DNA-based data storage, robotics on the rise, Trump's impact on universities, and much more...
What's Up Tech? #204
Welcome to our 204th newsletter, written with 🖤 by Annika Bautista, Sarah Luna, Orio Del Moral.
We wish you wonderful Year-end Celebrations ✨
Dear Readers,
As the year comes to an end, we want to wish you joyful celebrations. Your support and engagement have been the driving force behind everything we’ve achieved, and we’re incredibly grateful to have such an amazing community of 8,000 readers by our side.
We’ll be taking a short break and will be back on January 7, 2025, ready to bring you more exciting updates, insights, and opportunities.
Here’s to a wonderful new year filled with growth, innovation, and success. Thank you for being part of our journey and see you in 2025! 🎉
Warm wishes,
Justine, Annika & Sarah Luna
🔍 Topics we'll cover this weekGeneral news from the week: Trump’s proposed university endowment tax raises concerns for VC’s, and an open letter to strengthen Europe’s funding ecosystem 💌
Fundraising news from the week: sustainable AI-centric data centers, and robotics inspection goes global 🤖
Up-and-coming ventures to watch: long-term DNA storage, and smarter energy solutions
Internships & Job offers of the week
What’s Up, Tech Wrapped: check out your favorite articles this year 🎉
Enjoy the read! 💛
🤑 Fundraisings of the week↗️ Nscale raises $155 million in Series A funding for sustainable AI-first data centers (🇬🇧)
Looks like AI is coming to the North Pole. 👀 Nscale has just secured €185 million in total funding, with their latest Series A round led by Sandton Capital Partners. The firm plans to build data centers powered by 100% renewable energy.
They’ve already started with their Arctic Circle-based facility, which utilizes energy-efficient cooling and delivers GPUaaS (Graphic Processing Units as a Service).
The funding will be used to enhance their infrastructure, which integrates bespoke GPU clusters. So far, the company has already made a partnership with Nokia to ensure reliability of their service.
Nscale Raises $155M for AI-ready Data Centers and GPU Infrastructure
🏪 Upvest secures €100 million Series C to expand Investment API offering (🇩🇪)
Founded in 2017, Upvest provides an Investment API that enables fintechs, banks, and wealth managers, including clients like Revolut and N26, to offer fractional investments in ETFs, stocks, mutual funds, and more. 💸
The Berlin-based fintech has just raised €100 million in a Series C funding round led by Hedosophia and joined by Sapphire Ventures. Upvest aims to enhance its product suite with goal-based and tax-efficient investing powered by a smart portfolio engine, continuing its mission to deliver seamless wealth solutions for millions of users.
🦿 ANYBotics raises $60 million for AI-driven robotics inspection, closing out $110 million in Series B funding (🇨🇭)
Specialising in AI-driven robotic inspection solutions, ANYbotics has secured an additional $60 million in funding. This recent investment will accelerate ANYbotics’ global scaling efforts, supported by tech giants AWS and NVIDIA, and its recent expansion in the US to meet the growing demand for its industrial inspection robots.
The company’s flagship product, the ANYmal robot, is equipped with advanced sensors, including cameras and inertial sensors, enabling it to perceive its surroundings and navigate autonomously in challenging or hazardous environments that are difficult for humans to access.
Spot Rival from Switzerland: ANYbotics Grabs $60M to Scale its Four-legged Robot
📱 Gigs raises $73 million in Series B funding for a telecom-as-a-service platform (🇩🇪🇺🇸)
Enterprises are calling for embedded mobile services, and Gigs is on speed dial. ☎️ The firm has raised fresh round of funding, led by Ribbit Capital, to revolutionise the $1-trillion mobile subscription market.
The platform enables companies to launch bespoke mobile services by bundling connectivity, payments, and AI-powered customer service into one system. The firm plans to expand to more markets and introduce enhanced solutions, helping tech brands create new revenue streams through simplified telecom offerings.
Gigs Raises $73M to Enable Tech Companies to Launch Their Own Mobile Service
🔥 Heartcore Capital launches $180 million Fund V broadening its investment focus (🇩🇰)
Heartcore Capital has announced its $180 million Fund V, shifting from its earlier consumer tech focus to a broader, more generalist investment strategy.
Fund V will target 25–30 early-stage startups across sectors such as AI-driven productivity, software infrastructure, compute stack, synthetic biology, climate tech, and consumer travel. Investments have already been made in areas like LLM compute infrastructure, database software, and carbon capture technology. 💻
Heartcore Capital Closes $180M Fund to Pivot Toward Infrastructure, Synthetic Biology, Climate
🔥 Up-and-coming startups to watch🧠 Biomemory raises $18 million in Series A funding for DNA-based data storage (🇫🇷)
Biomemory has closed this Series A funding round, led by Crédit Mutuel Innovation, to advance its synthetic biology-based DNA data storage technology. The company develops DNA fragments that can store data for thousands of years without energy input. 💡
The new round of funds will support the development of a storage appliance for data centers and partnerships with cloud providers.
⚡️ SpotmyEnergy secures €10.5 million Seed round to revolutionize energy management (🇩🇪)
SpotmyEnergy offers a comprehensive energy management system that integrates a smart meter, time-of-use electricity tariffs, and solutions for home energy storage, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and rooftop solar installations. The company’s network of over 50 electrical installation partners is growing daily.
The new €10.5 million in Seed funding will be used to scale manufacturing, advance technology development, and enhance device compatibility across manufacturers. ⚒️
SpotmyEnergy Raises €10.5M Seed to Drive Energy Efficiency for Homeowners
📰 News of the week🇺🇸 Trump Administration proposes tax hike on University endowments, threatening the VC ecosystem
The Donald Trump Administration has proposed increasing the excise tax on university endowments from the current 1.4% to 35% for private colleges and universities with at least $10 billion in assets under management.
Universities like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, with combined endowment assets exceeding $270 billion, play a crucial role in the VC ecosystem, and such a tax increase may hinder their investment capabilities, affecting the broader startup landscape. Indeed, 20% of the VC funds in the US have at least one university endowments as one of their Limited Partners and they invest on average 30% of their assets in private markets such as venture capital or private equity.
Trump’s Proposed University Endowment Tax Could Hurt Funding, VC Warns
🇪🇺 European startup associations call for more VC investment from institutional players
A coalition of 26 startup associations across Europe is urging the newly appointed European Commission to take action to boost venture capital investment from institutional investors like pension funds and insurance companies.
In an open letter, groups including France Digitale and Invest Europe highlight the insufficient participation of European institutional investors in VC, which contributes to Europe raising just 5% of global VC capital compared to 52% in the US and 40% in China. This funding gap forces many startups to seek growth-stage financing outside Europe, particularly in the US. The measures exposed in the letter aim to strengthen Europe’s funding ecosystem, enabling startups to scale without seeking external markets for growth capital.
🗞️ Newsletter Wrapped🥇Your most read article this year was: Northvolt goes bankrupt, health-tracking rings, unmanned aircrafts, and much more...
🥈 Second position was: The EU Startup Entity, Carbon-Storing Construction, Smart Farming, and much more...
🥉 Last but not least: Early-Stage Funds Surge, Wildfire Detection from Space, Real-time AI Audio Translations, and much more...
In 2024, we proudly launched our IBERIA Chapter, and this special edition became our most successful in terms of new subscribers yet! 🎉
Thank you for your continued support! We always value your feedback and ideas. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us through our social channels, linked at the end of this edition. ⬇️
👔 Internships & job offersInternships
VC Analyst - HTGF (Berlin)
Visiting Analyst - Gateway Ventures (Vienna)
Visiting Analyst - neoteq (Cologne)
Jobs
Investment Analyst - BNVC (Berlin)
Platform and Community Associate - Antler (Helsinki)
Venture Analyst Portfolio - Speedinvest (Munich)
👉 If you’d like to discover more internship & job offers, you can check our LinkedIn Fridays’ post here!
You can also read more about baby vc on our website and follow our updates on LinkedIn, or directly reach out to us at hello@baby-vc.co! 🤝
The whole baby vc crew 🖤