RAW, the rising dating app that’s already made waves by solving major problems like catfishing and ghosting, is now jumping into the AI pool — but with a twist that actually makes sense. Their new feature, RAW Q (yes, like Bond’s tech wiz) stands apart from all those AI toys made to grab tech blog headlines. It’s here to amplify natural charm, without replacing it — turning crushes into dates right in the chats.

Caught in the act: your AI wingman is showing

Online dating should be the last fortress of human touch in this robot takeover — after all, can algorithms really understand butterflies in the stomach? But reality check: according to McAfee’s 2024 study, more than a quarter of Americans are already secretly sliding AI into their dating game, with 30% of men and 27% of women using it to polish their profiles.

Meet your new lovebot — with standards

RAW Q is a next-generation AI dating assistant that integrates right into the dating experience. Unlike standalone tools, RAW Q:

• Analyzes profiles and chat histories

• Learns individual communication styles

• Reviews messages in real-time

• Generates effective conversation starters

• Maintains user authenticity while improving messages

Built on OpenAI and Anthropic’s language models, RAW Q simplifies AI assistance down to a single tap. The system automatically detects the context — whether it’s an empty chat needing an opener, an ongoing conversation requiring a response, or a draft message that needs refinement. Users don’t need to understand AI or prompting — they tap once, and the system determines exactly what kind of assistance to provide.

RAW is showing that AI can upgrade human connection without replacing it. After all, sparks fly between people, not processors — and in the right hands, even AI can help keep dating real. Time to see what happens when authentic meets automatic, one cute DM at a time.

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Germany’s Klim has raised $22 million in a Series A funding round led by BNP Paribas to take its regenerative farming platform international. The startup, founded in 2020, provides farmers with tools to plan, execute and finance the transition to more sustainable farming practices.

Klim’s platform offers data-driven insights on restoring soil health, increasing biodiversity, capturing carbon, and reducing emissions. Farmers can use the platform to track their progress and earn revenue by selling carbon “insets” to supply chain partners looking to make their operations greener.

“There’s a real urgency to transition farmland to regenerative practices,” said Klim CEO Robert Gerlach. “You need to do two things to get a farmer to regenerative agriculture – provide a digital agronomist to guide them, and quantify the impact through data.”

The new funding will allow Klim to expand its operations beyond Germany, where it currently serves 3,500 farmers covering 700,000 hectares of land, representing 5% of the country’s farmland. Clients include major food companies like Nestlé, Kaufland, and Aryzta.

“Klim’s innovative platform and approach to scaling regenerative agriculture are perfectly aligned with our commitment to financing solutions that mitigate climate change, make the ecosystems more resilient and improve people’s livelihoods,” said Maha Keramane, head of BNP Paribas’ Positive Impact Business Accelerator.

Klim is not alone in the regenerative agriculture space, with competitors like Agricarbon, Regrow, and Soil Capital also working to help farmers transition to more sustainable practices. However, Klim’s comprehensive platform and growing client base make it a standout player in the European agritech market.

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Writer, a leading generative AI company, has raised $200 million in a Series C funding round, valuing the startup at a staggering $1.9 billion. The round was co-led by Premji Invest, Radical Ventures, and ICONIQ Growth, with participation from prominent investors including Salesforce Ventures, Adobe Ventures, B Capital, Citi Ventures, IBM Ventures, and Workday Ventures.

Founded in 2020 by May Habib and Waseem AlShikh, the company has grown rapidly, offering a full-stack generative AI platform with customizable solutions for various enterprise use cases. The new funding will be used to accelerate product development and cement Writer’s position as a leader in the enterprise generative AI space.

“At Writer, we’re not just creating AI models that can execute tasks, but developing advanced AI systems that deliver mission-critical enterprise work,” said Habib, the company’s CEO. “With this new funding, we’re laser-focused on delivering the next generation of autonomous AI solutions that are secure, reliable, and adaptable in highly complex, real-world enterprise scenarios.”

Writer’s platform includes its own family of models, Palmyra, for text generation, as well as features that connect business data sources to its models and the ability for customers to self-host Writer-created models. The company has also developed a model, Palmyra X 004, trained almost entirely on synthetic data, which cost just $700,000 to develop, a fraction of the estimated $4.6 million required for a comparably-sized OpenAI model.

The company’s current focus is on “AI agents” that can plan and execute workflows across systems and teams, as well as customizable AI guardrails and a suite of no-code development tools. Writer has already secured hundreds of clients, including prominent names like Mars, Ally Bank, Qualcomm, Salesforce, Uber, Accenture, L’Oréal, and Intuit.

“There’s a tremendous amount of engineering required to transform models into reliable business tools,” said Patrick Stokes, EVP of product and industries marketing at Salesforce. “Writer provides a refined, AI-powered solution that’s effective, easy to deploy, and has rapidly accelerated our workflows here at Salesforce. We’re excited to join them on this journey not only as an investor, but also as a customer.”

The latest funding round is a testament to the growing enthusiasm for generative AI in the venture capital community. According to a report from Accel, generative AI startups will receive 40% of all VC cash poured into cloud technologies this year, and in the first half of 2024, investments in generative AI startups topped $3.9 billion, not counting OpenAI’s $6.6 billion round.

As the generative AI market is projected to surpass $1 trillion in revenue within the next decade, Writer is well-positioned to capitalize on this growth and continue its mission of delivering innovative, enterprise-focused AI solutions.

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Tokyo-based startup SmartBank has secured a remarkable $26 million in funding to bolster its personal finance management app, making strides in driving cashless transactions in Japan.

Founded in 2019 by Shota Horii, Yuta Horii, and Jun Taketani, SmartBank aims to address a pressing issue within the country’s consumer finance industry – the preference for cash transactions among the aging population. The startup’s core product is a prepaid card and finance management app that offers a deposit account, catering primarily to individuals in their 20s and 30s, as well as married couples.

“Our core user base, which was the B/43 My Card, is now the B/43 Pair Card users…this is significant as banks in Japan do not provide joint bank accounts, and B/43 has become the go-to product,” said SmartBank CFO Yuta Shimogawara.

The latest funding, which includes 1.1 billion JPY ($7.2 million) in debt financing and 2.9 billion JPY ($18.8 million) in equity from current investor Global Brain, will be used to double the company’s workforce from 49 to around 100 employees by 2025, with half dedicated to the engineering team.

“Consumer fintech services in Japan have been slow to use AI, but our goal is to become the leading AI fintech company in the country,” said Chihaya Akaike, the director of business operations at SmartBank.

The startup has also introduced an AI-powered receipt reading feature, allowing users to better understand and optimize their finances. Additionally, SmartBank has obtained licenses for money transfers and prepaid payment instruments, enabling it to offer a wider range of services, including payments and peer-to-peer transfers.

With plans to diversify its revenue streams beyond interchange fees, SmartBank aims to become a comprehensive financial platform, providing a broad suite of services to its growing user base.

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Agicap, the Lyon-based fintech startup, has secured a $48 million Series C funding round from AVP, the VC firm previously known as Axa Venture Partners. The fresh capital will help the company expand its reach and develop new features for its cash flow management platform.

Founded in 2018, Agicap targets mid-sized companies struggling to keep track of their cash flow across multiple bank accounts, subsidiaries, countries and currencies. The platform allows CFOs and finance teams to centralize cash-related data and forecast future cash positions, addressing a pain point faced by 80% of European CFOs who still rely on Excel for this task.

“We think that we’ll be able to use cash management as the basis for what we call the CFO suite, and provide other tools to CFOs and treasurers,” said Sébastien Beyet, Agicap’s co-founder and CEO.

The startup has already reached a break-even position on a cash basis and has ambitious growth plans. With over 8,000 customers, half of them in France, Agicap aims to expand its foothold in other European markets. The new funding will also be used to launch new features around credit management and foreign exchange risk management.

Agicap’s success is largely attributed to its laser-sharp focus on treasury management, a relatively untapped market. The company has seen its valuation increase “substantially” since its $100 million Series B round in 2021, with industry reports suggesting a valuation range between $750 million and $860 million.

“We don’t want to become a bank,” Beyet stressed, emphasizing Agicap’s commitment to remain a software-as-a-service provider rather than venture into lending or taking on financial risk.

With this latest funding, Agicap is well-positioned to continue its growth trajectory and cement its position as a leading cash flow management solution for midsize businesses across Europe.

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As the demand for lithium surges globally, a German startup, Tozero, is sprinting to scale its innovative lithium-ion battery recycling technology. The company has just closed an oversubscribed €11 million ($11.7 million) seed funding round to build its first industrial-scale plant.

Tozero’s process, protected as a trade secret, uses a water-based carbonation method to recover valuable raw materials like lithium and graphite from recycled batteries. This approach is more environmentally friendly than traditional smelting techniques, resulting in 70% lower emissions.

“The security of the raw material – it’s national security in a way,” said Tozero co-founder and CEO Dr. Sarah Fleischer. “There are so many underserved industries here in Europe that are starving for the material because Europe doesn’t produce lithium carbonate; we’re importing.”

With global lithium demand expected to quadruple by 2030, driven by the rise of electric vehicles and renewable energy storage, Tozero is well-positioned to help meet this growing need. The startup has already lined up over €1 billion worth of off-take agreements with eager customers.

Tozero’s co-founders, Fleischer and Dr. Ksenija Milicevic Neumann, attribute the company’s rapid progress to their focus on speed and creativity. By rapidly iterating and learning from mistakes, Tozero has been able to build its pilot plant and secure its first commercial deliveries in just two years since the company’s founding.

“We break things fast, learn, iterate and improve at a very fast pace – probably like Elon Musk’s SpaceX kind of principle – just get stuff building and see [what happens] until things break, learn from it, and iterate and improve in very fast sprints,” Fleischer explained.

While Tozero is initially focusing on the European and North American markets, the startup plans to expand its recycling operations globally once its first industrial-scale plant is operational. The company’s ultimate goal is to achieve zero waste of critical raw materials, potentially expanding into the recycling of other energy-related materials in the future.

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Equal, a data-sharing and identity verification platform, has raised $10 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Prosus Ventures, Tomales Bay Capital, and the company’s founder, Keshav Reddy, at a post-money valuation of $80 million.

The funding round also saw participation from several prominent investors, including Blume Ventures (Founders Fund), DST Global, Quona VC, Gruhas VC (Nikhil Kamath), Binny Bansal (Co-founder, Flipkart), Harsh Jain (Founder, Dream11), Karan Adani (Managing Director, Adani Ports), D S Brar (Chairman, Aragen), and Kunal Shah (Founder, CRED).

Equal, founded by Keshav Reddy and Rajeev Ranjan, helps businesses streamline their KYC (Know Your Customer) processes, fraud prevention, and regulatory compliance through easy integration with over 50 ID databases and more than 4,000 API providers. The startup recently invested in OneMoney, an account aggregator, which will enable Equal to enhance its offerings by combining secure, consent-driven financial data sharing with its core identity verification services. According to the company, OneMoney and Equal jointly enable over 64 million monthly transactions and serve more than 250 clients nationwide.

The fresh funds will be used to ramp up operations, forge strategic partnerships, and develop an integrated, secure, and transparent digital framework. Equal competes with other identity verification players in the market, such as IDfy, SpringVerify, AuthBridge, Digio, and Perfios-owned Karza.

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Bhanzu, an edtech startup focused on math education, has secured $16.5 million in its Series B funding round. The round was led by Epiq Capital and Z3 Partners, with participation from existing investors Lightspeed Ventures and Eight Roads.

The fresh capital will be used by Bhanzu to expand its presence in the lucrative U.S. market, where the company sees significant potential. Founded in 2020, Bhanzu provides experiential math learning courses that aim to enhance cognitive abilities in children aged 5 to 16.

“The U.S. math education market has significant potential, but it is dominated by large, billion-dollar companies that have not innovated their curricula or effectively embraced technology,” said Neelakantha Bhanu, co-founder and CEO of Bhanzu. “This gap creates a significant opportunity for Bhanzu to revolutionize math education in the U.S.”

Since its last funding round in September 2022, when Bhanzu raised $15 million, the company claims to have achieved 8x growth. It has also reported positive cash flow and a strong product-market fit across the markets it operates in, which include India, the U.S., the U.K., and the Middle East.

The edtech sector has seen a resurgence in funding after a slowdown, with several significant deals announced recently. This includes $210 million for PhysicsWallah, $150 million for Eruditus, and $60 million for upGrad.

Bhanzu competes with other math-focused edtech platforms like Cuemath, Unacademy, Adda247, and Skillmatics. With this fresh infusion of capital, the company aims to solidify its position in the rapidly evolving edtech landscape.

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Food delivery giant Swiggy’s upcoming initial public offering (IPO) on Wednesday will be a crucial test for India’s appetite for billion-dollar tech listings. The $1.4 billion IPO, which has already garnered strong institutional interest, will provide a public comparable for rival Zomato and gauge investor sentiment towards large-scale tech debuts in the country.

India has seen a surge in tech IPOs in recent years, with over a dozen startups going public since 2020. However, the market has displayed a preference for smaller offerings, with several high-profile listings struggling post-debut. Beauty e-commerce firm Nykaa and insurance provider Star Health, for instance, are trading well below their IPO prices.

Swiggy’s offering, seeking a valuation of $11.3 billion, will be one of the largest Indian tech IPOs to date. Its success or failure could set the tone for a wave of potential billion-dollar-plus listings from growth-stage startups in the next 24 months.

The food delivery space, dominated by a duopoly between Swiggy and Zomato, has emerged as a key battleground. Zomato’s stock has surged over 100% since its $1.3 billion listing in 2021, reaching a market cap of $29 billion this year. Swiggy’s offering is expected to benefit from this positive sentiment.

Additionally, Swiggy’s foray into the burgeoning quick-commerce segment through its Instamart service has caught investor attention. Instamart is among the top three players in the space, which collectively are on track to record over $6 billion in sales this year.

However, doubts remain about the scalability of the quick-commerce model beyond major urban centers. Swiggy’s ability to navigate this challenge will be closely watched.

Ultimately, Swiggy’s IPO will serve as a litmus test for India’s readiness to embrace large-scale tech listings, even as global market conditions remain volatile. The outcome could pave the way for a new wave of billion-dollar-plus debuts from the country’s thriving startup ecosystem.

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Indian startups have demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of volatile funding trends, securing $125 million across 18 deals in the first week of November. This figure marks a 54% decline from the previous week’s $256.9 million raised through 8 deals, highlighting the mixed bag of funding patterns in the final quarter of 2024.

The fintech sector emerged as the investor favorite, with startups in the space bagging a total of $50 million through 2 deals. This included a $35 million Series B round for lending platform Easy Home Finance and a $15 million round for cross-border payments startup MODIFI.

Deeptech startups closely followed the fintech sector, raising $33.9 million across 6 deals. This underscores the growing investor interest in cutting-edge technologies, from spacetech and robotics to IoT and hardware solutions.

Despite the week-on-week decline, the funding landscape remains resilient, with startups demonstrating the ability to navigate the challenges posed by the volatile market conditions. The diversity of sectors attracting investments, ranging from e-commerce and travel-tech to enterprise software and cleantech, reinforces the breadth and depth of India’s thriving startup ecosystem.

As the country’s startup ecosystem continues to evolve, the ability to secure funding, even in the face of market fluctuations, serves as a testament to the ingenuity and resilience of Indian entrepreneurs. The funding trends observed in the past two weeks showcase the startup community’s adaptability and the investors’ continued confidence in the long-term growth potential of the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem.

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