HighSpot hits $2.3bn valuation after Series E round

Highspot, the sales-enablement platform, closed $200m (£142) in Series E funding led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from new investor Bain & Company. The round included all existing investors: ICONIQ Growth, Madrona Venture Group, OpenView, Salesforce Ventures, Sapphire Ventures and Shasta Ventures. The round values Highspot at $2.3bn. Customers include DocuSign, John Deere and Nestle.

Monument builds £28m in Series A funding

Monument, a new digital bank with a focus on servicing property investors, raised over £28m in Series A funding. Monument plans to launch this summer. The bank will make property investment loans of up to £2m through its digital platform. So far, Monument has raised around £40m in funding.

Hubilo stages £17m Series A fundraise

Hubilo, a virtual events platform, raised £17m in Series A investment led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Balderton Capital. The funding comes after Hubilo’s £3.2m seed round in November and will be used to further expand its global customer base, acquire office space in London, grow its teams in the UK and Europe, and develop its platform.

Hiro respawns £11m investment in games studios

Hiro Capital, the London-based VC which invests in gaming and esports, has invested $15m (£11m) in three games developers: Snowprint Studios, Double Loop Games and Happy Volcano Games.

GoodBox taps £9m funding for charity donations tech

GoodBox closed a £9m funding round for its cashless charity donations tech, which enables donations to over 1,600 charities, including the Church of England, Christian Aid and Natural History Museum. Investors in GoodBox include tennis champion Andy Murray.

Pro Bono Economics estimates a £10bn funding shortfall for charities as a result of the pandemic as demand for services soar and funding dries up. GoodBox’s own data shows a 97 per cent decline in charitable giving from February to April 2020.

EQT Ventures helps plant £3.6m in TreeCard

EQT Ventures led a $5.1m (£3.6m) seed round for TreeCard, a London-based payment card which reforests every time you spend. SeedCamp and Episode 1 also participated in the round. The funding will be used to hire new fintech talent, support UK roll-out and expansion into the US and Europe. TreeCard is a wooden payment card using the MasterCard payment system.

Placense locates £3.5m funding round

Pi Labs joined an investment round led by Zero Gravity Capital for Placense, a location technology provider for retail, bringing its investment total to $5m (£3.5m). Other investors were Future Energy Ventures by EON, Nielsen and Blue Minds. Placense’s clients include Cushman & Wakefield.

Laundryheap cleans up with £2.5m Series A round

Laundryheap, the laundry and dry cleaning platform, raised $3.5m (£2.5m) in Series A funding in a round led by Sova VC. SidebySide Partnership also took part in the round. This was Sova VC’s second investment after investing $2.5m in the Series B round of translation platform Smartcat. Sova VC launched in December 2020 with plans to invest over €50m in building a portfolio of more than 20 early stage technology companies. Laundryheap plans to use the money to expand in the US and across the Middle East.

Delta Fund closes up £2.2m investment in spinal surgery tech firm Axis

ACF Investors’ Delta Fund has made its first investment, leading a £2.2m funding round for med-tech start-up Axis Spine Technologies. Mercia’s EIS funds joined the round with follow-on funding for Axis, which creates spinal implants for spinal surgeons to use. Delta Fund launched in January to invest £30m in start-ups.

Wukr seeds with over £1m of start-up cash

Wukr, a start-up virtual workspace platform, raised over £1m in seed funding led by Hindustan Media Ventures (£700,000) and £188,000 raised through Seedrs crowdfunding. Angel investor Yan van der Velde invested £100,000 through Seedrs plus an additional £100,000. The company also raised debt as part of the seed round.

RLC Ventures experiences Alloxcentric

Alloxentric, the Latin American AI-driven customer experience start-up, has raised in a seed round of $275,000 (£194,689) led by London-based investment fund RLC Ventures.

Finexos banks third funding round

Finexos, the UK-based fintech which uses AI to help financially vulnerable customers manage high-interest credit, closed a third round of funding. The Government Future Fund supported the round. Since October 2017, Finexos has raised £1.15m in investment.

Further reading

Deals of the week February 15 to February 19 – Growth Business roundup