Author: Tatjana Anderer

Frank­furt a. M. — From four new inves­tors and exis­ting inves­tors such as the High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) and renow­ned busi­ness angels node.energy raises Euro 7 million in fresh capi­tal. The selec­tion of the four new Series‑A inves­tors was quite deli­be­rate. For exam­ple, the funding round is led by Colo­gne-based VC BitStone Capi­tal, the leading PropTech fund with strong exper­tise in the real estate indus­try. As co-inves­tors, 10x Foun­ders brings exten­sive expe­ri­ence in the soft­ware-as-a-service sector and impact inves­tor BonVen­ture brings a clear sustaina­bi­lity focus. As an inter­na­tio­nal inves­tor from the energy sector, Helen Ventures from Finland is also parti­ci­pa­ting in the finan­cing round.

The soft­ware “opti.node” deve­lo­ped by node.energy simpli­fies the manage­ment of wind and solar plants. As the “digi­tal lubri­cant of the energy turn­around”, opti.node takes over the fulfill­ment of nume­rous bureau­cra­tic requi­re­ments in parti­cu­lar: With opti.node, plant opera­tors can easily auto­mate the crea­tion of invoices, tax forms and noti­fi­ca­ti­ons to the autho­ri­ties. The soft­ware is alre­ady being used to manage around 10,000 wind energy and solar plants. node.energy is thus the market leader in Germany.

“The future energy supply will be based on milli­ons of rene­wa­ble energy plants, and every major buil­ding will also be a power plant. Many new provi­ders, such as property mana­gers and citi­zen energy coope­ra­ti­ves, are driving change with new busi­ness models. In doing so, they are regu­larly confron­ted with the compli­ca­ted rules and bureau­cra­tic requi­re­ments of the energy market. This results in enorm­ous market poten­tial and further growth oppor­tu­ni­ties for us,” explains Matthias Karger, foun­der and mana­ging direc­tor of node.energy

“Rising energy and CO2 prices and the desire for secu­rity of supply are making rene­wa­ble energy instal­la­ti­ons for real estate more attrac­tive than ever. node.energy makes it easy for profes­sio­nal owners to evaluate this poten­tial and to operate the plants successfully and legally compli­ant. I am plea­sed to support the team in this soci­ally important task,” says Marc Stilke, Venture Part­ner at BitStone Capi­tal and future Chair­man of the Advi­sory Board at node.energy

node.energy will ther­e­fore invest the seven million euros recei­ved in Series A in the further deve­lo­p­ment of the soft­ware. The goal is to build a compre­hen­sive soft­ware plat­form that enables profes­sio­nal system opera­tors from the commer­cial and real estate sectors to easily imple­ment new busi­ness models such as solar power direct deli­veries (e.g. tenant power or power purchase agreements/PPAs) and self-supply. To this end, the soft­ware is being enhan­ced with addi­tio­nal func­tions and expan­ded into an end-to-end solu­tion platform.

About node.energy

node.energy GmbH, based in Frank­furt am Main, is a fast-growing company working towards a sustainable energy future. node.energy was foun­ded in 2016 by Matthias Karger and Lars Rinn and deve­lops and distri­bu­tes the SaaS solu­tion “opti.node” for profes­sio­nal opera­tors of rene­wa­ble energy plants. More than 9,500 wind turbi­nes in over 2,500 wind and solar farms as well as more than 400 commer­cial and indus­trial proper­ties are alre­ady using opti.node. 2020 node.energy was awarded the Handels­blatt Energy Awards. Curr­ently, node.energy employs about 50 people.

About High-Tech Gründerfonds

The seed inves­tor High-Tech Grün­der­fonds (HTGF) finan­ces tech­no­logy start-ups with growth poten­tial. With a volume of around EUR 900 million spread across three funds and an inter­na­tio­nal part­ner network, HTGF has supported more than 670 start-ups since 2005. With the launch of HTGF IV, more than EUR 400 million in fund volume will be added in the fall of 2022. The team of expe­ri­en­ced invest­ment mana­gers and start-up experts supports the young compa­nies with know-how, entre­pre­neu­rial spirit and passion. The focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digi­tal tech, indus­trial tech, life scien­ces, chemis­try and rela­ted busi­ness areas. More than €4 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,900 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 160 companies.

The fund inves­tors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Climate Protec­tion, KfW Capi­tal, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and nume­rous compa­nies from a wide range of industries.

 

Espoo (Finland) and Munich (Germany) — IQM Quan­tum Compu­ters (IQM), Europe’s leading company for buil­ding super­con­duc­ting quan­tum compu­ters, has raised €128 million in a Series A2 finan­cing round. The lead inves­tor is Europe’s largest climate tech venture capi­ta­list World Fund from Berlin. IQM intends to use the money to further expand and inter­na­tio­na­lize its leading role in Europe with offices in Espoo, Finland, and Munich, Germany, among others. “This round of funding shows the importance of our mission: to deve­lop quan­tum compu­ters for the well-being of huma­nity. It also shows confi­dence in our busi­ness model and in our team’s ability to shape the future of quan­tum tech­no­logy,” says IQM’s German foun­der and CEO Dr. Jan Goetz.

This funding round is the largest ever recei­ved by a Euro­pean quan­tum compu­ting company.

The finan­cing follows a Series A1 finan­cing of EUR 39 million in 2020 and includes the EUR 35 million risk loan from the Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank (EIB) announ­ced in early 2022. Bayern Kapi­tal, EIC Acce­le­ra­tor, OurC­rowd, QuIC SPV, Tofino and Varma as well as exis­ting inves­tors MIG Fonds, Tesi, Open­O­cean, Maki.vc, Matadero QED, Vsquared, Salvia GmbH, Santo Venture Capi­tal GmbH and Tencent parti­ci­pa­ted in the round.

Commen­ting on the round on behalf of the inves­tors, Dr. Sierk Poet­ting, CEO of IQM, said: “This finan­cing round is very important for the company. It is confir­ma­tion of the tech­no­lo­gi­cal mile­sto­nes achie­ved so far and will signi­fi­cantly acce­le­rate future deve­lo­p­ment. We are grateful for the rene­wed confir­ma­tion from exis­ting inves­tors and welcome the new inves­tors in this strong round.”

Euro­pean pioneer of quan­tum technology

Since its foun­ding in 2018, IQM has become the world’s fastest growing quan­tum compu­ting company and has soli­di­fied its posi­tion as the Euro­pean leader in buil­ding super­con­duc­ting quan­tum compu­ters. IQM is the only Euro­pean company alre­ady supp­ly­ing complete quan­tum systems. The part­ners include a leading global auto­ma­ker. In doing so, IQM pursues an inno­va­tive co-design stra­tegy in which it works closely with indus­trial custo­mers to deve­lop appli­ca­tion-speci­fic processors.

Accor­ding to the Boston Consul­ting Group (BCG), quan­tum tech­no­logy could create up to $850 billion in value globally over the next 15 to 30 years as it scales and impro­ves accu­racy and stabi­lity. Quan­tum compu­ting is a foun­da­tio­nal tech­no­logy that has extreme speed advan­ta­ges over any super­com­pu­ter for certain calcu­la­ti­ons. It has great poten­tial for areas such as drug disco­very, encryp­tion, and more accu­ra­tely predic­ting move­ments in finan­cial markets. Google announ­ced back in 2019 that a quan­tum proces­sor they deve­lo­ped comple­ted a calcu­la­tion in 200 seconds that would have taken the world’s fastest super­com­pu­ter 10,000 years.

Quan­tum compu­ting can help solve the climate crisis

Since its foun­ding, IQM’s goal has been to contri­bute to social progress with its own tech­no­logy, which includes helping to address the climate crisis. There is great poten­tial here for quan­tum compu­ters because it can be used to model solu­ti­ons that are not possi­ble with the current compu­ting power of clas­si­cal compu­ters. Accor­ding to McKin­sey, climate tech­no­logy deve­lo­ped using quan­tum compu­ting can reduce CO2 emis­si­ons by seven giga­tons per year by 2035.

The poten­tial of IQM’s tech­no­logy lies, for exam­ple, in the opti­miza­tion of energy networks or climate mode­ling. The company is alre­ady conduc­ting basic rese­arch for signi­fi­cantly better rech­ar­geable batte­ries as well as on comple­tely new methods for desig­ning materials.

A key metric used by lead inves­tor World Fund in its invest­ments is Climate Perfor­mance Poten­tial (CPP). The compa­nies and tech­no­lo­gies inves­ted in should have the poten­tial to avoid at least 100 million tons of CO2 emis­si­ons each year until 2040. The Fund’s CPP calcu­la­ti­ons show that IQM’s tech­no­logy has the poten­tial to exceed this thres­hold based on impro­ved battery perfor­mance and utiliza­tion alone.

Daria Saha­rova, co-foun­der of the World Fund, said.: “Quan­tum compu­ting has the poten­tial to be a driving force behind the breakth­roughs we need to solve the climate crisis. We are proud to lead this round of funding and support IQM’s ambi­ti­ons to create a quan­tum advan­tage for climate and sustaina­bi­lity goals. This invest­ment is in line with our commit­ment to only support compa­nies with the highest possi­ble Climate Perfor­mance Poten­tial (CPP). The goal is for the compa­nies we fund to save a total of two giga­tons of CO2 annu­ally by 2040 — that’s four percent of all current global emis­si­ons. IQM has alre­ady succee­ded in buil­ding a strong busi­ness focu­sed on high-perfor­mance data centers and rese­arch labs. We look forward to being part of their growth on the path to global market leadership.”

First invest­ment of the Bava­rian ScaleUp Fund laun­ched in 2021

The eight-figure invest­ment by Bayern Kapi­tal, the venture and growth capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria, is the first invest­ment of the ScaleUp Fund Bava­ria, laun­ched in 2021 for stron­gly expan­ding high-tech compa­nies with invest­ments between 10 and 25 million euros. “Quan­tum compu­ters are a key tech­no­logy of the future today and Bava­ria, with its outstan­ding compe­ten­cies in science and indus­try in the field of quan­tum tech­no­lo­gies, is excel­lently posi­tio­ned here,” said Bava­rian Minis­ter of Econo­mic Affairs Hubert Aiwan­ger: “IQM is an active part­ner of Munich Quan­tum Valley and is making an important contri­bu­tion to inte­gra­ting quan­tum compu­ters into an envi­ron­ment of high-perfor­mance compu­ters and making these compu­ting capa­ci­ties available to users in science and industry.”

“For the first invest­ment with the ScaleUp Fund Bava­ria, we could hardly have wished for a better company with a signal effect for the entire region,” says Dr. Georg Ried, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Bayern Kapi­tal. IQM’s presence includes the new quan­tum compu­ter at the Leib­niz Compu­ting Center (LRZ) in Garching near Munich.

About IQM Quan­tum Computers

IQM is the pan-Euro­pean leader in buil­ding quan­tum compu­ters. IQM provi­des super­com­pu­ting data centers, labo­ra­to­ries and enter­pri­ses with on-site instal­la­tion of quan­tum compu­ters and allows full access to this hard­ware. For indus­trial custo­mers, IQM offers a quan­tum advan­tage through a unique appli­ca­tion-speci­fic co-design approach.

IQM is buil­ding the first commer­cial 54-qubit quan­tum compu­ter in Finland toge­ther with the non-profit Tech­ni­cal Rese­arch Centre of Finland (VTT), the largest contract rese­arch orga­niza­tion in Nort­hern Europe. The IQM-led consor­tium Q‑Exa is buil­ding a quan­tum compu­ter in Germany. This compu­ter will be inte­gra­ted with a high-perfor­mance super­com­pu­ter to acce­le­rate its rese­arch perfor­mance. IQM employs more than 180 people and has offices in Munich, Paris, Madrid and Espoo.
www.meetiqm.com

About World Fund

World Fund is the largest Euro­pean-focu­sed climate venture capi­tal fund and was foun­ded by Daria Saha­rova, Dani­jel Više­vić, Craig Douglas and Tim Schu­ma­cher. From energy, food, agri­cul­ture, and land use to buil­ding mate­ri­als, manu­fac­tu­ring, and trans­por­ta­tion, the World Fund is inves­t­ing in Euro­pean climate tech­no­lo­gies with a Climate Perfor­mance Poten­tial (CPP) of at least 100 million tons of CO2 emis­si­ons saved per year. As an inves­tor, the World Fund argues that start­ups with an appro­priate CPP will be among the most valuable compa­nies of the coming decade. www.worldfund.vc

About Bayern Kapital

Bayern Kapi­tal GmbH, based in Lands­hut, was foun­ded in 1995 as a wholly owned subsi­diary of LfA Förder­bank Bayern on the initia­tive of the Bava­rian state govern­ment. As the venture/growth capi­tal company of the Free State of Bava­ria, Bayern Kapi­tal provi­des equity capi­tal to the foun­ders of inno­va­tive high-tech compa­nies and inno­va­tive tech­no­logy compa­nies in Bava­ria. Bayern Kapi­tal mana­ges specia­li­zed invest­ment funds with an invest­ment volume of around 700 million euros. To date, Bayern Kapi­tal has inves­ted around 370 million euros of venture capi­tal in around 300 inno­va­tive tech­no­logy-orien­ted compa­nies from a wide range of sectors, inclu­ding life scien­ces, soft­ware & IT, mate­ri­als & new mate­ri­als, nano­tech­no­logy and envi­ron­men­tal tech­no­logy. Bayern Kapi­tal has supported the compa­nies EOS Elec­tro Opti­cal Systems, conga­tec, Morpho­Sys, voxel­jet, parcel­Lab, SimS­cale, proglove, Sirion Biotech and many others, some of which are listed on the stock exch­ange and are now market leaders in their sectors, from an early stage in the realiza­tion of their projects and also in large-volume finan­cing rounds. As a result, more than 8,000 jobs have been perma­nently crea­ted in Bava­ria in sustainable companies.

Tübin­gen — SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment has recei­ved capi­tal commit­ments of over EUR 220 million for its now sixth fund at first closing. Faster than expec­ted, the Tübin­gen-based health­care inves­tor has thus alre­ady excee­ded its target of 200 million euros at the first closing of the subscrip­tion. The sixth gene­ra­tion of SHS funds also targets majo­rity and mino­rity invest­ments in the health­care indus­try. 12–15 enga­ge­ments are plan­ned. Inves­tors can still parti­ci­pate in SHS VI until the “final closing”.

As part of the place­ment of the sixth gene­ra­tion of funds, the inves­tor base was further inter­na­tio­na­li­zed. More than half of the SHS VI inves­tors have alre­ady inves­ted in prede­ces­sor funds, and some of them have signi­fi­cantly increased their subscrip­tion to the new gene­ra­tion of funds. SHS attri­bu­tes the strong demand to its unique selling propo­si­tion as a sector specia­list and the successful tran­sac­tions of the last fund generations.

“We would like to thank our inves­tors for their trust,” conti­nues Huber­tus Leon­hardt (photo © SHS), the SHS part­ner and mana­ging direc­tor respon­si­ble for fund­rai­sing. “With our sixth gene­ra­tion of funds, we are once again provi­ding access to private equity in the growing health­care market. In addi­tion to fund perfor­mance, our sector exper­tise and access to tran­sac­tions are key factors for our inves­tors. In addi­tion, our ESG and inves­tor rela­ti­ons exper­tise, as well as our range of co-invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties, are also rele­vant to many of our clients. We are very plea­sed that with fund gene­ra­tion six we have been able to further inter­na­tio­na­lize our inves­tor base and expand it to include very pres­ti­gious addresses.”

The more than 60 inves­tors in the SHS VI Fund come from the fund of funds, insu­rance compa­nies, pension funds, foun­da­ti­ons, family offices, banks, health­care groups, church inves­tors and entre­pre­neurs. The largest inves­tors include, for exam­ple, the Euro­pean Invest­ment Fund, the Scan­di­na­vian foun­da­tion Reald­ania, the Swiss Hels­ana Healt­hIn­vest, the Baden-Würt­tem­berg-based L‑Bank and major family offices. Further­more, the SHS invest­ment team itself has inves­ted significantly.

Focus on growth finan­cing and corpo­rate succession

“We see in our deal flow a variety of fast-growing health­care compa­nies, both young and estab­lished, that are candi­da­tes for invest­ment by the new fund. Stric­ter regu­la­tion and a high need for inno­va­tion and inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion are leading to incre­asing capi­tal requi­re­ments in the indus­try. For other compa­nies, it is a matter of a successful hando­ver to the next gene­ra­tion. Here too, as an expe­ri­en­ced part­ner, we can provide compa­nies with targe­ted and compe­tent support, both with mino­rity and majo­rity share­hol­dings,” says Uwe Stein­ba­cher, Mana­ging Part­ner at SHS.

The fund focu­ses on corpo­rate tran­sac­tions of up to EUR 250 million. The fund can refi­nance the corre­spon­ding equity tran­ches with up to EUR 50 million from its own resour­ces. In case of higher equity requi­re­ments, SHS increa­ses the volu­mes by co-invest­ments of inves­tors inves­ted in the fund or syndi­ca­tes with friendly private equity houses. Expan­sion and inno­va­tion finan­cing, succes­sion situa­tions and share­hol­der chan­ges repre­sent the focus of the invest­ments sought. Majo­rity and mino­rity share­hol­dings are possible.

About SHS Gesell­schaft für Betei­li­gungs­ma­nage­ment mbH

“SHS, an indus­try inves­tor, is a private equity firm foun­ded in 1993 that makes invest­ments in health­care compa­nies in Europe. The focus of invest­ments is on expan­sion finan­cing, share­hol­der chan­ges and succes­sion situa­tions. “Buil­ding Euro­pean Health­care Cham­pi­ons” is the invest­ment philo­so­phy accor­ding to which SHS finan­ces and deve­lops port­fo­lio compa­nies. The Tübin­gen-based inves­tor is taking both mino­rity and majo­rity stakes. SHS funds’ natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors include pension funds, funds of funds, foun­da­ti­ons, family offices, stra­te­gic inves­tors, entre­pre­neurs and the SHS manage­ment team. The equity invest­ment of the AIFM-regis­tered company is up to EUR 50 million. Volu­mes beyond this can be imple­men­ted with a network of co-inves­tors. When making invest­ment decis­i­ons, SHS places strong empha­sis on conside­ring ESG aspects and is ther­e­fore commit­ted to the UN PRI guide­lines. SHS is curr­ently inves­t­ing from its sixth fund, laun­ched in 2022, with a volume of more than EUR 200 million. www.shs-capital.eu

Eindhoven/Bochum — Emproof B.V. has successfully closed a €2 million seed finan­cing round, enab­ling the company to further expand its product range and serve custo­mers in Europe and the US. The finan­cing round is led by Dutch invest­ment company TIIN Capi­tal through its Dutch Secu­rity Tech­Fund, toge­ther with German High-Tech Grün­der­fonds and French venture capi­tal fund Cyber Impact.

Emproof has deve­lo­ped a unique tech­no­logy to protect resource-cons­trai­ned (I)IoT and embedded devices from cyber-attacks and IP devia­ti­ons. With redu­ced effort and easy inte­gra­tion into custo­mers’ firm­ware deve­lo­p­ment proces­ses, Emproof’s NYX Suite makes a signi­fi­cant diffe­rence for OEMs with expo­sed IoT devices across multi­ple industries.

Most embedded and indus­trial IoT devices have mini­mal memory and compu­ting power to keep their manu­fac­tu­ring costs as low as possi­ble. There is ther­e­fore little scope for addi­tio­nal safety precau­ti­ons. Conse­quently, exis­ting firm­ware hardening solu­ti­ons are not suita­ble, which means that those very devices are not protec­ted against attacks from hackers. As a result, embedded systems can be easily hacked in large numbers and used as botnets, for crypto mining, as an entry point into back-end systems, or simply to extract and reverse engi­neer intellec­tual property or trade secrets that OEMs have spent milli­ons deve­lo­ping. The result: redu­ced compe­ti­tive advan­tage, lower returns on invest­ment in rese­arch and deve­lo­p­ment, product liabi­lity claims, and repu­ta­tio­nal damage.

To address these issues, Emproof has deve­lo­ped the NYX soft­ware suite that prevents reverse engi­nee­ring and firm­ware tampe­ring for Arm and Intel Corpo­ra­tion archi­tec­tures, with RISC V Inter­na­tio­nal support coming soon. Inte­gra­tion as a post-compi­ler step in any firm­ware deve­lo­p­ment pipe­line enables a fast and smooth start for the custo­mer. The ability to upgrade the secu­rity of field devices via an over-the-air update is also extre­mely valuable.

Over the next 12 months, the team will focus on road­map capa­bi­li­ties and func­tional safety certi­fi­ca­tion to meet requi­re­ments in key markets such as aero­space, auto­mo­tive and medi­cal devices.

About emproof B.V.

Emproof provi­des inno­va­tive secu­rity solu­ti­ons for embedded systems that address multi­ple layers of the soft­ware secu­rity stack. The company’s auto­ma­ted solu­ti­ons not only prevent cyber attacks such as the explo­ita­tion of soft­ware vulnerabi­li­ties, but also product piracy and tampe­ring. Emproof’s solu­ti­ons address where tradi­tio­nal methods fail, helping custo­mers reduce costly risks asso­cia­ted with cyber attacks and increase confi­dence in IoT devices. www.emproof.com

Zurich (Switz­er­land) — b‑rayZ AG, a spin-off of the Univer­sity Hospi­tal Zurich (USZ) based in Schlie­ren (Switz­er­land), has closed an over­sub­scri­bed Series A finan­cing round of over four million Swiss francs with leading inves­tors from the life scien­ces and IT sectors. The finan­cing round was led by LifeCare Part­ners, Prot­agon AG and Conver­gence Part­ners and supported by the Ecken­stein-Geigy Foun­da­tion, the Swis­spre­neur asso­cia­tion and seve­ral private inves­tors. — Cancer diagno­stics should thus be signi­fi­cantly impro­ved with AI technology.

Foun­ded in 2019 by Prof. Dr. Dr. Andreas Boss (senior physi­cian at USZ Radio­logy), Prof. Dr. Cris­tina Rossi (data analyst and MR physi­cist) and PD Dr. Alex­an­der Cirit­sis (AI medi­cal scien­tist and data analyst), b‑rayZ is deve­lo­ping a unique and revo­lu­tio­nary AI-based plat­form to assist radio­lo­gists in the early detec­tion of breast cancer. The b‑box system from b‑rayZ has a CE mark and is used commer­ci­ally in leading breast centers in Europe. With the funds from the Series A round, b‑ray‑Z intends to expand distri­bu­tion in addi­tio­nal Euro­pean markets and achieve FDA appr­oval for the United States. It also plans to deve­lop new products for gyneco­lo­gists and radio­lo­gists based on its proprie­tary AI platform.

AI from b‑rayZ revo­lu­tio­ni­zes radio­lo­gi­cal diagnostics 

Low image quality and inade­quate diagno­sis in dense breast limit radio­lo­gists’ ability to diagnose breast cancer at a very early stage. b‑rayZ has deve­lo­ped an AI-based plat­form that supports the daily work of radio­lo­gists in mammo­gra­phy by asses­sing image quality and breast density in real time. Cris­tina Rossi, CEO and co-foun­der of b‑rayZ comm­ents, “Our AI tech­no­logy helps to signi­fi­cantly improve the quality of breast cancer diagno­stics by analy­zing mammo­grams in real time. The next gene­ra­tion product enables auto­ma­tic detec­tion of early-stage lesi­ons on mammo­gra­phy and ultra­sound, which are often missed or misdia­gno­sed in breast cancer pati­ents. Our easy-to-imple­ment AI plat­form is not only suita­ble for all imaging moda­li­ties in breast cancer, but also for all onco­logy appli­ca­ti­ons in radiology.”

Every 14 seconds, a pati­ent is diagno­sed with breast cancer

In 2020, more than 2.3 million women world­wide were diagno­sed with breast cancer and 685,000 of them died from it. “Every 14 seconds, a woman is diagno­sed with breast cancer some­where in the world. Since 2008, the global inci­dence of breast cancer has increased by more than 20% and, regrett­ably, the morta­lity rate has increased by 14%. With our plat­form, we can save thou­sands of lives through the earliest possi­ble diagno­sis and subse­quent support in the selec­tion of a perso­na­li­zed therapy,” Cris­tina Rossi contin­ued. The b‑rayZ system not only enables quality-control­led mammo­gra­phy to signi­fi­cantly reduce late diagno­ses, but also saves more than 25% time in the process and nearly 50% of previous quality assu­rance costs. The effec­ti­ve­ness of b‑rayZ’s deep lear­ning algo­rithms in daily diagno­stics has alre­ady been clini­cally proven with more than 35,000 pati­ents successfully exami­ned by leading radiologists.

“When we met the team at b‑rayZ, we were imme­dia­tely won over by their exper­tise and tech­no­lo­gi­cal approach. The deve­lo­ped AI plat­form is suita­ble for rapid and cost-effec­tive diagno­sis of a wide range of cancers. In addi­tion, we are abso­lut­ely fasci­na­ted by b‑rayZ’s unique capa­bi­li­ties to create a revo­lu­tio­nary virtual market­place for the exch­ange and preser­va­tion of radio­lo­gi­cal know­ledge and exper­tise. We are convin­ced of the long-term success of the b‑rayZ soft­ware plat­form as well as the highly expe­ri­en­ced and enthu­si­a­stic manage­ment team,” adds Dr. Gerhard Ries, Mana­ging Part­ner of LifeCare Part­ners.

“b‑rayZ is beco­ming an emer­ging leader in AI-powered cancer diagno­stics and work­flow SaaS. What sets the company apart from many compe­ti­tors is its deep clini­cal back­ground and exclu­sive access to high-quality data. The SaaS plat­form will enable impro­ved cancer care and help reduce the cost of diagno­sis and therapy,” added Mikael von Euw (photo © Conver­gence Part­ners), deal lead at Conver­gence Part­ners.
“We inves­ted in b‑rayZ because we believe the importance of digi­tal health is growing globally, they have one of the best AI teams in the world, but also because they have such a deep under­stan­ding of radio­logy and the clini­cal vali­da­tion requi­red to usher in this new era of cancer diagno­sis,” explains Seve­rin Weiss, Chair­man and foun­der of Prot­agon AG.

About b‑rayZ

Incor­rect breast cancer diagno­ses due to human error harm pati­ents, expose physi­ci­ans to high liabi­lity risk, and increase health­care costs. b‑rayZ is trans­forming breast cancer diagno­stics with its breakth­rough AI tech­no­logy for faster and better diagno­ses. b‑rayZ’s success is driven by a commit­ment to saving women’s lives through early breast cancer detec­tion. Every woman, ever­y­where. www.b‑rayz.ch.

About Conver­gence Part­ners AG

Conver­gence Part­ners AG (“Conver­gence”) is a Swiss Health­Tech venture capi­tal firm actively support­ing the inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion of its port­fo­lio compa­nies in the four largest health­care markets USA, China, India and Germany. Conver­gence, which has a presence in Switz­er­land, Germany, Spain and Hong Kong, was foun­ded in 2018 by expe­ri­en­ced health­care indus­try play­ers and venture capi­ta­lists with the aim of combi­ning tech­no­lo­gi­cal excel­lence in the EU with great inter­na­tio­nal scale-up and exit poten­tial. Conver­gence focu­ses on later-stage invest­ments in digi­tal health, medi­cal devices and diagno­stics. Current major invest­ment themes include mental health, women’s health, and compu­ta­tio­nal biology. www.convergence-partners.ch.

About LifeCare Part­ners GmbH

LifeCare Part­ners is an inde­pen­dent invest­ment advi­sory firm that provi­des finan­cing to private and public life science compa­nies. LifeCare Part­ners addres­ses the entire life science indus­try with a special focus on medi­cal tech­no­logy, diagno­stics, biophar­maceu­ti­cals, food and nutri­tion, indus­trial biotech­no­logy, bioma­te­ri­als, e‑health and bioen­ergy. The LifeCare Part­ners team, based in Basel, Switz­er­land, has successfully inves­ted in more than 50 life science compa­nies in recent years, a large number of which are alre­ady listed on the stock exch­ange or have been acqui­red by leading life science compa­nies. www.lifecare.partners.

About Prot­agon AG

Prot­agon AG is an invest­ment company that focu­ses on seed and growth finan­cing. The digi­tal revo­lu­tion is chan­ging all indus­tries at a rapid pace and promi­ses solid returns with sustained momen­tum for years to come. This under­pins Protagon’s belief that tradi­tio­nal compa­nies will conti­nue to be chal­len­ged by new digi­tal start­ups, with tech­no­logy compa­nies incre­asingly taking the helm. www.protagongroup.com.

Zug (Switz­er­land) — Never­mi­ned AG, a Web3 company provi­ding tools for reading, writing and owning digi­tal assets, announ­ced its first invest­ment round of €3 million, led by Signa­ture Ventures and Poly­mor­phic Capi­tal. The Never­mi­ned plat­form consists of modu­lar solu­ti­ons that make it easy for users to create and mone­tize digi­tal assets and parti­ci­pate in the read-write-own vision of Web3.

The plat­form provi­des the foun­da­ti­ons for buil­ding digi­tal ecosys­tems with compon­ents such as Toke­niza­tion Engine, Market­place Crea­tor, Royal­ties Engine, Decen­tra­li­zed Access Control, DAO Frame­work and DISC, or Data In-Situ Compu­ta­tion, for remote computation.

Don Gossen, CEO of Never­mi­ned, explains, “The best Inter­net is the one that ever­yone can access and own. And that is what Never­mi­ned enables people to do. When it comes to data rela­ted to Web3, our pedi­gree speaks for itself — our team has been working with cutting-edge tech­no­logy for over 20 years, first in Big Data and now in Web3. With these buil­ding blocks, we can help you realize your vision. I would argue that we are the best team in the world doing what we do.”

Accor­ding to a new report by Grand View Rese­arch, the global block­chain tech­no­logy market is expec­ted to reach $1,431 billion by 2030. Given this market oppor­tu­nity and its solid, proven tech­no­logy, Never­mi­ned will use this capi­tal increase to:

Become more complete and scalable by driving its product road­map: Never­mi­ned will enhance its digi­tal asset deve­lo­p­ment plat­form that makes the Web3 acces­si­ble by stream­li­ning the crea­tion, mone­tiza­tion and manage­ment of distri­bu­ted digi­tal assets. Key projects include:
● Company: A global energy company used the plat­form to estab­lish a peer-to-peer market­place for trading carbon credits.
● Crea­tive: Auto­no­mies uses Never­mi­ned to build a music NFT plat­form and DAO that enables a more equi­ta­ble distri­bu­tion of value between musi­ci­ans, labels, and collectors.
● Science: In a world first, Vita­DAO used Never­mi­ned to toke­nize the intellec­tual property of scien­ti­fic rese­arch conduc­ted by the Schei­bye-Knud­sen Lab in Copenhagen.

Improve acces­si­bi­lity by acce­le­ra­ting global presence: To drive busi­ness growth and a better custo­mer expe­ri­ence, Never­mi­ned will streng­then its presence in key areas such as product, engi­nee­ring, marke­ting and community.

Easier to use by expan­ding the breadth and depth of the part­ner ecosys­tem: Never­mi­ned will form both tech­ni­cal and crea­tive part­ner­ships to support its mission. In addi­tion to deepe­ning part­ner­ships with initia­ti­ves like Auto­no­mies, an NFT music plat­form that enables artists to become participants.

We only invest in outstan­ding teams that are the back­bone of the decen­tra­li­zed future,” said Signa­ture CEO Juliane Hahn. “We see a lot of start­ups trying to combine data with block­chains. Never­mi­ned is the first company to under­stand the comple­xity and provide concrete solu­ti­ons at the inter­sec­tion of data and Web3. In the future, every data-driven company will need the ability to trans­form its data silos into data ecosys­tems. Never­mi­ned provi­des the complete product stack to do just that.”

“We are very impres­sed with the Never­mi­ned team,” says Vitaly Spassky, foun­der of Poly­mor­phic Capi­tal. “They have both the vision and the tech­ni­cal talent and pedi­gree to make it happen. For us, digi­tal assets are a criti­cal buil­ding block for the decen­tra­li­zed web. And the Never­mi­ned plat­form makes it super easy for teams and projects to inte­grate Web3 tech­no­logy. We’re very exci­ted to see what people will build with Nevermined.”

Never­mi­ned star­ted as an incu­ba­tion project within Keyko AG to solve problems rela­ted to data sharing through toke­niza­tion and smart contract gate­ways. From there, it evol­ved from a data-centric solu­tion to a decen­tra­li­zed digi­tal asset solu­tion with much broa­der applicability.

About Never­mi­ned

Never­mi­ned is a Web3 company that provi­des tools to read, write and own your digi­tal assets. It was foun­ded by CEO Don Gossen, CTO Aitor Argo­ma­niz and CIO Dimi­tri De Jonghe. They met while foun­ding Ocean Proto­col, the world’s first decen­tra­li­zed data market­place. In 2019, they foun­ded Keyko out of a shared belief in the power of digi­tal ecosys­tems. They helped a variety of orga­niza­ti­ons deve­lop Web3 ecosys­tems that are coll­ec­tively valued at $3 billion. In 2022, they deci­ded to spin off Never­mi­ned as a stan­da­lone tech­no­logy platform.

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About Signa­ture Ventures

Signa­ture Ventures is an early-stage venture capi­tal fund that invests in block­chain, distri­bu­ted ledger tech­no­logy, and Web3 tech­no­logy. The fund is based in Germany and invests in pre-seed to Series A, globally with a focus on Europe. Signa­ture Ventures is led by Juliane Hahn, Foun­ding Part­ner, and Dr. Georg Stri­cker, Tech Part­ner. They combine an exten­sive track record in VC invest­ments with deep block­chain expertise.

About Poly­mor­phic Capital

Poly­mor­phic Capi­tal is a venture capi­tal firm that invests globally in teams shaping the future of the Inter­net with decen­tra­li­zed proto­cols and digi­tal assets. The company specia­li­zes in infra­struc­ture, finance and gaming.

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