swiftscale

🚀 Founders: Series A on the horizon? Apply to present at our Investor Forum in November 💸 Investors: there's still time to get a ticket BEFORE the event goes live! On Wednesday 27th November, swiftscale and Macquarie Capital are co-hosting a private forum for senior members of the investor community. We're showcasing exceptional startups raising their Series A to a curated audience of senior investors from VC, CVC, PE and Family Offices. Interested? Drop us a direct message or email at hello@swiftscale.co.

Who are REV.VC? 💸 Data and analytics-focused fund 💸 First cheque is typically anywhere from $1 to $10 million 💸 They lead the deal about 40% of the time 💸 Since 2000, they’ve invested over $250m in technology companies 💸 Portfolio standouts include Babbel, Healthline, Palantir, Recorded Future and SingleStore Want to learn more? We sat down with Daven Nijran-Talwar, Principal at REV.VC to discuss his investment thesis, what he looks for in a founder and what he's got his eye on right now. Continue reading: https://buff.ly/47vN4cp ------ Follow swiftscale by tapping the 🔔 for the latest insights from expert investors, founders and executives. Want to meet REV? Drop us a note at hello@swiftscale.co

“Innovation comes from the intersection of differences.” Who agrees with this quote from Barb Hyman, Founder and CEO of Sapia.ai? In a candid interview, Barb shares the winning characteristics of her founding team, what advice she'd give herself if starting again and the benefit of being a "data" company first and foremost. Read the full interview here:

It may just be end-of-week tiredness talking, but "forever chemicals" are terrifying. Developed in the 1940s, “Forever chemicals” (also known as per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances or PFAS) are a class of highly persistent and toxic chemicals used to make products water-repellant, grease-resistant, and/or heat tolerant. However, these same qualities also make them hard to destroy, hence the name “forever chemicals”. PFAS can be found in non-stick cookware, stain-resistant carpets and furniture, waterproof clothing, artificial turf, building materials, and more. They've recently come under intense scrutiny because they've been found to: 🧪 Migrate into soil, air, and water 🧪 Persist in the environment because they can't readily break down 🧪 Bioaccumulate in the food chain 🧪 Be universally detected in humans, fish, and wildlife 🧪 Pose health risks even at extremely low levels (some at parts per trillion) According to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), forever chemicals have entered water supplies worldwide, with an estimated 97% of people having PFAS in their bodies.  It's not surprising when the Royal Society of Chemistry stated last year that more than a third of tested water courses in England and Wales exceeded their recommended limits of PFAS. That's why we're SO excited by Puraffinity, a London-based startup developing precision technologies which remove toxic perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) from water. They've completed a £16.93m Series A round, after just closing £6.73 million from BGF. This follows existing funding from Octopus Ventures, HG Ventures, Kindred Capital VC and Verve Ventures as well as materials science sector specialist fund Universal Materials Incubator Co., Ltd. Continue reading: https://lnkd.in/e-_VkW22 #raiseoftheweek

Our next investor event isn't live just yet, but you can get on the waitlist now.... On Wednesday 27th November we'll be hosting: 🚀 Lightning fast pitches from Seed-stage startups raising Series A 🚀 A focus on B2B SaaS, but outliers included (because we know you break the mould now and again for something exceptional) 🚀 Drinks and networking with top-tier investors 🚀 Stunning space with delicious food and drink from our wonderful partners Macquarie Group (Macquarie Capital Partners) in Moorgate, London Want to get on the waitlist before the event goes live? Drop us a DM or email us at hello@swiftscale.co and skip the queue

"Nowadays, a good product doesn't necessarily mean a good business.” We sit down with Daven Nijran-Talwar, Principal at REV.VC, a data and analytics-focused fund, which has invested in breakout companies, such as Babbel and Palantir Technologies, since 2000. https://lnkd.in/ePNsNySm ------ Follow us (swiftscale) by tapping the 🔔 for the latest insights from expert investors, founders and executives. Want to meet REV? Drop us a note at hello@swiftscale.co

Endless cover letters, impersonal forms and gruelling interview marathons have turned the hiring process into a soul-sucking ordeal. To make matters worse, a lot of the time, it doesn’t even result in the right people being hired! It feels like a solution has been a long time coming, which is why we were so excited to talk with Barb Hyman, founder and CEO of Sapia.ai. They're trusted by enterprise customers globally from Qanta to Starbucks to Woolworths. They've generated amazing results for companies like Holland & Barrett, reducing employee churn by 30% by hiring for potential over experience. Barb is also just such a formidable founder. We discuss what the insecure overachiever profile is in the startup world, why innovation comes from the intersection of differences and how Sapia is changing the recruitment game. Check it out: https://lnkd.in/ey3VspT7

Tired of slow, cumbersome due diligence? Capsa AI has just raised £1.7 million in Seed Funding to transform the Private Equity due diligence process. Capsa uses AI to automate tasks such as: - Generating company profiles - Summarising financial performance - Answering due diligence queries - Reviewing legal contracts This results in: 🏃 Faster deal closing 📈 More efficient due diligence 💸 Increased investment opportunities Ultimately, saving time and money ✨ The Seed funding round was led by Outward VC and investment from Cornerstone VC, existing investor Antler (where co-founders Danyal Özdüzenciler and Callum Downie met) and angel investors including Chris Adelsbach. Continue reading: https://lnkd.in/ez-xtvF8 #raiseoftheweek

💡 Clean energy's next trillion-dollar industry.....Grid-scale batteries 🔋 The context: Solar and wind energy are unreliable due to their dependence on weather conditions, making energy storage essential for a stable electricity supply 🔋 Grid-scale batteries can store excess energy and release it when production is low. 🪫 However, the current installed capacity is under 200 gigawatts, far from the terawatt levels required by the end of the decade. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that nearly 5 terawatts of battery storage by 2050 is essential to keeping the world on track for net-zero emissions. The energy storage market is expected to grow rapidly, with investments and technological advancements paving the way for increased capacity. Continue reading: https://lnkd.in/eGji3J93 --- Technology is advancing at the speed of thought, so it pays to stay informed. Follow us (swiftscale) by tapping the 🔔 for your digest of the startup news you should know about.

Magic has just raised $320 million to build an automated AI software engineer and researcher 👩💻 Magic develops AI-driven tools (not yet for sale) designed to help software engineers write, review, debug and plan code changes. The tools operate like an automated pair programmer, attempting to understand and continuously learn more about the context of various coding projects. How will they power this software? Today, Magic has just announced their partnership with Google Cloud and NVIDIA to build two new cloud-based supercomputers. Magic co-founder and CEO Eric Steinberger said “Nvidia’s [Blackwell] system will greatly improve inference and training efficiency for our models, and Google Cloud offers us the fastest timeline to scale, and a rich ecosystem of cloud services.” The supercomputers will support Magic’s mission of developing code assistants with a context window reaching 100 million tokens, which is enough information to equal 10 years of human speech! 🗣️ Magic has a small team and has not yet seen revenue, but they're going after a market that could be worth $27.17 billion by 2032. The latest funding round was led by former Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, with contributions from Sequoia Capital and Atlassian Ventures. Read more: https://lnkd.in/giXpX_8g