Seed Weekly Edition #21
Highlights of this weeks funding rounds:
- 🇬🇧 Arweave saw its ‘permaweb’ decentralised internet backed by Andreessen Horowitz
- 🇬🇧 Sonantic’s voice generation technology funded by EQT Ventures after graduating from Entrepreneur First in 2019.
- 🇬🇧Labworks.io ‘Netflix for voice’ games studio led by RLC Ventures.
- 🇮🇳 Leap Finance was funded by Sequoia Capital India, and helps Indian students secure loans in order to attend international universities.
- 🇮🇳 Airmeet.com was backed by Accel India and Global Founders Capital, an online events platform.
Figures this week:
Funding rounds covered:
12
Countries covered:
4
Largest round:
$8,300,000
Estimated funds raised:
~€39,000,000 (not all covered below)
Categories & countries:
Most rounds:
🇬🇧United Kingdom
Largest Round:
🇬🇧 Arweave $8,300,000
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Edition 22 will be published Tuesday 17th March
🇬🇧 United Kingdom — $17.7m
Arweave
Raised: $8.3m (Seed)
Category: Blockchain, FinTech, Data Storage
Description: Arweave are developing the ‘permaweb’ which looks just like the normal web, but all of its content — from images to full web apps — is permanent, retrieved quickly, and decentralized — forever.
Investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures and Coinbase Ventures.
Location: London, England, UK.
Rest Less
Raised: $3.9m (Seed)
Category: Recruiting, Staffing
Description: Rest Less is a social enterprise startup offering jobs, volunteering and guidance for the over 50s. The online platform offers fulfilling opportunities to work, volunteer or find a new career path.
Investors: Octopus Ventures, QED Investments and 1818 Capital.
Location: London, England, UK.
Sonantic
Raised: $2.5m (Seed)
Category: AI, Voice
Description: Sonantic is a startup that has developed “human-quality” synthetic voice know-how for the video games and leisure business. Sonantic enables game developers to access “expressive, realistic voice acting”.
Investors: AME Cloud Ventures, Entrepreneur First and EQT Ventures.
Location: London, England, UK.
Emma
Raised: $2.5m (Seed)
Category: FinTech, Financial Services, Apps
Description: Emma is a financial app advocate that helps users avoid overdrafts, find wasteful subscriptions, and allows users control of their finances.
Investors: Connect Ventures, Algaé Ventures and Tiny VC.
Location: London, England, UK.
Labworks
Raised: $500k (Seed)
Category: Voice, Gaming, Alex Skills
Description: Labworks.io is the leading creator of viral voice-activated games for Amazon and Google devices. Read more here.
Investors: RLC Ventures
Location: London, England, UK.
Chatable Apps
Raised: $Unknown (Seed)
Category: Fitness, Wellness, Health Care
Description: ChatableApps — Worlds First Neuroscience-led AI Hearing Aid App, making everyday conversation accessible to everyone, everywhere.
Investors: Mark Cuban.
Location: London, England, UK.
🇮🇳 India — $15.5m
Leap Finance
Raised: $5.5m (Seed)
Category: Financial Services, Education
Description: Leap Finance is a fintech startup for Indian students pursuing international higher education. Leap Finance offers loan products and services that help Indian students pursue overseas education.
Investors: Sequoia Capital India
Location: Bengaluru, India.
Raised: $4m (Seed)
Category: Financial Services, Education
Description: Trell is a location-based network which helps users to explore experiences and annotating places around them (similar to TikTok by the looks of it).
Investors: Sequoia Capital India, BEENEXT, Fosun Capital and others.
Location: Bangalore, India.
Raised: $3m (Seed)
Category: Events, Software, Remote
Description: Airmeet is an online events platform with a focus on 1-to-1 interactivity amongst attendees.
Investors: Global Founders Capital, Accel India and others.
Location: Bangalore, India.
Raised: $3m (Seed)
Category: Events, Software, Remote
Description: QTalk is a Smart Dialer designed to make phone conversations fun & stress-free, including caller reasons, games and live shared-browsing.
Investors: Accel India and Lightspeed India.
Location: Bangalore, India.
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🇫🇮Finland — $4.7m
Aibidia
Raised: $4.7m (Seed)
Category: Information Technology, Data, Analytics
Description: Aibidia is a data and analytics company established to digitalise and enhance the way future professionals work and live.
Investors: Global Founders Capital and icebreaker.vc.
Location: Helsinki, Finland.
🇺🇦Ukraine — $1.5m
Respeecher
Raised: $1.5m (Seed)
Category: Artificial Intelligence, Hardware, Information Technology, Software
Description: They build high fidelity voice cloning (voice conversion) systems using deep neural networks.
Investors: ff Venture Capital and others.
Location: Kyiv, Ukraine.
