00:16:05 · Robin Walters
[00:16:05] S0: Also want to keep a very close eye on. Some more interesting news to note. Microsoft has reported the opening two cloud data centers in Germany at a cost running to more than a €100,000,000. The data centers would allow customers of Microsoft, which of course competes with Amazon and Google in the $260,000,000,000 cloud computing market to keep data in Germany, which has relatively strict privacy laws. In other very country specific news, Finland's state investment arm has spent about €844,000,000, that's more than 1,000,000,000 US dollars, on building a 3.3% stake in Nokia, strengthening the national influence over the telecom network gear maker. Nokia currently employs 6,300 people in Finland, off a global workforce of about 102,800, but it still remains the country's largest company. So that's a very interesting move by Finland's state investment arm. Going back to funding for startups, UiPath, which is an automation software company originally founded in Bucharest, Romania, has raised $153,000,000 a Series B round led by Excel with participation from Capital G, Kleine Perkins, Caulfield and Beiers, Early Bird, Creative Ventures and Seed Camp. The company, which is now headquartered in New York, develops enterprise robotic process automation software for automating business processes and ensuring compliance. Meanwhile, there's German IoT startup Relayr. They've raised $30,000,000 in funding rounds led by Deutsche Telekom with participation from, again, Kleiner Perkins along with Munich Re and others. And then we have Moovit, which is the Israeli transportation service startup whose iOS, Android and web apps are now used by 120,000,000 people globally across 2,000 cities in 80 countries, has raised about $50,000,000 in new funding. The Series D round was led by Intel Capital and is actually strategic investment. As part of it, Mobileye, which is the $15,300,000,000 Intel subsidiary that builds autonomous driving solutions, will be partnering with Moovit to incorporate its data into its proprietary navigation system. We are going to end the podcast with a number of acquisitions in European tech as well. Of note in particular was that European independent fiber network and cloud networking provider Interoute has been acquired by US cloud networking firm, GTT Communications for €1,900,000,000 in an all cash deal.
00:18:17 · Robin Walters
Experian also made headlines by acquiring ClearScore, which has built a platform that offers you a credit score, which it then uses to suggest financial products like credit cards that fit the bill. Experian is acquiring UK based Clearscore for about $385,000,000 US dollars plus an unspecified earnout based on future performance. The deal is expected to close later this year. Clearscore has around 6,000,000 users and has only disclosed around 15,600,000 in funding. So this deal appears at least to provide a very, very nice return for its investors. German automaker Daimler meanwhile has coughed up about €70,000,000 to buy the remaining 25% of car sharing company, Kart2Go, that it did not already own, valuing the startup thus at €280,000,000 And finally we have SK Telecoms, which has acquired Switzerland based ID Quantique, which is a company that provides quantum safe cryptography solutions. The South Korean telco bought over 50% majority share of the firm for about 70,000,000,000 won, which is about 65,000,000 US dollars. That's it for this edition of the podcast. I really hope you enjoyed it. And we'll be back soon with a new episode. If you can, you should also check out a few events that we are partnering with in the coming months. Firstly, we're co organizing a conference on cryptocurrencies, ICOs, and blockchain technologies. The event is called Crypto Capital World and the first summit will take place on twenty five and twenty six April in Fylnius, Lithuania. The website is simply cryptocapitalworld.com. And the second event we'd like to feature is the Ant Summithem Festival in Leuven, Belgium, which is promising to be a one of a kind event at the intersection of health, tech, and creativity. And that one takes place from two to five May. The website is Andleuven, that's A N D L E U V E N Dot Com. That's it, folks. Please subscribe to this podcast if you haven't already. Tell all your friends and enemies about it, and follow us on Twitter. We're at tech underscore eu or Facebook for regular updates on all things European tech. Thank you for listening. This is Robin Vloggers. Checking out. Ciao.