Nauta Capital closes fifth fund at £141m

Nauta Capital, which has offices in London, Barcelona and Berlin, has closed its fifth fund at €190m (£141m). The B2B-focused VC has €550m of assets under management and has invested in over 60 early stage B2B tech companies in the UK, Spain, Germany and the Nordics. Nauta plans to invest in around 35 companies through the new its new fun, including 16 investments in pre-seed Deep Tech companies in trances of £100,000 to £250,000 each. Investors taking part in the fifth fund include British Patient Capital, ICO, the European Investment Fund, ICF and Germany-based KfW Capital. Nauta has invested in 11 companies to date across sectors including fintech, insurtech and retailtech at either seed or Series A stage.

Permutive closes £56m Series C fundraise

Permutive, which helps publishers use programmatic advertising in a targeted and audience-safe way, has raised $75m (£56m) Series C from SoftBank Vision Fund 2. It brings Permutive’s total raised to date to $105m, with existing investors EQT Ventures, Octopus Ventures and ACE & Co also participating. Clients for Permutive’s audience platform include News Corp, Hearst, BuzzFeed, Penske, The Guardian, Vox Media, Insider, Hubert Burda Media and Condé Nast International.

Scottish vertical farming tech grows £42m Series B

COFRA, the Swiss business group whose founders built retailer C&A, has led a £42.2m Series B funding round for Scottish vertical farming technology company Intelligent Growth Solutions. Other investors include Scottish publishing group DC Thomson and Chicago-based VC Cleveland Avenue. IGS designs and builds award-winning vertical farms for farmers and growers in food, pharmaceutical and fragrance markets around the world.

Nimbla gets nimble with £5.1m funding round

Fintech business insurance start-up Nimbla has closed a £5.1m funding round led by specialist US financial services VC Fin VC with participation from Barclays Bank. Nimbla enables businesses to insure against non-payment of invoices. To date, Nimbla has processed over 67m invoices worth £2.5bn.

UK companies added £1.9tn debt in 2020 to their balance sheets, taking the total amount outstanding to over £6.6tn in 2021 with half of UK businesses carrying “toxic debt” that may never be repaid.

Unlock unlocks £1.5m in seed funding

Unlock, whose software promotes team building among remote workers through games and teambuilding activities, has raised $2m (£1.5m) in a seed round. German VC La Famiglia led the round, with other investors including Kima Ventures, Antler, GuideStar Ventures and angel investors. Unlock says that CaaS (culture-as-a-service) is a new $300bn sector attracting a lot of investor interest as both remote working and competition to retain the best talent continues to grow. CaaS is a way for companies to create emotional attachment and loyalty among their teams, claims Unlock.

Voxboard finds voice with £317,000 pre-seed funding

QVentures has invested £317,000 pre-seed funding in Voxboard, an SaaS platform which helps dev teams, designers and engineers to develop new digital products and services.

Further reading

Deals of the week October 25-29 – a GrowthBusiness roundup