Germany: Flagship Founders, the first European venture studio focused on maritime technologies, logistics and shipping, has closed its €3.5 million funding round. The round is led by Hamburg-based shipping company F. Laeisz. and complemented by Starthub Ventures and Flagship Founders' founding partner Auerbach Schifffahrt. In addition, several business angels are investing, including Jürgen Ringbeck and Philipp Ahrenkiel.

UK-based Legislate has added $3.6M in funding in a round led by Parkwalk Advisors, with participation from Oxford Capital and several high-profile angel investors. Using its patented knowledge graph technology, Legislate provides companies with ontologies of legal terms, allowing anyone in the business to semantically search for information across an entire database of contracts. The company, which until now has focused on creating a solution for startups and scaleups, is using the funds to double down on UK sales and prepare for international expansion in 2023.

OION Angels has invested in the latest £1.5 million funding round of Arma Karma, the award-winning monthly insurance subscription company which has been a part of the Oxford Innovation ecosystem since 2019, when it took up residency with Oxford Innovation Space in the Colchester Innovation Centre Knowledge Gateway.

Chris Morling, one of the UK's most successful tech entrepreneurs and the CEO and co-founder of Online Education Agency Studee, has personally invested £16.5m into an innovative new service that blends technology, marketing automation and human support to deliver pre-assessed applications from international students to universities. 

The SABI has successfully closed its pre-seed investment round, securing €150,000 from a group of industry focused investors. 

Reskube Ltd, the British start-up responsible for an innovative remote-working resilience solution, has successfully raised £500,000 via a crowdfunding campaign. The company behind the Reskube, an always-on power and internet solution in a smart, portable box, will use the money to further enhance its product development and global distribution.

London-based clean heat technology start-up, Futraheat, has closed a £1.5 million seed round led by Clean Growth Fund, the UK cleantech venture capital fund. The new investment, Futraheat’s first equity raise, will be used to accelerate product development and commercialisation of its heat pump technology as well as to grow Futraheat’s team.  Prior to the seed round, investment had been received from Angel investors to match government grant funding.

Tim Pryce chair of biomaterial start-up Cellexcel, looks at how to get a business from the Univeristy R&D lab into the commercial world.

Dorset Business Angels is gearing up for its next pitch event on 17th April where a number of exciting businesses will be pitching for investment from DBA members.  

In 2022, Finnish angels invested €37 million in 248 growth companies, says the latest study conducted by the Finnish Business Angels Network (FiBAN), collecting answers from 450 private investors out of FiBAN's 670 members. 7% of FiBAN members’ investments were made outside of Finland. The most popular countries were Estonia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

Within a year after its first funding, Connect Earth closes a $5.6 million seed round to grow its API-first environmental data offering that drives sustainable finance. The round was led by Gresham House Ventures with participation from Love Ventures, Global Brain and its CVC partner The Norinchukin Bank, Portfolio Ventures, Super Capital and strategic angel investors. 

Finland: Carbonaide, a spin-out company from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland that enables the manufacturing of carbon-negative concrete, has raised €1.8 million in seed funding led by Lakan Betoni and Vantaa Energy. The round was completed with public loans and in-kind contributions from Business Finland and other Finnish concrete companies and strategic investors.