Every day, Global University Venturing rounds up the smaller investments from across the university innovation ecosystem in its deal net.
Bibliu, a UK-based academic e-textbook portal backed by university venture fund Oxford Sciences Innovation, has increased its series A funding to $12m following a third tranche supplied by Spartech Ventures, Wamda has reported. The funding adds to an initial $10m in April 2020 led by Nesta Impact Investments, an impact fund sponsored by innovation charity Nesta, and rounded off by Guinness Asset Management, ClearlySo and unnamed clients of family office Stonehage Fleming. Angel Investment Network subsequently contributed $650,000 in a series A extension last month. UAE-based Spartech Ventures will now look to drive the expansion of Bibliu’s academic subscription service into the Middle East and North Africa region. Bibliu has now raised $16.6m in funding altogether, including $4.2m in a 2018 seed round led by Paul Forster’s family office. OSI joined its co-investment vehicle University of Oxford Innovation Fund and private investor Fritz Demopoulos in the round.
Oxford Seed Fund, the student-led venture fund of University of Oxford, has invested undisclosed amounts in DocuVision, a US-based artificial intelligence-powered personal data management platform, and Hutano Diagnostics, a UK-based disease diagnosis technology developer. DocuVision is also a portfolio company of SkyDeck, the accelerator of University of California, Berkeley.
Databourg Systems was spun out of University of Luxembourg yesterday to commercialise technologies for predicting flash floods. Databourg Systems has devised a method to measure rain precipitation and the potential for flooding based on the fluctuations rain causes in satellite TV signals. Ahmad Gharanjik invented the approach during his work as a research associate at the University of Luxembourg-based Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust.
