Unibuddy buddies up to £15m Series B round

Unibuddy, a peer-to-peer university recruitment platform, has raised $20m (£14.5m) in funding. The Series B round was led by Highland Europe with additional participation from Stride.VC. Unibuddy has raised $32m in total since its inception in 2017.

Toqio closes £7m seed round

Toqio, the white label fintech platform which helps any business create its own financial products, has raised an €8m (£6.9m) seed round. Seaya Ventures, Speedinvest and SIX FinTech Ventures all participated. Torqio makes it easier for any business to create financial products inhouse rather than outsourcing them to a developer. Existing clients include business banking service Wamo, alternative business lender Just Cashflow and new Spanish online bank Crealsa.

Gener8 generates £2.1m funding round

Angel investors including rapper Tinie Tempah, football legend Harry Redknapp and Dragons’ Den star Tej Lalvani have all participated in a £2.1m funding round for privacy web browser Gener8. The free-to-use web browser lets people take back control and earn from their online data. The latest investors join Peter Jones and Touker Suleyman, who won a hotly contested battle on Dragons’ Den to invest in the start-up following founder Sam Jones’s appearance on the show in April, which has been called “the best pitch ever.”

Investors step up for StepEx £1.1m pre-seed round

StepEx, the fintech student finance start-up, has raised a £1.1m pre-seed round. Investors included BBVA Anthemis Venture Partnership and Triple Point Ventures and angel investor Chris Adelsbach. The start-up offers to cover postgraduate, executive and technical education to those who cannot pay course fees upfront or secure loans. Students pay a percentage of their earnings for a fixed period of time once they finish their course and cross an agreed salary threshold.

ACF mounts Cavalry with £60,000 investment

Scene Group has closed a £60,000 seed round to develop its Cavalry 2D animation software. ACF Investors and mobile games entrepreneurs Paul Gouge and Alex Rigby, founders of Playdemic, led the round. Cavalry is a motion design animation app for creatives with a powerful engine that is a leap forward in 2D animation software, allowing real-time playback and data-driven content as well as a full suite of traditional animation tools.

Further reading

Deals of the week June 28 to July 2 – a GrowthBusiness roundup