Hello!
Here is what happened today in European tech:
Deals
- This just in: Swiss semiconductor company Kandou has announced a $92.3 million Series C funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners. This brings the total amount of money secured by the startup to date at $132.8 million. Kandou is working on chip-to-chip link solutions, which, as it says, allow to build “smaller, more energy-efficient and cost-effective electronic devices.”
- Paddle, the London-based company behind a revenue platform for B2B SaaS companies, has raised $68 million (£52 million) in Series C funding. The round was led by FTV Capital, with participation from Kindred Capital, Notion Capital and 83 North.
- Digital clean energy company Tibber has set a goal to reduce European households’ electricity consumption by 20 percent. To that end, the Stockholm-based startup raised $65 million in equity funding, thanks to a round led by Eight Roads Ventures and Balderton Capital.
- E-commerce delivery startup Paack has secured a $53 million Series C funding round led by Bregal Milestone, with participation from the current investors Unbound, RPS Ventures, Rider Global, and Fuse Ventures. This transaction brings the total amount raised by the startup to over $80 million. Paack provides a delivery platform for the likes of Amazon, Decathlon, MediaMarkt, and others. It’s active in over 60 cities in Spain, the UK, France, and Portugal.
- Digital freight forwarding startup Forto has landed $50 million in funding. The Berlin-based company “gives customers real-time data and on-time delivery, while typically reducing their administrative supply chain costs by 30 percent,” TechCrunch reports.
- Banco Santander has acquired a range of “highly specialised technological assets” from the insolvent payment company Wirecard. According to a statement, “round 500 employees currently managing the acquired assets, in highly qualified teams, will join Santander. They will remain in their locations and will become part of Santander’s global merchant services team under the umbrella of the Getnet global franchise.”
- Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), one of Japan’s leading banks – and one of the word’s largest commercial lenders – has invested $30 million into UK challenger bank OakNorth through a secondary transaction. Almost exactly three years ago, GIC (Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund) invested £90 million in OakNorth. According to Crunchbase, the company has raised more than $1 billion to date. SMBC today also announced that it has become an OakNorth customer, deploying its ‘Credit Intelligence’ software to enhance its commercial lending proposition in the US and Asia.
- US-based software company Autodesk has paid $240 million in cash for Norwegian AI startup Spacemaker (we interviewed Spacemaker's co-founder and CTO Carl Christensen on our podcast last year). The startup develops AI-powered software for urban designers, architects, and real estate developers.
- Greece-founded Arrikto, a startup that wants to make the implementation of machine learning easier for companies, has come out of stealth with $10 million in funding led by Unusual Ventures.
- We also tracked a large number of (other) European tech funding rounds and M&A transactions, all of which we are putting in a handy list for you on Friday afternoon in our weekly roundup newsletter (note: the full list is for paying customers only). Also check out our European tech news section for ongoing coverage.
Worth Knowing
- Dutch chipmaker NXP Semiconductors has entered a strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services. “The companies said the partnership would involve making a new NXP chip designed to aggregate data from a car’s systems and send it over the internet to work better with Amazon’s data centers,” Reuters reports.
- Sweden’s gaming giant Thunderful Group is planning to apply for a listing on the NASDAQ First North Premier Growth Market. The IPO is expected to generate proceeds of SEK 750 million ($87.3 million), prior to transaction costs.
- Transport for London (TfL) and London Councils have launched a competition to select up to three operators for a twelve-month trial of rental e-scooters. It's interesting to note that the use of privately-owned e-scooters is still illegal under UK law.
- “As Italy reinstates many COVID-19 restrictions, the country’s tech ecosystem is watching and waiting to see what the wider effects of the emergency will be. Italy’s ecosystem for tech venture capital and startups has been in development for years and has made decent strides in the last decade. Will the coronavirus stymie their efforts?”
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