Helsing, Planqc, Lemon.markets, and Lleverage

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 this content. Thank you so much for reading.

Estimated reading time: ⌛️  4 min 50 sec.

SERIES B AND LATER
German defense AI company Helsing raises €450 million to strengthen NATO’s eastern flank

🇩🇪 Defense AI startup Helsing has raised €450 million in a Series C financing round led by General Catalyst.

Even though I am not particularly interested in defence startups, this round is so significant that I think it deserves to be highlighted this week.

This startup has been active in Ukraine since 2022 and recently established the Defence Manufacturers Alliance, a joint initiative with the Ukrainian government.

Since its founding in 2021, the company has secured a series of government contracts.

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More Series B (and later) interesting stories:

🇺🇸 Skild AI raises €275 million to continue building its plug-and-play robotic intelligence.

🇺🇸 Hebbia, a startup that uses generative AI to search large documents and respond to large questions, has raised a €119 million.

🇺🇸 US-based mental health startup Headway is set to close €91.6 million in funding at a $2.3 billion valuation.

🇺🇸 AI-powered Regard nabs €55.9 million to find missed illness and boost hospital revenue.

🇪🇸 Spanish startup PLD Space secures €31.2 million loan to continue the development of its Miura 5 rocket.

🇧🇪 Brussels-based Soda snaps €12.9 million to expand its data quality platform in the US.

SERIES A
Munich-based Planqc secures €50 million aiming to accelerate quantum computing innovation

🇩🇪 Planqc, an atom-based quantum computing startup headquartered in Munich, has announced the completion of a €50 million Series A financing round.

This startup, founded in 2022 by scientists from the Max-Planck-Institute for Quantum Optics (MPQ) and Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich (LMU), seems to be at the forefront of the quantum computing competition.

Honestly, it's great to see a European deep tech company attract such a significant funding round.

According to the press release, this startup is already using quantum machine learning for climate simulations and the development of more efficient batteries for electric vehicles. Very nice!

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More Series A interesting stories:

🇬🇧 UK fintech NALA raises €36.8 million to enhance the reliability of payments in Africa by developing its payment rails.

🇳🇱 Amsterdam-based Scaler raises €9.2 million for real estate decarbonisation.

🇬🇧 London-based Byway raises €5.9 million to make flight-free travel the new standard.

🇮🇪 Irish marketplace transaction platform Trustap raises €5.1 million to spread the trust gospel for buyers and sellers.

SEED
Berlin-based Lemon.markets secures €12 million to expand brokerage-as-a-service across Europe

🇩🇪 Brokerage-as-a-Service company Lemon.markets, founded in 2020, has secured an additional €12 million in funding as it aims to open 100 million brokerage accounts.

What this startup basically provides is digital brokerage (a way to buy and sell investments like ETFs) and custody infrastructure, enabling any company (included other fintechs or banks) to offer investment products to its customers or users.

I think this is a classic example of an API-first business. Think of it as something similar to Stripe, but on a smaller scale and specialized in investment products. Interesting!

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More Seed interesting stories:

🇬🇧 London-based Tracebit nabs €4.6 million to accelerate mass adoption of threat deception.

🇬🇧 UK-based Unum Aircraft Seating takes off with €4.1 million to scale business class seats manufacturing capacity.

🇪🇸 Spanish startup Viva in Vitro raises €1.3 million euros to develop treatments against sepsis.

PRE-SEED
Amsterdam-based Lleverage raises €2 million to make AI development accessible to all companies

🇳🇱 Lleverage, an AI startup aiming to transform the way developers and product teams build and integrate AI features into their software, announced its emergence from stealth with €2 million in pre-seed funding.

I think this startup has an interesting approach to the AI market. They are creating a low-code AI development and observability platform that simplifies the creation, testing, and deployment of AI features.

This startup aims to make AI accessible to all software engineers, enabling them to build AI features without deep AI expertise. Interesting!

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More pre-Seed interesting stories:

🇩🇪 Berlin-based Kolum raises €2.1 million to simplify EU carbon pricing compliance.

🇩🇪 Munich-based Trail secures €1.45 million pre-seed for its AI governance copilot.

🇩🇪 Berlin-based Northbound gets €1.3 million to optimise container flows from the port to the warehouse.