Gorilla, a Belgian company that serves the energy sector with real-time data and analytics for pricing and forecasting, has raised €23 million ($25 million) in a Series B round led by U.S. venture capital firm Headline.
Founded in 2018, Antwerp-based Gorilla works with energy providers across Europe, the U.S. and Australia, including British Gas’ parent Centrica, Shell Energy, and Atlanta, Georgia-based Gas South.
Throw into the mix geopolitical factors such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict, ever-evolving regulations, increasingly distributed energy sources across fossil and renewables, and the increasing use of connected technology, and we now have fertile ground for data-focused energy startups to flourish.
“No one knows what the energy sector will look like 10 years from now,” Gorilla’s co-founder and CEO, Ruben Van den Bossche, said in a statement.
Other participants in the round include the startup’s existing investors Beringea and Belgian private equity firm, PMV.
Mistral AI has closed its much rumored Series B funding round with General Catalyst leading the round.
The company has secured €600 million (around $640 million at today’s exchange rate) in a mix of equity and debt.
As a reminder, Mistral AI is a relatively new entrant in the artificial intelligence space.
It also has distribution partnerships with cloud providers, such as Microsoft Azure — Microsoft is also a minor shareholder in Mistral AI.
According to the Financial Times, Mistral AI raised €468 million in equity and €132 million in debt (around $500 million and $140 million respectively).
Anterior, a company that uses AI to expedite health insurance approval for medical procedures, has raised a $20 million Series A round at a $95 million post-money valuation led by NEA, according to two people familiar with the deal.
Existing investors Sequoia, which led Anterior’s $3.2 million seed round last September, and Neo, an accelerator that helped the company launch in the summer of 2022, also participated in the Series A financing.
The company has built an LLM-powered co-pilot that helps nurses and doctors save hours on gathering medical documentation required by insurance.
While Anterior’s initial offering is in prior authorization automation, the company eventually plans to expand into other medical administrative functions.
Makhzoimi also backed Xaira, an AI drug discovery startup that launched this year with $1 billion in funding.
Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje’s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups.
Image Credits: OdaHardware is hard, episode 234: We already knew that Humane’s Ai Pin launch was going anything but smoothly.
Image Credits: Sword Health / CompanyLive by the sword : Sword Health, an AI-powered virtual physical therapy startup, raised a $30 million primary funding round and a $130 million secondary funding round that brought its valuation to $3 billion.
: Sword Health, an AI-powered virtual physical therapy startup, raised a $30 million primary funding round and a $130 million secondary funding round that brought its valuation to $3 billion.
Where’s your head at: Austrian startup Storyblok raised $80 million to add more AI to its “headless” content management system (CMS) for non-technical people.
“I couldn’t get a credit card because my parents couldn’t co-sign,” Kobe recalls, “and I didn’t want to put down a large security deposit.
Scott points out that New York-based Fizz set out to offer college students a different entry ramp into building credit.
And if you ask any of them, they’ll tell you that they’re credit card averse, but they’re not necessarily credit averse,” he told TechCrunch.
”Fizz is one of several fintechs aiming to serve the expansive Gen Z market.
For instance, Frich, a financial education and social community for Gen Z, just raised $2.8 million in seed funding.
Midas, a fintech startup that allows people in Turkey to invest in U.S. and Turkish equities, says it has raised $45 million in a funding round led by Portage Ventures of Canada.
The startup is aimed at Turkey’s retail investor market and claims to have more than 2 million users.
That’s in a country of 80 million,” Egem Eraslan, CEO and founder of Midas, told TechCrunch.
The company has plans to expand beyond Turkey, and aims to target countries in the MENA region.
Globally, Portage invests in transformational financial technology and Midas is poised to lead that initiative in a region of early adopters.”
Clay Canning had an idea while in high school: smartphone screen protectors that featured logos, right on the screen.
“In December 2022, I resigned from my job to pursue building Screen Skinz with Clay full time.”Now, Screen Skinz can officially announce the closing of a $1.5 million seed round led by South Loop Ventures and Abo Ventures.
The company produces custom, patent-pending phone screen protectors that feature personalized logos or slogans that are visible when the phone screen is black and then disappear when the phone is in use.
The latest fundraise allowed Screen Skinz to move manufacturing from Asia to the U.S., allowing it to more easily control its supply chain.
Screen Skinz next has some partnerships lined up and is focused on customer acquisition and deepening licensing relationships.
HR startup Rippling is in discussions to raise at a $13.4B valuation, up from $11.25B The round could total $870M, including $670M worth of secondaryLate stage HRtech startup Rippling is raising new capital.
This will be Rippling’s Series F, and could raise its valuation to as high as $13.4 billion on a post-money basis, up from the $11.25 billion valuation it reached when it last raised capital in a $500 million Series E just a year ago.
Rippling had raised $1.2 billion total previous to this round.
Rippling competitor Gusto told TechCrunch that it reached $500 million in trailing revenue last year, along with cash flow positivity.
Earlier this year Deel, which focuses on payroll for teams that cross borders, said that it had reached $500 million worth of annual recurring revenue.
The startup charges a listing fee (subscription fee) to publish jobs on the platform and a success fee when a hire is made.
“The listing fee ensures buy-in from startups to the two-way marketplace and a commitment to the recruiters they’re working with,” Kim said.
In addition to early- and late-stage startups, Kim said the platform also works with larger in-house talent teams to fill challenging roles.
“More than 50% of our customers have great in-house talent teams, but they continue to post roles on Paraform.
“We’re already branching out into research, science, manufacturing and defense roles due to the demand we’re seeing from potential customers,” Kim said.
Social media startup ShareChat’s valuation has cratered below $2 billion from nearly $5 billion in a new funding round, a source familiar with the situation told TechCrunch, marking a steep decline for the nine-year-old Indian startup that boasts over 400 million users in the South Asian market.
It did not disclose the valuation at which the funds were raised but strongly denied that its new valuation was below $2 billion, asserting there was “no valuation” attached to the round.
Existing investors including Lightspeed, Temasek, Alkeon Capital, Moore Strategic Ventures and HarbourVest have invested in the new round, the startup said.
Their debt will convert to equity at a valuation below $2 billion in the next round, according to a source with direct knowledge of the terms.
ShareChat was valued at $4.9 billion in a funding round it raised in mid-2022.
