Ventech led the €11 million Series A round for Prewave with Kompas. This financing will enable the startup to scale its platform, continue to grow its customer base and expand its European footprint. Grunderfonds, IST CUBE, Seed and Speed, Segnalita, Speedinvest and Working Capital Fund participated in this round.
The investment follows an exceptional year for Prewave, the artificial intelligence platform that helps companies find, understand and categorize risks impacting supply chains: the scale-up has seen significant growth in revenue, headcount and customer portfolio over the past ten months, including ABinBev, AUDI, BMW, Porsche, PWC, Toyota and Zurich Insurance.
Prewave is a spin-off from Vienna University of Technologyand was founded in 2017 by Dr. Lisa Smith and Harald Nitschinger who had a shared vision to ensure technology plays a more significant role in making supply chains more sustainable. The scale-up will use the investment to expand the platform’s supply chain analysis capabilities and drive customer acquisition in new European markets (beyond Germany and Austria). Prewave will also use the investment to hire more talent with plans to double employee numbers by the end of the year.
Dr. Lisa Smith, Co-Founder and CEO at Prewave says:
“As businesses manage globally distributed suppliers, the need for transparency across the entire supply chain is evident. Thanks to artificial intelligence and automated language processing, we have made it possible for businesses to identify risks in their supply chain in real-time so they can take quick, effective and corrective actions.”
Stephan Wirries, Partner at Ventech, states:
“Ventech is proud to see Prewave’s impressive growth trajectory in a short period of time, and we are beyond delighted to renew our support after its Seed round in 2020. Prewave is the solution for businesses and their suppliers given the macro trends and uprise of supply chain disruptions. They are also a fantastic asset for companies’ readiness for current and increasing regulations like the German Supply Chain Act. We are thrilled to continue our partnership with the Prewave team and their visionary binomial founders to lead the company to the next level and bring positive impact to a larger industry.”
With this transaction, Ventech confirms itsambition to become the trusted partner for innovative digital start-ups thatare keen to grow to scale.
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About VENTECH
Ventech is a European pioneer in venture capital for early-stage andrecently founded tech companies. Founded in 1998, Ventech supports the mostinnovative and visionary technology entrepreneurs with global ambitions. With its dual-structured platform, Ventech has tailored strategies for Europe(Paris, Munich, Berlin and Helsinki) and Asia (Shanghai and Hong Kong).
Since its creation, Ventech has raised over €900 million and made morethan 200 investments (including Vestiaire Collective, Passion.io, Ogury,Picanova, Veo, Reveal, Speexx) and over 80 exits (Fintecsystems, acquired byTink; Believe (BLV.PA), listed on Euronext; Arteris (AIP), listed on Nasdaq).
For more information: www.ventechvc.com - @Ventech_VC
About Prewave
Prewave heralds a new era of supply chain transparency, resilience andsustainability. Committed to improving supply chain sustainability andresilience, Prewave uses publicly available data from local news, social mediaand other databases to understand and report on risks impacting suppliers andraw materials at every level of the supply chain. Prewave's AI algorithmanalyzes sources in more than 50 languages across more than 100 risk categoriesto ensure that no disruption goes unnoticed.
