London Brief #43 —
Flying Black Cabs, British Processors to Power AI, No Cars for Sale and Business as usual. Read more in this issue…
People
Rich Pleeth, former Googler, CMO of Gett and Founder of Sup, joins the Estonian startup Taxify to try and conquer London once again. The first attempt, run by Finn Geraghty was quickly stopped by the TfL.
Mr Pleeth is supposed to raise funds and try again, but he already knows the taste of defeat. His last gig was Sup, a social networking app has failed to attract users even with the support of Sir Richard Branson and Steve Wozniak. This time, the chances are better, as Taxify is backed by Didi, the company that was powerful enough to push Uber out of China.
In the news
Geely, the Chinese company that controls London Taxi Company (now London Electric Vehicle Company), has just acquired Terrafugia, an American startup pursuing flying cars. We cannot wait to fly the black cab over the traffic jam! However, cabbies may not like the fact that Uber works with NASA to control traffic lights for flying cars.
As for the automotive market, it seems to be particularly hard to disrupt. After Rocket Internet silently killed Carspring, another player has just closed operations. Hellocar, which was the offspring from the Founders Factory did not sell a car since October and now officially confirmed closure.
The gossips were true, and Sequoia Capital has indeed poured £38m into Graphcore. The company designs computer processors (IPUs) that are designed to power AI much better than existing chips. The market has to be taken from the incumbents Nvidia and Intel, but we believe in yet another success of a British processor maker after ARM and Imagination Technologies.
Barclays bank joins mobile-first banks Monzo and Sterling Bank adding Flux to its launchpad app. Flux is an innovative retail payment system that keeps receipts and loyalty programmes together in a banking app. With Barclays, you can now use it in the EAT food chain, but if successful, the pilot will be extended to other retailers.
Reports and Rankings
Business as usual
- Monzo, a challenger bank, has raised £71m from investors including Goodwater Capital, Stripe, and Michael Moritz.
- Graphcore, a chipmaker focussed on AI, has scored $50m (£38.2m) from Sequoia Capital.
- Behavox, an AI software company, has received $20m in a round led by Citigroup.
- Hostmaker, an Airbnb management firm, has raised a $15m (£11.4m) series B round led by Sansiri.
- Trouva, an online marketplace for homeware and lifestyle brick and mortar boutiques, has raised a $10m series A led by BGF Ventures.
- SAM Labs, a start-up that develops classroom solutions for teachers, has closed a £5.1m series A funding round led by Touchstone Innovations and E15 Ventures.
- Autologyx, Robotic Process Automation startup has received over £1.5m in pre-series A investment. The round was supported by Beacon Capital
- No Agent, a startup for managing property lettings, has raised $1.1m (£840,000) from private investors including Nick Hynes and Carl Uminski, the co-founders of SOMO.
- Suggestv, an intelligent video discovery platform for publishers, has closed a $1m seed round led by Fuel Ventures.
Number of the day
500,000 users are now using Monzo cards, which is a 300-percent increase since February investment round.
Idea
London Brief is a weekly selection of essential information about startups, technology and the business scene in London. Got news? Give us a shout at londonbrief@netguru.co.
Piotr Wrzosiński
On behalf of the London Brief Team
