Impact venture capital fund 4impact capital invests in AI software startup Coolgradient. The Amsterdam-based startup, founded by Jasper de Vries and René Gompel in 2023, has built the most comprehensive software solution to optimize complex cooling and power infrastructure operations in data centers.

Coolgradient makes data centers intelligent by converting existing data into actionable recommendations and improved visibility, delivering increased reliability and improved sustainability by reducing data center infrastructure energy by up to 40%. Coolgradient achieves these superior results by capturing interdependencies between all operational assets from the mechanical and electrical infrastructure in data centers rather than focusing on isolated assets. This holistic view makes Coolgradient the solution of choice for globally leading clients such as Digital Realty.

Data centers were responsible for 2% of global electricity consumption in 2022, which is expected to increase. By 2030, they are expected to use an average of 3.2% of global electricity consumption, with some countries’ estimations being as high as 6% (US) or even 32% (Ireland) by 2026. As their numbers grow, their CO2 emissions and water consumption also continue to rise. However, due to the vast amounts of variables involved in data center operations and the shifting data and energy demands, data center operators currently have limited ability to find the optimal energy and water settings at any given time.

4impact capital now joins Coolgradient as a software-specialized investor to support the experienced team in scaling its business internationally. The team around Jasper de Vries and René Gompel have decades of experience in data-driven optimisations for industrial applications. Through their existing work with large clients, they have built and optimized best-in-class AI models that can work universally.

As the data center market is expected to boom over the next decades, Coolgradient is set to become a vital cog in the global computing space.

Victor Straatman, Partner of 4impact says “The unrivaled expertise of Jasper, Rene, and their team of people in Amsterdam and across the world make them the obvious choice for many of the world’s leading data center operators. The need for and benefit of their product is crystal clear. As they become a key component of operating this critical infrastructure globally, we are proud to play a part in Coolgradient’s journey of reducing 1% of all global energy used for data center cooling while delivering meaningful cost and resource savings to customers.”

Jasper de Vries, Co-Founder and CPO of Coolgradient, adds, “We are thrilled to have 4impact join our mission for a more sustainable digital infrastructure. They share our passion, and this investment reflects their commitment to seizing the momentum for our product. This will enable further global expansion and increase the impact we create for our customers.”

About Coolgradient 

Coolgradient, founded by Jasper de Vries and René Gompel in 2023, aims to reduce 1% of global energy consumed by cooling data centers. Their innovative solution converts every data center into an intelligent facility, covering all infrastructure from roof-to-room. The platform merges existing data with distinct AI models to simplify and optimize increasingly complex data center operations. With their approach, they have achieved remarkable results, such as up to 40% in energy and water savings, increased reliability and resilience, compliance with sustainability regulations, and improved employee productivity.

Contact: Rene Gompel, rene.gompel@coolgradient.com

About 4Impact 

4impact capital is a prominent early-stage impact investor in European digital startups. 4impact capital supports passionate founders dedicated to advancing sustainability and creating measurable change, aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly in the areas of Planet and People. Currently, 4impact capital is investing from its second fund, which they anticipate to close later this year. 4impact plans to invest in around 25 companies that capitalize on the massive opportunity at the intersection of digitization and sustainability in Europe, focusing on the Benelux, DACH, and Nordics regions.

Contact: connect@4impact.vc

LONDON, UK – May 2, 2024 – Blackstone (NYSE:BX), the world’s largest alternative asset manager, announced today that private equity funds managed by affiliates of Blackstone (“Blackstone”) have completed its acquisition of Civica, a global leader in public sector software solutions, from Partners Group, a leading global private markets firm, acting on behalf of its clients. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The transaction was previously announced on November 22, 2023, and has fulfilled all regulatory approvals. Civica was founded in 2001 and has since grown into one of the UK’s largest software companies and a global leader in software for the public sector, providing mission-critical automating and streamlining technology services to over 6,000 customers around the world.

Jonathan Murphy, Senior Managing Director, and Miguel García Gómez, Principal at Blackstone, said: “Civica has established itself as a leader in the ‘GovTech’ space, helping public bodies globally embrace technology and improve their services. We’re thrilled to partner with Lee and the management team and support Civica’s continued growth and global expansion.”

Lee Perkins, Chief Executive Officer at Civica, said: “With digitalization transforming the expectation of public services around the world, Civica creates the software that helps public servants deliver for citizens every day. Blackstone has a long track record of investing in technology and in the UK, and we look forward to partnering with them as we build on two decades of growth and innovation.”

Blackstone was advised by Barclays as lead financial advisor, Shea & Company and DC Advisory as secondary financial advisors, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Kirkland & Ellis as legal advisors. Partners Group was advised by Clifford Chance and Arma Partners. Arma Partners acted as exclusive financial advisor to Civica and Management was advised by Travers Smith and Wyvern Partners.

About Blackstone  
Blackstone is the world’s largest alternative asset manager. We seek to deliver compelling returns for institutional and individual investors by strengthening the companies in which we invest. Our more than $1 trillion in assets under management include global investment strategies focused on real estate, private equity, infrastructure, life sciences, growth equity, credit, real assets, secondaries and hedge funds. Further information is available at www.blackstone.com. Follow @blackstone on LinkedIn, X (Twitter), and Instagram

About Civica Group 
We’re Civica and we make software that helps deliver critical services for citizens all around the world. From local government to central government, to education, to health and care, over 5,000 public bodies across the globe use our software to help provide critical services to over 100 million citizens. Our aspiration is to be a GovTech champion everywhere we work around the globe, supporting the needs of citizens and those that serve them every day. www.civica.com

Media Contacts

Civica
Amanda Newman
press@civica.co.uk

Blackstone
Rebecca Flower
Rebecca.Flower@blackstone.com
+44 (0)7918 360372

Dr. Marisa Randazzo to Join Raptor to Lead Threat Assessment Services and Training

HOUSTON—Raptor Technologies (Raptor), the U.S. leader in school safety software, announced today an agreement with Ontic, a software provider delivering Connected Intelligence that unifies how security professionals manage physical threats, mitigate risks and strengthen businesses, for the strategic acquisition of SIGMA Threat Management Associates (SIGMA), a renowned leader in threat assessment and violence prevention services.

This acquisition marks a significant milestone in Raptor’s commitment to providing comprehensive safety solutions for schools and communities. By incorporating SIGMA’s expertise in threat assessment and violence prevention with StudentSafe, Raptor’s cutting-edge threat management software, Raptor aims to further enhance its ability to safeguard students, staff and school environments.

“Raptor’s mission is to empower schools to create safer environments for learning,” said Gray Hall, CEO of Raptor Technologies. “Adding SIGMA Threat Assessment training to the Raptor portfolio of safety products and services is our next step in expanding our capabilities as we assist schools in embracing a broader perspective on safety for their students, staff and communities.”

SIGMA brings decades of experience in threat assessment, behavioral threat management and violence prevention to Raptor. SIGMA threat assessment experts have worked with schools, businesses and organizations across the country to assess threats, develop prevention strategies and train stakeholders on threat awareness and response.

“We are excited to join Raptor to advance our shared mission of making schools safer,” said Marisa Randazzo, Ph.D., co-founder of SIGMA. “By combining our expertise in threat assessment and violence prevention with Raptor’s innovative software solutions, we can provide schools with comprehensive, proactive approaches to reducing threats.”

As part of the acquisition, SIGMA will operate as part of Raptor Technologies, with Dr. Marisa Randazzo serving as Executive Director of Threat Assessment. Prior to joining Raptor, Dr. Randazzo served as Executive Director of Threat Management at Ontic and was the former Chief Research Psychologist with the U.S. Secret Service, where she served for over a decade. Additionally, she currently serves as the Director of Threat Assessment at Georgetown University.

“Ontic, Raptor and SIGMA all share the mission of keeping people safe,” said Lukas Quanstrom, CEO and co-founder of Ontic. “We will continue to champion the threat assessment methodology and software for our corporate clients at Ontic. We look forward to seeing the impact SIGMA will have on school safety as they join a leader like Raptor.”

About Raptor Technologies
Founded in 2002, Raptor has partnered with over 60,000 schools in 55 countries, including over 5,300 K-12 US school districts, to provide integrated visitor, volunteer, attendance, dismissal, emergency management, and safeguarding software and services covering the complete spectrum of school and student safety. To learn more about Raptor Technologies, visit www.raptortech.com.

About Ontic
Ontic makes software that corporate and government security professionals use to proactively manage threats, mitigate risks, and make businesses stronger. Built by security and software professionals, the Ontic Platform connects and unifies critical data, business processes, and collaborators in one place, consolidating security intelligence and operations. We call this Connected Intelligence. Ontic serves corporate security teams across key functions, including intelligence, investigations, GSOC, executive protection, and security operations. For more information, please visit ontic.co or follow us on X or LinkedIn.

Read the release on the Raptor website here.

As the world waits for $65 billion payments tech giant Stripe to go public, a wave of smaller startups continues to roll into the market to pick up more payments business. In one of the latest developments, Danish company Flatpay, which builds payment solutions for small and medium physical merchants like shops, restaurants and salons, has raised €45 million ($47 million), led by Dawn Capital.

Flatpay had raised just under $21 million before this latest Series B, and with this new funding, it’s now valued at well over $100 million. The company plans to use the money to expand into new markets in Europe and to build out more products alongside the point-of-sale and card terminals that it sells today. Some of these products might involve AI but only as an enabler of certain features, rather than a core service, said Flatpay’s CEO Sander Janca-Jensen.

“We have been able to raise money without mentioning the AI buzz word,” he said. “It seems to be rare these days.”

That €45 million is a strong Series B in the current market in Europe, especially when you consider the size of the startup. Founded in 2022, Flatpay currently has just 7,000 customers across Denmark, Finland and Germany.

Even with its revenues and customer base both growing at a monthly rate of 15%, Flatpay’s business is just a drop in the merchant ocean.

There are more than 24 million SMBs in Europe; point-of-sale terminals in the region number more than 17 million; and there are hundreds of other payments services — including Stripe, Adyen, SumUp and PayPal, as well as smaller players like SilkPay — all targeting the same customers as Flatpay.

But investors think there is a lot of potential in the startup, enough to bet early and strong, even in the current economic climate.

Janca-Jensen, who co-founded the company with Rasmus Busk, Rasmus Hellmund Carlsen and Peter Lüth, said the gap Flatpay spotted in the market was a lack of really simple solutions for merchants who want the convenience that technology can bring, without the harder aspects that come along with it, such as troubleshooting, understanding the intricacies of charges, and integrating products into their business flow.

The startup’s approach to addressing that gap comes in three ways, he said. On the customer side, Flatpay works with a defined size of customer: only merchants that process over €100,000 annually, and the customers cannot be multiple-location chains or franchises. Janca-Jensen said that it regularly rejects customers if they don’t meet those parameters.

On the technology side, it has matched its target customer size with the unit economics of its payment solutions to come up with very basic, flat fees (hence the startup’s name) of 0.99% for terminal transactions and 1.49% for POS purchases. Flatpay then doesn’t set a minimum charge for single transactions, and it doesn’t charge fees if customers are paying with international cards. Janca-Jensen admitted that its model means that Flatpay sometimes loses money on transactions, but it overall lowers the bar for usage and encourages more spend and overall revenue for the company.

Perhaps most interestingly, on the sales side, despite its focus on streamlined technology, Flatpay only sells via live sales visits. No online sales (although there are specialists who will help arrange those in-person sales visits and handle support), no virtual visits, and no plans to introduce either.

Janca-Jensen said he and his co-founders developed a fondness for direct field sales when they were selling home alarm systems in a previous life.

As with payments hardware and software, security can be a hard sell to customers. Flatpay found that the only way it could reliably seal deals was by selling in person. And the only way that salespeople can sell in person is by understanding the products really well.  “You have to get salespeople to understand the product enough to explain it well to buyers. It sets high standards for how simple your product must be,” said Janca-Jensen. “We like that challenge.”

Around half of Flatpay’s 200 employees are on the sales side, he said, split between those who help arrange sales visits and handle support and those who visit customers in person. Typically, they are recruited from other retail roles rather than software sales.

“We steer clear of SaaS account executives and fintech people,” he said. In his opinion, SaaS sales are so easy that people who work in that area are “too lazy and complacent” to make the grade for field sales.

So far, in the three markets where Flatpay operates, the aim has been to recruit very local salespeople who understand the nuances of their respective markets. That seems to raise a lot of questions about how well this can scale longer term, but Janca-Jensen brushes that concern aside, and investors are equally bullish.

“The field sales model, when done well, works. You can localize and roll out teams in a cost-efficient way to explain on a local basis why a product makes sense,” said Josh Bell, a general partner at Dawn Capital who focuses on fintech.

He pointed out that iZettle — another company Dawn backed — was also an early mover in using field sales to sell its fancy new tech to non-technical customers. “They were a winner, but even they never did it as well as Flatpay does this. Payments is huge, and Flatplay has touched just at a fraction of the opportunity.”

Denmark’s Seed Capital also participated in this round, along with other unnamed investors.