This week a total of $487.5m was raised across 32 deals. This is nearly $1bn less than last week, where $1.3bn was raised through 34 funding rounds.
A significant amount of the total capital raised this week was raised by the ten biggest deals. Of the total $487.5m raised, $344.2m was raised by the top ten investments.
WealthTech companies led the charge this week. Of the 10 biggest deals, five were WealthTechs. These were Lunar, Canoe Intelligence, Oxygen, Conquest Planning and Moonfare.
The sector was well represented in all size deals. Of the 32 deals completed this week, eight deals were in WealthTech companies.
Despite being just over a month into the year, there have already been some notable developments in the WealthTech sector, including over 20 deals have already been recorded. This year has also seen WealthTech giant FNZ acquire Fondsdepot Bank and YieldX, while Texan WealthTech First Rate acquired Chilean-based Finantech.
One area of WealthTech that has gained some attention is gamification. A report from MarketsandMarkets claims that the global gamification market will grow from $9.1bn in 2020 to $30.7bn by 2025. These tools aim to make finances more engaging, whether that is by including leaderboards or providing users with rewards. Earlier this week, WealthTech platform Kidbrooke offered firms a guide of what they should know before they implement them.
Another sector to do well this week was CyberTech, despite only recording one of the top ten biggest deals. In total, eight companies in the vertical raised funds this week.
Cybersecurity has always been a massive challenge for digital operations, but as criminals get more sophisticated in their attacks it is becoming crucial for CyberTech to be leveraged for protection. A report released this week from iProov found that Digital injection attacks, where criminals bypass video biometrics with synthetic imagery, are now five times more common than presentation attacks, i.e. wearing a mask or showing a photo.
While another report released this year showed that firms are not putting enough money into their cybersecurity. Neustar International Security Council conducted a survey that found just 49% of organisations have sufficient budget to meet their current cybersecurity needs, and 11% only protect their most critical assets.
With such trouble in the market, it is easy to see why CyberTechs are receiving a lot of attention from investors.
Going back to this week’s deals, in terms of countries, the US was home for five of the biggest deals (SALT Lending, Skybox Security, Ushur, Canoe Intelligence and Oxygen). Other countries represented in the top ten were the UK (Salad Money), Denmark (Lunar), Canada (Conquest Planning), Singapore (Tazapay) and Moonfare (Germany).
This week, FinTech Global released a number of research pieces of note. One of these focused on Argentinean FinTech, which dropped by 70% on last year’s levels. A total of $132m was raised across 24 deals, while $441m was raised in 23 funding rounds during 2021. Despite the drop, it is still significantly higher than 2020, where just $7m was raised through 16 transactions.
Another country in the limelight this week was Spain. Deal activity in the country dropped to the lowest levels in five years, reaching 86. The amount of capital investors also dipped. It went from $985m in 2021 to $408m in 2022.
Here are this week’s 32 FinTech funding rounds.
Crypto lender SALT nets $64.4m in Series A raise
SALT Lending, a crypto lending platform, has scored $64.4m in a Series A funding round from a share sale to accredited investors, CoinDesk has reported.
Colorado-based SALT offers blockchain-backed loans where borrowers put up cryptocurrency as collateral.
The sale comes less than three months after its planned sale fell through due to the implosion of crypto exchange FTX.
Back in November, online investing platform Bnk To The Future ended its planned acquisition of the firm after the latter informed customers that it would pause withdrawals and deposits on its platform due to an exposure to FTX.
The new funding has helped to recapitalise SALT’s balance sheet and capital reserves. Subject to approval, SALT is working to return to full operations during Q1. SALT will use the capital toward new products and its growth strategy
SaaS-based CyberTech Skybox Security collects $50m and names new CEO
Skybox Security, a SaaS-based security posture management platform, has raised $50m in funding and named a new CEO.
The investment was supplied by CVC Growth Funds, Pantheon and J.P. Morgan. Skybox did not disclose how it intends to use the funds.
Taking up the role of CEO is Mordecai (Mo) Rosen, who has over 25 years of experience. Rosen will focus on driving Skybox’s growth and accelerating the adoption of its solution.
Prior to Skybox, Rosen was the president and CEO of data loss prevention software company Digital Guardian. In this position, he significantly grew recurring revenue and led the company to profitability.
He has also served as the corporate senior vice president and general manager for security at CA Technologies.
Rosen said he was drawn to Skybox for its “disruptive technology platform, blue chip customer base, and seasoned cybersecurity team.”
Ushur bags $50m for its AI-powered customer experience platform
Ushur, an AI-powered customer experience automation platform, has raised $50m in Series C funding.
The round was led by Third Point Ventures with participation from existing investors Iron Pillar, 8VC, Aflac Ventures and Pentland Ventures.
Ushur’s platform is purpose-built from the ground up to intelligently automate entire customer journeys end to end.
The enterprise-ready platform uses conversational AI, language intelligence and document understanding to deliver industry-specific, hyper-personalised customer experience solutions.
The company raised an additional $5m to its Series B funding round back in 2021.
Half of Ushur’s customers are Fortune 500 companies including globally recognised brand names such as Aflac, Cigna, CVS, Irish Life, United Healthcare and Unum Group.
According to Ushur, these enterprises have improved customer engagement rates as much as 85%, reduced email triage times from five days down to five minutes and slashed customer issue resolution times by as much as 90%.
In the last 12 months, Ushur has tripled its headcount, doubled its customer base and achieved a Net Revenue Retention (NRR) of 164% as enterprises have moved toward AI-driven automation solutions purpose-built for end-to-end customer engagement applications. This is an area where back-office automation technologies, such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA), continue to struggle to deliver business value.
Ushur plans to use the fresh funding to expand its experience automation portfolio, develop new innovations in AI such as Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative AI, and move into new regions and industry verticals.
FinTech Salad Money rakes in £40m ($48m) debt facility
Salad Money, a social purpose FinTech, has scored £40m from a senior debt facility with a US-based credit fund.
According to Salad, this recent debt facility will help the company serve rocketing demand for affordable credit from NHS and public sector workers.
The company added that the committed facility means more key workers among the UK’s millions under-served by mainstream credit providers will be able to avoid high-cost and payday loans or even loan sharks.
Salad Money is a community development finance institution which offers small-sum loans to key workers in the public sector and NHS and uses open banking and machine learning to assess affordability, so applicants aren’t penalised or unfairly excluded for having an impaired credit score.
Each of Salad’s loans saves a typical customer more than £335 in interest compared with alternatives available to them.
In addition, Salad gives tailored financial education, support and signposting to many applicants whether or not it can offer them credit. Since launching in 2019 it has built a trusted reputation with partner NHS Trusts and among public sector and NHS workers.
Salad Money will use the new finance facility, which complements arrangements with existing funders, to meet the growing demand for affordable credit.
Danish neobank Lunar nets €35m ($37.4m)
Lunar, a neobank based in Denmark, has scored €35m in funding as it looks to push forward in its path to profitability.
Investors in the recent funding round include Tencent, IDC Ventures, Heartland and Kinnevik. Alongside these investors, a press release by the company cited other ‘existing investors contributed to the round’.
Founded in 2015, Lunar claims it is a bank, a financial technology company, a wealth management platform, a payment solution, an investment toolbox, a business accelerator all-in-one.
Lunar previously closed a Series D-2 extension round on $77m back in November last year, alongside the launch of a new cryptocurrency service.
This funding round was raised at a $2bn valuation, according to a report from TechCrunch.
Operating throughout the Nordic countries, Lunar currently has 500,000 retail customers and 15,000 business customers.
Alternative investment intelligence WealthTech Canoe Intelligence nets $25m
Canoe Intelligence, which provides alternative investment intelligence, has secured $25m in its Series B funding round.
The investment round was led by F-Prime Capital with contributions also coming from Eight Roads Ventures and other unnamed strategic investors.
With the funds, Canoe hopes to bolster its expansion into European markets, hire more staff, enhance its product offerings, develop new data products and bolster its core platform.
Canoe offers alternative investment firms the ability to streamline their data management processes. This means they can reduce the time and costs associated with collecting and reconciling documents, and enabling them to act on the information they need to make more informed investment decisions.
The platform leverages AI and machine learning technology to automatically collect and categorise documents from investor portals and email inboxes. It can also extract, validate and deliver clean data to downstream systems, removing the need for manual data entry.
Its services are used by institutional investors, capital allocators, wealth managers and asset servicing firms. The company grew its client base by over 200% in 2021 and maintained the pace in 2022, it said.
Digital banking platform Oxygen secures $20m
Digital banking platform Oxygen has secured $20m in its Series B funding round, which was led by return investors.
With the fresh capital, Oxygen will bolster the investment into product development and user experience. It also plans to hire more staff to meet rising demands.
Y Combinator, 1984.vc, Rucker Park and Possible Ventures were among the investment firms to join the Series B. Multiple notable angel investors also committed capital, including all-time NFL great Larry Fitzgerald, Deutsche Bank Global CEO Frank Strauss, Plaid co-founder William Hockey and Teachable founder and CEO Ankur Nagpal.
In addition to the Series B, Oxygen announced the appointment of David Rafalovsky as CEO. As part of this, Rafalovsky has become a major equity shareholder.
He takes over the role from Oxygen founder Hussein Ahmed, who will now serve as chief product officer.
Oxygen is a flexible, all-in-one digital banking service for consumers and small businesses. It also claims to be the first and only US neobank to launch for both the consumer and small businesses.
Canadian WealthTech Conquest Planning raises CAD 24m ($17.9m) for international growth
Canadian WealthTech Conquest Planning, a technology developer on a mission to modernise financial planning through customised advice, has raised CAD 24m ($17.9m) in its Series A round.
Fidelity International Strategic Ventures served as the lead investor, with commitments also coming from existing capital partners Portage. Also joining the Series A round were first time Conquest backers BNY Mellon and Royal Bank of Canada.
With the funds, the company plans to bolster its user experience, and bolster its expansion in key markets, such as the UK and US.
Fidelity will help accelerate Conquest’s penetration of the UK market, while Portage will help to drive strong relationships, and grow locally and internationally. BNY Mellon will help Conquest foster a stronger strategic foothold in the US.
Canada-based Conquest Planning was founded in 2018 to bridge the gap between investor expectations and the technology experiences available to them. The Conquest platform simplifies the financial planning process for advisors and makes personalised planning accessible for all consumers.
Conquest claims that as recently as 2019 advisors were spending an average of 10 hours creating each financial plan. The FinTech platform helps reduce this by supplying advisors with an AI-strategic advice manager that allows them to build flexible plans quickly and with accuracy.
These plans can be tailored and modelled to a client’s changing life circumstances, objectives, priorities and risk tolerances. The Conquest platform also helps advisors and consumers understand the impact of holistic financial decisions.
Cross-border payments FinTech Tazapay nets $16.9m
Tazapay, a cross-border payments company, has raised $16.9m in its Series A funding round, which was led by Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia.
Other commitments came from EscapeVelocity, PayPal Alumni Fund and angel investor Gokul Rajaram, which all made their first investment into Tazapay. Existing backers of Tazapay, Foundamental, January Capital, RTP Global and Saison Capital, also participated in this round.
With the funds, the company hopes to scale its business across Asia and expand into other regions where there are rising demands for its platform. These regions include the Middle East and Europe.
As part of this expansion, Tazapay will seek payment licences in major markets that would grow its payment network.
The cross-border payments company is also enhancing its core capabilities and adding more local payment methods to better serve the growing list of verticals, including cross-border e-commerce, education technology, Software-as-a-Service and travel.
Tazapay, which is based in Singapore, is a digital payment platform that supports cross-border transactions. Its full-stack payment solution includes cards and local payment methods.
It stated that the advent of open banking and the maturing of real-time payments networks, such as the PayNow services in Singapore and Unified Payments Interface in India, has increased the customer demand for real-time payments.
Investment platform Moonfare caps Series C extension at $15m
Moonfare, a digital private equity investment platform, has capped the extension of its Series C investment round at $15m.
With the extension of the Series C financing round, Moonfare has welcomed 7 Global Capital as an institutional investor. 7GC is a leading cross-border venture capital firm investing in capital-efficient internet and consumer technology companies.
Following this recent capital raise, it brings the total amount of funding raised to over $130m.
Moonfare makes it possible for qualified individual investors to invest in top-tier private equity and venture capital funds from firms like KKR, Carlyle, EQT and Insight Partners at low minimums and via a fast and user-friendly digital experience.
The company increased its assets under management by almost 60% to over $2.3bn in the 12 months to end December 2022.
In this same period, the number of Moonfare investors grew by 40% to 3,393 and the community of registered users more than doubled to over 48,000.
To meet this growth in demand, Moonfare has increased the funds offered on its platform from 40 to 69 (up 73%) and entered into two new asset classes, Impact and Philanthropy.
Car IQ nets $15m to bolster its integrated vehicle payments tool
Car IQ, a provider of vehicle payments, has exceeded its Series B target, closing the round on $15m.
Forte Ventures served as the lead investor to the round. Other commitments came from existing backers State Farm Ventures, TELUS Ventures and Avanta Ventures, as well as new strategic investors Visa, Bridgestone, Navistar and Circle K.
With the capital, the company hopes to accelerate the expansion of its Car IQ platform to meet the rising demand from customers and merchants. It also plans to add new commerce categories, including electric vehicle charging, repairs, registration and insurance.
Founded in 2016, Car IQ offers machine identity verification that allows vehicles to directly connect with banks and service providers, without needing the use of physical credit cards.
Through this solution, Car IQ Pay, commercial fleets can pay for fuel, tolls, and parking by leveraging vehicle data to automate the payment process. Fleets would be able to better manage spending, develop unique insights and reduce fraud.
Car IQ Pay is used at over 21,500 fuel stations nationwide including Shell, Sunoco and others across the US.
Mobile application protection startup Build38 nets €13m ($13.9m)
Build38, which develops mobile application protection solutions, has raised €13m in its Series A funding round.
France-based investor Tikehau Capital led the round through its European Cybersecurity Growth Fund. Existing Build38 investors, eCAPITAL Entrepreneurial Partners and Caixa Capital Risc, also joined the Series A round.
Build38 highlighted that a mobile phone user can have an average of 40 applications installed on their device. With over 70% of digital commerce taking place on mobile, the need for mobile protection is imperative.
Malicious actors are using popular app stores to create and spread fake, malware-infused and fraudulent applications to unwitting users globally, it said.
This is why Build38 was built, with its zero-trust 360-degree approach to securing mobile applications. One of its flagship solutions is the Trusted Application Kit, which is designed to integrate into any Android or iOS mobile app during the development phase and shield it.
Its technology boasts varying layers of security, providing organisations with endpoint protection, mobile application firewalls and AI-powered threat intelligence for fraud and attack prevention.
Additional features of the platform include allowing organisations to create self-defending mobile applications for any smartphone and comply with regulations, such as PCI, eIDAS, SSI and MPoC.
Over the past year, Build38 has increased its presence in APAC and doubled its size and revenue.
With the fresh capital, the CyberTech will expand its global customer reach and mobile partner ecosystem. It will also hire more staff for its sales and marketing teams. Finally, funds will be used to add new threat intelligence analytics and AI capabilities to its platform.
Its clients include Verimi, Minesec, Netcetera, Coppernic, Chang’an Auto, Republic Bank of Ghana, Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen and others.
Electric vehicle lender Turno closes doors on Series A round
India-based Turno, which provides loans to buy electric vehicles, has reportedly raised $13.8m for its Series A funding round.
B Capital and Quona Capital served as the lead investors to the round, according to a report from VCCircle. Other commitments came from existing investors Stellaris Venture Partners and Avaana Capital, as well as first-time backers Alteria Capital and InnoVen Capital.
With the capital, Turno hopes to bolster its technology and scale its operations.
This investment comes shortly after the company raised $3.1m in funding to support its launch out of stealth. The company had been operating in stealth from April 2022 and launched publicly in July.
Investors to the round included Stellaris Venture Partners, Avaana Capital and multiple angel investors.
Turno is a lender to help individuals buy electric vehicles for their business. It offers a variety of financing options, with instant approvals and buy back guarantees.
Cyber awareness platform Riot lands $12m
Riot has bagged $12m in a Series A funding round to iterate on its all-in-one cyber awareness platform for firms and their employees, according to TechCrunch.
TechCrunch said that the startup originally focused on fake phishing campaigns. It now also offers customized educational content that can help grow the cybersecurity culture in a team.
The funding round was led by Base10 and saw participation from angel investors such as Duolingo’s co-founder Severin Hacker and Snyk’s founder Guy Podjarny. Y Combinator, Funders Club and Founders Future also took part.
The main interface of Riot is a chatbot called Albert. It is available on Slack, Microsoft Teams or through a web interface. Each course is interactive and the content changes dynamically depending on each employee’s cybersecurity knowledge.
Instead of giving a general definition of a data breach, Riot starts by telling you that your email address can be found in five different data breaches. When the company then tells you what it means, you are more likely to pay attention and reach the end of the training. Admins can then track the progress of their teams.
Riot can also encourage employees to activate two-factor authentication on important services. Many hackers also rely on LinkedIn data to find out who you are working with and send a message using some co-worker’s name.
Feel-good finance app Fierce emerges from stealth with $10m
Fierce, a “feel-good finance app” helping its users earn high-yield returns across all their financial assets, has emerged from stealth with $10m seed funding.
Institutional investors Pendrell, AP Capital, Wheelhouse Digital Studios, Space Whale Capital and several notable angel investors participated in the funding round.
Fierce, which has launched its app available for iOS, is on a mission to empower users to take charge of their finances with confidence by reducing the friction most people face in the current landscape of fractured spot-solutions.
The FinTech was founded and built by a team of industry veterans, including executives from several US stock exchanges, neo-banks, traditional banks, and crypto platforms.
Prior to founding Fierce in mid-2021, CEO and founder Rob Cornish was the CIO of the New York Stock Exchange, the CIO of the International Securities Exchange, and the CTO of Gemini Trust Company.
According to Fierce, today’s financial market is abundant with solutions, but navigating through various opportunities can feel disjointed and overwhelming for the average person.
Fierce intends to use the funds to grow its team, acquire more customers, and further its goal of bringing the benefits of the app to as many people as possible.
Unique to the company’s offerings is the Fierce Cash account, an FDIC-insured checking account that earns an industry-leading current rate of up to 4.25% APY, where cash is available 24/7 via a no-fee debit card with access to over 55,000 fee-free ATMs. Unlike other offerings, Fierce does not charge monthly fees or impose restrictions that lock up your cash in order to access top-tier rates.
The Fierce Rewards Credit Card will also launch later this year with 1.5% cash back on all spending
Blockchain intelligence platform Elementus snares $10m
Elementus, a blockchain intelligence platform aimed at helping financial institutions and crypto exchanges, has raised $10m in its Series A-1 round.
Crypto-native investment firm ParaFi Capital served as the lead investor.
The blockchain intelligence has earmarked the fresh funds for hiring and new product development.
Elementus had a strong 2022. Some of its highlights include more than tripling its valuation from $52m to $160m and doubling the size of its team.
It was also selected by the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors of Celsius Network and of BlockFi as blockchain intelligence and forensics expert in two of the most high-profile crypto bankruptcies, it said.
Elementus’ blockchain intelligence platform covers three core areas, data intelligence, crypto investigations, and digital asset risk and compliance.
For data intelligence, users can visualise insights from unstructured data across the entire blockchain and extract actionable market intelligence to reduce operational risk, maintain compliance and create business value.
The crypto investigations tool offers easy to understand dashboards to show where money comes from, where it goes and who it is attributed to. Finally, its digital asset risk and compliance technology supports firms with their AML and KYC processes.
Its technology is also used by US governmental agencies to solve ransomware investigations. Its technology can probe on-chain activities, identify risk and discover valuable market intelligence, it said.
Industrial cybersecurity firm Opscura lands $9.4m Series A
Opscura, an industrial control systems cybersecurity company, has scored $9.4m in a Series A funding round.
According to Security Week, Opscura is a new brand and the company has a new global management team. Co-founders of Enigmedia Gerard Vidal and Carlos Tomás will serve as CTO and VP of engineering respectively, while David Hatchell will serve as Opscura’s CEO.
The funding round was led by Anzu Partners and saw participation from Mundi Ventures and Dreamit. The capital will be used to aid the firm’s growth and expansion in the US.
Opscura protects and connects industrial networks with easy-to-use innovations that are safe to use deep within operational infrastructure.
Validated by global partners such as Schneider Electric, Opscura reduces operational risks by protecting vulnerable legacy industrial assets and data, eliminating deep-level attacker footholds, and enriching threat visibility data.
The company says its solutions enable organizations to gain deep OT visibility, provide access control capabilities between IT and OT networks, provide protection for critical legacy endpoints, and help reduce the OT attack surface.
Opscura added that its solutions are designed to complement the offerings of companies such as Nozomi Networks, Claroty and Fortinet.
The firm claims to have customers in the transportation, renewable energy, government, manufacturing and chemical sectors.
Digital payment platform Kasheesh welcomes star-studded funding round
Kasheesh, which claims to be a first-to-market digital payment platform, has increased its total capital raised to $8.5m, with backing from high-profile investors.
Its backers include Grammy Award-winning rapper Lil Baby, Snowfall actor Damson Idris, The h.wood Group co-founder John Terzian and Super Bowl winner Odell Beckham Jr and his business partner Ajay Sangha.
The firm has also attracted investment firms, including Tribe Capital and Anthemis.
In line with the funding, the digital payment platform has hired more staff. This includes a new head of partnerships.
The team is also looking to bolster its consumer education efforts through its Finance Academy platform.
Kasheesh is a digital payment platform that allows anyone to split payment for online purchases across multiple combinations of debit and credit cards.
The team believes that consumers should have tailored financing options on purchases, rather than being forced to pick one source of available funds. Its free, web-based browser extension aims to help US-based consumers reduce cost burdens on individual cards, sustainability building credit scores and card rewards, and maximising privacy through auto-generation of a new encrypted VISA or Mastercard card number to use per purchase.
Launched in 2022, Kasheesh built a transaction engine that can instantly check and charge the account balances of the underlying cards before funding purchases, removing the exposure to credit risk.
Email impersonation prevention startup Sendmarc nets $7m to grow team
South Africa-based Sendmarc, which protects against email impersonation, has reportedly raised $7m in its Series A round, as it looks to expand its team globally.
Altantica Ventures served as the lead investor, according to a report from TechCrunch. Other commitments came from Allan Gray, E-Squared Ventures, Fireball Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, 4Di Capital, Endeavor Harvest, Alpha Private Capital and Kalon Venture Partners.
With the funds, Sendmarc will increase its sales team across Africa, Europe, the US and Latin America.
Founded in 2020 by Sam Hutchinson, Keith Thompson and Sacha Matulovich following the sale of their former startup Everlytics. The former company allowed businesses to send, deliver and track email and SMS messages.
Through Sendmarc, the founders hoped to solve email impersonation issues their former clients faced.
Its platform helps stop criminals from sending emails through a company’s domain and protects customers, employees and suppliers.
The company claims to protect customers from impersonation by locking down their email domains and monitoring them for attempted abuse.
Its chief strategy officer Sacha Matulovich told TechCrunch that its tech is based on email authentication methods such as Sender Policy Framework and the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance. These are global email security standards that protect domains against spoofing, and used by major companies including Google, Meta and Microsoft.
Singaporean super wallet Cenoa bags $7m
Cenoa, which stylises itself as a borderless super wallet, has raised $7m in its seed round to support market expansion.
The investment was led by San Francisco-based venture capital firm Quiet Capital and Boston-based investor Underscore VC.
Other commitments came from Human Capital, Ulu Ventures, Acrew Capital and Collective Spark.
This capital will allow Cenoa to expand its operations in existing and new markets across Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia and Europe. Other plans are to add US Dollar-based debit cards and instant money transfer to its product suite within the next 18 months.
Finally, funds will be used to hire staff across various departments, including product development and engineering.
Based in Singapore, Cenoa is a borderless and non-bureaucratic way to access a digital dollar product without any fees and earn an inflation-resistant yield.
It added that as the US dollar is at its strongest in 20 years and emerging markets setting the highest USD saving demand, Cenoa’s non-custodial wallet can help users make their assets devaluation-proof and increase savings growth.
Tenable backs supply chain security firm Lineaje in seed raise
Lineaje, a software supply chain security management firm, has scored $7m in a seed funding round led by Tenable Ventures.
The round also includes participation from a range of other industry-leading executives and cyber technology companies including Dreamit Ventures, Veear Capital and Richard Clarke’s Belltower Fund Group.
The new injection of capital comes at a pivotal time as the company also announces SB0M360, a first-of-a-kind software supply chain management solution, as well as a new distribution partnership with Persistent Systems.
Lineaje’s technology helps organisations secure their complete software supply chain whether they build, buy, or use software. Lineaje’s unique approach can determine the components of all software and expose each component’s multi-level dependency chain. Its cutting-edge fingerprinting technology can attest to the authenticity of the entire supply chain, eliminating supply chain compromises.
Lineaje’s flagship product, SBOM360, is the industry’s first software supply chain and software bill of materials (SBOM) manager. Customers can manage the software supply chain of all software – built or bought by a company.
According to Lineaje, Tenable Ventures is working with Lineaje to create shareable data models so that software supply chain data can create better runtime security that comprehends and secures built-in weaknesses in deployed software.
With the new funding, Lineaje will accelerate its go-to-market strategy, invest in continued R&D, and expand its workforce.
Yellow scores $5m loan to boost solar solutions access in Africa
Oikocredit, a social impact investor, has deployed a $5m loan into Yellow, a pay-as-you-go off-grid solar solutions and appliances provider.
With the funds, Yellow hopes to increase access to electricity to around 89,000 households in Sub-Saharan Africa. The funds will allow it to support low-income people in Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia to access clean energy and move towards the ownership of off-grid solar products.
Yellow stated that access to renewable electricity will help households improve their living standards and increase their earning potential.
Based in South Africa, Yellow offers smart finance and solar and digital technology solutions.
Since its inception in 2018, Yellow has sold over 300,000 energy devices and helped improve the lives of over 1.5 million people, it said. Furthermore, renewable energy generated through its solar home systems has avoided approximately 442,671 metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent by replacing kerosene lanterns and diesel generators.
UK-based FinTech kennek raises $4.5m to streamline operations for lenders
UK-based FinTech kennek, which aims to streamline operations for lenders, has raised $4.5m in its pre-seed round.
The round was led by Dutch Founders Fund, ffVC and Plug and Play Ventures.
Founded in 2021 by Thibault Lancksweert, Edmund Parsons and Xavier De Pauw, kennek aims to solve two major pain points. The first is the operational scalability for lenders and investors, and the second is efficient funding of credits.
Having decades of experience within the credit sector, the company’s founders noted that the alternative lending sector was largely reliant on manual workflows and data stored in spreadsheets.
These inefficiencies mean lenders struggle to access funding from institutional investors, which need reliable and connected data, and robust and scalable processes. The ultimate goal of kennek is to establish a scalable and robust lending infrastructure that is accessible to everyone and can facilitate more funding to flow into the real economy.
To solve the problems, kennek has built an end-to-end operating system that streamlines operations for lenders, credit investors, corporates and servicers in the alternative credit sector. Users can manage their risks, control their data, scale operations and access funding.
It also boasts a marketplace for funding of loans and loan portfolios. Here, its operating system reconnects all the relevant parties in lending.
During its first year of trading, the FinTech has hired 20 staff and launched a plug-and-play operating system that caters for a broad variety of lenders and credit products. Its clients span SME loans, R&D credit and Commercial Real Estate.
Danish FinTech Mazepay raises €4m ($4.2m) in growth funding
Danish FinTech platform Mazepay, which aims to simplify procurement and B2B payments, has raised €4m in growth funding.
Scale Capital, a technology-focused investor, served as the lead backer. Other commitments came from Hambro Perks and Outward VC.
This investment will allow Mazepay to expand across Europe.
Founded in 2018, Mazepay helps medium and large-scale enterprises to manage all B2B spending through a compliant global ecosystem. It claims this will reduce long-tail spend problems that are caused by managing thousands of suppliers and tens of thousands of invoices.
The company’s payment solution is integrated within the Mastercard ICCP (In Control Commercial Payments) which is connected with over 70 banks globally.
Its clients include Polestar, Orsted, Advania, Better Collective, Configit and Sweco. Additionally, it has partnerships with AirPlus International, Nordea, and SEB Kort.
SalesRiver bags $3.95m to serve insurance and financial services industries
SalesRiver, an enterprise sales enablement platform for distributed sales teams, has raised $3.95m in Series A funding.
The round was led by Mucker Capital.
SalesRiver is a sales enablement platform serving a range of industries including all forms of insurance, mortgage, financial services, real estate, and home services.
The platform aims to expand organisational capabilities in four areas of the sales process: customer acquisition, lead and call routing, performance insights, and sales team management.
Most noteworthy are SalesRiver’s intelligent lead and call routing based on flexible criteria, granular sales performance visibility within team hierarchies, and management of funding allocations throughout those hierarchies to improve marketing ROI at scale. All of this functionality is housed within a private-labeled platform branded uniquely to each customer.
Leadrilla, which was founded in 2019 and currently serves over 20,000 licensed insurance agents in the US, is powered by the SalesRiver platform. As Leadrilla continues to serve new and existing customers, SalesRiver is bringing its all-in-one software solution to enterprises around the globe.
Japanese FinTech Habitto secures $3.9m
Habitto, a Japan-based firm looking to alter money habits through a mobile bancassurance platform, has scored $3.9m in a pre-Series A.
The round was co-led by Saison Capital and Cherubic Ventures. It also saw participation from DG Daiwa Ventures, GMO Ventures, Kyokuto Securities, Epic Angels and discrete angel investors.
According to Finextra, this financing round follows an earlier seed round in which the company raised US$3.4 million in September 2021.
Habitto is a mobile, connected, relatable financial experience to action new money habits built by SJ Mobile Labs Japan
The company is looking to take on the financial anxiety that Japanese people face about the future. It offers connected savings, investment and life insurance products supported by financial advisors.
Vulnerability intelligence startup nets $3.2m
VulnCheck, a vulnerability intelligence startup, has raised $3.2m for its seed round.
The investment was led by Sorenson Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on software and security.
Also joining the round was In-Q-Tel, a non-profit venture capital firm aimed at companies building security solutions. Other backers included Lux Capital, and Aviso Ventures.
Several angel investors also joined the round, including Open Raven co-founder Dave Cole and Pangea founder Oliver Friedrichs.
With the fund, VulnCheck hopes to hire more staff, as well as enhance the capabilities of its technology.
Founded in 2021, helps enterprises, government agencies and cybersecurity solution providers improve their security through real-time vulnerability intelligence autonomously correlated with unique proprietary exploit and threat intelligence.
Based in Boston, the company has three core products. These are VulnCheck Vulnerability Intelligence, a commercial alternative to the NIST National Vulnerability Database. It claims the tool includes more data, fields, sources, exploit and remediation intelligence, and provides data weeks earlier.
Its second solution is VulnCheck Exploit Intelligence, which helps organisations track all of the world’s exploit proof-of-concept code, exploited in-the-wild information, and exploit metadata, including timelines, to focus remediation resources on the right vulnerabilities.
The final tool is VulnCheck Initial Access Intelligence. This solution provides organisations with detection artifacts, such as Snort or Suricata signatures, YARA rules, PCAPs, and private exploit PoCs, to defend against initial access vulnerabilities, recently exploited or likely to be soon.
Speaking on the deal, Sorenson Ventures venture partner Tony Spinelli said, “VulnCheck’s superpower is its ability to discover vulnerability intelligence that other solutions are unable to access, acquire, and have no ability to find – which is the key to security since you can’t secure what you don’t know about.
Compliance firm Dotfile lands €2.5m ($2.6m)
Dotfile, a French compliance operating system supporting FinTech and regulated firms to verify their customers, has scored €2.5m in seed funding.
The round was led by V13 INVEST with participation from Kima Ventures, Pareto Holdings, Super Capital, Upscalers, Polymatter Ventures. Several startup founders also took part.
According to FinSME, Dotfile helps organisations automate customer approval and fraud detection so they can onboard clients faster and save on operational costs, while shielding them from legal, financial and reputational risks.
The compliance solution is integrated with leading financial databases, business registries, AML providers and fraud prevention APIs. Customers can mix and match data sources and configure custom decision rules without coding.
Dotfile intends to use the funds to accelerate the development of its compliance platform, expand its team and expand into new markets.
The company intends to use the funds to accelerate the development of its compliance platform, expand its team and expand into new markets.
With the new funding, Dotfile will continue to develop its platform, leveraging an API-centric approach to allow customers to integrate verification capabilities into their own systems. The company also plans to invest in analytics capabilities and to double its workforce by the end of the year.
Spanish PayTech Snab nets €1.1m ($1.1m)
Snab, a PayTech platform that allows payments and transfers between firms in one click, has bagged €1.1m in its funding round.
The transaction was finalised with the accelerator YCombinator, where firms such as Coinbase, Dropbox and Airbnb were born.
The round also saw participation from 4Founders Capital, Glenfarne Group and business angels such as Kantox’s founder and the Spanish startup Belvo’s founders.
Snab is a B2B payments and cash management platform in Europe that enables one-click transfers and payments without the need for manual data entry.
The firm simplifies, automates and digitizes treasury management for small and medium-sized businesses through a unique cloud-based solution that enables companies to automate and digitize the entire end-to-end payment flow.
Snab claims it makes it possible to automate bill payments and collection by turning a tedious experience into an experience of a few clicks. In addition, users can connect their bank accounts to monitor them in real-time in one dashboard to have a consolidated view of the business thus facilitating cash management.
Its solution is capable of automating, digitising, and simplifying a company’s entire payment and collection cycle through a single cloud-based solution that allows companies to manage their cash flow from a single place securely and simply.
VAT compliance startup Staxxer bags €1m ($1m)
Staxxer, a Netherlands-based platform for VAT compliance in e-commerce, has reportedly raised €1m in funding.
The investment capital was supplied by the Development Agency for the Northern Netherlands, G-Force Capital, Dwarfs CEO Demian Beenakker and Whoppah CFO Martijn Leenaerts, according to a report from Silicon Canals.
With the funds, Staxxer plans to enhance its software and expand its services internationally, initially focusing on Denmark.
The VAT compliance company is also building practical financial tools to provide insight into sales.
Founded in 2021, Staxxer is a cloud-based automated VAT compliance software stack for e-commerce in Europe. Clients simply have to connect their marketplaces and webshops and the system can automate European VAT compliance. Its platform also provides direct insight into VAT due per country.
Alternative investment startup Darksquare preps for beta with £260k ($315k) round
Darksquare, an alternative investment startup, has reportedly raised £260,000 in a funding round backed by angel investors.
The round received commitments from 17 angel investors, as well as a Seedrs crowdfunding campaign, according to a report from BusinessCloud.
This capital will help Darksquare move ahead with its beta launch, which is set for mid-Q1.
In the beta, the alternative investment startup will select two or three investment products that have target yields around 12% annum. The asset classes will include distressed/special situations credit, forestry, renewable energy and/or real estate.
Darksquare enables access to unique investment opportunities which are typically left for hedge funds or the ultra-wealthy. Through the platform, investors can access renewables, real estate and special situations credit.
To unlock these assets to everyone, Darksquare works as a crowdfunder. The team selects investment products and each has a target investment threshold. Investors then pledge money towards their preferred products and when the target is reached, it will be added to their portfolio.
As for fees, Darksquare takes a 1% share of any investment.
Canada-based CyberTech Beauceron Security gets CIBC backing
Canada-based cybersecurity SaaS platform Beauceron Security has received a growth capital facility from CIBC Innovation Banking.
With the funds, Beauceron plans to build new features and products to help businesses reduce vulnerabilities to human-centric cyber risks.
The size of the investment was not disclosed.
Beauceron offers a platform that educates employees about security awareness and risk reduction.
Its platform helps organisations with cybersecurity awareness programs that teach them to make better decisions and reduce their cyber risk.
Last year, the Beauceron launched a new service to help organisations provide feedback to employees reporting suspicious emails. It claims that users have experienced a ‘significant’ increase in their employees reporting suspicious activity and a decrease of engagement with phishing emails.
The Canada-based cybersecurity SaaS company has raised a total of $4m in equity, to date. Its investors include BankTech Ventures, Independent Community Bankers of America, Mariner Partners and New Brunswick Innovation Foundation.
To see last week’s FinTech funding rounds, click here.
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