The law firm HAVEL & PARTNERS has provided legal advice and assisted in a one of the biggest venture capital investments in Slovakia. We have provided legal services to the investors Credo Ventures and Earlybird Digital East Fund as well as to Photoneo, a Slovak start-up, which raised a total of USD 21 million, i.e., nearly half a billion Czech crowns, in new capital upon the successful completion of the Series B investment round.

The transaction was facilitated by M&A and venture capital specialists – Václav Audes, a partner, Tomáš Navrátil, a senior associate, Ivana Gajdošová, an associate, and Kristína Očenášová, a junior associate, who rendered comprehensive legal advice on the investment on behalf of HAVEL & PARTNERS.

Apart from Credo Ventures and Earlybird Digital East Fund, other investors that participated in the investment round included IPM Group, a global asset manager focusing on technology companies, together with Venture to Future Fund and other funds.

Photoneo specialises in R&D activities in 3D sensing technology and vision-guided robotics and focuses on new comprehensive solutions for fully automated distribution centres. Photoneo intends to use the raised capital to accelerate its production of the 3D sensing technology equipping robots with shape detection, space-orientation and goods-sorting abilities. It also intends to invest the capital in its new product BRIGHTPICK, an automated e-shop order handling and dispatching solution.

Jan Žižka, a co-founder and the CEO of Photoneo, said: “The potential of this new-generation warehouse automation technology is immense since it is extremely flexible, expandable, and it maximises the output with minimum effort. It helps optimise processes, save space and triple to quintuple the efficiency compared to manual work.”