Top startups news to follow this week:

-  French Presidency of the Council of the European Union, France will focus on talent attractiveness and funding. There are some commitments to facilitate the creation of 10 to 20 late-stage investment funds with at least €1 billion under management and a boost in deep-tech financing.

- Specialist VC (formerly known as United Angels VC) has announced the first close of a new €50 million fund at €42 million. The main focus of the fund is on pre-seed and seed stage startups and is the first of its kind in the Baltic region to implement a dual strategy of integrating secondary transactions into a traditional venture capital fund.

- Bloomberg reports, that South Korea’s $200 billion sovereign wealth fund plans to boost investments in Silicon Valley startups as it looks to the metaverse and artificial-intelligence to accelerate its expansion in alternative assets.

- Tech Crunch reports, French startup Alma is trying to build a new “buy now, pay later” giant in Europe. The company has closed a $130 million Series C round (€115 million). It has also raised $109 million (€95 million) in debt financing.

- Enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) solutions startup Mozn has raised $10 million in a Series A funding round, the Saudi company said in a news release Friday (Feb. 4).

- The Australia energy storage systems market is expected to register a CAGR of greater than 10% during the forecast period of 2022 – 2027. 

-Clean Energy Technologies Market is projected to grow by  USD 81.65 billion between 2020 and 2025. 

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