Who Got Funded? Week 6, 2024

Good morning ☀️ 

First thing I want to say is THANK YOU.

I am excited to share that Who Got Funded club has doubled its subscriber count in the last 4 weeks, surpassing 200! And I'm convinced that this is just the beginning of something big. 🧑‍🚀 🚀 

Now, let's take a quick look at the most interesting startup funding stories from last week.

• Estimated reading time: ⌛️ 6 min 40 sec.

• Top song for reading: 🎧 In Motion - The Social Nework.

PRE-SEED
London-based Sable Bio raises €1.7 million pre-seed to provide scientists with richer specialist data

🇬🇧 London-based Sable Bio, a B2B software startup changing how biotech and pharma companies evaluate drug target safety, secured an oversubscribed €1.7 million pre-seed fund, led by Episode1 Ventures and backed by Seedcamp.

The company is now seeking to form partnerships with entities in the biotech, pharmaceutical, and healthcare sectors, and I am eager to observe the outcome these partnership efforts.

Although I believe that processing the right data (especially with LLMs) can lead to highly useful and actionable biomedical insights, I am somewhat skeptical about their ability to collect the most important asset in their proposal: the data.

Ultimately, there are too many conflicts of interest within the pharmaceutical sector, and I understand that this process will be challenging since they don’t own the data they need to create actionable medical insights.

You can read more about this deal here.

More pre-seed interesting stories:

🇮🇱 Octup raises $4 million for operational AI-driven e-commerce platform.

🇺🇸 Cascading AI, a California-based fintech, secures $3.9 million to revolutionize the banking industry with its AI-native loan origination system.

🇺🇸 San Francisco-based Loamist locks in $1 million and launches innovative biomass explorer.

🇭🇺 Budapest-based Qneiform raises €750k to shake up the executive search industry with talent AI models.

🇫🇮 Finnish traveltech startup Reveel secures €650K pre-seed funding to upgrade tourism experience.

🇫🇷 Paris-based The Essence App secures over €500K to tackle menstrual health disparities in the workplace.

SEED
Brussels-based Cosmic Aerospace closes €4.5 million round to develop 1,000km-range electric airliner

If last week it was Heart Aerospace’s turn, now it is the turn for this startup competing in the aviation industry.

🇧🇪 Brussels-based startup Cosmic Aerospace announced on February 6 that it has closed a €4.5 million seed funding round to continue development of a battery-powered electric aircraft with a range of up to 1.000 km.

I think it's fantastic news that an increasing number of companies (and funding) are investing in research and development in this industry, which is responsible for a significant portion of total CO2 emissions.

You can read more about this deal here.

More seed interesting stories:

🇺🇸 Amperesand raises $12.5 million round to remake the humble 140-year-old transformer.

🇺🇸 Elemind, a Massachusetts-based AI-powered neurotech health company, raised $12 million in funding.

🇫🇷 Paris-based Naboo raises €7.5 million for European expansion of its corporate booking platform.

🇩🇪 Berlin-based Dude Chem gets €6.5 million to make Europe a major hub for chemical-pharmaceutical production again.

🇺🇸 Stellar Sleep, a San Francisco-based provider of a digital solution for chronic insomnia management, raised $6 million in funding.

🇺🇸 Perigon secures $5 million to structure the Open Web for AI.

🇺🇸 Camb.ai announces $4 million to provide multilingual AI dubbing and translation.

🇮🇹 Milan-based Voidless raises €2.2 million to confront the overpackaging problem with “box on demand” solution.

SERIES A
UK-based Lilli secures over €9.5 million to help people to live safely and independently in their homes for longer

🇬🇧 Lilli, a UK-based SaaS company using a proactive lifestyle monitoring technology to revolutionise care, announced that it has raised over €9.5 million financing led by West Hill Capital, a 37% increase from its initial target.

Lilli is pioneering the shift from a reactive to a proactive care model. And I think that it’s a very, very interesting approach.

Leveraging AI and machine learning, Lilli provides caregivers with precise insights by detecting behavioral patterns, enabling early intervention to prevent acute conditions, enhance health outcomes, and reduce hospital visits.

You can read more about this deal here.

More Series A interesting stories:

🇭🇷 Croatian company Project 3 Mobility (P3), focusing on autonomous electric vehicles and mobility services, secured €100 million in funding.

🇬🇧 Colossyan's AI-text-to-video platform attracts $22 million in latest funding round.

🇩🇪 Daedalus, which is building precision-manufacturing factories powered by AI, raises $21 million.

🇺🇸 Thea Energy raises $20 million for pixel-inspired fusion power plants.

SERIES B AND LATER
Swedish firm Xensam takes on first ever external funding in $40 million round

Wow, Xensam is a fascinating example of a successfully bootstrapped startup that first identified the right market BEFORE seeking funding (and not the other way around).

🇸🇪 This Sweden-based AI-driven startup enhances access to critical Software Asset Management (SAM) data for IT professionals.

As a fun fact, two of the founders are brothers! Oskar and Gustav Fösker. The round is led by London-based Expedition Growth Capital.

You can read more about this deal here.

More Series B (and later) interesting stories:

🇺🇸 NinjaOne secures $231.5 million Series C to enhance endpoint management.

🇪🇪 Starship Technologies, the Estonian company turning science fiction into reality with street delivery robots, raises €83.7 million.

🇪🇸 Barcelona-based Heura bags €40 million Series B to achieve profitability with additive-free plant-based options.

🇫🇷 Accounting software startup Pennylane has become France's latest unicorn following its recent €40 million round.

🇪🇪 Estonian core banking provider Tuum bags €25 million as targets DACH and Middle East.