The Latest from Mike Butcher
Personal skin problems leads founder to launch skincare startup Nøie, raises $12M Series A
Inspired by his own problems with skin ailments, tech founder Daniel Jensen decided there had to be a better way. So, using an in-house tech platform, his Copenhagen-based startup Nøie developed its
Turkey’s Ace Games raises $7M to develop casual and ‘hyper casual’ games
Ace Games, a Turkish mobile gaming company founded by a former Peak Games co-founder, has raised a $7 million seed funding round led by Actera Group. Co-investment has come from San Francisco’s NFX.
Diginex launches ESG reporting platform aimed at small businesses
As ESG reporting goes up the agenda for large companies, it’s also increasingly doing so for smaller companies as well. But right now, tracking things like your company’s CO2 emissions is mainly t
Look out Pied Piper — iSIZE reduces power for video streaming, raises $6.3M in round led by Octopus
It’s widely known that video streaming boomed during the pandemic, as millions of people were faced by boredom during lockdowns. But an unintended consequence of this was the growing environmental i
TechCrunch Survey of Scottish Tech Hubs: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, Aberdeen
TechCrunch is embarking on a major new project to survey European founders and investors in cities outside the larger European capitals. Over the next few weeks, we will ask entrepreneurs in these cit
Born in the pandemic, Moonfire’s first $60M seed fund will combine remote investing with Big Data
During the pandemic, we’ve seen the rise of “Zoom investing” — where VCs literally use remote video conference tools like Zoom and Google Meet to take pitches from entrepreneurs. Now a
Could NFT auctions be moving away from Ethereum? One new group is betting they will
NFTs were arguably already taking off when Beeple sold his NFT artwork for $69m. But another crypto project attracted attention when it bought an original Banksy artwork for $95,000. The group literal
Supercell likes Metacore’s games so much it just gave it another $180M credit line
Metacore, a Finnish mobile games company, seems to have an amazing “relationship” with Supercell, another (quite successful) Finnish mobile games company. Back in September 2020, Metacore
Sprout.ai raises $11M Series A led by Octopus Ventures to apply AI to insurance claims
It was way back in 2018 that Omni:us appeared to disrupt the insurance market by applying AI to this most legacy of all industries. It has now gone on to raise $44.1 million. In a similar vein, Shift
Pivoting from offline into virtual events for enterprises nets Tame a $5.5M seed round
In March 2020, Tame had a digital event suite for offline corporate events. But with the pandemic hitting, it did a hard pivot into providing a highly customizable virtual events platform, primarily u
London’s Stride VC raised second $138.6M seed fund, hunts for third partner
Stride VC, a London-based seed investment fund, has raised its second fund, which will be £100 million ($138.6 million) — identical to its first fund. The fund will invest primarily in London s
In the race toward Web 3 financial privacy, Secret Network attracts backing from key players
In the real world — the world on which the global economy runs — we don’t expose every aspect of our financial activity in public. We want to be able to select which parties can access our finan
Sorbet raises $6M seed led by Viola Ventures to tackle the thorny financials of paid time off
A U.S./Israeli startup, Sorbet — which is tackling what companies do with the financial risks as employees accrue paid time off (PTO) — has raised $6 million in a seed funding round led by Viola V
The TechCrunch Survey of Dutch tech hubs: Calling Delft, Eindhoven, Rotterdam, Utrecht
TechCrunch is embarking on a major new project to survey European founders and investors in cities outside the larger European capitals. Over the next few weeks, we will ask entrepreneurs in these cit
Erase All Kittens raises $1M seed round for Mario-style game which teaches girls to code
Erase All Kittens (EAK) is an edtech startup that created a “Mario-style” web-based game designed for kids aged 8-12. However, the game has a twist: it places an emphasis on inspiring girl
Gr4vy launches cloud payment orchestration, pulls in $11.1M Series A led by Nyca Partners
Gr4vy, (pronounced “gravy”) is a cloud-native payments company with a “payment orchestration platform (POP)” that merges a cloud platform with payments infrastructure. It’s also anno
Here are all the startups pitching today at Venture Day Minsk
Venture Day Minsk (organised by tech startup hub Imaguru) is run annually, but because of the pandemic and the political situation in Belarus, it has gone virtual. Even Imaguru itself has had to switc
EU-based digital assets platform Finoa inks $22M Series A funding led by Balderton Capital
Institutions need to keep their crypto assets somewhere. And they aren’t going to keep it on some random or consumer-grade crypto operation. This requires more sophisticated technology. Furthermore,
Solar roof-tile and energy startup SunRoof closes €4.5M led by Inovo Venture Partners
SunRoof is a European startup that has come up with a clever idea. It has its own roof-tile technology that generates solar power. It then links up those houses, creating a sort of virtual power plant
Israel’s electric powertrain maker IRP Systems raises a $31M Series C
IRP Systems, a maker of innovative electric powertrains for electric vehicles, has raised a $31 million Series C funding round, bringing its total funding to $57 million. The financing was led by Clal