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The braid can be good or bad. This week, we saw startups on both sides of this fence – and be on the right side justified large financing balls.
The most interesting start -up stories of the week
While the week is coming to an end, it’s time to count the merits and the demerites.
Sparkling: A newspaper evaluated by peers has highlighted the plans of the German startup Proxima Fusion, lending a new credibility to its concept and its design for a fusion power plant which can operate reliably and continuously.
Oops Points: Y Combinator deleted his messages on the demo of the company YC W25 Optify.ai after its viral entry, and not in the right direction. The startup claims to build “AL performance monitoring for factory workers”, but others called that “Sweatshops-as-a-service.”
Percée points: The Palo Alto Inception startup claims to have developed a large -based model of language (DLM). The diffusion models that already exist are mainly used to create images, videos and audio, while Inception hopes to compete with LLM.
VC news and the most interesting financing this week
This week, several startups obtained financing sessions which were particularly important for their respective steps, and new funds are ready to be deployed at the growth stage.
Record: The Israeli startup quantum machines have obtained one of the largest financing rounds that a quantum IT company has raised to date with its C series of $ 170 million led by PSG equity with the participation of Intel Capital, Red Dot Capital Partners and existing investors.
Curl: Shop Circle, which manufactures a series of applications for electronic commerce, has collected a series of $ 60 million which also financed the acquisition of Aiden, a software manufacturer “with guided” fueled by AI.
Magic arm: Polish startup Nomagic, which manufactures robotic weapons for logistics operations, has enabled a B series of $ 44 million led by the European Bank VC branch for reconstruction and development (BVD). It plans to use part of the financing to reach customers in North America.
Magic touch: Taktile, a startup based in New York which helps fintechs to build automated decision -making workflows, closed a 54 million dollars B series led by Balderton Capital with the participation of Index Ventures, Tiger Global, YC, Prosus Ventures and Visionaries Club.
Ideas relay: The relay has lifted a series of $ 35 million led by VC Plural, based in London, to bring the model for delivery of the latest Mile “without assets” of Asia in Europe, in an approach that also reduces energy consumption and is based on electric bikes.
Adored: Lovable, an AI platform for creating fast-growing applications out of Sweden, obtained $ 15 million in a pre-series tour led by Creandum. He also said that he had reached $ 17 million in annual recurring income after having evolved at 30,000 paid customers with only $ 2 million spent.
European growth: The Investment Capital Company Thoma Bravo has closed an inaugural European fund of $ 1.9 billion to deepen its presence in the region and take new participations in shares in intermediate size software companies across the continent.
Cambridge Growth: Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC), a British fund which invests exclusively in the University of Cambridge ecosystem, launched an opportunity fund of $ 126 million.
Last but not least
This week marked the third anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. This stimulated a wave of Ukrainian duplicate startups and innovative defense technology on and out of the battlefield, and Techcrunch gathered several here.
Last week’s newsletter included an error; Augury first reached unicorn status in 2021.
