Welcome to Startup Monday, my weekly newsletter that recaps the week in the global startup ecosystem. To have this newsletter emailed to you, you can sign up here.
Top startup news to follow this week:
Despite the fundraising slowdown and reduced investments in new companies, Israeli funds still sit on a substantial $10 billion, with $2.38 billion earmarked for new investments and $7.7 billion reserved for existing portfolio companies
Last year, 21 Israeli venture capital funds managed to secure an aggregate amount of $1.52 billion, marking not just a significant drop in dollar terms, but also a 66% decrease in the number of funds raising new capital. Notably, three VC funds accounted for 51% of the total capital, raising over $200 million each: Qumra Capital IV, TLV Partners V, and Viola Growth IV.
Israeli VC fundraising looks to have rebounded since the start of 2024, with Team8 ($500 million), Red Dot Capital ($250 million), Ibex Investors ($106 million) and iAngels ($70 million) raising a total of almost $1 billion.
According to IVC’s measurement model of Israeli VC funds allocations and capital availability, 2023 concluded with $1.14 billion, reflecting the lowest Israeli VC fund capital allocation volume since 2015.
These figures underscore the limited availability of capital for local startups from Israeli funds, particularly as the volume of investment rounds in startup companies surged, partly due to the increased involvement of foreign funds in Israel. Consequently, a venture capital dollar in 2023 holds less purchasing power compared to 2015.
It’s not the only one: Giant Ventures in January closed two new funds totaling $250 million to invest in startups on both sides of the Atlantic.
Frontline believes that U.S. scale-ups, generally, have much better odds at succeeding when they expand their operations to the other side of the Atlantic. “Though it is a traditionally undervalued market, Europe accounts for over 30% of global revenues of top-performing B2B software companies at IPO,” Brennan O’Donnell — the co-lead of Frontline Growth with Stephen McIntyre — said in a statement.
O’Donnell and his partners at Frontline have been vocal about Europe’s value as a market for some time and have even corroborated it with some research of their own. Frontline wants to ensure that its U.S. companies don’t leave money on the table by not expanding to Europe when they should.
Founded in 2021, World Fund invests in startups building tech to decarbonize industries from energy and buildings to transport and agriculture. It has already backed 15 early-stage companies, including SpaceForge, which manufactures materials in orbit, and Slovenian startup Juicy Marbles, which makes fake meat whole cuts.
“We look for founders building companies and technologies with the potential to scale, deliver significant cuts in CO2 emissions, and power systemic change,” Danijel Visevic, managing partner at World Fund, told TNW.
OTB Ventures announced that it has closed a €170 million significantly oversubscribed fund, to build and scale Europe’s most promising early-stage deeptech startups. Fund 2 will be backed by the European Investment Fund (EIF), Isomer Capital, NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), Foundation for Polish Science, TDJ Venture, Snowflake co-Founder Marcin Zukowski and OnDean, the family office of the Founders of Relativity.
The dedicated Deep-Tech fund, which is the largest VC with roots in Central Eastern Europe, will invest in four core verticals across Europe; SpaceTech, Enterprise Automation & AI, Cybersecurity and FinTech Infrastructure. Mirroring the funding strategy of OTB Ventures’ Fund 1 and utilising the Partner’s strong track record for identifying winners in emerging technology sectors at an early stage, Fund 2 will be used predominantly for Series A investments, with a new up to 10% allocation for Seed funding to support the growth of promising ventures at their inception.
OTB Fund 2 will reserve more than 50% of its capital for follow-on investments to support additional funding rounds in the best-performing portfolio companies. OTB Ventures will continue to maintain meaningful minority stakes in its portfolio companies.
The Toronto-based company has seen its annualized revenue run rate grow to $22 million this month from $13 million in December as it launched new model Command-R, said the source, who requested anonymity to discuss confidential matters.
, a leading bank integration provider, announced that it has closed a €22.1 million funding round with a combination of equity and debt. The round was led by True Ventures, the Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, with participation from Manchester-based investment firm Praetura Ventures, NatWest, Mastercard, Route 66 Ventures, and Beringea.
This latest round of capital will be instrumental in driving AccessPay’s focus on profitable growth while bolstering its commitment to increasing revenues in a sustainable manner. A significant portion of the funding round will be dedicated to AccessPay’s Research and Development (R&D) work, ensuring continued value creation for its enterprise customers. Notably, the company plans to further develop its capabilities in fraud & error prevention, bank statement data and reconciliation automation, and ISO 20022 data transformation, as well as to continue AccessPay’s rapid expansion in the US.
Over the last couple of years, the AccessPay team has made several senior hires, and expanded geographically beyond the UK, including mainland Europe and the United States via partnerships with Sage and Finastra. This round of funding will provide AccessPay with the financial resources to maximise these strategic growth opportunities, including potential acquisitions to sustainably expand its market presence and offerings.
B Capital-which has in the past backed Indian startups such as Byju’s and Meesho-said that the fund attracted both existing and new investors, including pension funds, family offices, high-net worth individuals, and sovereign wealth funds. The fund made its first investment through a secondary investment in U.S. based contract intelligence company, Icertis last June.
With a net worth of $16 billion, Saverin, a Brazilian native, topped the list of Singapore’s 50 Richest when it was released last September. Despite being a venture capitalist, most of his wealth still comes from his small but valuable stake in Meta Platforms (previously Facebook), which he co-founded with Harvard classmate Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. Saverin has been a resident of Singapore since 2012 when he renounced his U.S. citizenship.
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is in talks with venture capitalists to create a $40 billion investment fund to propel Saudi Arabia to a top leadership position in the field of artificial intelligence by 2030. The sovereign wealth fund manages nearly $1 trillion to drive growth in new sectors as the country pivots away from oil as their main source of revenue under the country’s master plan called . Vision 2030
Saudi Arabia receives the majority of its revenue from oil sales, but as the world shifts away from using oil for transportation, heating, and cooking to counter global warming, revenues will decline. To counter this, Saudi Arabia created the Vision 2030 master plan in 2016 to rapidly drive innovation and growth across other sectors with the goal of becoming a world-leader in the respective fields by 2030.
The Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA) was created in 2019 as part of this drive and currently has over twenty thousand AI and data specialists on board focusing on education, government, healthcare, energy, and mobility sectors. The SDAIA has rapidly digitized Saudi cities and government services to improve the people while establishing collaborative training programs to train more than 45,000 specialists. has also assisted with their build-out of national cloud systems and government data systems.
With six more years remaining until 2030, the PIF is preparing to spend four times the investment Microsoft has made in OpenAI ($1 billion in 2019, $10 billion in 2023) to achieve AI dominance. Despite a population half the size of the UK, the Saudi AI investment is also eight times what the (£1.5B + £2.5B or $5B). One venture capitalist company the Saudis might partner with is UK and Microsoft UK are investing in AI according to unofficial sources as reported by the and Andreessen Horowitz .
Critically, Saudi Arabia is actively closing the gender gap in tech. Whereas only 1 in 5 CS graduates are women in America, the SDAIA is committed to by 2030 and more than training 25,000 women . Saudi Arabia is also half their technical workers are women , with fewer than America to impede rapid AI development. less burdened by AI laws
Readers itching for a hot career in AI might want to start learning Arabic ( with book like this at Amazon ) before moving to sunny Riyadh.m-based Cemvision bags €10 million to lead the net-zero cement game Saudi Arabia’s is in talks with venture capitalists to create a $40 billion investment fund to propel Saudi Arabia to a top leadership position in the field of artificial intelligence by 2030. The sovereign wealth fund manages nearly $1 trillion to drive growth in new sectors as the country pivots away from oil as their main source of revenue under the country’s master plan called Public Investment Fund . Vision 2030
Saudi Arabia receives the majority of its revenue from oil sales, but as the world shifts away from using oil for transportation, heating, and cooking to counter global warming, revenues will decline. To counter this, Saudi Arabia created the Vision 2030 master plan in 2016 to rapidly drive innovation and growth across other sectors with the goal of becoming a world-leader in the respective fields by 2030.
Cemivision a Swedish company re-inventing cement, announced a €10 million seed round, led by Polar Structure and Backing Minds, and SF-based Zacua Ventures. The news comes soon after Cemvision announced its first official customer contract and is part of a plan to accelerate the company’s short-term momentum. This represents the largest known green cement seed round to date.
Cemvision’s products offer an alternative to traditional Portland cement, reducing CO2 by more than 95% while retaining durability and performance. It is produced using raw materials recycled from industrial waste and kilns powered by green electricity at much lower temperatures. Cemvision’s cement builds early strength up to 5 times faster than Portland, allowing for increased productivity. The company was founded by three experienced leaders from global cement industry incumbents.
The cement industry accounts for 8% of global CO2 emissions and is an estimated $400B market globally. Sweden, the leading climate tech ecosystem in the EU by investment volume in 2023, is up for this year too.
Backing Minds and Polar Structure invest the lion’s share of the €10 million, with Zacua contributing an additional amount. BackingMinds is a VC investing in the blind spots of venture capital. The firm has made more than 20 investments in Europe including innovative technologies and circular business models solving the big global challenges.
Polar Structure is a green transition partner in infrastructure development, providing the public and private sectors a way to develop, manage, and finance necessary investments to upgrade or build new, critical infrastructure. The firm’s other green transition portfolio investments include freight mobility unicorn Einride.
Zacua is an early-stage, sector-specific venture fund tackling the world’s biggest challenges in sustainability, productivity and urbanization. It has offices in San Francisco, New York, Singapore, Madrid, and Mexico City — and is led by partners with deep-running experience of investing in construction tech.
In addition to Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, this funding round welcomes new investors such as BGV (Benhamou Global Ventures), Move Capital, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and HSBC, while existing partners like XAnge and Energy Impact Partners reaffirm their resolute support for Greenly. Brian Halligan, Co-Founder and Chairperson of HubSpot, also participated in the round, contributing his extensive experience to further Greenly’s mission.
This funding will enable Greenly to extend its global reach and solidify its position as the go-to comprehensive Climate Suite, facilitating a transition from an outdated model where climate expertise was a low priority for companies, externally sourced, to cultivating in-house climate knowledge and implementing effective reduction strategies that make companies excel in the new world of the Energy Transition.
This capital injection will elevate Greenly’s status as a global reference in carbon management, thanks to its one-stop-shop for corporate environmental initiatives. Beyond compliance with Greenly CSRD or SEC reporting mandates, its Climate Suite allows companies to budget decarbonization and reduce emissions in line with international frameworks like SBTi.
Founded in 2019, Greenly’s new Climate Academy supports organizations’ need to build in-house climate expertise, offering certification programs for managers on broad climate strategies, as well as specialized knowledge in legal compliance, detailed accounting methodologies, and sector-specific eco-design.
Product managers and Greenly solutions partners now enjoy an integrated Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Builder , disrupting product level emission tracking by offering free LCA templates to a community of eco-designers. Greenly Cloud helps IT departments reduce data center related emissions, while Greenly Sustainable Procurement plugs into purchasing softwares to ensure suppliers actively contribute to low-carbon roadmaps.
