00:08:42 · Robin Walters
[00:08:42] S0: Great. Well, it sounds like you have a lot of big plans ahead. Thank you so much for taking the time, and good luck with the company and the rest of the conference. Thanks, Alex. Very interesting company for sure. I'm sure you'll agree. Now let's look at some recent funding rounds for European tech companies that garnered our attention in the past few weeks. There were quite a few big ones in the fintech arena, so let's take a look at those for starters. First up, there was UK digital bank Atom, which has raised £149,000,000 led by Spanish financial institution BBVA, along with asset manager Tosca Funds. And as part of the round, BBVA has invested £85,400,000 into the company, and that actually brings its total stake in the company up to 39%. So that's getting close to half of the company. Interestingly, BBVA has also invested quite heavily in another fintech startup along with Visa, Relaystar and ABN AMRO this time. That consortium has pumped about €56,600,000 into the German banking as a service platform, solarisBank. That company claims to have nearly 60 businesses currently using its white labeled suite of banking services and is on course to integrate with over 100 corporate clients by the end of this year. And then there's fintech firm Capitolis, which has raised $29,000,000 two separate rounds of funding. 20,000,000 came from Index Ventures and 9,000,000 from Sequoia Capital. The company, which is based in London with offices in Tel Aviv, New York, basically develops services and solutions for capital markets, such as equities and foreign exchange. And then we have made.com, which is a furniture e commerce firm based in The UK. They have raised £40,000,000 from Partech Ventures, Level Equity and Eight Roads Ventures, along with a new investor that has not been named mysteriously. Made.com basically links customers directly with furniture designers. It plans to use the new funds to expand further across Europe. In other news, France's competition authority may open investigations into Facebook and Google in the next few months after an in-depth examination concluded that the pair dominates the French online advertising market.
00:10:39 · Robin Walters, Sandis Kondrats
France is also threatening to fine Apple and Google for abusive commercial practices through their app stores amid growing scrutiny from European authorities of the biggest Internet companies whose size and sway over data collection have rapidly made them advertising giants. Finance Minister Bruno Le Meagh said last Wednesday that France will take legal actions against Google and Apple and fines could be in the millions of euros. Fines are actually likely to be about €2,000,000 per company, which are accused of taking advantage of local developers. This comes after a two year investigation by the ministry's fraud repression units, according to an official in Le Mer's office. And now let's have a listen to our second interview, podcast featuring the founder and CEO of a very interesting startup called Anatomy Next. His name is Sandis Kondrats, and his company just won the Tech Chill startup pitching competition. To learn what they're all about, listen up. Hey. This is Robin Walters from tech.eu, and I'm here in Riga, Latvia, where I attend the Tech Show conference. And the winner of the startup competition of that conference, was a Latvian company called Anatomy Next. And I'm sitting now with Sandis, who's a co founder and CEO of the company. Can you briefly tell us what the startup does? [00:11:49] S2: Yeah. So Anatomy Next is human body simulator for medical training in virtual reality. It's just like a a Google Maps for human body or a flight simulator, but for the human body. [00:12:01] S0: Okay. And you work on multiple platforms and headsets already?
00:12:01 · Robin Walters, Sandis Kondrats
[00:12:01] S0: Okay. And you work on multiple platforms and headsets already? [00:12:05] S2: Exactly. Right now focusing on mixed reality, holographic devices, and having also product on desktop available and mobile devices. [00:12:15] S0: Great. And what's the target audience for this solution? [00:12:19] S2: Yeah, target audience are medical students and young millennial doctors. Great. And how's it going [00:12:25] S0: so far? How long has the company been around? [00:12:27] S2: Yeah, so company twenty fifteen started since then been developing the product and engaged with almost 70 medical institutions, both in US and Europe, doing really well as having a first paying customer, the number one US hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and involved with many other possible contracts down the road. It's Have [00:12:53] S0: you raised any funding so far? [00:12:54] S2: We did raise a 500,000 of euros twenty sixteen-seventeen winter. [00:13:00] S0: What's the next step for the company? What's 2018 going to be like [00:13:03] S2: for you? Yeah, 2018. So we are now about to close a 500,000 of dollars round and now scaling up the sales and marketing, both in The US and Europe, and going to participate in main education conferences like Health2O in Barcelona will happen in May, as well as for you in The US to scale up. [00:13:26] S0: Well, that's definitely very cool if you actually try it. It's very hard to explain, of course, in an audio interview, but what's the secret sauce of this? What makes you special compared to other competitors out there?
00:13:26 · Robin Walters, Sandis Kondrats
[00:13:26] S0: Well, that's definitely very cool if you actually try it. It's very hard to explain, of course, in an audio interview, but what's the secret sauce of this? What makes you special compared to other competitors out there? [00:13:37] S2: Mhmm. Yeah. So it is a... The team, the composition of the team, and a... Our location culture behind it, because the product is developed by programmers, three d artists, and medics. And so our team, the medics programmers and three d artists, work closely together. They speak Latin. They understand the programming languages, and this is not possible elsewhere. Here in Latvia are really high level medical education professionals, and they are accessible because this country is small, we know each other, we know each other's sort of culture and the language, and are highly supported from the University of Latvia and the Rigsons University. So we get access to the latest medical technology and data. So it is a team. That's the key. Great. [00:14:28] S0: You focus on a pretty specific target audience today. Can you also think of other use cases down the line as the company expands and scales that you might get into?
00:14:28 · Robin Walters, Sandis Kondrats
[00:14:28] S0: You focus on a pretty specific target audience today. Can you also think of other use cases down the line as the company expands and scales that you might get into? [00:14:37] S2: Yeah, so currently focusing on the medical students' education and then a case for emergency medicine simulation. But down the road, that's a second part of this year, it's a neurosurgery, it is a craniofacial surgery, and also orthopedic surgery simulators in our pipeline. We will stay in the medical field. Absolutely. That's our competence and our nation, our mission to save millions of lives around the world. So we are doing through education, training, resources and simulation solutions. [00:15:19] S0: Right, well that's absolutely a great mission to have. But you have an interesting background because you don't come from a medical background. Can you briefly share what you used to do before [00:15:28] S2: this time? Yeah, so I come from the Renaissance style art, specifically sculpture. It's like a Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci style education. As you know, Leonardo da Vinci was anatomist, and artist and architect at the same time. So this type of education also I had here in Latvia and learn the human body, the surface anatomy through sculpting experiences. Yeah. [00:15:55] S0: Absolutely. Great background and great company. Congratulations again on winning the startup competition and best of luck with the company this year. [00:16:02] S2: Thank you, sir.
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.