Warsaw-based Restimo, a startup specialising in automating the restaurant landscape, announced on Tuesday that it has secured €465K in a Seed round of funding. The funding comes from business angels, including Bartosz Majewski, co-founder of Casbeg, and Bartłomiej Kiszala, co-founder of Base CRM. Additionally, a consortium of investors from the Sterling Angels association, led by Krzysztof Polak, participated in the round. It also includes the company’s clients, such as David Cao, owner of the UKIM restaurant With this round, the company has raised €750K in funding to date. The Polish company will use the funds to accelerate its growth, with plans for international expansion into Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Scandinavia. https://siliconcanals.com/news/startups/polish-startup-restimo-bags-465k/

Andrei Dudoiu, co-founder and managing partner of SeedBlink, expects 2024 to be a much better year for tech startup funding after 2023 was the worst in nearly a decade. The change will be driven by declining inflation and interest rates, the return of venture capital investment, and positive developments in the global stock markets. Seedblink is a leading venture investment and equity management platform dedicated to technology startups in Europe. “After the exuberance of 2021 and 2022 that was marked by the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis, monetary policy measures have emerged which have raised the interest rates, causing investors to choose fixed-yield instruments with low or very low risk,” Andrei Dudoiu said in a recent analysis. He believes that the declining inflation of recent months could be a sign that 2024 will be the year of global adjustment in monetary policy, and investors, local or international capital holders, will no longer have high-interest rates at their disposal, which will restore the appetite for other forms of investment. https://www.romania-insider.com/andrei-dudoiu-seedblink-tech-startup-funding-analysis-2024

Walk15, a Vilnius-based sustainable mobility startup, has secured €1 million from venture capital fund Coinvest Capital, the “8NGLS” syndicate led by Justinas Pašys, CEO of PVcase, and others. The company, which promotes sustainable movement and living, engages employees, clients, and community members in activities across multiple markets. With over 640,000 users and 1,300 businesses worldwide, Walk15 plans to use the funding to expand into the German market, following the opening of a new office in Berlin. At the end of last year, Walk15 reached a valuation of 15 million euros and attracted a €500K investment – among the investors was Mantas Mikuckas, co-founder of the Lithuanian unicorn Vinted. https://arcticstartup.com/walk15-raises-e1-million/

SessionStack leverages AI and ML to enhance the e-commerce experience, promising higher conversion rates and optimized customer journeys across CEE. SessionStack, a Bulgarian startup leveraging machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), is revolutionizing the e-commerce sector with its innovative digital experience insights platform. After a successful pilot with high-traffic e-commerce businesses, the company is set to broaden its reach across Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). SessionStack's technology has already shown promising results in enhancing conversion rates, detecting fraud, improving checkout experiences, and optimizing traffic channels, making it a game-changer in the digital commerce landscape. https://bnnbreaking.com/finance-nav/business/bulgarian-startup-sessionstack-pioneers-ai-in-e-commerce-expands-to-cee-with-groundbreaking-insights

Threedy, a Darmstadt, Germany-based spatial computing technology company, raised $10M in Series A funding. Backers included LBBW Venture Capital, Trumpf Venture, Futury Capital, and EquityPitcher Ventures. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate growth across industries and regions. Threedy provides instant3Dhub, a high-performance spatial computing technology platform enabling customer 3D data, any compositions, and its visualization at scale. By making data available and accessible in real-time on any device, at any time, it allows companies to optimize a multitude of digital processes all along the industrial value chain and reduce associated costs, and waiting times. https://www.finsmes.com/2024/03/threedy-raises-10-4m-in-latest-series-a-funding.html

Now, Greenlyte Carbon Technologies has closed a €10.5 million pre-series A funding round. The investment came from Earlybird Venture Capital (backed QuantumDiamonds and randevu.tech), Green Generation Fund, Carbon Removal Partners, Board member Dr. Udo Jung, and Partech, who joined the investor group. With this round, the German startup has now raised over €20 million. The round follows strong commercial traction in the form of partnerships and high-value offtake agreements. In addition, Greenlyte won two grants from the European Fund for Regional Developments. Founded in 2022 by Florian Hildebrand, Dr. Niklas Friederichsen, and Dr. Peter Behr, Greenlyte specialises in a direct air capturing system that efficiently removes CO2 from the atmosphere. It does this with a liquid-sorbent solution with minimal energy and producing hydrogen as a byproduct. The process can be integrated with renewable energies and does not rely on high heat or pressure. The generated CO2 and hydrogen can then be used as feedstock for chemicals, construction materials, and alternative fuels, or to create negative emissions.

A near-record investment round from hospitality-management firm Mews means that it joins Rohlík and Productboard as Czech companies worth over USD 1bn. Mews, a Prague-based startup specializing in software for accommodation services and restaurants, has officially become Czechia’s third unicorn company in history as its valuation has reached over USD 1.2 billion (CZK 28 billion). A recently confirmed investment of USD 110 million (CZK 2.6 billion) helped secure the tech firm’s unicorn status. The newly verified backing was part of Mews' late 2022 investment round, which raised USD 220 million (about CZK 4 billion) from investors – one of the largest sums ever raised by a Czech firm in any investment round. Swedish investment fund Kinnevik and existing shareholders Goldman Sachs and Notion Capital are leading the financing. A unicorn company is a privately owned startup that has reached a valuation of over USD 1 billion. https://www.expats.cz/czech-news/article/tech-startup-becomes-third-czech-firm-in-history-to-reach-unicorn-status-1