Seedtag tagged with £29m Series B round
Oakley Capital, the London-based VC, has led a $40m (£29m) Series B round for Seedtag, the contextual advertising company. Contextual advertising means ads that are placed on relevant websites, so home gym equipment on a personal fitness site, for example. Adara Ventures and All Iron Ventures also participated in the round.
Numan energises with £29m Series B round
Numan, the UK-based digital men’s sexual health platform, has raised $40m (£29m) in Series B funding round to fuel its expansion and meet growing demand. White Star Capital led the round with participation from existing investors Novator, Vostok New Global, Anthemis Exponential and Colle Capital, alongside new investor Hanwha Dream Fund.
accuRX gets £25m Series B injection
accuRx, the healthcare communications solution, has raised £25m Series B in a round led by Lakestar. Today accuRx is used by over 98 per cent of GP practices and delivered a vaccine-booking service, which has been used to administer over 21 million Covid-19 vaccinations to date. British Patient Capital, Latitude VS (sister fund to London-based seed investor LocalGlobe), Atomico, Trusted Insight and Encore Capital also participated in the round.
Tyk double-clicks on £25m equity round
Tyk, the London-based software management platform for enterprise-level businesses, has raised $35m (£25m) in a round led by new investor Scottish Equity Partners, alongside existing investor MMC Ventures. APIs are the sinews that connect what browsers see on the internet and those servers in the background.
Martin Buhr, CEO and co-founder of Tyk, said: “APIs are everywhere. Ordered a pizza online? You can thank APIs for that. Just applied for a credit card? That’s APIs from start to finish. The modern enterprise is at its core an API company, and those that want to survive are expanding their API ecosystems rapidly. With that growth comes an increasing need to manage, monitor and secure that complexity.
MyTutor finds £15m from investors led by SEEK
Tutoring platform MyTutor has closed a £15m funding round led by SEEK Investments of Australia alongside existing investors including Mobeus Equity Partners. The online tutor supports both disadvantaged students through its school programme and also offers private tuition. The platform’s 20,000 tutors have supported over 1,000 secondary schools, hundreds of thousands of parents, and delivered over two million lessons.
Vector.ai ships £11m Series A from US venture capital giant
Vector.ai, the London-based logistics software solution, has raised $15m (£11m) Series A to tackle the growing productivity crisis in the $199bn freight forwarding market. Bessemer Venture Partners, the US VC giant which invested in LinkedIn, Pinterest and Shopify, led the round. It is estimated that freight forwarders globally lose billions of hours due to manually inputting cumbersome and monotonous freight forwarding data. Vector.ai automates arduous tasks and processes necessary to move goods around the world on behalf of importers and exporters. In 2021 alone, Vector.ai has signed up several top-10 global freight forwarders, as well as tripling month-on-month revenue since the start of the year.
Lightyear streaks ahead with £7.2m seed round
Lightyear, the platform which enables Europe’s retail investors to invest globally without being hit with currency exchange fees, has raised another $8.5m (£6.2m) for its seed round. Mosaic Ventures led the round. This brings the total raised pre-launch to $10m, having only closed its first $1.5m angel-investor round months ago. Lightyear is the brainchild of ex-Wise duo Martin Sokk and Minhel Aamer, who want to do for investing what Wise did for currency exchange.
CattleEye spots £1.8m seed round
Belfast-based livestock monitoring technology firm CattleEye has closed a $2.5m (£1.8m) seed round led by Northern Ireland VC Techstart Ventures alongside Paris-based VC Seventure Partners and Amazon-backed Turntide Technologies. CattleEye uses machine-vision AI to detect lameness in dairy cows, the top syndrome impacting cattle production and welfare in the UK. The firm is preparing for commercial launch later this year and its technology is currently being used by a group of dairy farms along with UK retailers Tesco and Marks & Spencer.
Terry Canning, CEO of CattleEye said: “We are really excited to be bringing the very latest in deep learning and artificial intelligence technology to one of oldest industries in world, livestock farming.”
Embargo gets stamped with £830,000 angel investment
Embargo, the hospitality loyalty app, has raised $1.1m (£830,000) through angel investors in its latest funding round. More than 800 brands currently use Embargo including Crosstown Doughnuts, Notes Coffee and Bars and The Gentlemen Baristas – with 300 coming on board in the last 12 months alone. Embargo enables customers to collect loyalty stamps in their favourite restaurants, coffee shops and bars. However, it also gives hospitality brands insight into customers and offers a way to communicate with them.
