Deals round-up | Cervest, Movoto, BuildOps, Smartworks

London startup Cervest has raised £3.7m in pre-series A funding to launch a real-time, climate forecasting platform.

The fund was co-led by Future Positive Capital and Astanor Ventures.

Cervest’s platform uses AI to analyse billions of data points from meterology to hyrdrology to predict the impact of the weather on landscapes across the globe. It’s climate forecasting can create predictions years into the future, and could help insurers set premiums and inform governments about regions of risk.

This also has the potential to add another layer to risk management for the property industry, for example, whether current or future developments are likely to flood.

Sofia Hmich, founder of Future Positive Capital, said: “Our mission is to back companies that use deep tech to solve the world’s most pressing problems.”

California-based Movoto, an online real estate brokerage which uses AI to help search for properties, has received $8m (£6.2m) from Mitsui Fudosan, making the Japanese developer a minority stakeholder.

The capital is set to allow Movoto to evolve its AI-enabled platform and accelerate company growth.

Daisuke Yamashita, general manager of Mitsui Fudosan, said: “We have been looking at new platforms for the real estate industry for quite some time. We were extremely impressed by the AI-enabled, end-to-end platform that Movoto has matured over the years to provide for consumers and agents to collaborate so that agents can provide excellent service to consumers.”

The software helps commercial HVAC, plumbing and electrical contractors manage workflow

BuildOps, a subcontracting platform, has raised $5.8m (£4.5m) in seed funding led by Fika Ventures.

MetaProp VC, Global Founders Capital, CrossCut Ventures, TenOneTen, IGSB, 1984 Ventures, L2 Ventures, GroundUp, Oberndorf Enterprises, Wolfson Group, Sequoia Capital, and angel investor Metta World Peace from the NBA, also participated.

The platform integrates scheduling, dispatching, inventory management, contracts, workflow and accounting into one piece of software.

Smartworks co-founders Harsh Binani and Neetish Sarda

Indian flexible workspace provider Smartworks has raised $25m (£19m) from Singapore-based developer Keppel Land in its Series A.

The company plans to use these funds to grow its desk count from 25,000 up to 65,000 by the end of the year. Over the next five years, Smartworks plans to provide workspaces for over 200,000 people.

The company also plans to raise an additional $20m through debt and internal accruals.