Getir acquires Gorillas, a new French unicorn, Deeptech funding, and more...
What's Up Tech? #116
Welcome to our 116th newsletter. It was written with 💛 by Mathilde Valin, Côme Nodé-Langlois, Gautier Richard, Saish Rane, Medina Sinani and Angèle Sahraoui
Fundraisings from last week with Younited and Arsen
News from last week with Getir acquiring Gorillas, a crypto update, the metaverse ft. the European Commission, and an interesting study about European Tech
Our content of the week by Eldorado about funding in the DeepTech sector
Internship & Job offers of the week
Wishing you a pleasant read 💛
💰Younited raises €60M and becomes the 29th French Unicorn(🇫🇷)
The Paris-based leader of Instant Credit in Europe has just raised €60M from its historical investors including Eurazeo, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, BpiFrance and Goldman Sachs. With its new €1.1B valuation, Younited is now the 29th French company to enter the Unicorn list! 😳
Originally founded in 2009 by Charles Egly (CEO) and Geoffroy Guigou (COO), the company has developed a credit and payment platform that operates in 5 countries (France, Italy, Spain, Germany and Portugal). The company has already provided an instant, transparent and simple credit to nearly a million customers. The loans that Younited is able to provide go as high as €50,000 with repayment terms of 84 months. 🤝
The new funds will enable Younited to further develop its instant credit and open banking solutions along with new partnerships. The latter channel provides businesses such as retailers or financial institutions with the expertise and technology to implement their own instant credit solutions. 📈
Strong investment continues for FinTechs as 2022 winds to a close
🥓 Arsen raises 2.5M€ to help companies deal with human-related cyberattacks (🇫🇷)
The French startup Arsen, aiming at protecting companies from human-related cyberattacks, raised a €2.5M round with Elaia, Le Fonds by FrenchFounders and several business angels. 💰
Founded in 2020 by Thomas le Coz and Alexandre Esser, Arsen is a phishing training awareness platform, allowing companies to manage phishing campaigns and train their employees in realistic conditions. 🤝
The startup tackles an exploding market where new threats are constantly being developed, and ambitions to become the reference platform for human risk management in cybersecurity by 2027. 🚀
This fundraising round will allow Arsen to invest in fundamental research on human behaviour regarding cyberattacks, and grow their team of engineers and business developers. 😃
💡 Back to normal in 2022?
An article published by Les Echos on European tech startups (and based on data from Atomico’s State of European Tech latest report) informs us that $400B in valuation has gone up in smoke in the European tech sector this year alone. The global valuation of this sector would drop from $3,100B to $2,700B. 📉
After 105 new unicorns listed in 2021, there will be only 31 new ones in 2022 and the report does not say how many unicorns listed in 2021 have lost their title. 👑
Start-up européennes : 400 milliards partis en fumée en 2022
💸 Getir acquires its competitor Gorillas for €1.2B
Speculation has been happening for some time, but now it's official: Getir and Gorillas have signed an acquisition agreement. 🤝
FT reports that Turkish predecessor Getir has purchased Berlin-based Unicorn Gorillas. It is estimated that the combined company will be valued at $10B. 💰
Getir values Gorillas at $1.2B, down from $3B last September. 📉
It is expected that job cuts will occur in major cities like London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Berlin due to the overlap. Furthermore, it has been revealed that Kagan Sümer, the founder of Gorillas, will leave the company and is already pitching a new idea. 💡
❌ Complicated start for the Metaverse at the European Commission
The European Commission may have been founded in 1967, but it's probably more up to date than we are. The European body organized a gala in the metaverse to promote the €300B investment program to address the most pressing global challenges.
A journalist went there (in the metaverse). At first, there were 5 of them. Then he found himself alone. End of the story. An anecdote that can make you laugh, but the price of the gala a little less... The event cost 387,000€! 😅
📰 A little update on cryptos since the FTX bankruptcy
Investors and speculators continue to get back the money they had deposited on crypto platforms as they are afraid of a domino effect after the FTX bankruptcy. 🀹
Hence, platforms like Binance are under serious pressure and are trying to explain how sound their cash balances are, and that customers' money does belong to customers — but doubt has set in. 😕
In November alone, $1.5B was reportedly withdrawn from major platforms. The main winner of this failure is our French unicorn ledger. Indeed, Ledger — the world's leading physical crypto wallet company — has been enjoying record sales thanks to the FTX collapse. And the French unicorn has been riding the wave by introducing its new wallet, the Stax, created by Tony Fadell, the creator of the iPod. 🎧
Our content of the week is brought to you by our partner Eldorado. Massive thanks to Clarisse Barthou and Aude Delépine for having written the piece below!
Deeptechs and their fundings
Deeptechs are very specific startups that do not respond to traditional growth cycles and capital consumption. They are the result of years of research and experimentation led by scientists in order to commercialize a disruptive technology. The periods devoted to research and experimentation are long and require substantial investments before achieving a satisfactory first result. Consequently, the issue of financing these disruptive innovations is central to the emergence of leading European deeptechs. 🎯
Recourse to traditional financing via venture capital is clearly centralized around investment funds: business angels do not position themselves on deeptech investments, as they are too risky and long-termist.
According to a study conducted by the French General Directorate of Enterprises (DGE), the deeptech sector is experiencing strong momentum in terms of funds raised with a significant acceleration since 2015, with an average annual growth rate of 60%, placing France in second place in Europe. 🥈
In terms of specialization, HealthTech, which encompasses medical devices (Medtech) and biomedicines (Biotech) appears to be highly represented, reaching 27% of the sum of deeptech envelopes. It is followed by digital (AI, cybersecurity and hardware), which represents around 21% of the sum of the deeptech envelopes.
However, deeptech is out of category for investor due diligence: indeed, it is difficult to determine which metrics to use to measure the progress of the research team? What conclusions should be drawn in case of a misstep or dead end? How to evaluate the burn rate of the startup? 🧠
Deeptech companies need a true continuum of funding to maintain a sufficient level of capital over the long term while limiting founder dilution. This is where non-dilutive, multi-faceted and timely public funding comes in. We will present the main mechanisms proposed by France, Europe and intergovernmental organizations.
In France: the Programme d’investissement d’avenir (PIA) and the deeptech plan are designed to finance €2.3B to promote the emergence of industrial and deeptech startups. This is characterized by three main support systems (Bourse French Tech Emergence, Aide au développement deeptech and Fonds French Tech Seed), and competitions organized by Bpifrance such as I-PhD or I-lab granting subsidies of up to €600k for the winners.
In Europe: the Horizon Europe program, with a budget of €13.6B, is designed to finance the development of high-risk innovations in disruptive technologies. To this end, several institutions have been created, each with the mission of offering grants, support or debt instruments or guarantees. (European Innovation Council (EIC), European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), European Innovation Forum (EIF), and the European Investment Bank (EIB)).
The EUREKA system: the intergovernmental network supports innovative projects between companies from different countries. 46 countries are involved (mostly European) and choose the calls for projects they wish to finance. Once the project has been selected, funding is then granted by the national innovation agencies in the form of a repayable advance or an innovation loan. 🤝
To obtain further information about deeptech financing, don’t hesitate to read our article on the subject.
Internships
Visiting Analyst - Eurazeo (Berlin)
Jobs
Analyst — Blue Lion Global (London)
Associate - Generate Capital (London)
Climate Tech Research Analyst - Climate Tech VC (London)
👉 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 💛