Well-known names believe in the fund, which focuses on health, climate, nutrition and social issues. Also: Consolidation in the fintech sector and Virgin Hyperloop laying off almost half of its workforce.
Emily Brooke, Otto Birnbaum, Lauren Lentz and Henrik Grosse-Hokamp manage the Revent Fund.
Revent
Good Morning! While you slept, work continued elsewhere in the digital scene.
The top topics:
The Berlin venture capitalist Revent collects 60 million euros. Support comes from the Otto Group and Beiersdorf, for example. The impact fund specializes in topics such as health, but also in climate, nutrition and social affairs. Many companies already have to define these areas as sustainability goals in their reports. The investors Otto Birnbaum and Lauren Lentz want to use the fresh money to support startups in the early stages.
In addition to the Otto Group and Beiersdorf, institutional investors and some well-known members of German entrepreneurial families have backed Revent. In addition, top-class tech founders and investors such as Verena Pausder (Fox & Sheep), Sascha Konietzke (Contentful), Florian Heinemann (Project A) and Luis Hanemann (Headline) have invested in the fund. Revent has funded nine companies so far, including UK's Sylvera, which provides ratings for carbon offset schemes, and Germany's Avelios, a modular hospital software platform. [More at Handelsblatt and Techcrunch]
On the start-up scene: The smartphone bank N26 wants to go public, but at the same time the personnel carousel keeps turning: N26 is constantly losing top managers. We have compiled the most important heads in an organizational chart. [More at Gründerszene+]
And here are the other headlines of the night:
Sofi Technologies buys Technisys SA for approximately $1.1 billion. Technisys is a banking software developer and aims to help Sofi transform itself from a lender into more of a one-stop finance shop. The all-stock deal represents approximately 10 percent of Sofi's market value. The acquisition also means that Sofi now owns a banking platform that provides back-end technology to other banks and fintech companies. [More at Wall Street Journal]
Virgin Hyperloop has laid off almost half of its workforce. The company is shifting its focus from passenger transportation to cargo transportation, according to a media report. 111 positions will be eliminated. US-based Virgin Hyperloop is one of the leading companies developing the technology of the same name. This is an updated version of the idea of reducing the energy requirements of trains by placing them in vacuum-sealed tubes where drag is minimal. The concept was revived by Elon Musk in 2013. [More at Financial Times and The Verge]
Airbus will be testing hydrogen engines with the CFM joint venture from the middle of this decade. CFM is a merger of the US company General Electric and the French airline Safran. Jeff Knittel, CEO of Airbus Americas, called the day of the announcement a "historic day for aviation". [More at CNBC and Handelsblatt]
Sony presented its virtual reality headset for the Playstation VR2 on Tuesday. The new product is a sign that competition in the VR space continues to increase. Facebook parent company Meta, for example, has committed $10 billion to shift its focus to the Metaverse, a digital world where people should work and play with their headset. Apple is also reportedly planning to launch a virtual reality headset in the coming year. [More at CNBC]
Cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ether and other digital currencies fell sharply on Tuesday. Geopolitical tensions between Russia and Ukraine hit cryptocurrencies particularly hard after traders shied away from risky assets. Bitcoin fell to just over $36,000 at times, its lowest level in more than two weeks. Ether, Cardano's Ada and XRP also fell. [More at CNBC]
Our reading tip on the start-up scene: Georg Molzer's startup Shadowmap arose from the small desire to catch more light. Now it turns out that the idea of visualizing shadows and light on a map in real time has a surprising number of possible applications. Top investor Hansi Hansmann is also convinced of the Viennese start-up. [More at start-up scene]
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