Fintech hasn't had its funnest year — but perhaps the tables are turning. Klarna's reported its first quarterly profit in four years, Monzo's reportedly in talks to raise a big new round via a share sale and three veteran fintech bosses are setting up a new wealthtech platform.
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The round was led by a group of seven new investors including the Innovation Park Artificial Intelligence (Ipai), based in Heilbronn, Bosch Ventures and SAP, among others. US investors were (deliberately) few and far between.
🛍 Klarna sets up holding company — and posts profits. Swedish buy now, pay later giant Klarna reported a pre-tax profit of SEK 90m ($8.3m) in the third quarter of 2023, its first profitable quarter since Q2 2019.
It comes after reports that Klarna has set up a holding company in the UK ahead of a possible IPO (most likely in the US).
Shares in Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski’s listed trading company, Flat Capital, rose by over 9% on Monday.
🇧🇬 From pitching to politics. We can expect an innovation push from Sofia: Vassil Terziev, Bulgaria’s most active startup investor, has been elected the capital's next mayor.
Terziev is one of Bulgaria’s best-known entrepreneurs: he’s a cofounder of Telerik (the biggest exit in Bulgaria to date — $262.5m) and the first angel investor in the unicorn fintech Payhawk. He was also a managing partner at Eleven Ventures. The Recursive has more here.
10x more money goes to VC funds owned by all-male vs all-female teams
The gender funding gap problem isn't just affecting female founders: a new report from Ada Ventures, Diversity VC and Google Cloud has found that female VCs are struggling to raise, too.
As climate tech rapidly grows, reaching a record $70.1bn in funding last year, there are plenty of differing opinions on how to build a startup in the sector. To cut through the noise, we asked sustainability founders, investors and operators for their best advice.
“We can stream energy, the same way we're streaming music,” says the company’s CEO, meaning batteries wouldn’t need as much capacity, potentially cutting the costs of cars, and removing the need for curbside charging infrastructure.
💬 "If governments want to help startups, they should stop being such terrible customers." A rise in public funding of tech startups across Europe is a "noble gesture," says cofounder and general partner at Project A Ventures, Uwe Horstmann — but what startups really need is for public bodies to actually use the technologies they fund and enable.
German devtools startup Langfuse raised a $4m seed from Lightspeed, La Famiglia and Y Combinator.
London-based Prosper, a new wealthtech platform from three serial fintech execs, has raised a £3.2m angel round from fellow fintech founders like Monzo's Tom Blomfield, plus Connect, MMC Ventures and Portfolio Ventures. Nick Perrett and Ricky Knox of Tandem, and Phil Bungey of Nutmeg are the founding team.
Paris-based mobile gaming developer startup TapNation raised €15m from Re-Sources Capital and Paluel-Marmont Capital.
Estonia's Raiku, which produces compostable packaging to substitute single-use plastic packaging, raised €5.65m from the European Innovation Council and others.
Italy-based Dreamfarm raised €5m for its nut-based alt cheese products.
French pay-by-the-mile car insurance provider Flitter has bagged a €3.5mseed led by Swiss insurer Helvetia.
Ensol, a French startup which makes photovoltaic equipment for households to capture solar energy, has raised €3m from Otium Capital.
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