Wood-based materials, hearing health, gradual homeownership, and many more...
What's Up Tech? #135
Welcome to our 135th newsletter. It was written with 🖤 by Justin Sylvestre, Léna Meyniel and Angèle Sahraoui
In 2023, baby vc is proudly sponsored by OneRagtime which will fund enrolment fees for the 2023 VC bootcamps participants, to promote diversity and inclusivity in the VC ecosystem — giving everyone the opportunity to succeed, regardless of their background.
OneRagtime is a European Seed & Series A venture capital fund with 40+ portfolio companies like Jellysmack, Homa Games and Zenly.
Follow OneRagtime on LinkedIn and check their website!
Fundraisings from last week with TympaHealth, Riverlane, Woodoo and Wayhome
News from last week with PwC’s AI plan and Europe’s Digital Services Act
Internship & Job offers of the week
Wishing you a pleasant read 🖤
TympaHealth, a London-based hearing health startup, raised $23M in Series A funding (🇬🇧)
The round was led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from Dara Capital, Rezayat investments and serial entrepreneurs Bob Davis and Jeff Leerink. The company intends to use the funds to grow its team and services in the UK, across Europe and enter into the US. 📈
Led by Dr Krishan Ramdoo, Founder and CEO, TympaHealth provides a solution that enables comprehensive, fully digitized assessments of ear and hearing health to be performed in both traditional and community-based clinical settings. The Tympa Platform allows a broad range of professionals to perform digital otoscopy, microsuction wax removal, and hearing assessments. Its comprehensive examination is digitally captured in a single hearing health record, which can be shared between patients, providers, and specialists seamlessly. 🧘♂️
In the UK, TympaHealth has established partnerships with providers including Walgreen Boots Alliance, Sonova, Day Lewis Pharmacy, Demant (Hidden Hearing), Bupa, and the NHS to provide treatment through its platform. 🤝
UK’s TympaHealth sounds out $23M to expand its hearing diagnostics startup
Riverlane raises £15M to expand quantum engineering company (🇬🇧)
Riverlane, a quantum engineering company, has raised £15M in a Series B funding round led by Molten Ventures, with participation from Altair, Cambridge Innovation Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners, and the National Security Strategic Investment Fund. 💵
The funding will be used to accelerate the development of Riverlane’s operating system for error-corrected quantum computing, Deltaflow.OS. Qubits, the fundamental components of quantum computers, are highly error-prone due to their sensitivity to disturbances from their environment. Error correction is a critical challenge that Riverlane has taken on for quantum computing to achieve the scale and reliability required to deliver its transformative potential. 🔥
Riverlane is already partnering with many of the world’s leading quantum hardware companies, university labs, and government agencies to build and implement Deltaflow.OS with various qubit types. Furthermore, the quantum computing industry is forecast to create up to $850B in economic value in the next 15-30 years. This is largely based on its potential application to drug design, material science, aerospace and climate change.
Quantum software company Riverlane secures £15m in Series B fundraise
♻️ Woodoo raises $31M to keep decarbonize composite materials (🇫🇷)
Woodoo is a Paris-based startup that develops wood-based composite materials as a low-carbon alternative to materials such as glass, leather or steel. For now, Woodoo focuses on three verticals: the automotive, construction and fashion industries. It has indeed developed wood-based alternatives that match those industries’ specific needs:
a translucent and touch-sensitive wood panel that can be used in cars for dashboards and tactile buttons,
a wood-based alternative to leather,
a lightweight yet strong structural material that could be used by the construction sector instead of steel.
After 5 years of R&D, 50+ patents filed, 44 innovation awards, and two industrial sites built, Woodoo has now already signed deals with luxury brands (LVMH), car markers (Volkswagen and Mercedes) and more recently a first deal in the construction industry (Garnica). 🤝
Two third of the $31M raised correspond to equity raised with Lowercarbon, One Creation, Purple and various business angels — while the remaining third corresponds to grants and debt. This new cash will enable the team to double down on its existing products and industries. 📈
🏠 Gradual Homeownership provider Wayhome raises £8M Series A (🇬🇧)
Wayhome is a UK-based Gradual Homeownership provider that has raised £8M in a Series A equity funding round led by existing investors Allianz X and Augmentum Fintech, along with new funders Volution, Love Ventures, and Cur8 Capital. 💵
Wayhome allows customers to gradually purchase a home through a part buy, part rent proposition, providing an alternative to traditional home buying methods. The idea is to enable people who cannot afford to buy a home outright, due to factors such as rising house prices and difficulty saving for a large deposit, to get onto the property ladder. The Gradual Homeownership model allows customers to buy a stake in a property with a smaller deposit, and then increase their share over time as they save more money. In this way, they aim to make homeownership more accessible and affordable. 🙌
The funding will be used to expand partnerships with mortgage brokers and lenders. Hopefully doubling the annual rate of £100M deployed in customer property purchases within 12 months. The company has seen increased demand for its product due to rising interest rates and the recent end of the Help to Buy scheme in the UK.
Wayhome is opening doors as it raises £8 million to help people get on the property ladder
💵 PwC plans to invest $1B in generative AI by 2026
UK consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) plans to invest $1B in generative AI by 2026 to perform or speed up its auditors' most time-consuming tasks. This includes a global subscription to GPT-4, recruitment of subject matter experts, and training of its employees. It intends to work with OpenAI to automate the onerous tasks associated with its tax services. 👀
The aim is to first develop and integrate generative AI into its own technology stack and service platforms. Once the models are trained, they can be used to speed up reporting and compliance documents, analyze and evaluate business strategies, identify inefficiencies in operations or create marketing content and sales campaigns, among other things. But the ambition is also, eventually, to be able to advise customers on how best to use generative AI.
PricewaterhouseCoopers to Pour $1 Billion Into Generative AI
🇪🇺 Europe unveils the "very large platforms" that will be subject to the Digital Service Act starting 25th of August
The EU Digital Services Act (DSA) aims at regulating content posted on social networks and products sold by commercial websites. The obligations under this text will come into force on 17 February 2024 but the very large online platforms and search engines will be affected earlier, from 25 August 2023. The list unveiled last week contains 19 platforms that reported meeting the 45-million-plus monthly active users threshold in the European Union, or 10% of the population. 🔍
This represents 12 companies, mostly American giants. Google appears five times, with its search engine, Play Store, Maps, Shopping and YouTube. Meta is included twice, with Facebook and Instagram. So is Microsoft, with its search engine Bing and LinkedIn. The DSA provides for annual audits of the major platforms. In the event of infringement, the European Commission may impose fines of up to 6% of global turnover. 🚨
From Amazon to Zalando: EU unveils list of online giants to come under strict regulation
Internships
Platform Intern - Cavalry Ventures (Berlin)
VC Analyst - Nauta Capital (Berlin)
Jobs
Investment Team (different levels of seniority) - Antler (Munich)
Principal - Ascension (London)
Investment Analyst/Associate - Earlybird (Berlin)
Associate - Rivus Capital (Munich)
👉 If you’d like to discover more offers… you can check our job board just here. And if you want to submit a new job offer, you can fill in this form (or share it)!
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 🖤