468 Capital

Congratulations to Christian Bersch, Anjali Jindal Naik, Jonas Witt, Jake Stelman and the entire Cartken team on closing $10 million in addtional seed financing, which we led with participation from Incubate Fund, LDV Partners, Vela Partners, and global mobility leaders including Magna International, Mitsubishi Electric, Shell Ventures, and Volex. Cartken is building an AI-based technology stack enabling unmanned vehicles to become fully autonomous, enhancing operational efficiency and productivity by combining AI and computer vision for seamless indoor and outdoor operation. Its autonomous navigation system effortlessly navigates diverse environments such as industrial complexes, production facilities, campuses, and neighborhoods. Since its inception, Cartken has completed hundreds of thousands of deliveries, averaging 36,000 deliveries per month. In 2023 alone, this efficiency saved employees over 10,000 hours in transportation time. Serving major players in the OEM, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, and chemical sectors across the US, Germany, Denmark, and Japan, Cartken is also integrated with delivery platforms like Uber Eats and Grubhub.

Congrats to Pete Clifford and the team at KARRI who announced their pre-seed funding today. London-based KARRI is on a mission to give children greater independence and parents peace of mind with its smart walkie talkie. Parents of young children often want to give them more freedom to roam with their friends in local neighbourhoods but are also increasingly wary of giving them access to the full internet with screen-based devices like smartphones. KARRI has developed a data-enabled walkie talkie which allows children to send messages simply by pushing a button and speaking, while parents can receive and send messages back via the KARRI app. We admire KARRI’s innovative approach to making it as easy as possible for parents and kids to stay in touch, and excited to back the team ahead of their full launch.

Diving into “AI innovation beyond Big Tech” at Tech.eu summit, 468 General Partner Ludwig Ensthaler hosted a panel yesterday with Cartken’s Christian Bersch, CereGate’s Bálint Várkuti and Jua.ai’s Andreas Brenner. The panel looked at how Europe is a hotbed of innovation - especially at the early stage - and what the next few years will mean for the continent, including the exponential growth we can expect to see in the AI for 3D world. With Cartken using AI to pioneer autonomous robot deliveries, CereGate developing new ways of interfacing with the human brain, and Jua.ai building the world’s first AI foundation model for the natural world, the trio of founders showed how we can transcend “hype” and deliver tangible value, and why AI is poised to impact not just the digital but also the physical world. Thanks to Tech.eu for organising a great event, and thanks to everyone who attended!

Congratulations to 🟣 Elias Schneider, Roman Frolov and Jonas Zipprick and the entire Codesphere team on raising an $18 million Series A round led by Creandum with participation from Firestreak Ventures and existing investors. Codesphere enables developers to program and scale complex applications directly in the cloud without the traditional challenges of DevOps and containerization. This leads to a significant reduction in infrastructure costs and makes the development process self-service. Having been the first backers of the Karlsruhe-based Codesphere, we are hugely excited to continue supporting the team as they advance their work and take the next steps in their journey.

Congratulations to Michał Mgeładze-Arciuch, Daniel Vlasits and Jan Oborili and the entire YonedaLabs team on raising a $4 million seed round led by Khosla Ventures. YonedaLabs, which is pioneering the foundational model for chemical manufacturing, aids chemists in refining reaction parameters such as temperature, concentration, and catalyst selection when producing drugs or materials. Chemists currently invest significant time in trial and error to match molecules and determine optimal bonding methods. We are hugely excited to continue supporting the team as they continue their work and take the next steps in their journey.

Congratulations to Tony Schumacher, Thomas Antonioli and the entire Terra One team on raising a $7.5 million seed round led by PT1 and neosfer. We were the first backers of Berlin-based Terra One which is accelerating the expansion of renewable energy storage infrastructure and on a mission to power the transition to green energy. While solar capacity is expanding and more wind turbines are being installed, the current electricity grid and storage capacities are inadequate for the full transition to renewable energy sources.  Terra One’s network of AI-powered, grid-connected, large-scale battery storage systems offers a solution. The company’s largest battery project to date has the capacity to power a city of 100,000 people for up to six hours, making it a viable alternative to gas and oil. We are hugely excited to continue supporting the team as they continue their work and take the next steps in their journey.

Congrats to Patrick Rafferty, Silas Sewell and the team at UserHub on securing $3.2 million in pre-seed funding in a round we led. UserHub, the user-based billing platform built for B2B SaaS, is on a mission to make modern monetization infrastructure attainable for every software business – particularly startups, for which there is often a gap between the value their software delivers and the value they can extract from customers, at scale. Category-leading SaaS products – such as Slack, Hubspot, and GitHub – spend millions building user management, pricing, and billing systems. But the majority of SaaS companies, especially startups, lack the resources to invest in this area. To level the playing field, the UserHub platform includes embeddable self-service interfaces designed to be a natural extension of a SaaS vendor’s core product, so end customers can easily add team members, upgrade plans, and manage licenses and credits. We at 468 Capital are excited to back UserHub in building a best-in-class billing platform. Keep up the good work, guys!

Congratulations to Johannes Korves, Manuel Zapp, Christophe Hocquet, Bérenger Laurent and the whole team at natif.ai on their latest milestone – a successful acquisition by DocuWare. Natif, the AI document automation platform, enables users to optimize document processing – from organizing and filing to extracting content – so they can improve their efficiency and productivity. Founded in 2019 as an official spin-off of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Natif is led by a team of research experts and serial entrepreneurs, with successes under their belt including the sale of online optical retailer Brille24. From a cold mail here on LinkedIn to a successful exit – that's the journey we embarked on with Natif. We are proud to have believed in their vision and thrilled to see their hard work culminate in such a successful outcome.

Congratulations to Pascal Salmen, Andre Stollhans and the entire team at acto on raising €3.7 million in a seed funding round we led with Cusp Capital. acto's platform is changing the way how SMEs leverage data by providing decision intelligence and automation on top of their legacy technology systems (e.g., ERP and CRM), thereby turning data silos into actionable decision insights — augmenting sales, procurement or logistics employees to substantially boost efficiency and topline growth. Its unique approach has the potential to set the gold standard in high-stake and high-volume decision augmentation. We can’t wait to see what’s next!

Congratulations to Edoardo Dellepiane, Raffaele Sertorio and the entire team Niko Energy on raising $3.3 million in a seed funding round we led with Picus Capital. Electrification and energy transition are key investment themes for 468 Capital. Niko is enabling the energy transition in Mexico by converting the energy source for homes and small businesses to solar with no upfront costs for their clients. Mexico is the 14th-largest country in the world and despite having one of the world's highest photovoltaic power potentials, solar energy adoption to date has been remarkably small representing only 5% of the country's energy mix. Good luck, guys!