News
Austria’s digital investment platform, the country’s first unicorn, Bitpanda has bagged $263 million (nearly £190 million) in Series C funding, which values it at $4.1 billion (nearly £3 billion). This round has come just months after the company attained unicorn status. It was led by Valar Ventures along with the participation of Alan Howard and REDO Ventures and existing investors LeadBlock Partners and Jump Capital.
Headquartered in Vienna, Bitpanda now has a diverse team of over 500 people who represent over 50 nationalities and physical tech hubs and offices in 8 cities across Europe, including Vienna, Barcelona, Berlin, Krakow, London, Madrid, Milan, and Paris. Recently, it announced the opening of its remote-first Blockchain Research & Development hub, focused on uniting talent around Europe to build state-of-the-art technologies that leverage blockchain for the future, and it plans to open new offices in Europe.
Eric Demuth, Co-Founder & CEO of Bipanda, said: “The future of Bitpanda is being a number one investment platform in Europe for everyone. International expansion and growth are our key priorities: we’ll keep building the team, opening new offices, and launching new products as we design for scale and optimise for growth. This also means strengthening Bitpanda’s position in existing markets – such as in the DACH region, Spain, France, Italy, and Poland, and also entering new markets, such as the UK or the markets in Central and Eastern Europe.”
Bitpanda will use the funds to strengthen its team and design the organisation for scale while doubling down on state-of-the-art technology, international expansion and growth. Also, four key executive hires have joined the team to shape the future growth trajectory of Bitpanda. The new appointees are Lindsay Ross, ex-Adyen and MessageBird, as Chief HR Officer; Irina Scarlat, ex-Revolut and Uber, as Chief Growth Officer; João Luís, ex-Farfetch, as VP of Engineering; and Michael Keskerides, ex-N26, as VP Product.
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Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of mortality globally, with an estimated 17 million deaths each year. Thanks to development in medical technology and clinical research, imaging tests and diagnostic measurements are constantly evolving, particularly in cardiology.
Meet Ultromics, an Oxford-based startup that aims to help clinicians to make fast, accurate decisions when using ultrasound images to diagnose cardiovascular disease.
Recently, the UK company has secured $33 million (approx £23.7 million) in a Series B funding round led by Blue Venture Fund with participation from Optum Ventures, GV, and existing investor Oxford Sciences Innovation.
“Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States, and Ultromics offers groundbreaking AI solutions for more accurate diagnosis,” said Dr. Emir Sandhu, Managing Director at the Blue Venture Fund. “We are excited to partner with Dr. Ross Upton and the Ultromics’ team, as they promote improved patient outcomes.”
The company will use the funding to help accelerate the use of AI-enabled echocardiograms to help improve patient care and bring improved diagnostic quality and resource savings to hospitals.
Founded in 2017 by Ross Upton and Paul Leeson, Ultromics is a spin-off of the University of Oxford and built-in partnership with the UK’s NHS. The company has developed the first fully automated solution for echocardiography (EchoGo Core and EchoGo Pro) and analysis of global longitudinal strain (GLS).
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Disruption is happening everywhere! Retailers need to keep up with customer demands and expectations to keep their business running. Consequently, this has led to innovative solutions that no one thought possible just a few years ago.
New technologies, increased consumer choice, and fiercer competition has fuelled a sharp rise in the density of urban supermarkets.
In the latest development, Amazon has started adding own-brand groceries to its UK website to make gains in the grocery sector. The customers can add hundreds of ‘By Amazon’ and ‘Our Selection’ products into their carts in the upcoming days.
As per the report, Amazon is planning to promote the service through advertisement to attract more customers. The range spans fresh produce, ready meals, and other cupboard essentials.
It’s worth mentioning that Amazon started offering free grocery delivery to Prime customers in Britain last summer to take on traditional grocery stores.
The Amazon Fresh store in Ealing, West London is a ‘contactless’ shop available to anyone signed up on the Amazon app on their phone. Customers need to scan in a code on their phone to enter the shop.
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We’re expanding Ardent and looking for two ACA qualified individuals to join our tech focused Corporate Finance team.
Ardent works with exciting high growth companies in the digital commerce arena and we are looking for an Associate and an Associate Director to join our growing team.
If this is of interest, please email, our head of HR, Georgia (gderlanger@ardentadvisors.com) for more details.
Tembo Money is a London-based fintech company working on the mission to transform consumer lending through the power of family. Now, the company announced that it has closed a £2.5 million funding post its official launch in June 2021.
The investment round was led by Aviva and Fair by Design, the venture fund managed by Ascension Ventures and backed by Nationwide, Big Society Capital and Joseph Rowntree. The funds will help Tembo optimise its technology and drive the expansion of its offering as the company continues to focus on its mission to address the ‘poverty premium’ and help millions of prospective homeowners buy their first property sooner.
Speaking on the news, Tembo Co-Founder and CEO, Richard Dana said: “The average first-time buyer is confronted by a number of significant obstacles on their route to homeownership, and for many these were thought of as insurmountable. We’re on a mission to change this mindset and help turn the tide on the generational wealth gap, by helping families work together to give first-time buyers a fast, affordable way to increase their deposit. This funding will allow us to do that, and we’re incredibly happy that major players in finance and technology like Aviva and Fair by Design are joining us on this journey.”
Being the brainchild of finance and technology expert Richard Dana, Tembo’s portfolio includes a range of specialist mortgages from leading lenders in the UK. Its family lending products – Income Boost and Deposit Boost allow first-time buyers to lean on loved ones to help them buy the property without requiring their families to have a cash lump sum.
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Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley is set to step down from leading his retail empire, Frasers Group, and hand the reins to his prospective son-in-law, according to reports.
The tycoon is expected to reveal plans to step back from his role as chief executive of Frasers Group to become deputy chairman on Thursday, The Telegraph has reported.
It said he will be replaced in the top job by 31-year-old Michael Murray, who is engaged to Ashley’s daughter Anna.
Murray is currently “head of elevation” at the retail group, which also owns House of Fraser, Jack Wills, USC and Flannels among others, and has been tasked with modernising the business and creating a more upmarket image.
However, the report also said sources told the newspaper that the famously mercurial retail chief could still change his plans.
Ashley has been one of the high street’s most high profile and colourful characters since founding Sports Direct in 1982.
He has rapidly grown his retail operation in recent years, snapping up a number of distressed British brands including Evans Cycles, Jack Wills and Game.
The group is now worth around £3bn and operates almost 1,000 shops.
Ashley was previously executive deputy chairman of the retail group – which changed its name from Sports Direct International to Frasers Group last year – until 2016, when long-serving chief executive Dave Forsey resigned.
Frasers Group will reveal its latest full-year trading figures on Thursday and is expected to highlight a recovery in sales following the reopening of high street stores in April.
Suma Brands, a Minneapolis-based platform for acquiring and scaling Amazon FBA businesses, closed a $150m Series A funding.
The round was led by Pace Capital and Material alongside a credit facility led by i80 Group. These financings bring the total amount raised by the company, which launched last year and has been operating in stealth mode, to over $150M.
The company intends to use the funds to continue accelerating their pace of acquisitions of Amazon FBA businesses and expand their diverse portfolio of e-commerce brands, and hiring e-commerce, Brand Management, and Supply Chain talent to expand its operating platform.
Co-founded by Matt Salzberg, Founder and former CEO of Blue Apron, Andy Salamon, co-founding investor in Hims and Hers, Danielle David Parks, and Jon Dussel, former CFO of Dolls Kill) and led by Co-founder and CEO Andrew Savage, Suma Brands is an commerce platform focused on acquiring and developing marketplace brands by applying enterprise-level operating resources to scale them.
Headquartered in Minneapolis, the company is building a national presence with remote work optionality and planned offices in New York City and Los Angeles.
THG, the online beauty and wellness group, has acquired trailblazing prestige beauty etailer Cult Beauty in a £275m deal.
Manchester-based THG, which owns Lookfantastic, Dermstore, Glossybox and a raft of other beauty and wellness brands, said Cult Beauty’s portfolio of emerging and independent third-party brands was “a compelling addition for THG Beauty”.
Founded by entrepreneur Jessica DeLuca in 2008, who was then joined in the business by co-founder and co-CEO Alexia Inge, Cult Beauty blazed a trail for selling beauty online and found a loyal following for its edit of independent, or cult, brands and its on-site story-telling.
Brands on the site include Charlotte Tilbury, Drunk Elephant and Huda Beauty, which are currently not available elsewhere in the THG portfolio. With less than 50% of its sales coming from international markets, THG sees a promising opportunity for global expansion for Cult Beauty, but it will focus on markets outside of the US, which it will continue to serve via Lookfantastic and Dermstore, a multi-brand online beauty retailer it acquired from US retail giant Target at the end of last year.
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Rapyd, a London, UK-based Fintech as a Service company, raised $300m in Series E funding.
The round was led by Target Global with participation from new investors including funds managed by Fidelity Management and Research Company, Altimeter Capital, Whale Rock Capital, BlackRock Funds, and Dragoneer, along and existing investors General Catalyst, Latitude, Durable Capital Partners, Tal Capital, Avid Ventures, and Spark Capital.
The company intends to use the funds to accelerate growth through a combination of organic growth, acquisitions, and strategic investments. The financing comes shortly after Rapyd’s acquisition of Valitor, a European payments and card issuing company, for $100m, and the launch of Rapyd Ventures, the company’s venture arm.
Led by Arik Shtilman, co-founder and CEO, Rapyd provides tools to power local payments anywhere in the world, enabling companies across the globe to access markets quicker. By utilizing its payments network and Fintech-as-a-Service platform, businesses and consumers can engage in local and cross-border transactions in any market. The platform brings together 900-plus payment methods in over 100 countries.
The efforts to curb the rate at which pollution is being pumped into the environment was stepped up with the Paris Agreement. However, businesses create a lot of the pollution that either needs to be lowered or removed from the atmosphere to meet one of the critical goals of the agreement, to keep the earth’s warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Enter Supercritical, a startup offering businesses the option to reach carbon net zero output via its offerings. The London-based company has secured £2 million in pre-seed funding, which was led by LocalGlobe and will be utilising it to further ramp up its mission to make climate action accessible for all businesses.
Post funding, the startup will also hire more people to grow its team.
Supercritical’s offerings might seem akin to the conventional offsets that many services currently provide. However, in an exclusive conversation with UKTN, the company’s CEO and Co-founder, Michelle You, notes that it is much more. When one buys conventional offsets, it means that someone else is getting paid not to emit the same amount of carbon into the atmosphere. So, the carbon emitted by a company still remains in the atmosphere.
On the contrary, Supercritical offers high-impact carbon removal offsets via its software platform. The software is said to measure a company’s carbon footprint, create an actionable plan for reducing emissions, and recommends a portfolio of high-quality carbon removal offsets to buy.
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