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Finch Capital, the early-stage fintech VC with a presence in London and Amsterdam, has raised a third fund. Targeting a final close of €150 million, the fund has already secured €85 million from LPs ready to deploy.
Out of Finch Capital “Europe III,” the VC will invest in fintech startups at the Series A and B stages, deemphasising its previous inclusion of seed. Specifically, it says it is on the lookout for “European category leaders,” and in particular those leveraging AI with €2-5 million in revenues — a company profile, the firm argues, that is currently seeing a funding gap. Noteworthy, in early 2020, Finch Capital added Google and DeepMind alum Steve Crossan as a venture partner.
As with its previous funds, Finch plans to back 15-20 European startups over the next three years, and candidly reveals it’s targeting liquidity (i.e. exits) “3-5 years post investment”.
“Although we have a relatively good hit rate on seed deals, the overall impact on the fund is small, as we have made the best returns on deals with €2-5 million in revenues,” Radboud Vlaar, MD Finch Capital, tells me. “This plays to our sweet spot as a team, to leverage our network to help companies to scale, which is harder in the earlier stages when the companies look for product market fit”.
On a potential funding gap, Vlaar says there is a lot of early-stage capital going to companies with €0.5-2 million in revenue, with the aim to get to €5 million and beyond in revenue quickly. And there is also a lot of capital chasing companies with €5-10 million in revenue. “In reality, B2B takes time and many companies are not growing linearly,” he observes. “They might have to adapt the team, strategy etc., on the way to cracking the market.
In addition, most of the U.S. or European growth firms prefer to see signs of a “winner takes all” market, which in Europe, due to its fragmented landscape, is more the exception than the rule, with a greater proportion of €100-500 million exits.
This means that Finch is seeing promising companies with “great products” that are facing a funding gap at €2-5 million in revenue, which the VC aims to plug. “Our strategy is fairly dynamic in terms of ownership but specific in terms of theme: we can aspire for 30-40% in certain companies as well as the more traditional stake of 15-25%,” adds Vlaar.
Meanwhile, Finch’s current portfolio spans pure-play fintech, regtech and insurtech, and includes Trussle, Fourthline, Goodlord, Grab, Hiber, BUX, Twisto and Zopa. Exits include Salviol and Cermati, plus two exits currently unannounced or in progress.
In 2020 the firm launched “Flowrence,” its machine learning tool to help source and manage deal flow. Finch says that over the last SIX months, 20% of its shortlisted deals were sourced by Flowrence, especially useful during the current pandemic.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/09/finch-capital-launches-third-fund/
Hoxton Farms, a U.K. startup that wants to produce animal fat without using animals, has raised £2.7 million in seed funding.
The round is led by Founders Fund, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm founded by Peter Thiel. Also participating is Backed, Presight Capital, CPT Capital and Sustainable Food Ventures.
Still at the R&D stage, Hoxton Farms says it will use the funding to grow its interdisciplinary science team in a new purpose-built lab in London’s Old Street. “[We] will be working towards a scalable prototype of our cultivated fat over the next year to 18 months,” co-founder and mathematician Ed Steele tells me.
He started the company with longtime school friend Dr Max Jamilly, who has two degrees in biotechnology and a PhD in synthetic biology (the pair met at pre-school). “I spent my PhD using a genome editing technology called CRISPR to discover better treatments for children’s leukaemia,” says Jamily. “Along the way, I learnt how to grow complex cells at scale — a fundamental part of the scientific challenge that we face at Hoxton Farms”.
Like other companies in the meat alternative space, the startup is founded on the premise that the traditional meat industry is unsustainable. This is seeing demand for meat alternatives soaring, but, argues Steele, these products still aren’t good enough. “They don’t taste right and they aren’t healthy. They are missing the key ingredient: fat,” he says. And, of course, it’s fat that gives meat most of its flavour.
However, meat alternatives typically use plant oils as a fat replacement, which has a number of drawbacks. Some oils are bad for the environment, such as coconut and palm oil, and most lack flavour.
“At Hoxton Farms, we grow real animal fat without the animals,” explains Steele. “Starting from just a few cells, we grow purified animal fat in bioreactors to produce cultivated fat, a cruelty-free and sustainable ingredient that will finally unlock meat alternatives that look, cook and taste like the real thing”.
Furthermore, he says that current techniques for culturing animal cells are too expensive. Hoxton Farms is using mathematical and computational modelling to “massively reduce the cost of cell culture,” which the company believes will result in a production process “that is cost-effective at scale”.
“We’re combining the latest techniques from computational biology and tissue engineering to do science that wasn’t possible a few years ago,” says Steele. “What sets us apart is the fundamental philosophy that the only way to grow cells cost-effectively at scale is to combine the power of mathematical modelling with synthetic biology”.
It’s envisioned that his computational approach will not only help it compete with other companies working on the same problem — competitors include Mission Barns in the U.S. and Peace of Meat in Belgium/Israel — but also enable it to customise fats for different manufacturers. This could include fine tuning the taste profile, physical properties (melting temperature, density, etc.) and nutritional profile (saturated/unsaturated fatty acid ratio etc.).
Meanwhile, Hoxton Farms’ early customers will be plant-based meat companies who seek a more sustainable and flavoursome alternative to plant oils. Much further into the future, the startup will target cultivated meat companies that grow muscle cells but still need a source of fat, and other industries, such as bakery, confectionery and cosmetics.
Tesla, which is seeing rapid growth in China as it ramps up local manufacturing capacity, has been called upon by the Chinese government for talks over quality issues in its electric cars.
A group of Chinese authorities, including the country’s top market regulator, cyberspace watchdog and transportation authority, held talks with Tesla after consumers complained about acceleration irregularities, battery fire, software upgrade failures and other vehicle problems, according to a government notice posted late Monday.
Tesla said on microblogging platform Weibo that it “sincerely accepts the government departments’ guidance” and will “strictly comply with Chinese laws.” It will also work to strengthen its “internal operational structure and workflow” under the direction of the regulators in order to ensure safety and consumer rights.
While its popularity surged in China over the past few years, Tesla has made a series of recalls due to faulty parts or functions in the country. Just before its meeting with the government, the American EV giant recalled 20,428 imported Model S vehicles and 15,698 units of imported Model X, China’s market regulator announced last week.
China is an increasingly important and the second-largest market for Tesla. The Gigafactory in Shanghai, where Tesla enjoys tax breaks granted by the local municipal government, has allowed the carmaker to localize procurement and production, thus driving down prices in products like Model 3.
China contributed $6.66 billion in revenue for Tesla in 2020, more than doubling the amount from a year before, and accounted for more than 20% of the firm’s total revenues, according to Tesla’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week. In 2019, China made up just around 12% of Tesla’s revenues.
Tesla is competing with a handful of well-financed and indigenous electric car startups in China such as Nio and Xpeng, which are both listed in the U.S. For comparison, Xpeng shipped a total of 27,041 vehicles in 2020, while Nio topped that with 43,728 units shipped. These numbers are still fractions of Tesla’s total delivery, which reached 499,647 vehicles in the year.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/08/tesla-summoned-by-chinese-regulators-for-quality-concerns/
LanzaJet, the renewable jet fuel startup spun out from the longtime renewable and synthetic fuel manufacturer, LanzaTech, has inked a supply agreement with British Airways to supply the company with at least 7500 tons of fuel additive per yer.
The deal marks the second agreement between the UK-based airline and a renewable jet fuels manufacturer following an August 2019 agreement with the British company Velocys. It’s also LanzaJet’s second offtake agreement. The company announced itself with a partnership between the renewable fuels manufacturer and the Japanese airline ANA.
Through the deal, British Airways will invest an undisclosed amount in LanzaJet’s first commercial scale facility in Georgia. The fuel will being powering flights by the end of 2022 the companies said.
It’s part of a broader expansion effort that could see LanzaJet establish a commercial facility for the UK airline in its home country in the coming years.
Back in the U.S. the plan is to begin construction on the Georgia facility later this year which will convert ethanol into a jet fuel additive using a chemical process.
Fuel from the plant will reduce the overall greenhouse emissions by 70 percent versus traditional jet fuel. It’s the equivalent of taking almost 27,000 gasoline or diesel-powered cars of the orad each year, according to the company.
The deal is the culmination of years of research and development work between LanzaJet’s parent company, LanzaTech and Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Spun off in June 2020, LanzaJet was financed by an investment group including parent company LanzaTech, Mitsui, and Suncor Energy. British AIrways now joins the two other strategic investors as LanzaJet eyes an ambitious scale up program through 2025. The company plans to launch four large scale plants producing a pipeline of renewable fuels.
“Low-cost, sustainable fuel options are critical for the future of the aviation sector and the LanzaJet process offers the most flexible feedstock solution at scale, recycling wastes and residues into SAF that allows us to keep fossil jet fuel in the ground. British Airways has long been a champion of waste to fuels pathways especially with the UK Government,” said Jimmy Samartzis, the chief executive of LanzaJet. “With the right support for waste-based fuels, the UK would be an ideal location for commercial scale LanzaJet plants. We look forward to continuing the dialogue with BA and the UK Government in making this a reality, and to continuing our support of bringing the Prime Minister’s Jet Zero vision to life.”
The LanzaJet fuel is certified for commercial flight up to 50% blend with conventional kerosene. “Considering the aviation market is 90 billion gallons of jet fuel a year, having 50% or 45 billion of production capacity and reaching that max blend level will be a great problem to have,” said LanzaTech chief executive Jennifer Holmgren in an email.
LanzaJet’s manufacturing facility in Georgia is designed to produce zero-waste fuels, according to Holmgren, and British Airways will receive 7,500 tonnes of sustainable aviation fuel from LanzaJet’s biorefinery each year for the next 5 years.
The partnership between British Airways, Hangar 51, International Airlines Group’s accelerator and others.
In addition to its biofuel work, British Airways is also working with companies like ZeroAvia, the hydrogen fuels company that also received backing from Amazon, Shell, and Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
“For the last 100 years we have connected Britain with the world and the world with Britain, and to ensure our success for the next 100, we must do this sustainably,” said British Airways chief executive Sean Doyle.
“Progressing the development and commercial deployment of sustainable aviation fuel is crucial to decarbonising the aviation industry and this partnership with LanzaJet shows the progress British Airways is making as we continue on our journey to net zero.”
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