Who Got Funded? Week 19, 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: ⌛️  4 min 15 sec.

SERIES B AND LATER
London-based Wayve raises almost €1 billion to reimagine autonomous mobility through embodied intelligence

🇬🇧 Last week, British startup Wayve (founded in 2017) announced an almost €1 billion Series C investment round led by SoftBank, with contributions from new investor NVIDIA and existing investor Microsoft.

Not a bad lineup of investors, right? 🚀 

In my opinion, this startup is competing in one of the most exciting markets nowadays. It seems we are on the verge of witnessing major breakthroughs in the autonomous mobility space.

You can read more about this deal here.

More Series B (and later) interesting stories:

🇬🇧 UK fintech Abound secures up to €931 million to expand access to fair credit.

🇬🇧 London-based Iwoca secures €313 million in debt funding to support SME lending.

🇮🇳 Meesho, an Indian social commerce platform with 150 million transacting users, raises €256 million.

🇪🇸 Valencia-based Sesame raises €23 million for global expansion of its HR all-in-one platform.

🇪🇸 Madrid-based Luzia, a startup that offers an AI assistant for WhatsApp, secured €17.7 million in fresh funding.

🇬🇧 Oxford-based Dendra Systems secured €14.7 million to large-scale land restoration through reseeding.

SERIES A
Milan-based edtech Futura raises €14 million Series A to make the world learn faster and better

🇮🇹 Milan-based Futura, an AI-powered education company, announced that it has successfully raised €14 million in Series A funding.

Founded in 2020, this startup has developed an innovative algorithm that personalizes and optimizes students' learning trajectories, replicating the experience of working with a highly skilled private professor.

As a result, students using Futura have a 3.5 times higher chance of passing tests compared to those using traditional learning methods. Nice!

You can read more about this deal here.

More Series A interesting stories:

🇩🇪 German biotech Insempra secures €18.5 million Series A to advance bio-based alternatives in manufacturing.

🇺🇸 San Francisco-based Triomics raises €13.9 million Series A to automate cancer clinical trials matching.

🇱🇺 Luxembourg-based fundcraft raises €5 million Series A transform asset management infrastructure.

SEED
Peter Thiel's Founders Fund leads €12.2 million seed round in cryptography startup Lagrange Labs

🇺🇸 Colorado-based Lagrange Labs, a startup developing the Lagrange cryptography protocol for scalable big data infrastructure and cross-chain interoperability, has raised €12.2 million in funding.

This startup is planning to use the funds to advance its ZK Coprocessor technology, enhancing resources for decentralized application developers.

🥸 I am curious: Do you believe in a future where decentralized applications (DApps) become much more relevant? Please share your thoughts by voting on this poll. I will share the results on my Twitter/X account.

You can read more about this deal here.

More Seed interesting stories:

🇩🇰 Copenhagen-based climatetech Electricity Maps raised €5 million to accelerate the data-driven decarbonization of the electricity grid.

🇺🇸 California-based Yellow raises €4.6 million to fuel AI-powered 3D modeling tool.

🇬🇧 London-based insurtech Eleos secures €3.75 million seed investment to launch in the US.

🇨🇭 Swiss startup Axmed secures €1.8 million Seed round to improve healthcare procurement in emerging markets.

PRE-SEED
Zurich-based Mimic grabs €2.3 million to further develop a collaborative robot with humanoid hands

🇨🇭 Founded in 2024 and spinning out from the research university ETH Zurich, Swiss startup Mimic secured €2.3 million to become the first company to market a combination of a robotic arm and humanoid hand governed by AI.

I absolutely love to see European startups competing in markets traditionally dominated by American companies. I'll definitely keep an eye on this startup's next steps!

You can read more about this deal here.

More pre-Seed interesting stories:

🇬🇧 Hexis, which uses advanced analytics to optimise athletes’ nutrition plans, has raised a €1.8 million pre-seed round.

🇵🇹 Lisbon-based Checkfirst raises €1.4 million pre-seed to apply AI to remote inspections and audits.

🇧🇪 Ghent-based VR art studio Oisoi Studio announced the successful closure of a €450k funding round.