Author: Tatjana Anderer

Maas­tricht (NL) — Mosa Meat, the Euro­pean food tech­no­logy company that laun­ched the world’s first hambur­ger made from farmed beef in 2013, announ­ced the third and final closing of its Series B finan­cing. This third closing of $10 million brings the total amount of the finan­cing round to $85 million. New inves­tors include Blue Hori­zon Ventures and Nutreco.

Inves­tors in this latest deal include new and exis­ting inves­tors such as Nutreco, a global leader in pet food and aqua feed, and Jitse Groen, CEO of Just Eat Takeaway.com. The funding brings toge­ther leading global inves­tors with a wealth of know­ledge that will help Mosa Meat grow its produc­tion of real beef in a sustainable and safe way.

“We are exci­ted to expand our colla­bo­ra­tion with exis­ting part­ners and welcome new part­ners to this round,” said Maar­ten Bosch, CEO of Mosa Meat. “The comple­tion of the Series B funding brings us one step closer to our mission of deve­lo­ping a clea­ner and gent­ler way to produce real beef. Our part­ners bring immense stra­te­gic capa­bi­li­ties and exper­tise and share our strong commit­ment to incre­asing the sustaina­bi­lity of our global food system.”

Mosa Meat will use the funds to expand the current pilot produc­tion faci­lity at the Maas­tricht site, deve­lop an indus­trial-scale produc­tion line, grow the team and intro­duce tasty cultu­red beef to consumers.

Rob Korem­ans, CEO of Nutreco, says: “I am deligh­ted that Mosa Meat has reached the next mile­stone on the road to large-scale produc­tion of real meat. Nutreco is inves­t­ing in its ‘Feeding the Future’ mission, which requi­res protein produc­tion from tradi­tio­nal and alter­na­tive protein produc­tion methods. Our part­ner­ship with Mosa Meat is an important part of our stra­tegy to meet the growing demand for high-quality protein.”

The Series B funding round is led by Luxem­bourg-based Blue Hori­zon Ventures, a food tech­no­logy fund that aims to support and promote a posi­tive global impact on the envi­ron­ment, human health and animal welfare. Mosa Meat welco­mes this strong group of mission-driven inves­tors follo­wing successful Series A funding in 2018 led by M Ventures and Bell Food Group.

About MOSA MEAT

Mosa Meat is a Nether­lands-based food tech­no­logy company pionee­ring a clea­ner, gent­ler way to produce real beef. The team intro­du­ced the world’s first cultu­red beef hambur­ger in 2013 by growing it directly from cow cells. Foun­ded in 2016, Mosa Meat is now ramping up produc­tion of the same beef people love, but it’s more animal-friendly, envi­ron­men­tally friendly and safer to eat. They are a diverse and growing team of nutri­tion-conscious problem solvers united in their mission to funda­men­tally trans­form the global food system. www.mosameat.com.

About BLUE HORIZON VENTURES

Blue Hori­zon Ventures was foun­ded in 2018 by serial entre­pre­neurs and inves­tors Roger Lien­hard and Michael Kleindl and mana­ges assets of €183 million. The funds are inten­ded to support the move­ment toward a more sustainable food system through inno­va­tion, tech­no­logy and entre­pre­neur­ship. Special empha­sis is placed on plant-based meat, cultu­red meat, synthe­tic biology and sustaina­bi­lity. The Fund’s under­ly­ing mission is to promote a posi­tive global impact on the envi­ron­ment, human health and animal welfare. One of its requi­re­ments is that all its port­fo­lio compa­nies contri­bute to the 2030 Sustainable Deve­lo­p­ment Goals set by the UN Gene­ral Assem­bly. www.bluehorizonventures.com.

About NUTRECO

Every day, Nutreco’s 12,100 dedi­ca­ted employees in more than 37 count­ries around the world tire­lessly pursue our mission to feed the future in a way that ensu­res sustaina­bi­lity is at the fore­front of ever­y­thing we do. Our solu­ti­ons go beyond nutri­tion — we provide world-class advice and tech­no­logy to help our custo­mers produce more food in a sustainable way to feed our growing popu­la­tion. With more than 100 years of expe­ri­ence, Nutreco is a world leader in animal nutri­tion with its Trouw Nutri­tion divi­sion and in aqua feed with its Skret­ting divi­sion. Our NuFron­tiers team works to iden­tify, deve­lop and invest in next-gene­ra­tion breakth­rough inno­va­tions across the value chain. In 2019, Nutreco achie­ved net sales of EUR 6.4 billion. The company is a subsi­diary of SHV Holdings N.V., a family-owned multi­na­tio­nal company with net sales of €19.2 billion in 2019.
nutreco.com.

Zurich — Neural Concept, the Swiss soft­ware company in the field of Compu­ter Aided Design (CAD) and Engi­nee­ring (CAE), is plea­sed to announce new mile­sto­nes in the company’s deve­lo­p­ment. At the begin­ning of the year, the exis­ting inves­tors, Constan­tia New Busi­ness and High-Tech Grün­der­fonds, support the next growth phase with seed exten­sion finan­cing. Both inves­tors alre­ady led the seed round 18 months ago. With the fresh capi­tal, Neural Concept can acce­le­rate and realize its mission — to bring the enorm­ous poten­tial of Deep Lear­ning into the hands of design engi­neers for real-time simu­la­tion and inter­ac­tive design optimization.

Paral­lel to the finan­cing round, a new advi­sory board was estab­lished to comple­ment the exis­ting board of direc­tors. The two new advi­sory board members, Evrard Van Zuylen and Roberto Schett­ler, bring exten­sive expe­ri­ence in foun­ding, growing and mana­ging successful B2B soft­ware compa­nies in the areas of machine lear­ning and design engineering.

Pierre Baqué, foun­der and CEO of Neural Concept: “I am deligh­ted to advise Neural Concept on its future growth. The company’s disrup­tive deep lear­ning algo­rithms will set the new stan­dard in the simu­la­tion industry

Evrard Van Zuylen, Neural Concept Advi­sory Board: “Neural Concept has foun­ded a new world of simu­la­tion. Deep Lear­ning will not only speed up simu­la­ti­ons and demo­cra­tize them in all areas of design and deve­lo­p­ment. I am convin­ced that this will finally enable itera­tive design of better products at low cost. Rather than seeing this as a mere vision of the future, compa­nies can make it a reality today with Neural Concept’s soft­ware products.”

About Evrard Van Zuylen
Evrard van Zuylen is co-foun­der (2006) and mana­ging direc­tor of darts-ip, world’s leading AI-based data provi­der for IP liti­ga­tion until its acqui­si­tion by Clari­vate plc. Foun­der (2000) and CTO of Trans­wide, now part of Alpega N.V. Previously, he worked at BCG and IBM.Evrard holds a master’s degree in mecha­ni­cal engi­nee­ring from l’Ecole Poly­tech­ni­que de Louvain and an MBA from the Univer­sity of Chicago Booth School of Business.

About Roberto Schettler
Roberto was CEO of Real­time Tech­no­logy (RTT), a leading 3D soft­ware and services company for the auto­mo­tive and aero­space sectors. Under his leader­ship, he grew the company to nearly 1,000 employees before RTT was acqui­red by Dassault Systems in 2014. He subse­quently also served as CEO of the rebran­ded company 3DExcite. Previously, he co-foun­ded Core­Op­tics, which was later acqui­red by Cisco Inc. was purcha­sed, and worked as a consul­tant at Think­Team as well as BCG. Here, he helps tech­no­logy compa­nies in both Europe and the U.S. grow to new levels.

About Constan­tia New Busi­ness (CNB Capital)
CNB Capi­tal is an inde­pen­dent early-stage inves­tor focu­sed on B2B product compa­nies that have achie­ved initial market vali­da­tion. An expe­ri­en­ced team of invest­ment mana­gers actively supports foun­ders in func­tional areas, espe­ci­ally sales and marke­ting. The ever­green invest­ment approach supports the long-term orien­ta­tion of CNB’s stra­tegy in buil­ding substan­tial busi­nesses together.

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 600 start-ups since 2005. His 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. Almost EUR 3 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,700 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 120 companies.Investors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy, KfW Capi­tal, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and the 32 companies.

Vienna/Leobersdorf — Logsta, the logi­stics scale-up from Austria, with warehouse loca­ti­ons in Austria, Germany, UK and USA, impro­ves the effi­ci­ency of logi­stics proces­ses many times over with its highly inno­va­tive IT plat­form. For the company with over 860 satis­fied custo­mers like NEOH and Novrit­sch, the new year starts with posi­tive invest­ment news. The company secu­res a 7‑digit finan­cing from the Vien­nese invest­ment fund for growth finan­cing, Round2 Capi­tal, in order to conquer further inter­na­tio­nal markets and expand the IT plat­form, among other things. The high­light: Logsta does not give away shares in the company as usual, but instead Round2 Capi­tal parti­ci­pa­tes in the company’s sales until a prede­fi­ned upper limit has been reached.

Many people today rely — full-time or part-time — on e‑commerce to sell their products. Howe­ver, many SMBs, sole proprie­tors and start­ups invol­ved in e‑commerce that only distri­bute small quan­ti­ties or have special or crea­tive pack­a­ging needs often face the diffi­culty of finding a logi­stics company willing to work with them and provide a digi­ti­zed logi­stics process solu­tion for busi­nesses of any size. Georg Weiß, Chris­toph Glatzl and Domi­nik Bier­in­ger reco­gni­zed this in 2017 and laun­ched the logi­stics startup Logsta.

The goal of the three foun­ders was to support compa­nies that were simply too small or had too high digi­ta­li­zed requi­re­ments for the clas­sic logi­stics compa­nies with uncom­pli­ca­ted and custo­mi­zed logi­stics services world­wide from a single source and at fair prices: From inno­va­tive IT tools, warehouse loca­ti­ons in the USA, Germany, Austria and England, fast support for world­wide ship­ments to modern e‑fulfillment as well as favorable ship­ping condi­ti­ons. Now outgrown its start-up shoes, the scale-up has over 860 inter­na­tio­nal custo­mers and over 2 million products in its warehou­ses. With the speci­ally deve­lo­ped Logsta-Connec­tor, custo­mers can control and check their logi­stics world­wide free of charge, it enables 24/7 inven­tory check, expi­ra­tion date manage­ment, batch manage­ment, order status insight and much more.

In order to realize further expan­sion plans, the three foun­ders have raised a 7‑digit euro amount from Round2 Capi­tal, the invest­ment fund for growth finan­cing. The Vienna-based invest­ment fund is a Euro­pean pioneer in reve­nue-based finan­cing, inves­t­ing in leading scale-ups in the tech­no­logy and soft­ware sectors in Europe. It is a simple, trans­pa­rent and flexi­ble finan­cing instru­ment for compa­nies in the growth phase, which offers non-dilu­tive finan­cing against reve­nue sharing up to a prede­fi­ned cap. The advi­sor for this growth finan­cing was i5Invest, which sees this measure as an important step for Logsta in terms of scaling and internationalization.

“We have found the ideal part­ner for us in Round2. They convince with their flexi­ble finan­cing solu­tion, which gives us the chance to acce­le­rate our growth and conquer more inter­na­tio­nal markets,” said the foun­ders of Logsta.

Chris­tian Czer­nich, CEO and Co-Foun­der Round2 Capi­tal Part­ners: “We are impres­sed by the dyna­mism and inge­nuity of the Logsta team. The foun­ders have mana­ged to build a highly inno­va­tive and now globally opera­ting company in a short period of time without exter­nal funding. Logsta’s digi­tal logi­stics solu­ti­ons enable both large and small compa­nies to get their products sold online to the end custo­mer quickly, relia­bly and cost-effectively.”

About Round2 Capi­tal Partners

Round2 Capi­tal is a fast-growing Euro­pean invest­ment firm with €30 million under its manage­ment. The Vienna-based company is a strong part­ner for Euro­pean scale-ups with digi­tal and sustainable busi­ness models. Since its incep­tion in 2017, Round2 Capi­tal has been pionee­ring reve­nue-based finan­cing in Europe and is active in seve­ral Euro­pean count­ries, with a focus on Germany, Switz­er­land, Austria and the Nordic count­ries. To date, Round2 Capi­tal has inves­ted in 14 diffe­rent compa­nies, with Logsta being the newest company in the port­fo­lio. www.round2cap.com

Bonn, Germany — Kranus Health, the digi­tal men’s health plat­form, today announ­ced a seven-figure seed funding. HTGF, A Round Capi­tal, Venture Base­camp and Dr. Ralph Müller are new inves­tors in Kranus Health. In addi­tion to the new inves­tors, exis­ting busi­ness angels, inclu­ding Konstan­tin Mehl (foun­der Foodora + Kaia Health), have again parti­ci­pa­ted in the seed round.

With the fresh capi­tal, Kranus Health will conti­nue to expand its men’s health plat­form and take the next step of laun­ching a reim­b­ursable digi­tal therapy as a sustainable solu­tion for erec­tile dysfunc­tion. The exis­ting expert network of urology specia­lists will also be further expan­ded to reach even more men with Kranus Health solutions.

The digi­tal health company Kranus Health was foun­ded in 2020 by Jens Nörters­häu­ser, Thilo Klein­schmidt, Niko­lay Dimo­la­rov and Profes­sor Kurt Miller. The goal is to rethink men’s health­care and improve it using digi­tal solu­ti­ons. Men’s life expec­tancy is still up to 6 years behind women’s, thou­sands of men world­wide die too early due to unhe­althy life­styles and lack of preven­tive care and preven­tion — there is a lack of health awareness.

Kranus Health is on a mission to change that. Digi­tal and thus easily acces­si­ble pati­ent jour­neys lower men’s inhi­bi­ti­ons about consul­ting a doctor for their problems and sustain­ably support a healthy life­style because users inter­act with the digi­tal offe­ring in an uncom­pli­ca­ted and frequent manner. The first offe­ring being deve­lo­ped is a reim­b­ursable digi­tal therapy for erec­tile dysfunc­tion (DiGA as an “app on prescrip­tion”). In this clini­cal picture, there is a close connec­tion with serious cardio­vas­cu­lar dise­a­ses such as heart attacks, the risk factors of which should also be redu­ced by Kranus Health therapy. The startup works closely with medi­cal specia­lists and has alre­ady built up a broad network of experts from German urologists.

“Kranus Health has deve­lo­ped an offe­ring based on scien­ti­fic evidence that provi­des urolo­gists with enti­rely new and, most importantly, root cause-orien­ted opti­ons in trea­ting their pati­ents, accor­ding to Profes­sor Kurt Miller,” Chief Medi­cal Offi­cer at Kranus Health

With the fresh capi­tal and the inves­tors’ network, the digi­tal therapy will be further deve­lo­ped this year and laun­ched as a reim­b­ursable product, and the digi­tal plat­form for men’s health will also be expan­ded with addi­tio­nal offerings.

“In the clini­cal picture of erec­tile dysfunc­tion, current offe­rings such as medi­ca­ti­ons are aimed at alle­via­ting the symptoms, but not the causes. With its digi­tal solu­tion, Kranus is helping to improve the quality of life of a large number of men in a long-term and goal-orien­ted manner,” explains Louis Heinz, Invest­ment Mana­ger at HTGF

About Kranus Health

Kranus Health aims to help men live healt­hier, longer lives by provi­ding easy, straight­for­ward access to the latest medi­cal care. Foun­ders Thilo Klein­schmidt and Jens Nörters­häu­ser have known each other for many years through their time toge­ther at McKin­sey & Company, and both have been passio­nate about the possi­bi­li­ties of digi­tal trans­for­ma­tion for years. But both also had a keen inte­rest in the health­care sector. Jens is origi­nally a bio-engi­neer and has years of profes­sio­nal expe­ri­ence in the phar­maceu­ti­cal field. Thilo comes from a medi­cal family, his father is a urolo­gist. The idea of foun­ding Kranus at the begin­ning of 2020 was ther­e­fore an obvious one and also took place against the back­drop of regu­la­tory chan­ges, in parti­cu­lar the Digi­tal Utility Act (DVG). Since then, it has been possi­ble to signi­fi­cantly improve health­care in Germany through digi­tal therapies.

Profes­sor Kurt Miller, former Chief of Urology at Charité Berlin, and CTO Niko­lay Dimo­la­rov (Celo­nis, among others) comple­ment the foun­ding team to jointly imple­ment Kranus’ vision. For this purpose, Kranus Health deve­lops digi­tal thera­pies based on current scien­ti­fic findings supported by tele­me­di­cal care from medi­cal specia­lists. The spec­trum of services ranges from thera­pies for taboo dise­a­ses such as erec­tile dysfunc­tion to early detec­tion and preven­tion (e.g. cardio­vas­cu­lar diseases).

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 600 start-ups since 2005. His 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.

Almost EUR 3 billion in capi­tal has been inves­ted in the HTGF port­fo­lio by exter­nal inves­tors in more than 1,700 follow-on finan­cing rounds to date. In addi­tion, the fund has alre­ady successfully sold shares in more than 120 companies.Investors in the public-private part­ner­ship include the German Fede­ral Minis­try for Econo­mic Affairs and Energy, KfW Capi­tal, the Fraun­ho­fer-Gesell­schaft and the compa­nies ALTANA, BASF, Bayer, Boeh­rin­ger Ingel­heim, B.Braun, Robert Bosch, BÜFA, CEWE, Deut­sche Bank, Deut­sche Post DHL, Dräger, Dril­lisch AG, EVONIK, EWE AG, FOND OF, Haniel, Hettich, Knauf, Körber, LANXESS, media + more venture Betei­li­gungs GmbH & Co. KG, PHOENIX CONTACT, QIAGEN, RWE Gene­ra­tion SE, SAP, Schufa, Schwarz Gruppe, STIHL, Thüga, Vector Infor­ma­tik, WACKER and Wilh. Werhahn KG.