Last month, we announced that we led the $10 million Series A round in digital therapeutics pioneer Kaia Health, creator of the world’s leading back pain app, to support their mission to put treatment and pain management for chronic conditions into the hands of patients.

"Rather than just giving patients another way to connect to a carer, Kaia Health has utilised the most powerful and prevalent tools we have to provide clinically effective health treatments, at a fraction of the cost, freeing up physiotherapists time for more meaningful interactions. It’s an exciting antidote to the Baumol cost disease, and one we hope will change many people’s lives." James on Medium.

You can read more from James on the thinking behind the Kaia Health investment, and why we believe the next era of software in health is about treatment, not just diagnosis. Read more about the Kaia news on TechCrunch and VentureBeat.

SOPHiA GENETICS raises $77M

In January, SOPHiA GENETICS announced a $77M raise, to support their mission to democratize data-driven medicine.

"SOPHiA stands out as one of the most exciting companies in genomic software today," writes James in his Medium post.

The company's SOPHiA AI platform is now used by more than 850 hospitals across 77 countries and has already supported the diagnosis of over 300,000 patients. The platform enables healthcare professionals to make sense of complex genomic and radiomic data through advanced analysis in order to better diagnose and treat patients, both for oncology and hereditary disorders. This Series E was led by Generation Investment Management, with participation from Idinvest Partners, Alychlo and Balderton. Read more on Techcrunch and on the SOPHiA site.

Mimiro (formerly ComplyAdvantage) raises $30M

Also in January, Mimiro (formerly ComplyAdvantage) announced their $30M raise to accelerate the global expansion of its machine-learning platform for analysing the risk of financial crime.

"At its heart, Mimiro’s backend ingests millions of transactions, media reports and financial signals to build a highly accurate, up to date risk model of the global financial system and its actors," writes Suranga in his Medium post: 'Mimiro — the financial industry’s knight in Machine Learning armour.'

See the press kit, and read the news in VentureBeat and TechCrunch.

Nutmeg raises £45M

Also in January, online wealth manager Nutmeg announced a £45M round from investors that include Goldman Sachs. Read more in the Financial Times.

Virtuo raises €20M

And just this week, car rental startup, Virtuo, stepped up its battle against the giant car rental companies today by announcing that it has raised €20 million (£17.3m) from Iris Capital and joined by Raise Ventures and Balderton to help it make a big push into the UK market in 2019. The company currently operates in 21 locations in France and Belgium, and will launch in Spain and in Germany in 2019, making it a truly pan-European rental option for drivers who are fed up with being served so poorly by the existing car hire sector.

“Technology in cars and other areas of mobility is evolving rapidly, due to concerns over the environment and congestion. Given these shifts, renting a car as and when you need it is becoming a viable alternative to buying, particularly for younger people who have come of age as the sharing economy took off,” comments Bernard.

Read more on Techcrunch, Les Echos, and Le Figaro.

Portfolio companies in the news

Congratulations to Zego, who makes work insurance simple and flexible, on winning the the "Best Innovation" Award at the 2019 Paris Fintech Forum — the winner from a strong field of sixty two companies!

Zego CEO and Co-Founder, Sten Saar, accepts the Best Innovation Award

Read VOI Technology's CEO Fredrik Hjelm in the London Evening Standard on why he loves London, and why he's waiting for permission to bring his scooters to the capital.

HIYA educates consumers on the cost of robocalls, and how in one month alone last year, Americans received an estimated 5.1B scam calls from automated machines.

Portfolio companies HIYA, Tempow, and VOI Technology will all be at Mobile World Congress coming up in Barcelona

Depop CEO Maria Raga in the Times 'What to do if your boss is holding you back.' The company appeared in Wired in December, 'How Depop went from niche app to making secondhand clothing cool.'

Cleo was featured in the Forbes article '80% of people don't trust AI with money — how can we fix its image?'

We welcome Jen Andre to the Marketing team

We're delighted to welcome Jen Andre to the Balderton family. Jen joins the Balderton Marketing team, working with Alice, and will be responsible for PR and communications at Balderton.

Balderton in the news

Hear Bernard on France Radio discussing the how the market for talent has changed since he founded Business Objects.

"Last year will be remembered as an annus horribilis for some of the world’s leading entrepreneurs." Read James in the Telegraph 'Big tech overtakes banking as the sector we love to hate.'

Read Caye's advice on her Medium on how to get started on a career in venture.

And on Balderton's Executive Council, many congratulations to Aicha Evans, who left on Intel, where she was Chief Strategy Officer, to become CEO of self-driving car startup Zoox.

Build with Balderton

We continue our series of content around how, when and where European-founded startups should 'go global.'

Part 1: When should your European startup expand into International markets?
Part 2: Where should your company expand internationally?
Part 3: By the numbers: a look at 94 tech companies in the US and Europe, to see when and where they expanded internationally.
Part 4: How to budget for internationalisation.
Part 5: (new): Your geo-expansion playbook, a guest post by Pranav Sood, Director of International Expansion at GoCardless. This article first appeared in VentureBeat.
Part 6: (new): When Internationalization goes wrong. This article first appeared in VentureBeat.

We're hiring: Balderton interns for summer 2019

We're looking for investment interns to work with us over the summer of 2019. If you're interested, or know someone who would be a good fit, please visit our Workable listing.

Catch the Balderton team at the following events:

Feb 14th - Suranga will be hosting a Royal Academy of Engineering event at Balderton, 'Celebrating failure: my biggest business mistake and how it helped me succeed.'

Feb 19th - Alice will be speaking at an event with the PRCA NextGen group at Balderton, 'How to make it in tech communications,' to offer advice to early career entrants.

Feb 27th - Suranga will be speaking at the SuperVenture conference in Berlin on the use of data in venture capital.

Mar 19th/20th - Rob will be speaking at the Insurtech Insights conference in London.

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