Plural

Exciting news! 💥 Thrilled to share that we’ve raised a fresh €400M fund to continue backing the most ambitious founders on consequential missions to change the world through technology. This new fund signals a strong belief in the quality of founders and companies emerging from Europe by some of the most sophisticated LPs on both sides of the Atlantic. In our first 18 months, we’ve invested in 26 transformative companies across 6 countries, including Denmark, Estonia, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and US. These exceptional teams are making important progress across a range of sectors, including AI (e.g. Robin AI or Unitary) frontier tech (e.g. Proxima Fusion or VSPARTICLE ), climate & energy (e.g. Field or Isometric)) and health & tech bio (e.g. Sano Genetics or Teton), and we’re honoured that they’ve chosen Plural to join them on their transformative journeys. We’ve now raised €660M in total to back important missions and have a GDP-level impact in Europe, address systemic risks and reduce the opportunity gap worldwide through the companies we back. Thanks to everyone who has been part of the Plural journey so far. We’re just getting started! https://lnkd.in/epxdmQAG

We're delighted to welcome Taavet Hinrikus to Impact/Week 2024. Previously co-founder of Wise, which went public in 2021, and the first employee at Skype, Taavet is now a partner at Plural, an early-stage investment fund that backs the most ambitious founders on a mission to change the world through technology. Taavet has been an active investor for more than a decade, looking for 10x better solutions to huge problems that have impact globally. 🌍 Impact/Week 2024 📆 November 6-7 📍 Norrsken Barcelona  Get your ticket here: https://lnkd.in/dM3NvHai

Sharing this news is great on more levels than funding announcements usually. First and foremost, for the mission: our global transition to clean energy will get the novel materials it needs quicker. And the potential of software defined materials + AI will of course cover every other industry from there on. But also, having Rainer Sternfeld and NordicNinja VC team join Plural in this round means interesting additional bridges between Netherlands and Estonia tech scenes, between old startup founder friends, and between Europe and Japan.

Our magnet team recently gathered at the PSI Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland, where we’re collaborating with PSI’s Magnet Development Laboratory on the development of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet technology. Proxima team members—alongside our technical advisor Felix Schauer—kicked off this closely integrated collaboration with a working session that included a technical deep dive, laying out our plans for process development and prototyping. Partnering with the experts and state-of-the-art facilities at PSI empowers us to accelerate our demonstration of HTS magnet technology and de-risk this critical component for #stellarator fusion power plants. Together, we’re forging the future of HTS magnet innovation. 🧲⚡

“It’s like watching a toddler learning, because the robots are not deterministically programmed but self-learning, you don’t have high engineering costs in the same way.” Plural's Carina N. on breakthroughs in embodied AI in today's Financial Times 👇 Full piece below by the FT's Madhumita Murgia & Cristina Criddle

Thrilled to see Monumental in The Generalist's Future 50! From the article: "Monumental is at the vanguard of a new “European dynamism” movement. The Dutch company has a chance to establish itself as the “Anduril of construction,” bringing a tightly integrated hardware and software solution to revitalize a stagnant industry. "

Last month I had a chance to spend time in Europe and visited Tallinn to learn about the Estonian startup ecosystem. Some mind-blowing statistics: 1. +1,000 startups per million inhabitants in 2022 (vs 269 average in Europe) 2. +400 funded startups per million inhabitants in 2023 (more than double of UK) 3. 4.5 unicorns per million inhabitants in 2023 (vs 0.9 average in Europe) Talking with the people from the ecosystem and reading, here are some insights on how they came to where they are: 🌟 Skype was the first spark that showed everyone what was possible. Its success benefited many former employees, who have since used that experience to spin out their own companies as well as invest in the local ecosystem. 🤝 Open and collaborative ecosystem. People are very open to connecting, sharing experience and learnings as well as mentoring and investing in new generations. "Skype mafia" set the tone and people are eager to continue supporting new founders. 📜 Advanced digital infrastructure and supportive governmental policies have made it easier for founders to start and build businesses. 🌍 The small market size forces the founders to look outside Estonia from day one. As Sten Tamkivi from Plural puts it: "Any tech project in Estonia always begins with the scrappy lens of “how can we get ALL THIS done with 3 people?” You can never build a massive company on a local market of a million people, which means every founder is forced to think global from day one. When all founders look outside of Estonia, their backs are together: we have the most supportive community of peers anywhere." Huge thanks to Kaidi Ruusalepp, Francesco Rovetta, Märt Aro, Andrus Oks, Siim Teller, Leonardo Daniel Ortega Prudencio, Mikk Vainik, and Sten Tamkivi for meeting up with me, sharing your knowledge and learnings, and connecting me to inspiring people. Lots of things to learn for Mexico & Latam :)

Welcome to Estonia, Dr. Gundbert Scherf, Torsten Reil and team Helsing. Working together on defending democracies is crucial, especially in this time and place.

Today, Plural is doubling down on our team’s early investments in Helsing, a new type of defence AI company that believes that software, in particular AI, will be the key to protecting our democracies. We are fully behind their core mission to attain technological leadership so that democratic societies are free to make sovereign decisions and control their ethical standards. Having long been preoccupied by the question of how AI would affect national sovereignty, Ian Hogarth was one of the first backers of Helsing as part of the pre-seed round and Khaled Helioui followed suit at the seed round, bringing on board a number of European founders and operators equally committed to protecting European sovereignty and supporting the team as they navigated the escalation of conflict on the continent. Democracies are fragile and the world is changing fast. Protection of European sovereignty, democratic values and open societies is not something we take lightly at Plural. A number of us have grown up on the repressive side of the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. Today 100M Europeans live on the Eastern flank of NATO, right next to the full scale war Russia is waging against its sovereign neighbour Ukraine on European soil. There is a critical and urgent need for investment in and development of world-class defence from Europe in teams with European values at the core. Having already backed some of the most ambitious founders addressing the world’s energy and climate challenges, we are proud to back Helsing’s world-class team, led by co-founders Torsten Reil, Dr. Gundbert Scherf and Niklas Köhler, that brings the highest ethical standards to defending democracy and freedom from Europe. They founded Helsing to help protect our democratic values and open societies, and they are taking a software-first approach to partnering with industry and governments to connect existing and new hardware platforms with advanced AI to keep our societies from harm. More details by Bloomberg's Mark Bergen 👇 https://lnkd.in/gCa2bFXC

AI will enable us to do more with less – from reimagining public services to transforming Britain's health-care system. Learn more from CEO of Unitary Sasha Haco at the #FutureofBritain Conference 2024 on how to unlock economic growth, societal wellbeing and global leadership: https://bit.ly/3L5ny3p