29 Sep 2022 /

Luminii are delighted to have provided Commercial Due Diligence (CDD) support to Octopus Ventures on their investment in Wazoku, a provider of an AI-powered innovation management platform.

Wazoku has closed a series B funding round of £8.5M through investment from Octopus Ventures along with follow on from existing investors including Calculus Capital. Led by CEO Simon Hill, Wazoku helps the world’s largest and most complex businesses to innovate at scale. The company works with global enterprises such as NASA, Enel, HSBC, Shell and more to help them innovate at scale. The platform facilitates digital communication between workspaces and contains a suite of products used for tasks such as talent scouting and supply chain management.

It will use the funding to drive R&D across its product suite, as well as further internationalisation, acquisitions and the management of hyperscale growth over the next two years.

Wazoku has also announced the acquisition of the Danish collective intelligence platform, Mindpool, a research spinout that captures actionable employee insight to improve company performance. Mindpool captures employee thoughts and predictions and provides actionable insights and ideas based on this collective intelligence, all geared to improving organisational performance and assessing overall company health using quantitative and qualitative data inputs.

The Danish firm was founded by serial entrepreneur Mik Thobo-Carlsen, globally renowned architect Bjarke Ingels, and Dr. Carina Antonia Hallin a collective intelligence and technology scientist at the IT University of Copenhagen. She is an author, an entrepreneur, a thought leader in collective intelligence (CI) and hybrid intelligence (CI+AI) and led the initial research for Mindpool.

Mindpool powers the Global Mindpool platform that connects the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) with citizens worldwide through the Don’t Choose Extinction programme. The campaign features a collective intelligence platform, the Global Mindpool, to help tackle the most important issues of our time. Linking insights from around the world – on the climate emergency, the crisis in nature and inequality – the Global Mindpool will support UNDP to better inform and equip policy makers in government, civil society, and the private sector. Don’t Choose Extinction was launched at COP26 with the campaign video having over 4bn views globally.

The acquisition, the company’s third in three years, extends the company’s collective intelligence offering driving further insights, engagement and predictions across the innovation at scale process. The Mindpool team will join the Wazoku business as part of the transaction, extending Wazoku’s reach and presence even further in Denmark and across Europe.

"Luminii are delighted to have supported Octopus on this transaction. This is yet another deal that helps to further strengthen our credentials in the TMT and Enterprise Software sectors, having worked on several deals in this space recently. We wish Octopus and Wazoku's management team continued success for the future." Lushani Kodituwakku, Managing Director, Luminii Consulting

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    Private equity and venture capital with £9.1bn worth of funds under management

  • Lushani and her team at Luminii delivered a high quality CDD report that exceeded our expectations. We were particularly pleased with the post deal recommendations and informed opinions contained within the report. We wouldn't hesitate to use Luminii's services again on future projects.

    Leading mid- market private equity firm

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