What happened in the startup ecosystem this week? 09

Startups, unlike traditional businesses, are established with the goal of rapid growth and often take risks and receive a large amount of investment. These investments are used to accelerate the growth of the business and they often develop projects that focus on technological innovation. However, the survival and growth of startups is often a challenging process.

Entrepreneurs have to constantly improve their product and business model, impress their customers and satisfy investors in order for their business to succeed. A successful startup is achieved with a team that believes in and is excited about its product, a business model that meets the needs of customers, and proper management of its financial resources. Building a startup therefore requires a great deal of risk and dedication, but can offer significant rewards when it succeeds. Let’s see what happened in the startup ecosystem this week.

Also See: Celestial AI Receives $100 Million Investment

Startups that received investment

Swave Photonics, a pioneer in true holography applications for augmented reality, today announced the successful completion of its seed round investment. Swave received an additional €3 million in this round of investment, bringing its total funding to €10 million.  Click for more information.

Berlin-based ocean cleanup organisation platform CleanHub has raised $7 million in a new round of funding led by Lakestar and Integra Partners. Click for more information.

US chipmaker Micron has announced that it will invest $825 million to build a semiconductor assembly and test facility in India. Click for more information.

Captions raised $25 million in an investment round led by Kleiner Perkins with existing investors Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and SV Angel. Click for more information.

Apex, a startup planning to mass-produce satellite buses, has raised $16 million to also fund the development of its first large-scale factory. Click for more information.

Supercritical, the regulated carbon-cleaning marketplace that helps businesses achieve net zero, announced it has raised $13 million in Series A financing led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Click for more information.

Logistics startup Colonia Technologies has closed a seed financing round with EUR 6 million. The funding round was led by London-based Octopus Ventures, a London VC backing Flock, Kita and Delio. Click for more information.

Turkish mobile application Easyapp was developed by Taptoweb Information Technologies Inc. It went on a crowdfunding round through Fonangels. It received 19.6 million TL investment. Click for more information.

Celestial AI, founded several years ago by David Lazovsky and Preet Virk, announced that it has raised $100 million in a Series B round led by IAG Capital Partners, Koch Disruptive Technologies and Temasek’s Xora Innovation fund. Click for more information. 

What’s new this week

Crypto and stock trading app Robinhood has taken a new step to diversify its business portfolio by acquiring credit card startup X1 in a $95 million deal. X1, a fintech firm, offers free trial and single-use credit cards, as well as an income-based rewards credit card. The deal is expected to be completed by the end of September, Robinhood said in a statement on 22 June, adding that the acquisition is an “important step” towards a deep relationship with its existing customers. Click for more information.

A team of researchers from Imperial College London and The Empa Research Institute are working to build a fire-resistant drone. The new drone, designed to survive for long periods of time in a raging fire, could provide vital reconnaissance services for firefighters. Called the ‘FireDrone’, the currently experimental drone is said to withstand temperatures of 392 ºF (200 ºC) for at least 10 minutes. Click for more information.

It’s not just investors looking to snap up hot tech companies in the AI space, but these are also likely to spur a huge wave of M&A. Today, Databricks announced that it will pay $1.3 billion to acquire MosaicML, an open source startup with neural networks expertise that has built a platform for organisations to train large language models and deploy productive AI tools based on them. Prior to this, MosaicML had raised just under $64 million from investors including DCVC, AME Cloud Ventures, Lux, Frontline, Atlas, Playground Global and Samsung Next. Click for more information.