UK fintech Kord, the end-to-end platform making onboarding clients, identity verification and payment processing simpler and more secure, has raised £6.4 million in a Series A funding round. The investment was led by Guinness Ventures, with participation from Beringea, SFC Capital and angel investors. The latest round brings the company's total funding to £9 million. Founded by James Owusu, Kord provides an end-to-end platform for businesses operating in regulated industries, combining identity verification, anti-money laundering (AML) and compliance checks, digital onboarding, document signing and payment processing into a single system. The platform is designed to replace multiple legacy tools and help organisations manage customer onboarding and financial transactions through a unified workflow. Regulated by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Kord is used by estate and letting agents, law firms, conveyancers and financial services companies. In addition to onboarding and compliance tools, the platform provides digital wallets and dedicated client accounts that enable regulated businesses to securely hold and manage client funds. For firms in regulated industries, relying on fragmented legacy systems that fail to meet the demands of modern digital commerce slows transaction speeds and increases risk. We created Kord to change that, said James Owusu, founder and CEO of Kord. According to the company, its API-based platform also helps verify customer documents against multiple data sources to strengthen fraud prevention. Kord will use the new funding to expand its team, accelerate product development and support the continued growth of its customer base.

UK fintech Kord, the end-to-end platform making onboarding clients, identity verification and payment processing simpler and more secure, has raised £6.4 million in a Series A funding round. The investment was led by Guinness Ventures, with participation from Beringea, SFC Capital and angel investors. The latest round brings the company's total funding to £9 million. Founded by James Owusu, Kord provides an end-to-end platform for businesses operating in regulated industries, combining identity verification, anti-money laundering (AML) and compliance checks, digital onboarding, document signing and payment processing into a single system. The platform is designed to replace multiple legacy tools and help organisations manage customer onboarding and financial transactions through a unified workflow. Regulated by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), Kord is used by estate and letting agents, law firms, conveyancers and financial services companies. In addition to onboarding and compliance tools, the platform provides digital wallets and dedicated client accounts that enable regulated businesses to securely hold and manage client funds. For firms in regulated industries, relying on fragmented legacy systems that fail to meet the demands of modern digital commerce slows transaction speeds and increases risk. We created Kord to change that, said James Owusu, founder and CEO of Kord. According to the company, its API-based platform also helps verify customer documents against multiple data sources to strengthen fraud prevention. Kord will use the new funding to expand its team, accelerate product development and support the continued growth of its customer base.

Belgian startup Polysense has raised $10.7 million in an oversubscribed seed funding round to accelerate the global rollout of its AI-powered quality control platform for food manufacturers. The round was led by Felix Capital, with participation from Fortino Ventures, Syndicate One, 100IN and other angel investors. Polysense develops AI-powered quality control and process optimisation software for food manufacturers. Its platform helps reduce waste by combining continuous in-line inspection with automated process control. By combining continuous in-line inspection, real-time imaging data and synthetic data models with automated process control, the platform detects quality deviations as they occur and automatically adjusts production parameters before waste is generated. The platform consists of three integrated products. Polysense Qualify continuously inspects every product on the production line in real time, while the Polysense Platform consolidates quality and process data into a single view to identify variability and improvement opportunities. Polysense AutoControl automatically adjusts machine settings to compensate for changing ingredients and production conditions. The funding comes just over a year after Polysense raised $2.2 million and focused exclusively on food manufacturing. Since then, the company has progressed from early pilots to commercial deployments with major food producers including Agristo, Darta and Poppies Bakeries. Initially launched in Europe, the platform has since expanded into the United States and the Middle East, with customers increasing the scale of their deployments across vegetable, potato, bakery, confectionery and packaging production lines. Yarne De Munck, CEO and co-founder of Polysense, said: The past twelve months have been incredible. The traction is real. We went from early pilots to live deployments with some of the largest food manufacturers in the world, and they are growing their rollouts. The food industry has been waiting for a solution to this problem. Polysense delivers one that works. This funding lets us move faster and reach many more lines around the world. We are just getting started. Food waste remains a major challenge for manufacturers, creating a significant opportunity for technologies that can improve production efficiency. According to Eurostat, food and beverage manufacturing accounts for 19 per cent of all food waste in the EU. Variations in raw materials, including moisture, density and product characteristics, combined with fixed production settings, make it difficult for manufacturers to identify and correct quality issues before products are lost. Polysense's platform is designed to automate this process, enabling continuous monitoring and real-time corrective action. The new funding will be used to expand Polysense's product across more stages of the food production process, enabling manufacturers to automate a wider range of quality control and process optimisation tasks. The company also plans to grow its engineering, sales and customer success teams, while investing in faster deployments to support its expanding international customer base.

Belgian startup Polysense has raised $10.7 million in an oversubscribed seed funding round to accelerate the global rollout of its AI-powered quality control platform for food manufacturers. The round was led by Felix Capital, with participation from Fortino Ventures, Syndicate One, 100IN and other angel investors. Polysense develops AI-powered quality control and process optimisation software for food manufacturers. Its platform helps reduce waste by combining continuous in-line inspection with automated process control. By combining continuous in-line inspection, real-time imaging data and synthetic data models with automated process control, the platform detects quality deviations as they occur and automatically adjusts production parameters before waste is generated. The platform consists of three integrated products. Polysense Qualify continuously inspects every product on the production line in real time, while the Polysense Platform consolidates quality and process data into a single view to identify variability and improvement opportunities. Polysense AutoControl automatically adjusts machine settings to compensate for changing ingredients and production conditions. The funding comes just over a year after Polysense raised $2.2 million and focused exclusively on food manufacturing. Since then, the company has progressed from early pilots to commercial deployments with major food producers including Agristo, Darta and Poppies Bakeries. Initially launched in Europe, the platform has since expanded into the United States and the Middle East, with customers increasing the scale of their deployments across vegetable, potato, bakery, confectionery and packaging production lines. Yarne De Munck, CEO and co-founder of Polysense, said: The past twelve months have been incredible. The traction is real. We went from early pilots to live deployments with some of the largest food manufacturers in the world, and they are growing their rollouts. The food industry has been waiting for a solution to this problem. Polysense delivers one that works. This funding lets us move faster and reach many more lines around the world. We are just getting started. Food waste remains a major challenge for manufacturers, creating a significant opportunity for technologies that can improve production efficiency. According to Eurostat, food and beverage manufacturing accounts for 19 per cent of all food waste in the EU. Variations in raw materials, including moisture, density and product characteristics, combined with fixed production settings, make it difficult for manufacturers to identify and correct quality issues before products are lost. Polysense's platform is designed to automate this process, enabling continuous monitoring and real-time corrective action. The new funding will be used to expand Polysense's product across more stages of the food production process, enabling manufacturers to automate a wider range of quality control and process optimisation tasks. The company also plans to grow its engineering, sales and customer success teams, while investing in faster deployments to support its expanding international customer base.

When contemplating Germany's startup scene, one tends to think of Berlin and Munich. But Hamburg is on a tear, with new data showing that more startups were founded in Hamburg than in Munich in the first half of 2026.   Overall, the data shows that a record 3,053 new startups were founded in Germany between January and June this year. This marks a 52 per cent increase on the previous six months, and amounts to more new startups than all of 2024, according to figures from the German Startups Association. "Over 3,000 new start-ups in six months—Germany has never seen such momentum in company creation," remarked Verena Pausder, chairwoman of the German Startups Association. The rise in AI tools making it easier to start a startup is cited as a reason behind the surge, allied to the German economic climate, which has seen German companies pull back on recruitment, meaning that building a startup has become more attractive to individuals. Pausder adds: "AI significantly lowers the barriers to starting a business, and more and more people are seizing this opportunity." Berlin is the clear leader, with 429 startups launched, growing 21 per cent. But a big winner is Hamburg, which is home to energy unicorn 1KOMMA5°, with 212 new startups, an 83 per cent surge. It marks the first time in several years that more startups were founded in Hamburg than in Munich. Over 1,000 of the new startups have an AI focus, the data shows. “The startup boom is no longer a phenomenon confined to a few specific hotspots,” says doctor Felix Engelmann, co-founder of startupdetector.  “We are seeing the biggest gains precisely where startups intersect with strong industrial sectors and excellent universities—from Hamburg and Hesse to Baden-Württemberg.” IMAGE: PIXABAY

When contemplating Germany's startup scene, one tends to think of Berlin and Munich. But Hamburg is on a tear, with new data showing that more startups were founded in Hamburg than in Munich in the first half of 2026.   Overall, the data shows that a record 3,053 new startups were founded in Germany between January and June this year. This marks a 52 per cent increase on the previous six months, and amounts to more new startups than all of 2024, according to figures from the German Startups Association. "Over 3,000 new start-ups in six months—Germany has never seen such momentum in company creation," remarked Verena Pausder, chairwoman of the German Startups Association. The rise in AI tools making it easier to start a startup is cited as a reason behind the surge, allied to the German economic climate, which has seen German companies pull back on recruitment, meaning that building a startup has become more attractive to individuals. Pausder adds: "AI significantly lowers the barriers to starting a business, and more and more people are seizing this opportunity." Berlin is the clear leader, with 429 startups launched, growing 21 per cent. But a big winner is Hamburg, which is home to energy unicorn 1KOMMA5°, with 212 new startups, an 83 per cent surge. It marks the first time in several years that more startups were founded in Hamburg than in Munich. Over 1,000 of the new startups have an AI focus, the data shows. “The startup boom is no longer a phenomenon confined to a few specific hotspots,” says doctor Felix Engelmann, co-founder of startupdetector.  “We are seeing the biggest gains precisely where startups intersect with strong industrial sectors and excellent universities—from Hamburg and Hesse to Baden-Württemberg.” IMAGE: PIXABAY

Fleek, a UK-based startup developing AI infrastructure for the secondhand clothing industry, has raised $25 million in a Series B funding round. The investment was led by Burda Principal Investments, with participation from eBay, FJ Labs, H14 and existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, HV Capital and Y Combinator. Founded in 2021 by Abhi Arora and Sanket Agarwal, Fleek operates a B2B marketplace connecting wholesale secondhand clothing suppliers with retailers and resellers worldwide. The company aims to digitise a secondhand clothing supply chain that still relies heavily on manual sorting, grading and trading processes despite growing global demand for resale. Alongside its marketplace, Fleek has developed AI tools that automate textile sorting, grading and merchandising. Its proprietary AI model, Fleek Sort, identifies, categorises and grades garments from images and videos, enabling inventory to be processed digitally before being listed on the company's marketplace. AI-powered pricing, search, recommendation and matching tools then connect suppliers with buyers globally, while marketplace activity continuously improves inventory classification, pricing and recommendations. We started Fleek because that system is broken, the market it serves is exploding, and nobody is building the technology and infrastructure to fix it, said Abhi Arora, co-founder and CEO of Fleek. According to the company, its platform connects more than 2,000 wholesale suppliers and graders with over 50,000 retailers, resellers and boutiques across more than 100 countries. Fleek says it has helped keep more than 12 million clothing items in circulation while enabling suppliers to recover more value from secondhand inventory and helping buyers source products more efficiently. The funding will be used to further develop Fleek's AI-native marketplace, expand its engineering team, scale its technology platform and grow its global network of buyers and suppliers. The company also plans to further develop AI capabilities across inventory processing, merchandising, marketplace operations and buyer discovery as it continues to expand its platform.

Fleek, a UK-based startup developing AI infrastructure for the secondhand clothing industry, has raised $25 million in a Series B funding round. The investment was led by Burda Principal Investments, with participation from eBay, FJ Labs, H14 and existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, HV Capital and Y Combinator. Founded in 2021 by Abhi Arora and Sanket Agarwal, Fleek operates a B2B marketplace connecting wholesale secondhand clothing suppliers with retailers and resellers worldwide. The company aims to digitise a secondhand clothing supply chain that still relies heavily on manual sorting, grading and trading processes despite growing global demand for resale. Alongside its marketplace, Fleek has developed AI tools that automate textile sorting, grading and merchandising. Its proprietary AI model, Fleek Sort, identifies, categorises and grades garments from images and videos, enabling inventory to be processed digitally before being listed on the company's marketplace. AI-powered pricing, search, recommendation and matching tools then connect suppliers with buyers globally, while marketplace activity continuously improves inventory classification, pricing and recommendations. We started Fleek because that system is broken, the market it serves is exploding, and nobody is building the technology and infrastructure to fix it, said Abhi Arora, co-founder and CEO of Fleek. According to the company, its platform connects more than 2,000 wholesale suppliers and graders with over 50,000 retailers, resellers and boutiques across more than 100 countries. Fleek says it has helped keep more than 12 million clothing items in circulation while enabling suppliers to recover more value from secondhand inventory and helping buyers source products more efficiently. The funding will be used to further develop Fleek's AI-native marketplace, expand its engineering team, scale its technology platform and grow its global network of buyers and suppliers. The company also plans to further develop AI capabilities across inventory processing, merchandising, marketplace operations and buyer discovery as it continues to expand its platform.

Berlin-based reverse.fashion, a startup developing AI-powered textile sorting technology, has secured a seven-figure extension to its pre-seed funding round from High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF). Founded in 2024 as a spin-off from the Technical University of Berlin by Dr Karsten Pufahl, Paul Doertenbach and Mario Osterwalder, reverse.fashion develops AI systems that automate the sorting and digitisation of used textiles. Combining computer vision, machine learning, Digital Product Passport (DPP) integration, and advanced sensing technologies, the company enables textile sorters, recyclers, and circular fashion businesses to accurately identify, classify, and route used garments to the most suitable reuse, repair, resale, upcycling, or recycling pathway. Its AI platform digitises and classifies garments based on characteristics such as condition, brand, style, size, and material composition, replacing labour-intensive, subjective sorting processes with intelligent, data-driven technology. The company says its solutions improve operational efficiency, increase the value recovered from used textiles, reduce waste, and help the fashion industry meet growing sustainability and regulatory requirements. Built on years of research and development in collaboration with industry and academic partners, reverse.fashion aims to make textile circularity scalable by creating the next generation of textile sorting infrastructure. According to the company, its technology increases sorting quality and throughput, allowing customers to boost productivity by 40 per cent while increasing revenue by around 20 per cent. The funding will support the company's commercial expansion, including the continued deployment of its co.sort software and the rollout of its line.sort automated sorting system, with the aim of scaling automated textile sorting across the industry.

Berlin-based reverse.fashion, a startup developing AI-powered textile sorting technology, has secured a seven-figure extension to its pre-seed funding round from High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF). Founded in 2024 as a spin-off from the Technical University of Berlin by Dr Karsten Pufahl, Paul Doertenbach and Mario Osterwalder, reverse.fashion develops AI systems that automate the sorting and digitisation of used textiles. Combining computer vision, machine learning, Digital Product Passport (DPP) integration, and advanced sensing technologies, the company enables textile sorters, recyclers, and circular fashion businesses to accurately identify, classify, and route used garments to the most suitable reuse, repair, resale, upcycling, or recycling pathway. Its AI platform digitises and classifies garments based on characteristics such as condition, brand, style, size, and material composition, replacing labour-intensive, subjective sorting processes with intelligent, data-driven technology. The company says its solutions improve operational efficiency, increase the value recovered from used textiles, reduce waste, and help the fashion industry meet growing sustainability and regulatory requirements. Built on years of research and development in collaboration with industry and academic partners, reverse.fashion aims to make textile circularity scalable by creating the next generation of textile sorting infrastructure. According to the company, its technology increases sorting quality and throughput, allowing customers to boost productivity by 40 per cent while increasing revenue by around 20 per cent. The funding will support the company's commercial expansion, including the continued deployment of its co.sort software and the rollout of its line.sort automated sorting system, with the aim of scaling automated textile sorting across the industry.

Respiro Diagnostics, a UK-based startup developing breath-based diagnostics for lung diseases, has raised £1 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Zinc Venture Capital and SFC Capital. The round also included participation from Amadeus Capital Partners, the Conception X Angel Syndicate, KQ Labs through the Francis Crick Institute, strategic angel investors and Innovate UK. Founded by Alison Quinn and Dr Theo Issitt, Respiro is developing a non-invasive liquid biopsy platform that uses exhaled breath to detect lung cancer and other respiratory diseases. The company's technology combines a proprietary breath collection device with laboratory methods that analyse DNA, RNA and proteins captured from breath samples, providing an alternative to invasive tissue biopsies and blood-based liquid biopsies. Respiro's platform is being developed as a non-invasive alternative to existing diagnostic methods for lung diseases. Unlike tissue biopsies, which require invasive procedures, the technology analyses biological material collected directly from exhaled breath, including DNA, RNA and proteins. According to the company, this approach could support earlier diagnosis and provide additional information to guide treatment decisions. Our vision is simple: that one day, a breath sample is all it takes to know what's happening in your lungs — early, while there's still time to act, said Alison Quinn, CEO and co-founder of Respiro Diagnostics. Respiro has completed initial proof-of-concept testing in mesothelioma patients and plans to begin its first clinical study in lung cancer patients at Aalborg University Hospital in Denmark in September 2026. The company is also evaluating potential applications of its platform in other respiratory conditions, including pulmonary hypertension and asthma. The funding will support Respiro's clinical research and the continued development of its breath collection device and laboratory platform as the company advances towards clinical validation.

Respiro Diagnostics, a UK-based startup developing breath-based diagnostics for lung diseases, has raised £1 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Zinc Venture Capital and SFC Capital. The round also included participation from Amadeus Capital Partners, the Conception X Angel Syndicate, KQ Labs through the Francis Crick Institute, strategic angel investors and Innovate UK. Founded by Alison Quinn and Dr Theo Issitt, Respiro is developing a non-invasive liquid biopsy platform that uses exhaled breath to detect lung cancer and other respiratory diseases. The company's technology combines a proprietary breath collection device with laboratory methods that analyse DNA, RNA and proteins captured from breath samples, providing an alternative to invasive tissue biopsies and blood-based liquid biopsies. Respiro's platform is being developed as a non-invasive alternative to existing diagnostic methods for lung diseases. Unlike tissue biopsies, which require invasive procedures, the technology analyses biological material collected directly from exhaled breath, including DNA, RNA and proteins. According to the company, this approach could support earlier diagnosis and provide additional information to guide treatment decisions. Our vision is simple: that one day, a breath sample is all it takes to know what's happening in your lungs — early, while there's still time to act, said Alison Quinn, CEO and co-founder of Respiro Diagnostics. Respiro has completed initial proof-of-concept testing in mesothelioma patients and plans to begin its first clinical study in lung cancer patients at Aalborg University Hospital in Denmark in September 2026. The company is also evaluating potential applications of its platform in other respiratory conditions, including pulmonary hypertension and asthma. The funding will support Respiro's clinical research and the continued development of its breath collection device and laboratory platform as the company advances towards clinical validation.

Aardaia, a Wageningen-based agritech startup developing new crop varieties from wild plants, has raised €5 million in a seed funding round led by Point Nine. Existing investor FoodLabs participated in the round alongside new investors Astanor, Grey Silo and a group of angel investors. Founded in 2025 by Pádraic Flood and Mike Henske, Aardaia is developing a breeding platform that identifies and domesticates wild plant species to create new crops without using genetic modification or gene editing. The company combines whole-genome sequencing, computational biology and phenotyping to predict plant performance and accelerate breeding programmes. Its first product is the aardaker, a protein-rich tuber designed to combine the productivity of a root crop with the nitrogen-fixing properties of legumes. According to the company, the crop is intended to reduce reliance on imported protein crops while requiring no synthetic nitrogen fertiliser. Aardaia says its breeding platform enables it to evaluate large numbers of plant genotypes in a shorter timeframe than conventional breeding methods. The company expects to screen around 750,000 unique aardaker genotypes this year and aims to increase that to around two million with the new funding. For most of history, inventing a new crop took millennia, so the world settled for improving the few it already had. We can now design crops on demand, drawing on hundreds of millions of years of evolution to find plants that are already built to win. The aardaker is our first, and this round lets us put our foot on the accelerator, said Pádraic Flood, co-founder and CEO of Aardaia. The new funding will be used to expand Aardaia's breeding platform and accelerate the development of the aardaker as the company continues to build new crop varieties from wild plant species.

Aardaia, a Wageningen-based agritech startup developing new crop varieties from wild plants, has raised €5 million in a seed funding round led by Point Nine. Existing investor FoodLabs participated in the round alongside new investors Astanor, Grey Silo and a group of angel investors. Founded in 2025 by Pádraic Flood and Mike Henske, Aardaia is developing a breeding platform that identifies and domesticates wild plant species to create new crops without using genetic modification or gene editing. The company combines whole-genome sequencing, computational biology and phenotyping to predict plant performance and accelerate breeding programmes. Its first product is the aardaker, a protein-rich tuber designed to combine the productivity of a root crop with the nitrogen-fixing properties of legumes. According to the company, the crop is intended to reduce reliance on imported protein crops while requiring no synthetic nitrogen fertiliser. Aardaia says its breeding platform enables it to evaluate large numbers of plant genotypes in a shorter timeframe than conventional breeding methods. The company expects to screen around 750,000 unique aardaker genotypes this year and aims to increase that to around two million with the new funding. For most of history, inventing a new crop took millennia, so the world settled for improving the few it already had. We can now design crops on demand, drawing on hundreds of millions of years of evolution to find plants that are already built to win. The aardaker is our first, and this round lets us put our foot on the accelerator, said Pádraic Flood, co-founder and CEO of Aardaia. The new funding will be used to expand Aardaia's breeding platform and accelerate the development of the aardaker as the company continues to build new crop varieties from wild plant species.

Meet the startup digitising battlefield medicine The AO is combining wearable sensors, digital patient records and frontline data to improve casualty evacuation in Ukraine and beyond. Drone warfare has fundamentally changed battlefield medicine. During four medical rotations with the Hospitallers Medical Battalion in Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast, startup founder and volunteer medic Howard Hunt (callsign Hunter) saw firsthand how the proliferation of drones has pushed casualty evacuation further from the frontline.  Medical teams can no longer safely drive directly to wounded soldiers during daylight hours. Instead, casualties are stabilised by combat medics before being transported after dark to Casualty Collection Points, where evacuation crews collect multiple patients simultaneously. This shift has exposed the limitations of a medical evacuation system that still relies heavily on manual processes. Inside moving ambulances, medics caring for several critically injured soldiers must measure blood pressure with a cuff, count respirations manually and complete paper-based Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) cards while travelling over damaged roads. Those handwritten records accompany the patient through successive stages of care before eventually being entered into hospital systems, introducing delays, transcription errors and gaps in patient data. As casualty numbers increase, these analogue workflows become increasingly difficult to manage. Medics spend valuable time recording observations rather than treating patients, while subtle physiological changes that could indicate a patient is deteriorating can easily go unnoticed. "Battlefield medicine is the complete opposite of a hospital environment," Hunter explains. "You're working in moving vehicles, under extreme time pressure, often treating multiple casualties with limited equipment." Hunter returned from Ukraine to Germany convinced that someone must already have solved this problem of continuously monitoring multiple vital signs inside a moving ambulance, transferring patient data digitally between medical teams and building a longitudinal record throughout the evacuation chain. They hadn’t,  so this became the foundation of the startup The AO. The battlefield problem nobody had solved Berlin startup The AO is developing a battlefield patient-monitoring platform that combines wearable sensors, ruggedised software, and digital patient records to continuously measure pulse, blood pressure, respiration, and blood oxygen saturation during evacuation. Rather than replacing medics, the platform is designed to automate data collection, allowing them to focus on treatment while every patient's physiological data follows them digitally through the evacuation chain. From casualty evacuations to company formation Hunter has a rather unique founding story. He joined emergency evaluation services without military or medical experience.  When the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, he started hosting Ukrainian refugees in his apartment from  March 2022. 13 people in total have stayed in his apartment, including a historian and graphic designer from Ivano Frankivsk, and two music producers from Kyiv. “Listening to their stories completely changed my perspective on the war,” he says. He wanted to help, so he travelled to Ukraine and joined Hospitallers, the volunteer medical battalion. Getting accepted as a foreigner who doesn’t speak Ukrainian wasn't easy, so he turned up at their base with a bag full of medical supplies and worked his way in, completing three rotations on their rescue bus before asking to move into medical evacuation and join an ambulance team. He admits that it was initially difficult to get onto ambulance crews: “Initially, I didn’t have enough experience to work as a head medic or paramedic. Second, they didn't have enough money to fuel all their ambulances. Third, if I were killed, they'd have to organise getting my body home, which creates a huge amount of additional work. And finally, I didn't speak Ukrainian. Then they said something that completely changed everything. "If you bring your own ambulance, you can have your own crew." So he went back to Germany and raised money to buy three ambulances. Images: Ambulances for use on the front line in Ukraine. Eventually, he was based in the Donbas before relocating to Kyiv, where he continued working with evacuation teams. Hunter recounts that early in the war, you could often drive directly to the front line and collect casualties. “That changed pretty quickly. Combat medics and combat lifesavers (soldiers with basic medical skills) now stabilise wounded soldiers near the zero line, before moving them to casualty collection points outside the kill zone of drone range. From there, evacuation medics like me transport multiple casualties to stabilisation points further behind the drone-contested areas. You're rarely transporting one patient. Quite often, you'd have five seriously wounded soldiers in a single ambulance. That changes everything about how you deliver medical care.” Every evacuation becomes a data point Presently developing medical technology in Berlin, Hunter argues that The AO is ultimately designed to become a data company rather than simply a hardware manufacturer. "The hardware matters because it determines how you collect your information," he says. "But the real value lies in the data you will generate over time. Every evacuation becomes another data point. And the data you collect can be extrapolated to forecast trauma outcomes using machine learning, and then predictive AI." Rather than relying on intermittent manual observations, The AO's platform is designed to continuously record vital signs. As thousands of patient records are collected near the Ukrainian zero lines, the company aims to build a dataset unlike any that currently exists in combat medicine. "Once you've collected enough real-world patient data, you can begin developing predictive algorithms," Hunt explains.   "A medic doesn't just need to know what a patient's condition is now. They need to know what's likely to happen next." By identifying physiological patterns that precede clinical deterioration, The AO hopes to provide medical teams with advance warning before a patient reaches a critical state. "If the system can recognise patterns showing a patient is likely to deteriorate in the next 15 or 20 minutes, it gives the medical team time to intervene before that happens. That's potentially life-saving." Hunter estimates that it will require data from around 2,000 casualties before the battlefield management system can begin to develop reliable models capable of predicting trauma outcomes, including severe deterioration caused by massive blood loss. "That isn't something you can simulate in a laboratory," says Hunter. "You have to collect it during real medical evacuations in active conflict. It's difficult, dangerous and time-consuming, but there's simply no alternative. And, strangely enough, the safest place to collect this data is in Ukraine." Although the platform is being developed on the battlefield, Hunter believes its long-term potential extends far beyond defence. Every ambulance service and first responder faces the same challenge: identifying which patients are about to deteriorate before the warning signs become clinically obvious.  The same predictive monitoring could ultimately support civilian emergency medicine worldwide, further serving disaster response teams, national security agencies, and first responders operating in high-risk environments, as well as the mining, energy and heavy industry sectors. Building tech the military will actually use For AO, the biggest competitive advantage isn't necessarily the technology—it's the relationships behind it. The company is already working with medical teams from Ukraine's 112th Brigade in Kyiv and 92nd Brigade in Kharkiv, giving its engineers continuous access to frontline feedback as the platform evolves. "The technology itself can be replicated," says Hunt. " What's much harder is developing it alongside the Ukrainian Armed Forces, earning their trust, collecting operational data and continuously refining the system based on real-world use. You can't do that remotely. It takes years of working with frontline medical teams." That collaboration is critical because convincing militaries to adopt new medical technology is notoriously difficult. Medical protocols evolve slowly, and any new system must prove not only that it improves patient care, but that it is robust, reliable and intuitive enough to use under battlefield conditions. Rather than asking military medics to change established NATO procedures, AO is digitising the existing Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) card that every NATO soldier already carries. The aim is to improve how information is captured and transferred without disrupting familiar clinical workflows. Working directly with brigade medical teams has also fundamentally shaped the product itself. Early prototypes used large ruggedised tablets, but Ukrainian medics quickly rejected them as too bulky for combat casualty evacuation. "We've redesigned major parts of the system because users told us they needed something smaller, simpler and easier to integrate into existing evacuation procedures," Hunt explains. "That's exactly how product development should work." That iterative approach appears to be paying off. According to Hunt, frontline medical teams have reached the point where they're telling AO: "Bring the equipment and we'll use it." "Trust is everything," he says. "We're not turning up for a few demonstrations and then leaving. We're building the system alongside the people who'll ultimately rely on it. That takes time, but it's the only way to create something that's genuinely useful." Today, the team combines frontline operational experience, biomedical engineering, hardware design, wireless communications, software development and machine learning.  Besides Hunt, technical development is led by CTO Hans Hübner and VP Eng Ota Fejfar, with support from collaborations with TU and Fraunhofer HHI in Berlin. Software development is led by Vladimir Skoupy, and ML/AI capabilities are provided by Stepan Reiben and colleagues in Prague and Ukraine.  The company is partnering with Zebra Technologies, and a sensor manufacturer planned through Harwario s.r.o. in Liberec, Czech Republic. From Ukrainian ambulances to NATO According to Hunt, the company is at TRL 7. The first deployments are expected to involve the 60 ambulances operated by the Hospitallers Medical Battalion. AO is also in discussions with Dutch evacuation vehicle manufacturer Nixxen on a pilot with the medical corps of Ukraine's 112th Brigade, integrating the company's battlefield management platform into military evacuation vehicles.  If successful, he believes the technology could eventually be deployed across the Ukrainian Armed Forces' fleet of approximately 4,000 military ambulances. The company is also exploring future integration with emerging military "soldier cloud" architectures following discussions with developers from the Dutch and Ukrainian defence ministries. Building a defence company from the frontline Given I met Hunt as he pitched AO at Kyiv Defencetech Week in partnership with the European Defense Tech Hub, I was interested to get his take on the way forward for startups in the sector.  He contends that the biggest mistake founders make is building technology before fully understanding the problem. “I see companies arriving in Ukraine with impressive hardware or software and then trying to find a use case afterwards. We approached it the other way around. We spent months experiencing the problem ourselves before writing a line of code. That changes everything.” He asserts that you can't really understand combat casualty evacuation from reading reports or watching videos. “You have to understand what it's like trying to take someone's blood pressure while driving over damaged roads with multiple casualties in the back of an ambulance. Once you've lived through that, your priorities as a designer change completely.” AO is currently fundraising to gain the runway to complete product development, continue testing in Ukraine and generate the clinical data that underpins its work. “The product, the software, the sensor platform, the validation work—those all require time and capital. Our goal is to build something that's genuinely deployable rather than rushing an unfinished product into the market,” shared Hunt.  Hunt admits he spent enough time in Ukraine to see just how much of a difference small improvements can make. “Sometimes a better process, better information or a few extra minutes can be the difference between someone living and someone dying. Once you've seen that firsthand, it's very difficult to walk away. That's what continues to drive the company today.” Meet The AO at Berlin Defense Tech Week, July 6 to 12.

Meet the startup digitising battlefield medicine The AO is combining wearable sensors, digital patient records and frontline data to improve casualty evacuation in Ukraine and beyond. Drone warfare has fundamentally changed battlefield medicine. During four medical rotations with the Hospitallers Medical Battalion in Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast, startup founder and volunteer medic Howard Hunt (callsign Hunter) saw firsthand how the proliferation of drones has pushed casualty evacuation further from the frontline.  Medical teams can no longer safely drive directly to wounded soldiers during daylight hours. Instead, casualties are stabilised by combat medics before being transported after dark to Casualty Collection Points, where evacuation crews collect multiple patients simultaneously. This shift has exposed the limitations of a medical evacuation system that still relies heavily on manual processes. Inside moving ambulances, medics caring for several critically injured soldiers must measure blood pressure with a cuff, count respirations manually and complete paper-based Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) cards while travelling over damaged roads. Those handwritten records accompany the patient through successive stages of care before eventually being entered into hospital systems, introducing delays, transcription errors and gaps in patient data. As casualty numbers increase, these analogue workflows become increasingly difficult to manage. Medics spend valuable time recording observations rather than treating patients, while subtle physiological changes that could indicate a patient is deteriorating can easily go unnoticed. "Battlefield medicine is the complete opposite of a hospital environment," Hunter explains. "You're working in moving vehicles, under extreme time pressure, often treating multiple casualties with limited equipment." Hunter returned from Ukraine to Germany convinced that someone must already have solved this problem of continuously monitoring multiple vital signs inside a moving ambulance, transferring patient data digitally between medical teams and building a longitudinal record throughout the evacuation chain. They hadn’t,  so this became the foundation of the startup The AO. The battlefield problem nobody had solved Berlin startup The AO is developing a battlefield patient-monitoring platform that combines wearable sensors, ruggedised software, and digital patient records to continuously measure pulse, blood pressure, respiration, and blood oxygen saturation during evacuation. Rather than replacing medics, the platform is designed to automate data collection, allowing them to focus on treatment while every patient's physiological data follows them digitally through the evacuation chain. From casualty evacuations to company formation Hunter has a rather unique founding story. He joined emergency evaluation services without military or medical experience.  When the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began, he started hosting Ukrainian refugees in his apartment from  March 2022. 13 people in total have stayed in his apartment, including a historian and graphic designer from Ivano Frankivsk, and two music producers from Kyiv. “Listening to their stories completely changed my perspective on the war,” he says. He wanted to help, so he travelled to Ukraine and joined Hospitallers, the volunteer medical battalion. Getting accepted as a foreigner who doesn’t speak Ukrainian wasn't easy, so he turned up at their base with a bag full of medical supplies and worked his way in, completing three rotations on their rescue bus before asking to move into medical evacuation and join an ambulance team. He admits that it was initially difficult to get onto ambulance crews: “Initially, I didn’t have enough experience to work as a head medic or paramedic. Second, they didn't have enough money to fuel all their ambulances. Third, if I were killed, they'd have to organise getting my body home, which creates a huge amount of additional work. And finally, I didn't speak Ukrainian. Then they said something that completely changed everything. "If you bring your own ambulance, you can have your own crew." So he went back to Germany and raised money to buy three ambulances. Images: Ambulances for use on the front line in Ukraine. Eventually, he was based in the Donbas before relocating to Kyiv, where he continued working with evacuation teams. Hunter recounts that early in the war, you could often drive directly to the front line and collect casualties. “That changed pretty quickly. Combat medics and combat lifesavers (soldiers with basic medical skills) now stabilise wounded soldiers near the zero line, before moving them to casualty collection points outside the kill zone of drone range. From there, evacuation medics like me transport multiple casualties to stabilisation points further behind the drone-contested areas. You're rarely transporting one patient. Quite often, you'd have five seriously wounded soldiers in a single ambulance. That changes everything about how you deliver medical care.” Every evacuation becomes a data point Presently developing medical technology in Berlin, Hunter argues that The AO is ultimately designed to become a data company rather than simply a hardware manufacturer. "The hardware matters because it determines how you collect your information," he says. "But the real value lies in the data you will generate over time. Every evacuation becomes another data point. And the data you collect can be extrapolated to forecast trauma outcomes using machine learning, and then predictive AI." Rather than relying on intermittent manual observations, The AO's platform is designed to continuously record vital signs. As thousands of patient records are collected near the Ukrainian zero lines, the company aims to build a dataset unlike any that currently exists in combat medicine. "Once you've collected enough real-world patient data, you can begin developing predictive algorithms," Hunt explains.   "A medic doesn't just need to know what a patient's condition is now. They need to know what's likely to happen next." By identifying physiological patterns that precede clinical deterioration, The AO hopes to provide medical teams with advance warning before a patient reaches a critical state. "If the system can recognise patterns showing a patient is likely to deteriorate in the next 15 or 20 minutes, it gives the medical team time to intervene before that happens. That's potentially life-saving." Hunter estimates that it will require data from around 2,000 casualties before the battlefield management system can begin to develop reliable models capable of predicting trauma outcomes, including severe deterioration caused by massive blood loss. "That isn't something you can simulate in a laboratory," says Hunter. "You have to collect it during real medical evacuations in active conflict. It's difficult, dangerous and time-consuming, but there's simply no alternative. And, strangely enough, the safest place to collect this data is in Ukraine." Although the platform is being developed on the battlefield, Hunter believes its long-term potential extends far beyond defence. Every ambulance service and first responder faces the same challenge: identifying which patients are about to deteriorate before the warning signs become clinically obvious.  The same predictive monitoring could ultimately support civilian emergency medicine worldwide, further serving disaster response teams, national security agencies, and first responders operating in high-risk environments, as well as the mining, energy and heavy industry sectors. Building tech the military will actually use For AO, the biggest competitive advantage isn't necessarily the technology—it's the relationships behind it. The company is already working with medical teams from Ukraine's 112th Brigade in Kyiv and 92nd Brigade in Kharkiv, giving its engineers continuous access to frontline feedback as the platform evolves. "The technology itself can be replicated," says Hunt. " What's much harder is developing it alongside the Ukrainian Armed Forces, earning their trust, collecting operational data and continuously refining the system based on real-world use. You can't do that remotely. It takes years of working with frontline medical teams." That collaboration is critical because convincing militaries to adopt new medical technology is notoriously difficult. Medical protocols evolve slowly, and any new system must prove not only that it improves patient care, but that it is robust, reliable and intuitive enough to use under battlefield conditions. Rather than asking military medics to change established NATO procedures, AO is digitising the existing Tactical Combat Casualty Care (TCCC) card that every NATO soldier already carries. The aim is to improve how information is captured and transferred without disrupting familiar clinical workflows. Working directly with brigade medical teams has also fundamentally shaped the product itself. Early prototypes used large ruggedised tablets, but Ukrainian medics quickly rejected them as too bulky for combat casualty evacuation. "We've redesigned major parts of the system because users told us they needed something smaller, simpler and easier to integrate into existing evacuation procedures," Hunt explains. "That's exactly how product development should work." That iterative approach appears to be paying off. According to Hunt, frontline medical teams have reached the point where they're telling AO: "Bring the equipment and we'll use it." "Trust is everything," he says. "We're not turning up for a few demonstrations and then leaving. We're building the system alongside the people who'll ultimately rely on it. That takes time, but it's the only way to create something that's genuinely useful." Today, the team combines frontline operational experience, biomedical engineering, hardware design, wireless communications, software development and machine learning.  Besides Hunt, technical development is led by CTO Hans Hübner and VP Eng Ota Fejfar, with support from collaborations with TU and Fraunhofer HHI in Berlin. Software development is led by Vladimir Skoupy, and ML/AI capabilities are provided by Stepan Reiben and colleagues in Prague and Ukraine.  The company is partnering with Zebra Technologies, and a sensor manufacturer planned through Harwario s.r.o. in Liberec, Czech Republic. From Ukrainian ambulances to NATO According to Hunt, the company is at TRL 7. The first deployments are expected to involve the 60 ambulances operated by the Hospitallers Medical Battalion. AO is also in discussions with Dutch evacuation vehicle manufacturer Nixxen on a pilot with the medical corps of Ukraine's 112th Brigade, integrating the company's battlefield management platform into military evacuation vehicles.  If successful, he believes the technology could eventually be deployed across the Ukrainian Armed Forces' fleet of approximately 4,000 military ambulances. The company is also exploring future integration with emerging military "soldier cloud" architectures following discussions with developers from the Dutch and Ukrainian defence ministries. Building a defence company from the frontline Given I met Hunt as he pitched AO at Kyiv Defencetech Week in partnership with the European Defense Tech Hub, I was interested to get his take on the way forward for startups in the sector.  He contends that the biggest mistake founders make is building technology before fully understanding the problem. “I see companies arriving in Ukraine with impressive hardware or software and then trying to find a use case afterwards. We approached it the other way around. We spent months experiencing the problem ourselves before writing a line of code. That changes everything.” He asserts that you can't really understand combat casualty evacuation from reading reports or watching videos. “You have to understand what it's like trying to take someone's blood pressure while driving over damaged roads with multiple casualties in the back of an ambulance. Once you've lived through that, your priorities as a designer change completely.” AO is currently fundraising to gain the runway to complete product development, continue testing in Ukraine and generate the clinical data that underpins its work. “The product, the software, the sensor platform, the validation work—those all require time and capital. Our goal is to build something that's genuinely deployable rather than rushing an unfinished product into the market,” shared Hunt.  Hunt admits he spent enough time in Ukraine to see just how much of a difference small improvements can make. “Sometimes a better process, better information or a few extra minutes can be the difference between someone living and someone dying. Once you've seen that firsthand, it's very difficult to walk away. That's what continues to drive the company today.” Meet The AO at Berlin Defense Tech Week, July 6 to 12.

Luffy AI, a UK-based startup developing AI for real-time adaptive control in industrial systems, has raised £8.1 million in a Series A funding round. The investment was led by BGF, with participation from MIG Capital AG through its MIG Fonds. Existing investors Bow Capital, Chrysalix, Momenta and UKI2S also joined the round. Luffy AI has developed a neuroplastic AI platform designed for industrial applications where conventional AI models are limited by high data, computing and connectivity requirements. The company's sparse neural networks are trained in simulation and refined during real-world operation, enabling real-time adaptive control without relying on large datasets or continuous cloud-based retraining. The technology is initially being deployed in industrial motor control, one of the company's first commercial applications. Luffy AI is working with variable frequency drive (VFD) systems, including pumps, fans and conveyor systems. By enabling motors to automatically adapt to changing operating conditions, the technology is intended to improve energy efficiency, reduce commissioning time and optimise overall performance. Over the longer term, the company plans to expand into additional applications, including robotics, drones, thermal process control and other physical AI systems. Factories, motors and physical systems need AI that is small, fast and adaptive in real time, not cloud-dependent, or with huge data and compute requirements. At Luffy we've already proven what's possible with AI motor control and will use this new funding to scale up our delivery and rollout, said Dr Matthew Carr, co-founder and CEO of Luffy AI. The fresh capital will be used to accelerate the company's commercialisation efforts by converting proof-of-concept projects and pilot deployments into long-term partnerships with industrial customers while supporting the broader rollout of its AI technology.

Whering, a UK-based digital wardrobe platform, has raised $7 million in a seed funding round led by eBay Ventures and Google AI Futures Fund. The investment comes as the company reaches a milestone of 10 million users globally. Founded in 2021 by Bianca Rangecroft, Whering enables users to digitise their wardrobes, plan outfits, pack for travel and share styling ideas. The platform is designed to help users make better use of the clothing they already own while supporting more intentional and circular fashion consumption. According to the company, Whering's growing user base reflects increasing demand for tools that help people manage, style and extend the life of their wardrobes. Looking ahead, the company plans to further strengthen its role in the circular fashion ecosystem by expanding resale integrations, connecting wardrobe management, styling and resale within a single platform. We have access to such a vast amount of data that hasn't existed before – not just what people buy, but what people actually wear, what they wear it with and how it makes them feel. For us, what's next is helping people not just when they get dressed in the morning, but every time they interact with clothes, whether that's buying, selling or styling, said Bianca Rangecroft, founder and CEO of Whering. The funding will support the development of new AI-powered features and the expansion of Whering's platform. As part of its participation in the Google AI Futures Fund, the company plans to introduce personalised outfit recommendations based on factors such as weather, mood and occasion, alongside new tools including image enhancement, gallery scanning to identify clothing items from users' photos, and virtual try-on functionality. Whering also plans to expand its resale integrations as it continues to develop its circular fashion platform. By bringing together wardrobe management, styling and resale within a single ecosystem, the company aims to help users extend the lifespan of their clothing and encourage more intentional engagement with fashion.

In a market that has spent a decade moving to cards, digital wallets and one-click checkout, cash on delivery can look like a relic. The customer pays the courier at the door, only once the parcel is in their hands. Yet in parts of Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, COD is not fading away. It still drives a meaningful share of ecommerce conversions, and for brands expanding across borders it often decides whether a new market opens up or stalls. The reason is less about habit than about trust. In markets where shoppers are wary of paying upfront for an unfamiliar brand, the option to pay only once the parcel has arrived removes the single biggest barrier to a first order. That dynamic is strongest where local courier habits and category-specific trust barriers still support paying on delivery. It is precisely where cross-border sellers tend to look for their next stage of growth. A payment method the obituaries got wrong. COD has been written off repeatedly as card penetration has risen, but it has proved unusually durable. In several European markets it remains a normal expectation rather than a fallback, and it carries its own established local vocabulary: Nachnahme in Germany, contrassegno in Italy, contra reembolso in Spain, pobranie in Poland and dobierka in Slovakia. Poland is a useful example of why COD needs careful definition. By transaction volume, Polish ecommerce is dominated by BLIK and account-to-account payments, yet COD remains a familiar and widely offered option, particularly for trust-sensitive categories and first-time purchases. According to WAPI, the cross-border fulfilment platform that handles COD across 19 European markets, the method performs most strongly where buyer trust gates the sale, in categories such as supplements, cosmetics and consumer electronics. Who actually needs cash on delivery. COD is not for every seller. For a well-known brand selling low-value repeat purchases to loyal customers, card checkout is faster and cheaper. The method earns its place in a narrower but valuable set of situations. The clearest fit is the first-time purchase from an unfamiliar brand, especially at a higher price point. According to WAPI’s own network data, average order values on COD orders range from roughly €100 to €190 depending on the market, with supplements, cosmetics and electronics leading. These are exactly the purchases where a shopper hesitates to pay in advance, and where the reassurance of paying on delivery turns a browser into a buyer. The second group is cross-border sellers and the media buyers running performance campaigns into those markets. For them, COD is often one of the few payment methods that can work at scale in the target country, and the economics of a campaign live or die on how many of those orders are actually accepted at the door. The one number that decides everything. Every benefit of COD eventually reduces to a single metric: the buyout rate, the share of COD orders that customers actually accept and pay for on delivery. A seller’s cost per acquisition, margins and cash flow all run through it. A campaign with a 60 percent buyout and one with an 85 percent buyout are different businesses, even on identical traffic. According to WAPI, buyout across its strongest European markets typically sits between 75 and 85 percent, averaging around 80 percent. These are company-reported figures that move with vertical, traffic quality, season and the seller’s own pricing, but the spread is consistent enough to plan around. The lever that moves that number most is recovery. When a courier flags a problem, such as a failed first attempt, an unreachable customer, an address mismatch or a refusal at the door, there is a short window to save the order before the parcel turns around. WAPI fires a real-time webhook to the seller’s call centre on each of those events, and the company says disciplined recovery on those signals can swing the buyout rate by 10 to 15 percentage points against providers that simply ship and hope. What to weigh when choosing a COD provider. Once a seller decides COD belongs in the mix, the choice of fulfilment partner matters more than it would for a card-based operation, because the provider’s infrastructure directly determines both the buyout rate and the cash flow. A handful of factors separate a partner that scales from one that quietly erodes margin. Recovery infrastructure comes first. It is worth asking whether the provider exposes real-time delivery events and how quickly a call centre can act on them, because that is where buyout is won or lost. Payout terms come next, and they are easy to underestimate. Many operators wait on individual carrier settlements before releasing a seller’s money, which ties up working capital at exactly the moment a campaign is scaling. A weekly, fixed payout schedule in a single currency removes that drag. The pricing model is the third factor. A per-order commission can look cheap at low volume and turn punishing at scale, whereas a margin-based model aligns the provider’s incentive with orders that actually deliver and get paid. Coverage and structure round out the list. A provider that pools inventory in regional hubs and ships cross-border lets a seller reach many markets on one contract and one integration, instead of building a separate operation in every country. It is equally practical to confirm the technical fit with your stack, and that the provider handles your vertical and its compliance requirements, before committing. What COD infrastructure looks like in practice. WAPI, a cross-border fulfilment platform that runs cash on delivery in Europe, is a useful illustration of how this is built. According to the company, it handles COD across 19 markets from more than 16 warehouses in Europe and Mexico, pooling inventory in regional hubs and shipping cross-border so a seller can reach many countries on one contract and one integration rather than a separate operation in each. The commercial design follows the same logic. WAPI says it works on a margin-based model with no per-order commission, pays out weekly in euros regardless of when carriers settle, and exposes an open API that connects to the performance-marketing trackers media buyers already run. New clients, the company reports, typically go live within 48 hours to two weeks. WAPI also reports that one cross-border supplements brand scaled from a single market to 10, including Germany, Italy, Poland and Romania, on one inventory pool and one integration rather than building local fulfilment in each. The figures are company-reported and indicative, but the pattern is the point: the infrastructure, not the payment method, is what lets COD scale across borders. WAPI co-founder Aleksandr Fridman frames the company’s purpose around that kind of cross-border ambition: WAPI is built out of love for the seller who wants their product to be everywhere, not only in the store around the corner. It is a story about ecommerce and the people who live and breathe online trade. Aleksandr Fridman, co-founder, WAPI What it means for sellers. Cash on delivery in Europe is not a legacy payment method waiting to disappear. It is a practical tool for reaching buyers who will not pay upfront, and for cross-border brands it is often the key that unlocks a market rather than a cost to be minimised. The sellers who succeed with it treat it as an operational discipline, not a checkbox at launch. That is why the choice of partner matters. Buyout infrastructure, payout terms and coverage decide whether a COD programme compounds into profitable growth or slowly bleeds margin, and those are the questions worth asking long before price.

BIZAY, a Portugal-based technology platform for customised products, has raised $55 million in a Series D funding round. The investment was led by existing investor Indico Capital Partners, with participation from Lince Capital, Cedrus and BPF. Founded in 2014 by Sérgio Vieira, José Salgado and Jorge Correia and headquartered in Lisbon, BIZAY operates a digital platform serving small and medium-sized businesses in more than 50 countries. The company offers a broad catalogue of customised products, including marketing materials, packaging, promotional items and business essentials. Its platform integrates technology, AI and a network of production partners to support the full process from product customisation and ordering to production, fulfilment and customer support. BIZAY is also expanding its AI capabilities to further automate catalogue management, manufacturing operations and customer service. According to the company, 2026 will mark its first profitable year, with annual revenue expected to surpass $100 million, reflecting continued growth alongside profitability. "We publicly stated that we were going to reach €100 million. We are delivering on that promise - and, for the first time, with a profit. This proves that we have built a platform that scales with economic discipline. It is this solidity that now allows us to take the next step: consolidating the global customization market and accelerating in the United States, starting from Portugal," said Sérgio Vieira, CEO and co-founder of BIZAY. The fresh capital will be used to accelerate the company's expansion in the US, pursue acquisitions in the fragmented customised products market and further develop AI infrastructure across its platform, including catalogue management, production and customer support.