Who Got Funded? Week 5, 2024

Good morning :)

Last week was FULL of exciting startup funding stories. So, let's quickly explore the most interesting ones. 🧑‍🚀 🚀 

Estimated reading time: 5min 30sec

PRE-SEED
Indemn, an AI-driven conversational insurance platform, raises $1.9 million to revolutionize insurance purchasing with AI agents

Indemn, a NYC-based provider of an AI-powered conversational insurance platform, raised $1.9 million in pre-seed funding round led by Markd, a VC firm focused on funding and partnering with transformative Insurtechs.

Personally, I find Indemn's proposal very interesting, because in my experience, every time I had to purchase insurance, the user experience wasn't as satisfactory as it could have been.

Large Language Models (LLMs) are very good at having conversations. So, let's leverage them to improve the experience of buying any insurance! It totally makes sense to me from this perspective.

You can read more about this deal here.

More pre-seed interesting stories:

🇺🇸 Fora, a NYC-based provider of an executive relationship management platform, raised $3.8 million.

🇩🇪 Berlin-based startup WAY has raised €1.2 million. Take a look at their landing page because I think it's really well-designed.

🇩🇰 Aarhus-based fintech company Safty has raised $1.6 million.

🇬🇧 London-based Sentify raises more than $1.1 million in oversubscribed round to build the leading analytics platform for LLM products.

SEED
Reken, an AI-defense cybersecurity startup still in stealth mode raises $10 million before revealing its product

Reken, an AI-defense cybersecurity firm founded on January 1, 2024, announced an oversubscribed $10 million seed round on January 31, 2024 – but without a publicly demonstrable product. The product will be unveiled later in the year. The round is led by Greycroft and FPV Ventures.

If you're wondering whether it's possible to close a funding round without a product, well… answer is yes.

However, the truth must be told. In this case, both co-founders have “unparalleled experience in building large-scale AI platforms to defend against sophisticated attacks”. You cannot understand the speed of this round without understanding the founders' background.

You can read more about this deal here.

More seed interesting stories:

🇺🇸 Fintech provider Portal raises $34 million round for bitcoin-based decentralized exchange.

🇺🇸 AI startup Roofer, a pioneering technology company in the roofing industry, announced that it has raised a $7.5 million round.

🇧🇪 VoxelSensors, a Belgium-based semiconductor deep tech startup, has closed its €9.5 million seed round.

SERIES A
Munich-based Planet A Foods gets €14.2 million to spread the world with sustainable cocoa-free chocolate

Planet A Foods, specializing in sustainable, nutritious ingredients for the food industry, has closed a €14.2 million Series A funding round. The round was led by one of Europe’s leading climate venture fund: World Fund.

To be honest, every time I have to go buy groceries, I really wish there were more sustainable options in the supermarket.

Reading about Planet A Foods, I learned they have a product called ChoViva that tastes like chocolate. It contains up to 30% less sugar and has a very low CO2 footprint, thanks to the use of local ingredients and short supply chains. We need solutions like this in our society, but at an affordable price!

You can read more about this deal here.

More Series A interesting stories:

🇫🇷 Gen AI and quantum to design new drugs: Paris-based Aqemia completes €60 million Series A. This is not a small round!

🇵🇱 edrone, a Polish company specializing in marketing automation and CRM systems for e-commerce., announced a €4.6 million round.

🇩🇪 Munich-based BOX ID, a logistics software provider, has secured €3.5 million in new funding to expand its IoT-based supply chain visibility solutions.

🇺🇸 Cultivo announced it has raised $14 million in funding to accelerate its mission to unlock investment into regenerating nature at scale through high-quality projects.

🇺🇸 Austin-based Vital Interaction closes $15 million funding round to revamp patient communication with hyper-personalization. Really interesting startup here!

SERIES B AND LATER
Bill Gates-backed electric plane startup Heart Aerospace flies high with $107 million raise

According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, globally, aviation produced 2.4% of total CO2 emissions in 2018. That’s a lot. We, as a society, need substantial changes within the aviation industry.

Heart Aerospace, a Gothenburg-based company focusing on hybrid-electric airplanes, has successfully raised $107 million in Series B funding from investors including Sagitta Ventures, Air Canada, Breakthrough Energy Ventures (founded by Bill Gates), European Innovation Council Fund, EQT Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Norrsken VC, United Airlines, and Y Combinator.

“The industry has committed to net zero emissions by 2050. The only way forward is to decouple the tremendous growth in aviation from its emissions, and we believe ES-30 is the first stepping stone,” CEO and cofounder Anders Forslund says.

You can read more about this deal here.

More Series B (and later) interesting stories:

🇺🇸 Kore.ai, a startup building conversational AI for enterprises, raises $150 million.

🇺🇸 San Francisco-based climate data service Watershed secures $100 million round.

🇺🇸 Metronome, a startup that helps software companies offer usage-based billing, has raised $43 million.

🇳🇱 Amsterdam-based DataSnipper bags €92 million to take AI to the auditors arena.