– MODIFI announced $24M in funding, which brings its valuation to more than $120M.
– The round was led by Heliad Equity Partners with a co-investment from Neva SGR, the venture capital investment vehicle of Italy’s leading banking group Intesa San Paolo.
– Existing investors also participated significantly, including Global Founders Capital, Maersk Growth, and Picus Capital.
– The funds will be used to grow MODIFI’s digital trade finance platform for SMBs (small-to-medium businesses) into a global trade management hub.

– Telos Brands, a technology-first eCommerce company focused on the Amazon FBA ecosystem, announced a $2.1M seed round led by Picus Capital with participation from select business angels.
– Telos has also raised an undisclosed amount of debt from several financing partners to support acquisitions.
– Telos Brands is rethinking the “Amazon Aggregator” model that has become popular over the last couple of years by utilizing predictive analytics, automation tools and other proprietary technology-first processes to grow and optimize acquired brands.

– WeRize is a Bengaluru, India-based socially distributed financial services platform.
– The company raised USD8M in Series A funding.
– The round was led by 3one4 Capital, Kalaari Capital, Picus Capital and Orios Venture Partners.
– The new investment will be used to accelerate growth and expand operations.

– Kocomo is a Mexico City-based proptech startup.
– The company raised US$56m in debt and equity funding.
– The round was led by AllVP and Vine Ventures with participation from Picus Capital, Fontes – QED, FJ Labs, Clocktower Technology Ventures, and JAWS (the family office of Starwood Capital Group Chairman Barry Sternlicht), Florian Hagenbuch – Founder & Co-CEO, and Mate Pencz – Founder & Co-CEO, of Loft, Oskar Hjertonsson of Cornershop, Carlos Garcia of Kavak, and Sergio Furio of Creditas.
– The company intends to use the funds to continue to expand operations and its business reach.

– Hawk AI announced that it has raised $10m USD in its Series A funding, with fintech specialist BlackFin Capital Partners leading the investment round and Picus Capital expanding its existing share.
– Hawk AI is Germany’s leading software platform for banks, payment firms and fintechs for the detection of transactions linked to financial crime.
– The software identifies patterns of suspicious activity in financial transactions with the help of artificial intelligence and provides anti-money-laundering experts with highly relevant, actionable alerts.
– Hawk AI eliminates false alerts by applying fully transparent and auditable Machine Learning to deliver significant process efficiencies.
– Hawk AI aims to become the leading compliance platform for transaction surveillance.

– SimpliContract is a Bengaluru, India-based AI and SaaS-based contract lifecycle management (CLM) platform.
– The company raised $1.8M in seed funding.
– The round was led by Kalaari Capital with participation from Picus Capital, Arka Ventures, and Digital Sparrow Capital.
– The new investment will be used to expand the company’s engineering, AI research, and marketing efforts.

– Curio is a NFT platform for the entertainment industry.
– The company raised $7m in seed funding.
– Backers included Fenbushi Capital, Kenetic Capital, Protocol Labs, LongHash Ventures, Picus Capital, and several entertainment industry veterans Marc Geiger, CEO of SaveLive and former head of global music at WME, and Rich Battista, former CEO of Time Inc. and former Fox Entertainment executive.
– The new investment will be used to expand operations and business reach.

– Cyble raised a $4M seed financing round led by Blackbird Ventures and Spider Capital with participation from Xoogler Ventures, Picus Capital, and Cathexis Ventures.
– The funding comes as Cyble graduates from Y Combinator, which accepted Cyble into its Winter 2021 (W21) cohort and provided pre-seed funding in January of this year.
– These investments demonstrate the continued trust that investors and clients have in Cyble.
– Cyble has made huge progress over the last year.
– “We started this company with an ambitious goal: to equip organizations with real-time visibility into vulnerabilities in the cyber landscape and help safeguard their businesses.

– PayZen is a healthcare fintech company based in San Francisco, CA.
– The company came out of stealth raising $5m in seed funding.
– PayZen was incubated with Viola Ventures in 2019.
– The new investment will be used to deploy the AI-backed technology platform across a number of healthcare providers, reaching hundreds of hospital systems and thousands of patients across the country.
– Investors: Picus Capital, TWO39 Ventures, and others.