The Regensburg-based digital health startup brainjo has closed a €2 million seed funding round, led by High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), with additional participation from strategic partners and business angels, including Andreas Weinhut (Regensburg) and better ventures. Limited therapy availability, long waiting lists, and insufficient access to mental health services continue to challenge healthcare systems. brainjo aims to address these gaps by leveraging Virtual Reality (VR) as a prescribable extension to psychotherapy, designed to enhance patient adherence and accessibility. The company develops Digital Health Applications (DiGA) that can be prescribed by therapists or physicians and reimbursed by health insurance. Rather than replacing traditional psychotherapy, these immersive VR-based solutions complement existing treatments by offering individualised and accessible therapy that patients can use from home. This approach helps bridge critical gaps in care where conventional therapy alone may fall short. Markus Wensauer, co-founder and CEO of brainjo, commented: With a strong network of business angels, MEDICE – The Health Family as a strategic partner, and HTGF as a leading European seed investor, we are ideally positioned to bring our solutions into healthcare and establish multimodal therapy offerings for patients. The company’s mission is to create evidence-based, immersive therapy solutions that complement and scale existing treatment approaches. The newly secured capital will finance the next major milestone: a clinical study and the regulatory approval of brainjo’s first VR-based DiGA. This initial application, focused on children with ADHD, is being developed in collaboration with MEDICE – The Health Family. Market approval is currently planned for 2028.

This week, we tracked more than 75 tech funding deals worth over €1.9 billion and over 5 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe. Alongside the week’s top funding rounds, we’ve highlighted key industry developments, as well as notable trends in European venture activity, investor moves and emerging sectors shaping the current funding landscape. We also launched our Q1 report, which looks at tech fundraising, deals, and trends in Europe over the first three months of 2026. 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. Either way, let's get you up to speed. ? Notable and big funding rounds ??  Stegra bags €1.4B rescue funding package for giant European green-steel plant ??  CamGraPhic secures €211M from EU to build graphene tech for faster AI data transfer ??  Wayve raises new £44B investment from chip giants ??‍?? Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers ?? Standard Life announces £2B acquisition of Aegon UK ?? Codery acquires Elfshock to launch AI automation division ?? Fracttal acquires TCMAN to strengthen its strategic position in Europe ? Interesting moves from investors ? The new Seed filter: what investors look for beyond the demo ?  Eka closes $107M Fund II to becomes the UK’s largest early-stage impact VC ?  Elaia closes €134M fund DTS3 to back Europe’s next generation of breakthrough startups ?  Fund II second close strengthens Unconventional Ventures’ bet on overlooked founders ? ET Capital launches Cambridge Venture Index Fund 2 to broaden access to deeptech investing ? £100M boost for UK healthtech as British Business Bank backs Apposite growth fund ?️ In other (important) news ?️  Guide: What’s Coming Up at the Tech.eu Summit London 2026? ☁️. Accenture and Google Cloud unveil Brussels centre to accelerate sovereign AI adoption ? OpenAI to move to first permanent London office, with capacity to more than double headcount ?  Crowdcube achieves “hard-fought” profit, driven by boost in secondary shares ?? Europe builds its first “kill-switch proof” cloud recovery stack ??  Locai Labs and Civo launch Project Mercury to end UK reliance on foreign AI ??  Graftcode secures €2.1M to simplify AI-era software integration ??  Audrey AI secures $1.8M to develop AI platform for financial auditors ??  StirLight raises £1.25M to bring real-time quality assurance to friction stir welding at scale ?? Zell raises €500,000 to scale AI-powered sales management ?? Obriy AI raises $500,000 to take multi-agent enterprise automation global

Taking place on April 21–22 at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London, the Tech.eu Summit London 2026 will once again bring together founders, investors, and operators from across Europe for two days of focused conversations, insights, and networking. Following the recent agenda announcement, here’s a closer look at what to expect from each day of the event and how to make the most of your time at the summit. The agenda is further shaped by a speaker lineup that includes executives and investors from organisations such as OpenAI, Wise, NATO Innovation Fund, Notion Capital, Oxa, and 2150, reflecting a mix of global tech leaders, venture capital, and fast-scaling startups. April 21 - First day of the Tech.eu Summit London 2026 The first day of the Tech.eu Summit London 2026 will focus heavily on the forces currently shaping the European tech ecosystem, with artificial intelligence taking centre stage across multiple sessions. Discussions will explore how AI is being integrated into products and operations, as well as how companies are positioning themselves in an increasingly competitive global landscape. Alongside this, investors and founders will share perspectives on funding conditions, scaling challenges, and what it takes to build resilient companies in today’s market. Climate tech, fintech, and deep tech will also feature prominently throughout the day, reflecting continued investor interest in these sectors. Sessions are expected to move beyond surface-level trends, offering practical insights from those actively building and backing companies across Europe. April 22 - Second day of the Tech.eu Summit London 2026 On the second day, the programme shifts towards more focused, sector-specific conversations and operational learnings. Mobility, energy, and emerging technologies will be explored through panels and discussions that highlight both opportunities and ongoing challenges. Founders and operators will share first-hand experiences on scaling teams, entering new markets, and navigating regulatory environments across different European regions. The second day will also continue to build on themes introduced earlier in the summit, offering a more granular look at how strategies discussed on day one translate into execution. The venue: Queen Elizabeth II Centre Following last year’s edition, the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster will once again host the event. Its central location and multi-floor layout make it well-suited for a conference of this scale, allowing attendees to move easily between sessions while also creating space for informal meetings and conversations. Networking & Tech.eu Events App Networking remains a core part of the Tech.eu Summit London 2026 experience. We believe that conferences are just as much about the people as they are about the content. With the Tech.eu Events App, you’ll have access to the full agenda, speaker details, and networking tools that allow you to connect with other attendees, arrange meetings, and stay updated on everything happening during the event. The Tech.eu Events App is available for download on the App Store and Google Play Store. See you at the Tech.eu Summit London 2026! Get ready for an unforgettable experience at the Tech.eu Summit London 2026. If you haven’t secured your ticket yet, now is the time. Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of the conversation shaping the future of European tech. See you in London! Partners Pavilion Partner Gold Partner   Silver Partners   Supporting Partner Community Partners           

The chairman of the new £500m UK government-backed VC fund backing domestic AI startups last night channelled his inner Craig David to indicate the speed of its investing, rebuffing criticism that it might be slow and bureaucratic. Referencing words from a David hit song, James Wise said: “Just last week we met a company that told us they were doing a fundraising round. On Monday, we met the founders.  “On Tuesday, we did due diligence. On Wednesday, we made a decision. On Thursday, we took them out to celebrate, moving at a speed that Craig David would blush at.” Wise was speaking at the launch event of Sovereign AI, which took place at the London headquarters of self-driving AI scaleup Wayve. The event was packed with Wise, a partner at London VC Balderton, AI minister Kanishka Narayan, technology secretary Liz Kendall, Wayve CEO and co-founder Alex Kendall, and Meryem Arik, the CEO and co-founder of AI startup Doubleword, addressing the audience. The launch event came as the first deals from the £500m fund, which is aimed at keeping the UK's best AI startups in the UK as they scale across the world, were announced. Wise said: “We are venture investors with a mandate to back the AI companies in Britain we believe are national priorities and on commercial terms.” Generally speaking, the fund is investing cheques of between £5m and £10m, leading and following on investing rounds, usually investing in Seed and Series A. It is investing in areas ranging from AI model development to AI drug discovery to agentic AI. The fund is also offering portfolio firms access to UK government-funded supercomputers, procurement opportunities, and free visas for international hires. Wise is heading up Sovereign AI with Joséphine Kant, a VC who previously worked at Y Combinator. Defending criticism about the size of its investments, when US AI firms were raising billions, Wise said the size of its investments could change the course of a company. He added: “When the time comes for founders we work with to raise those larger rounds, we will be able to introduce them to the best investors in the world. And they will have a hotline to the British Business Bank, who we are already working with, hand in glove.” Wise said one of the key criteria for investments was that “they must have the potential to be a huge commercial success”. The fund has also faced criticism from some VCs that it might be bureaucratic and slow to invest. Liz Kendall said: “I believe sovereign AI is going to be one of the most important things this government does to build a better future for our country.”  She added that AI was “beyond negotiable for our national security”. The first equity investment from the fund is in AI infrastructure startup Callosum, for an undisclosed amount. The fund has also awarded compute power from its supercomputers to Prima Mente, Cosine, Cursive, Doubleword, Twig Bio and Odyssey, to train their AI models. In return, the fund will get a first refusal on future investment in some of these startups. IMAGE: Callosum founders

Doctolib,  @Hôtel-Dieu (AP-HP) and Roche are launching Care Forward, a support program for European health startups at STATION F.  Designed to help young companies develop, test and deploy their solutions as close as possible to care delivery needs, it brings together technological expertise, access to clinical environments, and medical and regulatory support. Based in the heart of STATION F, this program targets European startups that can demonstrate a rapid, measurable impact on the healthcare system, regardless of their maturity stage. It aims to accelerate the rollout of practical solutions, ready to be proven in real-world settings and to meet the daily requirements of healthcare professionals and patients’ needs.  The program is open to both early- and late-stage, developing technologies dedicated to the healthcare sector, whether digital solutions, AI, connected devices, or services. Projects may focus on a specific step of the care pathway — identification, diagnosis, treatment or follow-up — as well as innovations that improve the overall efficiency of the healthcare system. Any technological contribution demonstrating a concrete impact on the healthcare system is welcome to join this new initiative.    Doctolib will support program participants with technology integration, the use of AI in healthcare, an in-depth understanding of practitioners’ expectations, and deployment strategies at the European scale.  @Hôtel-Dieu (AP-HP) will provide privileged access to AP-HP innovation platforms designed to support the emergence of innovation in the service of healthcare, and through them, to hospital environments. Startups will be able to engage directly with clinical realities, align their solutions with real-world needs, and leverage the expertise of professionals across the 38 hospitals of Europe’s largest university hospital system.  Roche will provide essential strategic support to navigate the sector’s complexity. Its teams will help entrepreneurs master regulatory constraints, demonstrate the health economic value of their projects, and gain access to a global network of scientific experts. In addition to this hands-on support, the program includes regular meetings with specialised investors and key industry stakeholders, as well as exclusive invitations to events across Europe’s health ecosystem.  According to Jean-Urbain Hubau, Managing Director, France, Doctolib: “Our healthtech ecosystem is full of talent, but the real challenge remains scaling and adoption by healthcare professionals. With this program, we want to give startups the codes and tools so their innovations truly—and quickly—make it into the daily lives of care teams and patients.”  According to Nicolas Castoldi, Deputy Director to the CEO of AP-HP and Executive Director of the @Hôtel-Dieu: “This program is a further demonstration of our commitment to accelerating the emergence of innovation as close as possible to care delivery, in order to better meet the needs of healthcare professionals and patients. It builds on our innovation platforms and supports the development of the new Hôtel-Dieu, a major innovation hub at the heart of a hospital with 14 centuries of history.”  According to Jean-François Brochard, President, Roche Pharma France: “This program will combine our longstanding expertise with the innovation capacity of healthtech startups. Our shared ambition is to optimise care pathways to ensure lasting benefits for patients, simplify the daily work of care teams, and strengthen the efficiency of our healthcare system.”  Applications for the program are open until May 15th. 

AlixLabs, a developer of Atomic Layer Etching (ALE) solutions for next-generation semiconductor manufacturing, has closed a €15 million Series A funding round in the first quarter of 2026. The round includes a strategic investment from Stephen Industries, building on earlier participation from Global Brain and other institutional investors. The funding marks a key milestone for AlixLabs as it continues to advance its proprietary ALE solutions, including its APS™ (Atomic Pitch Splitting) platform. The approach is designed to enable more precise, efficient, and cost-effective semiconductor fabrication, addressing the growing complexity of advanced device architectures. Atomic Layer Etching is widely regarded as a critical enabler for future semiconductor nodes, complementing Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) processes by allowing atomic-scale precision in material removal. As semiconductor manufacturing evolves, ALE is expected to play an increasingly important role in production. The new funding will be used to accelerate product development, expand technical capabilities, and strengthen partnerships with semiconductor manufacturers. With this investment, AlixLabs aims to further establish its position within the European semiconductor ecosystem and advance its ambition to become a global provider of Atomic Layer Etching solutions.

Akbank AG, the German subsidiary of Turkey’s leading bank Akbank TAS, has successfully completed Phase 1 of its core banking transformation, to the leading SaaS cloud banking platform Mambu. The transformation was delivered in close partnership with Innovance, Mambu’s strategic technology partner. The milestone marks a full transition away from Akbank AG’s legacy core system for its Retail and Private segments, with all customers and accounts in these business lines now operating on Mambu’s composable, API-first cloud-native core banking platform. Operating under the supervision of Germany’s financial regulatory authority, BaFin, Akbank AG’s transformation represents a significant example of a regulated European bank modernising its core banking infrastructure through a structured, phased migration strategy. The new architecture, hosted on Microsoft Azure, combines: Mambu as the core banking foundation. Its API-first architecture enabled the bank to integrateeasily with partners and reduce operational complexity, lowering maintenance effort and improvingresilience. Core+ layer: This custom implementation layer communicates with Mambu and other integration services, acting as the central orchestration and business logic layer. Implementation partner: Innovance playing a key role in integrating the Core+ architecture with Mambu to enable scalable product modelling, transaction validation and limit management and standardised integration patterns aligned with Akbank AG’s target architecture. A standout milestone was the delivery of the Limit Proposal Application in 2022, which enabled Akbank AG to launch a digital corporate credit approval process in just four months. The fully integrated ecosystem now includes core banking, accounting, payments, digital channels (web and mobile), wealth management back office, document management, and enterprise financial crime detection components. The modular approach allowed Akbank AG to adjust parameters—such as pricing, fees, and interest settings—directly through configuration rather than code, significantly reducing implementation time. With Retail and Private Banking now live, the next phase of the transformation covering Corporate Banking and Lending is underway. This next stage will focus on complex lending requirements and the integration of several new systems using Mambu’s modular service structure. “The industry is undergoing rapid transformation, and customers increasingly expect agility and seamless digital experiences,” said Osman Kara, Core Banking Technologies Vice President at Akbank AG. “With the successful completion of Phase 1 on Mambu, and in close collaboration with Innovance, we have modernised our core banking foundation and established a scalable architecture to support our next phase of growth.” “Mambu is proud to have powered the transformation of Akbank AG. A show of our strength in the region, as well as our continued partnership with Innovance, this project will transform the banking capabilities of the region, as well as the offerings from Akbank AG. We look forward to the next phase of transformation.” says Mark Geneste, Chief Revenue Officer - Mambu Yusuf Ürey - Innovance Founder & CEO: “At Innovance, we approach core banking transformation as a long-term capability shift rather than a system replacement. Together with Mambu, we have established a modern technology backbone for Akbank AG that enables continuous evolution, allowing the bank to respond faster to changing customer expectations and market dynamics.” Mehmet Ali Özcan - Innovance Germany - Managing Director: “In this transformation, we developed the Core+ layer end-to-end to manage business logic, integrations and validations independently, while ensuring seamless interaction with Mambu’s platform. This approach allowed us to simplify system interactions and create a more adaptable and scalable foundation for future banking services.” The successful migration strengthens Mambu’s footprint in the DACH region and, together with Innovance’s engineering and delivery capabilities, demonstrates the viability of replacing legacy core systems within regulated European banking environments.

The UK government has selected Cosine, the British AI company whose models have outperformed OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, and DeepSeek on independent coding benchmarks for two consecutive years, as one of the first partners in its newly launched £500 million Sovereign AI programme.  Cosine was founded in 2022 by Alistair Pullen — who has been building AI products since 2018 and shipped his first iOS app at age nine — and Yang Li, who previously scaled Mobike to 220 million users across four continents before its $55 billion acquisition. A Y Combinator graduate, the company has raised $8 million from investors including Lakestar, SOMA Capital, and Gaingels. As both an AI lab and a product company, Cosine builds and owns its models, trains its agents, and deploys the full stack. Its platform supports more than 38 programming languages, including Fortran, COBOL, Ada, and Verilog — purpose-built for the legacy codebases that underpin Britain's defence systems, nuclear infrastructure, and financial services backbone.  It is the only end-to-end sovereign AI coding platform built, owned, and operated entirely in Britain. Cosine is already engaged across UK defence primes and critical national infrastructure operators, including organisations involved in the UK's nuclear deterrent programmes and next-generation defence platforms. For organisations operating at the classified edge of British industry, sending code to a foreign-managed server is often legally and operationally prohibited. Cosine was built for that constraint: its platform deploys entirely within a customer's own infrastructure, without an internet connection, without data leaving the building, and without reliance on foreign-managed models. Through the UK’s AI Research Resource (AIRR), the Sovereign AI Fund has awarded Cosine 500,000 GPU hours on Isambard-AI — one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe — worth millions of pounds in infrastructure value.  For the first time, this makes it possible to build and deploy a fully sovereign AI model entirely on British soil, with no foreign dependency at any stage. In addition, the Sovereign AI Fund’s venture arm has secured the option to participate in Cosine's next funding round. "Cursor and Claude Code are outstanding products. They are also legally off the table for a lot of our customers," said Alistair Pullen, CEO and co-founder of Cosine. "The moment your work touches classified infrastructure, you need an AI that lives entirely inside your walls. We built Cosine that way from the start, because retrofitting security onto a cloud product is not the same thing, and the people we work with know the difference. What we are building now goes further: a truly British AI lab, producing sovereign models for Britain's most critical use cases, owned and controlled by the UK, for the benefit of the UK." "For two years we've been telling defence primes and critical infrastructure operators that we can do what no one else can: air-gapped, on-premise, trained on the legacy code that runs Britain's most sensitive systems," said Yang Li, COO and co-founder. "The one thing we couldn't say was that the model itself was trained on sovereign infrastructure. The AIRR grant completes that picture. The UK should be an AI maker, not an AI taker - and this is what that looks like in practice."  

Today, Unconventional Ventures (UV) announced the second close of Unconventional Ventures Fund II. In a challenging global climate — marked by economic uncertainty and tightening capital markets — this close represents more than a fundraising milestone. It signals strong conviction that backing underinvested founders building scalable, category-defining companies remains a resilient and forward-looking investment thesis. The firm welcomed new investors joining Fund II, including Wire Group, Investinor, FÆRCH OG DØTRE, and Merete Lundbye Møller. Investinor, a Norwegian government-backed venture capital investor, is committed to identifying and supporting companies with the potential to grow into world-leading businesses. The firm continues its partnership with Unconventional Ventures, having been a valued investor since Fund I. Wire Group, a Netherlands-based impact investing firm, is known for its focus on diversity and inclusion, as well as measurable social and environmental impact. Ronald Janse, Chief Conscious Capital at Wire Group, commented: “We’re thrilled to join the UV team in their second fund. The fund’s thesis is a perfect match for our Wire Thrive Fund II: investing in underrepresented founders who are building meaningful, future-shaping companies. UV’s rare combination of inclusion and impact—paired with an exceptional team—makes us genuinely excited to participate in this closing.” The firm also expressed gratitude to its existing Fund II LPs and its broader community of family offices, whose continued support underpins its mission. Unconventional Ventures maintains that the next generation of scalable, sustainable companies will emerge from ambitious founders who have too often been overlooked, and remains committed to identifying and backing them while contributing to a more equitable and sustainable future.

Solidroad, an AI platform that helps companies evaluate and improve every human and AI customer conversation, today announced a $25 million Series A round led by Hedosophia.. Solidroad strengthens customer experience through AI-powered training and quality insights. It reviews 100 per cent of a company’s customer interactions and generates insights that help support teams reduce manual quality assurance work, resulting in higher customer satisfaction. The platform also uses these insights to create personalised training simulations to address areas of improvement for agents. This helps teams improve quality while keeping QA costs from rising when ticket volume grows. “We turn every customer interaction into measurable insight,” said Solidroad co-founder and CEO Mark Hughes.  “While most company support interactions go unreviewed, our platform evaluates them at scale, holding every interaction to a high quality standard to ensure customers feel supported. This funding enables us to expand our team and capabilities so more companies can make exceptional service the standard, not the exception.” Since its 2023 launch, Solidroad has grown its customer base to include brands such as Ryanair, ŌURA, and Crypto.com. Customers use the platform to automate QA coverage, reduce manual review hours, accelerate agent onboarding, and drive higher CSAT through continuous, data-driven coaching.  Additionally, Solidroad’s AI analyses hundreds of conversations in seconds, making it ideal for companies managing high interaction volumes and scaling support teams.   To date, Solidroad’s platform has scored millions of interactions and increased analyst productivity by up to 10x. Building off the momentum of their seed round in June, Solidroad will use this recent round of funding to expand its teams across San Francisco and Dublin, furthering the platform’s role as a leader in quality assurance for customer support. Lead image: Grant Puckett.

ET Capital, a long-standing investor in high-growth technology businesses, has launched the Cambridge Venture Index SEIS/EIS Fund 2 (CVIF2).   It aims to back up to 20 early-stage, science-based companies emerging from the Cambridge and Oxford start-up ecosystems.  The fund marks an expansion of ET Capital’s ambitions to improve access to early-stage venture investing opportunities for sophisticated angel investors. Its first fund CVIF1, was raised in 2025 and is being invested in up to ten companies coming out of some of Cambridge’s leading accelerator and deal originator programmes.  Companies that have received investment to date include:  Reo Tx, which uses advanced technology for a disease with a significant unmet medical need.        Cellestial Health, a preclinical biopharmaceutical company transforming the future of brain disease therapies by targeting previously overlooked causes of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s. The Cambridge Venture Index funds focus on delivering diversified, risk-limited returns through structured venture investment, a technique based on extensive proprietary research by ET Capital. The research analysed the financing history of nearly 200 start-ups in the Cambridge cluster to model the performance of a series of synthetic venture funds from 1992 to 2024. Using the same criteria across all cohorts, five of the six synthetic funds outperformed the FTSE 100 Index. ET Capital is using this approach as an alternative to a more traditional VC methodology, based on 'picking winners'.  According to Martin Rigby, managing director of ET Capital, businesses coming out of Cambridge and Oxford science clusters represent some of the UK’s most ground-breaking deep science and technology start-ups. “At the same time, there are sophisticated or high-net-worth investors that want to back these new companies, but who find it hard to access the breadth of deals. With the second of our venture index funds, we aim to give those investors access to a broad range of investments that balance significant potential with a reduction of risk through diversification.” Struan McDougall, an investor in CVIF1 and managing director of local angel syndicate Cambridge Capital Group, said:   “The start-ups coming out of the Cambridge and Oxford ecosystems represent an exciting new wave of scientific innovation, but the opportunities for early-stage investors are often limited to a small part of the market. I am delighted to be investing in CVIF2 as ET Capital expands its innovative approach, offering a way for a wide range of investors to support ventures with significant potential.” Lead image: David, James and Martin from ET Capital.

One of Europe’s top AI researchers, who is heading up a 3D AI foundation model startup, says that 3D AI models are “kind of where ChatGPT for language was five years ago”.  Matthias Niessner, the CEO and co-founder of SpAItial, took a leave of absence from leading the visual computing and AI lab at the Technical University of Munich to launch the Munich and London-based startup SpAItial, which last year landed a $13m seed round.  The funding round is high by European standards for a seed round, but small in comparison to the billions of dollars being raised by US large language model firms.  Speaking on the Tech.eu podcast, Niessner, whose research helped launch UK AI startup Synthesia, discusses SpAItial, getting hold of compute power, the potential of 3D AI models and use cases, the future of AI more broadly, and European sovereignty.  On raising funds, Niessner said: "Raising money is still surprisingly easy, actually. There is a lot of money right now. And the reason, I think, is that the opportunity of these models is so massive. You train them once, and they just train so incredibly well."  He said investors were also enticed by the fact that AI model builders can build with relatively small teams, taking advantage of using AI coding agents.  He said: “We also expect to raise a new round this year. We feel there has to be a healthy balance. We need a little bit more for scaling up the models. But we are probably not going to raise billions right away, because we think this is yet not justified, but it’s going to come step by step.”  Niessner believes that AI models, which create 3D worlds from text and image inputs, have a big market potential. He says use cases span everything from video games to robotics to use in the construction and housing industries. SpAItial has already developed its first 3D AI model and will look for licencing partners who will decide how they will leverage the models.  He says: “We are kind of like where ChatGPT was for language five years ago."

The British Business Bank has agreed to make a £100 million commitment to Apposite Healthcare Growth I, a fund investing to support the growth of health technology companies, primarily in the UK.  This will be the British Business Bank’s largest fund commitment to date and is the Bank’s first commitment to Apposite Capital, a specialist healthcare and life sciences investor. Apposite Healthcare Growth I will invest in innovative companies across medical products, diagnostics, life sciences tools, digital health, and pharmaceutical outsourcing services. The fund aims to address the shortage of scale-up capital for UK life sciences companies approaching a growth inflection, which aligns with the Bank’s strategy to create deeper pools of scale up funding. The fund will invest in UK companies developing market-leading technologies and services to improve patient outcomes and access to healthcare, while enabling them to compete globally and create highly skilled jobs. The British Business Bank is the largest investor in UK venture and venture growth capital funds and regularly makes cornerstone commitments to funds that are aligned with its strategy. By acting as a cornerstone investor, the Bank enables a fund to achieve a first, supporting their launch and enabling them to execute their strategy at greater scale. The British Business Bank is targeting over 60 per cent of its venture and growth investment flow towards scale-ups and aims to support the launch of 10 new-to-market growth-stage funds over the next five years, and will write larger cheques to leading fund managers.  Christine Hockley, Managing Director and Head of Commercial Equity Funds, British Business Bank, said, “The UK needs growth stage funding, and the Bank is stepping up to deliver this. To help  funds launch and ensure they have the size and firepower needed, we are writing larger cheques and signalling these commitments to institutional investors, with the intention it mobilises the private sector.” According to Sam Gray, Managing Partner at Apposite Capital: “Apposite Healthcare Growth I will back the next generation of UK healthcare technology leaders. The UK is home to an extraordinary depth of scientific research, entrepreneurial talent, and innovative companies, yet many businesses face a persistent gap in scale-up funding.  This fund will bridge that gap, enabling high-potential companies to accelerate their growth, commercialise transformative technologies, improve health outcomes and support economic growth.”    Lead image: Freepik.

Copenhagen-based spektr, a company building AI infrastructure for compliance in financial services, has raised $20 million in Series A funding. The round was led by NEA, with participation from existing investors Northzone, Seedcamp, and PSV Tech. Compliance teams continue to spend significant time manually reviewing corporate documents, mapping ownership structures, verifying websites, and preparing risk rationales. Despite substantial investment in compliance technology, much of the Know Your Customer (KYC) and Know Your Business (KYB) processes still rely on analysts assembling information from numerous sources. spektr addresses these challenges with an AI-powered compliance infrastructure platform designed for banks and fintechs. The platform deploys networks of specialised AI agents to automate the manual work associated with KYC and KYB processes, from onboarding to ongoing monitoring, allowing teams to focus on decision-making rather than data gathering. The company has developed specialised AI agents that replicate the tasks typically performed during compliance reviews, including researching companies, interpreting information, verifying business activity, and generating structured risk assessments. By automating these processes, tasks that once required hours of manual effort can be completed in minutes, while compliance professionals retain oversight by reviewing and approving the results. Mikkel Skarnager, CEO and co-founder of spektr, commented: Compliance technology has largely concentrated on workflows and the gathering of data. But the real bottleneck has always been the work itself - analysts researching companies, interpreting information, and documenting decisions. spektr automates those tasks with AI agents designed specifically for KYC and KYB compliance. spektr’s platform also enables financial institutions to design customised onboarding and monitoring processes and deploy networks of AI agents within these workflows. This approach transforms traditionally manual, analyst-driven operations into scalable and automated compliance processes. The new funding will support spektr’s continued platform development and international expansion, further strengthening its role in modernising compliance infrastructure for the financial services industry.

European tech investment reached €72 billion in 2025, making it the second-strongest year of the past three, despite a slight decline from 2024. Deal activity remained stable, with more than 3,740 transactions completed, indicating continued investor engagement across the ecosystem. Investment was concentrated in a core group of sectors, with fintech, software, healthtech, energy, and artificial intelligence accounting for the majority of capital deployed. Fintech led all industries, attracting €11.1 billion across 397 deals and reinforcing its position as Europe’s primary investment driver. Software followed with €8.1 billion across 692 transactions, reflecting both its breadth and consistent deal flow. Healthtech (€7.7 billion) and energy (€7.5 billion) formed the next tier, while artificial intelligence secured €5.3 billion, emerging as a strategically significant growth sector. Beyond these leading sectors, several additional industries contributed to the overall investment landscape. Telecom attracted €4.8 billion, followed by cleantech with €3.1 billion, cloud with €2.5 billion, transportation with €2.3 billion, and semiconductors with €1.7 billion. Together, these ten industries represent the primary areas of capital concentration within the European tech ecosystem. Quarterly trends indicate relatively balanced investment across the year, with sector leadership shifting over time. Fintech maintained consistent funding levels throughout the year. Software demonstrated steady growth, particularly toward the final quarter. Healthtech experienced stronger activity in the first and last quarters, while energy peaked in the third quarter, reflecting heightened investment in the energy transition. Artificial intelligence also gained momentum mid-year before moderating toward year-end. Overall, the European tech landscape in 2025 was shaped by investments in digital infrastructure, financial services, artificial intelligence, energy, and healthcare, with capital continuing to concentrate in large, strategic sectors rather than consumer-focused markets. This article highlights the largest deals from each of these top 10 industries. In the coming weeks, we will take a closer look at the biggest funding rounds within each sector individually. For more detailed analyses of the European technology ecosystem, see Tech.eu’s annual report, European Tech 2025 – The Big Picture. Amount raised in 2025: £1.5B Propel Finance is a UK-based fintech lender providing technology-enabled asset finance solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Through its proprietary digital platform, Propeller, the company delivers fast and flexible funding for business-critical equipment, vehicles, and technology. Working with a network of brokers, vendors, and partners, Propel Finance enables seamless, point-of-sale financing across sectors such as healthcare, construction, and manufacturing. In 2025, Propel Finance secured a £1.5 billion funding round to expand its support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across the UK. Amount raised in 2025: €1.1B Bending Spoons is an Italy-based technology company that develops, acquires, and operates digital products and software platforms. The company focuses on improving and scaling established applications, including Evernote, WeTransfer, Meetup, and Remini, using proprietary technology and data-driven optimisation. Its products serve hundreds of millions of users globally, and its strategy centres on long-term ownership and continuous enhancement of digital services. In 2025, the company raised approximately €1.1 billion across two corporate financing rounds to support the continued expansion of its product portfolio. Amount raised in 2025: $900M Oura Health is a Finnish company that develops the Oura Ring, a smart wearable designed to continuously monitor sleep, physical activity, heart rate, and other biometric indicators. Through its connected mobile application, the device provides personalised insights to support users’ health and wellness. In 2025, Oura secured more than $900 million in a funding round, valuing the company at approximately $11 billion. The proceeds will be used to advance AI-driven capabilities and product innovation, expand global distribution, and introduce additional health-focused features. Amount raised in 2025: €600M IONITY is a Germany-based company that develops and operates a network of ultra-fast charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs) across key European transport corridors. Its high-power charging infrastructure supports long-distance EV travel by reducing charging times and ensuring reliable access to renewable energy. The company serves both individual drivers and fleet operators. In 2025, IONITY secured €600 million in financing to accelerate the expansion of its high-power charging network. The investment will enable a significant increase in the number of charging points and support the broader deployment of renewable energy solutions across Europe by 2030. Amount raised in 2025: €1.7B Mistral AI develops advanced generative artificial intelligence models and tools that enable organisations to build, customise, and deploy large language models, AI assistants, and autonomous agents for applications such as search, software development, automation, and data processing. The company raised €1.7 billion in funding, more than doubling its valuation to approximately €11.7 billion. The capital will be used to accelerate research and development, expand computing infrastructure, and support the global scaling of its AI platform. Amount raised in 2025: £2.3B CityFibre is a UK-based telecommunications infrastructure company that designs, builds, and operates one of the country’s largest independent full-fibre broadband networks. Its gigabit-capable fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) infrastructure serves homes, businesses, public sector organisations, and broadband service providers. In 2025, the company secured £2.3 billion in financing to support the continued expansion of its full-fibre network across the UK. The funding will be used to increase the number of residential and commercial connections and to explore potential acquisitions of additional fibre network assets. Amount raised in 2025: €810M Enpal provides integrated renewable energy solutions for households, including solar panel systems, battery storage, heat pumps, and wallbox chargers. Through flexible purchase and rental models, the company enables homeowners to generate and manage clean energy while reducing costs and increasing energy independence. The company raised €810 million to expand its installation capacity and further scale its clean energy platform. Amount raised in 2025: $1.53B Nscale develops and operates high-performance AI infrastructure, providing scalable, GPU-powered cloud and data centre solutions for the training, fine-tuning, and deployment of artificial intelligence workloads. The company emphasises a vertically integrated approach, combining compute, networking, and software tools to support advanced AI development and large-scale implementation. The company secured approximately $1.53 billion across two funding rounds to expand its AI data centre capacity and support the global growth of its infrastructure. Amount raised in 2025: €1B FINN provides a flexible car subscription service through all-inclusive monthly plans that cover insurance, maintenance, taxes, and delivery. The platform enables customers to select, order, and receive a vehicle entirely online, offering access to personal mobility without the need for long-term ownership commitments. The company secured €1 billion in funding to expand its vehicle fleet and support its international market expansion. Amount raised in 2025: €1B NXP Semiconductors designs, develops, and manufactures a wide portfolio of high-performance semiconductor solutions, including microcontrollers, processors, sensors, and secure connectivity technologies. These products are used across automotive, industrial, Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, and communications applications, enabling smart and embedded systems to connect, sense, and operate intelligently. The company secured €1 billion in funding to support ongoing research and development, advance product innovation, and expand its manufacturing capabilities.

Outcraft AI, an agentic AI platform focused on autonomous revenue execution, has raised €2 million in pre-seed funding from Practica Capital. The company also received early backing from venture builder Lost Astronaut. Businesses frequently miss revenue opportunities due to delayed or inconsistent customer engagement. Leads may go cold, free users fail to convert, declined payments remain unresolved, and early signs of churn are often overlooked. Rising customer acquisition costs and expectations for immediate, personalised responses further intensify pressure on sales and lifecycle teams. Outcraft AI introduces a new category of system - autonomous AI agents for sales and revenue execution. These agents engage customers in real time across voice, SMS, email, and WhatsApp, determining the optimal next action when triggers such as inbound leads, abandoned checkouts, or failed payments occur. Continuous, context-aware interactions ensure seamless follow-up and minimise lost opportunities. The platform integrates with widely used business systems, allowing it to respond immediately to real-time customer behaviour. By focusing on execution across the full customer lifecycle, Outcraft AI enables organisations to achieve measurable outcomes while reducing reliance on manual processes. Will Nauseda, CEO and co-founder of Outcraft AI, commented: We’re not building another sales tool or engagement platform. We’re developing autonomous AI agents that execute customer engagement end to end, enabling companies to respond instantly across multiple channels and drive measurable revenue outcomes. Outcraft AI is emerging at a time when technological advancements in real-time voice and decision-making capabilities are converging with market pressures to operate more efficiently. Together, these factors are enabling a transition from tools that support sales teams to systems that can independently perform key revenue-generating activities. Looking ahead, the company aims to enable fully autonomous revenue execution, where AI agents manage the entire customer lifecycle, from lead capture and qualification to engagement, retention, and revenue recovery. The newly secured funding will be used to further enhance the platform’s capabilities and support its expansion into additional markets.

Audrey AI, a Dublin-based startup developing AI solutions purpose-built for financial auditors, has raised $1.8 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Sure Valley Ventures (SVV) and Delta Partners, with participation from Enterprise Ireland, Donnchadh Casey (former CEO of Calypso), Conor Jones (former Chief Business Officer at Wayflyer), and several former Big Four auditors. Financial auditing remains highly manual, with auditors spending much of their time on spreadsheets and evidence collection, areas where general-purpose AI tools have struggled to provide effective solutions. Founded in 2025 by Ryan Loughran and David Burke, Audrey AI addresses this gap by developing an agentic AI platform designed specifically for the audit process, automating key workflows such as intelligent data requests, evidence gathering, transaction testing, and automated review. By orchestrating these tasks end-to-end, the platform enables auditors to focus on professional judgment and client relationships rather than administrative processes. The solution adapts to each firm’s methodology, increasing its effectiveness over time as it learns from continued use. Ryan Loughran, co-founder of Audrey AI, commented: We’re building AI that understands auditing deeply enough to raise the bar on quality, not just speed, freeing auditors to focus on the judgment and oversight that matters most. The platform has already been piloted with top-10 and top-20 audit firms, demonstrating significant efficiency gains, including more than 85 per cent time savings in client data collection, validation, and tests of detail, alongside measurable improvements in audit quality. The newly secured funding will be used to expand Audrey AI’s engineering and audit specialist teams and to support the company’s growth as it scales deployments with audit firms across Ireland, the UK, and additional international markets.

Openlaw, a European platform for digital legal and notary infrastructure, has closed a $3.3 million seed round for its platform beglaubigt.de.  The round includes YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim (via Y Ventures), Moonfire Ventures (founded by Atomico co-founder Mattias Ljungman), Zeno Ventures, Combination VC, Orange Collective and a group of prominent angels, including numerous Y Combinator alumni and founders with successful exits. Openlaw was accepted into Y Combinator F24 Batch. In the US, incorporating a company can take as little as 24 hours. In Europe, the reality is very different: founders face 27 national legal systems and more than 60 different corporate forms. In many of the continent's largest markets, including Germany, Spain and France, company formation requires notarisation.+ In Germany, setting up a GmbH typically takes six to eight weeks. For founders, that means navigating a maze of agencies, forms and procedures with little clarity on what needs to happen when or where. Germany’s startup problem isn’t just incorporation — it’s everything after Nearly 60 per cent of founders are dissatisfied with Germany as a business location according to the DIHK Report 2025, and three-quarters are calling for faster, simpler regulation, as intended in EU-Inc’s 28th regime. The EU Inc. proposal aims to make company formation across Europe faster and less bureaucratic.  But what comes after incorporation, tax registration, commercial register entries, business addresses, and ongoing administration remains complex and fragmented across jurisdictions. This is where Openlaw steps in: not to replace existing institutions, but to serve as the digital infrastructure that supports founders from first incorporation through to running their business, starting in Germany, Europe's most bureaucratic market, via the platform beglaubigt.de, with the long-term ambition of expanding into additional European markets. In Germany, the company is already leading the way with beglaubigt.de: the platform digitises the entire formation process, from incorporation documents and notary appointments to commercial register entries and transparency register filings. What used to take eight weeks, beglaubigt.de reduces to as little as three days.  The platform works with around 300 notary offices on behalf of its customers, handling administration, scheduling, document preparation and register filings, while legal counsel and notarization remain with the notaries. Less than a year after launch, beglaubigt.de counts established names like neobank Qonto, Holvi and Sevdesk among its partners and has served over 25,000 customers on its platform.  With Germany's first fully automated incorporation API, founders can start the entire company formation process directly from their Qonto account, without ever leaving the platform. From unicorn exit to legaltech Openlaw was built by two founders who experienced Germany's bureaucratic formation process firsthand. Through Y Combinator in San Francisco, they also learned how it should work. CEO Alexander Sporenberg was part of the founding team at Razor Group, which reached unicorn status with a $1.7 billion valuation in just 15 months. Across hundreds of M&A deals, he saw firsthand how notary appointments, registration processes and red tape became the real bottleneck. CPO Felix Gerlach began his career in the Rocket Internet ecosystem before founding Passbase, a global identity verification platform backed by Lakestar, Cowboy Ventures and Costanoa Ventures. Passbase was acquired by Parallel Markets in 2023. "Europe doesn't lack innovation, and it certainly doesn't lack talent. What it lacks is efficient infrastructure. At Razor, we built a unicorn in 15 months, but waiting for notary appointments nearly derailed us. In the US, it would have taken days. That's exactly what we're solving with Openlaw, so European founders don't fail because of bureaucracy," says Alexander Sporenberg, CEO and co-founder of Openlaw. “For us as Europe's leading finance management solution, the incorporation process is the starting point to accompany entrepreneurs along their journey." "With beglaubigt.de integrated into our product, customers can go from opening an account to incorporating their company seamlessly. It saves founders precious time and makes starting a business significantly easier," says Malte Dous, Managing Director Central Europe at Qonto. With the fresh capital, Openlaw plans to expand the product offering of its German platform beglaubigt.de: beyond GmbH, UG and GbR formations as well as tax-optimised holding structures, additional register processes and ongoing bookkeeping will be fully available on the platform. Openlaw is starting with beglaubigt.de in Germany and plans to expand across Europe.

The UK–Ukraine TechBridge has officially launched a new phase of its Investment Accelerator project for 2026, offering Ukrainian technology startups a structured pathway to expand into the UK market and connect with leading investors.  This builds on the success of previous phases of the Investment Accelerator, which has generated over £10 million in new investment and business deals for Ukrainian tech startups. Supported by the UK Government and the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, and led by Blue Lake VC https://www.bluelakevc.com/, the project will work with 20 high-growth Ukrainian tech companies (Late Seed–Series A), providing investment readiness support, practical workshops, and a cohort-based programme of support in a hybrid format throughout May- culminating in an in-person pitching showcase at London Tech Week in June 2026.A key focus of this year’s programme is direct 1-1 access to investors, enabling founders to build meaningful relationships with UK Venture Capital and to navigate fundraising in a new market.The programme is delivered by Blue Lake VC, an early-stage London-based Venture Capital firm founded by two Ukrainian entrepreneurs – Lyubov Guk and David Gilgur, investing in exceptional international entrepreneurs to grow in the UK.According to Lyubov Guk, Founding Partner, Blue Lake VC:  “Entering the UK market is not easy, and fundraising without an existing network is even harder. This programme is designed to remove those barriers - giving founders direct access to investors and helping them build real, long-term relationships.” Nataliia Denikeieva, Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, shared:  “We are proud to launch the Investment Accelerator for the third time as part of UK-Ukraine TechBridge. Even in wartime, Ukraine remains a dynamic tech ecosystem, home to more than 2,000 startups, over 300,000 tech professionals, and ranked 42nd globally in StartupBlink’s 2025 index.  For Ukrainian founders, this is a pathway to international growth. For the UK, it is access to strong talent, new technologies and high-potential partnerships.” UK-Ukraine TechBridge forms a part of the 100 Year Partnership agreement between the two nations.  Applications are now open until 27 April 2026.

Stendr, a Norwegian defence technology company, has raised $5.4 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding round to advance its AI-native platform. The round was co-led by RainFall, ACME, and SkyFall, with participation from Sisyphus, Antler, StartupLab, Off Piste, and Andøya Ventures, alongside a syndicate of global technology founders and investors. Headquartered in Oslo, Stendr is developing a vertically integrated technology stack that combines hardware and software with artificial intelligence at its core. The company’s initial focus is on drone defence, leveraging AI-driven multi-sensor systems embedded in cost-efficient hardware platforms to support detection, tracking, and situational awareness in modern operational environments. Aleksander Leonard Larsen, co-founder and CEO of Stendr, noted that modern warfare has evolved significantly, with the widespread availability of low-cost, autonomous drones outpacing the capabilities of traditional defence systems. At Stendr, we are building the technology to find them, track them, and give defenders the information to act, fully sovereign to Europe. The founding team brings extensive experience across technology, artificial intelligence, and hardware development, with backgrounds in scaling technology companies and delivering complex engineering projects. The newly secured funding will be used to accelerate the development of Stendr’s AI-driven multi-sensor technology, expand its engineering and hardware capabilities, and support the deployment of its platform for defence applications. Through these efforts, the company aims to contribute to the advancement of sovereign and adaptable defence technologies in Europe.