Coinbase Ventures contributed to a $55m round for music-focused NFT platform developer Royal while neural search technology developer Jina AI raised $30m in an SAP-backed round.

Funding Royal, the US-headquartered operator of a non-fungible token (NFT) issuing service for musicians, has secured $55m in a series A round featuring Coinbase Ventures, the investment arm of digital currency exchange Coinbase. VC firm Andreessen Horowitz and crypto investment firm Paradigm co-led the round, which included musical artists The Chainsmokers, Nas, Logic and Kygo. It came just two months after Paradigm and Founders Fund co-led a $16m seed round that included Atomic. Enterprise software producer SAP took part in Germany-based neural search software startup Jina AI’s $30m series A round yesterday through its SAP.io subsidiary. The round was led by venture capital firm Canaan Partners and also featured Mango Capital, GGV Capital and Yunqi Partners, the last two having joined SAP.io in Jina’s $5.4m pre-series A round in September 2020. Robert Bosch Venture Capital, the investment arm of industrial technology producer Robert Bosch, has provided an undisclosed amount for US-based precision medicine developer Variantyx as part of a $26m series C round. Variantyx, a spinout of Tel Aviv University, has now raised $53m altogether, $20m coming in a March 2021 series B round led by GHS Fund and backed by IBM Ventures on behalf of computing technology provider IBM in addition to Pitango Venture Capital, New Era Capital Partners and 20/20 HealthCare Partners. US-based vegetarian casein and mozzarella producer New Culture completed a $25m series A round yesterday featuring ADM Ventures, Be8 Ventures and Evolv Ventures, which invested on behalf of food processor ADM and packaged food producers Dr Oetker and Kraft Heinz. The round was co-led by Ahren Innovation Capital and CPT Capital and included SOSV’s IndieBio fund, Bee Partners, Mayfield, Alumni Ventures Group, Bluestein Ventures, S2G Ventures and Future Ventures. Software producer Microsoft’s M12 subsidiary has led a $22m series B round for India-based sales intelligence software developer Salesken, investing alongside VC firm Sequoia Capital India, Entrackr reported yesterday. Unitus Ventures supplied an undisclosed amount of seed capital for Salesken in 2013 before Michael and Susan Dell Foundation added $1.5m two years later. They both sold shares in the company in March 2020 when Sequoia India provided $8m in series A funding. LoQus23 Therapeutics, a UK-based developer of small molecule drug treatments for triplet repeat diseases such as Huntington’s, emerged from stealth today having completed an £11.5m ($15.4m) seed round that included Novartis Venture Fund, a subsidiary of pharmaceutical firm Novartis. The corporate was joined in the round by Dementia Discovery Fund, which had supplied the round’s…

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Robert Lavine

Robert Lavine is special features editor for Global Venturing.