Welcome to our 118th newsletter. It was written with 💛 by Diane de la Raudière, Saish Rane, Medina Sinani and Angèle Sahraoui
Fundraisings from last week with Sonio, Energy Dome and Primary Portal
News from last week with Meta and Italy-based VC P101
Our content of the week with Tony Fadell at MCJ Podcast
Internship & Job offers of the week
And before we dive into 2023’s first newsletter, the whole baby vc team is wishing you a..
May 2023 be full of self-realization and success while void of additional Elon-Twitter drama and valuation cuts!
Now, wishing you a pleasant read 💛
🤱 Sonio on the road to develop its AI for healthcare (🇫🇷)
Founded in 2020, Sonio raised €10M from the European Innovation Council incubator and was previously backed by Elaia, OneRagtime and Bpifrance in a first round of financing last June. 💵
The French startup develops an artificial intelligence software that helps fetal ultrasound practitioners to secure prenatal screening and diagnosis. The ultimate goal is simple: to improve access and quality of care for pregnant women and their unborn children. Thanks to its expertise in fetal medicine, artificial intelligence and medical imaging, the solution can treat 50% of congenital malformations and is already used by 150 healthcare professionals in Europe. 🇪🇺
This round of financing will enable Sonio to accelerate: the integration of image recognition into the Sonio platform, and access to the US market and obtain FDA approval, and the deployment of sales in Europe. 📈
🔋 Energy Dome raised €17.5M to get its disruptive CO2 Battery to market (🇮🇹)
The €17.5M investment was led by the European Innovation Council and will be made through the EIC Fund, a unique entity owned by the European Commission in charge of allocating grants or making direct equity investments into highly innovative companies (you can find a map with the full selection of funded projects just here). 🇪🇺
As for Energy Dome, the company developed a CO2 Battery, a disruptive long-duration energy storage system. In fact, we know long-duration energy storage is the missing link to the global adoption of renewable energy and to an accelerated energy transition. Using carbon dioxide has several advantages, including the use of readily available, off-the-shelf components from reliable and existing supply chains. 🚀
For this transaction, the EIC Fund joined other strategic investors, including Barclays and 360 Capital. 🤝
💸 Primary Portal seals £5.3M to expand in the US (🇬🇧)
In a round led by Dutch Founders Fund, London fintech Primary Portal raised £5.3M for its capital market deals aggregation and communication platform. Flow Traders, headquartered in Amsterdam, is also part of the group. 💪🏼
With Primary Portal, clients get instant access to live IPOs, rights issues, and other equity products. Therefore, it automates time-consuming workflows and integrates with tools used by banks and investors. 👩🏻💻
Currently, the platform mainly deals with Europe and Asia and is already used by 50 banks and 1,000 active users. Lastly, 2023 will be the year of focusing on the US expansion and adding new features to their products. 🚀
London fintech Primary Portal seals £5.3 million to tee up US expansion
🕶️ Meta acquires smart lens manufacturer Luxexcel
For those who have never heard of Luxexcel, we'll explain it simply: imagine living an augmented reality experience thanks to an optical lens. Founded in 2009, the Dutch company is playing its part in this process by creating a lens capable of superimposing virtual objects on the user's real environment.
But who else but Meta would be interested in this 3D lens printing player? Indeed, Meta made the acquisition of Luxexcel official this week without disclosing the amount of this acquisition. 🤭
While the announcement made some noise, the results will not see the light of day on the market for several years and Meta continues to lose billions, a year full of twists and turns ahead.
🇮🇹 Italy-based VC P101 closed a new fund
We learnt just before Christmas that P101 had closed a €150M new fund named Programma 103 — while targeting a €250M final close. 💵
The VC firm was founded in 2013 and invests in early-stage companies across sectors with a geographical focus on Spain and Italy. The team has already invested in 30+ companies and this new fundraising brings P101’s AUM to €500M.
Italy-based VC firm P101 closes new fund, Programma 103, at €150M: Know more
🌍 Inventor to Innovator to Investor: Tony Fadell with My Climate Journey
Tony is currently the Principal at Build Collective, and also the creator of many of the objects that we’ve either grown up with or still use today like the iPod, the iPhone 📱, the Nest Thermostat, and more recently the Ledger Stax through his collaboration with Ledger. With 300+ patents to his name, he has now decided to devote his time to the hardest, and most urgent problem ahead of us: climate change. 🌎
Through his investment & advisory firm, he is now coaching and helping bring deep tech startups out of research labs 🔬 and into adoption. In this podcast, he talks about how the climate tech movement has the potential to become the next Industrial Revolution 🏭 in terms of what it will take to address it as well as him increasing the pace of investing in climate tech startups.
Some other subjects covered here include whether Nest can be considered a climate tech company, how he got into investing in these sectors and what does he plan to do after having moved to Paris. 🇫🇷
Tony Fadell, Principal at Future Shape and fmr iPod, iPhone, & Nest: My Climate Journey
Internships
VC Analyst - Ananda Impact Ventures (Munich)
VC Analyst - Airbus Ventures (Toulouse)
Jobs
Analyst (SaaS focus) - Cherry Ventures (Berlin)
👉 And if you’d like to discover more offers… you can check our job board just here!
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! 🤝
You can also read about us on our website and follow what we do on LinkedIn.
Take care, and see you next week,
The whole baby vc crew 💛