Self-driving vehicles, surgical robots, AI-driven animation production for children, and many more...
What's Up Tech? #149
Welcome to our 149th newsletter. It was written with 🖤 by Justine Pelisson.
Fundraisings from last week with Conigital, Cato Networks, CMR Surgical, and Animaj
News from last week with Cisco’s largest acquisition ever, Open AI’s DALL-E 3 reveal, and Elaia’s Annual Sustainability Report
Internships & Job offers of the week
Enjoy the read! 🌞
🚘 Conigital raised £500M for self-driving vehicle plans (🇬🇧)
Conigital, a UK-based driverless vehicle company, has just closed a £500M series A+ round, becoming UK and Europe's best-funded driverless vehicle startup! Leveraging AI and machine learning, Conigital builds custom-made AI driverless vehicles for commercial and industrial fleets, based on many diverse use cases. 🤓
The startup is advocating for Safe Autonomous Mobility for All (SAM), working with a simulation-first approach to guarantee safety and scalability of its vehicles.🙏
Conigital Secures £500M Series A+, Becomes UK and Europe's Best-Funded Driverless Vehicle Startup
🛡️ Cato Networks raised $238M ahead of its IPO (🇮🇱)
In the cybersecurity sector now, Israeli network security startup Cato Networks has secured $238M at a valuation of $3B+! Cato Networks is specialized in SASE (Secure Access Service Edge), and has developed a platform that secures hybrid work environments by collecting network flows information from every device, applying AI-driven autonomous threat intelligence processes to detect malicious domains and prevent intrusion. 🥷
The funds will be used to expand their customers and partners’ ecosystem, as well as to grow their engineering and product teams.😇
Cato Networks Raises $238M in Equity Investment at Over $3B Valuation
🦾 CMR Surgical raised $165M for european expansion of its surgical robots (🇬🇧)
The British medical device company CMR Surgical has just announced its latest funding round of $165M, two years after raising $600M in a massive D series. CMR Surgical’s ambitions is to redefine surgery by powering surgeons with next-generation surgical robots. Its robot-assisted surgery system called Versius has already been used for 15,000+ surgeries across 130+ procedure types! 👨⚕️
The new funds will be used to serve more customers, confirm their growth in existing markets, and expand into new ones. 🗺️
🍿Animaj raised €100M to keep inspiring children (🇫🇷)
Animaj, the French “next-generation” media company producing children-specific content thanks to an AI-driven animation production and a digital-first approach, has just raised €100M. 😏
Animaj’s model is extremely unique, as it allows independent content creators from purchased franchises (like Pocoyo, Heykids,…) to refine, improve and scale across multiple platforms their programs - with the help of technology and AI. 🎬
As Sixte de Vauplane, CEO & Co-founder, mentions it: “At Animaj, we want to empower the young generation to make their world more colorful - by delivering exciting and engaging stories that inspire them to dream, explore, and create.”🤩
🤑 Cisco’s largest acquisition ever for $28 billion
Cisco has announced last week the acquisition of the cybersecurity software company, Splunk, for the modest sum of $28B! Splunk, in the security and “observability” fields, has been supporting its clients harness their data to mitigate cyber risks and power a resilient digital architecture. 💪
Cisco’s CEO Chuck Robbins emphasized: “Our combined capabilities will drive the next generation of AI-enabled security and observability; […] From threat detection and response to threat prediction and prevention, we will help make organizations of all sizes more secure and resilient.”👌
🕺OpenAI reveals DALL-E 3, its latest text-to-image generative model
OpenAI just revealed its latest image-synthesis model version, DALL-E 3 (you know, the text-to-image generator where you give a prompt and the model generates new images based on the input you gave). With more advanced training techniques, more computational training time on millions of images, DALL-E offers new promises in the gen AI image field: “DALL·E 3 understands significantly more nuance and detail than our previous systems, allowing you to easily translate your ideas into exceptionally accurate images.” 🖼️
OpenAI’s new AI Image Generator Pushes the Limits in Detail and Prompt Fidelity
🪴 Integrating ESG criteria into investment decision-making: Elaia’s Annual Sustainability Report
Elaia, a leading European and Deep-Tech Venture Capital fund, just launched its third Annual Sustainability Report. Following an ESG framework, Elaia is committed to investigating how the fund and its portfolio companies can adhere to ESG guidelines. ✅
From reducing negative impact on the environment, to building sustainable relationships with their communities and developing responsible leadership, Elaia is committed to integrating ESG criteria at each layer of the investment decision-making process.🧠
A highlight of this year’s edition? Elaia is one of the most gender-balanced investment companies with 60% of women among the highest paid employees! Not to mention its 56% female representation at the Investment Committee…💃
Internships
VC Intern - First Bridge Ventures (Paris)
Startup Financing Analyst - RAISE (Paris)
Visiting Analyst - Holtzbrinck Digital (Munich)
Jobs
VC Associate - XAnge (Berlin)
VC Associate - Ascension Ventures (London)
VC Analyst - Demium (Valencia)
👉 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 website and follow our updates on LinkedIn, or directly reach out to us at hello@baby-vc.co! 🤝
Oh and… In case you missed it, Apple just released its Mother Nature Status Report video, showcasing Apple's commitment to becoming carbon neutral by 2030 and to reducing its environmental impact across its entire value chain.☘️🍏
Have a wonderful week and see you next Tuesday!
The whole baby vc crew 🖤