German agritech company Computomics has raised €6.3 million in Series B funding to scale the commercial deployment of its climate-smart breeding platform. The round was led by Convent Capital Agri Food Fund, which invested €5 million, with participation from existing investors High-Tech Gründerfonds, MBG Baden-Württemberg and Amathaon Capital, alongside the company's founders and scientific advisers. The financing also benefits from support from the European Union under the InvestEU Fund. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Tübingen, Computomics applies machine learning and genomic analysis to plant breeding, helping breeders predict how different crop varieties are likely to perform under specific environmental conditions. The company's technology combines genomic data with information on temperature, rainfall and soil conditions, as well as measurements from field trials. Its machine learning models use these datasets to predict how a particular genotype will perform in a given environment, helping breeders assess potential crop varieties earlier in the breeding process. Computomics' ×SeedScore platform applies these predictions at the scale of commercial breeding programmes. It is designed to help breeders identify candidates likely to perform under hotter and drier conditions, determine which varieties are stable across different environments and assess where particular varieties are best suited for cultivation. The company works with commercial breeders across field crops, forage crops, vegetables and specialty crops. The technology is aimed at increasingly challenging growing conditions across Europe, where lengthy breeding cycles mean varieties entering the market today may have been selected under different climatic conditions several years earlier. Breeders have never lacked ambition about climate resilience. What they have lacked is a way to see it before the field tells them, which takes years they no longer have, said Dr Sebastian J. Schultheiss, co-founder and CEO of Computomics. Computomics' portfolio also includes CropCompass and BreedScope for climate-smart breeding, Pantograph for omics data analysis and trait discovery, and MORPHEUS and MEGAN7 for microbiome analysis. The funding will support the expansion of the platform across more commercial breeding programmes.

German agritech company Computomics has raised €6.3 million in Series B funding to scale the commercial deployment of its climate-smart breeding platform. The round was led by Convent Capital Agri Food Fund, which invested €5 million, with participation from existing investors High-Tech Gründerfonds, MBG Baden-Württemberg and Amathaon Capital, alongside the company's founders and scientific advisers. The financing also benefits from support from the European Union under the InvestEU Fund. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Tübingen, Computomics applies machine learning and genomic analysis to plant breeding, helping breeders predict how different crop varieties are likely to perform under specific environmental conditions. The company's technology combines genomic data with information on temperature, rainfall and soil conditions, as well as measurements from field trials. Its machine learning models use these datasets to predict how a particular genotype will perform in a given environment, helping breeders assess potential crop varieties earlier in the breeding process. Computomics' ×SeedScore platform applies these predictions at the scale of commercial breeding programmes. It is designed to help breeders identify candidates likely to perform under hotter and drier conditions, determine which varieties are stable across different environments and assess where particular varieties are best suited for cultivation. The company works with commercial breeders across field crops, forage crops, vegetables and specialty crops. The technology is aimed at increasingly challenging growing conditions across Europe, where lengthy breeding cycles mean varieties entering the market today may have been selected under different climatic conditions several years earlier. Breeders have never lacked ambition about climate resilience. What they have lacked is a way to see it before the field tells them, which takes years they no longer have, said Dr Sebastian J. Schultheiss, co-founder and CEO of Computomics. Computomics' portfolio also includes CropCompass and BreedScope for climate-smart breeding, Pantograph for omics data analysis and trait discovery, and MORPHEUS and MEGAN7 for microbiome analysis. The funding will support the expansion of the platform across more commercial breeding programmes.

Vilnius-based femtosecond laser manufacturer LITILIT has received an €8 million loan from the Lithuanian National Development Bank ILTE.  The company manufactures lasers based on patented technology that enables scalable production and facilitates integration into industrial systems. By bringing femtosecond lasers to the cost and integration simplicity of fibre nanosecond lasers, LITILIT aims to accelerate their adoption as the next standard for industrial manufacturing.  The company plans to invest  €2 million of its own capital, with a total project amount of €10 million. Commercialisation of the new laser system is planned for the second half of 2029. Nikolajus Gavrilinas, CEO of LITILIT, which recently broke ground on a large-scale femtosecond-laser facility in Vilnius, says that the new system will significantly expand the applications of femtosecond lasers. "Currently, femtosecond lasers are mostly used in manufacturing high-value small parts. Our new laser system will enable new applications in existing large-scale industries, such as the mass production of metal tools and the formation of specialised coatings on large surfaces, such as aircraft or car bodies. It will also speed up current femtosecond laser applications, from consumer electronics to displays and chips," Gavrilinas explains. Femtosecond lasers use extremely short pulses that process materials without damaging the surrounding structure. This quality, also known as cold ablation, makes them indispensable in applications ranging from eye surgery and vascular stents to the manufacture of computer chips and display screens. However, Gavrilinas notes that the adoption of femtosecond laser systems is often limited by their heavy infrastructure, installation, and maintenance requirements. For example, most existing systems use water cooling, which requires a dedicated water circulation and cleaning system that needs regular upkeep. They also rely on large, heavy optical modules that must sit on massive optical bases, along with sensitive optics to deliver the beam to the process location. Current systems also need to be kept in a stable-temperature environment. "All this adds complexity and limits where lasers can be used. We're building a system that combines the control electronics, optics, and cooling into a single industrial unit that can easily integrate into any factory," Gavrilinas explains. "Our new modular platform will be less sensitive to temperature, humidity, and vibration, and its modules can be combined into a more powerful system. If one fails, only that module needs replacing – not the whole system." FEMODA will target an average optical power of up to 1000 W split across 10 to 20 separate beam channels, each capable of delivering femtosecond pulses to a different processing point on a production line. According to Gavrilinas, it will be one of the most powerful modular industrial systems. FEMODA will advance LITILIT's goal of making femtosecond laser systems scalable. Currently, one of the biggest barriers to adoption is that there is no way to produce high-power femtosecond laser systems at scale, as most traditional systems are complex to manufacture. To address the scalability gap, in June LITILIT started developing a new high-capacity laser factory in Vilnius that will start operating this fall, targeting 3,000 femtosecond lasers per year. Lead image: Nikolajus Gavrilinas, co-founder and CEO of LITILIT.

Vilnius-based femtosecond laser manufacturer LITILIT has received an €8 million loan from the Lithuanian National Development Bank ILTE.  The company manufactures lasers based on patented technology that enables scalable production and facilitates integration into industrial systems. By bringing femtosecond lasers to the cost and integration simplicity of fibre nanosecond lasers, LITILIT aims to accelerate their adoption as the next standard for industrial manufacturing.  The company plans to invest  €2 million of its own capital, with a total project amount of €10 million. Commercialisation of the new laser system is planned for the second half of 2029. Nikolajus Gavrilinas, CEO of LITILIT, which recently broke ground on a large-scale femtosecond-laser facility in Vilnius, says that the new system will significantly expand the applications of femtosecond lasers. "Currently, femtosecond lasers are mostly used in manufacturing high-value small parts. Our new laser system will enable new applications in existing large-scale industries, such as the mass production of metal tools and the formation of specialised coatings on large surfaces, such as aircraft or car bodies. It will also speed up current femtosecond laser applications, from consumer electronics to displays and chips," Gavrilinas explains. Femtosecond lasers use extremely short pulses that process materials without damaging the surrounding structure. This quality, also known as cold ablation, makes them indispensable in applications ranging from eye surgery and vascular stents to the manufacture of computer chips and display screens. However, Gavrilinas notes that the adoption of femtosecond laser systems is often limited by their heavy infrastructure, installation, and maintenance requirements. For example, most existing systems use water cooling, which requires a dedicated water circulation and cleaning system that needs regular upkeep. They also rely on large, heavy optical modules that must sit on massive optical bases, along with sensitive optics to deliver the beam to the process location. Current systems also need to be kept in a stable-temperature environment. "All this adds complexity and limits where lasers can be used. We're building a system that combines the control electronics, optics, and cooling into a single industrial unit that can easily integrate into any factory," Gavrilinas explains. "Our new modular platform will be less sensitive to temperature, humidity, and vibration, and its modules can be combined into a more powerful system. If one fails, only that module needs replacing – not the whole system." FEMODA will target an average optical power of up to 1000 W split across 10 to 20 separate beam channels, each capable of delivering femtosecond pulses to a different processing point on a production line. According to Gavrilinas, it will be one of the most powerful modular industrial systems. FEMODA will advance LITILIT's goal of making femtosecond laser systems scalable. Currently, one of the biggest barriers to adoption is that there is no way to produce high-power femtosecond laser systems at scale, as most traditional systems are complex to manufacture. To address the scalability gap, in June LITILIT started developing a new high-capacity laser factory in Vilnius that will start operating this fall, targeting 3,000 femtosecond lasers per year. Lead image: Nikolajus Gavrilinas, co-founder and CEO of LITILIT.

SoftBank has invested $200m in Swiss robotics startup Gravis Robotics, in what has been billed as a record investment. Gravis says the Series A funding round, in which the Japanese investor was the sole investor, is the largest Series A in construction robotics history. It follows the Swiss startup raising $23m in a funding round in November last year. The Swiss startup, which was spun out of ETH Zurich university, builds autonomous tech for heavy construction machines. It has built software which transforms existing excavators and other heavy equipment into autonomous machines, operating without human drivers, which carry out work on construction sites. SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son sees the fast-growing robotics sector as a key tech channel for SoftBank, which has backed the likes of OpenAI, Alibaba, and Yahoo!, to invest in. The startup said it will use the funding to scale autonomous heavy machinery globally. Dominic Jud, CTO and co-founder of Gravis Robotics, said: “Skilled operators read the earth through subtle physical feedback - listening to the engine strain, sensing the machine vibration and reacting to hydraulic resistance. Our AI takes that same physical input and grounds it in machine telemetry, responding to varying subterranean forces and soil mechanics at microsecond speeds. We didn’t try to simplify the world for our software; we gave it the physical intuition to handle real job sites with precision that goes beyond what any human can feel from inside the cab.”

The chairman of Monzo’s board, who was reportedly in a boardroom battle with some Monzo shareholders over the departure of its former CEO, is standing down from the role. Banking veteran Gary Hoffman is standing down from the role at the digital bank next month after nearly eight years. Hoffman, who spent 25 years at Barclays and was previously CEO of Northern Rock, will be replaced on an interim basis by Karen Peacock, a Monzo non-executive director, as it hunts for a long-term replacement, in news first reported by Sky News. Peacock, who joined the Monzo board in 2025, is a Harvard and Stanford graduate who has served as CEO of Intercom and general manager of Intuit. Under Hoffman, in a surprise announcement, Monzo last year announced it was replacing CEO TS Anil with former Google and Standard Chartered executive Diana Layfield. Anil's exit led to a reported boardroom battle between Hoffman, who has also chaired the Premier League, and some shareholders unhappy at Anil’s departure from the role. Hoffman’s departure is understood to be his own decision and follows him having treatment for prostate cancer. Monzo has grown to now boast over 16m customers compared to 1.6m when Hoffman joined. Hoffman said: “Having been chair for nearly eight years, I will leave with immense pride knowing my colleagues have created one of the UK’s leading banks that brings together the best of technology and banking, living up to the original founders’ dream of making money work for everyone. On a personal note, I am now successfully through several years of difficult prostate cancer treatment and I want to enjoy my good fortune in recovering by focusing on the people and priorities that inevitably take a back seat in a demanding role: my family and my passion for sport.” Peacock commented: "When Gary joined Monzo, we had 1.6 million customers and a mission. Today we are 10 times that scale, with 16 million customers and products spanning almost every aspect of our customers' financial lives, and are evermore devoted to our mission to make money work for everyone. In my role as an interim Chair, I will continue building on Gary and the team’s work as Monzo focuses on delivering for our customers and on exciting growth opportunities in the UK and Europe.“

Tejpaul Bhatia, CEO of space trading company Nebex, told me something that he admits will upset many, many, many space entrepreneurs, “with the exception of maybe Elon Musk.” “The only thing that matters right now in space is business-model innovation. I would even go so far as to say there is no innovation in terms of deep tech when it comes to space. And I won't even claim this. Elon Musk said after the last Starship launch that there was no new invention. It was a brute-force improvement on a hundred-year-old equation. We had this technology in World War One. It's the rocket equation.” He admits that spacetech is certainly frontier tech, with definite innovation, iteration, and reusability. "But nobody is inventing anything fundamentally new, and that's okay.” Founded in 2025 by Tejpaul Bhatia and Anand Subramanian, former executives at Axiom Space, a human spaceflight and space infrastructure company, and Manlio Di Stefano, former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of Italy, Nebex is a commercial exchange connecting space companies with sovereign buyers and capital. And today, its launched a €100 million Industrial Return Initiative in France. The initiative connects French space startups with global contract opportunities while creating a new model for France to achieve 100 per cent industrial return on cross-border space spending. I sat down with Bhatia to learn how trading works in the space economy, why he believes it needs a new business model, and why Nebex is starting in France. No country gets to space alone While sovereignty is a ubiquitous theme in European tech, space is  by definition, collaborative. “It always has been. It always will be,”  asserts Bhatia. “No single country, no single company, no single individual is going to get humanity off the planet the way all eight billion of us deserve it to be. Maybe you don't have the launchers, but you have capabilities somebody else needs.” Government space spending reached $138 billion in 2025, according to Novaspace. As demand for space capabilities expands globally, supply remains concentrated, with more than 85 per cent of available space supply in the US and Europe. Nebex estimates this imbalance represents a $70 billion export gap annually. “While space sovereignty is the political frame, we all know that no country reaches orbit alone. What has been missing from the space economy is a way to collaborate through competition and cooperation, without each transaction becoming a bilateral barter negotiation,” said Bhatia. “Every government wants access to the best technology in the world while supporting its own industrial base." Until now, those goals have often been viewed as a tradeoff. Nebex was built to create a model where countries can access global capabilities while maintaining domestic economic value. The problem with doing deals in space Bhatia admits he’s been a space fanatic his whole life. He witnessed the challenges of space transactions while at Axion Space, explaining: “Basically, when governments all over the world need to procure commercial supply — which is essentially every space transaction — it gets extremely complicated, especially when you have multiple countries involved. 12 of the astronauts we worked with went through sovereign deals. These were professional, government astronauts from countries including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Turkey, Sweden, Poland, Hungary, and India. Some went through the European Space Agency, and some didn't. So I got firsthand experience of how complex and complicated it is to have money flow for international collaborations.” Bhatia uses Europe as an example of the friction Nebex is trying to remove. “Say there's a European country that needs to buy launch capabilities from a company in the US. In some cases, they can't actually send the money across the Atlantic because of law or policy. The European Space Agency is a perfect example. “In other cases, it's politics. It may not be a good time or send the right signal to be sending taxpayer money to the United States, where the perception can be more costly than the actual dollars going across.” Yet governments still need access to capabilities that may not exist domestically. “You're seeing this everywhere. It's true for launch, it's true for telecoms. But the reality is that these capabilities are needed.” That creates the question of industrial return: how can governments access technology abroad while ensuring public spending also generates economic value at home? Space companies trying to sell to foreign governments face complex regulatory and compliance requirements. “Take the US. We have very strict import and export regulations, including ITAR and EAR. If the United States government is your customer, you can't simply go and sell that technology and IP to a foreign government. It's not impossible. It's just very costly.” Bhatia says a cross-border contract can require companies to spend $1 million or more on lawyers, lobbyists, IT systems, and other compliance costs. “When I was sending astronauts to space, some of those deals were $150 million deals. Of course we're going to spend a million dollars to make sure we get that right. “But for another company with a $10 million deal, that's a lot of money. That could be your whole margin. The deal becomes more expensive than the actual revenue, even though there might be 15 of those deals available to you.” Space is still very much a bilateral industry — government-to-government, G2B, B2B.  "But when you have bilateral trades, you don't get the benefit of a multilateral perspective. Not everyone is going to need what somebody else has at the same time.” Nebex's model attempts to use that mismatch in geography and timing to its advantage. “We can use policy to say, okay, money can't cross the Atlantic, but that doesn't mean money can't stay in Europe and be spent with startups in Europe. That has value — maybe not today, but definitely tomorrow — because we know other countries are buying those things and want to buy those things. By lubricating the political side and the cash-flow side, we're able to create a model that provides 100 per cent industrial return today.” ​ Why Nebex is starting in France According to Bhatia, France, with its foundational role in the creation of ESA, and the institutions, infrastructure, and startup ecosystem built around that legacy, is the natural place to start. In terms of investor interest, France led Europe for space investment in the first half of 2026, with major deals including Eutelsat’s approximately €1 billion debt financing in February and UNIVITY’s €27 million raise in April. Across Europe, space companies collectively raised €2.9 billion across 33 funding rounds. Bhatia asserts, “When we looked at supporting the startup sector, what France has done in leading that is amazing. If you look at ESA, it was always going to be Italy, Germany, or France — maybe the UK. They've all done quite a bit, but France has made some significant statements recently, so France was where we wanted to start.” For eligible cross-border spending conducted through Nebex, the company says it can generate an equivalent amount of commercial value for French space companies — effectively matching €1 of eligible foreign spending with €1 of industrial return in France. The initiative can apply across existing and planned procurement, including human spaceflight, launch, satellites, hardware, software, data, and other space services. Nebex can also recognise qualifying foreign space expenditure already made by France, potentially turning previous international spending into new commercial opportunities for French companies. Turning €1 of foreign spending into €1 at home When developing the model, Nebex deliberately imposed several constraints on itself. When developing the model, Nebex deliberately imposed several constraints on itself, beginning with its definition of a 100 per cent industrial return. ​ “When we say 100 per cent industrial return, or €1 for €1, it literally has to be 100 per cent,” says Bhatia. “Not a promise to open an office. Not some political headline. Actual money being reinvested back into the sector through customer contracts and revenue.” The company then added another constraint: the money generated through the mechanism could not leave the country, an approach Bhatia says was designed particularly with ESA geo-return policies in mind. Perhaps more importantly, Nebex wanted its model to work without requiring governments to rewrite procurement rules or institutions to change the way they operate. “We cannot change any institutional behaviour. Not a single procurement law or policy will be modified. Whenever a politician says, ‘I want this,’ and it goes down to the Treasury, procurement office, or agency, it shouldn't be a question of whether this model will work or how they have to change their processes to make it work. Nothing changes. It's the same as any other procurement a country would already do.” That's a pragmatic decision rather than an endorsement of existing procurement systems. “That doesn't mean procurement processes are good. It means that if we were trying to change them, we wouldn't be able to solve this problem in 2026.” The same principle applies to finance. “We're not going to change the way bankers work,” says Bhatia. Those constraints ultimately led Nebex to its exchange model. “By forcing those constraints, it allowed us to uncover the solution. That requires a neutral commercial exchange with demand and supply aggregated across the market.” French startups need customers, not just capital For French space companies, the other side of the model is access to that aggregated demand. Participating startups gain access to Nebex's network of sovereign buyers, commercial opportunities, and capital. The initiative is open to French space startups, with priority given to venture-backed companies, which can access the platform through private invite codes provided to their investors. Other startups can join Nebex's waitlist. In France, Nebex is led by Etienne Cassuto, former venture innovation lead at Pernod Ricard, where he sent the first champagne bottle to the ISS with CNES and Axiom Space. Regarding the response to the initiative, Bhatia said feedback has been positive across political, financial, and space-industry circles. “The political feedback has been great. The space feedback has been great. The financial feedback has been great. It’s very difficult for anyone to say no to this offer. It’s a win-win.” Putting investors to work  For Bhatia, however, simply injecting more capital into the space sector is not the answer. “The reality is that money is not the problem. But money is also sometimes not the solution.” He argues there is already more than enough money in global trade settlement “for us to build every single thing every country wants in space right now.” Still, the challenge is enabling that capital to move effectively. “We can’t simply keep saying space is hard and expensive because that keeps the industry dwarfed. We have the trust; now it’s creating liquidity.” Nebex aims to do this by matching government demand with suppliers across its network, applying the model to new and existing contracts and to both established prime contractors and startup s. Bhatia admits he tends to “over-index on startups” when discussing Nebex, reflecting the backgrounds of its founders as repeat entrepreneurs. “I created a company to support space founders. But in doing that, we’ve created a capital-market solution for the whole industry and for governments.” has taken a deliberately gradual approach to the rollout. It initially opened the platform to its investors' portfolio companies, making Nebex’s investor network particularly relevant. The company raised a $30 million seed round, which it asserts is the largest seed round in space fintech history. GV led the round, with participation from Eniac Ventures, 2048 Ventures, Better Tomorrow Ventures, Oceans Ventures, AIN Ventures, Also Capital, Anagram, Armory Square Ventures, Multiball Capital, Trajectory Capital, and VSC Ventures. Investors effectively become an initial route into the supply side of its marketplace: investors can introduce portfolio companies to revenue opportunities that Nebex identifies across sovereign space programmes. This puts some pressure back on investors: “If there’s a few hundred million dollars for this one startup this year that is sitting under a rock and I can tell you which rock to turn over, why aren’t you going after it?” asserts Bhatia. “On average, companies are finding $100 million worth of revenue opportunities globally that they weren't even aware of. Our platform uses tools to match and cover all of this, but we're not talking about a giant universe. You're talking about a hundred or so countries and a few thousand suppliers. It's not necessarily that an exchange brings together people who wouldn't know each other or that the business wouldn't exist. It's that the friction is so high that unless you have this bird's-eye view, it's hard to justify doing it.” Nebex is also in conversations with financial institutions in France to develop financial products and services specifically dedicated to the French space supply chain. ​ Beyond launch: where France could win In terms of what kind of spacetech can expect the most traction through the initiative, Bhatia predicts that while a lot of attention is focused on launch tech — “It makes sense because without launch, we can't get to space —” it accounts for only a small percentage of global government space spending. He predicts that satellites, constellations, and Earth observation will be very large, and offer an opportunity for  France to play a very significant role. Then there's hardware, infrastructure, software, integration — all the tooling that goes into creating payloads — and the equipment on the payloads: sensors, cameras, telecoms, radios, etc. Then, within lunar orbit, there's everything from launchers and landers to cislunar communications and deep-space communications. It's almost an evolution of what we see in low Earth orbit. “That's going to be significant because of Artemis, NASA, ESA, and countries such as the UAE that care a lot about it. Then the next level out would be deep space. It really spans all capabilities.” Taking the model across Europe Nebex plans to replicate the initiative across Europe, admitting: “My intention with this company is to create superpowers for founders. So it's a little bit of pressure on investors to make sure they're giving their startups all the resources they can, allowing those founders to focus on building the future we all deserve.”

A defence tech investor and builder which counts Sir Jeremy Fleming, the former director of the UK’s security and cyber agency GCHQ, as an advisor has raised $50m. The funding round in Gallos Technologies, which is still open, was led by Ventura Capital, an early backer of Spotify, and asset manager Aberdeen Investments, with existing investor Lansdowne Partners, the investment management firm, also participating. Gallos, set up in 2021, was co-founded by former national security official Josh Burch and Dean Jones, an armed forces veteran who also serves as CEO of its portfolio company StirlingX, a drone and data intelligence startup, in which Fleming, the director of GCHQ between 2017 and 2023, is also chairman. Gallos backs and builds defence, security, and resilience startups. The funding will be used to fund its next cohort of company investments and investment in its platform, it said. Along with StirlingX, another portfolio company is AI Score, a data prevention startup, in which Fleming is an advisor and Burch, a non-executive director. The funding comes amid heightened geopolitical tensions and governments investing in new tech on the battlefield. Fleming, chairman of Gallos’s strategic advisory board, and former director of GCHQ, said: “The world faces rapidly growing and evolving digital threats, fuelled by geopolitical instability and sharpened by the speed at which new and emerging technologies are being turned against us. Gallos’s work enhances our ability to protect both people and businesses, in the UK and other allied nations.”

Astute, a platform that helps B2B companies manage partnerships with newsletter, podcast and social media creators, has raised an oversubscribed $1.2 million pre-seed round as it launches its new platform. The round was backed by Flyer One Ventures, Silicon Gardens, Marathon Fund and Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, alongside strategic angel investors. Founded by Vida Stanić and Abhishek Manikandan, Astute is developing infrastructure for B2B marketing as audiences increasingly shift from traditional channels such as advertising, PR and search towards newsletters, podcasts and social platforms. The company aims to make it easier for businesses to identify relevant creators and manage partnerships across a fragmented media landscape comprising millions of independent channels. Astute's platform uses two AI agents to automate both sides of the partnership process. One acts as a talent manager for creators, handling administrative tasks associated with brand partnerships. The second serves as a new media manager for B2B companies, helping them identify creators, develop partnership strategies and manage campaigns. The company says its technology monitors more than one million creator posts per minute to identify where businesses and their competitors are being discussed. It uses this data to recommend potential creator partnerships and manage opportunities including editorial placements, interviews, podcast appearances, advertising and event collaborations. The platform also measures campaign performance across metrics including impressions, conversions, brand visibility and visibility in AI-powered search engines, giving companies a way to track the impact of their creator partnerships. For years, B2B marketing relied on ads, PR and SEO. But audiences have moved to new media channels — newsletters, podcasts, LinkedIn, X. In direct-to-consumer space, that shift turned influencer marketing into one of the biggest line items in the budget. B2B is next, said Vida Stanić, founder and CEO of Astute. Stanić said one of the main challenges for B2B companies is identifying and reaching relevant creators, a process she experienced first-hand while working in growth roles. Astute is designed to automate much of this work, from discovering creators and establishing contact to managing partnerships and measuring their results. The company is positioning its platform around the growing importance of distribution as AI lowers barriers to developing new products and increases competition across technology markets. Astute also expects creator-generated content to become increasingly relevant to AI-powered discovery and recommendation systems, as AI agents play a greater role in how products and companies are found. In the longer term, Astute plans to expand beyond facilitating individual creator partnerships to help B2B companies build their brands, establish credibility and develop their own audiences.

Across Europe, accessing professional mental health support can mean long waits or costly private care. Yet there is also a gap between needing clinical treatment and feeling fine. People experience stress, overwhelm, sleeplessness, or anxiety before a social situation or meeting, or moments when their usual ways of calming themselves just aren't working. An expanding wellness industry has moved into that space, offering everything from meditation and breathing apps to haptic wearables, and now one Berlin startup is betting that the most useful technology might not be technology at all. Attuned combines smartphone-based haptics and guided audio with something considerably more analogue: access to another human being who is simply there to help you become grounded. I spoke to co-founder and Chairperson, Julian Teicke, to learn all about it.  From insurtech to human connection Teicke is a German serial entrepreneur, investor, and co-founder and Chairman of The Delta, a Berlin-based startup ecosystem and venture builder. He founded wefox, the Berlin insurtech that reached a $4.5 billion valuation in 2022, and through The Delta has since helped co-found and back more than 20 ventures, including luca, Kenjo, handly, hallo theo, and doctorly. He is also one of the leaders of Bad1, a community-led initiative that brings together founders, investors, and other ecosystem players to make Berlin Europe’s most builder-friendly tech city within the next 12 to 24 months. Attuned was founded by Teicke alongside Rebecca Godfrey, a product leader who spent more than a decade as a touring electronic music artist and was diagnosed autistic as an adult; and Thomas Hübl, teacher and author of Healing Collective Trauma, founder of the Academy of Inner Science, and one of Watkins’ Spiritual 100 in 2026. His work on trauma has included teaching at Harvard University's Wyss Institute. How Attuned works Attunement combines two functions into a single interface that are designed to manage dysregulation and improve wellbeing. For self-regulation, it offers short haptic sessions that translate designed frequency patterns into vibration through the phone, plus guided audio sessions created by Hübl. For co-regulation, users can connect with a vetted Anchor, a person trained in Attuned’s peer-presence protocol.  In quiet sessions, the Anchor is simply present, with no conversation required; in open sessions, the user can talk if they choose.  When operating on autopilot stops working For Teicke, the idea behind Attuned grew partly out of his own experience of becoming stressed, easily triggered and finding himself operating on “autopilot”. He realised that he wasn’t showing up as his real self or being the best version of himself in his relationships with family, colleagues, and friends. It also changed how he looked at the behaviour of people in positions of power. “You look into politics, you look into business, and these are not mature adults operating there. These are triggered people that act like little children,” he says. “And in this way, we're not going to be able to solve the big challenges that we have ahead of us.” What does a ‘dysregulated nervous system’ mean? Dysregulation is central to the language Attuned uses, but it can be a vague term. A dysregulated nervous system is characterised by difficulty shifting appropriately between states of alertness and calm. It can manifest as heightened activation — anxiety, irritability, racing thoughts or difficulty relaxing — or as shutdown, including exhaustion, withdrawal and feelings of disconnection. Teicke traces some of his own responses to overwhelm back to much earlier experiences: “The problem with overwhelm is that what happened when you were super young was: right now, right here, it's not safe. I need to shut down or disconnect from the world around me. I need to isolate myself, or behave aggressively, or whatever that compensation strategy was. What this attunement does is create what we call relational presence at the moment when you decide to shut off and disconnect from the world.” Teicke says he has experienced this relational presence helping situations that previously triggered him simply “flow by”.  ‘The most ancient human technology’ At the heart of Attuned is Teicke's belief that self-regulation tools can only take people so far. “I've used various devices such as Nurosym and a lot of other wellness apps — breathing apps, meditation, all of that. It's useful, but it only goes so far.” Instead, he believes another person can provide something technology cannot: co-regulation through human presence. Attuned’s approach builds on Hübl's coaching work. In coaching sessions with Hübl, Teicke would meet with a small group, and participants would “attune” to one another. The practice involved simply giving each other their presence, sitting silently for a minute or two and looking into each other’s eyes. Teicke admits that initially he found this “super uncomfortable”, partly because it was something he simply didn't do in his everyday life. “I had never actually looked people in the eyes. I realised that I'd been missing out on so much. The depth of connection you feel with another human just by looking into their eyes and being fully present is a tremendous gift. And the impact it has on your nervous system is magical. In the end, it added so much richness to my life and my relationships. I think it's the most ancient human technology that's probably been forgotten in some way or form. And it's incredibly powerful.” According to Teicke, the practice, combined with a long period of inner work, also changed how he showed up in his relationships and work. “It also allowed me to show up more authentically in life and more vulnerably — more like me and how I am. And it gave me a tool to cope with overwhelm and operate from a more grounded place. As a leader, for example, it helps me make better decisions.” That experience also changed how Teicke thought about technology. Despite years working with and investing in AI, he concluded that this was one problem he didn’t want to solve with an AI companion. “The only thing that is going to support the regulation of dysregulated nervous systems is another human, another system.” That realisation ultimately shaped what he calls “the most important project of my life”: building “an infrastructure that allows human-to-human connection at scale.” The science behind co-regulation I wanted to dig into the science that underpins Attuned’s claims.  The haptic sessions build on three decades of peer-reviewed research into low-frequency sound and vibration.   Randomised crossover studies have found that low-frequency vibration increases heart rate variability, a standard marker of parasympathetic nervous system activity.  There is a growing market for technologies using physical sensation to support relaxation and grounding. For example, UK-based Sensate combines chest-worn vibration with audio, while doppel uses heartbeat-like wrist vibrations for grounding.   Attuned's distinction is its argument that self-regulation tools can only go so far without another human in the loop. The co-regulation feature draws on research showing that human nervous systems regulate one another through social interaction. In a well-known 2006 fMRI experiment, neuroscientist James Coan and colleagues studied 16 married women who were told they might receive a mild electric shock while lying in a brain scanner.  Researchers compared their responses when they were alone, holding the hand of an anonymous experimenter, or holding their husband’s hand. Holding another person’s hand reduced activity in brain regions associated with threat.  Social baseline theory, built on this work, holds that proximity to others is the brain’s default strategy for managing stress, and developmental research shows that infants first learn self-regulation through co-regulation with caregivers. When supportive others are present (or even anticipated), stress responses, self-regulation demands, and associated neural activity are reduced.  This is the principle Attuned is attempting to bring into its Anchor sessions. Rather than physically holding someone’s hand, the platform connects a distressed or overwhelmed user with a grounded person via video, with the Anchor providing calm, attentive presence.  Does co-regulation work over video? However, whether comparable effects can be achieved through video interaction remains a question Attuned has yet to establish scientifically. Teicke says the company intends to validate this through research. He points to Hübl’s experience moving his courses — including eye-contact practices — from in-person sessions to Zoom during the pandemic as well as the first batch of Attuned testers.  “We've seen this now for years, and there is almost no difference in the effect between doing this in person and over video. The effect is almost the same.” What early users are doing with Attuned Attuned is currently on closed alpha. Attuned has been piloted with 150 test users and ten anchors.  Teicke asserts that the self-regulation feature has seen “crazy retention” compared to other wellness apps. Teicke says co-regulation is also becoming part of some users’ everyday routines: “We’re seeing quite regular usage and repeat usage, where people are turning this into part of their practice — for example, every night before going to bed, or before going into a meeting with their boss.” He says people are also using it to manage everyday situations that cause stress or anxiety. “People might be going into social gatherings and having anxiety. That’s not a complete nervous-system overwhelm or a panic attack, but it’s: all right, let’s get grounded, and then I can go into the social gathering with a different state of mind.” “Some people have real difficulties falling asleep, and it helps them get grounded. They do it every night.” He revealed that one of the nicest things to hear from these early testers was that, because they have Attuned in their pocket and could potentially jump on a video call, they are already much calmer. What makes a good ‘Anchor’? In terms of what makes a good Anchor — the person at the other end of the phone, either sitting in silence or offering a brief conversation — Teicke characterises them as someone who has done significant inner work and developed the self-awareness to recognise when they are calm and grounded enough to support someone else. “It's almost like you're providing a nervous system as a service,” he explains. “You need the ability to understand: okay, I'm now in a grounded place where I can provide my nervous system to someone who's in a distressed situation.” He believes that level of self-awareness is not innate but can be developed through training. “I don't think everyone has that kind of awareness, and that's something that you learn in the courses we're offering.” For now, the platform's anchors are drawn from people who have paid for and completed Hübl's coaching programmes. “Over the last 30 years, that's been tens of thousands of people, so that's already a good starting point.” But Teicke's ambitions for the platform extend far beyond this existing community. Can Attuned scale human connection? Regarding rollout, Attuned aims to onboard new users in batches to ensure a sufficient number of Anchors.  But ultimately Attuned will be open to everyone, “because we believe everyone can relate.” Teicke admits that many people won't understand it and therefore won't be open to trying it." And the challenge is that the first experience may be uncomfortable. Are people going to stick with it and do it again if they have a slightly uncomfortable experience? “But I think the amount of things that happen between two people, even on the phone, and the complexity of the communication of the nervous systems is tremendous.” That said, Attuned wants to heal a billion nervous systems, so it will need to find ways to train as many people as possible. Could relying on an Anchor create dependency? I wondered whether Attuned creates a dependency on having someone else on a call holding space — a concept that's hard to think about at the scale required if Attuned does what it aims to do.  Teicke is quick to stress that Attuned offers a starting point for independence:  “Right now, what we're offering is SOS support. In the future, these ten-minute sessions are already going more into that. And we might look into longer sessions for really helping the integration and healing process.” Further, the company stresses that Anchor sessions are peer presence, not therapy,  and Attuned is not designed for people struggling with mental illness or serious health issues.  “However, if needed, SOS features are built in on both sides. If a situation becomes very serious, the company can immediately alert the authorities. That’s built into the system,” said Teicke. Putting a price on ‘inner work’ The company aims for a membership model with a cut of the funding going to the anchors.  Teicke sees two broader possibilities for the app and its broader ecosystem: creating a new kind of work centred on human connection, and giving people a more direct way to support others during crises. “There are two things I think are going to be awesome,” he asserts. First, he believes being an Anchor could become a form of work that is difficult to automate. “I think this is a job that AI will never replace. Maybe it will become an important new job, because this is a very unique skill.” It could also, he suggests, give economic value to the personal development required to become an effective Anchor. “The inner work might get a monetary value. You can start earning money for the work that you do internally — becoming more grounded and so forth.” The second possibility is giving people a greater sense of agency when confronted with crises around the world. “A lot of people feel a little powerless when they look at events in the world. They're like, "Okay, so what do I do?" Do I donate money to people in crisis situations? Do I post on social media? Do I go to the street?” Teicke believes the platform could offer another way to respond. The plan is to make the service free to people affected by major crises. “Whenever there's a crisis happening — an earthquake, for example, or a war situation, or a terror attack, whatever — we offer it to affected people for free.” Attuned’s public beta opens in September 2026 with the self-regulation library broadly available. Access to Anchor sessions will expand gradually as the network of trained Anchors grows.

Last week, we tracked more than 35 tech funding deals worth over €763 million and over 10 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe. ? The top three industries that raised the most were software (€355.3 million), security (€265.7 million), and transportation (€88.2 million). At the country level, ?? the UK took first place (€393.5 million), followed by ?? Sweden (€349.4 million) and ?? Denmark (€9.5 million). ❗ Be sure to check out the Tech.eu Funding Explorer, free and open to everyone, for deeper insights into funding data, investor activity, company profiles, and market trends. Now, let's get you up to speed on everything that happened last week. Have a great week! Funding deals by amount SWEDEN: Lovable’s valuation doubles to $13.3BN as raises $400M in new funding UK: Cambridge Aerospace's valuation leaps to $3.4B as raises $300M UK: Flying-taxi maker Vertical Aerospaces secures £74M UK: Lancaster University spinout Mindgard lands €26M to secure enterprise AI systems UK: Edgify raises $9M to expand its edge AI platform DENMARK: Entravel Group secures $7.5M to scale its travel infrastructure platform UK: Cytix raises $7M Series A to tackle cyber risks from AI-driven software development UK: Watercycle Technologies bags £3M to scale UK lithium production DENMARK: Palette raises €3M pre-seed to develop an OS for AI-native teams NORWAY: Visoid raises $2.5M to expand AI visualisation platform for architects SWITZERLAND: Fintech Aisot Technologies secures €2.1M SWEDEN: Millow raises €2M to expand mycelium protein across Nordic foodservice SPAIN: Nomade Nation closes a funding round of almost €1.8M to accelerate its expansion in Europe UK: Aurrigo awarded £1.43M grant for autonomous airport vehicles SWITZERLAND: Zerolook raises €1.6M to tackle AI-driven flight search costs LUXEMBOURG: Space biotech Exobiosphere secures €1M to find “cures from space” FINLAND: STRGY AI raises €1M to scale its AI-powered strategy execution platform SWEDEN: Amanda AI secures €909,380 funding UK: Metal Morph raises £700,000 to recover industrial resources from wastewater UK: MatAlytics secures £619,000 Innovate UK grant to bring physics AI to the steel sector GERMANY: Wasteside secures €700,000 investment UK: FlairMakers raises £500,000 to build platform for hospitality portfolio careers SPAIN: eubiOmic Health closes a €200,000 investment round UK: Breezemove targets UK expansion after £160,000 investment PORTUGAL: GalgoSheets raises €150,000 to combat inefficiency in ride-hailing services UK: AI Factory joined the seed funding round of music-fintech startup Kahuna SWEDEN: Quartr lands €15.6M to expand its AI-ready public company IR data coverage GERMANY: Dr. Vivien Karl receives a seven-figure sum seed investment round TÜRKİYE: Mobile game studio Rotatelab has received seed funding NETHERLANDS: MIMETAS receives majority investment from Bruker Corporation UK: HOUF Games received investment at a valuation of $4M UK: HSBC Asset Management invests in Model ML GERMANY: Biotech AquaNab secures funding to tackle sea lice with nanoantibodies UK: SubSea Craft makes multi-million-euro investment in battery specialist LORILLION, acquiring 40% stake UK: Liverpool graduate, 21, raises £350,000 for Skinscanner.gg SWITZERLAND: Bruker makes minority investment in Atinary Technologies Exits and M&A activity GERMANY: The two companies Valuezon and metoda are merging UK: Duolingo snaps up UK animation studio Animade UK: Radar Healthcare expands with Cemplicity acquisition TÜRKİYE: Basefy has acquired Maxeo.ai, an AI visibility platform SWITZERLAND: Circet acquires Technik Partner DENMARK: Again acquires Geno to combine AI-driven discovery with industrial biomanufacturing SWITZERLAND: London-based market intelligence company acquires Square Commodities DENMARK: SEPPmail acquires CyberPilot GERMANY: B2B software investor Fortino Capital is acquiring a majority stake in Operations1 GERMANY: VAFO Group acquires Pets Deli GERMANY: Freighttech company TIMOCOM is acquiring Cologne-based Aparkado UK: ARO and TalkTalk Business merge to create £200M tech group GERMANY: Berlin’s AI InsurTech startup omni:us acquired by Dortmund’s adesso to embed AI into core insurance systems

AI platform amber has raised €7 million in Series A funding to expand across Europe and further develop its technology to help small and medium-sized businesses access and use internal company knowledge. The round was co-led by existing investor Ventech and NRW.Venture, the venture capital fund of NRW.BANK. Headquartered in Aachen, amber was founded by Bastian Maiworm, Philipp Reissel and Igli Manaj to develop an AI platform that connects, structures and contextualises company knowledge across emails, documents, cloud applications and internal systems. The company is addressing a challenge facing businesses adopting generative AI: company data is often fragmented across multiple systems, limiting the ability of AI models to understand business context and provide reliable results. At the same time, organisations risk losing institutional knowledge when experienced employees leave or retire. At the core of amber's platform is its proprietary AI Data Layer, which creates a unified understanding of information across different enterprise systems before applying large language models. By providing models with structured and relevant business context, the technology is designed to improve the accuracy of answers and insights while reducing the amount of unstructured data that AI systems need to process. Employees can use amber to retrieve information and organisational knowledge that would otherwise require searching through files, emails and other internal systems. The platform is designed to understand the context behind business information rather than relying solely on keywords, helping companies preserve knowledge, support employee onboarding and automate knowledge-intensive workflows. AI's next evolution is not another chatbot. The future belongs to systems that understand business context, recognise user intent and autonomously complete work. That's exactly what we're building with amber, said amber co-founder & CEO Philipp Reissel. The new funding will support amber's broader European expansion, beginning with Benelux, as well as further investment in its AI Data Layer and deeper integrations with business systems. The company also plans to strengthen AI adoption among SMEs and evolve its platform from user-initiated workflows towards systems capable of identifying and executing tasks more autonomously.

This week, we tracked more than 35 tech funding deals worth over €763 million and over 10 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe. If email is more your thing, you can always subscribe to our newsletter and receive a more robust version of this round-up delivered to your inbox. ❗ Want to explore the data in more detail? The free, open-access Tech.eu Funding Explorer offers deeper insights into funding rounds, investor activity, company profiles and market trends. Either way, let's get you up to speed. ? Notable and big funding rounds ?? Lovable’s valuation doubles to $13.3BN as raises $400M in new funding ?? Cambridge Aerospace's valuation leaps to $3.4B as raises $300M ?? Flying-taxi maker Vertical Aerospaces secures £74M ??‍?? Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers ?? Duolingo snaps up UK animation studio Animade ?? Again acquires Geno to combine AI-driven discovery with industrial biomanufacturing ??Circet acquires Technik Partner ?? VAFO Group acquires Pets Deli ? Interesting moves from investors ? Monzo and Lovable backer Accel raises enlarged $800M early-stage fund ? Exponent closes €750m H&MV Engineering continuation fund for at €1.4bn valuation ?️ In other (important) news ? Revolut clinches French banking licence ? July 2026's top 10 European tech deals you need to know about ⚛️ MSCA-backed QuBriC brings Alice & Bob into Europe’s quantum error correction push ? Uber ups robotaxi offensive in Europe, with partnership expansion ? Recommended reads and listens ? Isembard founder: We're a politician's "wet dream"  ? Efferon is ‘selling time’ in the race to treat sepsis ?? Hollow Home: The Ukrainian game telling the civilian story of war How research partnerships under the MSCA are driving innovation ? European tech startups to watch  ?? Palette raises €3M pre-seed to develop an OS for AI-native teams ?? Visoid raises $2.5M to expand AI visualisation platform for architects ?? Millow raises €2M to expand mycelium protein across Nordic foodservice ??  STRGY AI raises €1M to scale its AI-powered strategy execution platform ?? HSBC Asset Management invests in Model ML ?? Biotech AquaNab secures funding to tackle sea lice with nanoantibodies

For Rita Barbosa, the idea for her startup, Guardian Labs, began when a phone scam targeted her grandmother. She recounts: “The scammers told her that the water she was drinking wasn't safe. They led her to believe there was something wrong with the water — there wasn’t — and that she was, in a way, contaminating her and us. She thought, "I can't live with contaminating my grandchildren and children." So she bought four water filters, each for around €1,000, when each filter was actually worth around €20.” For Barbosa, “it was such a shock — not because she was scammed, but because of the way she reacted to it. " "She basically said to herself, "After this, I can't really use technology. This isn't something I should be doing alone." It really took a toll on her independence. She stopped picking up the phone altogether. At the time, I thought to myself, what can I do to prevent this, besides telling her, "Hey, don't pick up the phone"? This thought gained legs after she attended a hackathon in Germany, where she won first place with a prototype of what would become Guardião. Since then, it has grown from a hackathon project into a startup that partners with the Portuguese Public Security Police and two leading engineering universities in Portugal, collaborates with one of the country's largest accelerators, and has secured the support of the President of the Republic. Stopping the scam before the phone even rings Guardião serves as an AI layer between an incoming call or message and the recipient. Its models run locally on the phone, rather than sending the contents of calls or messages to a remote server. For SMS, the AI analyses the message before it generates a notification, looking for signals such as spoofing, phishing links, and patterns of manipulation. With calls, Guardian Labs found a way to do this even before the phone rings. Guardião checks known scam information and analyses the content for tactics such as artificial urgency, emotional pressure, or requests for banking codes. If it determines that the interaction is fraudulent, it can block the message or call before the user is exposed to it. If Guardião detects a suspected scam, the call does not ring, or the message is intercepted before it reaches the user in the normal way. Instead, the app sends a notification alerting the user to the attempted contact. Users can also view a history of intercepted calls and messages in the app, along with Guardian’s reason for blocking each one and its assigned risk level. “It's proactive because it's already there as the first line of defence. You don't need to protect yourself manually,” explained Barbosa. “It's also invisible because you don't really need to know that it's running. You install it, give it the permissions, and then it's always running in the background and defending you.” According to Barbosa, the tech behind it was only recently possible because there weren't super-small AI models that could run locally on your phone: “We don't want to have our calls or messages analysed by someone else on a server just to check whether they're scams. But if the AI models run locally, the calls and messages don't leave your phone. And this is exactly what Guardião is doing.” The Portuguese police provided the company with a lot of their data from reports they'd received about phone scams, which the company uses to fine-tune its AI alongside other data it's collecting through its reporting system. Scams change when you cross a border Guardião is designed to address a broad range of scams, from voice phishing and fraudulent messages to malicious links. But Barbosa says understanding scams requires a country-by-country approach, as the tactics used in Portugal, for example, can differ from those seen in Germany. One of the most common scams in Portugal is the "Hi Mum, Hi Dad, I lost my phone" scam in which fraudsters impersonate a victim's child, claiming to have lost or broken their phone and to be contacting them from a new number. They then create a sense of urgency, typically asking the parent to transfer money or pay an outstanding bill on their behalf. “We also see a lot of scams where you receive a message supposedly from our national healthcare service saying, "You have an outstanding payment. You need to pay €46 or €47." It's a very specific number, but it's always the same one. So many people don't even think twice about it because they may have gone to the doctor recently," shared Barbosa. "I think last year it was around €2 million to €3 million from this scam going to these bank accounts." Combining this local data with intelligence from other markets could also help Guardian Labs identify scam campaigns as they spread between countries and adapt its models accordingly. “Having this overview across different countries and different data means we can protect against a lot of different scams: voice phishing, message scams, malicious links, and all of these different scams before a cent is transferred.” And because the company gains an overview of different countries, they can identify a scam campaign and potentially stop it at a higher level. What happens when the AI gets it wrong? I was curious about the risk of false positives, but Barbosa contends that, at this stage, preventing false negatives — allowing a genuine scam to slip through — is the greater priority. “We mitigate false positives by continuously training on the data. If our systems are 99 per cent accurate and there’s 1 per cent false, we feel like that small number of false positives isn’t the worst thing because you can see all the messages and calls directly on your dashboard. “You’re not being denied any data. You can see the spam calls, messages, everything. Someone falling for a scam is much worse than someone missing a message and then going into the app and saying, ‘Oh, this message was actually something I wanted.’" By continuously training its models, Guardian Labs has very high accuracy.  Taking scam detection beyond the individual Besides Guardião, the company is also developing an intelligence platform that enables fraud to be stopped at the corporate and institutional level. It's providing banks, telecom operators, and law enforcement authorities with intelligence on active international scam campaigns. This can, for example, enable mule bank accounts — accounts used to receive, move, or withdraw money obtained through fraud — to be flagged and reported to banks, potentially allowing them to be frozen before victims transfer money. The company is currently finalising its first international pilot partnerships with banks and telecommunications companies. Guardian Labs plans to make money through B2B relationships with banks, insurers, and telecom operators, which themselves incur costs from fraud through refunds, insurance, and legal action. Relationships with public authorities would operate as partnerships, and would keep Guardião free for individuals. “This type of protection is really needed. It's like a human right. We already have so much AI controlling and scaring us, creating so many different types of problems, that having to pay for this kind of protection just doesn't sit right with us. It should be free,” asserts Barbosa. From hackathon winner to 20,000+ followers In case you’re wondering about the power of hackathons, Barbosa explained that after winning the German hackathon in February, the company went viral in Portugal. “We started growing exponentially across Instagram, Facebook, and now WhatsApp. We have almost 20,000 followers on Instagram alone since February, which is very fast. Because of this, we got a lot of exposure. But the really important point is that it's such a big problem anyone can see. It's very relatable and understandable. Everyone I talk to tells me, "Oh, I have a cousin," or, "My dad," or, "My sister has fallen into one of these scams." They know firsthand what it's like to not only lose the money, but also lose some of the trust you have in using your own phone. It's a problem that needs innovation and new ideas to solve it.” ​ Guardian Labs has achieved a lot in less than a year, with a lean team of three — the CTO is Barbosa's brother Tiago, who has a background in entrepreneurship as a startup founder and cybersecurity “I've known him for all of my 25 years, so it's really nice to be working with him,” she joked. It raised pre-seed funding earlier this year. In the future, because the AI runs locally, Guardião could even be embedded into platforms such as Telegram, WhatsApp, or Instagram as an additional feature. “We see a lot of scams that start in messages, then go to WhatsApp, then go to Instagram. If you have an overview directly on your phone, and your phone already has this information, it's easier to stop these scammers,” she said.

Uber is upping its robotaxi offensive across Europe, after signing an expanded partnership with a Chinese autonomous driving company. The US ride-hailing company and Pony.ai are deploying more than 2,000 of Pony.ai's self-driving taxis across four European cities, as the commercialisation of autonomous vehicles heightens. The collaboration dates back to May 2025, when Pony.ai and Uber first announced plans to bring Pony.ai robotaxis onto the Uber platform in international markets. Earlier this year, the companies worked with Croatian mobility company Verne to launch commercial robotaxis in Zagreb. Pony.ai did not disclose which European cities they were rolling out to or when they would be deployed. Pony.ai provides autonomous driving systems and self-driving trucks in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. The battle for autonomous driving is heating up across Europe. Waymo has reportedly set up entities in France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Germany, as it lays the groundwork for a European offensive. Uber and WeRide announced plans to launch a robotaxi pilot in Madrid this year, while Lyft is looking to bring robotaxis to Europe next year. China’s Baidu said that its autonomous driving unit has undertaken test drives in Switzerland while the likes of BMW and Volkswagen have been exploring autonomous driving tech. James Peng, founder and CEO of Pony.ai, says: “This expanded agreement marks an important new phase in the partnership between Pony.ai and Uber. It reflects our shared commitment to bringing safe, reliable Robotaxi services to more European cities. By combining Pony.ai’s proven autonomous driving technology and operational know-how with Uber’s global mobility platform and extensive market reach, we aim to build sustained commercial operations at scale across Europe and beyond.”

The new CEO of Monzo is a “huge advocate” of Monzo’s business bank, according to its general manager, who hailed hitting one million business customers as “really big”. Last month, the UK digital bank, which has over 16 million customers across retail and business banking, said Monzo Business, which launched in 2020, had hit one million business customers. Monzo said it was the first UK digital bank to achieve the milestone, saying that one in six UK businesses now banked with Monzo. By comparison, Monzo's key challenger bank rivals in the UK, Revolut and Starling, have around 800,000 and 500,000 business customers respectively. Jordan Shwide, general manager, Monzo Business, said that Monzo CEO Diana Layfield, appointed in October last year, and Monzo staff were shown a video when it hit the 1m mark, featuring interviews with its business customers. Shwide said: “And that is the thing that Diana has really loved about it. At the core, it has really aligned with our mission to make money work for everyone. She’s been a huge advocate of it.” Monzo launched Monzo Business following a warning from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) that big incumbent banks did not compete hard enough for SMEs. Monzo Business targets SMEs, which make up over 99 per cent of the 5.7m UK businesses, according to UK government statistics. However, it does have some multi-million-pound revenue customers, with over 200 employees, says Shwide.   Monzo Business offers three plans, one free and two paid. Monzo Lite (basic business account) is free for customers, while Pro (accounting integrations, tax management) costs £9 a month, and Team (expense cards, bulk payments) is £25 a month. Monzo does not break down the customer numbers for each plan.  In its 2026 annual report, Monzo says that Monzo Business makes up 14 per cent of Monzo’s £1.7bn 2026 revenues, up from 12 per cent the year previous. Monzo says it added 280,000 business customers in 2026 and that 47 per cent of its monthly active business customers were paid subscribers. Most of its growth comes through word of mouth, says Shwide, with business owners telling other business owners about it, with a heavy focus on startups. Around a quarter of new account sign-ups started their business in the last five years. However, Monzo does not break down the number of Monzo Business’s primary customers as, like in retail banking, companies maintain multiple accounts across different banks. Monzo Business makes money through subscription fees, interchange fees, interest on deposits and lending. Monzo Business will soon launch in Spain, having launched in Ireland earlier this year, as it looks to ramp up international expansion. Ahead of its Ireland launch, Shwide hosted a customer forum in Monzo’s European headquarters in Dublin, with around 15 business customers, including a fintech business, a cybersecurity consultant and a self-employed photographer, to gauge customer feedback. On international expansion, he says: “They are unique markets. They all have unique needs. What has been true across each market is the way we approach building products. Every step of the journey, we work with business owners to co-build something together.” But Shwide, an American who has worked at Monzo for eight years and previously consulted for big banks, said there are common threads across Monzo’s international customers. He pointed to them wanting speedy account openings, ease of payment, cash flow management, and a desire to stay compliant. Given the strength of Monzo as a retail bank brand, with its famed coral-coloured card, Shwide said Monzo had not considered giving Monzo Business a separate identity, like NatWest’s digital bank, which is called Mettle. But there was a discussion pre-launch about calling it Monzo for Business, instead of Monzo Business. However, the colouring of Monzo Business differs slightly from Monzo’s retail offering, with more blues and navy in its branding. On the agenda for the rest of the year, says Shwide, is finessing its offering in Spain and building and enhancing its product offering.

The new CEO of Monzo is a “huge advocate” of Monzo’s business bank, according to its general manager, who hailed hitting one million business customers as “really big”. Last month, the UK digital bank, which has over 16 million customers across retail and business banking, said Monzo Business, which launched in 2020, had hit one million business customers. Monzo said it was the first UK digital bank to achieve the milestone, saying that one in six UK businesses now banked with Monzo. By comparison, Monzo's key challenger bank rivals in the UK, Revolut and Starling, have around 800,000 and 500,000 business customers respectively. Jordan Shwide, general manager, Monzo Business, said that Monzo CEO Diana Layfield, appointed in October last year, and Monzo staff were shown a video when it hit the 1m mark, featuring interviews with its business customers. Shwide said: “And that is the thing that Diana has really loved about it. At the core, it has really aligned with our mission to make money work for everyone. She’s been a huge advocate of it.” Monzo launched Monzo Business following a warning from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) that big incumbent banks did not compete hard enough for SMEs. Monzo Business targets SMEs, which make up over 99 per cent of the 5.7m UK businesses, according to UK government statistics. However, it does have some multi-million-pound revenue customers, with over 200 employees, says Shwide.   Monzo Business offers three plans, one free and two paid. Monzo Lite (basic business account) is free for customers, while Pro (accounting integrations, tax management) costs £9 a month, and Team (expense cards, bulk payments) is £25 a month. Monzo does not break down the customer numbers for each plan.  In its 2026 annual report, Monzo says that Monzo Business makes up 14 per cent of Monzo’s £1.7bn 2026 revenues, up from 12 per cent the year previous. Monzo says it added 280,000 business customers in 2026 and that 47 per cent of its monthly active business customers were paid subscribers. Most of its growth comes through word of mouth, says Shwide, with business owners telling other business owners about it, with a heavy focus on startups. Around a quarter of new account sign-ups started their business in the last five years. However, Monzo does not break down the number of Monzo Business’s primary customers as, like in retail banking, companies maintain multiple accounts across different banks. Monzo Business makes money through subscription fees, interchange fees, interest on deposits and lending. Monzo Business will soon launch in Spain, having launched in Ireland earlier this year, as it looks to ramp up international expansion. Ahead of its Ireland launch, Shwide hosted a customer forum in Monzo’s European headquarters in Dublin, with around 15 business customers, including a fintech business, a cybersecurity consultant and a self-employed photographer, to gauge customer feedback. On international expansion, he says: “They are unique markets. They all have unique needs. What has been true across each market is the way we approach building products. Every step of the journey, we work with business owners to co-build something together.” But Shwide, an American who has worked at Monzo for eight years and previously consulted for big banks, said there are common threads across Monzo’s international customers. He pointed to them wanting speedy account openings, ease of payment, cash flow management, and a desire to stay compliant. Given the strength of Monzo as a retail bank brand, with its famed coral-coloured card, Shwide said Monzo had not considered giving Monzo Business a separate identity, like NatWest’s digital bank, which is called Mettle. But there was a discussion pre-launch about calling it Monzo for Business, instead of Monzo Business. However, the colouring of Monzo Business differs slightly from Monzo’s retail offering, with more blues and navy in its branding. On the agenda for the rest of the year, says Shwide, is finessing its offering in Spain and building and enhancing its product offering.

German robotics company NEURA Robotics will acquire the ACTIVE Shuttle driverless transport system from Bosch Rexroth effective October 1, 2026.  The ACTIVE Shuttle has established itself in numerous industrial companies as a field-proven solution for automated material handling, from supplying assembly workstations to transporting small load carriers in production and logistics.  NEURA Mobile Robots is acquiring the ACTIVE Shuttle's hardware and software and will also offer service to customers in the future. At the same time, the platform is entering its next development phase. NEURA plans to gradually integrate the ACTIVE Shuttle into its Physical AI ecosystem and expand it with AI functionalities and interfaces to the NEURA Group's technologies. The goal is to transform what is already a high-performance autonomous transport solution into an even more intelligent and interconnected platform in the long term. The company raised up to $1.4 billion in Series C funding in June to accelerate the development of its physical AI platform. Within the NEURA Group, NEURA Mobile Robots consolidates expertise in autonomous intralogistics and driverless transport systems. NEURA Robotics aims to connect different types of robots — from mobile platforms and industrial robots to humanoids — through a shared physical AI infrastructure. Instead of developing intelligence separately for each robot, the company is building a common technology layer that allows robots to perceive their environment, navigate autonomously, learn and apply new skills, and coordinate with other machines. According to David Reger, founder and CEO of NEURA Robotics, Europe possesses an incredible amount of robotics and industrial expertise.  “Our task now is to bring these technologies together and build something bigger. Our aim is an open ecosystem where mobile robots, industrial robots, and humanoids can collaborate on a shared infrastructure. For me, this is precisely where the future of robotics lies.”

German robotics company NEURA Robotics will acquire the ACTIVE Shuttle driverless transport system from Bosch Rexroth effective October 1, 2026.  The ACTIVE Shuttle has established itself in numerous industrial companies as a field-proven solution for automated material handling, from supplying assembly workstations to transporting small load carriers in production and logistics.  NEURA Mobile Robots is acquiring the ACTIVE Shuttle's hardware and software and will also offer service to customers in the future. At the same time, the platform is entering its next development phase. NEURA plans to gradually integrate the ACTIVE Shuttle into its Physical AI ecosystem and expand it with AI functionalities and interfaces to the NEURA Group's technologies. The goal is to transform what is already a high-performance autonomous transport solution into an even more intelligent and interconnected platform in the long term. The company raised up to $1.4 billion in Series C funding in June to accelerate the development of its physical AI platform. Within the NEURA Group, NEURA Mobile Robots consolidates expertise in autonomous intralogistics and driverless transport systems. NEURA Robotics aims to connect different types of robots — from mobile platforms and industrial robots to humanoids — through a shared physical AI infrastructure. Instead of developing intelligence separately for each robot, the company is building a common technology layer that allows robots to perceive their environment, navigate autonomously, learn and apply new skills, and coordinate with other machines. According to David Reger, founder and CEO of NEURA Robotics, Europe possesses an incredible amount of robotics and industrial expertise.  “Our task now is to bring these technologies together and build something bigger. Our aim is an open ecosystem where mobile robots, industrial robots, and humanoids can collaborate on a shared infrastructure. For me, this is precisely where the future of robotics lies.”

Mobile learning platform Duolingo has acquired Animade, a London-based animation and motion design studio.  Founded in London, Animade has built an international reputation for creating expressive motion systems, interactive experiences, and product storytelling for some of the world's leading technology companies and brands.  The team will join Duolingo's Design Studio, increasing the company's capacity to support product innovation, growth experiments, and new creative initiatives across the business.  The acquisition also expands Duolingo's creative presence in the UK, reinforcing its continued investment in world-class talent. "Since day one, Animade has been on a mission to share joy through thoughtful design and animation," said Jen Judd, Co-Founder of Animade. "I can't think of a more exciting place to continue that mission than at Duolingo. We've always believed it's the thoughtful moments that leave a lasting impression, and that great design and bringing personality into every pixel can make technology feel more human. We're thrilled to join a company that shares our passion for creativity, craft, and building products that genuinely bring people joy." "Great products aren't defined only by what they do, but by how they make people feel," said Mig Reyes, Head of Design at Duolingo. "Motion design has become a core part of how we help learners understand, enjoy, and return to Duolingo every day. Animade has built a reputation for exceptional creative craft, and bringing their team into Duolingo is an investment in the people and capabilities that will help us build even better learning experiences."