Inbrain, Beyond Aero, Buddy AI, and Bendi

🚀 Welcome to another edition of the Who Got Funded newsletter.

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I'm Onofre—product manager by day, entrepreneur by night, based in Aarhus, Denmark. Each week, I spend 3-4 hours reading startup news and sharing the key takeaways in this newsletter. As always, thank you so much for reading!

Estimated reading time: ⌛️ 6 min.

SERIES B AND LATER
Inbrain Neuroelectronics, a startup competing with Elon Musk's Neuralink, raises 46 million

🇪🇸 Barcelona-based Inbrain Neuroelectronics, a startup competing with Elon Musk's Neuralink, has raised €46 million in new funding.

According to reports, 40% of the world's population is affected by neurological disorders. These disorders incur an annual societal cost that exceeds the combined cost of cancer and cardiovascular diseases. They are everywhere, and their impact is massive.

This startup is developing a product called BCI-Tx, a platform that can read and influence brain activity to treat neurological conditions like Parkinson's, epilepsy, and aid in stroke recovery. The system uses an ultra-thin graphene implant—10 micrometers thick, even thinner than a human hair.

In September, the company enrolled its first patient with the implant in a clinical study on glioblastoma brain cancer at Salford Royal Hospital in Manchester, UK. Currently, two individuals are undergoing treatment. 🏥 

It seems wrong to me that we've heard so much about Neuralink, but hardly anything anywhere about Inbrain. That’s completely unfair.

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More Series B (and later) interesting stories:

🇹🇷 Turkish marketing tech unicorn Insider raises €460 million Series E funding.

🇮🇪 Dublin-based SynOx, a late clinical-stage biopharmaceutical developing a novel treatment for CSF-1 related and macrophage-driven disorders, raises €84.8 million.

🇩🇪 Berlin-based Blacklane, a chauffeur services provider, raises €60 million in Series G funding.

🇩🇪 Berlin-based Aignostics secures €31.4 million Series B to enhance precision medicine with AI.

🇵🇹 Porto-based Infraspeak closes €18 million to enable global collaboration in Facilities Management.

🇬🇧 UK-based healthtech SaaS startup Semble, allowing providers to organise their data, raises €13.8 million.

🇬🇧 Oxford-based Diffblue secures €5.8 million to fuel momentum for generative AI-for-code.

SERIES A
Beyond Aero, a mobility startup developing the first hydrogen-powered electric business aircraft, raises €40.5 million

🇫🇷 Toulouse-based Beyond Aero, a mobility startup developing the first hydrogen-powered electric business aircraft, has raised €40.5 million in funding.

This startup is targeting the business aviation segment, the most emissions-intensive category per passenger, producing ten times more CO₂ per person than commercial flights. This market was valued at around $44 billion in 2023.

Beyond Aero’s aircraft, One is designed to carry 6 to 8 passengers for 800 nautical miles and is expected to enter the market by 2030.

The company has reached significant technical milestones in recent months, including achieving France's first manned, fully hydrogen-electric flight earlier this year. It has also secured $914 million in Letters of Intent (LOIs) for 108 aircraft. Not bad! 🛫

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More Series A interesting stories:

🇸🇪 Stockholm-based Flower raises €45 million to revolutionise European energy flexibility.

🇪🇪 Tallinn-based Modash raises €11 million to help consumer brands scale creator partnerships.

🇩🇪 German AI startup Paretos raises €8.5 million to grow as a market leader in Decision Intelligence.

🇩🇰 Aarhus-based SaaS startup Kanpla, aiming to advance the digitisation of the catering industry, raises €8 million in Series A round.

SEED
Montenegro-based Buddy.ai closes €10.2 million for its AI tutor for children under 12

🇲🇪 Montenegro-based Buddy.ai, a conversational AI tutor for kids, has closed a very nice €10.2 million seed funding round.

This startup uses AI and gaming techniques to power Buddy, a multimodal robot that teaches English to children through interactive, real-time conversations. From what I can see on their website, the product looks very well-curated. It seems they're also drawing inspiration from Duolingo.

According to UNESCO, 69 million teachers are needed worldwide to achieve universal basic education. In the face of a massive global teacher shortage, AI tutoring seems like an effective way to fill these gaps quickly and affordably.

Their app has just surpassed 50 million downloads and appears to be rapidly growing in revenue as well. Nice!

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More Seed interesting stories:

🇩🇪 Cologne-based Vamo secures over €7 million to help customers save billions in heating.

🇧🇪 Belgium-based 3D animation startup Swoove Studios closes €6.9 million seed funding round.

🇩🇪 Berlin-based UnitPlus bags €4.7 million to further develop its technological capital market platform.

🇩🇪 Berlin-based GlassFlow bags €4.4 million to enable Python devs to build event-driven data pipelines in minutes.

🇩🇪 Munich-based Emidat raises €4 million to make construction emission management simple as EU deadline looms.

🇬🇧 UK-based CybaVerse gets €1.3 million to simplify cyber security management for SMEs.

🇵🇱 Warsaw-based Foodsi raises €1.2 million to combat food waste in restaurants and stores.

🇧🇪 Antwerp-based Wobby raises €1.1 million for its AI information platform for knowledge workers.

PRE-SEED
London-based Bendi raises €960k to transform supply chain visibility for large retailers and manufacturers

🇬🇧 London-based Bendi, an AI-driven platform helping businesses manage and mitigate supply chain disruptions, sustainability challenges, and reputational risks, has announced a €960k pre-seed funding round.

This startup is targeting the global supply chain management market, valued at nearly $30 billion in 2022 and projected to reach $85 billion by 2033. It’s a big, and a rapidly growing market. 🚀 

Although this startup was founded in 2020, it now seems to have gained the necessary traction to close its pre-seed round.

Bendi’s platform automates supply chain mapping and ESG risk checks, using AI to track over 100 risk indicators—like human rights violations and environmental hazards—across numerous data sources in 35+ languages. Good to see!

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.