Index Ventures has closed a $300M fund named Origin Fund II to invest in Seed-stage startups. The firm now has $1.2B available for deployment in early-stage startups. More: - The Origin Fund II is the second early-stage fund the company has, after having previously launched the $900M Index Ventures XI.
- Index Ventures believes that the Origin Fund will help startups benefit by being provided with both liquidity and early-stage startup expertise. According to them, startups have complained in the past that they've had to choose between the two.
- Some of its portfolio companies include names such as Notion, Robinhood, Figma, Wise, Revolut, Deliveroo, etc.
- Index Ventures will mostly deploy the funds toward startups in the U.S. and Europe.
- The firm has offices in San Francisco, New York, and London.
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Syzygy Plasmonics has raised a $76M Series C to eliminate combustion from the chemical industry. Syzygy harnesses energy from LED lights to power reactors. More: - Traditionally, the chemical reaction used to produce hydrogen, ammonia, and methanol used fossil fuel for energy.
- Syzygy Plasmonics offers a zero-emissions hydrogen reactor named Rigel. The company believes that through this solution, it will be able to transform the way the chemicals industry operates and prevent 1 gigaton of Co2 from entering the atmosphere by 2040.
- The company is based in Texas and has over 80 employees. It aims to use the funding to double its staff and improve its technology.
- Syzygy uses licensed technology from Rice University.
- The round was led by Carbon Direct Capital with participation from Aramco Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures, LOTTE CHEMICAL, Toyota Ventures, EVOK Innovations, The Engine, Equinor Ventures, Goose Capital, Horizons Ventures, Pan American Energy, and Sumitomo Corporation of Americas.
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Advanced Navigation has raised a $68M Series B to reduce sensor costs for companies through robotics. The company works with Google, Apple, Airbus, Boeing, and General Motors. More: - Advanced Navigation offers products such as underwater acoustics, GNSS antennas and receivers, radio frequency systems, inertial sensors, robotics, and quantum-enhanced inertial navigation.
- KKR led the round with participation from AI Capital and Main Sequence, the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull AC, In-Q-Tel, and Our Innovation Fund.
- This deal represents one of the largest venture capital raises for an Australian company since the tech correction wave. Investors are believed to have gained a 10-15% equity in the company.
- The fund will be used to boost R&D on robotic, navigation, photonics, and quantum sensing solutions, the company's marketing, and to find new growth opportunities.
- Advanced Navigation was founded in 2012.
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Akeyless Security has raised a $65M Series B to offer safe storage for company secrets. The product is used by Wix, Cimpress-VistaPrint, Outbrain, etc. More: - Akeyless Security offers a Secrets Management-as-a-Service platform. This platform is centralized and maintenance-free.
- The company has Fortune 50 clients as well as small and mid-sized businesses.
- The round was led by NGP Capital, with participation from existing investors Team8 Capital and Jerusalem Venture Partners. This funding takes the total amount raised by the company to $80M.
- Akeyless is based in Tel Aviv, Israel.
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 A message from SYNTHESIS AI How can synthetic data create more efficient, robust, and ethical ML models? Synthesis AI’s CEO & founder, Yashar Behzadi recently sat down with Inside AI to discuss the state of computer vision and machine learning, how synthetic data is evolving, and where generative AI is heading. Learn more about how Synthesis AI is working with ML practitioners to generate large, labeled datasets for developing accurate ML models across ID verification, driver monitoring, VR/AR, and other human-centric computer vision use cases. Watch on-demand now
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Today's funding 💵 Health tech - BetterVet (Massachusetts), provides a mobile veterinary network: $40M A led by Alta Partners and Bruce Herzfelder.
- Arey (California), aims to improve hair health and hair aging: $4.15M Seed led by Female Founders Fund and Greycroft.
SaaS - Freshpaint (California), a company that enables businesses to gain a better understanding of their business through instantaneous data: $14.5M A in equity and debt led by Intel Capital.
- Arcturus (California), provides volumetric video editing and streaming tools: $11M A led by Cloudtree Ventures, with participation from Autodesk and Epic Games.
- LeadScorz (Washington), has built analytics tools for each stage in lead generation: $5.6M A led by undisclosed investors.
Biotech - Torigen Pharmaceutical (Connecticut), aims to create pet cancer therapies: $13M A1 led by Werth Family Investment Associates and Connecticut Innovations, with participation from Emerald Development Managers, Gaingels, Kema Fund, University of Notre Dame, SoGal Ventures, UCONN Innovation Fund, Ironwood Capital and Advantage Capital.
Cybersecurity - BoostSecurity (Canada), a DevSecOps automation platform to make supply chain software safer: $12M Seed led by Sorenson Capital, with additional support from Hoxton Ventures, Golden Ventures, Firebolt Ventures, and Transform VC.
Marketing - Primer (California), offers hyper-precise targeting for B2B marketers: $12M A led by Craft Ventures with support from Slack Fund and Salesforce Ventures.
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Quick Hits: - Apis Cor holds the current Guinness World Record for the largest 3D-printed building on Earth. Invest in the future of construction.*
- Toyota Ventures has made an undisclosed investment in Zeti, a London and Santa Monica-based marketplace for institutional investors that want to invest in zero-emission fleet companies.
- Gen-Z career development platform Fearless+ has raised $1M in a Pre-Seed funding round led by Wray Thorn.
- Trailblazer Technology (New York), which offers a small-insurance multi-cloud solution, raised an undisclosed Seed round led by Manchester story.
- Israel-based provider of adaptive focal glasses Deep Optics has received an undisclosed investment from Fielmann Ventures.
*This is sponsored content.
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 |  | Arbër is an Inside writer who also has experience in entrepreneurship. He has experience covering Consumer Tech, Venture Capital, NFTs, Crypto, etc. Arbër holds a Bachelor's degree in Business from XAMK University in Finland. When he is not reading(and writing) business news, he chooses to watch sports or anime...and then read news about sports or anime. |   | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 and 1972 Fords. | |
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