Exoticca, Gcore, Fractile, and Rent2Cash

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

My name is Onofre, and I'm an entrepreneur living in Aarhus, Denmark. Every 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: ⌛️  5 min 40 sec.

SERIES B AND LATER
Barcelona-based travel tech Exoticca nabs €60 million Series D to keep disrupting the multi-day tour segment

🇪🇸 Exoticca, a leading travel tech platform for multi-day tour packages, has announced that it has closed a €60 million Series D round.

Despite being a significant vertical, the multiday tour packages market is still not as digitized as other areas of the travel industry. Exoticca’s platform simplifies booking by connecting flights, hotels, meals, transfers, transportation, and local companies.

Additionally, they claim to reduce costs by up to 30% for their customers.

Exoticca has more than doubled its sales year-on-year since 2015, becoming the digital category leader and selling trips to over 70 destinations worldwide to travellers in 8 markets. Impressive!

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More Series B (and later) interesting stories:

🇨🇦 Legal tech Clio raises €828 million at a $3B valuation, plans to double down on AI and fintech.

🇺🇸 Cohere, a generative AI startup co-founded by ex-Google researchers, raises €460 million.

🇳🇱 Dutch firm RE&UP Recycling Technologies secures €70 million to push fashion and textile industry to circularity.

🇨🇭 Swiss aviation startup H55 raises €57.1 million for its electric aircraft battery technology.

🇳🇱 Financial SaaS Payt receives €55 million for European expansion.

🇫🇷 Biotech startup Micropep raises €26.7 million to make pesticides safer.

🇸🇪 Gothenburg-based Maurten bags €20 million to expand sports fuels across new markets.

🇬🇧 London-based smart money app Plum raises €19 million Series B, on track for profitability in 2025.

🇵🇹 Portuguese seafood company Oceano Fresco secures €17 million for sustainable aquaculture.

🇪🇸 Barcelona-based Payflow raises €6 million to expand flexible salary in Iberian and Latam markets.

SERIES A
Luxembourg-based Gcore raises €55.3 million to accelerate AI training, and provide comprehensive cloud services and cybersecurity

🇱🇺 Luxembourg-based Gcore, a provider of edge AI, cloud, network, and security solutions, has announced securing €55.3 million in Series A funding.

Despite being founded 10 years ago, this is an impressive Series A for a European startup, especially considering that the average size of Series A rounds in Europe is usually significantly lower.

My main takeaway is understanding what this company is doing. Gcore focuses on "edge AI", which means bringing computation closer to where data is generated (such as devices and local servers) rather than relying solely on centralized cloud servers.

This approach reduces latency, improves performance for AI-driven applications, and protects data sovereignty.

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More Series A interesting stories:

🇨🇭 Zurich-based Lakera raises €18.4 million Series A to bring security to Gen AI applications.

🇩🇪 Berlin-based fintech Bunch raises €14.2 million Series A to build the backbone of private markets.

🇩🇪 Munich-based Deepc gets €12 million to spread radiology AI around the world.

🇬🇧 London-based Primary Portal raises €8.9 million to further drive equity capital markets digitisation.

🇸🇪 Stockholm-based Greenely secures €8 million to reshape how households interact with the energy market.

🇩🇪 Craft business platform Meisterwerk raises €6 million for expansion in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

🇬🇧 UK-based biotech 4D Medicine, who develop biomaterial for a range of 3D printed implants and surgical devices, raises €4 million.

SEED
London-based Fractile exits stealth with €13.8 million seed to develop radical new AI chip

🇬🇧 Fractile, a UK-based company developing a revolutionary AI chip to provide exponential performance enhancements for AI models, has emerged from stealth mode and announced €13.8 million in seed funding.

This startup was founded in 2022 by Walter Goodwin, a 28-year-old who completed his PhD in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at Oxford University.

In their funding press release, the company claims that their system will deliver impressive AI model performance, aiming to be 100 times faster and 10 times cheaper than current solutions.

Well, if this is true, they're going to have a great business on their hands.

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More Seed interesting stories:

🇺🇸 Texas-based Splight raises €11 million to unlock the potential of renewable energy sources with AI.

🇳🇱 Dutch startup NoPalm Ingredients secures €5 million to scale sustainable palm oil alternative.

🇩🇰 Copenhagen-based Agrobiomics harvests €4 million to make plants climate resilient.

🇵🇱 Krakow-based Digital First AI gets €3.5 million to leverage AI for marketing strategies and ad content.

🇵🇹 Lisbon-based Sqill gets €2 million to streamline the creative workflow of social media teams.

🇩🇪 Berlin-based fitness app TRAIT snaps €1 million for empathetic AI training platform.

PRE-SEED
Rome-based Rent2Cash closes €3 million to launch rental advance platform for property owners

🇮🇹 Rent2Cash, an Italian startup that pays landlords up to three years' rent in advance, raised €3 million in a pre-seed round.

Well, it seems very clear to me what this startup is offering. Providing a good payment in advance for landlords is a strong incentive for them to use the service. Additionally, the startup handles rent collections from tenants and offers customer assistance, which is also interesting.

It's important to note that this startup is targeting a very large market, valued at $2.5 trillion worldwide.

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More pre-Seed interesting stories:

🇨🇭 Zurich-based NetFabric secures €2 million to address the challenge of network downtime.