Fotokite AG, a Swiss-American company developing tethered drones for firefighting and public safety teams, has closed its Series B funding round, securing CHF 10 million (approximately $11 million). This investment aims to accelerate the company’s growth, bolster research and development (R&D) efforts, and expand its global operations. The funding round was led by Carbyne Equity Partners, a European private equity firm specialising in growing European businesses, along with existing investors including Swisscanto Private Equity Growth I, and Credit Suisse Entrepreneur Capital Ltd. https://techfundingnews.com/fotokite-raises-11m-funding-to-expand-global-reach-of-tethered-drone-technology-for-firefighting-and-public-safety/

Proxima Fusion has raised €20 million in seed funding led by redalpine, which invested in Knowunity. This round follows the €7 million pre-seed funding round last year. The oversubscribed round saw participation from the Bavarian government-backed Bayern Kapital, German government-backed DeepTech & Climate Fonds, and the Max Planck Foundation. In addition, existing investors, including Plural, UVC Partners, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Wilbe, and TOMORROW of Visionaries Club also participated in the round. Proxima Fusion will use the seed funding to further expand the team with world-class engineers and physicists, as well as to match public funding awards. This round is part of its mission to build the world’s first-of-its-kind fusion power plant and lead Europe into a new era of clean energy. https://techfundingnews.com/proxima-fusion-closes-e20m-to-build-worlds-first-of-its-kind-fusion-power-plant/

Investment firm Lakestar closed its latest funds, Lakestar Early IV and Lakestar Growth II, for around $600 million to inject new capital into the next generation of European startups, bringing Lakestar's assets under management to €2 billion. Both new funds will focus their investments across geographies, focusing on Europe in sectors such as AI, digitalisation, deep tech, healthcare, and fintech. The funds align with Lakestar's commitment to forge a stronger future for Europe by nurturing the region's innovation and tech ecosystem through the funding of business models that support economic growth and social prosperity. These new funds have already led investments in tech companies such as energy supplier platform Fuse Energy (UK), embedded finance solution Swan (France), healthtech company Nelly (Germany), NEKO Health (Sweden), the preventative health care technology company co-founded by Daniel Ek, and AI text-to-video technology platform Colossyan (UK/Hungary). https://tech.eu/2024/04/12/lakestar-closes-600m-funds-aims-to-strengthen-europes-innovation-ecosystem/