Zepz, MiLaboratories, Revyze, and Lovable

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

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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 50 sec.

SERIES B AND LATER
London-based Zepz (previously known as WorldRemit) raises €243.8 million to fuel expansion in Africa

🇬🇧 London-based Zepz (previously known as WorldRemit), a leader in the money transfer sector, has raised €243.8 million to expand into African markets.

After raising a €266.7 million Series E round in August 2021, the company shifted its focus from an earlier plan for an initial public offering (IPO) and is now fully focused on expanding operations into African markets and beyond.

According to Daba Finance, Zepz serves over 11 million users across 150 countries through its two brands, WorldRemit and Sendwave. While its current valuation remains undisclosed, it was valued at $5 billion in 2021 and achieved EBITDA profitability in 2022.

Although Zepz is arguably one of the most successful fintechs in Europe, it was “forced” to lay off more than 26% of its workforce (over 420 employees) in early 2023.

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More Series B (and later) interesting stories:

🇦🇹 Vienna-based GROPYUS raises €100 million to advance the development of sustainable buildings.

🇬🇧 London-based Basecamp Research raises €54.8 million Series B to fuel AI advancements in life sciences.

🇨🇭 Swiss agtech xFarm Technologies raises €36 million Series C to keep digitising the agri-food sector.

🇫🇷 Paris-based Qantev raises €30 million to continue building AI-driven claims platform for health and life insurers.

🇩🇪 Munich-based Building Radar nabs €6.5 million to expand suite of sales enablement software for the construction industry.

SERIES A
Bilbao-based MiLaboratories raises €9.1 million to accelerate AI-driven genomic research. Aupa!

🇪🇸 Bilbao-based MiLaboratories, a startup building a computational biology platform that leverages generative AI, has successfully raised €9.1 million in a Series A funding round.

Last week, we learned that two DeepMind scientists won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold2, an AI model that predicts protein structures and has been used by over 2 million people across 190 countries.

In a similar direction, MiLaboratories is creating a “no-code” style platform that allows scientists to easily process, analyze, and aggregate data. The platform also includes a “marketplace” where scientists can distribute specialized computational tools as apps.

The company is approaching 100 paying customers, including big names like Moderna and Bristol Myers Squibb, which, in my opinion, is a very significant milestone. Bravo!

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More Series A interesting stories:

🇳🇱 Rotterdam-based Paebbl raises €22.8 million to supercharge CO2 storage in the built environment.

🇸🇪 Stockholm-based Quartr secures €5.4 million to revolutionise qualitative public market research.

🇫🇷 Paris-based fintech Kriptown raises €4.2 million for blockchain-based SME stock exchange.

🇱🇹 Vilnius-based RedTrack raises €2.9 million to equip media buyers with AI-powered analytics and automation.

SEED
Paris-based Revyze raises €5.4 million to build social learning app for GenZ and GenAlpha

🇫🇷 Paris-based edtech Revyze, labeled as the “TikTok of education,” has secured €5.4 million in seed funding to develop a global social learning app for Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

Revyze was founded in 2022 with the mission to democratize access to high-quality education on a global scale. “You can think of Revyze as Duolingo meets TikTok. Duolingo for the gamified learning structure & Tiktok for the short-form video format & social interaction,” cofounder Guillaume Perrot said.

The startup’s mobile app helps students learn by scrolling through verified short form “Tiktok-like” videos & quizzes made by their peers – high schoolers, university students and even teachers.

Since its launch in August 2022, Revyze has reached over 1 million users, and over 1/3 of all 9th graders in France have already used Revyze to prepare for their middle school certificate. Besides, over 2,000 creators have also contributed with over 20,000 videos. Nice!

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More Seed interesting stories:

🇳🇱 Breukelen-based PhotonVentures secures €5 million strengthening the Dutch photonics ecosystem.

🇩🇪 Berlin-based forward earth secures €4.5 million to meet global demand for environmental management software.

🇨🇿 Prague-based FaceUp raises €2.7 million to foster speak-up culture and scale HR platform globally

🇫🇮 Helsinki-based Synergi raises €2 million to plug European homes and utilities into flexibility markets.

🇪🇸 Madrid-based QUIXOTIC closes €1.3 million for energy management platform for marketers.

PRE-SEED
Stockholm-based Lovable raises €6.8 million to make everyone a software engineer

🇸🇪 Stockholm-based startup Lovable, which aims to enable anyone to create software, has announced the closure of its €6.8 million pre-seed funding round.

I really love what this startup is trying to do. Lovable recently launched its beta product, GPT Engineer, a European alternative to US-based AI coding tools.

After debuting on Product Hunt, the platform quickly gained traction, acquiring “hundreds” of paying users overnight. GPT Engineer allows users to describe features for websites and web apps, generating production-ready code in no time.

Founded by Swedish entrepreneurs Anton Osika and Fabian Hedin, this startup's mission is to expand coding capabilities beyond the 1% of the population who can currently program, making software more accessible to everyone. LFG! 🚀 

👉️ You can read more about this deal here.

More pre-Seed interesting stories:

🇫🇷 Paris-based baCta secures €3.3 million to revolutionize natural rubber production.

🇬🇧 London-based Round Treasury secures €1.9 million to simplify treasury management for founders and CFOs.

🇬🇧 London-based Univa Health raises €1.2 million for digital platform to address eating disorder care.