European Tech Weekly (Series A & beyond) - Week 18
14 selected European funding rounds announced last week
Welcome to the latest edition of European Tech Weekly, a newsletter that provides a summary of Series A+ funding rounds in Europe on a weekly basis.
About the author - my name is Chirag Modi and I am a tech investor at Atomico, a multi-stage VC fund. I back exceptional founders at Series B and beyond in Europe and the US and would love to discuss potential opportunities/partnerships. You can reach me at chirag@atomico.com or on Linkedin.
Thematic areas that I am spending time on are (a) Voluntary Carbon Markets and (b) Payment operations. Would love to connect with founders/investors in these areas. :)
Funding Announcements in Europe by Stage
Note: Minimum deal size of $10m; also includes large seed rounds; excludes several sectors such as biotech; non-exhaustive
Company Profiles - Series A
Kevin. (Lithuania | $65m Series A | Lithuania | Accel)
Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Lithuania, kevin. provides an A2A (account to account) payment infrastructure to replace card transactions. It raised $65m in Series A funding led by Accel. The Series A funding comes just six months after the company secured its $10 million seed round and brings kevin.’s total funding to $77 million.
According to Siliconcanals, “the company has leveraged the opportunity provided by open banking and claims to have proven itself to be the leader in web and in-app A2A payments in the European Economic Area, where it has the broadest PSD2 bank API coverage on the market. Recently, the startup also stepped into POS terminal payments in physical stores by introducing an NFC A2A payments solution. The company claims their solution comes with a ‘seamless’ user experience comparable to a card payment experience. kevin.’s A2A in-store payments offering lies in the fact that it does not require any changes on the merchant’s technical side: it uses existing POS terminal infrastructure and widely used and intuitive NFC payment technology.”
“By the end of this year, the company aims to secure 35 per cent coverage of POS payment terminals across Europe and looks to achieve more than 85 per cent by the end of 2023. This is equivalent to the current coverage of major card schemes.”
Sources: Privateequitywire, Techcrunch, Silconcanals
2. HiveMQ (Germany | $43m Series A | Software | Molten Ventures)
Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Germany, HiveMQ is an MQTT-based messaging platform designed for the fast, efficient and reliable bi-directional movement of data between IoT devices and the cloud. It raised $43m in Series A funding led by Molten Ventures.
The flagship product, HiveMQ, is an MQTT-based messaging platform that provides:
MQTT broker that scales to 10 million connected devices
Elastic clustering for extreme reliability and fault tolerance
Real-time monitoring of device data
Over 130 customers, including many Fortune 500 companies, rely on our products in production for mission-critical use cases like connected cars, logistics, Industry 4.0, and connected IoT products. Our customers are using HiveMQ as the core infrastructure platform for building new digital products.
The new investment will be used to further accelerate the development, growth and adoption of the company’s MQTT messaging platform
Source: Press release
3. Druid (Romania | $15m Series A | Software | Hoxton Ventures, Karma Ventures)
Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Romania, Druid is an end-to-end platform for building AI-driven conversational business applications. It raised $15m in Series A funding led by Hoxton Ventures and Karma Ventures.
“DRUID intelligent virtual assistants enable fast, personalized, omnichannel, and hyper-automated interactions while speaking each organization's language via open integrations with any existing enterprise systems and RPA technologies. Started in 2018, DRUID actively builds on its vision to provide each employee with an intelligent virtual assistant, establishing an extensive 130+ partner network, most notably with UiPath, and servicing 100+ clients from around the world.”
“DRUID reached a 3.8x ARR growth rate at the end of December 2021 compared to 2020 and already achieved a 2.8x growth at the end of Q1 2022 compared to the same period last year. The new funding will be used to accelerate the company's international expansion and footprint, and increase platform versatility".”
Sources: Press release
Disclaimer
This post and the information presented are intended for informational purposes only. The views expressed herein are the author’s alone and do not constitute an offer to sell, or a recommendation to purchase, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security, nor a recommendation for any investment product or service. While certain information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, neither the author nor any of his employers or their affiliates have independently verified this information, and its accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed. Accordingly, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is made as to, and no reliance should be placed on, the fairness, accuracy, timeliness or completeness of this information. The author and affiliated persons and companies assume no liability for this information and no obligation to update the information or analysis contained herein in the future.