Wirecard Fugitive🕵️ Germany's first decacorn 🦄 and Chinese Fintech investments 🇨🇳
🗞 What you've missed
Important headlines and their gists
Ex-Wirecard exec believed to in Moscow after a year on the run
(English - 2 mins read)
Ex-chief operating officer Jan Marsalek who fled the EU after Wirecard's fraud scandal is reported to be in Moscow according to The German Federal Intelligence Service (BND). The Kremlin has not yet commented on the latest reports.
Germany finally allows driverless vehicles on the road
(German - 3 mins read)
The Bundestag passed a law to allow autonomous driving on the condition that it is supervised by a human remotely and can be abruptly stopped by the technician or even by the passengers if needed. The autonomous minibusses will slowly be rolled out in some cities to experiment.
SAP employees will enjoy working flexibility post corona
(German - 8 mins read)
SAP is big on the work from home policy for its employees post-corona this comes after a survey was concluded that 80% of employees would prefer the flexibility to work from anywhere they want. On the other hand, SAP is also expanding new offices in Berlin with a budget of €200M to accommodate 1200 employees.
💰 Big Money
Big investments, acquisitions and exits.
Celonis is now the 2nd most valuable European startup
(English - 2 mins read)
Celonis is now worth $11 billion officially the 2nd most valuable startup in the EU right after Klarna this came after a massive Series D round of $1B led by Durable Capital Partners and T. Rowe Price. This makes the TUM graduate a "decacorn" yes this term exists meaning pre-IPO companies net worth more than $10B.
Scalable Capital raises 180$M led by China's Tencent
(English - 5 mins read)
Munich-based Scalable Capital the retail investment platform just raised a $180M series E round to be valued at $1.4B. The Chinese tech giant Tencent has its eyes on European Fintech as the scale capital deal comes after the investment round in the Dutch mobile broker BUX. Scalable Capital has over 250k customers and $5 billion assets under management.
Firebase alternative Nhost raised $3M seed without Leaving the House
(English - 2 mins read)
Nhost already started as a remote company in late 2019. Nhost raised a pre-seed capital of $110k right when lockdown started which shifted the fundraising focus to be fully remote. The angels of the seed rounds include very respected names in the dev-tools domain including founders of Github, Netlify, and workOS.
🔭 Startups to watch
Stealth startups worth keeping eyes on
Chart showing the companies started by ex-German classic companies
credits to Robin Dechant
photo credits to Robin Dechant
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