7bridges raises £12.42m to transform supply chains

7bridges, the AI-powered logistics platform used by global companies to transform their supply chains, raised £12.42m in a Series A funding round led by the fund. global venture capital firm Eight Roads, with backing from existing investors Local Globe and Crane.

Further investment from Maersk Growth will provide customers with even more informed, predictive and insightful supply chain decision-making through synergies between 7bridges’ specialized AI and Maersk’s global logistics network and data.

7bridges’ mission is to use its technology to enable autonomous customer-centric supply chains that are resilient to disruption, more cost effective, help reduce waste and improve access to goods worldwide. Today, the 7bridges platform is used by e-commerce, retail, pharmaceutical and manufacturing brands, giving them increased logistics visibility and the ability to orchestrate and execute operations on the all of their supply chains.

Tinnitus support app Oto gets £510,000

Tinnitus support app Oto raised £510,000 in pre-seed funding and was chosen to join the Y Combinator accelerator in Silicon Valley.

Oto provides tinnitus support through a mobile app that consolidates the latest therapy techniques. The app’s founders will use the new funding to accelerate clinical validation and strengthen its international user base. The funding will also allow several new teams to be hired to drive product development ahead of an expected seed round later this year.

The pre-seed round saw participation from Acequia Capital, the West Midlands Academic Health Science Network’s SME Innovation Fund, CalmStorm Ventures, Bethnal Green Ventures and angel investors such as Simon Franks, Errol Damelin, Alex Stephany, Matt Robinson and Ian Hogarth.

WealthKernel lands £5.1m for digital investment services

London-based digital startup WealthKernal raised £5.1m in a Series A expansion. The funding round was led by XTX Ventures, the venture capital arm of XTX Markets, with participation from Digital Horizon, Big Start Ventures and WealthKernel’s current lead investor, ETFS Capital.

WealthKernel will use the additional investment to support its integration of intraday trading and the expansion of its services into European markets.

WealthKernel has enabled a number of diverse companies – such as Claro Money, Wahed and Wealth8 – to enter underserved areas of the wealth management services market, covering areas ranging from halal and ethical investing to the G. This is driven by WealthKernel’s ambition to democratize access to wealth management and investment services, and to become the leading provider of wealth management API infrastructure in the UK and Europe.

Self-driving car startup Wayve secures £147m

Wayve, a London-based startup that is reinventing autonomous mobility through embodied intelligence, has raised a £147m Series B round backed by a significant group of global financial and strategic investors.

This latest round of funding brings total equity raised to over £190m since inception. Longtime supporter of Wayve, Eclipse Ventures, led the round with participation from new global financial investors including D1 Capital Partners, Baillie Gifford, Moore Strategic Ventures and Linse Capital, as well as additional backing from Microsoft and Virgin, and early-stage investors. Compound and Balderton Capital.

They join strategic investor Ocado Group and a strong list of angel investors including AI and industry leaders, such as Sir Richard Branson, Rosemary Leith, Linda Levinson, David Richter, Pieter Abbeel and Yann LeCun.

Video-based dating app The Sauce closes £1.25m funding

ActiveNav raises £2m for data privacy software

Gresham House Ventures has invested £1.4 million in ActiveNav, a privacy and data governance software developer, in a £2m Series A+ round on behalf of Mobeus VCTs.

ActiveNav helps privacy and compliance teams quickly identify, inventory and map sensitive data. Developed with the aim of achieving Zero Dark Data across all types of repositories, ActiveNav’s software discovers and maps data in minutes to comply with a range of global privacy regulations including GDPR, CPRA and others. .

The investment builds on a previous £5m investment from Mobeus VCTs, which are part of Gresham House Ventures’ wider offering alongside Baronsmead’s VCTs. This previous investment was part of an $11 million Series A funding round for ActiveNav in November 2019.

The latest investment will be used to support the company in the commercialization of its new SaaS-based product, which offers midsize businesses the ability to access enterprise-level data discovery solutions for non-data. structured – sets of data not stored in a structured database format.

In other international investing news

Crypto index provider Vinter raises £2.5m round seed

wine, an index provider specializing in crypto assets, has raised a further £2.5m as it continues to expand its range of crypto asset indices for ETP and ETF issuers.

The round was led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from the Ricketts family office, D4 ​​Ventures, Pfeffer Capital and notable angels such as Gokul Rajaram, Marc Powers and David Chreng.

Accelerated by the SEC’s clearance of crypto ETFs in October, the market has seen unprecedented growth as fully regulated providers have allowed investors and institutions to gain exposure to the asset class through managed funds, thus avoiding the potential pitfalls of poorly regulated online trading platforms.

Spendesk raises an additional £83.2m in unicorn valuation

Expenses, the 7-in-1 expense management solution for SMEs, raised £83.2m in its Series C round extension in July 2021, making it the fifth French unicorn to achieve the coveted status this this month.

The new investment comes from US venture capital fund Tiger Global, which has all existing investors participating, including General Atlantic, Eight Roads Ventures, Index Ventures and eFounders. The Paris-headquartered fintech has seen remarkable growth during the pandemic. It has more than doubled its revenue every year and more than €3 billion in spend was managed on the Spendesk platform in 2021.

With the new funds, Spendesk plans to invest heavily in workforce growth. The goal is to hire 300 new people in 2022.

STILRIDE raises £2.5m to produce sustainable electric motorcycles

Swedish technology and design start-up STILRIDE raised £2.5million to produce sustainable electric motorcycles and scooters using a process called ‘industrial origami’.

The pioneering manufacturing technique involves robots capable of bending simple sheets of recyclable steel into complex new structures that are lightweight and durable, dramatically reducing the environmental impact of production. This process is being used to create the chassis and bodywork for a fleet of next-generation electric motorcycles, which will be available to European consumers later this year.

This £2.5m seed round was joined by angels and private investors including Gustaf Hagman, Saeid Esmaeilizadeh, Sam Bonnier and Andreas Adler.