The round, led by Elaia with participation from Speedinvest, Founderful, 1st Kind, 10X Founders, 2100 Ventures, and the Sequoia Scout Fund, pushes Mimic’s total funding past $20 million. 

The fresh capital will speed up the development of its foundation AI model, humanoid robotic hands, and large-scale industry deployments.

Mimic’s goal is to create robots that can match human finesse in handling intricate tasks on factory floors, from assembling small components to managing logistics processes where precision and adaptability are essential. 

While traditional robots are great at repetitive actions, they lack the flexibility to manage the unpredictable nature of real-world environments.

“Humanoids are exciting, but there aren’t many industrial scenarios where the full-body form factor truly adds value,” said Stephan-Daniel Gravert, co-founder and chief product officer at Mimic Robotics. 

“Our approach pairs AI-driven dexterous robotic hands with proven, off-the-shelf robot arms to deliver the same capabilities in a way that is much simpler, more reliable and rapidly deployable.”

The company’s technology is trained on real human performance. Skilled operators wear Mimic’s proprietary data-collection gear during everyday factory work, capturing precise motion data without interrupting production. 

These recordings are then used to teach Mimic’s AI models through imitation learning, allowing robotic hands to replicate human movements with impressive accuracy.

“Our general purpose AI models allow us to automate manual labour in a way that simply was not possible before,” said Elvis Nava, co-founder and chief technology officer. “Thanks to our unique focus on human-like dexterity and human data, we are competitive at the robot foundation model layer as well as the application layer.”

Global manufacturers and logistics providers are already testing Mimic’s technology. Pilots are underway with several Fortune 500 companies, including major automotive brands. 

The firm’s offering comes at a time when many industrial economies are faced with labour shortages, an ageing workforce, and high costs that make automation more urgent than ever.

Analysts estimate the humanoid and dexterous robotics market could reach $38 billion by 2035, part of a robotics sector projected to be worth up to $1 trillion by 2040.

Founded in 2024 as a spin-off from ETH Zurich, Mimic’s 25-member team combines engineering, research, and industrial expertise. The company has also received support from Switzerland’s federal innovation agency and was selected for the AWS Generative AI Accelerator programme.

“We’re at an inflection point in robotics where learning-based systems meet real industrial needs,” said Stefan Weirich, co-founder and CEO of Mimic Robotics. “We make dexterity deployable at scale, closing the gap between what AI can do in the lab and what factories actually need. Europe has the talent, the infrastructure, and the demand, and we’re building the company that brings all of this together.”

Investors have commended Mimic’s technical and commercial potential. Clément Vanden Driessche, Partner at Elaia, noted, “Elaia is thrilled to lead the seed round in Mimic. The world-class team at Mimic is addressing one of the most challenging problems in physical AI: dexterous manipulation. Mimic’s breakthrough approach integrates a proprietary robotic hand, state-of-the-art foundation models for robotics, and novel data acquisition and training methods.”

Vincent Faber, investment manager at Elaia, added, “This enables autonomous, versatile manipulation and unlocks a previously untapped segment of the automation market, where the demand for flexible solutions continues to grow.”

Meanwhile, Andreas Schwarzenbrunner, general partner at Speedinvest, said, “At Speedinvest, we’ve always believed that Europe’s strength lies in marrying world-class engineering with foundational research. With Mimic, we see exactly that: a platform that unlocks human-level dexterity with frontier AI and solves billion-dollar problems on factory floors today. This is the moment Europe steps forward to compete and lead in the new era of AI and robotics.”

The post Mimic Robotics Raises $16 Million to Bring Human-Like Dexterity to Industrial Robots appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

That inefficiency translates into higher prices for everyday essentials. Leta, a Nairobi-based logistics technology company, says it has a solution.

The company just secured $5 million in funding to expand its platform, which helps businesses move products faster and at lower costs. The investment was led by European venture capital firm Speedinvest, with backing from Google’s Africa Investment Fund and Equator, an Africa-focused climate tech fund.

In 2022, Leta pulled in $3 million in pre-seed funding to strengthen its presence in five key markets: Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Since then, the company has scaled really fast, powering 4.5 million deliveries and managing over 7,000 vehicles.

Interestingly, Leta is about making logistics less chaotic. Most businesses in Africa still rely on manual processes to plan and execute deliveries, leading to delays, inefficiencies, and wasted resources. 

Leta’s software changes that by automating key steps—matching shipments to the right vehicles, optimising delivery routes, and tracking orders in real time.

Founder and CEO Nick Joshi explains it simply: “A company with 70 trucks saves about $30,000 monthly using Leta.” That’s because the platform doesn’t just plan routes but reduces the number of vehicles needed for deliveries. Businesses move the same volume of goods but at a lower cost.

The system also makes quick adjustments based on real-world conditions. If a road becomes a trouble spot due to flooding, police stops, or construction, the platform immediately flags it. “For example, if there’s a roundabout where trucks or motorbikes repeatedly fail to complete a turn on that route, the AI flags it,” Joshi said. This flexibility ensures deliveries are completed without unnecessary detours or delays.

Leta is already testing financial products that integrate directly with its platform. These include fuel cards for delivery drivers, financing for fleet owners, and supply chain credit for merchants. Investors see this as a logical next step.

Deepali Nangia, a partner at Speedinvest, explained why her firm backed Leta: “It leverages logistics as a gateway and fintech as a growth driver, unlocking new business opportunities.”

Leta’s approach differs from earlier African logistics startups like Sendy and KOBO360, which focused on aggregating trucks. Many of those companies struggled with high costs of operations and eventually pivoted or shut down. Leta is betting on a software-first model instead—partnering with existing fleet owners rather than managing assets itself.

With the new funding, Leta plans to enter more African and Middle Eastern markets. It already counts major brands like KFC and Diageo as clients and aims to double its revenue in the coming months.

Since 2022, Leta has grown from handling 500,000 deliveries to 4.5 million. It has increased its fleet from 2,000 vehicles to over 7,400 and helped businesses transport 150,000 tonnes of goods.

The post Kenya’s Leta Raises $5 Million to Disrupt Africa’s Costly Logistics Industry appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

The company, which provides financial services to low- and middle-income workers, plans to use the funds to apply for a digital banking licence in Egypt and expand into Saudi Arabia.

Founded in 2019, Khazna aims to bridge the financial gap for Egyptians who lack access to traditional banking. The company offers services such as salary advances, digital payments, and micro-loans, allowing workers to manage their finances with greater flexibility. 

Currently, over 500,000 people use Khazna’s products, with 100,000 receiving their salaries directly through the platform. The company’s goal is to integrate financial services such as loans and insurance into payroll systems, making financial management more accessible for workers.

Khazna has focused on credit offerings for payroll and pension recipients, alongside unsecured loans for gig workers. This approach has helped the company reach profitability, according to CEO Omar Saleh. 

“What we did over the last two and a half years was to focus on our core product, which is credit offering to payroll and pension recipients and also unsecured loans to gig workers. This is the most profitable and core product in our journey, and getting it right was very important because it has helped us to hit profitability,” Saleh said.

In addition to loans, Khazna provides bill payment services, buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) options, medical insurance, and rent-to-own products. However, one of the company’s biggest challenges is its inability to accept customer deposits, which makes lending operations costly. 

To address this, Khazna is working to secure a deposit-taking licence from Egypt’s Central Bank, which introduced a regulatory framework for digital banks in July 2024.

Beyond Egypt, Khazna is setting its sights on Saudi Arabia, where demand for consumer finance solutions is rising. Unlike BNPL companies such as Tabby and Tamara, which focus on short-term credit, Khazna aims to provide medium-term credit solutions like earned wage access (EWA), payroll-backed lending, and pension-based credit.

A key factor driving this expansion is the strong economic ties between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, with nearly three million Egyptians living and working in Saudi Arabia. This presents an opportunity for Khazna to offer cross-border financial services, particularly in credit and foreign exchange (FX) solutions.

Added to these, Saudi Arabia’s capital markets have influenced Khazna’s decision. The Tadawul stock exchange, one of the most liquid in the region, has hosted multiple IPOs in recent years. 

Khazna plans to generate 40–50% of its revenue from Saudi Arabia within the next four years, positioning itself for a public listing on Tadawul. Saleh noted that this would provide early-stage investors with a clear path to exit, making an IPO a viable long-term strategy.

Khazna’s latest funding round was shaped by Egypt’s recent economic instability, including currency devaluation and investor caution. Between 2022 and 2023, fundraising for Egyptian startups became difficult, leading to a slowdown in venture capital deals. 

However, 2024 brought a turnaround, with over $50 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) flowing into the country following economic reforms.

This renewed investor assurance has benefited Khazna, which secured funding from both global and regional investors, including Quona, Speedinvest, SANAD Fund for MSME, anb Seed Fund, Aljazira Capital, Tibas Ventures, Khwarizmi Ventures, Nclude, and ICU Ventures.

The post Egypt’s Khazna Raises $16 Million as It Eyes Digital Banking, Saudi Expansion appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

Palm.hr will leverage the investment to strengthen its reach across Saudi Arabia, while expanding into new markets such as Egypt and the UAE. The company also plans to add new features and products to its offerings, enabling employees purchase or rent assets, sign up to health or travel insurance, among other benefits.

The round was Speedinvest’s first investment in a Saudi Arabian company. The Europe-based VC led the round alongside RAED Ventures, with participation from MENA-focused VC firm Wamda Capital.

Palm.hr wants to create a mobile-first experience so as to enhance HR tech and employee experience across the MENA region.

Founded by Richard Schrems, Christoph Czichna and Dragan Nikolic, the company focuses on payroll automation, leaves and absences tracking, and staff performance monitoring and follow-up, as well as making internal communication between staff seamless.

It also automates other workflow functions related to HR including on or off-boarding of employees, and is configurable across borders, making it easy for it to match local labour laws, and employee regulations in different markets.

Palm.hr has integrated with Saudi Arabian government services such as Mudad for digital payroll and compliance, mandated by the country’s ministry of labour; the General Organization for Social Insurance (GOSI), and Muqeem, the foreign employee’s data platform.

The post Palm.hr Closes $5 million Pre-Series A Funding Round led by Speedinvest, RAED Ventures appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

The funding will be used to launch new products, expand the team, and enter new emerging markets, all contributing to Revio’s mission of reducing payment failures and churn. Its Payments Orchestration, Billing Automation, and Revenue Recovery solutions enable businesses to passively, actively, and proactively recover lost transactions, to increase revenue, optimise cashflow, and increase customer lifetime value.

Other investors who joined SpeedInvest in the round were RaliCap, The Fund, and Two Culture Capital. Several angel investors also participated, including payment and collections experts from Sequoia, Quona Capital and Circle Payments. This is Revio’s first institutional funding round since emerging from stealth in March 2021.

“We’re grateful to be supported by some of the world’s best FinTech investors and operators,” said Revio founder and CEO, Ruaan Botha. “We have ambitions to build a global business that helps businesses reduce failed payments and recover revenue they’ve earned.

We know that growing a business is hard, but getting paid shouldn’t be. I’m excited to partner with our investor community to accelerate our growth and the value that we deliver to our customers.”

In Africa, 2-3 out of every 10 payments fail, compared to the 0.7 global average. Reasons for this include the fragmented payments landscape, higher dispute rates, invalid or expired card details, false-positive fraud checks, multiple or dormant accounts, and insufficient funds. This high failure rate results in billions of dollars in lost revenue. In Africa alone, an estimated $14 billion in recurring revenue is uncollected each year, and the continent has a 320% higher churn rate than mature markets.

With digital payments growing at 20%+ year-on-year, this problem will only intensify. While gateways and aggregators have made it easier for businesses to accept multiple payment methods, few solutions exist to deal with payment failures.

“Revio is building a category-leading product to enable businesses to better manage their cash flow and accelerate growth,” said Hayden Simmons, Partner at RaliCap Ventures. “The African payments landscape is fragmented, and we believe they will play a critical role in contributing to the growth of subscription commerce and companies with pan-African scale.”

Today, businesses can integrate with Revio’s API to seamlessly accept and reconcile 20+ payment methods across 25+ African markets, to increase their payment success rates and automate revenue operations. Based on the insight that ‘there’s more to getting paid than accepting payments,’ Revio offers:

• Smart payment routing and failover to increase payment success rates
• Configurable auto-retries, dunning rules, and proactive card expiry management
• Data-driven interactions to recover lost revenue, including secure payment links, self-service billing changes, and options to settle arrears in cash at a nearby retailer
• Real-time analytics and reporting to optimise recovery processes

Combined with real-time customer segmentation and analysis, these capabilities can help businesses increase their customer lifetime value and direct collections effort toward the customers with the highest return on investment. Through a single integration, businesses can access all these functionalities, simplifying complexity, accelerating speed to market, and increasing revenue and customer lifetime value.

In just one year of trading, Revio has landed 50+ customers and processes thousands of transactions each month. The client base is diverse, spanning large-scale enterprises, mid-market corporates, and fast-growing scale-ups across multiple industries.

The current traction is just the beginning of Revio’s story. Locally grounded but globally relevant, the team aims to be the go-to revenue recovery and growth partner for businesses in all emerging markets.

“Revio’s leadership team has bold ambitions and deep industry experience, which is a powerful combination. They have attracted some of the best talent in the market and are executing at pace. We are excited to be investing at this inflection point in their journey,” said Scott Hartley, Co-founder and Partner at The Fund.

“Having been part of multiple payment orchestration and billing automation platforms across the world, we can see the incredible potential of using this toolset to increase revenue recovery for businesses in a region where three out of ten payments fail. With a team as experienced as Revio’s at the helm of tackling this massive opportunity we’re convinced that they can fundamentally change the payments landscape for businesses in their target markets and are excited to be backing them on that journey,” said Alvaro Perezcano, FinTech Investor at SpeedInvest.

The post SA’s Revio Raises $1.1 million to Solve Payments Challenge in Emerging Markets appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

Julaya is a B2B digital account that enables companies to send and collect payments seamlessly through a digital account. With the Julaya platform, African businesses can make bulk payments through all mobile money channels, process their travel or online expenses with a corporate prepaid card tailored to their needs, and easily import all transactions into their accounting system. 

The platform helps companies to improve operational efficiency by digitizing their payments to multiple unbanked workers and suppliers. Julaya “Cash & Collect” solution allows fast and secured cash collection, especially in the FMCG sector. More than 500 SMBs, startups, large corporates and government institutions, including famous brands such as Africa’s e-commerce giant Jumia, use Julaya as their digital account to pay their partners and collect payments.

The lead investor, Speedinvest already invested in Moove and FairMoney (Nigeria and India) and has six unicorns in its portfolio. EQ2 Ventures, Kibo Ventures, angel syndicates Unpopular Ventures and Jedar Capital, as well as Ivorian business angel Mohamed Diabi and previous investors Orange Ventures, Saviu, and 50 Partners also invested in the round. 

2021 world’s best Goalkeeper and 2022 Africa Cup of Nations Champion with Senegal, Edouard Mendy also participated in the round as his first participation in Africa. Julaya also received investment from its own CFO and country manager in Senegal.

Proceeds from this financing round will enable Julaya to expand in the West African market, open Benin, Togo and Burkina Faso offices, hire multicultural talents and boost product development.

“African companies are eager to improve their profitability, and digitizing their finances is one of the most important steps for them to grow their business. 90% of payments are still made in cash on the continent, and Julaya is proud to be part of the fintech landscape that helps businesses be more successful,” said Mathias Léopoldie, CEO & co-founder.

“Julaya’s technology is fundamentally changing how companies operate in an increasingly complex payment landscape across Francophone Africa. As we look ahead, the potential for Julaya’s technology goes far beyond its payment capabilities, having the opportunity to become a close banking partner for companies in West Africa,” said Enrique Martinez-Haussmann, Principal at Speedinvest.

“I believe helping companies transition to easy-to-use digital solutions makes a real difference in their daily activities. I’m confident that the talented team at Julaya will play a decisive role in the rise of digital financial solutions in Africa,” added Edouard Mendy.

Since the announcement of Julaya’s pre-Series A funding in June 2021, the fintech launched its Dakar office and extended the features of its product, now enabling African companies to make cash collection. Transactions and revenue have grown +500% year on year.

The post Julaya Fintech Set to Expand Across West Africa with $5 million Extension Round  appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.

The round, which follows the $700,000 seed funding secured by OZÉ last year, was led by European early-stage VC, Speedinvest. Other investors included Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund, Savannah Capital and other angel investors. 

OZÉ’s products and services enable SMEs make data-driven decisions and improve their overall performance, bringing them to a state of investment readiness and ensuring the local economy attains global competitiveness.

OZÉ was founded by the company’s CEO Meghan McCormick and COO, Dave Emnett in 2018 following a series of travels McCormick made across Africa, where she noticed the challenges small businesses face and their dire need for financial and recordkeeping tools to thrive.

The company has a client base of more than 125,000 business owners in Ghana and Nigeria. Traditionally these businesses have operated as brick-and-mortar enterprises running on pen-and-paper. Now, as they look to build an online presence, demand for technology and financial products to digitize businesses is increasing. 

OZÉ’s business app helps these medium and small businesses collate sales, expenses, payables, receivables and customer data. This data is analyzed to provide businesses with support ranging from tailored recommendations, reports through daily business tips, monthly business seminars and access to an on-demand business coach. 

Based on how businesses use the platform, OZÉ generates performance and behavioural data, which it uses to predict their credit risks and create alternative credit scores. The startup partners with financial institutions such as banks and fintechs, to lend to businesses that need loans.

The post Ghana’s OZÉ raises $3,000,000 pre-Series A fund to continue helping SMEs scale appeared first on Tech | Business | Economy.