HousApp, the AI-powered platform designed to help real estate agents work more efficiently, has raised €4.3 million in a seed funding round led by venture capital firms Arches Capital and Antler, with participation from a group of angel investors. Initially launched as a property viewing scheduler, HousApp has evolved into an AI assistant that helps real estate agents automate administrative tasks and manage their workflows, allowing them to spend more time with clients. The company aims to support agents throughout the entire sales process, from the first interaction with a seller to the completion of a property transaction. Sebastiaan Kloppenborg, CEO of HousApp, said the company was founded to reduce the administrative burden on real estate agents and give them more time to focus on their clients. He added: Our growth shows that the market is ready for a new generation of software. We are building HousApp into the platform where agents manage every step of their workflow, from first interaction with a seller to the final property transfer. The platform handles the heavy lifting, so agents can close deals faster. Earlier this year, HousApp expanded its presence in the Dutch market through the acquisition of proptech company Friva. Today, the platform serves customers ranging from independent agents and boutique agencies to large brokerage chains. The funding will support product development, strengthen HousApp's engineering team and accelerate the company's expansion as it continues to develop its AI-native platform for the real estate sector.

Alva Industries, the Norwegian deeptech company developing ultra-compact electric motors, has raised €16 million in an equity financing round to support manufacturing expansion and international growth. The round was led by Nysnø Climate Investments, Sandwater and Emerald Technology Ventures, on behalf of Nabtesco Technology Ventures, with participation from existing investors including Statkraft Ventures and EnvisionTech. Samsung Ventures' investment, made in December 2025, has also been converted into equity as part of the financing. Headquartered in Trondheim, Alva Industries develops electric motors using its patented FiberPrinting manufacturing technology, which enables lightweight, frameless motors designed to deliver high torque density and cogging-free performance. The company serves customers across robotics, aerospace, defence, medical technology, industrial automation and autonomous systems. The company says it currently has hundreds of active customer projects across commercial and defence markets and is seeing growing demand from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in robotics, aerospace and medical devices. Oliver Skisland, CEO of Alva Industries, said the company is focused on developing electric motors for the next generation of machines, with an emphasis on performance, weight and reliability: This investment gives us the capacity to accelerate our technology roadmap, expand production and strengthen our position as a global supplier of high-performance electric motors. We are seeing strong demand from customers pushing the limits of what compact electric actuation systems can deliver. The funding will be used to expand Alva's manufacturing capacity, further develop its product portfolio and support international growth as demand for compact electric motors continues to increase across advanced engineering sectors. Alva currently manufactures its products in Norway and plans to significantly increase production capacity to support growing international demand.

BidScript, an AI-native tender management platform that helps businesses find, manage and submit bids for public and private sector contracts, has raised $800,000 in its latest funding round, taking its total pre-seed funding to more than $1 million. The round includes follow-on investment from NPIF II – PXN Equity Finance, managed by PXN Ventures as part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II (NPIF II), alongside new investment from SFC Capital. Founded by childhood friends Henry Brogan and Tyler McCarthy while they were still at university, BidScript was created to address the inefficiencies of traditional tendering. Despite hundreds of billions of pounds worth of public and private sector contracts being awarded each year, many businesses continue to rely on manual processes, spreadsheets and shared drives to manage bids. The platform uses AI to streamline the end-to-end tender process, helping organisations identify opportunities, automate bid workflows and improve the quality and efficiency of submissions. With an initial focus on the construction and engineering, IT, and education sectors, BidScript supports businesses operating in some of the world's most demanding tendering environments. Early customers across the UK, the US and the Middle East have reported improvements in bid win rates of up to 50 per cent after adopting the platform. Commenting on the company's approach and growth, Henry Brogan, Co-Founder and CEO of BidScript, said: General-purpose AI does not meet the standards required for high-stakes public and private sector tendering — it's a niche that demands deep expertise. BidScript embodies that exact principle, and this latest funding round will allow us to take the next step on our journey as we expand into new markets and geographies. The funding will support BidScript's next stage of growth, enabling the company to expand its team, accelerate product development and grow its presence in the UK and international markets.

Qonto and Pennylane are two of France's most well-known fintech disruptors. The Paris-based fintechs set out to disrupt particular areas of finance: Qonto- SME banking; and Pennylane- accounting software for SMEs. Qonto, founded in 2016, four years before Pennylane, is the bigger name in France, yet Pennylane is fast-rising. Backed by the likes of Sequoia and Tiger Global, both have hoovered up hundreds of thousands of customers.   In the European SME market, the fintechs are now friends and foes- each is integrated with the other’s services, so users can sign up for both services, yet they also compete for customers as they have expanded to offering all-in-one financial and accounting products.   Tech.eu spoke to executives from Qonto and Pennylane to get a progress report on their respective fintechs and ask whether they saw themselves as competitors.   Qonto   Qonto boasts more than 600,000 SME and freelance customers across Europe, where it takes on incumbent financial players. On top of its core business banking offering, it now offers SMEs and freelancers corporate cards, bookkeeping tools, expense management and short-term financing in a single hub. Its focus is on the EU market, operating across France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, and Austria. It was last valued at $5bn in a 2022 $552m funding round, led by Tiger Global and TCV.  Qonto, which is full-year profitable, makes around half its revenues through monthly fees, such as subscriptions, and half through net interest income.   Philippine Rougevin-Baville, Qonto’s managing director for Western Europe, says Qonto runs an 80-20 model, which means that 80 per cent of the product is the same in each market it enters, with a 20 per cent difference.   Rougevin-Baville says Qonto’s application for a French banking licence, which it applied for last year, is “making good progress”. She says Qonto has had “positive feedback” from the regulators and is hoping to get the green light within six months.   If successful, it will allow Qonto, which currently operates under a Payment Institution licence, to offer its own credit products, such as lending.  Qonto has hitherto made two acquisitions: German rival Penta in 2022 and accounting and financial automation platform Regate in 2024. Rougevin-Baville doesn’t like comparing Qonto to Pennylane, pointing out they are “very, very different players”.   For example, she points out they have different customer acquisition strategies: Qonto direct to SMEs, Pennylane to SMEs via accountants. She says: “We have a tendency because we are smaller players to compare against each other. But the reality is that each of us is addressing a bigger market, which is going after traditional players.” However, the two fintechs do compete against each other and are going head-to-head as they compete for business when mandatory electronic invoicing for B2B transactions comes into force in France in September.   Rougevin-Baville says: “E-invoicing is a key topic for France in particular. But it’s also coming across other markets, so we are very much focused on that.” On the biggest challenge facing its customers, Rougevin-Baville says: “I guess it’s everything related to cash flow. They like visibility. All of that is an immense playground for us to play in.”   On the potential threat to Qonto from a new wave of fintechs, she said: “For us, being positioned on the banking side, which is a regulated industry, we are seeing fewer threats compared to the SAAS players.”   On the agenda for the rest of the year, along with the expected banking licence and the new e-invoicing rules, Qonto will also be investing in markets outside its native France, says Rougevin-Baville.   Pennylane   Pennylane, founded in 2020, has extended beyond offering SMEs and accountants accounting software into offering business bank accounts, via banking-as-a-service provider Swan.   It now sells itself as an ”all-in-one” accounting and financial management platform which centralises the financial function of businesses and their accountants in one shared workplace, enabling them to work closer together. Pennylane says it has more than 800,000 business customers, with around 90 per cent of them coming via accounting firms, according to co-founder and CEO Arthur Waller. It operates in a French software market for accountants and SMEs that is fast consolidating, with “super-app” competitors on the rise.     For example, US private equity firm Silver Lake has made several investments in the market.   Earlier this year, Pennylane raised $200m at a $4.25bn valuation, in a round led by TCV with Sequoia and CapitalG also participating. Waller says Pennylane didn’t need the funds.   He said: “We want to be in a position that we can sit at the table, so that if there is someone we would like to buy, to just be credible. You need to have hundreds of millions in the bank to sit at the table." Waller, who is a fan of Qonto, says Pennylane is both friend and foe to Qonto. He says: “We both have a really good integration. It’s probably the bank we are best integrated with. But at the same time, around three years ago, we also started offering our own bank account to our users.”   Last year, Pennylane launched in Germany, its first overseas market, where it is “still very early days” but there is “lots of demand”, says Waller.   Waller says another difference between Pennylane and Qonto is localising the product in different markets, saying it can take Pennylane up to three years to localise the accounting part of the tech.   He says: “Localising for a new country is much, much harder for us, as we are rebuilding the tax, so it is more to localise than just a bank account.”   On the new e-invoicing rules, Waller says: “There is obviously a battle between banks and accountants to equip their accountants with that operator.”   On the challenges facing its customers, he says: “What we are trying to solve is to give the real-time visibility on their finances and trying to make admin easier. We have lots of complex admin.”

A startup founded by three ex-Google DeepMind researchers which builds AI agents to trade across the Nasdaq says it has hit a valuation of more than $500m, following fresh funding. Prague-based EquiLibre Technologies says it has closed a Series A funding round, but did not disclose how much it has raised. The funding round was led by European early-stage investor Creandum, which, the VC said, marked its single biggest investment in a startup. EquiLibre builds reinforcement learning agents which trade billions of dollars on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq financial markets daily, it said. Reinforcement learning is when AI models learn from experience. The founders are the team behind DeepStack, the first AI to beat human professional players at no-limit Texas hold'em poker. The majority of the capital raised will go towards purchasing compute power to scale the operation, the startup said. Founded in 2022, the startup leveraged its tech in crypto before moving to traditional financial markets. Last year, it said it became the first company to deploy reinforcement learning agents live on key financial markets.  It says its agents now trade billions of dollars daily, via a partnership with a quant firm. EquiLibre's earliest backers include Richard Sutton, a recent Turing award laureate and a key figure in reinforcement learning. Martin Schmid, co-founder of EquiLibre, said: "Trading is one of the few fields where technology is the entire game. There's no sales cycle, and no marketing spend can rescue a weak product.  "The market is the judge, and the verdict updates every millisecond. That's what drew us to the problem, and it's why reinforcement learning is such a natural fit.  "The question is no longer whether this approach works. It's how big it can get. We've proven the technology in the world's biggest and most liquid markets."

UK self-driving car technology startup Wayve is giving its employees the opportunity to cash in on their equity, as it looks to “retain talent”. Wayve, which is one of the UK's best-funded startups, is launching what is called an employee tender offer. It is a mechanism which gives startup employees the chance to sell shares to new and existing investors. The $85m tender offer is being led by new and exising investors in Wayve, which was valued at $8.6bn in February this year, when it raised $1.2bn in a Series D round. It marks the second time Wayve, which employs 1,200 people, has carried out a tender offer, following one in its 2024 $1.05bn Series C funding round. Employee tender offers have become increasingly popular amid a drying up of the IPO markets, as startups look to give employees an alternative liquidity option and retain top talent. Stripe, ElevenLabs and Revolut are examples of startups that have carried them out. Wayve, which develops software for autonomous vehicles, said the tender offer was a means to ensuring it kept its most prized employees. It said: ”Building embodied AI is not like building regular software. It demands a rare combination of talent across AI and in our case, automotive, from robotics and machine learning researchers to vehicle engineering and compliance experts.  "It also requires the kind of long-term thinking that only comes when people feel invested in the outcome. Retaining and attracting that unique blend of talent requires us to consistently and creatively reward our team." Wayve is backed by a range of investors including Nvidia, Softbank, Mercedes Benz, Uber, Microsoft and Balderton.

Today marks the public launch of Common Path, a programme created to get graduate talent from low-income backgrounds into startups, and to challenge an industry that prides itself on meritocracy to prove it. Graduates and employers alike can register interest in being involved at common.ventures/talent.     Common Path is backed by a coalition of the UK’s most influential names in social mobility and venture capital: the Sutton Trust, The Hg Foundation, Atomico, Phoenix Court, as well as support from upReach.  For all the talk of disruption, UK tech has a social mobility problem. Just 9 per cent of the country’s tech workforce comes from a low-income background. In financial services, the figure is 29 per cent, and in law, it is 26 per cent. When it comes to the people hiring this talent, only 18 per cent of startup founders come from working-class backgrounds, compared with 45 per cent of the UK population. Private school startup founders are approximately 500 per cent overrepresented compared to the wider population. The sector that most loudly promotes modern workplaces, diversity of thought, and low barrier to entry is actually one of the hardest to break into without the right schooling, the right network, or the right postcode.    That gap is exactly what Common Ventures (formerly Social Mobility Ventures) is built to close and is now the UK’s most active community of state-educated founders, operators and investors. F or generations in Britain, “common” has been a quiet insult: shorthand for being ordinary, working class, or somehow less worthy. Common Path turns that on its head, treating a less affluent upbringing not as something to play down on a CV, but as the source of the qualities that are fundamental for successful startup operators: resourcefulness, resilience and the instinct to make something from nothing. The programme is built on the belief that talent is everywhere, but opportunities are not.   Applicants will be selected not on where they went to school or who they know, but on demonstrable drive, resilience, self-awareness and mental agility. Each cohort of 15-20 will undertake four intensive week-long sprints, covering the realities of early-stage company building, from product and growth to operations and culture. Throughout this, Common Path will match talent with programme mentors and then into roles at leading UK startups.   David Houghton, Co-founder of Common Ventures, asserts that tech likes to tell itself it’s the great meritocracy, that a good idea and a laptop are all you need, but the data says otherwise. "We named ourselves Common Ventures because for too long that word has been used to put people down, and we’re reclaiming it. Common Path is about proving that the talent, instinct and drive it takes to thrive in a startup are spread evenly across the country, even when the opportunities aren’t. We’re not asking founders to lower the bar. We’re asking them to stop recruiting solely from the same postcodes, schools and networks.” Startups keen to hire from the first cohort, as well as prospective applicants, can register their interest at: common.ventures/talent

Today marks the public launch of Common Path, a programme created to get graduate talent from low-income backgrounds into startups, and to challenge an industry that prides itself on meritocracy to prove it. Graduates and employers alike can register interest in being involved at common.ventures/talent.     Common Path is backed by a coalition of the UK’s most influential names in social mobility and venture capital: the Sutton Trust, The Hg Foundation, Atomico, Phoenix Court, as well as support from upReach.  For all the talk of disruption, UK tech has a social mobility problem. Just 9 per cent of the country’s tech workforce comes from a low-income background. In financial services, the figure is 29 per cent, and in law, it is 26 per cent. When it comes to the people hiring this talent, only 18 per cent of startup founders come from working-class backgrounds, compared with 45 per cent of the UK population. Private school startup founders are approximately 500 per cent overrepresented compared to the wider population. The sector that most loudly promotes modern workplaces, diversity of thought, and low barrier to entry is actually one of the hardest to break into without the right schooling, the right network, or the right postcode.    That gap is exactly what Common Ventures (formerly Social Mobility Ventures) is built to close and is now the UK’s most active community of state-educated founders, operators and investors. F or generations in Britain, “common” has been a quiet insult: shorthand for being ordinary, working class, or somehow less worthy. Common Path turns that on its head, treating a less affluent upbringing not as something to play down on a CV, but as the source of the qualities that are fundamental for successful startup operators: resourcefulness, resilience and the instinct to make something from nothing. The programme is built on the belief that talent is everywhere, but opportunities are not.   Applicants will be selected not on where they went to school or who they know, but on demonstrable drive, resilience, self-awareness and mental agility. Each cohort of 15-20 will undertake four intensive week-long sprints, covering the realities of early-stage company building, from product and growth to operations and culture. Throughout this, Common Path will match talent with programme mentors and then into roles at leading UK startups.   David Houghton, Co-founder of Common Ventures, asserts that tech likes to tell itself it’s the great meritocracy, that a good idea and a laptop are all you need, but the data says otherwise. "We named ourselves Common Ventures because for too long that word has been used to put people down, and we’re reclaiming it. Common Path is about proving that the talent, instinct and drive it takes to thrive in a startup are spread evenly across the country, even when the opportunities aren’t. We’re not asking founders to lower the bar. We’re asking them to stop recruiting solely from the same postcodes, schools and networks.” Startups keen to hire from the first cohort, as well as prospective applicants, can register their interest at: common.ventures/talent

The backer of smartphone disruptor Nothing has raised an $80m fund, nearly three times bigger than its predecessor, as it looks to invest in repeat founders across both sides of the Atlantic, which it says are going through a  boom. The London and San Francisco-based Tapestry VC, founded in 2018, typically invests in immigrant founders. Its new $80m Fund III has captured a $40m investment from new investor, the British Business Bank. Other investors in the fund include Revolut investor Molten Ventures, pension fund manager Railpen and OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar.  Friar has invested in previous Tapestry funds and is a mentor figure of Tapestry founder Patrick Murphy, who is relocating from San Francisco to London to head up the fund. Its predecessor, Fund II, was $30m in size. On the challenges of raising the latest fund, Murphy pointed to repeat investors coming on board, saying “it was a pretty straightforward process”. On the increased size of the fund, Murphy said: “Ultimately, seed rounds are getting bigger. We have built our business from scratch.  “You need to earn the right to be a bigger investment firm. And so we were writing half a million dollar cheques in our first fund, a million dollar cheques in our second fund and now we are investing up to three million dollars leading and co-leading seed rounds.” He says the European repeat founder landscape is in the midst of a “super cycle”, pointing to ballooning employee figures of repeat founders. The figures show that repeat founder-led startups employ over two million people across 23,000 companies. Tapestry’s portfolio includes investing in Nothing’s seed round, backing video conference startup Hopin at Seed before its $7.75bn valuation (whose star fell after Covid) and backing Fin before its $3.6B acquisition by Salesforce.  On opening its first London office, he says: ”I was spending more and more time in London. And as the European ecosystem has become more and more mature, especially around repeat founders, I now spend the majority of time here.  “We are now focused on being here most of the time, and then helping those companies expand to the US.” Tapestry's investment strategy is sector-agnostic spanning software, AI, cybersecurity, fintech, autonomy and deep technology at Seed and Pre-Seed stage. It says it specialises in working with founders before there’s even a company or formal process in place, supporting product direction, hiring, fundraising and more. It expects to make around a dozen investments a year.

The backer of smartphone disruptor Nothing has raised an $80m fund, nearly three times bigger than its predecessor, as it looks to invest in repeat founders across both sides of the Atlantic, which it says are going through a  boom. The London and San Francisco-based Tapestry VC, founded in 2018, typically invests in immigrant founders. Its new $80m Fund III has captured a $40m investment from new investor, the British Business Bank. Other investors in the fund include Revolut investor Molten Ventures, pension fund manager Railpen and OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar.  Friar has invested in previous Tapestry funds and is a mentor figure of Tapestry founder Patrick Murphy, who is relocating from San Francisco to London to head up the fund. Its predecessor, Fund II, was $30m in size. On the challenges of raising the latest fund, Murphy pointed to repeat investors coming on board, saying “it was a pretty straightforward process”. On the increased size of the fund, Murphy said: “Ultimately, seed rounds are getting bigger. We have built our business from scratch.  “You need to earn the right to be a bigger investment firm. And so we were writing half a million dollar cheques in our first fund, a million dollar cheques in our second fund and now we are investing up to three million dollars leading and co-leading seed rounds.” He says the European repeat founder landscape is in the midst of a “super cycle”, pointing to ballooning employee figures of repeat founders. The figures show that repeat founder-led startups employ over two million people across 23,000 companies. Tapestry’s portfolio includes investing in Nothing’s seed round, backing video conference startup Hopin at Seed before its $7.75bn valuation (whose star fell after Covid) and backing Fin before its $3.6B acquisition by Salesforce.  On opening its first London office, he says: ”I was spending more and more time in London. And as the European ecosystem has become more and more mature, especially around repeat founders, I now spend the majority of time here.  “We are now focused on being here most of the time, and then helping those companies expand to the US.” Tapestry's investment strategy is sector-agnostic spanning software, AI, cybersecurity, fintech, autonomy and deep technology at Seed and Pre-Seed stage. It says it specialises in working with founders before there’s even a company or formal process in place, supporting product direction, hiring, fundraising and more. It expects to make around a dozen investments a year.

London-based procurement software company Omnea has launched the Omnea Future Founders Fund, a new initiative designed to support employees who want to start their own businesses. The programme, launched in partnership with European angel fund Firedrop, will allow employees who have spent at least five years at the company to pitch for $250,000 in seed funding to launch their own ventures. Founded in London with offices in New York, Omnea develops an AI-native procurement orchestration platform that helps businesses manage purchasing workflows by connecting requests, approvals, suppliers and spend data into a single system. Employees will pitch directly to Omnea founder and CEO Ben Freeman and Firedrop founding partner Pietro Invernizzi in a single 30-minute meeting, with investment decisions made immediately. In addition to funding, successful applicants will receive workspace, operational support and coaching from Omnea's leadership team, along with access to the combined network of Omnea and Firedrop, which includes entrepreneurs, operators and investors such as Claire Hughes Johnson (former COO of Stripe), Anne Raimondi (COO of Asana), Joel Hellermark (CEO of Sana), and Harsh Sinha (CTO of Wise). According to Ben Freeman, joining a high-growth startup can give aspiring founders the experience, skills and network needed to build a company of their own. People who want to start businesses are looking for an environment where they can develop the skills they need and find a launchpad for the next step. Omnea does exactly that, which is why we have the confidence to invest in any long-serving Omnean who chooses to take that path, he said. Pietro Invernizzi, founding partner at Firedrop, said Omnea attracts and develops people with the qualities early-stage investors typically look for in founders, adding that the partnership aims to help more employees turn their ideas into companies.

Founded in Croatia, Hypefy AI, a platform that uses AI to automate influencer marketing campaign execution, has raised $7.2 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by AYMO Ventures, with participation from existing investors Interactive Venture Partners, Oktogon Ventures and Euroventures. Earlier investors include Fil Rouge Capital and angel investor Dražen Pehar, following the company's $1.75 million seed round last year. As influencer marketing continues to grow, campaign execution remains largely manual. Brands and agencies still rely on spreadsheets, messaging, negotiations and multiple disconnected tools to manage creator partnerships, often repeating the same processes across campaigns and markets. Founded by Stjepan Zelić, Hypefy AI streamlines these workflows through AI. The platform manages the end-to-end execution of influencer campaigns, including creator discovery, outreach, pricing, onboarding, contracting, content review, performance tracking, reporting and payments. Brands retain control over campaign briefs, budgets and approvals, while the platform automates much of the operational work, enabling campaigns to be launched across multiple markets more efficiently. We built Hypefy so a brand can describe what it wants to achieve, stay in control of the key decisions, and let AI manage everything operational, said Stjepan Zelić, CEO and co-founder of Hypefy AI. We started from Croatia, outside the usual AI and adtech hubs, but from day one we built for global campaigns. This investment helps us scale to a category-defining technology in fully managed creator marketing. The company works with brands including NIVEA, Unilever, ABOUT YOU, Philips, PepsiCo, McDonald's and Samsung. To date, it has supported thousands of campaigns across 43 countries, generating more than 700 million impressions. The new funding will support product development, international expansion and team growth across Europe, the United States and other key markets.

Swedish deeptech company Digiclean has raised €2.5 million in a seed funding round to advance its platform for industrial cleaning and maintenance optimisation. The round was co-led by Unconventional Ventures and Almi Invest GreenTech, with participation from S-E Bankens Utvecklingsstiftelse, Impact Shakers and Feminvest Ventures. Industrial cleaning is a critical process across manufacturing industries, affecting equipment performance, product quality, production uptime and regulatory compliance. Yet many cleaning processes remain manual, reactive and difficult to monitor. While areas such as machinery, energy and logistics have become increasingly digitised, process chemistry is still largely managed through manual sampling and operator experience. Founded by Charlotte Stigen Låstberg and Andreas Låstberg, Digiclean develops sensor- and AI-based technology that enables manufacturers to monitor and optimise industrial cleaning processes in real time. Its plug-and-play platform continuously measures cleaning bath chemistry and automates chemical dosing, replacing manual sampling with real-time data. The system helps manufacturers optimise the use of chemicals, water and labour while improving traceability, reducing unplanned downtime and supporting regulatory compliance. The platform is currently deployed at more than 20 industrial sites across Sweden, including facilities operated by companies such as Volvo Group Trucks, SKF and Parker Hannifin. According to Charlotte Stigen Låstberg, CEO and co-founder of Digiclean, industrial cleaning has long been a critical part of manufacturing, but many of the underlying processes have changed little over the years. We are building the tools needed to make it measurable, optimisable and aligned with modern efficiency and sustainability requirements. With the support of Unconventional Ventures and Almi Invest GreenTech, we can accelerate this transition across industries. By enabling continuous monitoring and optimisation of process chemistry, Digiclean aims to reduce chemical waste, lower resource consumption and help manufacturers improve the environmental performance of their operations without compromising production quality. The company will use the funding to support continued product development and commercial expansion across Sweden and key European industrial markets.

Saltroad, the clinician-led speech and language therapy (SLT) provider, has raised £1.5 million and acquired Ogma, an AI documentation platform designed for SLT.  The round was led by Techstart Ventures, with participation from Ascension, ScaleX and a group of prominent angel investors. An estimated 1 in 5 children - around two million in the UK - need support with speech, language and communication, and demand far outstrips supply. Services built for a different era can't keep pace, and families and therapists have been left to absorb the trade-offs: reports instead of therapy, rationed time, endless admin and caseloads that don’t fit. Saltroad's premise is that none of this is inevitable.  It gives families private access to NHS speech and language therapists, meaning a wider pool of specialists to choose from, therapists matched to their child's clinical needs, no waiting lists, and support that costs less than traditional private therapy. Integrating the Ogma acquisition turns the raw material of a therapy session into structured, clinically useful notes - cutting after-hours admin and standardising record quality across the workforce.  By embedding AI tooling across its network of over 1,000 therapists across the UK, Saltroad aims to increase the number of children each therapist can see without compromising clinical quality or therapist wellbeing. According to Darren Lester, co-founder and CEO of Saltroad, too many children wait months, sometimes years, for help during the years that matter most.  “That isn't a failure of effort from therapists - it's a system that was never built for the scale or variety of need it now faces. Saltroad exists to put the therapy back into speech and language therapy, and to reach the families the current systems can't. This funding, and the Ogma acquisition, supports how we build that and deliver tailored, 1:1 speech therapy at scale.” Audrey Osborne, Partner at Techstart Ventures, said: "We've backed Saltroad since inception, and everything since has deepened our conviction in Darren, Debi and the team. The combination of a scalable therapist workforce and purpose-built AI is exactly the kind of ambition we want to support in Northern Ireland." Toyosi Ogedengbe, Partner at Ascension, said: "We look for teams solving problems that genuinely matter, at scale, and Saltroad does exactly that. From the start, Saltroad has been clear-eyed about a real and growing problem. Bringing AI alongside skilled clinicians, rather than in place of them, is the right way to widen access without lowering the bar." The funding and acquisition support Saltroad's plan to build an AI-enabled SLT workforce - pairing the flexibility of an associate model with purpose-built tools that free therapists to spend more time with the children who need support, and less on admin.

From June 17 to 20, 2026, VivaTech welcomed more than 200,000 visitors at Paris Porte de Versailles, setting a new attendance record for its 10th anniversary edition. Held under the joint presence of French President Emmanuel Macron and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the show confirmed its position as one of Europe's leading events dedicated to innovation, tech, and startups, and as one of the most influential tech events in the world. A decade of scale: the numbers behind the milestone The 2026 edition stretched VivaTech's footprint further than ever before. Over four days, the event brought together 200,000 visitors from 165 nationalities, hosted 60 country pavilions, and gathered more than 1,155 speakers on stage. More than 15,000 startups participated, alongside over 4,500 exhibitors, 61% of them international. The cumulative social media audience surpassed 5 billion, reinforcing VivaTech's role as a global conversation driver around innovation. To mark its decade in style, VivaTech also took the experience outside the venue: on Sunday, June 14, in partnership with the Comité Champs-Élysées, the world's most famous avenue was transformed into a large open-air technology showcase, opening innovation to the wider public ahead of the trade days. A program built around the defining themes of the decade ahead This anniversary edition was structured around five strategic themes shaping the next wave of technological transformation: AI & Productivity, Cybersecurity & Defense, GreenTech, Space, and DeepTech. The speaker line-up reflected the breadth of these topics. Among them: Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon & Blue Origin and Co-CEO of Prometheus; Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin; former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino; Yann LeCun, Executive Chairman of AMI Labs; Shantanu Narayen, Chair & CEO of Adobe; Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web; and Thibault Sottiaux, Head of Core Product & Platform at OpenAI. European institutions were also strongly represented, with Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy at the European Commission, and Ekaterina Zaharieva, EU Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation. French and international business leaders, including Bernard Arnault (LVMH), Patrick Pouyanné (TotalEnergies), Christel Heydemann (Orange), Catherine MacGregor (ENGIE), Marie-Ange Debon (Groupe La Poste), Rodolphe Saadé (CMA CGM), Roland Busch (Siemens), Joe Tsai (Alibaba), Valérie Baudson (Amundi) and Mohamed Kande (PwC), joined the conversation. Germany was named Country of the Year 2026, with a strong ministerial delegation including Karsten Wildberger, Federal Minister for Digital Transformation and Government Modernization, and Dorothée Bär, Federal Minister for Research, Technology, and Space. Building on the AI Summit in New Delhi, India was present as AI Country Partner 2026, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. From conversations to business: new formats for acceleration True to its DNA, VivaTech 2026 doubled down on its business utility. New dedicated spaces were introduced, including the Business Plaza, designed to turn connections into concrete commercial opportunities, and Investors Office Hours, a privileged meeting format between startups and investors. With more than 15,000 startups connecting to companies from over 30 sectors, the event continued to position itself as a deal-making hub for the European and global tech ecosystem. New flagship exhibitors joined the show for the first time, including Samsung, Envision, SAP, and Adobe. Innovations that defined the edition VivaTech 2026 served as a launchpad for hundreds of announcements and product premieres. Standout innovations included XPANCEO's smart contact lens, designed to replace screens as the leading interface of the AI era; Lifepods' autonomous protection capsule for extreme-risk situations; Lattice Medical's 3D-printed resorbable implants for soft tissue reconstruction after cancer treatment; Tetmet's automated robotic solution for producing stainless steel mesh for the automotive, defense and aerospace industries; and a striking demonstration by Unitree x HABS of a humanoid robot controlled by human brain activity. Honoring tech's leaders: the VivaTech x Bloomberg Awards For the first time, the VivaTech x Bloomberg Awards recognized the world's top tech leaders. The Visionary Award went to Sir Tim Berners-Lee (Inrupt), the Leadership Award to Joe Tsai (Alibaba), the Momentum Award to Yann LeCun (AMI Labs), the Breakthrough Award to Peter Steinberger (OpenClaw / OpenAI), the Investor Award to Jeannette zu Fürstenberg (General Catalyst), the Rising Star Award to May Habib (WRITER), and the CitizenTech Award to Ukraine. The VivaTech Startup Prizes spotlighted impact-driven entrepreneurs: Liz Dennett (Endolith) received the Female Founder Award, Fanny Giannou (Alithea Biotechnology) the Tech for Change Award, Ahmed Yahia (Surgia) the AfricaTech Award, Sasha Ovalle (AssisTech Smart Shower) the Next Startupper Challenge, and Karim Boussetta (Hodor) the Innovation of the Year Award. Opening the next decade On Saturday, June 20, VivaTech opened its doors to the general public for a day dedicated to AI, robotics and career encounters, with French ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet as special guest. As underlined by Maurice Lévy, Co-President of VivaTech and Emeritus Chairman of Publicis Groupe, Michèle Benbunan, Co-President of VivaTech and CEO of LVMH's Press division, and François Bitouzet, Managing Director of VivaTech, this 10th edition was not designed as a celebration of past years, but as the opening of a new decade of innovation. Next stop: VivaTech 2027, from June 16 to 19, at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles.

Lucida AI, a speech-to-speech AI platform for global communication, has secured an additional $1.6 million in funding, bringing its seed round to $7 million. The seed round was led by UK-based Velocity Capital, with participation from Next Tier Ventures, Look AI Ventures, Bogazici Ventures, Yapı Kredi Frwrd Ventures and Ünlü & Co. The company had announced the initial $5.4 million close of its seed round a few months ago. As communication increasingly spans multiple languages and cultures, spoken fluency and confidence play a growing role in how effectively people interact. Founded by Mustafa Girgin and M. Sait Demirci, Lucida AI develops speech-native AI technology designed to help individuals and businesses improve spoken communication through real-time, AI-powered conversations. Powered by its proprietary Speech Language Model (SLM), the platform enables users to speak naturally with AI without relying on text prompts or scripted exercises. It adapts conversations to each user's proficiency level, providing instant feedback on fluency, pronunciation and clarity while simulating real-world situations ranging from everyday interactions to business meetings, presentations and client calls. Lucida AI is available as a mobile application for individual users and also offers enterprise deployments with on-premises hosting and end-to-end encryption. Since launching 15 months ago, the company says it has grown to more than 3 million users and generated over 2.2 billion minutes of spoken interaction across Europe, the United States and emerging markets. AI is becoming a global race, and meaningful innovation is no longer tied to a single geography. With this round, we've partnered with investors who share our long-term vision. Our focus is clear: building a scalable, speech-native AI platform that powers global communication, said Mustafa Girgin and M. Sait Demirci, co-founders of Lucida AI. The funding will support Lucida AI's expansion into new languages and markets, further development of its proprietary speech-to-speech AI infrastructure, growth of its enterprise offering and continued product development.

Nomerra, an AI platform for private market operations, has raised $2 million in its first funding round. The round was led by 14Peaks Capital, with participation from Redstone Fintech and senior individuals from firms including KKR and Intapp. The investment comes as private markets are expected to expand significantly over the coming years, while the operational infrastructure supporting the sector has not kept pace. Much of the industry's day-to-day work still relies on emails, PDFs, spreadsheets and disconnected systems, as firms face increasing pressure to manage growing operational complexity with a shrinking pool of qualified professionals. Founded by Johannes Gebendorfer and Jakob Zacherl, Nomerra develops AI software to automate operational workflows across private markets. Unlike public markets, many processes remain fragmented, with limited standardisation and interoperability between systems. The same information is often manually re-entered across multiple applications, sometimes several times for a single transaction. At the same time, operations have become more complex due to new investor channels, more frequent reporting, evolving regulation, semi-liquid fund structures, evergreen vehicles and expansion into new asset classes. Nomerra makes these workflows AI-native, starting with fund accounting, treasury and transfer agency. By integrating with firms' existing systems, its AI agents can access, validate and process data while following each firm's operating procedures. Today, the idea that humans once routed every phone call manually seems absurd. Private market operations are approaching a similar turning point. In a few years, people will look back and wonder how this work was ever done by hand, said Johannes Gebendorfer, co-founder and CEO of Nomerra. Rather than replacing operational teams, Nomerra is designed to shift employees from preparing deliverables to reviewing them. AI agents execute workflows end-to-end before presenting outputs through review interfaces with a complete audit trail showing what was done, why each action was taken and where the underlying data originated. The company will use the funding to expand its engineering team and accelerate product development to meet growing demand from asset servicers and asset managers across Europe and the United States.

Vegvisir, an Estonian defence technology company building the command-and-control software layer for the multi-domain battlefield, today announced a venture investment from Iron Wolf Capital (IWC). Vegvisir's platform addresses one of the most pressing unsolved problems in modern warfare: the absence of a unified, interoperable software layer capable of connecting, visualising, and commanding manned and unmanned systems across ground, air, maritime, and sub-sea domains at operational scale. Unmanned systems have moved from experimental to operational across allied armed forces, but the command-and-control infrastructure required to exploit them effectively remains fragmented, proprietary, and platform-specific. Vegvisir is building the connective layer that bridges that gap: a software-native, platform-agnostic operational interface with AI-driven detection and decision support built in from the ground up — designed to reduce cognitive load on operators managing assets across multiple domains simultaneously.  The company's long-term ambition is to become to allied warfare what air traffic control became to global aviation – the single command interface through which all actors, assets, and decisions flow, regardless of origin or nationality. Proprietary, fragmented command architectures are the single largest obstacle to effective multi-domain operations. Vegvisir intends to make them obsolete. ‍ According to Ingvar Pärnamäe, Co-Founder and CEO of Vegvisir, this investment marks the beginning of the company's next phase, moving from deep product development into operational deployments and commercial scale. "Iron Wolf Capital understands the problem we are solving at a level that goes beyond the financial opportunity. Their footprint at the front line of NATO's Eastern Flank, and their relationships across Baltic and Central European defence and policy circles, give us a strategic amplifier that capital alone cannot buy. This is the partnership we were looking for," The investment draws strong validation from Vegvisir's existing shareholder base, including Kuldar Väärsi, CEO of Milrem Robotics, one of Europe's foremost developers of unmanned ground systems and a key participant in NATO's robotics and autonomous systems programmes, and a personal investor in Vegvisir. "Milrem is building the software-defined robotic systems that future forces will depend on. Vegvisir is building the software layer that makes those systems operationally more capable and easier to adapt. My investment in Vegvisir has always reflected the belief that the future battlefield will be dominated by software-defined systems in which different products and technologies will be interoperable through a shared architecture. The team at Vegvisir has the technology and the ambition to own a software layer which makes the adaptation of robotics seamless at the alliance level," shared Väärsi. ‍ Iron Wolf Capital views Vegvisir as the software layer for future warfare, connecting and multiplying the value of the physical systems that the broader ecosystem is developing. ‍ "We invest where technology meets an irreversible shift in how the world operates. The transition to multi-domain unmanned operations is exactly that kind of shift, and it demands a software-native, platform-agnostic solution that no existing player has adequately built. Vegvisir has the architecture, the team, and the ambition to own that space. We believe that over the next decade, Vegvisir can become one of the defining names in European defence technology, and this investment is our commitment to helping them get there," said Kasparas Jurgelionis, Managing Partner at Iron Wolf Capital. ‍ The investment will accelerate Vegvisir's product development, deepen integrations with allied unmanned platform providers, and expand its pipeline with commercial and government customers across NATO member states. ‍

Italian VC P101 has integrated PranaVentures, an operational venture capital company specialising in Seed investments. The combination brings together more than €600 million in assets raised, creating an Italian firm capable of supporting startups from Pre-Seed and Seed stages through to international scale-up rounds, providing capital, operational skills, an international network, and follow-on capabilities. Today, the combined portfolio includes more than 80 active companies that generated approximately €2 billion in aggregate revenue in 2025 and employed over 5,500 people. Through the integration, P101 expands its investment platform to directly cover the seed segment, further strengthening the team led by Managing Partner Andrea Di Camillo with the highly specialised expertise developed by PranaVentures. The Seed investment strategy will continue to be led by Lisa Di Sevo, Founder of PranaVentures, together with Guido Giordano, Partner, ensuring continuity with the model established since 2021 and with the same distinctive approach to seed investing, based on close collaboration with founders, operational expertise and hands-on support across technology, finance and go-to-market execution. Following the transaction, fundraising has begun for Prana101, the first fund of the new platform, targeting €100 million, with a first closing expected by year-end. Prana101 will focus on Pre-Seed and Seed investments in Italian and European technology startups, backing founders building companies at the forefront of major technology-driven transformations, particularly those enabled by artificial intelligence, next-generation digital infrastructure and innovative services for businesses and consumers. Andrea Di Camillo, Founder and Managing Partner of P101 SGR, commented:  "The integration of PranaVentures strengthens our position in Seed investing and lays the foundations for a new venture capital model in Italy. The market increasingly requires stronger, more specialised and better-capitalised platforms capable of competing at a European level.  Together with the PranaVentures team, we will continue building a more comprehensive, institutional and competitive venture capital platform, with the ambition of surpassing €1 billion in assets under management over time." Lisa Di Sevo, Founder of PranaVentures, said:  "AI has fundamentally reshaped the economics of company building, reducing the capital requirements of early-stage startups by up to 70 per cent while increasing execution speed by as much as eightfold. In this new environment, speed of decision-making and operational efficiency have become as important as access to capital.  Through our partnership with P101, PranaVentures evolves while preserving the principles that have defined our approach since inception — deep seed-stage expertise, hands-on operational support and close proximity to founders. At the same time, we strengthen that model with greater capital resources, enhanced follow-on capabilities and access to a broader institutional and international network.”

Italian VC P101 has integrated PranaVentures, an operational venture capital company specialising in Seed investments. The combination brings together more than €600 million in assets raised, creating an Italian firm capable of supporting startups from Pre-Seed and Seed stages through to international scale-up rounds, providing capital, operational skills, an international network, and follow-on capabilities. Today, the combined portfolio includes more than 80 active companies that generated approximately €2 billion in aggregate revenue in 2025 and employed over 5,500 people. Through the integration, P101 expands its investment platform to directly cover the seed segment, further strengthening the team led by Managing Partner Andrea Di Camillo with the highly specialised expertise developed by PranaVentures. The Seed investment strategy will continue to be led by Lisa Di Sevo, Founder of PranaVentures, together with Guido Giordano, Partner, ensuring continuity with the model established since 2021 and with the same distinctive approach to seed investing, based on close collaboration with founders, operational expertise and hands-on support across technology, finance and go-to-market execution. Following the transaction, fundraising has begun for Prana101, the first fund of the new platform, targeting €100 million, with a first closing expected by year-end. Prana101 will focus on Pre-Seed and Seed investments in Italian and European technology startups, backing founders building companies at the forefront of major technology-driven transformations, particularly those enabled by artificial intelligence, next-generation digital infrastructure and innovative services for businesses and consumers. Andrea Di Camillo, Founder and Managing Partner of P101 SGR, commented:  "The integration of PranaVentures strengthens our position in Seed investing and lays the foundations for a new venture capital model in Italy. The market increasingly requires stronger, more specialised and better-capitalised platforms capable of competing at a European level.  Together with the PranaVentures team, we will continue building a more comprehensive, institutional and competitive venture capital platform, with the ambition of surpassing €1 billion in assets under management over time." Lisa Di Sevo, Founder of PranaVentures, said:  "AI has fundamentally reshaped the economics of company building, reducing the capital requirements of early-stage startups by up to 70 per cent while increasing execution speed by as much as eightfold. In this new environment, speed of decision-making and operational efficiency have become as important as access to capital.  Through our partnership with P101, PranaVentures evolves while preserving the principles that have defined our approach since inception — deep seed-stage expertise, hands-on operational support and close proximity to founders. At the same time, we strengthen that model with greater capital resources, enhanced follow-on capabilities and access to a broader institutional and international network.”