Munich-based Proxima Fusion, the first spin-out from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP), announced that it has raised €20M in a seed funding round led by redalpine and oversubscribed. The Bavarian government-backed Bayern Kapital, German government-backed DeepTech & Climate Fonds, and the Max Planck Foundation also participated in the funding. Existing investors, including Plural, UVC Partners, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Wilbe, and TOMORROW of Visionaries Club, have doubled down on their pre-seed investments. The company will use the funds to build the first generation of fusion power plants based on quasi-isodynamic (QI) stellarators with high-temperature superconductors. https://siliconcanals.com/news/startups/germanys-proxima-fusion-bags-20m/

Berlin-based Zolar, which supplies solar panels to consumers, has raised a €100m debt vehicle from BNP Paribas to offer financing solutions to its residential customers. Zolar provides consumers with panels and offers a flexible instalment loan to help finance it. Consumers can choose between making a one-time upfront payment or a flexible monthly fee. Zolar’s new debt vehicle is an asset-backed security (ABS). Zolar has raised $241m (€300m) from backers such as Partech, Heartcore Capital and green search engine, Ecosia. https://sifted.eu/articles/zolar-climate-debt-solar-news

Leading MarTech scaleup, Lunio, has been selected by Digitl, the leading consultancy and marketing technology service provider, as its strategic partner to protect the German marketing industry from invalid traffic (IVT). The strategic partnership comes at a time when German advertisers are increasingly losing control and visibility over their ad spend due to the rise of smart bidding and fully automated campaign types such as Google’s Performance Max. With audience targeting decisions increasingly determined by algorithms – and Lunio estimating 10 – 25% of paid media budgets across search, shopping, social and programmatic are routinely wasted on fake ad engagement – the collaboration will play an important role in ensuring data fed to automated systems comes from real users with genuine conversion potential. https://www.martechcube.com/martech-scale-up-lunio-fuels-german-expansion-with-a-strategic-partner/

Venture capital (VC) firm Wingman Ventures has rebranded as Founderful, with an announcement that it has raised $85m for its new fund, with a goal of $120m. The Zurich-based VC firm, which focuses on pre-seed startups, has a vast portfolio of 40 startups which it has already injected $60m into. The new rebrand and fund, Fund II, will see Founderful “laser-focused” on the Swiss tech market. Founderful said it is looking to invest in everything from robotics and AI, to computer vision technologies and construction tech. The firm was founded in 2019 by Swiss unicorn GetYourGuide co-founder Pascal Mathis, former Switzerland lead at Creathor Ventures, Alex Stöckl, and EAT.ch co-founder Lukas Weder. https://www.globaldata.com/newsletter/details/founderful-raises-85m-to-boost-switzerland-s-global-tech-presence-despite-country-s-venture-capital-decline_341924/

Cloud computing startup Hive has completed a Series A round of funding with $13 million. Hive is planning to use the funding to further its plans for a decentralized cloud, using an aggregation of individual devices' unused storage and computing. The funding round was led by SC Ventures, the venture arm of Standard Chartered, and was joined by participants including OneRagtime and other private backers. Hive's plans for 'The Right Cloud' are hoped to help businesses plan more efficiently for cloud- related expenses, improve server autonomy, and reduce energy usage by spreading workloads over more separate devices. Hive is based in Geneva, Switzerland. The company launched with its seed funding round which raised €7m in 2022, led by Global Ventures and OneRagtime. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/hive-raises-13m-for-decentralized-cloud/

Weev, the leading development platform for the footwear, leather and apparel industry, has reached a significant milestone: Marc Benioff, the visionary founder of Salesforce, has taken a substantial stake in the start-up. Weev is fundamentally transforming product development in the footwear and apparel industry. The unique software solution (SaaS) enables significant time and cost savings as well as an increase in quality in the global value chain. This marks a digital disruption in the industry. Weev is currently expanding its international customer base and already counts renowned companies such as Industria del Design, Santori Pellami, Polo Sourcing, Jinjiang HAOF Shoe Material Co., Ltd. in China and Faytex Corporation in the USA among its customers. https://www.organisator.ch/en/management/2024-03-19/us-milliardaer-marc-benioff-investiert-in-schweizer-startup-weev/

The EIC Scaling Club, on Thursday, announced the list of the first 48 European deep tech scale- ups to join its community of investors, corporate innovators, mentors, media firms, and other industry stakeholders. The EIC Scaling Club is a community of over 120 European deep-tech scale-ups with investors, corporate innovators, and other industry stakeholders to drive growth, build world-class businesses, and tackle major global challenges. It is an EIC-funded initiative partnered with Tech Tour, Bpifrance (EuroQuity), Hello Tomorrow, Tech.eu (Webrazzi), EurA and IESE Business School. The EIC Scaling Club is supported by the European Innovation Council, the European Commission’s flagship program and has a budget of over €10B. https://siliconcanals.com/news/startups/48-companies-joining-eic-scaling-club/