Platform9 has closed $26 million financing led by Celesta Capital, with participation from Cota Capital, NGP Capital, and other investors. This financing round comes on the back of three consecutive years of 100% growth in annual recurring revenue (ARR) for SaaS Kubernetes, led by enterprise interest in cloud-native distributed clouds.    In addition to the financing, the company has made two significant appointments to its executive team to help scale the company rapidly. Former Oracle and Nokia sales executive, Emilia A’Bell joins as Chief Revenue Officer and former Intel Corporate Vice President, Ravi Jacob, joins as the company’s chief financial

VEON Ventures has completed a $15 million investment as part of a Series A round for Dastgyr, a Pakistan-based B2B e-commerce marketplace platform. This investment will contribute towards boosting Pakistan’s e-commerce market.   Dastgyr offers businesses a one-stop-shop application that connects thousands of retailers with suppliers to give them access to real-time visibility on pricing and financing rates. Platform partners have included Coca-Cola, Nestle, and Reckitt.          The deal is VEON Ventures’ largest investment in a Pakistani start-up and reflects the Group’s continued commitment to the region and to the growth of Pakistan’s digital economy.

Digital payments network MFS Africa has has secured an additional $100 million in equity and debt funding led by Admaius Capital Partners, taking the total amount raised in its Series C round to $200 million. New investors, Vitruvian Partners and AXA IM Alts joined the extension, alongside existing investors, AfricInvest FIVE and CommerzVentures, who re-invested in the extension.  Previous other investors include LUN Partners Group, Goodwell Investments, Allan Gray Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst and Endeavor Harvest, Equator Capital Partners, Ulme, and Vlemeij.

Mid-market private equity firm LDC has exited its investment in Plimsoll Productions (Plimsoll) to ITV plc in a transaction that values the independent television production company at £131 million. Plimsoll’s BAFTA, EMMY and Academy award winning team specialises in wildlife, documentary and factual entertainment shows, and is the biggest independent producer of natural history programmes in the world. Headquartered in Bristol, with offices in LA and Cardiff, the business has produced more than 70 series for broadcasters including Netflix, Disney, Apple and Natural Geographic.   LDC backed Plimsoll’s management team, led by CEO Grant Mansfield, in 2019, with a minority

Project and resource management specialist Projekt Rising has secured a £100k investment from Growth Lending to develop its project management automation technology, expand its product offering and enhance working capital.

Venture capital firm Molten Ventures has participated in a $200 million Series C funding round in CoachHub, a global digital coaching platform. The round, led by Sofina and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, will be used to further scale CoachHub’s product innovation and operations while accelerating the company’s global expansion. Following an $80 million round only eight months ago, this Series C brings the three-year-old company’s total funding to $330 million.

Spirea Limited, a Cambridge company created to advance a new generation of antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) therapeutics, has secured funding of £2.4 million in an investment round led by Jonathan Milner and Cambridge Enterprise. US-based R42 Group, ACF Investors, o2h Ventures, Syndicate Room and the Cambridge Angels also participated in the round. Spirea, a spin-out from the University of Cambridge, has previously received investment from IP Group, Cambridge Enterprise, Start Codon, Jonathan Milner, o2h Ventures and Syndicate Room, and is supported by a number of successful, high-profile board members from the life sciences.

British Patient Capital has invested in Proximie, the global health technology platform digitising operating rooms around the world, as part of a $80 million Series C round. The $12.5 million investment has been made via Future Fund: Breakthrough, British Patient Capital’s £375 million programme where it co-invests with private sector investors in innovative, R&D-intensive UK companies. The round was led by Advent Life Sciences and is British Patient Capital’s fourth life sciences deal following previous investments in Microbiotica, Epsilogen and Quell Therapeutics.

The asset management arm of Abu Dhabi state investor Mubadala has led a $100 million equity funding round in Swedish fintech Juni, according to a report by Reuters. Juni has also raise an addition $106 million in venture debt financing from Silicon Valley-based TriplePoint Capital. Juni’s existing investors – EQT Ventures, Felix Capital, Cherry Ventures and Partners of DST Global – also participated in the funding round.

Blackstone has made progress on its $6.3 billion buyout bid for troubled casino operator Crown Resort after Australia’s gambling regulators granted the the PE firm permission to run the Crown Resorts casinos in the country’s two largest cities, according to a report by Reuters. Sydney-listed Crown, which is 37% owned by billionaire James Packer, has backed Blackstone’s buyout offer having been damaged by revelations that it enabled money laundering and hit hard by the global pandemic.