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Candela is flying high — and across the Atlantic.  The Swedish startup has secured $14mn, marking the close of its Series C round at a cosy $40mn. This puts its total funding at just shy of $90mn.  Candela has also sold its first P-12 ferry in the US, amid burgeoning demand for what is the world’s fastest and longest-range electric passenger vessel.  FlyTahoe, the company that will operate the service, will use the P-12 to shuttle tourists and locals across Lake Tahoe. This massive freshwater lake straddles the border of California and Nevada and is best known for its clear blue waters and nearby world-class ski resorts.  The 💜 of EU tech The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now! Candela’s ferry will run a north-south route across the lake at 25 knots (30 mph), halving travel times from an hour by car to just 30 minutes — minus the emissions.   “It’s ironic that while millions, myself included, drive around Lake Tahoe to admire its beauty, the road sediment we generate contributes to the largest threat to the lake’s famous cobalt blue clarity,” Ryan Meinzer, founder and CEO of FlyTahoe. Computer-controlled hydrofoils lift the P-12 above water, reducing drag and cutting energy use by 80% compared to regular boats. This also provides a smooth, silent ride unaffected by waves and winds.  Attracting over 15 million visitors annually, Lake Tahoe suffers from road congestion, worsened in winter by heavy snow and road closures. However, since the lake never freezes over, the P-12 can operate year-round, providing a quicker, cleaner alternative to driving.  Last month, Stockholm became the first city to adopt Candela’s ferry as part of its public transport system. The P-12 runs a 15km route from the suburb of Ekerö into the City centre, cutting a 55-minute commute in half.  Candela estimates 120 of its shuttles could replace Stockholm’s entire 35-strong fleet of diesel ferries. That’s a big investment, but CEO Gustav Hasselskog is bullish on the returns.  “Unlike a lot of green technologies, the cost is lower, it’s cheaper to run, and cheaper to maintain,” he told TNW when we visited the company’s headquarters earlier this year.  Powered by a fresh batch of funding, Candela’s is rushing to fulfil orders from New Zealand, Berlin, Saudi Arabia and now the US, as it prepares for its biggest phase of growth yet.  “Our technology offers a strong economic incentive to switch to zero-emission fleets while unlocking the potential for waterways to ease road congestion and enable multi-modal urban travel. This investment comes at a critical time for the planet,” said Hasselskog in a press release. SEB Private Equity, a global private equity investor, led the funding round, with participation from existing investors EQT Ventures and KanDela AB. Update (18:24AM CET, November, 2024): This article previously mentioned that the P-12 costs $1.7mn each. This figure is no longer accurate. source

London-based startup Lighthouse just raised a hefty $370mn from American investment giant KKR at a valuation of over $1bn, making it Europe’s latest unicorn tech company. The funding will supercharge the company’s ambitions to shake up the $15bn travel tech market. What’s on the to-do list? Refining its AI tools, expanding globally, and snapping up competitors through mergers and acquisitions (it has already made four). Lighthouse’s platform crunches over 400 terabytes of travel data every day, using AI to turn that ocean of info into bite-sized insights that help hotels make better business decisions. It includes data like how many people are booking rooms, when they’re booking, what they’re willing to pay, and how hotels compare to others in the same area. This data helps businesses understand the market, predict trends, and make decisions to increase bookings and revenue. The startup says its tools are used by over 70,000 hospitality providers in 185 countries, including big names like Holiday Inn, Radisson, and NH Hotel Group. It has more than 700 employees worldwide.  CEO Sean Fitzpatrick is pumped about what’s next. “I couldn’t be more energized by what we’re working towards. We’re just getting started in making hospitality data and tools more powerful, accessible, and affordable,” he said, adding that KKR’s investment will boost AI capabilities, pull in new data sets, and push the company deeper into the global market. The 💜 of EU tech The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now! Gino Engels and Matthias Geeroms founded Lighthouse in 2012. The company was originally called OTA Insight and started in Ghent, Belgium, before moving its HQ to London. Now, it has raised one of the largest rounds for any startup based in the British capital. For KKR, this is another notch in a long belt of tech growth bets. Since 2010, the firm has funnelled around $23bn into the sector. Stephen Shanley, KKR’s head of tech growth in Europe, called Lighthouse “the leading platform in this space,” praising its ability to serve everyone from boutique inns to multinational hotel chains. Back in 2021, Lighthouse raised $80mn in a Series B, with backers like Spectrum Equity and F-Prime Capital sticking around for this latest buy-in. source

Two years ago, the minds behind Testing for All — a Covid-era at-home testing service — launched a new startup. But instead of those dreaded antigen tests that make you feel like you’re trying to tickle your brain with a cotton swab, the company delivers something much more comforting: a trained nurse or doctor.  The London-based venture is called Heim Health. It works with the private sector and the NHS to match patients with the best practitioners in their area. Once paired, the platform uses algorithms borrowed from delivery apps to map the fastest routes and schedule the most convenient time for the appointment. Less time wasted in traffic means more patients seen per shift. And Heim even ensures any necessary equipment shows up before your nurse does.  “Specialist care is becoming increasingly bottlenecked, with waiting lists at an all-time high and discharge delays keeping patients in hospital longer than they need,” said Kelly Klifa, co-founder and CEO at Heim Health, and former founder of Testing for All (pictured top left).  “Our mission with Heim Health is to build the digital infrastructure needed to change this; revitalising community-based care and moving more healthcare from the hospital into the home through scalable modes of delivery.” Webinar: Unicorn DNA: The Blueprint for Scaling Success What does it take to build a unicorn? Top executives of unicorn companies reveal the mindset, strategies, and innovative thinking that propelled their companies to the top. During the height of the pandemic, Klifa launched Testing for All alongside James Monico. It was the UK’s only not-for-profit Covid testing service, delivering more than 1 million at-home tests. In 2022, the pair teamed up with entrepreneur Sasha Tory (pictured top right) to expand the concept to at-home healthcare.   Today, Heim Health announced it has raised £2.2mn (€2.5m) in seed funding. The round was led by Heal Capital and joined by Form Ventures, Portfolio Ventures and Houghton Street Ventures.  This fresh capital will help Heim Health to fine-tune its algorithms and support a wider range of healthcare services, including furthering its work with the NHS. The company said its long-term mission is to ease pressure on hospitals and provide patients with better care.   Heim is already getting good feedback, it said. According to the company, healthcare providers have seen patient waiting slashed up to 85% by using the platform.  source

Amsterdam-based startup Skytree is set to deploy its carbon-sucking machines on a newly announced carbon capture and storage project in Texas, US.  Dubbed “Project Concho,” the $100mn Direct Air Capture (DAC) plant aims to initially vacuum up 30,000 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere annually, eventually scaling to 500,000 tonnes. This carbon will be permanently stored underground, on site.  The facility is set to enter operation in 2028, a Skytree representative told TNW via email.   Project Concho is masterminded by carbon capture developers Return Carbon, from the Netherlands, and Verified Carbon, from Texas. They will generate revenue from the plant by selling carbon credits to companies looking to offset their emissions. Webinar: Unicorn DNA: The Blueprint for Scaling Success What does it take to build a unicorn? Top executives of unicorn companies reveal the mindset, strategies, and innovative thinking that propelled their companies to the top. The partners have chosen Skytree to do the carbon vacuum cleaning. Founded in 2014, Skytree’s technology is based on the carbon scrubbers used aboard the International Space Station, which remove the excess CO2 produced from the breath of astronauts.  Skytree makes two machines: Cumulus, for small-scale applications and an industrial-scale machine called Stratus. Project Concho will deploy dozens of these units in unison, to make one single hub.    “Project Concho is a first-of-its-kind collaboration that opens the door to even more ambitious and transformative carbon removal projects,” said Elena Nikonova, VP of Skytree’s recently opened offices in the US and Canada.  The developers plan to power the hub using an onsite wind farm, built by Spanish energy firm Greenalia. This would make it the world’s first DAC project fully powered by wind energy, they said.  A symbiotic relationship? Project Concho marks a rare collaboration between a DAC facility and a wind energy provider, but one that could become a blueprint for future facilities.  The carbon capture plant guarantees it will consistently buy wind energy, giving the wind farm a stable customer and predictable revenue. In return, the DAC plant gets low-cost, renewable energy, which is crucial for reducing the high operational costs of large-scale carbon capture. This agreement also ensures energy price stability and flexibility, making it easier for both partners to plan and grow efficiently.   Alexandre Alonso, SVP of Business Development at Greenalia, called this a “game-changer” for renewable energy projects.  Projecto Concho comes amid a boom in carbon capture projects in the US, partly driven by generous government subsidies. Last month, the Biden-Harris Administration, announced plans to provide up to $1.8bn in funding to support DAC technologies. This builds on the 45Q tax credit laid out in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The incentive provides up to $180 per metric ton of CO2 captured and stored. “The US continues to demonstrate growing demand for proven, cost-effective, scalable DAC technology driven by the needs of industry and with the backing by government,” said Skytree’s CEO Rob van Straten. source

British scaleup Tokamak Energy has secured $125mn as it looks to harness fusion — the same clean, virtually limitless energy source that powers the Sun and stars.  Tokamak spun out from the UK’s Atomic Energy Authority in 2009. As its name suggests, the company is building a tokamak reactor, the most common kind of fusion design, first pioneered in the 1960s. Tokamaks use giant magnets to keep plasma moving in a loop while running an electrical current through it.  The funding brings the company’s total raised to $335mn, comprising $275mn from private investors and $60mn from the UK and US governments. This makes it Europe’s most well-funded private fusion energy venture.  Tokamak Energy said the fresh capital will help bolster its commercialisation plans. The company aims to have its first fusion power plant up and running somewhere in the 2030s.  The 💜 of EU tech The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now! However, the funds will also go toward growing Tokamak’s side hustle, TE Magnetics. The subsidiary develops superconducting magnets using rare earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) tape, enabling stronger magnetic fields to confine the plasma. Superconducting magnets are in demand not just in the fusion industry but in science, mobility, and renewable energy. East X Ventures and Lingotto Investment Management led the funding round with participation from new investors including British Patient Capital, Furukawa Electric Company, global maritime company BW Group and US-based Sabanci Climate Ventures. “Our mission is to make fusion energy a reality, and we believe the only way to achieve that is through strong, global partnerships,” said Tokamak Energy CEO Warrick Matthews, adding that the raise comes at a “critical” and “exciting” time for fusion development.     To fulfil its ambitious timeline, Tokamak is hastily developing, testing, and validating its approach using its pilot reactor — the ST40 — housed at its headquarters in Oxford.   The ST40 is a spherical tokamak, which is more compact than traditional donut-shaped reactors like the ITER fusion plant under construction in France. According to the company, this shape allows better confinement of the super-hot plasma where fusion occurs, making the reactor smaller, cheaper, and easier to build.    In 2022, the ST40 became the first privately owned fusion reactor to reach 100 million °C — six times as hot as the core of our closest star. This is generally regarded as the temperature threshold whereby fusion reactions can become self-sustaining.  Despite huge progress, fusion energy has always seemed to be that “20-years-away” technology. But the tides might be changing. According to a poll at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) forum in London earlier this year, 65% of insiders think fusion will generate electricity for the grid at a viable cost by 2035, and 90% by 2040. Once up and running, Tokamak intends for each of its reactors to produce around 500MW of clean electricity — enough to power approximately 85,000 homes.   source

American wearables firm Realwear has acquired Swiss augmented reality (AR) startup Almer Technologies.  Almer’s AR headset — the Arc-2 — overlays digital information onto the wearer’s field of view, allowing them to access real-time data, instructions, or assistance from an engineer seated anywhere in the world. The glasses are targeted specifically at industrial companies looking to help their staff maintain and repair equipment and machinery remotely. “Almer’s innovative approach for frontline workers has enabled us to deliver industrial AR solutions that are intuitive and effortless to use,” said Sebastian Beetschen, Almer’s co-founder and CEO. Beetschen founded Almer alongside Timon Binder in 2021 as a spin-off from a research project at the Swiss Insitute for Technology. The company has raised $8mn in funding so far. Its clients include Coca-Cola, Ford, and Samsung.  Webinar: Unicorn DNA: The Blueprint for Scaling Success What does it take to build a unicorn? On November 19, 3pm CET, top executives of unicorn companies will reveal the mindset, strategies, and innovative thinking that propelled their companies to the top. For Realwear, the acquisition is part of its plans to become a global leader in the industrial wearables space. For Almer, the deal bolsters the budding company’s ambitions to scale at pace and expand beyond Europe.  “We are thrilled that the Almer team is joining forces with the American leader in the augmented reality space for frontline workers,” said Olivier Laplace, managing partner at Swiss VC Vi Partners. The firm was an early back of Almer.  “This strategic move validates our early conviction that Almer is a technical front-runner,” said Laplace, who will now join the board of directors of Realwear. The acquisition comes as the market for AR, and extended reality (XR) more broadly, consolidates.  The initial hype around XR sparked a wave of startups and experimental applications, driven by excitement over immersive digital experiences. Now, as the market matures, we’re beginning to see where the technology adds real value.  XR tech can now be found in any industry that benefits from immersive interactions. Healthtech has been one of the greatest use cases. AR is used to provide train medical professionals, enhance patient diagnostics, and even facilitate remote surgeries. Startups in transportation, manufacturing, professional training and construction are also harnessing the technology. And of course, gaming and entertainment — the early targets of the XR market — still make up a sizeable portion of the market. Almer’s buyout was financially backed by TeamViewer, a major player in enterprise AR software that owns a minority stake in both Almer and Realwear. Almer will continue to operate from its headquarters in Switzerland. The deal amount was not disclosed.    source

UK startup Surf Security has launched a beta version of what it claims is the world’s first browser with a built-in feature designed to spot AI-generated deepfakes.  The tool, available through Surf’s browser or as an extension, can detect with up to 98% accuracy whether the person you’re interacting with online is a real human or an AI imitation, the company said.  The London-based cybersecurity upstart uses “military-grade” neural network technology to detect deepfakes. The system uses State Space Models, which detect AI-generated clones across languages and accents by analysing audio frames for inconsistencies.   “To maximise its effectiveness, we focused on accuracy and speed,” said Ziv Yankowitz, Surf Security’s CTO. The tool’s neural network is trained using deepfakes created by the top AI voice cloning platforms, he said.  The system has an integrated background noise reduction feature to clear up audio before processing. “It can spot a deepfake audio in less than 2 seconds,” said Yankowitz.  The 💜 of EU tech The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now! The new feature is available for audio files, including online videos or communication software such as WhatsApp, Slack, Zoom, or Google Meet. You just need to press a button and the system verifies if the audio – recorded, or live – is genuine or AI-generated. Surf said it will also add AI image detection to the browser’s toolkit in the future.  Deepfakes are a growing problem Deepfakes, which use AI to create convincing fake audio or video, are a rising threat.  Just this week, researchers at the BBC unearthed deepfake audio clips of David Attenborough that sound indistinguishable from the famous presenter’s own voice. Various websites and YouTube channels are using the deepfake to get him to say things – about Russia, about the US election – that he never said.   This is just the tip of an ugly iceberg. Deepfakes have been used to enable large-scale fraud, incite political unrest through fake news, and destroy reputations by creating false or harmful content. Surf said it launched the new deepfake detector to help protect enterprises, media organisations, police, and militaries around the world from the growing risk of AI cloning. However, battling deepfakes is a continuous battle between humans using machines for good, against other humans using machines for nefarious means.  “AI voice cloning software becomes more capable by the day,” admitted Yankowitz. “So like all of cybersecurity, we are committing to winning an ever-evolving arms race.” Surf expects to release the full version of its deepfake detector early next year.    source

Zurich-based venture capital firm Founderful has raised $140mn in its second fund — $20mn more than its target and a strong sign of investor confidence in Switzerland’s flourishing tech ecosystem.   First announced back in February, the fund has already invested in 15 early-stage startups. These include Chiral Nano, which develops nanomaterials for silicon chips, and 8inks, which is rejigging the lithium-ion battery. Founderful — formerly Wingman Ventures — was launched in 2019 by Pascal Mathis, the co-founder of local travel marketplace unicorn GetYourGuide, Eat.ch co-founder Lukas Weder and Alex Stöckl, former exec at Creathor Ventures. The founder-led VC exclusively backs Swiss startups at the pre-seed or seed stage. Its vision? To transform budding Swiss ventures into global industry leaders. The 💜 of EU tech The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now! “From day one, we have been relentless in our efforts to create a foothold for the Swiss tech ecosystem on the global stage,” said Stöckl, partner at Founderful.  “Fund II is evidence that we have walked the talk, and investors have taken note. This was no easy win, but we fought hard.”  Founderful’s new Fund II is backed by a range of institutions, family offices, and founders from unicorns such as Duolingo, Climeworks, Proton, and Scandit.  Silicon alps? Stöckl called the Swiss tech ecosystem a “powerhouse” that’s only just starting to claim its place on the global stage. The Alphine nation has the highest number of unicorn companies per capita in Europe and has ranked first in the Global Innovation Index for 13 years in a row.  But perhaps the Swiss tech ecosystem’s biggest asset is its universities and research institutions. ETH Zurich, for one, now produces more university spin-outs than any other university in Europe. We profiled one of these companies, Oxyle, earlier this year in an in-depth piece about PFAS, commonly known as “forever chemicals.” Led by Dr. Fajer Mushtaq, Oxyle has developed a reactor that mineralises these cancer-causing compounds, breaking apart their carbon-fluorine bonds. Founderful led Oxyle’s pre-seed investment in 2022 under its first $90mn fund, which has since been fully deployed across 40 startups.  The VC claims that these portfolio companies have since created over 1,100 jobs and secured more than $450 million in follow-on funding. Notable successes include Ethon AI, which helps factories like the Lindt chocolate factory save waste, and plastic recycling startup DePoly. Severin Hacker, CTO and co-founder at Duolingo and investor in Founderful’s Fund II called the up-and-coming VC “meticulous and relentless” in creating value for the founders it backs. “Their approach, combined with the unfolding potential of the Swiss tech ecosystem, probably makes them one of Europe’s most promising VC firms,” said Hacker. source

German tech darling DeepL has (finally) launched a voice-to-text service. It’s called DeepL Voice, and it turns audio from live or video conversations into translated text.  DeepL users can now listen to people speaking a language they don’t understand and automatically translate it to one they do — in real-time. The new feature currently supports English, German, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, Dutch, French, Turkish, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Italian.  What makes the launch of DeepL Voice exciting is that it runs on the same neural networks as the company’s text-to-text offering, which it claims is the “world’s best” AI translator.   As someone who’s just moved to a foreign country, I’m keen to try a voice-to-text translator that actually might work. All the ones I’ve tried so far aren’t real-time — there’s a lag that renders them pretty useless — and the translation quality is pretty poor.   For face-to-face conversations, you can launch DeepL Voice on your mobile and place it between you and the other speaker. It then displays your conversation so each person can follow translations easily on one device. You can also integrate DeepL Voice into Microsoft Teams and video-conference across language barriers. The translated text appears on a sidebar as captions. It remains to be seen whether DeepL Voice will be available on platforms like Zoom or Google Meet anytime soon.    ‘The next frontier’ While this is DeepL’s first such offering, it’s unlikely to be its last. DeepL’s founder and CEO, Jarek Kutylowski called real-time voice translation the “next frontier” for the business.   “DeepL is already a leader in written translation, but real-time speech translation is an entirely different story,” said DeepL’s founder and CEO, Jarek Kutylowski.  “When translating speech as it happens, you’re dealing with incomplete input, pronunciation issues, latency and more, all of which can lead to inaccurate translations and poor user experience.   “So we built a solution that would take these into account from the offset and enable businesses to break down language barriers by enabling them to communicate in multiple languages as required,” said Kutylowski.  Quality will likely be DeepL Voice’s differentiating factor from the countless other providers of voice-to-text translations. From a technological perspective, DeepL’s success lies in the architecture of its neural networks, the input from human editors, and the training data. But Kutylowski also believes it has a key advantage over its competitors: focus.   “Focus is always an important thing,” Kutylowski previously told TNW. “Translate isn’t the core business of Google — it’s one of the 100 side gigs. The same goes if you consider LLMs and the OpenAIs of this world as our competition; translation is only one thing of what they’re doing and their GPU is doing a tonne of different things. We’re focused on one particular area.”  In May, the DeepL reached a $2bn valuation after securing a new investment of $300mn (€277mn). It covers 32 languages and counts over 100,000 business users.   source

London-based startup Gendo has secured €5.1mn amid booming demand for its generative AI software built for architects.  British architectural designer George Proud and software engineer Will Jones founded Gendo in 2022. The platform transforms simple inputs like sketches, 2D drawings, or text descriptions into hypereal building designs.  It works a bit like Midjourney or DALL-E, except it’s built by architects for architects. The tool allows you to precisely edit specific details of your design, such as colours, lighting, structural elements, or furniture. The model produces more life-like results than more general AI algorithms.    What’s more, Gendo claims it can generate detailed visualisations 100 times faster than conventional software. The tool also comes at a reasonable price point — £15 per month for the mid-range package. The 💜 of EU tech The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol’ founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It’s free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now! “We are huge believers in bespoke generative AI tools that are designed for specific use cases – the reception to Gendo has been a huge validator of that belief,” said Proud, who serves as the startup’s CEO.  Gendo launched its platform just four months ago, after securing €1mn in pre-seed funding. Early adopters include big names such as Zaha Hadid Architects, KPF, David Chipperfield Architects, and Benoy.   Gendo stands out because it makes it easy and affordable to generate professional designs, filling the gap between basic visualisation tools and time-consuming rendering software like Autodesk’s Forma or Spacemaker.  Patrik Schumacher, principal at Zaha Hadid Architects, called Gendo’s platform a “step-change for our discipline.” Schumacher was recently appointed to Gendo’s board, as the startup embarks on its next phase of growth.   Gendo said it will use the fresh capital to expand its AI capabilities and the development of customised workflows and licensing models aimed at big design firms. German early-stage funds PT1 and LEA Partners co-led the funding round. The UK’s largest pre-seed fund Concept Ventures also chipped in, as did London-based Koro Captial. source