Future Fund: Breakthrough makes first life sciences investment
British Patient Capital has participated in a $156m (£117m) Series B round for cell therapy start-up Quell Therapeutics. The investment marks the first life sciences investment made through the £375m Future Fund: Breakthrough programme.
EQT Ventures leads £11m Timeless investment
EQT Ventures has led a €12m (£11m) funding round for German start-up Timeless, which enables users to buy fractional shares in luxury assets, such as classic cars, art and watches. Existing investors Porsche Ventures, C3 EOS VC and La Roca Capital followed on. Timeless wants to democratise ownership of luxury items as an asset class, which, despite showing 6 per cent annual compound growth since 1996, are simply unaffordable for most people.
British Business Investments gets folky with £7m backing
British Business Investments, a subsidiary of the state British Business Bank, has committed £7m to FOLK2FOLK, a peer-to-peer lender for rural and regional small businesses. FOLK2FOLK has arranged £488m of loans for regional smaller businesses since 2013.
Cerbos gets permission with £3m seed round
Cerbos, a London-based software startup helping tech companies manage user permissions more efficiently, has raised a $3.5 (£2.6m) million seed round. Crane led the funding round with with support from Earlybird Digital East, Seedcamp, 8-Bit Capital, Connect Ventures, OSS Capital, Acequia Capital, HelloWorld and Tiny.
Hinterview recruits Calculus for £3m Series A
Recruitment sector video software firm Hinterview has raised £3m in Series A funding led by Calculus Capital. To date, Hinterview has raised over £6m for its video technology, which has experienced soaring demand as the recruitment industry adapts to hybrid working. Recruiters including Korn Ferry, Harvey Nash and Impellam Group use Hinterview, which has been adopted by thousands of recruiters in more than 30 countries.
National MRI Scan scans £2m seed round
National MRI Scan has raised $2.5m (£1.9m) in seed funding for its proprietary technology, which reduces wait times for diagnostic imaging results. Britain faces record numbers of people waiting for MRI scan imaging with the number of people waiting more than three months for a scan being 22 times higher than in 2019. Waiting times for MRIs can now be cut from over six weeks to just seven days, using National MRI’s proprietary technology. Oxford Capital and health tech VC YZR led the seed round.
Mindstone sprouts £1.5m Seedrs crowdfunded raise
Mindstone, an online learning platform, has raised £1.45m through Seedrs, making it the largest edtech crowdfunding campaign to date. Investors include Moonfire Ventures founder Mattias Llungman, whose previous investments include unicorns Klarna and Viagogo. Impact investment fund Mustard Seed Maze also joined the round, as did US VC Scout Fund, Zanichelli Venture and Andrew Gault, founding partner of 7percent Ventures.
More Deals of the Week
Deals of the week Nov 22 to Nov 26 – a GrowthBusiness roundup
