A French OpenAI (?), an app for amateur football, VC fundings on both sides of the Rhine, and many more...
What's Up Tech? #136
Welcome to our 136th newsletter. It was written with 🖤 by Anas El Aissaoui, Victoire Gendre, Jérémy Bréhault and Angèle Sahraoui
In 2023, baby vc is proudly sponsored by OneRagtime which will fund enrolment fees for the 2023 VC bootcamps participants, to promote diversity and inclusivity in the VC ecosystem — giving everyone the opportunity to succeed, regardless of their background.
OneRagtime is a European Seed & Series A venture capital fund with 40+ portfolio companies like Jellysmack, Homa Games and Zenly.
Follow OneRagtime on LinkedIn and check their website!
Fundraisings from last week with Mistral.ai, Prematch, Spread and Green-Got
News from last week with HV Capital and Bouygues launching its CVC with ISAI
Internship & Job offers of the week
Wishing you a pleasant read 🖤
🤖 Mistral.ai is set to raise €100M… and become the French OpenAI? (🇫🇷)
French start-up Mistral AI, created by industry experts, is set to raise almost €100M in a funding round led by US venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, which will value the company at €240M. 💰
Mistral AI was co-founded by Arthur Mensch, a former expert in language models at Google's DeepMind and INRIA. He will be joined by Guillaume Lample, a former AI researcher at Facebook, one of those behind LLaMA (Large Language Model Meta AI, a large language model released by Meta AI in February 2023), and Timothée Lacroix, also an ex-Meta AI researcher. 🧠
Mistral AI is focused on artificial intelligence research and development, and aims at becoming a leading European player in the field. Mistral AI will use the investment to compete in the AI sector, which requires significant resources in R&D and computing power. The fundraising will be one of the largest in France for AI.
Mistral AI, the French artificial intelligence start-up, will raise 100 million euros
⚽️ Prematch raised €2.4M for its soccer content platform (🇩🇪)
Prematch, a German content and stats app for amateur football players, has raised €2.4M in a seed funding round led by the Schadeberg Family Office.
Concretely, the Cologne-based startup and app is on a mission to become a super-platform for amateur football in Europe by bringing pro-level experience (e.g. news, data and gamification) to this community. There are an estimated +190M football fans out there, so there is no need to stress Prematch is entering a massive market. ⚽️
While the app is free and not yet generating revenue, the company is working on brand partnerships that could include prizes for top-performing teams. Prematch has about 330,000 users, or roughly a third of Germany's 1 million adult amateur football players. 🥅
The startup now plans to double its user base and improve community engagement by investing in product development and hiring five additional staff. 📈
Prematch scores €2.4 million to bring football back to the people
👨💻 Spread raised $16M for its engineering intelligence platform (🇩🇪)
German engineering startup Spread has raised $16M in a Series A funding round led by HV Capital, with participation from Cavalry Ventures, Dylan Field, Figma Co-Founder & CEO, the founders of logistics unicorn Sennder, and Summit Partners founder Walter Kortschak.
Spread makes product data accessible and usable for mechatronics products (a branch of engineering that focuses on designing, manufacturing and maintaining products that have both mechanical and electronic components.). Its platform connects product information to help engineering teams gain an objective understanding of complex systems such as cars, aircraft, and machines. Its customer base already includes Mercedes, VW, and Infineon, which all use the platform to accelerate development cycles, improve quality, and reduce their environmental footprint. ♻️
With this fresh capital, the Berlin-based firm will now aim at expanding its engineering intelligence network to new markets and develop the platform's capabilities.
Engineering Intelligence platform Spread butters up to $16 million
🏦 Green neobank Green-Got raised €5M (🇫🇷)
Green-Got, a French green and ethical banking platform, has raised €5M in funding, including €1.9M through crowdfunding, with the goal to expand its offerings and impact across Europe. The startup offers alternative, transparent, and environmentally friendly bank accounts that support initiatives such as plastic pollution cleanups, reforestation, and renewable energy development. To achieve this, Green-Got redirects a portion of the transaction fees (known as interchange fees) paid by merchants to the bank towards these eco-friendly projects. 🤝
Green-Got already claims to have stored or prevented over 12,000 tons of CO2 and empowers its users to measure and control their CO2 emissions related to their banking activities. In 10 months, it has already acquired over 13,000 paying users.
The funding secured will not only support the expansion of Green-Got's product offerings for savings and investment but also facilitate its entry into European markets, starting with Belgium. It already has all the necessary banking authorizations to do so. Green-Got's overarching goal is to educate and raise awareness about the environmental impact of financial choices, and to leverage finance to address the pressing environmental challenges we face. ♻️
💰 German VC HV Capital closed a ninth €700M fund
German VC firm HV Capital has closed its ninth fund at €700M, which is its biggest ever. The fund will be split in two vehicules to target companies from seed to Series D and beyond. The recent economic turmoil has made it more challenging to get money. "I wouldn't say it was an uphill battle, because we can play on our strong LP base, but it was definitely more challenging than we anticipated," says Rainer Märkle, general partner at the firm. 🔍
HV Capital has been investing for over 20 years and has backed companies such as Zalando, HelloFresh, Delivery Hero and Depop. The last fund, with a size of €535M, was also split into early-stage and growth functions. The 30% increase in fund size comes largely because HV Capital saw “significant potential” in later-stage investing and now wants to expand its growth fund and focus on sectors such as fintech, B2B marketplaces, enterprise SaaS, mobility, blockchain and sustainability. 👀
The firm is also adopting specific commitments on improving sustainability and diversity across its portfolio. HV Capital's ninth fund is an Article 8 fund under the European Union’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) criteria, which means it has adopted specific commitments on improving sustainability and diversity across its portfolio. The fund is working with portfolio companies to “push diverse hiring” and is recommending executive search firms committed to diversity. It plans to collect data on at least a quarterly basis to track its progress. This comes from a fund that doesn’t have a female partner yet — but HV Capital says it's working on it.
HV Capital closes €710M fund amidst the wider European and global funding downturn
🏗 The Bouygues Group launches its €80M CVC
While the French group has already been investing in startups since 2009 through its subsidiary Bouygues Telecom, it is now taking the plunge by establishing its first venture capital fund in partnership with ISAI. 🤝
The vehicle, called SAI Build Venture, will focus on investing in startups developing "software and hardware solutions that accelerate the transformation and decarbonization of Bouygues' businesses in the construction, real estate, transport infrastructure and energy and services sectors". ♻️
The combined expertise of ISAI, a recognized investor in the tech/digital ecosystem, and Bouygues, a leading player in its field, will enable the fund to build a portfolio of 15 to 20 startups within 5 years, sourced internationally with a primary focus on Europe and the United States. With a budget of €80M, the fund will invest minority stakes in rounds ranging from seed to series C, with an average ticket size ranging from €500,000 to €5M. 💵
For reference, ISAI currently manages over €600M through four investment strategies: early stage venture, corporate venture, tech buyout, and growth lending. ISAI has "invested between 1% and 2% in the fund," according to Les Echos.
Beyond accentuating the synergies between corporate and startups, this initiative by Bouygues aims to foster the emergence of solutions that address the key challenges faced by the sector, which are the digital and environmental transitions. "We are convinced that relevant, effective and disruptive solutions can emerge from the startup ecosystem," said its CEO, Edward Bouygues. 👀
Bouygues & ISAI launch investment fund dedicated to construction start-ups (PR)
Internships
Visiting VC Analyst - Cavalry Ventures (Berlin)
VC Analyst (working student) - Signals VC (Berlin)
Visiting Analyst - DN Capital (London or Berlin)
Jobs
Investment Manager Digital Health - Redstone (Berlin)
Associate Fintech Emerging Markets - Speedinvest (London or Paris)
Tech Analyst - EQT Ventures (Stockholm)
Analyst / Associate - DN Capital (London)
Analyst / Associate - DN Capital (Berlin)
Associate - FoodLabs (Berlin)
👉 If you’d like to discover more offers… you can check our job board just here. And if you want to submit a new job offer, you can fill in this form (or share it)!
Also, don’t hesitate to reach out to us at joinbabyvc@gmail.com. We’d be super happy to have you sharing job/internship offers, events or feedback with us! 🤝
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Take care, and see you next week,
The whole baby vc crew 🖤