What happened in the startup ecosystem this week? 22

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 Read: Finnish Startup Saidot Receives €1.75 Million Investment

Startups that received investment

Web3 startup IYK has raised $16.8 million in a seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto arm (A16z Crypto). 1kx, Collab Currency, Lattice Capital and Gmoney also participated in the round.  Click for more information.

AI Clearing, an AI-powered autonomous construction progress tracking and quality control platform, received investment led by Prudence.  Click for more information.

Unitary, a London-based startup working in the visual content moderation space, has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round. Click for more information.

Varsapp, which held its first investment round in September 2022, succeeded in realising a bridge investment round 1 year after the first investment round by doubling its valuation 4 times as a result of the positive developments in its metrics and technology within 1 year. Click for more information.

Electric Hydrogen (EH2) announced the successful completion of a $380 million Series C financing. Click for more information.

Habyt, a Berlin-based startup, has secured $42 million in a Series C funding round to expand its Airbnb-style platform for longer stays and flexible living arrangements. Click for more information.

NANO Corp, a French cybersecurity firm providing software-based network detection and response (NDR) solutions, has announced the completion of a €4.2 million seed round led by G+D Ventures with renewed confidence from Elaia Partners and participation from Cyber K1.  Click for more information.

Stoke Space, the startup that recently tested a prototype of the upper stage of a reusable rocket, has raised $100 million to continue development of this vehicle.  Click for more information.

Machina Labs, a company that combines artificial intelligence and robotics to rapidly manufacture advanced composite and metal products, has received $32 million in Series B financing. Click for more information.

Espoo-based Saidot is a Finnish AI governance startup with a platform that helps businesses and governments safely harness the benefits of AI. It has secured a €1.75 million round of seed funding led by Crowberry Capital, a startup capital firm based in Iceland and Denmark.  Click for more information.

This week's news

Turkish startup Ango.ai acquired by US iMerit! Ango.ai is an artificial intelligence (AI) powered data labelling platform based in Ankara. Ango.ai was founded in 2020 by Gökalp Urul and Gökhan Urul in Ankara. According to the news, it was acquired by iMerit, a leading US-based company in AI data solutions. However, the financial details of the deal have not yet been disclosed. Click for more information.

Visa announced plans to invest $100 million in companies developing productive AI technologies and applications that will “impact the future of commerce and payments”! The investments will be made through Visa Ventures, the card giant’s 16-year-old global corporate investment arm. The company claims that it has been “pioneering the use of artificial intelligence in payments” since 1993. For those who do not know. Generative AI is an emerging subset of artificial intelligence trained on existing large datasets to create text, images or other content when given text commands. Click for more information.

US-based Boomerangme, Turkey-based TYMY and UAE- based Pass24.online emerged victorious among over 100+ startup applicants at the EMERGE International tech conference, which took place in Istanbul on 2-3 October. Venture fund Contribution Capital will invest $1M in one of the selected startups after due diligence. Click for more information.