£100M Boost for UK Healthtech as British Business Bank Backs Apposite Growth Fund
The British Business Bank has pledged a £100 million (≈$127 million) cornerstone commitment to Apposite Healthcare Growth I, marking its largest fund investment to date and its first partnership with Apposite Capital. The fund will back UK health‑technology scale‑ups across medical products, diagnostics, digital health, and pharmaceutical outsourcing. By targeting companies at a growth inflection point, the initiative seeks to close a persistent capital gap for life‑science firms. The Bank aims to catalyse private‑sector investment, create skilled jobs, and boost the global competitiveness of UK health tech.
This Long Beach Startup Says It Has a Patch for California's Power Problems
Long Beach‑based Critical Loop secured $26 million in new funding, bringing its total to $49 million, to accelerate deployment of battery‑and‑grid‑management systems that deliver power in days rather than years. The startup’s controller instantly switches between the public grid, on‑site batteries, solar...
Capsule Security Raises $7m to Secure AI Agents at Runtime
Capsule Security emerged from stealth with a $7 million seed round led by Lama Partners and participation from Forgepoint Capital International. The startup’s runtime‑first platform aims to secure AI agents while they execute tasks, preventing prompt‑injection attacks, data leaks, and unintended...
SA Firm Raises R85m to Scale AI Stethoscope for TB Screening
South African medtech firm AI Diagnostics secured roughly R85 million (about $4.6 million) in a pre‑Series A round led by The Steele Foundation for Hope. The capital will accelerate rollout of its AI‑enabled Ostium digital stethoscope, which screens for tuberculosis using lung‑sound analysis...
Men’s Personal Care Brand Unbound Raises Rs 8 Cr Led by Fireside Ventures
Men’s personal care brand Unbound announced it has raised ₹8 crore (approximately $960,000) in a round led by Fireside Ventures. The capital will be used to launch its inaugural line of skin, hair and body care products tailored for modern Indian...
Audrey AI Secures $1.8M to Develop AI Platform for Financial Auditors
Audrey AI, a Dublin‑based startup, closed a $1.8 million pre‑seed round led by Sure Valley Ventures and Delta Partners. The company is building an agentic AI platform that automates data requests, evidence gathering, transaction testing and review for financial auditors. Pilot...
Cohoma Coffee Raises Rs 5 Cr Seed Round Led by IPV
Cohoma Coffee, a specialty coffee roaster and machine maker founded by Kanika and Paritosh Birla, closed a Rs 5 crore (approximately $0.53 million) seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures with participation from Swishin VC. The funding will be deployed to expand its...
Autotech Ventures Expands Into UAE to Drive GCC Auto Commerce Digitization
Autotech Ventures, the global VC dedicated to ground‑transport innovation, has opened a regional office in the United Arab Emirates to capture the Gulf Cooperation Council’s emerging auto‑commerce opportunities. The firm will back early‑stage founders building mobility fintech, AI‑driven dealership platforms,...
YC-Backed Openlaw Closes $3.3M Seed to Digitise Europe's Notary Nightmare
Openlaw, a YC‑backed legal‑tech startup, closed a $3.3 million seed round led by Y Ventures, Moonfire Ventures and a slate of angels. Its German platform beglaubigt.de digitises company formation, shrinking the typical eight‑week GmbH setup to as little as three days...
VinoBuzz Launches AI Wine Marketplace in Hong Kong
VinoBuzz, Hong Kong's first AI‑driven wine marketplace, announced an angel round that values the startup at US$10 million. In just two weeks of beta, it attracted over 1,000 registered users and aggregated more than 4,000 unique wine SKUs. The platform leverages...
Wonderskin CEO Michael Malinsky on Turning a Viral Product Into a Thriving Beauty Brand
Wonderskin, founded by Michael Malinsky in 2020, turned a TikTok‑viral metallic blue lip‑stain into a multi‑category beauty brand. The $22 Wonder Blading Lip Stain Peel‑Off Mask has sold over 6 million units, fueling a 300% revenue surge that hit roughly $125 million...
Plata Hits $5 Billion Valuation in Bicycle Capital-Led Funding
Plata raised $405 million in a Series C round, pushing its valuation to $5 billion—the largest for a private financial services firm in Latin America. The round was led by Bicycle Capital and included investors Kora, Qatar Investment Authority and BTG Pactual. The funding...
Y Combinator-Backed AI Call Receptionist Raises $22 Million Series A
Y Combinator‑backed Phonely announced a $22 million Series A round, valuing the AI call‑receptionist startup at roughly $100 million. The funding, led by Base10 Partners and backed by YC and three enterprise customers, builds on a prior $750,000 seed raise. Phonely’s platform can...
Yoga Joint Secures $5.5M Growth Round
Yoga Joint, the infrared‑focused fitness chain, announced a $5.5 million growth round led by industry veteran Adam Shane. The capital, sourced from a strategic group that includes Port Street Ventures and former executives of Barry’s, Crunch and UFC Gym, will fund the...
Timeshifter Recieves New Funding
Timeshifter, the creator of the world’s most‑downloaded jet‑lag app, announced a new funding round led by Skip Capital, the private fund of Atlassian co‑founder Scott Farquhar and Kim Jackson. The round attracted high‑profile strategic investors including F1 champion Nico Rosberg, astronaut...
HockeyStack Pulls in $50M Funding
HockeyStack, a San Francisco‑based enterprise revenue‑agent platform, announced a fresh $50 million financing round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Y Combinator and Uncorrelated Ventures. The capital brings its total funding to just over $50 million and will back the rollout of its...
HYFIX Announces $15M Seed Round
HYFIX Spatial Intelligence, a Santa Clara‑based semiconductor startup, announced a $15 million seed round to develop a new class of American‑made chips for high‑precision drones and autonomous robots. The financing was led by Craft Ventures and included Catapult Ventures, Multicoin Capital,...
Spain Plants US$200m Flag in Boston with Debut US Biotech Fund
Spain has unveiled a $200 million venture‑capital fund based in Boston, anchored by $57 million of public seed capital. The fund will back Spanish life‑science startups seeking to scale within the U.S. ecosystem and co‑invest in select American biotech firms. A new...
Parasail Secures $32M Series A
Parasail, a San Francisco‑based AI Supercloud startup, announced a $32 million Series A round, bringing its total capital to $42 million. The round was co‑led by Touring Capital and Kindred Ventures, with participation from Samsung NEXT, Flume Ventures, Banyan Ventures and existing backers. Parasail’s...
Parasail Closes $32M Series A to Build the Supercloud that Puts Developers in Control of Their AI
Parasail announced a $32 million Series A round, bringing its total capital to $42 million, led by Touring Capital and Kindred Ventures. The funding will expand its AI Supercloud—a global GPU‑aggregated platform that automates inference optimization and lets developers launch custom AI models...
Smartwage Raises €2M to Scale AI-Driven Corporate Welfare Platform
Smartwage, an AI‑driven corporate welfare startup, closed a €2 million pre‑seed round led by Step Fund. The funding, roughly $2.2 million, will be used to expand platform architecture, security, and AI models. The platform lets employees spend welfare credits across any provider,...
Ukrainian Startups Get UK Market Gateway as TechBridge Accelerator Returns for 2026
The UK‑Ukraine TechBridge accelerator has launched its 2026 Investment Accelerator, supporting 20 high‑growth Ukrainian tech startups (late seed–Series A) to enter the UK market. Backed by the UK government and Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation, the programme offers investment‑readiness workshops,...
Ex-OnlyFans CEO Launches Vylit, an 18+ Creator Platform Positioned Between Social Media, Adult Content
Former OnlyFans CEO Ami Gan has launched Vylit, an 18+ creator platform that blends social‑media style discovery with adult‑content monetization. The New York‑based startup secured $2.7 million in seed funding from Windmill Chain Fund and angel investors. Vylit differentiates itself by...
French AviationTech Startup Donecle Bags €10 Million to Grow Drone-Based Inspection Platform
French startup Donecle, which automates aircraft inspections with AI‑driven drones, closed a €10 million ($10.9 million) funding round led by IRDI Capital Investissement and SWEN Capital Partners. The capital will fund rapid expansion across Europe and the United States, bolster AI development,...
Stendr Secures $5.4M Pre-Seed to Develop AI-Driven Defence Systems
Norwegian defence tech startup Stendr raised $5.4 million in an oversubscribed pre‑seed round led by RainFall, ACME and SkyFall. The capital will fund its AI‑native platform that integrates hardware and software for drone defence. Stendr’s solution uses multi‑sensor AI to detect,...
Swiss HQ QAI Ventures Aims to Partner with India’s Quantum AI Startups
Swiss‑based QAI Ventures, a venture capital firm specializing in quantum‑AI startups, is preparing to enter India. The firm cites the country's deep talent pool and the government’s National Quantum Mission, which earmarks roughly Rs 6,000 crore (about $720 million), as key enablers. QAI...
BMS Makes a Beeline, Bringing 5 Assets to Biotech's $300M Precision Immunology Debut
Bristol Myers Squibb has spun out a new biotech, Beeline Medicines, backed by $300 million from Bain Capital and an initial portfolio of five assets. The company, led by former SpringWorks CEO Saqib Islam, will focus on precision therapies for autoimmune...
Chip Giants AMD, Qualcomm and Arm Back Driverless Car Startup Wayve with Fresh Funds
British autonomous‑driving startup Wayve secured an additional $60 million from chip makers AMD, Qualcomm and Arm, bringing the total of its recent funding round to $1.2 billion. The capital, while modest relative to the round, is strategic, giving Wayve access to a...
Gizmo Secures $22M Series A to Advance AI-Powered Education
London‑based AI learning platform Gizmo announced a $22 million Series A round led by Shine Capital, with participation from Ada Ventures, Seek Investments, GSV and NFX. The funding will fuel the company’s push into the U.S. college market and expand its engineering...
Brix Raises $5.5M to Support the Tokenisation of Emerging Market Assets
Brix, a fintech platform that brings emerging‑market assets on‑chain, closed a $5.5 million funding round featuring Circle Ventures, ConsenSys, and other Web3 investors. The company will tokenise real‑world securities such as stocks, funds and bonds, starting with a Turkish lira‑denominated money‑market...
This Startup Is Betting Tokenmaxxing Will Create the Next Compute Giant
Parasail, a cloud‑compute broker focused exclusively on AI inference, closed a $32 million Series A round. The startup claims to process 500 billion tokens a day by dynamically allocating GPU capacity across 40 data centers in 15 countries, buying excess compute on liquidity...
Traza Raises $2.1 Million Led by Base10 to Automate Procurement Workflows with AI
Traza, a New York‑based startup, closed a $2.1 million pre‑seed round led by Base10 to launch AI agents that autonomously handle procurement tasks such as vendor outreach, RFQ generation, order tracking, and invoice processing. Targeting the $8 billion procurement‑software market, the company...
Denmark’s Sapient Perception Secures €2M Pre-Seed to Develop Large-Area Drone Perception
Copenhagen‑based Sapient Perception secured a €2 million (≈$2.2 million) pre‑seed round co‑led by Balnord and FORWARD.one to scale its high‑resolution, software‑defined camera system for drones. The startup’s 10K sensors can capture up to 100 times larger areas in a single frame while processing...
Flagship Investor Showcase to Accelerate UK Scaleup Growth
The Worshipful Company of Entrepreneurs, in partnership with the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), is launching Scale‑Up Capital 2026 – a trio of investor showcases that will connect 14 high‑growth UK companies with more than 120 active investors. The flagship...
Anthropic Draws Investor Offers at Over $800 Billion Value
Anthropic, the AI startup behind Claude, has attracted multiple investor offers that could more than double its pre‑money valuation to roughly $800 billion, positioning it among the most valuable private tech firms. The surge in interest coincides with rising demand for...
StirLight Secures £1.25m for Friction Stir Welding Quality Assurance Platform
StirLight has raised £1.25 million (approximately $1.6 million) to fast‑track commercialisation of its StirSense platform, a real‑time quality‑assurance solution for friction stir welding (FSW). The round combines over £750 k in pre‑seed capital from Haatch Ventures, the British Business Bank, D2N2 and angel...
AlixLabs Closes €15m Series A with Strategic Investment From Stephen Industries
Sweden‑based AlixLabs AB closed a €15 million (≈$16.2 million) Series A round in Q1 2026, secured from Finnish investor Stephen Industries. The funding targets rapid development of its proprietary Atomic Pitch Splitting (APS) atomic layer epitaxy (ALE) platform. Stephen Industries’ Kustaa Poutiainen, who helped...
Can Europe Finance and Keep Its Biotech Winners?
The United States saw a surge of life‑sciences IPOs in early 2026, raising over $1 billion, while Europe continues to lose its biotech firms to foreign markets. Over the past six years, 66 of 67 EU biotech companies that went public...
Mending University and Venture Capital Relations: Is It Possible to See Eye-to-Eye?
European university spin‑outs in deep‑tech and life sciences now represent a $398 billion asset pool, but collaboration with venture capitalists remains fraught. Tech transfer offices are tasked with bridging divergent goals—academia’s focus on discovery and publications versus VCs’ demand for speed...
Power Equipment Startup Ayr Energy in Talks to Raise $25-30 Million: Sources
U.S.-based power‑equipment startup Ayr Energy is negotiating a $25‑30 million raise with Energy Impact Partners, which would value the company at roughly $200 million. The firm, founded by former Zetwerk and Ather executives, emerged from stealth in September 2025 with a $250 million...
The New Playbook for Emerging Managers
The latest Buyouts Insider podcast breaks down what limited partners (LPs) now demand from emerging managers, highlighting the shift toward proven track records, fee transparency, and strategic alignment. It also outlines frequent missteps made by first‑time funds, such as under‑estimating...
Q1 2026 Hit Big VC Records, but Top 5 AI Deals Were Most of the Fundings | Pitchbook/NVCA
The first quarter of 2026 set venture‑capital records, with $267.2 billion in deal value—exceeding every full‑year total except 2021 and 2025. Exit activity hit $347.3 billion, the highest quarterly exit value ever recorded and positioning 2026 as the second‑largest year for exits....
Homegrown Ventures Closes $22.8 Million Fund I to Back MENA Consumer Brands
UAE‑based Homegrown Ventures announced the final close of its debut Fund I at $22.8 million, topping its $20 million target. The fund is dedicated to early‑stage, “better‑for‑you” consumer packaged goods and fast‑moving consumer goods startups across the Middle East, North Africa, South...
Korean AI Chip Startup DEEPX, Hyundai Work on Robots Powered by Generative AI
Korean AI‑chip startup DEEPX is deepening its partnership with Hyundai Motor Group to supply its second‑generation DX‑M2 neural processing units for generative‑AI‑powered robots. The chips, built on Samsung’s cutting‑edge 2‑nanometer process, promise dramatically lower power draw—up to 20 times more efficient...
Glydways Raises US$170m Series C for AV Network Rollout
Glydways announced an oversubscribed $170 million Series C, bringing its total capital to over $250 million. The funding, co‑led by Suzuki Motor Corporation, ACS Group and Khosla Ventures, will finance pilot autonomous‑vehicle networks slated for 2026 in the UAE, the greater New York area...
Proptech Startup Helium Raises Angel Funding From Albinder Dhindsa, Kunal Shah, Others
Helium, a proptech startup that rents out apartments in gated societies, announced an angel round of ₹5 crore (about $600,000). The round was led by Indian startup veterans Albinder Dhindsa, Kunal Shah and other founders. The capital will be used to...
Baskit Raises US$4.4M to Take Indonesia’s Offline Distribution Playbook Regional
Indonesian supply‑chain startup Baskit closed a $4.4 million Series A round, complemented by a $3 million revolving credit facility from HSBC Innovation Banking, bringing total funding to $9.9 million. The AI‑enabled platform integrates software, logistics, payments and embedded credit to help consumer brands reach...
Kiwi Fund Administration Fintech Caruso Banks $9.3 Million Series A
Caruso, a New Zealand‑born AI‑driven fund‑administration platform, closed a $9.3 million Series A round, valuing the company at $80 million. The round was led by Icehouse Ventures and GD1, with participation from Balmain, a customer‑credit fund manager. The capital will accelerate product development, expand...
Anthropic Attracts Investor Offers at an $800 Billion Valuation
Anthropic PBC is fielding investor overtures that could push its valuation to roughly $800 billion, far above the $350 billion pre‑money figure tied to its February $30 billion fundraising round. The offers, which the company has so far rebuffed, would more than double...
Y Combinator Completes Stablecoin Investment in Prediction Markets Startup Totalis
Y Combinator has made its first venture investment entirely in a stablecoin, sending $500,000 USDC to prediction‑market startup Totalis via the Solana blockchain. The on‑chain transfer, executed through Ramp, settled instantly without any banking intermediaries. Totalis builds multi‑leg parlays that...
