Who Got Funded? Week 7, 2024

Good morning,

Monday is here! Let's quickly explore the most captivating startup funding narratives from last week. ✌️

Estimated reading time: ⌛️ 5 min 40 sec.

PRE-SEED
Lithuanian startup Cyber Upgrade secures €650k pre-seed to empower SMEs against cybersecurity threats

🇱🇹 Lithuania's cybersecurity startup, Cyber Upgrade, has raised €650k in pre-seed funding, with backing from venture capital firms Firstpick, NGL Ventures, and additional support from business angels.

According to various studies, the cybersecurity market is expected to grow more rapidly than other software sectors. So, from that perspective, it's quite easy to understand the reasoning behind this investment.

You can read more about this deal here.

More pre-seed interesting stories:

🇪🇸 Zylon emerges from stealth announcing a $3.2 million pre-seed funding round to develop AI for SMBs.

🇺🇸 SocialCrowd raises $1.6 million pre-seed as venture interest in work software remains high.

🇬🇧 London-based Didimi raises €880k pre-seed to bring interoperability to the construction industry.

🇮🇹 Milan-based Guidoio picks up €700k pre-seed to digitize Italy’s driving school industry.

🇳🇴 Oslo-Based startup Midio raises $660k for visual programming interface development.

🇪🇸 Barcelona-based Habitacion.com raises €400k to allow investors to purchase rooms as an alternative to renting.

SEED
Stockholm-based powertech Fever gets €10 million to make energy grids more resilient

🇸🇪 Fever, a Swedish API-focused virtual power plant developer, raised €10 million in seed funding led by General Catalyst, with support from La Famiglia and Norrsken VC.

According to their press release, “Fever’s innovative API-centric platform further empowers energy asset installers and operators, including leading utility companies, EV fleets, and Battery Energy Storage Operators, to run and monetize their own virtual power plants by unlocking the full potential of market participation, capacity modelling, orchestration, reporting and settlements”.

You can read more about this deal here.

More seed interesting stories:

🇺🇸 Antithesis raises $47 million to launch an automated testing platform for software.

🇩🇪 Berlin-based Simplyblock raises €2.5 million to improve the carbon footprint of data centers.

🇬🇧 Oxford-based MeVitae secures €1.7 million to keep making the workplace more fair and equitable.

🇳🇱 Dutch medtech Amazec Photonics bags €1.5 million to develop new generation of heart failure detection tech.

SERIES A
Less than two years old, GPU cloud company Together AI is set to raise $100 million from Salesforce Ventures

🇺🇸 Founded in 2022 (!!!), Together AI is set to raise more than $100 million in a new funding round, bringing the not-yet-two-year-old company’s valuation to over $1 billion. This represents an astonishingly rapid rate of growth. 🤯 

The company offers a cloud-based platform, built on open-source principles, enabling developers to create customizable AI models. Additionally, it facilitates access to Nvidia server chips, combining GPU services with software, thereby offering customers a more economical means to train and refine their open-source models.

You can learn more about this deal here.

More Series A interesting stories:

🇺🇸 Sierra, the AI chatbot startup launched by OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor, has raised $110 million in funding.

🇪🇸 Madrid-based LUDA Partners bags €12 million to further interconnect the digital presence of pharmacies.

🇩🇰 Copenhagen-based Go Autonomous gets €10 million to accelerate adoption of autonomous commerce.

🇩🇰 Copenhagen-based Aegir Insights snaps €8.5 million to accelerate the offshore wind energy segment.

SERIES B AND LATER
SME banking tech start-up Finom lands €50 million Series B to power product expansion

🇳🇱 Dutch fintech firm Finom has successfully raised €50 million in a Series B funding round, aiming to enhance its product range. The investment was led by existing backer General Catalyst, with Northzone joining the round as a new investor.

Co-founder Kos Stiskin claims Finom is aiming to “transform the SME banking experience into something straightforward and user-friendly” and I agree with him. Even in 2024, I think that there's still plenty of room to make banking experiences better for end users.

You can learn more about this deal here.

More Series B (and later) interesting stories:

🇺🇸 AI compute startup Lambda hits $1.5 billion valuation after massive $320 million raise.

🇮🇹 Evernote and Meetup owner Bending Spoons raises $155 million in equity financing.

🇺🇸 Bugcrowd secures $102 million for its 'bug bounty' security platform, engaging over 500,000 hackers.

🇨🇴 Bold, a Colombian financial technology firm constructing an electronic payment framework, secured $50 million.

🇫🇮 Helsinki-based Bob W lands €40 million to spread sustainable alternative to short-term rentals.

🇬🇧 UK-based Cambridge Mechatronics bags €37 million to further develop smartphone imaging tech.