The European startup market is booming at a rapid pace. The European tech startups witnessed a record-breaking investment in recent quarters. There has been a wave of mega funding rounds of €100 million and above pumped into the tech startups across the continent. The various funding rounds let these startups scale up, develop new products, and expand into new territories. Having said that, here we have listed some of the biggest funding rounds in Europe in February 2020.
Kinéis (France)
CEO: Alexandre Tisserant
Total Funding: €100 million
Founded year: 2018
Why its hot: Kinéis is an emerging spacetech startup, which intends to lead innovation in global connectivity for IoT. This French startup works in close collaboration with terrestrial IoT operators, connected object manufacturers, and current satellite operators. This way, it intends to locate and collect data in all conditions from across the world. Recently, it raised €100 million funding that will be used to finance the launch of a constellation of nanosatellites dedicated to the IoT domain from Bpifrance and BNP Paribas Développement.
Volocopter (Germany)
Founders: Stephan Wolf, Alexander Zosel
Total Funding: €160 million
Founded year: 2011
Why its hot: Volocopter, a German air taxi startup is one of the companies that is working to make short-distance air travel a reality in the coming years. It carries the credits of being the first vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) company to get the ‘Design Organisation Approval’ from the European Aviation Safety Authority. A few days back, Volocopter announced that it has extended its Series C funding round to raise a total of €87 million.
Fenergo (Ireland)
Founder: Marc Murphy
Total Funding: €211 million
Founded year: 2009
Why its hot: Fenergo provides CLM solutions that enable global financial institutions to digitally transform client onboarding while optimizing customer experiences and ensuring regulatory certainty. The company expanded into new markets, including asset and wealth management, private, retail, business, and commercial banking, and appointed global team leaders to spearhead growth. Recently, Fenergo raised $80 million (nearly €73.35 million) led by ABN AMRO Ventures and DXC Technology.
SoundCloud (Germany)
Founders: Alexander Ljung, Eric Wahlforss
Total Funding: €421 million
Founded year: 2007
Why its hot: SoundCloud is one of the world’s largest open audio platforms that is powered by a connected community of listeners, creators, and curators on the pulse of what’s new, next and so on. SoundCloud empowers the world’s audio creators with the best services, tools, and resources that lets them build and grow their careers. It has over 200 million tracks from 20 million creators across 19 countries. SoundCloud raised $75 million (nearly €67.3 million) Series G funding from Sirius XM Radio, Inc.
Univercells (Belgium)
Founders: Hugues Bultot, José Castillo
Total Funding: €86.4 million
Founded year: 2013
Why its hot: Univercells is a business-to-business provider focused on increasing the availability of affordable vaccines and biotherapeutics to address global health challenges. The company is developing turnkey solution for a series of vaccines and biotherapeutics to be delivered at an affordable price. Recently, Univercells bagged €50 million funding from Gamma Biosciences aimed to make gene therapy manufacturing cheaper.
MatHem (Sweden)
Founders: Tomas Kull, Karolin Kull
Total Funding: €149 million
Founded year: 2009
Why its hot: Stockholm-based MatHem is a pure-play online grocery retailer delivering over half of the country’s households. It is one of the largest online grocery stores and a leading e-commerce firm in the industry. The company focuses on growing further and improve customer relationships. In February, MatHem secured nearly €47.5 million investment from Kinnevik, Verdane Capital, Clas Ohlson, and AMF.
Tier Mobility (Germany)
Founder: Lawrence Leuschner
Total Funding: €118 million
Founded year: 2018
Why its hot: TIER Mobility, the micro-mobility solutions, is on a mission to change mobility for good, relieving cities from emissions and congestion. Recently, the company has acquired 5000 e-mopeds from Coup that had operated a fleet of around 5,000 e-mopeds in Berlin, Paris, and Madrid. At the end of November, Coup announced that the service would be discontinued. In the meantime, it secured $40 million (nearly €36 million) funding from Novator and RTP Global.
Tinubu Square (France)
Founders: Olivier Placca, Jérôme Pezé
Total Funding: €79 million
Founded year: 2000
Why its hot: Tinubu Square operates with the mission to enable the digital transformation for credit insurance, trade finance and surety. The company provides global SaaS solutions and services to credit and surety insurers to enable them reduce exposure to risk significantly. Also, lets them reduce their operational, financial, and technical costs with best-in-class technology solutions and services. In February, this startup secured €15 million investment from Long Arc Capital and Bpifrance.
TISSIUM (France)
Founder: Christophe Bancel
Total Funding: €78.7 million
Founded year: 2013
Why its hot: TISSIUM was founded to address one of the most persistent medical challenges since the inception of surgical procedures, which is to reconstruct damaged tissue and restore its natural function. Its has developed a fully integrated design, innovation, commercialisation, and manufacturing platform to support internal programs and co-development partnerships with leaders in the medtech sector. TISSIUM received funding from the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation’s IBD Ventures, a funding mechanism intended to accelerate the discovery and development of novel research-based products.
Beekeeper (Switzerland)
Founders: Andreas Slotosch, Cristian Grossmann, Daniel Sztutwojner, Flavio Pfaffhauser
Total Funding: €69.1 million
Founded year: 2012
Why its hot: Zurich-based Beekeeper is a workplace app that connects the non-desk workforce to operational systems and communication channels. Beekeeper is a mobile-first communication platform that reaches every shift, location, and language through real-time messaging and targeted streams. Recently, the company has secured $5 million (nearly €4.5 million) Series B funding from Energize Ventures, which is an extension to the investment it raised back in September 2019.
Main image picture credits: TIER Mobility
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