Neobanks dial up mobile, AI boosts antibodies, a circular economy comeback, and much more...
What's Up Tech? #222
Welcome to our 222nd newsletter, written with 🖤 by Annika Bautista, Sarah Luna Mongin, and Aris Sevastianos, featuring current baby vc fellows Jaime Antón Bermúdez de Castro, Francesca Blasi, Miguel Garcês Roxo, Kseniia Kolosova, and Joaquin Wu Lin
🔍 Topics we'll cover this weekGeneral news from the week: Neobanks are phoning it in with a telecom play & Europe steps up its defense game 📡
Fundraising news from the week: B2B fintech is heating up & Europe’s re-commerce is getting a resurgence 🔥
Up-and-coming ventures to watch: biotech strikes big in the Netherlands, while this Swiss cleantech takes on plastic ♻️
🆕 Product news from the week: scroll to the end for one-liner, stand-out headlines on the latest tech that you should read more about 👀
Internships & Job offers of the week
Enjoy the read! 💛
🤑 Fundraising of the week💸 Navro get €36 million in Series B funding to facilitate international payments for businesses (🇬🇧)
Navro secures €36 million in Series B funding led by Jump Capital, to scale its all-in-one B2B payments platform. 💸
Navro provides a single API that helps businesses send and receive payments in over 140 currencies across 200+ countries. The company is positioning itself as a faster, simpler alternative to traditional payment systems bogged down by complexity and delays.
In a space crowded by legacy players, Navro is betting on better tech and smoother operations to stand out in the global payments space.
British FinTech Startup Navro Raises €36M for Payments Curation Platform
🚀 Volution raises $100 million to fuel UK tech scaleups post-Series A (🇬🇧)
Here’s the deal: a ton of UK startups hit a wall right after early traction. Think £5 million+ ARR, product-market fit, and an actual go-to-market plan — not just vibes. But without follow-on funding, they either sell early, die quietly, or become zombie companies.
Volution’s new fund is here to change that, helping proven SaaS, AI, and FinTech players scale globally. The UK VC firm just dropped a $100-million bomb of a fund to tackle the UK’s post-Series A funding drought.
The fund is a tag-team effort with Japanese heavyweight SBI Investment, marking a new UK–Japan FinTech power couple. 🫶
It’s Volution’s second fund, and many of its OG backers are back for round two. The firm’s track record is solid — past wins include Zopa Bank, Cognism, and Signal AI, with 300% average revenue growth across Fund I and three exits. Bonus points: Volution is pushing ESG hard, including a “Carbon Carry” that offsets emissions from AI’s massive compute load.
Volution Launches $100M UK Fund to Tackle the Global Productivity Challenge
👗Vinted Group launches Vinted Ventures to accelerate startups in the re-commerce (🇱🇹)
Vinted Group announced the launch of its Corporate Venture Capital investment vehicle. The fund will target startups with business models concerning re-commerce, that “shape the future of consumption” and rely on data-driven decision-making. 🛍️
Vinted Ventures is expected to invest in three startups yearly, ranging from Series A to C. Equity tickets can go from €500,000 and €10 million, with a focus on long-term growth generation. Values regarding the total fund size haven’t been made publicly available yet.
Secondhand Marketplace App Vinted Launches VC Unit 'Vinted Ventures'
💳 Pliant raises $40 million to take on US corporate payments (🇩🇪)
Pliant just locked in $40 million in Series B funding to cross the Atlantic and tackle the U.S. market. The round was led by Illuminate Financial and Speedinvest. With this latest haul, Pliant’s war chest now totals over $100 million.
So what’s the big deal? Pliant runs an API-first, modular payments platform for businesses drowning in messy transactions — think travel, fleet ops, and finance SaaS. It's not just “another fintech.” It’s trying to kill the spreadsheet-as-payment-solution nightmare. 👋
The cash is being used to fund a full-throttle US expansion, building out local talent, partnerships, and infra from scratch. Oh, and they just scooped up hi.health — an Austrian InsurTech — to flex even harder in the insurance payments space. European startup going global, acquiring stuff, and cleaning up the mess B2B payments left behind? Respect. 🫡
European FinTech Pliant Secures $40M Series B to Fuel US Expansion
😎 IXI raises $36.5 million for autofocus glasses that promise sharper, smarter vision (🇫🇮)
Tired of switching between reading and distance glasses? IXI’s goal is simple: help you see clearly without thinking about it.
IXI just raised $36.5 million in Series A funding led by Plural and joined by the Amazon Alexa Fund. They’re using eye-tracking and new liquid crystal lenses tech to make it all invisible — prototype coming later this year. ✨
IXI Raises $36.5M from Amazon and Others to Bring Autofocus to Prescription Glasses
🦾 ARX Robotics raises €31 million Series A to advance military automation (🇩🇪)
ARX Robotics, founded by former German Army officers, has secured €31 million in Series A funding to advance its autonomous military technologies. The company specializes in unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and Mithra OS, an AI-powered operating system that upgrades existing military vehicles with autonomous capabilities. 🤖
ARX's technology is already in use by six European military forces, including deployments in Ukraine, where their UGVs support logistics and casualty evacuation missions.
🔥 Up-and-coming startups to watch🧬 Avidicure raises $50 million to supercharge cancer-fighting antibodies with next-gen immune tech (🇳🇱)
Biotech Avidicure just launched out of stealth with a $50 million Seed round led by EQT Life Sciences. The funds will go toward ramping up clinical development of Avidicure’s lead drug, AVC-S-101, a TROP2-targeting therapy for non-small cell lung cancer and other solid tumors.
The tech? Think immune system 2.0. Their proprietary “AVC-Boosters” are like souped-up antibodies on steroids — dual agonistic, multifunctional immune activators engineered for precision strikes on cancer cells. These molecules aim to mobilize both innate and adaptive immunity, minus the nasty side effects that usually come with powerful immunotherapies.
The founding team isn’t new to the game. They helped scale and sell European biotech hits like Crucell and Ablynx. The company will strut its stuff at AACR and ASCO this spring, hoping to wow the oncology crowd with preclinical results. If the science holds up, Avidicure might just be one of Europe’s most promising biotech bets this year. 👩🔬
♻️ DePoly raises $23 million to melt plastic waste into high-purity raw materials (🇨🇭)
DePoly just scooped up $23 million in Seed funding, with MassMutual Ventures leading the round.
The goal? Build a 500-ton-per-year plant this summer in Monthey, Switzerland to flex their tech outside the lab and into the real world. 🏡
What makes DePoly special isn’t just another feel-good “we recycle stuff” story. Their fossil-free chemical processbreaks down gnarly polyester and PET waste — even the nasty, mixed kind — back into virgin-grade raw materials. Think: water bottles and fast fashion turned back into building blocks for new products. No shortcuts, no greenwashing. Just pure monomers that rival oil-based ones.
The company is cooking up plans for a full-scale commercial plant by 2027, aiming to compete with virgin plastic on price and scale. With collabs with brands like Odlo and PTI, DePoly isn’t just chasing the circular economy trend — they're building it. 🌍
📰 Tech news of the week🏦 Revolut and N26 push beyond banking with mobile plans launch in Europe
Revolut has taken the lead among neobanks by introducing mobile plans in the UK and Germany, marking a bold step into telecoms. Users can access unlimited calls, texts, and data - plus 20GB of EU and US roaming - starting at £12.50/month, all managed through the app using eSIM technology.
N26 is expected to launch a similar service in May, initially in Germany, where mobile plans remain some of the priciest in Europe. Both banks are entering as Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs), meaning they lease capacity from major telecom networks but offer their own customer experience, pricing, and product integration.
The timing isn’t random. MVNOs gained traction in 2024, with over 1.6 million new users in the UK alone, while traditional carriers saw a decline. This move reflects a shared ambition to expand beyond financial services and create stickier, multi-service platforms. 📡
📰 Product news of the weekAll marketing or legitimately an existential crisis? Anthropic is researching on model welfare
AI is ready to take your money 🛍️ ChatGPT just dropped new features for shopping
👔 Internships & job offersInternships
VC Analyst Intern - Wind (Paris)
Investments & Portfolio Analyst Internship - Antler (Copenhagen)
Investment Analyst Intern - Curiosity VC (Amsterdam)
Jobs
Founder’s Associate - Berlin Innovation Agency (Berlin)
Investment Analyst - Noratis (Frankfurt)
Analyst/Associate - DN Capital (Berlin)
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 🖤