News on deals and facts taking place in the startup and venture capital world

• Presto Ventures, a Prague, Czech Republic-based venture capital firm, investing in early-stage B2B startups from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), closed its Fund II, €30m (read here)

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• True Wealth Ventures, an Austin, TX-based seed-stage venture capital firm invests in companies improving human and environmental health with at least one woman on the founding or executive team, closed its second fund, at $35M (read here)

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• Taavet Hinrikus (Wise), Sten Tamkivi (Teleport), Ian Hogarth (Songkick) and Khaled Helioui (Bigpoint) launched a €250m early stage venture fund called Plural (read here)

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• SturdyAI, a Portland, OR-based provider of an AI-led customer intelligence and automation platform, raised $3.1M in funding (read here)

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• R Labs, an Austin, TX-based blockchain-based financial technology company, raised +$5M in pre-seed funding (read here)

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• Geminus.AI, a Palo Alto, CA-based global leader in physics-informed AI, closed a $5.9m seed funding (read here)

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• AI Squared, a Washington, DC-based provider of a low-code AI integration platform, raised $6M in Seed funding (read here)

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• Veritonic, a NYC-based audio analytics and research platform, closed a $7.5m Series A funding (read here)

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• Nikola Labs, a Columbus, OH-based provider of sensor-based reliability solutions that monitor the health of critical manufacturing equipment, raised an additional $9m in Series A funding (read here)

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• Audience, a Miami, FL-based robot-powered outbound marketing platform, closed a $10m Series A funding round (read here)

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• Cordio Medical, a NYC-based medical speech processing platform provider, raised $18m in funding (read here)

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  Opaque Systems, a Berkeley, CA-based collaborative analytics and AI for confidential computing platform, raised $22m in Series A funding (read here)

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  Front, a San Francisco, CA-based communication hub for building customer relationships, raised $65 million in Series D financing (read here)

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  Nomad Health, a NYC-based digital marketplace for temporary healthcare jobs, raised $105m in financing (read here)

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  Cloudbeds, a San Diego, CA-based hospitality management platform provider, acquired Whistle, a guest engagement solution (read here)

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  ESW, a Dublin, Ireland-based direct-to-consumer (DTC) ecommerce company, acquired Scalefast, a Los Angeles, CA-based provider of a end-to-end ecommerce solution (read here)

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• Accenture (NYSE: ACN) is to acquire XtremeEDA, an Ottawa, Canada-based silicon design services leader (read here)

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• Glia, a New York based provider of a Digital Customer Service, acquired Finn AI, a Vancouver, BC-provider of an AI-powered chatbot platform for banks and credit unions (read here)

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• Magical Mushroom Company, a London, UK-based sustainable packaging company harnessing the magic of mushrooms, raised £3m in seed funding (read here)

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• Speechmatics, a Cambridge, UK – based speech recognition technology company, raised $62m in Series B funding (read here)

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• Swave Photonics, a Leuven, Belgium-based innovator in Holographic eXtended Reality (HXR) technology to bring the metaverse to life, raised €7m in seed funding (read here)

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• Kaiko, a Paris, France-based digital assets data provider serving institutional investors and enterprises, raised $53m in Series B funding (read here)

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• Konnecto, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based provider of a prescriptive marketing platform, raised $21M in Series A funding (read here)

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• Incredibuild, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based creator of a hybrid development acceleration platform for developers and DevOps teams, raised $35M in Series B funding (read here)

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• Bykea, a Pakistani bike-ride sharing and on-demand delivery platform, raised $10M in funding (read here)

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