Who Got Funded? Week 16, 2024

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

My name is Onofre, and I'm an entrepreneur living 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: ⌛️  5 min 10 sec.

PRE-SEED
London-based Tangent secures €1 million to boost social mobility in tech with effective employee referrals

🇬🇧 Tangent, an employee referral platform, has secured €1 million in funding to democratize referrals, making them available to everyone (not just for those with privileged networks).

As the startup states on their website: you're 9 times more likely to get hired through a referral—and I agree. People with good connections are more likely to secure a good job than their peers from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

However, transforming this problem into a very large business... that seems like a significant challenge.

You can read more about this deal here.

More pre-seed interesting stories:

🇬🇧 London-based Huzzle secures €1.7 million pre-seed to help students land their dream graduate job.

🇱🇹 Vilnius-based CTO2B secures €1 million pre-seed to automate DevOps on cloud infrastructure.

🇱🇻 Riga-based inGain raises €650k to offer no-code SaaS loan management system for fintechs.

🇬🇧 Manchester-based fintech Lemon secured over €580K pre-seed to help grow its business.

SEED
Paris-based HyLight raises €3.7 million to decarbonise aerial inspection with hydrogen-powered airship drones

🇫🇷 Hylight, a maker of patented hydrogen-powered airship drones, has raised €3.7 million. The startup has developed a zero-emission method to inspect any infrastructure from the air.

Honestly, this startup seems very interesting to me. The company argues that previous solutions to this problem were either costly and polluting (such as helicopters), not precise enough (like drone planes and satellites), or lacked sufficient flight autonomy (such as quadcopter drones).

At the same time, methane leaks alone account for 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions and result in annual losses of $7 billion in the European and North American markets.

You can read more about this deal here.

More seed interesting stories:

🇬🇧 London-based Lawhive an AI-powered platform for lawyers secures over €11 million in seed funding.

🇧🇪 Ghent-based AmphiStar secures €6 million to launch eco-friendly and cost-effective biosurfactants derived from waste.

🇬🇧 London-based FilmChain raises €2.8 million to bring automation to payments in film and TV.

🇫🇮 Finnish startup NPHarvest raises €2.2 million to fuel its mission to recycle nutrients from wastewater.

🇸🇪 Lund-based foodtech Saveggy raises €1.7 million to extends the shelf life of fresh fruits and vegetables.

🇬🇧 London-based HealthKey secures €1.3 million to improve how employees access and pay for healthcare.

🇪🇸 Barcelona-based circular retail startup EALYX secures €1 million to allow customers to trade used items for discounts.

🇳🇱 Amsterdam-based Verify snaps €1 million to expand its invisible fingerprint solution.

🇳🇱 Dutch drone software startup AirHub raises €1 million to go full automation on a large scale.

SERIES A
Cambridge-based Qureight raises €8 million to accelerate drug development in lung and heart disease

🇬🇧 Founded in 2018, UK-based biotech company Qureight announced the closing of their oversubscribed Series A funding round.

This startup seems interesting because, according to their funding press release, they have a unique “data contract” agreement that grants them access to healthcare data from the National Health Service of England. Naively, I believe few companies possess this capacity.

You can read more about this deal here.

More Series A interesting stories:

🇩🇪 Berlin-based finmid raises €35 million to empower B2B platforms to become financial partners for customers.

🇳🇴 UK and Oslo-based Red Rover Interactive secures over €14 million aiming to redefine the survival game genre.

SERIES B AND LATER
London-based Skyports secured over €103 million to build vertiports and accelerate its drone business

🇬🇧 Skyports, a developer of vertiport infrastructure and electric drone operations, announced that it has secured over €103 million in its Series C funding round.

Spanish construction and infrastructure management group ACS has led this funding round, with the majority of the funds reserved for accelerating vertiport construction in Dubai, targeting the 2026 launch of air taxi services.

You can read more about this deal here.

More Series B (and later) interesting stories:

🇺🇸 Spend management startup Ramp raises another $150 million at $7.65 billion valuation.

🇫🇮 Finnish space startup ICEYE has raised €94 million in growth funding led by Finnish sovereign wealth fund.

🇮🇪 Dublin-based GridBeyond closes €52 million Series C to continue its intelligent energy platform evolution.

🇩🇰 Danish payment solutions provider Flatpay, serving small to medium physical merchants such as shops, restaurants, and salons, raises €45 million.

🇳🇱 Maastricht-based Mosa Meat raises €40 million to help bring cultivated beef to consumers.

🇩🇪 Fribourg-based cleantech Bcomp closes €37.6 million Series C to foster mobility decarbonisation.

🇬🇧 UK-based Pathios Therapeutics raises €23.4 million Series B to advance first-in-class immunotherapy approach.

🇬🇧 London-based Wagestream raises €20.4 million to serve the workers overlooked by banking.