Informed raises five million euros

The startup has built a news app that manually curates news from well-known media.

Berlin-based startup Informed has successfully completed its seed funding round, raising five million euros. Informed plans to use the money to further develop its product and grow its team. Munich and Berlin-based venture capitalist HV Capital led the round. German-American venture capital firm 468 Capital also participated. The latter had led Informed's pre-seed round last year. That round had raised one million euros.

The start-up has developed a platform that enables its users to read news from different media with just one subscription. The company is working with the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Economist, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Telegraph, Reuters and Foreign Policy, among others.

The news is curated and bundled in the app, which is to be launched this year. According to the company, this is done by employees - and not just by algorithms. This way is best "to provide different perspectives across the political spectrum, from a variety of national and international sources, small and large publishers, Western as well as non-Western publishers," the company says in a statement.

The founders who launched Informed 2021 previously worked at major digital and media companies: Benjamin Mateev came from Wunderlist and Microsoft, Martin Kaelble had worked at Capital and Financial Times Deutschland, and Axel Bard Bringéus had worked at Spotify and EQT Ventures.