Digital transformation has become the next big frontier defining how businesses operate. A survey found that at least 77 per cent of CEOs have accelerated their digital transformation plans. Now, digitisation has not only found a new meaning but also became a shield for labour and productivity.

Its rise has been unequivocal among both small and large companies and there are companies like Sigli at the centre of this rapid change. From the periphery, Sigli looks like just another tech company, but its story is a confluence of engineering and business and the unity that comes out of it and has been helping companies meet their digitalisation goals for years.

Built on values

Sigli was founded in 2015 in Vilnius, Lithuania, after its founders had spent years working for big corporations with an engineering-first mindset. The four founders realised that engineering is important, but there is a need for unity between engineers and a business mindset. This led them to launch Sigli as a business-centric company with a razor-sharp focus on clients.

“We believe that any engineering solution is done by a human who is an engineer and who understands the business side of it,” says Maxim Golikov, Sigli’s Chief Business Development Officer and host of the Innovantage Podcast.

While the founders are still engineers at their roots, Golikov adds that there is often a gap in thinking between engineers and business people and when you bridge that gap, there is a lot of value to derive. This, he adds, is exemplified by Sigli’s three values: ownership, transparency, and service.

He says the company is built on a foundation where every person, regardless of their position, is encouraged to take ownership “because as a person, your capacity to bring value is much higher than any system that an engineer can develop.”

Golikov further adds that they encourage transparency for everybody, internally as well as externally, while service is the very basis of its existence. When they started, these values formed their backbone, while software development was its core service. Golikov tells me back then, it wasn’t even called digital transformation, but they did build the foundational blocks that are now called digital transformation.

Digital transformation

The way Golikov explains the rapid escalation in demand for digital transformation is different from any other narrative. He tells me that they have been solving engineering challenges for years but as the company got older and its clients became closer, the scope of the challenges also grew.

This challenge, be it engineering, technical or business, can be collectively dubbed as digital transformation. “And through the experiences that we’ve gained, through business experience, through technical experience, through product experience, we understood that we can bring more value to the table than just writing lines of code,” explains Golikov.

Most businesses start with basic services but as their client needs evolve, their capabilities evolve with those needs. Sigli’s story is essentially that where they started by solving engineering challenges before evolving to do projects with end-to-end delivery, looking at the problems of their clients through a business lens and applying digital solutions to solve them.

Even at this stage, Golikov quips, they didn’t call it digital transformation but once they added governance to their services, they began to officially call what they did – digital transformation. The three basic blocks of digital transformation for us came down to, building that relationship with the client, being aligned on the same level with them, creating that transparency through one of our values and again being focused on the end value that we bring,” he adds.

A great example of Sigli’s approach to digital transformation in action is the work it has done for Allkind Group, a leader in accessible technology for individuals with disabilities. With Allkind, Sigli reimagined their digital infrastructure by integrating AI capabilities to enhance both operational efficiency and customer engagement. The partnership led to development of intelligent features like personalised learning tools and automated support systems, tailored to the unique needs of Allkind’s audience.

“By aligning cutting-edge innovation with a deep understanding of industry challenges, Sigli demonstrated how digital transformation can unlock new possibilities for businesses dedicated to making a meaningful impact,” says Golikov.

Software as an enabler

When it comes to digital transformation, the three key things to consider are speed, efficiency and security. While that is true, Golikov adds that software is only an enabler because tech companies and startups are always after speed and efficiency while larger businesses are keen on security.

Since Sigli is based in Europe with offices in Antwerp and Vilnius, the company is uniquely positioned to deliver speed, efficiency and any additional securities, whether it is regulatory or governance. But the real challenge, he explains, is the resistance to digital transformation within non-tech companies.

“So a digital transformation project for a company that is not a tech business often means spending a lot of money on something very, very nebulous,” he says.

Since many old companies rely on legacy systems, digital transformation requires redoing everything from the group up and it can be a huge expense. Golikov states that such companies see digital transformation projects as an expense or as a revenue generator and with software as an enabler approach, they build a solution that is not only digital but also a revenue-generating model. He argues that the value of digital transformation is tied to technology and not derived from it.

Artificial intelligence

At the time of writing, 90 per cent of Sigli’s business comes from Europe while 10 per cent comes from the US. When the company started, it maintained a balance between the US and Europe but has found its business model and mindset more suited to European businesses. Golikov says the bulk of their business comes from Benelux with Belgium and the Netherlands driving a lot of business.

The company also generates a good amount of business from the DACH region, primarily Switzerland and Austria, with Germany not contributing in a big way. Insurance remains one of the biggest industries while education (or edtech) remains equally important. The clients of Sigli can be summed up as non-tech businesses like logistics to tech-focused businesses like e-commerce.

“I would say that we have kind of not an industry but a very heavy focus on data solutions, data analysis, business intelligence, data platforms, and AI,” quips Golikov.

He doesn’t hesitate to state the obvious – the tech industry loves its hype cycles but claims that AI is indeed the next big thing. He says AI has real applications and tangible effects that he hasn’t felt in a long time and adds that he didn’t feel this way about AR or VR, IoT, and even crypto or blockchain.

“AI seems to be more ubiquitous,” he says, before adding, “it seems to cover everything. All industries, all levels of management, all people, day-to-day business, governments, etc.”

While AI is the buzzword right now, Sigli has been building data-centric solutions for a while and AI is all about data. “Data is the bedrock of any digital transformation project because it is important both from a regulatory standpoint as well as internal security standpoint.”

How does Sigli approach AI? Golikov says they always ask whether they need AI to solve this problem and don’t use AI as a quick fix. He says to derive the best result from AI, it is important to understand the limits of AI and if there is good data in a project or a problem then that problem is likely to be solved by AI.

“A lot of companies just want AI for the sake of AI without knowing that it will hallucinate and give wrong information a lot of the times,” he adds.

He says it is important to understand the potential of AI but even more important is to know its limits. One way Sigli is already using AI is by connecting its chatbot with OpenAI’s large language model to improve customer service, assistance, and experience. The company is also using AI to help businesses solve challenges with patient diagnosis accuracy, supply chain optimisation, predictive maintenance, efficient grid maintenance, network optimisation, etc.

The use of AI in the logistics industry is a great example. Golikov tells me they worked with a leading provider of IoT-enabled freight solutions provider to transform their cargo tracking systems with AI. Sigli introduced AI-driven communication tools that enhanced operational insights and user interaction. This demonstrates Sigli’s deep understanding of the industry and its ability to think how AI can redefine experience before implementing it.

However, to succeed with AI, Golikov recommends looking at why AI is needed and what AI can do and then applying governance to achieve the best result. Afterall only 20 per cent actually use AI while only 5 per cent succeed with AI.

Structured growth

Without delving deep into the financials, Golikov reveals they have an annual turnover of €5M right now and a team of 100 people. In the next two years, the company aims to double that number to €10M while also doubling its team size. With the ongoing geopolitical situation and uncertainty in the market, the Belgian company is optimistic but also cautious.

The company aims to double its revenue in the next two years by following its play book in Belgium. He says by investing more in the region, they were able to grow their business and as the next step, they want to do the same with the UK. “At the moment we are considering opening up an office next year there,” says Golikov, adding they are looking at London, Reading, Birmingham or Manchester as a possible location.

If this expansion goes well, the company plans to continue to focus on Benelux and the UK while also expanding in regions like DACH and the US. shift its focus either to the US or the DACH region. They also plan to hire across a broad range of roles. One thing that won’t change is its business philosophy, which Golikov reckons is their north star. He says their growth and competitive advantage are directly linked to their business philosophy and company values.

Amsterdam-based Recall, an AI startup that helps users summarise, organise, and revisit information, announced on Monday that it has secured $1.5M (approximately €1.4M) in a funding round led by renowned VC Jason Calacanis.

Other investors, including Blockchain Founders Capital and Rocket Capital, participated in the round.

The Dutch company will use the funds to accelerate its mission to bring order to content chaos, transforming how individuals and businesses consume, organise, and retain knowledge. 

Birth of Recall

Paul Richards, a South African full-stack developer with deep expertise in knowledge graphs in the cybersecurity industry, founded Recall in 2022.

The Amsterdam company was born from frustration with existing tools that required excessive manual effort but failed to connect and resurface knowledge effectively. 

Richards envisioned a self-organising knowledge graph to connect his notes and highlight relevant past content.

After a year of struggle with his side project Recall, posting on Hacker News became his last hope and a game changer.

That first investment allowed him to quit his job and fully commit, bringing on developer Igor Gligorević as CTO to accelerate progress.

“Our vision is to redefine knowledge management as ‘intelligence management,’ where content consumption is intentional and insightful,” said Recall’s COO, Sankari, who brings over 10 years of startup experience.

How it works?

The web & mobile app organises information into a personalised knowledge graph, automatically tagging and connecting content based on key entities.

There are four main features:

• Summarise – The platform summarises online content from articles, PDFs, and YouTube videos up to 10 hours long.
• Categorise – Automatically categorise content using topic-based tags.
• Connect – Content is stored in a knowledge graph, revealing hidden connections and unlocking new insights.
• Review – The platform reinforces memory with a spaced repetition quiz, helping users retain content over time.

Berlin-based carbmee, a developer of AI-powered carbon management software, announced on Tuesday that it has secured €20M in a funding round led by CommerzVentures, with participation from Fly Ventures.

The announcement comes as the company claims to have consistently achieved sustainable growth, whilst maintaining capital-efficient operations, carbmee’s revenue has tripled over each of the past three years.

Fund utilisation

The German company will use the capital to enhance its software and service offerings, drive product innovation, and expand its reach to enterprises globally.

The funds raised will also be invested in further developing carbmee’s Environmental Intelligence System with a focus on features like collecting granular LCA data.

Additionally, the company will invest in carbmee Studio—the recently launched customisation tool that enables users to create tailored, AI-driven reports and dashboards with ease.

Christian Heinrich, CEO and co-founder, says, “This funding round is a validation of the innovative work we’ve done so far, but it’s also a launching point for what comes next.”

“With over 80% of emissions being rooted in the supply chain, we have built a platform that not only meets the evolving needs of complex industry enterprises but also plays a critical role in the global shift toward sustainability,” adds Heinrich.

Previously, carbmee has been backed by more than 15 high-profile angel investors – among them industry leaders such as Noah Eisner (co-founder of procurement platform Coupa), Gisbert Rühl (CEO of Klöckner & Co.), Dirk Hoke (CEO of Volocopter), Mike Corbo (former chief supply chain officer at Colgate-Palmolive), Pat McCarthy (VP Workspace & Gemini at Google), Marcel Vollmer (former CIO of Celonis), Ulrich Piepel (former CPO at RWE and AG & innogy SE). 

carbmee: Help companies manage carbon emissions

Founded in 2021 by Christian Heinrich and Robin Spickers, carbmee helps companies manage, reduce, and report on their carbon emissions with unparalleled accuracy and efficiency on a centralised platform through advanced data analytics and AI.

Robin Spickers, the co-founder, adds, “We address one of the biggest challenges faced by the manufacturing industry. Currently, teams in large organisations work in data silos – procurement, R&D, finance, production – and rely on manual Excel spreadsheets to calculate carbon footprints, causing data inaccuracy and ineffective processes.”

“Our platform provides a centralised platform for all enterprise users to manage CO2 emissions at the corporate, product, supplier, and SKU levels—enabling CO2 data to be managed as accurately as financial data in an ERP system,” he continues.

Consequently, procurement teams can collect data to choose eco-friendly suppliers.

Finance teams can report according to CSRD or CBAM standards. R&D engineers can create sustainable products, and sustainability teams can find ways to reduce CO2 emissions, especially in Scope 3.

Currently, carbmee works with numerous international customers, including Lufthansa Technik, Maersk, Kärcher, Hilti, Miele, Coca-Cola, Schaeffler, and Anglo American.

The investor

CommerzVentures is a specialised fintech VC investor with assets under management of €550M.

CommerzVentures invests in early and growth-stage companies in Fintech, Insurtech, and Climate Fintech.

CommerzVentures is a return-oriented investor with a geographical focus on Europe and pursues a global strategy including Israel, the USA, and Africa.

Paul Morgenthaler, Managing Partner at CommerzVentures, comments, “Christian and Robin have already achieved phenomenal growth since founding carbmee. They are at the forefront of a vital industrial step-change as businesses around the world demand the knowledge and support to manage their carbon emissions. Their powerful software breaks down the complexity of decarbonising global supply chains, solving a key problem for industries. We share in the team’s exceptional ambition for the future and look forward to helping them deliver on this journey.”

Amsterdam-based Nebius Group, an AI infrastructure company, announced on Monday that it has entered into definitive agreements for a $700M (approximately €667M) private placement financing from a select group of institutional and accredited investors.

It includes participation from Accel, NVIDIA, and certain accounts managed by Orbis Investments.

The Dutch company will use the funds to further build out its full-stack AI infrastructure – including large-scale GPU clusters, cloud platforms, and tools and services for developers.

Arkady Volozh, founder and CEO of Nebius Group, says, “The foundation of our business is our expertise in building advanced technology infrastructure. We have demonstrated the scale of our ambitions, initiating an AI infrastructure build-out across two continents. This strategic financing gives us additional firepower to do it faster and on a larger scale. I’m grateful to our investors for the trust they have placed in us – our team is ready to deliver.”

Issuing Class A shares

Nebius Group will issue 33,333,334 Class A shares for $21.00 each in a private placement. This price is about 3% higher than the average price of the shares since trading started again on Nasdaq. The deal will close once standard conditions are met, says the company in the press release.

Additionally, the Board has decided that the Company no longer needs to buy back its Class A shares after seeing strong trading and liquidity since trading resumed on Nasdaq on October 21, 2024.

In August 2024, shareholders approved a plan to repurchase up to 81M Class A shares at a maximum price of $10.50 each. This price was based on available cash after selling the Company’s Russian business.

John Boynton, Chairman of the Board of Nebius, says, “The authorisation to potentially repurchase shares was originally intended to provide legacy shareholders who wanted to exit our new business an opportunity to do so, especially in light of the prolonged suspension of trading on Nasdaq. Based on the strong level of investor engagement and technical dynamics that we have observed following the resumption of trading on Nasdaq, we believe that those shareholders who may have wanted to exit have had an opportunity to do so at a price higher than the maximum repurchase price authorised by shareholders,”

‍“The Board has determined that the best way to maximise value for the Company’s shareholders is to invest our capital into our core AI infrastructure business, where the Company believes there is a substantial market opportunity,” adds Boynton.

As a result of the combination of strategic financing and the decision not to deploy any capital toward repurchasing Class A shares, the Company now expects to deliver an annualised run-rate revenue (“ARR”)1 by year-end 2025 of $750M to $1B.

Nebius Group: Building AI infrastructure

Founded by Arkady Volozh, Nebius is a technology company that provides the infrastructure needed for the global AI industry. This includes GPU clusters, cloud platforms, and tools for developers.

The company’s core business is an AI-centric cloud platform built for intensive AI workloads.

With proprietary cloud software architecture and hardware designed in-house (including servers, racks, and data centre design), Nebius gives AI builders the computing, storage, managed services, and tools they need to build, tune, and run their models.

The AI-native Nebius GPU cloud is designed to manage the full ML lifecycle – from data processing and training to fine-tuning and inference – all in one place.

The new Nebius AI Studio inference service expands the company’s offerings for app developers. It provides access to advanced open-source models in a user-friendly environment at competitive prices per token.

The Dutch company, a preferred cloud service provider in the NVIDIA Partner Network, offers high-end infrastructure optimised for AI training and inference.

The company’s core AI infrastructure division is supported by a team of approximately 400 skilled engineers, delivering a genuine hyperscale cloud experience tailored specifically for AI developers.

London-based 9fin, an AI-powered analytics platform for debt capital markets, announced on Monday that it has raised $50M (approximately €47.4M) in a Series B round led by Highland Europe.

Existing investors, including Spark Capital, Redalpine, Seedcamp, 500 Startups, and Ilavska Vuillermoz Capital, also participated in the round.

The new funding will enable the UK company to invest further in its AI technology, grow its analytics team, and accelerate its expansion in the US. 

9fin: Building next-gen debt capital markets technology  

Founded by Steven Hunter and Huss El-Sheikh, 9fin aims to organise the world’s leveraged financial information and make it accessible and usable.

Steven Hunter, Co-founder and CEO of 9fin says, “Debt markets are the biggest overlooked asset class in the world, and yet they still rely on technology and information sources straight out of the 1980s – opaque, slow, and messy. We started 9fin to give professionals in the market a data edge, with smarter, faster intelligence. I’m really proud of the product, team, and company culture we’ve built so far at 9fin, and we’re just getting started. There’s a huge opportunity to build the #1 global provider of debt market analytics and bring debt markets into the AI age. We’re delighted to welcome Highland as a partner to help us achieve that vision.”

Through an AI-powered data and analytics platform, the company centralises everything that’s required to assess credit or win a mandate from one location using machine learning and computer vision.

Through its platforms, 9fin offers products such as news alerts, financials, covenants,  comparables, deal predictions, ESG, restructuring, and search.

9fin says its platform makes searching, filtering, and analysing extremely complicated data simple, helping subscribers win business, save time, and perform better than their competitors. 

Since its Series A+ round in 2022, the UK company has achieved 400 per cent group-wide ARR growth, with its US business growing at an even faster rate.

The company has also grown to 240 employees and recently doubled the size of its tech team, driving increases in product development speed.

Over this period, the company has more than doubled its customer base to nearly 200 of the largest firms in global credit markets, including leading investment banks, distressed debt advisors, private equity, credit fund managers, and law firms.

9fin is used by asset managers with a combined AUM of over $17T, with many more debt market professionals discovering its intuitive platform each week. 

Huss El-Sheikh, Co-founder and CTO of 9fin, says, “From the moment we started building at our kitchen table, 9fin has pioneered the use of AI in debt capital markets, setting a new industry standard. By investing in the best product and engineering talent, we’ve dramatically increased product velocity, delivering capabilities to give our customers the best workflows, tools, and insights, and helping them navigate easily through complex financial markets.”

The investor

Highland Europe invests in exceptional growth-stage technology and consumer companies. It has raised over €2.75B and has invested in companies such as Adjust, AMCS, Camunda, ContentSquare, Deepki, Descartes Underwriting, GetYourGuide, Featurespace, Finbourne, Huel, ME+EM, Nexthink, Nothing, Oritain, PVcase, SoSafe, Supermetrics and Zwift.

Fergal Mullen, Co-founder and partner of Highland Europe, says, “Debt markets are booming but data and technology offerings simply haven’t kept pace. 9fin’s vision, its relentless focus on technology, innovation, and company culture, position it as the go-to platform for those working in debt markets. We’re thrilled to support their ambition to become the global market leader.”

Prague-based Look AI Ventures, the investment fund focusing exclusively on early-stage AI startups, announced on Thursday that it has invested in Hamburg-based Secjur.

Secjur: Governance, Risk, and Compliance solution

Founded by Niklas Hanitsch in 2018, Secjur is a Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) solution.

It focuses on data privacy, information security, whistleblowing, anti-money laundering, and supply chain management.

By combining AI automation with expert insight, the German company makes compliance easier and more affordable for mid-sized businesses.

The company’s core product, the Digital Compliance Office, integrates technology with intuitive user interfaces, making compliance management for businesses straightforward.

Fund utilisation

The funding will help the German company accelerate the development of its comprehensive compliance platform.

With a new partnership with Look AI Ventures, Secjur aims to improve its AI features, particularly for risk modeling in information security.

The Czech venture capital fund is joining other investors, including the Berlin-based Visionaries Club and several business angels like Mario Götze and Nico Rosberg.

The company has already established partnerships with several notable clients, including Samsung, Mercedes Benz, Yunex Traffic, Tomorrow Banking, 1KOMMA5°, and others.

“We see Look AI Ventures as a key strategic partner in our journey to becoming a category-defining company in the world of compliance automation. We founded Secjur before the first successful large language models were released, but even then, we recognised the potential of AI-powered compliance automation and designed our database architectures accordingly. Since then, we’ve made significant progress and aim to accelerate our pace in the coming year. That’s why we’re grateful to have a strategic partner to help turn this vision of AI-enabled Compliance Management into reality over the next years,” says Niklas Hanitsch, CEO and founder at Secjur.

Look AI Ventures: Focusing on early-stage AI startups

Look AI Ventures (LAIV) is the first investment fund in the Czech Republic focusing exclusively on early-stage AI startups.

“Investing in Secjur is a strategic move to address the increasing complexity of regulatory compliance. Their highly automated platform not only simplifies obtaining and maintaining compliance certifications but also features one of the most powerful compliance backend engines in the market. This engine, built on extensive data and expert feedback, is a valuable asset on its own, bringing scalability to a traditionally consultancy-driven business. Secjur has emerged as a very competitive player in the DACH region, standing out among both automated and traditional compliance providers,” says Angelo Burgarello, Partner at Look AI Ventures.

Argil, the video engine for the creator economy, announced on Wednesday that it has raised €4.9M in pre-seed and seed funding rounds combined as it emerges from the Y Combinator incubator.

The company raised €3.9M in a round led by EQT Ventures and with participation from renowned YouTuber Kwebblekop, who has over 15M subscribers and uses Argil to grow his own Youtube channel, and Charles Gorintin, Cofounder & CTO of Alan, cofounding advisor of Mistral AI.

The funding announcement follows a pre-seed round in 2023 in which Argil raised €1M from Seedcamp and Axeleo.

Argil: Video engine for the creator economy

Led by Laodis Menard, Argil platform converts video, text, and audio-based content into AI-generated human-like and multilingual avatars in only a few minutes and for a minimal subscription fee (starting at $1/ minute of video).

According to the company, it is beneficial to brands and creators who find it difficult to meet the cost of creating multiple videos to continue engaging with their audiences.

The platform includes an AI-enabled pre-editing feature that significantly reduces the time and effort needed to create videos ready for social media.

Users can create avatars that can speak any language, and they also have access to a library of additional virtual avatars.

Furthermore, the platform provides templates to easily transform existing text-based or audio content, such as articles or podcasts, into engaging video content featuring the user’s avatar.

The current AI avatar landscape is dominated by robotic, detectably fake avatars that struggle to engage audiences and are primarily used for training in enterprise companies.

The company overcomes these limitations, offering a fun, interactive process with a user-friendly interface for creators including B-roll, captions, AI images and translations.

Users can leverage their body language and expressions resulting in warmer, more personalised, and relatable content.

Argil already has a huge client base, including YouTubers with millions of followers. It is also used by the estates of stars like Audrey Hepburn, who are leveraging  Argil’s technology to revive late celebrities and create content for a whole new generation of fans.  

Laodis Menard, CEO, and Co-Founder, comments, “I produced a lot of video content after leading product marketing at a French unicorn. I loved it, but found creating videos was becoming increasingly costly and ttime-intensive I was also lucky to be confident in front of the camera, a luxury not everyone has. At Argil, we want to democratize the production process to allow anyone to create engaging videos with realistic avatars that bring their original vision to life; AI allows us to do this quickly and cheaply. Demand for video content will continue to grow, and we need novel technology such as AI to fulfill this demand. We’ll make creating an engaging video as easy as writing a tweet”.

The investor

EQT Ventures is an early-stage lead investor founded by experienced operators, helping entrepreneurs scale their businesses.

Based in Luxembourg, with advisors in cities like Stockholm, Amsterdam, London, New York, Berlin, and Paris, the firm is currently investing from its largest-ever third €1.1B fund.

EQT Ventures is one of the most active VC firms, collaborating with numerous ambitious founders and startups.

Ted Persson, Partner at EQT Ventures, adds, “Argil is perfectly positioned to benefit from two megatrends – AI and the creator economy, the latter of which has helped to make synthetic media one of the fastest adopted forms of technology in the past year. We are hugely impressed by the team’s practical experience operating within this field and their ability to pack so much technology into a sleek platform the whole team has enjoyed demoing! We welcome Laodis and Brivael to the portfolio.” 

Paris-based Mago, a provider of AI tools empowering creators to transform and stylise any video, announced on Tuesday that it has secured €1.5M in a pre-seed funding round from Atlantic Labs.

The latest capital injection will enable the French company to expand its team and accelerate development, with a market launch planned for early 2025.

Mago: Specialising in AI-powered video transformation and stylisation

Founded by Alvaro Lamarche Toloza and Aleksandr Spirin, Mago is a software that utilises AI to transform and stylise videos. It is specifically designed for professionals in the creative industry.

The company builds upon Aleksandr Spirin’s open-source video style transfer project — WarpFusion, which garnered over 150 million views on social media and has been used in leading professional productions ranging from series to music videos.

The company’s mission is to empower creators to enhance any video, whether it is live-action footage or 3D animations, with a variety of aesthetic styles.

“Think of it as a universal filter for professional video, offering complete creative control and freedom,” explains Alvaro Lamarche Toloza, Mago co-founder.”

“Our technology can instantly transform live footage into animation, oil paintings, or any visual style while maintaining professional-grade quality and consistency,” adds Lamarche Toloza.

The software provides an easy-to-use yet advanced interface for AI workflows, enabling creators to change the style and look of any video.

“By accelerating production pipelines, we empower creators to do more with less, while preserving human creativity. Our goal is to amplify creative capabilities, not replace them,” adds Alvaro Lamarche Toloza.

The company plans to have both subscription-based (SaaS) and on-premise options, as well as a free version. Future updates will include support for popular tools like Unreal Engine and Blender.

The investor

Based out of Berlin, Atlantic Labs is a European first-round investor. Since 2013, they have led over 150 first-round investments, backing category creators such as Soundcloud, GetYourGuide, Clue, Vimcar, Zenjob, Choco, Wandelbots, and Again.

“Mago’s approach to transforming video production with AI is a game-changer for creators. Alvaro and Aleksandr are seasoned creative professionals, they know the challenges that exist and have a strong vision. We’re excited to support the Mago team as they take this technology from France to the world,” says Alice Bardon Catineau, Atlantic Labs.

Lyon, France-based Eden AI, an AI integration platform, announced on Thursday that it has secured €3M in a seed round led by Galion.exe.

Other investors, including 50 Partners and several prominent business angels, including Olivier Pomel (Co-Founder of Datadog), Sébastien Pahl (Co-Founder of Docker), and Alix de Sagazan (Co-Founder of ABTasty), also participated.

The French company will use the funding to accelerate product development, grow its engineering team, and expand its partner ecosystem.

The funds will be used to improve AI workflow capabilities and create monitoring and analytics tools. This will help users track the performance, usage, and costs of all AI services through a central dashboard.

Bridging the gap between AI models and business needs

Founded in 2021 by Taha Zemmouri and Samy Melaine, Eden AI began with a unified API that combined multiple AI models for easy business use.

“With Eden AI, we essentially cover two types of companies. Either SaaS software publishers integrating AI into their product, or more conventional companies automating in-house processes using AI,” says Taha Zemmouri, Co-Founder and CEO of Eden AI to Silicon Canals.

The company’s API provides access to services like natural language processing, computer vision, and generative AI through a single interface.

The French company enables businesses that lack the expertise, resources, and integration know-how to translate complex AI models into intuitive tools to address their unique business needs.

Explaining the use cases, Zemmouri says, “We have a platform that enables our customers to respond to a very wide range of use cases, and we are surprised to discover what our customers manage to put into practice with AI. These range from companies reducing their administrative workload by using AI to extract information from documents to companies setting up chatbots for support, to consumer SaaS applications that include image and text generation.”

Helping SMEs adopt AI seamlessly

With Eden AI, users can easily build complex AI workflows, monitor costs, and manage AI solutions.

“We focus on making AI accessible, cost-effective, and user-friendly for businesses of all sizes, including smaller businesses and startups. Our platform allows users to compare and select AI models based on their specific needs, including cost considerations,” states Zemmouri on engaging smaller businesses/startups.

By combining AI with practical tools for deployment and monitoring, the French company offers a unique proposition that simplifies the AI integration process.

“Our intuitive interface simplifies the integration and management of AI technologies, ensuring that even teams with limited technical expertise can adopt and benefit from AI. By reducing dependency on one provider and offering transparent cost control, Eden AI enables startups to harness the power of AI in a way that aligns with their budget and operational goals,” adds Zemmouri.

AI tech, business model, and more

Eden AI’s comprehensive end-to-end platform enables businesses to access over 70 AI technologies and 100 AI models from providers, including Google, AWS, and OpenAI.

The company has attracted thousands of users worldwide, including notable companies like Atos (Eviden) and the Council of Europe.

Explaining the company’s business model, Zemmouri says, “The Eden AI generates revenue through two main streams. First, users can buy AI credits at the same cost as the original AI providers, with no additional markup. This pay-as-you-go model is ideal for smaller or simpler AI needs.”

“For more advanced requirements, users can subscribe to monthly licenses, which represent the core of our business model. We offer several license options at various price levels to suit the different needs of our users, from startups to larger enterprises,” he adds.

Zemmouri also added that they want to be in the best position for a future Series A financing round.

Hiring

Taha Zemmouri explains that the company is looking for candidates who focus on three main areas:

• Creating an excellent user experience through great design.
• Building a strong platform that can handle many users.
• Offering advanced AI features.

The investor

Galion.exe is a venture capital firm dedicated to investing in innovative startups.

With a team of experienced investors and entrepreneurs, Galion.exe provides financial backing, strategic guidance, and industry expertise to help visionary companies grow and succeed.

Kevin Kuipers, Co-Founder of Galion.exe, says, “Eden AI has demonstrated exceptional innovation in making AI accessible to businesses of all sizes. Their platform’s ability to integrate multiple AI models into existing workflows in a frictionless and intuitive manner is a game-changer for the industry.”

50 Partners is a startup accelerator and venture capital firm co-founded in 2012 by 50 successful entrepreneurs.

It offers early-stage startup mentorship, funding, and strategic advice in the long term, focusing on high-growth potential ventures in the tech, healthcare, impact, and Web3 industries to build tomorrow’s success stories.

Jérôme Masurel, CEO of 50 Partners, says, “We see immense potential in Eden AI’s mission to bridge the gap between advanced AI models and business needs. Its comprehensive platform not only simplifies AI integration but also opens up new opportunities for efficiency and productivity in various industries.” 

London-based Workflow, an AI software company for design, marketing, and product teams, has secured $3M (approximately €2.84M) in pre-seed funding. 

The oversubscribed round was led by Venrex, early investors in Revolut, with participation from 8VC, Sequoia scouts, Octopus, and Index Ventures. 

The round also attracted backing from investors supporting exited founders Will Taylor (Rota.com), Allis Yao (ex-Instagram, Spirito AI), and Paul Sangle (Mailwiz.app, ex-Yelp product lead).

Alistair Russell, an investor at Venrex, says, “With Workflow, we saw an opportunity to invest in the future of creative work and in the near term address issues we consistently see appearing in some of the world’s largest brands and our portfolio companies.”

“Workflow’s narrow focus on this sector and the increasing demand for creative output, which is expected to increase 4.5 times by 2030, meant we couldn’t wait to back the experienced team at Workflow. These founders have built and exited companies before, and have a vision that made this opportunity impossible to pass up.”

Collaboration software for creative projects

Workflow has launched a platform designed to streamline collaboration for creative teams working with assets like designs, videos, and presentations. Addressing workflow bottlenecks, the platform centralises task management, asset organisation, and the review and approval process.

Leveraging AI, Workflow provides feedback on brand consistency, accessibility, design standards, and accuracy, functioning as an “intelligent” partner for every creative. Integrations with design tools such as Figma and Adobe Creative Cloud allow the platform to fit into existing workflows.

Additionally, third-party data from sources like Nielsen helps users optimise conversion rates and manage regulatory risks. Serving a global clientele, Workflow aims to boost productivity for teams in design, marketing, and product development.

Capital utilisation

Workflow secured funding after its beta attracted brands, agencies, design schools, and startups. The funds will support product development, especially its AI review system, to help creative teams manage more assets efficiently.

Will Taylor, Workflow founder who previously led product, design, and marketing at Rota (sold to Broadlake in 2022), witnessed firsthand how limited tools hindered his creative teams’ efficiency compared to engineering.

Taylor says, “With the adoption of AI in creative tools, the amount of creative work is now growing by 30 per cent a year. For example last year, more photographs were generated than have ever been taken by human photographers. So we’ve been asking ourselves ‘what infrastructure is going to be needed to manage this volume of work?”

“One problem that doesn’t scale well is issue checking – there’s no Grammarly for creative work and to date, this tedious work is still done by eye. Beyond issue checking, we believe AI can even provide insight to creatives analogous to access to a panel of experts. We see the role of AI as enabling people’s creative processes, not replacing them,” adds Taylor.

Bridging the gap between professionals and non-creatives

According to Workflow, as generative AI lowers the barrier to creative tasks, over 100 million non-creatives are increasingly tasked with producing digital assets. 

Workflow, designed to streamline collaboration and provide AI-driven feedback, seeks to assist both professional creatives and non-professionals, making creative production more accessible and efficient for a broader range of users.

Paul Sangle, co-founder and CPO of Workflow, says, “To develop our AI reviewer, we spent a lot of time with creatives to map out where in the review process they are getting slowed down. We saw Dyslexic and non-native English creatives turn on the spelling and grammar checkers, Junior designers and UX schools want access to design best practices.”

“Marketers in regulated industries are interested in legislative checks – an area they say they struggle to memorise, and where legal review can take days to materialise. Every person has different areas in their professional work where they can find a partner in AI to support.”

Allis Yao, co-founder and CTO at Workflow (previously at Instagram), adds, “Automated testing and centralised review are now the de-facto norm for software development. 100 per cent of the industry uses them.”

“By comparison, the process for creatives is decades behind. Our goal is to make creatives faster. We want to elevate their work away from the smaller issues so that they can focus on meaningful creative work.”

Yao says, “Because of the way we leverage AI, we’re able to automate routine tasks such as correcting hard-to-spot inaccuracies – and this both saves a lot of time in initial feedback cycles and helps teams get along smoothly, as they only need to discuss the high-level ideas instead of correct each other’s typos.”

“We’ll soon make it possible for creatives to do things like review their work against regulatory compliance and ensure it follows advertising standards for the industry – this is information the designer wouldn’t traditionally know.”