Biotech fundraisings, scalable e-commerce, new impact-driven fund, and many more...
What's Up Tech? #147
Welcome to our 147th newsletter. It was written with 🖤 by Justine Pelisson.
As per your feedback in our 145th NL, we will keep sharing every week a few, well-curated tech and VC news as well as several VC job and internship offers across our main geographies.
Our upcoming bootcamps’ applications are now OPEN! You have until the 17th of September to apply! 🤓
And if you’d like to meet us beforehand, we will be hosting a Q&A session today - the 12th of September - at 20:00 (GMT+2). Register here 💻
Fundraisings from last week with Apollo Therapeutics, Shop Circle, Corteria Pharmaceuticals, and Open Cosmos
News from last week with Founders Future, and our go-to list of the key tech & innovation events for the rest of 2023
baby vc x Bits & Pretzels Home of Founders Conference in Munich
Internships & Job offers of the week
Enjoy the read! 🌞
👩⚕️ Apollo Therapeutics raised $226.5M to take medical research to clinical trials (🇬🇧)
Big news for the biotechnology company Apollo Therapeutics who just closed its series C - led by Patient Square Capital, with multiple new investors including M&G plc as well as two very large US pension plan funds.🎉
The company, known to “translate” medical research into treatments, has built a unique R&D platform to accelerate on drug and treatment discovery based on the quality and potential of the science itself, fostered by partnerships with world-class research institutions like the University College London, Imperial College of London, University of Cambridge, as well as The Institute of Cancer Research. 🤝
This latest fundraising will enable Apollo Therapeutics to “take [its] most advanced programs to key clinical value inflection points”, as commented by Dr. Richard Mason, CEO of Apollo Therapeutics.💪
Apollo Therapeutics Closes $226.5 Million Series C Financing Led by Patient Square Capital
💸 Shop Circle raised $120M to nurture tech-driven e-commerce (🇬🇧)
Another fundraising to celebrate from the UK, this time in retail, with Shop Circle’s Series A led by 645 Ventures and 3VC, and with the participation of QED Investors and NfX. Shop Circle has been developing since June 2022 the tools and solutions to empower e-commerce merchants and brands to thrive with the help of AI and data, in the ultra-competitive market that online retail has become.💥
As Gian Maria Gramondi (Co-founder & COO) says, “we have embraced the AI revolution and promptly built several applications to support and automate the majority of our processes, offering a distinct advantage in operating and growing our suite of software. Our goal is to equip e-commerce entrepreneurs with the high-performance tools and expertise they need to scale business effortlessly”.🧩
Shop Circle already counts a customer base of 100,000+ e-commerce brands, and has grown by 360% year-over-year. It will use this incoming capital to keep developing the ‘one-stop shop’ software solution for e-commerce brands.🎯
Shop Circle Secures $120 Million in Series A Funding to Shape the Future of E-commerce
🫀 Corteria Pharmaceuticals raised €65M to advance heart failure pipeline towards clinical trials (🇫🇷)
Corteria Pharmaceuticals, the french biopharmaceutical company focusing on treating unaddressed heart failure subpopulations through its own innovative patient stratification and target selection strategy (ie, to identify the right and specific subgroups most likely to respond to the treatments), has raised €65M in Series A to keep developing transformative therapies for more than 60 million patients.👏
The round was co-led by the US investment firm OrbiMed and well as the European investment firm Jeito Capital, with the participation of existing seed investors (Kurma Partners, Fountain Healthcare Partners, V-Bio Ventures, Invivo Capital, Omnes Capital) and will allow Corteria to advance its cardiovascular pipeline into clinical trials.🚀
🛰️ Open Cosmos raised $50M to take sustainable satellites to new heights (🇬🇧)
Open Cosmos, the UK space tech startup building sustainable low-earth orbit satellites to empower companies with satellite data, has raised $50M in a round led by ETF Partners, Trill Impact and A&G, and counting several interesting strategic partners like Accenture Ventures, Banco Santander/InnoEnergy Climate Tech Fund, as well as InQTel - the CIA’s investment arm! 😎
The company already works with big organizations like Amazon AWS to provide them with satellite data essential to tackle sustainable challenges such as climate or humanitarian issues. ☘️
The funding will be used to finance Open Cosmos’ growth and international expansion, as well as to reinforce its satellite-based analytics offering.😏
💰 Founders Future announces new funds’ first closing at $80M with focus on impact-driven startups
Big news in the French ecosystem, with the first closing of Founders Future’s latest two funds: Founders Future II (focused on seed-stage, to capture 60% of the capital raised) and Founders Future Expansion (for post-Series A rounds of existing portfolio companies). Founders Future, uniquely positioned as the investment fund ‘founded by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs’, acts like a business angel in its agility and approach yet with the robustness of a VC fund. It has already invested in more than 100+ startups including stars like Lydia, Alma, Yuka, Databricks, or Eldorado (our former partner), representing a current total valuation of about $5.4B!
Founders Future is targeting a final closing of 150M for their “new generation of seed funds” which will place a new emphasis on climate innovation, artificial intelligence, and the circular economy.
French VC firm Founders Future reaches $80 million first close for its new funds
📌 The key tech and innovation events to not miss for the rest of 2023
It’s already September and the tech, innovation & entrepreneurial scenes are on fire, with some of the biggest events already at the corner!🧨Here are a few of our favorite guides to stay on top of them:
Maddyness, which dresses the list of key innovation & entrepreneurship events in France every month (here is the September list).
Les Echos Entrepreneurs, with their startup agenda for 2023 here (also France focused)
Bizzabo, with its international tech-events guide for 2023 (you can also find other more tech-specific guides at the bottom of the page such as Women in tech, blockchain events,..)
Selected by Sesamers, with their September key tech events to attend across the globe, as well as its selection of VC-specific conferences to attend for 2023
baby vc x Bits & Pretzels 2023!
Talking about events…we are super excited to announce our partnership with Bits & Pretzels for the largest tech conference in the DACH region! We’re looking forward to seeing you in Munich from September 24th to the 26th while you’ll get to meet 5,000 founders, investors, and industry leaders! ⚡️
Didn’t manage to grab a ticket in time? Join the waitlist right here !🗝
Internships
VC Analyst Intern - Daphni (Paris)
VC Analyst Intern - 574 Invest (Paris)
Investment Team Intern - DN Capital (London or Berlin)
Visiting Analyst - YZR Capital (Munich)
Jobs
Investment Associate - Entrepreneur First (Paris)
Deeptech Investment Associate - Verve Ventures (Zurich)
Analyst / Associate - DN Capital (Berlin)
👉 If you’d like to discover more offers, you can check our job board just here or fill this form to submit a new one.
You can also read more about baby vc on our updated website (🤩) and follow our updates on LinkedIn, or directly reach out to us at hello@baby-vc.co! 🤝
Have a wonderful week and see you next Tuesday!
The whole baby vc crew 🖤