Who Got Funded? Week 13, 2024

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

My name is Onofre, and I'm an entrepreneur based in Aarhus, Denmark. Each week, I dedicate 3 to 4 hours of my free time to reading startup news, which I then summarize in this newsletter.

I hope you enjoy it. Thank you so much for reading.

Estimated reading time: ⌛️  4 min 45 sec.

PRE-SEED
London-based Belong launches out of stealth with €3.4 million pre-seed to empower a younger generation of long-term investors

🇬🇧 Belong, a London-based provider of a wealth-building platform, raised €3.4 million in pre-seed funding.

So, what’s different now? What’s Belong offering that other platforms don’t?

Apparently, Belong has introduced a new feature called the “Boost Loan”, which allows customers to borrow money at low interest rates. This enables them to invest more in stocks from the outset, magnifying the effect of compounding over time. Customers can then repay the loan in small monthly installments.

It sounds interesting, right? You can learn more about this deal here.

More pre-seed interesting stories:

🇫🇷 Paris-based The Mobile-First Company launches with €3.5 million pre-seed to develop mobile apps for SMBs.

🇫🇷 Paris-based medtech Metyos snaps €2.3 million to improve the lives of millions of chronic kidney disease patients.

🇩🇪 Frankfurt-based fintech Bavest raises €1.1 million pre-seed to provide access to real-time financial and alternative data.

SEED
Lisbon-based Cargofive raises €2.5 million to continue accelerating digital transformation in freight forwarding

🇵🇹 Portuguese freight forwarding startup Cargofive recently announced the completion of a €2.5 million funding round. This company captures my interest for mainly two reasons:

1) Cargofive targets the vast, yet largely offline, freight forwarding market, where activities are still frequently managed through physical papers, extensive spreadsheets, or PDFs. Bringing these processes online could significantly streamline operations.

2) Given the maritime transport sector's substantial contribution to atmospheric carbon emissions, any solution that enhances the efficiency of oceanic goods transportation would represent a significant benefit for our environment.

You can learn more about this deal here.

More seed interesting stories:

🇬🇧 London-based Oriole Networks raises €11.6 million to fast-train LLMs with AI “super-brains”.

🇬🇧 London-based Scaleup Finance secured over €7.4 million to expand its digital CFO platform.

🇸🇪 Stockholm-based Dema secures €7 million to fuel further growth for their predictive analytics platform.

🇸🇪 Stockholm-based Buddywise raises €3.5 million to detect workplace safety risks in real-time.

🇬🇧 UK foodtech Clean Food Group gets €2.9 million to utilise food waste to deliver sustainable oil and fat ingredients.

🇵🇱 Polish startup SP Tech Solutions raises €2.7 million to fuel further development of rail transport optimisation.

SERIES A
Bristol-based WASE secures over €9.9 million to scale waste-to-energy technology

🇬🇧 Wase, a Bristol, UK-based electro-methanogenic reactor (EMR) technology company, raised over €9.9 million, including €2.8 million in non-dilutive funding.

This startup seems very interesting to me. Did you know that wastewater from breweries and food processing plants requires special, often costly, offsite treatment before disposal? Wase offers companies an alternative: onsite water treatment that also generates free energy.

You can read more about this deal here.

More Series A interesting stories:

🇬🇧 Global Screening Services, a RegTech (Regulatory Technology) firm based in London, UK, secured €43.5 million in financing.

🇨🇭 Geneva-based Hive raises €12 million Series A to make sustainable distributed cloud computing for the masses.

🇵🇹 Porto-based health tech Tonic App raises €10.8 million Series A to enter the UK and Germany.

🇬🇧 London-based Metaview raises €6.4 million to build the go-to AI assistant for hiring workflows.

SERIES B AND LATER
Boutique startup studio super{set} gets €83.3 million to co-found data and AI companies

🇺🇸 San Francisco-based startup studio super{set} has closed a €83.3 million second fund to invest in data and AI companies at inception.

I usually don't talk about investment funds or accelerators, but since Super{set} is a venture builder, I'm going to make an exception and treat them more like a regular startup.

This venture builder recently celebrated its first exit. They sold Habu, a data collaboration company, to LiveRamp for approximately €185 million. Super{set} looks like great inspiration if you are part of, or have ever thought about starting, a venture builder.

You can read more about this deal here.

More Series B (and later) interesting stories:

🇩🇪 ELEMENT, German InsurTech innovator, secures €50 million in latest funding round.

🇬🇷 Greek-founded firm Blueground thrives with €518 million revenue, nets €41.6 million in new funding.

🇩🇪 German startup Watttron secures €12 million Series B to lead the sustainable packaging movement.