Recycling composites, Earlybird expands to the UK, Carlyle raise funds, SFDR, and more...
What's Up Tech? #114
Welcome to our 114th newsletter. It was written with 💛 by Edward Toulemonde, Grégoire Loisance, Arnaud Savouré, Saish Rane, Medina Sinani and Angèle Sahraoui
Fundraisings from last week with Fairmat, HelloAsso and Taktile
News from last week with Earlybird and Carlyle
Our content of the week with MCJ Collective
Internship & Job offers of the week
Wishing you a pleasant read 💛
🤖 Fairmat raises €34M in Series A to recycle advanced materials through robotic technologies (🇫🇷)
Fairmat, a deep tech start-up pioneering the recycling of advanced materials, raised a €34M Series A round co-led by Temasek and CNP, with participation from Pictet Group, Singular, The Friedkin Group International, and other partners. 💰
The Paris-based company founded in 2020 by Benjamin Saada has developed a revolutionary technology for recycling carbon fiber composites for high-tech industries (you can find such composites in wind turbines or aircrafts!). ♻️
The capital raised will enable the team to accelerate the deployment of Fairmat’s industrial capabilities and to expand internationally. Fairmat will also grow its team from 80 to 400 people by 2025. 📈
Fairmat raises $35 million to recycle carbon fiber composite into a new material
💰 Taktile raised $20M with Tiger Global and Index Ventures (🇩🇪)
The fintech startup Taktile raised $20M in Series A led by Tiger Global and Index Ventures. 💪🏼
The German startup created a software platform that allows businesses to build, run and evaluate automated decision flows quicker and through a more data-driven approach than ever before. 🤝
Index Ventures, Y Combinator, Firstminute Capital, Play Ventures and several angel investors had previously invested $4.7M in Taktile. This time, the money will be used to develop its unique product capabilities and accelerate ongoing expansion in the U.S. where the team already gained lots of new customers. 🌍
Taktile raises $20M to help fintech companies test and deploy decision-making models
🏡 HelloAsso raises €15M with its historical shareholder, Crédit Mutuel (🇫🇷)
The Bordeaux-based specialist in fundraising for the non-profit sector has just raised €15M from its historical shareholder, Crédit Mutuel Maine Anjou Basse-Normandie.💰
Founded in 2009 by Ismaël Le Mouël and Léa Thomassin, the company has developed a digital platform enabling associations to raise money online. It already helped more than 215,000 of them to develop their projects, enabling them to collect more than €800M thanks to the participation of more than 7M people. 🤝
Their objective is to equip and support 500,000 associations by 2025, to strengthen their payment technologies, and to open their platform to provide associations with an even larger set of tools and services! 🚀
HelloAsso lève 15 millions d'euros pour renforcer son impact
🇬🇧 London calling for Earlybird Venture Capital
Earlybird is a European VC with >€2B under management and early investments in companies such as N26 or UiPath, and now it has set up an office in London to bring the breadth of its platform to the UK ecosystem. 🚀
Earlybird had already invested in no less than 10 UK-based startups including Payhawk, Payable, and Snyk, and is now looking to increase this number while supporting its existing investments in the country. Although consequences of Brexit should continue to impact the ecosystem, UK founders can now tap into an international network of investors and partners to scale operations faster, leveraging a strong experience of European venture investing. 🇪🇺
The London team is composed of highly experienced professionals including Vincenzo Narciso, Partner and Head Investor Relations for Earlybird Digital West. He will be supported by Elle Muller and Anya Maine, two investor relations associates while Akash Bajwa will be in charge of the investment department. ⭐️
Following a Paris office opening earlier this year, Earlybird now builds a nest in London
📈 Carlyle raises more than €3B for a pan-European fund
Famed U.S. buyout firm Carlyle Group has raised more than €3B for its latest pan-European tech fund (CETP V) that will buy a majority stake in 20-30 companies and write equity checks of up to €250M targeting B2B tech businesses. 🏹
The firm more than doubled its previous fund size and will be taking advantage of ‘pockets of life’ opportunities in less impacted private markets despite the market conditions souring. 👀
Carlyle says they will support portfolio companies with plans to become more international, for example, helping the break into the U.S. market. 📈
🌱 What is SFDR? Yet another acronym?
If you’re working or interested in tech, you’ve probably heard about ESG. Although many have a love-hate relationship with it, things are definitely changing for the better with new regulation kicking in from January 2023 that makes SFDR mandatory for all financial market participants (FMPs). 📆
But first, what is SFDR?
SFDR is a European regulation introduced as part of the EU Sustainable Finance package to improve transparency in the market for sustainable investment products, to prevent greenwashing, and to increase transparency around financial players' sustainability claims. It aims to make it easier for investors to understand asset managers' and investment advisors' sustainability investment strategies as part of the EU's push to green the economy. 🌍
The regulation imposes comprehensive sustainability disclosure requirements at the entity and product levels, covering a wide range of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics. Investment products must be designated as Article 6, 8, or 9 funds, and certain disclosures must be made in accordance with this choice. Article 8 funds promote environmental and social characteristics while Article 9 funds have sustainable investment as their objective. ♻️
What does it mean for investors & entrepreneurs?
This regulation is meant to converge a multitude of disparate approaches into one, unified strategy to bring sustainability to the forefront of the agenda. For capital managers (VC, PE, etc.) SFDR is yet another regulation to comply to but for the funds already incorporating it into their strategy, it’s a great opportunity to reduce greenwashing and stand out from the crowd singlehandedly. 😃
For entrepreneurs, especially ones working in impact or climate tech, you have an opportunity to be in high demand as tides are turning. This doesn’t mean you should target any fund: you will still need to be highly aligned with a few and know which ones to approach!
To learn more, dive into this newsletter:
Internships
Investment Analyst - HV Capital (Berlin)
Impact VC Analyst - LITA (Paris)
Jobs
Investment Manager - 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! 🤝
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Take care, and see you next week,
The whole baby vc crew 💛