel, KOMPAS VC, and ISAI.

• initial round was announced at $24 million over the summer.

• they use AI, 3D scanning and digital design, combined with robotic manufacturing of pre-fabricated external facades, in order to retrofit apartment blocks by installing those insulation panels on the outsides of existing buildings to limit heat loss while, simultaneously, bundling renewable energy generation installation into the same project. 

• fairly complex and capital intensive -> they have done 20 apartments since starting in 2019.

• average ticket size for a project is €4.5 million and has an existing order book of €100 million for next year.

• the goal is to scale to 10,000 units by 2027 that would translate into €1 billion in revenue.

🇩🇪 tacto, developing an automation engine SAAS used for strategic procurement, raised $54 million series A co-led by Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital.

• another expensive series A in a contracting European VC landscape, likely a result of a bidding war between the two lead investors.

• according to local media, Sequoia was set to lead tacto's Series A round at 10 million(ish) and then Index wanted in too, turning into the current deal, which seemingly comprises two separate transactions - probably series A and an extension of it.

• the PR is mum about it, raving about the huge category and great founders. As if.

• the two were represented by partners Luciana Lixandru and Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas.

• tacto initially raised 6M seed in a round led by Cherry Ventures in the spring of 2022. 

• the company was founded in 2020 and sells SAAS that uses AI to enable companies to identify savings by analyzing pricing of key procurement costs, like raw materials and energy. It is said to produce around 2 million ARR.

France

🇫🇷 Spore Bio, developing a device able to identify the concentration of bacteria in food, drink, pharmaceuticals and cosmetic products, raised $8.7 million pre-seed in a round led by LocalGlobe, joined by EmergingTech Ventures, No Label Ventures, Famille C, Better Angle and angel investors.

• startup incubated at EF, the British incubator which converts corporate employees into startup founders and making money with a VC business model.

🇫🇷 Aria, operating an invoice finance and B2B digital payments platform, raised $16.2 million series A led by 13books Capital, joined by Adevinta Ventures, Ankaa Ventures, and Otium Capital.

• basic factoring model via API to B2B marketplaces and vertical SaaS, acting as a middle man between freelancers/SMBs and their customers invoices.

• their TAM is the B2B payments totalling around $120 trillion each year globally, with just 7% of this currently conducted digitally. 

• the equity complements €150 million of funding raised in 2022-2023 from investors such as M&G used to provide loans against receivables.

• seed round was a $4.5M French affair led by Otium in 2021.

🇫🇷 Pivot, building a B2B spend management solution focusing on procurement, raised $21.6 million series A with Visionaries Club, Emblem VC, Anamcara and Oliver Samwer.

• similar story (and product*!) to tacto from above but with a shorter fuse - Pivot was launched in 2023 on top of a 5 million pre-seed round led by Visionaries Club. 

• that's likely because the founders are the ex-Swile and Qonto product chiefs.

• today the startup has less than 10 paying customers and is yet to get to €1 million ARR, a target set for the end of 2024 ...

• ... but that's seemingly a mere detail for yet another pricey series A round for 2023

• conviction > KPIs and a signal of the limited supply of teams doing interesting vertical B2B SAAS in Europe.

• fwiw, the TAM is enormous, fragmented and mainly un-altered by dominant vanilla SAAS providers.

• one last detail: Visionaries Club is in the captable of both Pivot and tacto.

* highly overlapping business case for the same customer profile - the Germans focus on suppliers relationship management, while the French on the suppliers spend management.

Other geographies

🇵🇱 BoxMarket, operating a B2B marketplace for packaging materials, raised $500k pre-seed with Tar Heel Capital.

🇪🇸 Applivery, developing a Device Management Solution made for app distribution to Android and Apple devices, raised $1.1 million seed with Spanish angels.

🇵🇱 Gotiva, operating a mobile distribution marketplace for creators, raised $1.2 million seed with Smok Capital, Movens Ventures and angel investors.

🇬🇧 Jenesys, developing an AI financial plugin for Slack or Teams used for spending management, raised $1.1 million pre-seed with Twin Path Ventures, Fuel Ventures, Antler, Hatcher+ and angel investors.

🇳🇱 Yoni, developing a D2C operation on top of a femcare brand that specialises in the production of organic cotton tampons, liners, and pads, raised $2.5 million seed with ROM InWest, Rabobank, Invest International, and Dutch angel investors.

🇬🇧 Arcane, developing what they call an AI copilot on top of a marketing automation platform providing insight & recommendations, raised $5 million seed led by Accel, joined by Cocoa, Firstminute Capital, Kima Ventures, Seedcamp and some high profile angel investors.

• one the more hyped AI startups among London investors this year, did by founders with the right background and the right network - the business guy did growth at Deliveroo and ops at WeWork and the tech guy did engineering for Babylon.

• conviction deal turned into a seed round that's more expensive than what the typical YC graduates do post graduation, at seed. 

• hard to see the unique insight that may turn into a billion dollar company, other than a first mover advantage that should translate quickly into a defensible business moat against the myriad other competitors.

​

Please note that this is just a selection of interesting early stage transactions, all deals (many more!) are available here. Pro tip: use advanced trackers to learn about new deals by industry, country, stage or a specific set of investors.

Investors

Fresh powder

🇫🇷 Singular announced closing a new €400 million fund to be deployed for European startups from seed to Series B.

• Singular is one of the few go-to names for series A startups in Europe

• one of the emerging VC firms in Europe, founded in 2019 by two ex-Alven long time employees, who raised the first fund ($265M) through the covid years from only a third of French LPs. That means the two have good rep on LP's street. 

• initially positioned as series A/B generalist dealer in the market -> that positioning diluted in time, as they ventured at early stages as well - just a month ago Singular led a $2.5m seed round closed by Osium (AI for R&D engineers)

• sifting thru the portfolio, about a third of their startups has been up marked in 3 years of work - assets with higher values include Papier, Homa or Indy.

🇫🇷 Épopée Gestion announced launching a fund dedicated to the hotel industry targeting €200 million. 

🇫🇷 Axeleo Capital announced a final closing of €73 million for a fund fo B2B tech startups from France.

• the fund raise was kicked off in July 2022 and partially spent on 14 startups, with one already exited.

🇫🇮 Innovestor announced a €30 million co-investment fund to be spent in early-stage Finnish startups alongside groups of angel investors. 

🇫🇷 Founders Future and L’Escalator, a French startup incubator run by ad executive Maurice Lévy, launched Future Step Venture, an investment vehicle targeted at €5 million in order to be spent via 50k-150k checks in 30-50 startups. 

​

New gigs

🇫🇷 Jean-Marc Patouillaud announced his retirement from Partech Ventures.

• He co-founded it almost 28 years ago and was leading it as an MD. 

• ​Karen Noël will become the new managing director from January 2024.

🇬🇧 Akshat Goenka was promoted to partner at Moonfire Ventures, after two and a half years with the company. 

🇫🇷 Caroline Folleas joined Cathay Capital as a PE partner, after two years with Merieux Equity Partners and thirteen with L Catterton prior to that.

🇩🇪 Alina Bassi was hired as investment manager by Ananda Impact Ventures after working as their scout for almost two years.

🇨🇭 Cyril Demaria joined Julius Baer as head of private markets strategy, after three and a half years with Wellershoff & Partners and two and a half with UBS prior to that.

🇬🇧 Kiko Ventures added three new members to its investment team from London: 

• ​Arielle Schacter - ex-Barclays

• ​Marius Evers - ex-Global Founders Capital 

• ​Paul Eisenberg - ex-Planet A

At the same time, partner Arne Morteani will move to the Berlin office, after almost two years in London.

🇬🇧 Nick Pappas will launch a Europe-focused debt firm called Faros Point Capital Management, after a 3 year Global Head of Credit job at CQS. 

🇸🇪 Zlatan Ibrahimović (Ibra) joined RedBird Capital Partners as an operating partner and will also be a senior adviser to the Italian football club AC Milan. 

• Ibra, who is 42 years old, retired from playing pro football earlier this summer and is quite popular across the world, with 123 million social media followers.

• AC Milan is also controlled by Redbird, which acquired it in 2022.

• Redbird is a $1bn sports, media and entertainment venture fund that's a joint operation between US-based Redbird Capital and International Media Investments, the investment vehicle backed by Manchester City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi.

• The JV is run by former CNN boss Jeff Zucker, who joined a year ago after being forced to quit his job at the US cable news network because of his failure to report a romantic relationship with a subordinate.

​

Other moves

🇬🇧 KKR is in talks to acquire UK accounting, payroll, HR and education software provider Iris Software, for about £3 billion, in what could be 2023's biggest buyout of a European tech company.

🇫🇮 TA Associates and Warburg Pincus acquired Epassi from Finland and merged it to Exercite, in a €1 billion deal to build one of Europe’s largest independent employee benefits providers. 

• The combined group will serve approximately 20,000 companies across seven countries in Europe (Germany, Finland, Sweden, Italy, Netherlands, UK and Ireland), providing their employees with access to benefits from over 74,000 merchants.

🇩🇪 Coparion and a bunch of German and Swiss angel investors exited from Veertly, a Swiss startup operating an all-in-one virtual platform for online events and acquired by Swisscom for an undisclosed amount.

• Veertly raised about $2 million in four years of existence. 

🇩🇪 VC Stack, a B2B SAAS aggregator targeted to the VC community, was acquired for an undisclosed amount by Going VC, a US-based entity running career programs for VC wannabes. 

• VC Stack was founded in 2020 and its assets bring in traffic of 5k users, 11k NL subscribers and 90k social media followers. 

🇩🇰 Two Danish asset managers - Artha and Scope Investment - are merging operations to create one of Denmark’s largest bank-independent asset managers.

• the new group will function as a Multi-Family Office with a combined $3.5 billion AuM.

🇫🇷 Elaia Partners is negotiating with investment bank Lazard for launching a joint asset management firm that would be in a position to support the companies at all stages of their development, from seed or early stage to their listing and life on financial markets.

• If it works out, the new entity will be led by Elaia's MD Xavier Lazaruswho will hire a new investment team to kick off ops in 2024.

🇫🇷 Sofinnova Partners launched Biovelocita, an accelerator providing resources and financial backing to biotech startups in Europe.

🇺🇸 Lightspeed Ventures announced a startup accelerator program as well, dedicated to its founders and dubbed Launch.

🇺🇸 Ben Horowitz of a16z announced that the company will, for the first time, get involved with politics by supporting candidates who align with our vision and values specifically for technology.

​

Also notable

🤔 LLMs started competing on price. 

• that's because, like in any tech startup, it is the business layer that makes the difference, rather than the n-th product iteration.

• generic LLMs will become a commodity (already are?) competing in unit economics - it's the economies of scale and infra costs that will make a winning difference in the end.

• any respectable software company is rewriting its entire stack incorporating LLM as we speak right now -> value is in vertical models, open source or high switching costs workflows.

🇸🇪 Tesla is out hiring a Nordic expert to help defuse Tesla union row.

• Meanwhile a group of pension funds and asset managers with a total of $1 trillion in assets sent a letter to Elon Musk urging him to change attitude visavis Swedish union demands. 

🇩🇰 WTF of the week: ex-Tradeshift CEO Christian Lanng is accused of forcing his assistant to sign a slave contract​.

🇽🇰 Gjirafa is a search engine company focused on e-commerce, a sort of mini Google-turned-Amazon.com employing 300 people in Kosovo.

🇪🇺 Alex Karp, CEO at Palantir Technologies:

They’re making terrible investments in tech. I’ve screamed at people in Europe. But it’s not going to change. link​

🇺🇸 A 27-year-old NYU dropout and hedge fund reject has somehow managed to raise $19.2 million to build a crypto-city for tech bros in the middle of the Mediterranean.

👎 The Armed Conflict Survey by the International Institute for Strategic Studies documented 183 conflicts in 2023, marking the highest number in three decades.

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