🌟 QUICK INTRO
Hello and welcome back.
In this week’s edition Synthesia turns down a $3bn offer, there are several high-profile acquisitions and the lots of promising startups raise decent sized rounds.
On a personal note I am starting to post new content direct to X - if that’s of interest please follow along here.
This week I live-streamed the Onstage Demo Day. You can watch the whole thing on Youtube as well as an open and stripped back interview with Harry Stebbings, which you can view here.
Harmonic are sponsoring this newsletter - check them out here.
💰 BIG ROUNDS
UK-based CoMind raised a $60m Series A led by Plural. The company is bhas built non-invasive brain monitoring tools and has now raised over $100m. Read more here.
Austrian refurbed, Vienna-based marketplace for refurbished electronics, household, and sports products, raised €50m from led by Alex Zubillaga. Read more here.
UK-based SheMed, raised $50m at a $1 billion valuation for its women’s weight loss platform. Read more here.
Lithuanian nexos.ai, which only launched this year, raised a €30m Series A at a €300 million valuation. The company is attempting to solve the enterprise AI adoption crisis, and only decided to raise after pressure from Matt Miller (the founder of Evantic Capital who co-led the round with Index Ventures). Read more here.
Norwegian Riff, the the vibe coding platform that enables enterprises to build their own applications, raised a €14m Series A led by Northzone. Read more here.
UK-based Finster AI, the AI-native platform designed for investment banks and asset managers, raised a $15m in combined Seed and Series A funding. Read more here.
Irish Bronto, a proprietary log data platform company, raised a €12m Seed led by Cercano Management. Read more here.
UK-based Saturn, which is building AI infrastructure for wealth managers, raised a $15m Series A led by Singular VC. I interviewed the founder here.
UK-based Wonder Studios, which is building AI tools for the next generation of creatives and film-makers and creatives, raised $12m led by Atomico. I interviewed the founder here.
Spanish Acoru, which stops AI-enabled fraud and money laundering, has raised a €10m Series A round led by 33N Ventures. Read more here.
💸 SMALLER BUT INTERESTING ROUNDS
UK-based Milvus Advanced raised a £5m seed round led by Hoxton Ventures to recreate rare metals using sustainable nanoalloy technology. Read more here.
French Exeliom Biosciences raised an additional €2.85 million to accelerate immunotherapy for cancer. Read more here.
Swedish Cytely raised €3 million to make “smart microscopy” the new standard in science. Read more here.
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📰 STARTUP NEWS
Synthesia
The UK AI company was valued at $2.1bn earlier this year before hitting $100m ARR a few months later.
It's now been reported that it rejected a $3bn takeover bid from Adobe as well as a bid from Meta.
This deal would have made the founders rich and their investors a great return. But the company said no as the founders want to stay independent and take the company public. Read more here.
Robin AI
One of the leading UK Legaltechs has cut a third of its staff after failing to close a $50m fundraise.
The company was seeking to raise $50m following a range of successful raises from other legaltech startups such as Legora and Wordsmith AI.
Unfortunately the raise hasn't been successful and the company has reduced its headcount from over 200 to about 150. Read more here.
Acquisitions
There was a bunch of interesting acquisitions across the continent this week:
Lemlist, the bootstrapped outbound tool doing $40m ARR, acquired another outbound tool Claap. I interviewed the CEO of Lemlist about the acquisition here.
UK Neobank Allica Bank, acquired fellow UK-fintech Kriya. The acquisition (Allica’s 3rd) helps Allica strengthen its SME lending proposition and sees the fintech move into the embedded payments market for the first time. Read more here.
Truelayer, one of Europe’s leading Pay by Bank providers, acquired Zimpler - the leading Pay by Bank provider in the Nordics. Read more here.
💶 FUND NEWS
Polytechnique Ventures, the alumni fund of prestigious French engineering school École Polytechnique, has closed €21m of a new fund, with a final close target of €30m-€40m. Read more here.
Vienna-based healthtech VC Calm/Storm reached a final close of its €30m second fund. Read more here.
Iris Ventures, a Barcelona-based growth investor focused on purpose-led consumer brands, announced the first close of its second fund, IRIS Fund II, securing €100 million toward a total target of €200 million. Read more here.
Lakestar, which backed Revolut and Spotify, says it will not raise any new generalist VC funds, undertaking a “strategy shift” which will instead see it focus on raising returns from its portfolio companies such as Helsing and Neko Health. Read more here.
🔎 IN OTHER NEWS
15% of Slush alumni become founders, making it one of Europe’s leading founder factories. Read more here.
Shawbrook targets a £2bn IPO on the London Stock Exchange.
THAT’S ALL. Thank you.
Seb