The investment was led by Octopus Ventures with backing from Maven Capital Partners to build out digital private markets infrastructure.
"With investor demand at an all-time high, there is a lot of noise around how institutions overcome the traditional barriers to private markets. We’ve taken a different approach, creating white-labelled technology that acts as the digital building blocks on which firms can scale their propositions. The growth funding from Octopus Ventures validates this approach and strengthens our plan of stimulating greater connectivity between financial institutions, capital raisers and investors."
The funding round was backed by Octopus Ventures, Headline, Volution, Verso Capital, and Channel 4 Ventures, alongside a retail crowdfunding campaign.
"We’re delighted to have such great support from the VC community as well as ‘the Crowd’. There’s significant momentum behind revolutionising the life insurance space, but there is also a much broader opportunity for our deathwish platform which allows people to plan exactly what they want to happen when they die. We’re here to help our customers think about how they want to be remembered and enable those wishes to be tied into their life insurance plan, to give it a real meaning."
Octopus Ventures led the seed financing round, which included participation from Deeptech Labs and Cambridge Enterprise.
"Construction is one of the world economy’s largest sectors, worth £7 trillion. McKinsey estimates that if the productivity levels were to catch up with the progress made by other sectors over the past 20 years or with the total economy, it could increase the industry’s value added by £1.2 trillion a year. We’re delighted to be backing such a formidable founder who is taking on a giant industry and we’re excited by BKwai because it is giving the industry the tools it needs to meet its potential. Not only is it helping companies optimise their builds and assets, it is also moving the industry to more green, sustainable practices that have long-term impact."
The funding round was co-led by Octopus Ventures and Anthemis Group with participation from various angel investors and funds.
"The main hurdle for many parents to effectively save for their children’s future is a lack of awareness about what they can do and a lack of tools that help them do that easily. The money we’ve raised today is going to give us the opportunity to change this, providing better education to families and building financial products and tools solely designed for families."
Octopus Ventures leads a £3.5m seed round in Touchlab to advance robotic electronic skin technology.
"Touch is the final frontier for robot interaction and entry into physical environments – enabling true dexterity and safety. We have taken on this challenge by developing a ‘full-stack’ solution; retrofittable e-skin that gathers the data, software to make sense of it, and integration to ensure it works in demanding applications – from grocery grasping to telerobotics in extreme environments. Octopus’ expertise propel us to achieve e-skin’s full potential and create a step-change in robotics."
