Vinted, Oriole Networks, DataCrunch, and Fungiball

🚀 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 35 sec.

👉️ This week, I’d like to recommend following Ignacio Arriaga on his newsletter Disaaster (only in Spanish). If you’d like to learn how to build and sell software (from a business perspective), especially in the SaaS and B2B segments, then it’s a must-follow. You can subscribe here: https://disaaster.io

SERIES B AND LATER
Lithuanian unicorn Vinted, a second-hand marketplace, completes a €340 million secondary share sale at a €5 billion valuation

🇱🇹 Vilnius-based unicorn Vinted has completed a €340 million secondary share sale at a €5 billion valuation. Not bad for a pretty simple idea: a second-hand fashion marketplace. 👗

The idea for Vinted emerged in 2008 during a conversation between Justas Janauskas and Milda Mitkute in a bar in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Milda, a 21-year-old student at the time, was struggling with too many clothes and not enough space as she prepared to move to Vilnius. Justas, with a background in software development, was initially skeptical but became convinced after discussing the concept with some of his female friends.

Today, the company operates in 16 markets across Europe and North America, has over 75 million registered members globally, employs more than 1,200 people worldwide, and is valued at approximately €5 billion. What an impressive journey.

As its CEO states, this round “rewards our employees for their dedication in making Vinted a success.” Vinted reached profitability in 2023, reporting a 61% year-over-year growth in revenue.

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More Series B (and later) interesting stories:

🇪🇸 Madrid-based Job&Talent, an online platform connecting temporary workers with companies, secures a €250 million loan.

🇧🇪 Ghent-based MobilityPlus secures €40 million to drive EV charging growth in Belgium and France.

🇬🇧 London-based fintech PensionBee, an online pension management platform, raises €24 million for its US expansion.

🇮🇹 Rome-based Cyber Guru raises €23 million Series B to expand its cybersecurity training platform.

SERIES A
London-based Oriole Networks raises €20.2 million to reduce energy consumption of AI data centres

🇬🇧 London-based Oriole Networks, a company using light to train Large Language Models with a fraction of the usual AI energy consumption, has raised €20.2 million in new funding.

This startup, founded in 2023 at University College London (UCL), uses advanced photonics technology to create networks of AI chips, combining their processing power. With this novel approach, LLMs can be trained up to 100x faster while consuming a fraction of the power, allowing algorithms to run with significantly lower latency.

After reading that a single ChatGPT query uses over 25 times more energy than a Google search (according to research from Stanford University), it’s easy to conclude that we need major innovations in the AI space to dramatically reduce energy consumption.

This startup aims to launch early-stage products to customers by 2025, creating a photonic networking ecosystem for AI. That’s nice to read!

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More Series A interesting stories:

🇬🇧 London-based Genie AI raises €16 million to reduce legal friction and boost economic efficiency.

🇪🇸 Valencia-based Matteco secures €15 million to drive down green hydrogen costs.

🇵🇹 Lisbon-based Sensei raises €15 million to revolutionize autonomous retail.

🇩🇪 Berlin-based Dunia.ai raises €10.6 million to accelerate clean energy innovations.

🇩🇰 Danish agtech FarmDroid secures €10.5 million for its autonomous, solar-powered agricultural robot.

🇵🇱 Warsaw-based Authologic raises €7.6 million for unified e-ID verification platform

🇩🇪 Freiburg-based Recyda raises €6.3 million Series A for packing management platform.

SEED
Helsinki-based DataCrunch.io raises €12 million to hyperscale AI Computing in Europe

🇫🇮 Helsinki-based DataCrunch, an European provider of AI computing infrastructure, has raised a €12 million seed funding round.

Not only is AI software an exciting market to be in, but the AI infrastructure market is also projected to grow tremendously, reaching $460.5 billion by 2033, up from $38.1 billion in 2023, with a CAGR of 28.3% from 2024 to 2033. Honestly, crazy numbers. 🚀 

Founded in 2020 by CEO Ruben Bryon, DataCrunch has increased its annual revenue by 250%, and its services have already been employed by a number of AI startups and scaleups, including developers at OpenAI, Sony, 1x.tech, Freepik, Nex.art, Manifest.ai, Premai.io.

With data centers in Finland and Iceland—regions renowned for their renewable energy use—DataCrunch can support AI workloads at a fraction of the cost of traditional cloud providers. With this seed round, the company’s total capital raised reaches €16.7 million to date. Very nice!

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More Seed interesting stories:

🇵🇱 Warsaw-based Oxla bags €10.1 million to redefine high-volume analytical data processing.

🇬🇧 London-based Keel secures €5.5 million to empower operators to become more technical.

🇱🇻 Riga-based Origin secures €4 million aiming to revolutionise precision weapon systems.

🇩🇪 German climate tech Autarkize raises €2.3 million to drive sustainable energy transition.

🇫🇮 Helsinki-based Avenue Biosciences raises €2.3 million to scale AI-enhanced protein engineering.

🇬🇧 AI platform Aether secures €2.3 million seed for rooftop solar panels.

PRE-SEED
Paris-based Fungiball secures €2.2 million to grow and scale its fantasy tennis platform

🇫🇷 Paris-based Fungiball, a fantasy tennis platform, announced an impressive €2.2 million pre-seed round (notably larger than usual for Europe). But what exactly is a fantasy tennis platform?

This startup aims to “transform the way fans engage with tennis, creating new revenue streams for professional players.” Fungiball is building a platform where professional tennis players can manage “everything from gameplay and fan engagement to content consumption.”

Since its official launch in January 2024, Fungiball has attracted over 5,000 registered users. That’s a good milestone.

The business model seems interesting. Fungiball’s revenue approach centers on the sale of player cards through auctions, along with a secondary trading market where users can exchange cards. Not sure how this relates to content consumption, but it definitely looks like an innovative business model.

The startup has recently welcomed two tennis superstars, Daniil Medvedev and Alexander Zverev, as official ambassadors.

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More pre-Seed interesting stories:

🇩🇪 Munich-based ExoMatter gets €1.7 million pre-seed for AI-based materials R&D.

🇳🇴 Norwegian startup Starflow raises €1.7 million to optimise energy flow for homes.