PayPal-backed UK fintech Modulr has reported its first full-year net profit, it says, ahead of announcements regarding its US expansion.  Myles Stephenson, CEO and co-founder, heralded the achievement as an “important milestone”. He said: “It gives us control over our destiny: the ability to invest in products for our customers, expand globally, and pursue strategic opportunities.” Modulr provides white-label payment infrastructure for businesses, calling itself an “embedded payments platform”. Modulr, which has an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) licence and employs over 400 people, provides payment services for the likes of Sage, Wagestream and HMRC. Modulr did not disclose a specific net profit figure for 2025, but the net profit marks an upturn from 2024. Financial results for Modulr Holdings show pre-tax losses of £11m in the year ending 2024. On its 2025 full-year profit, Stephenson said: “Modulr’s profitability has been driven by sustained commercial growth across our focus markets.” It says it processes more than 200m transactions and over £180bn in payment value on a yearly basis. Asked if Modulr, founded in 2016, had made any cuts to hit profit, Stephenson said: “We have continued to grow our team across the UK, Europe, the US and India." Hitting a full-year profit continues to be a key metric for fintechs, as they look to show investors the robustness of their financials. Stephenson said Modulr had no current plans for external fundraising. Modulr last undertook a fundraise, around £83m, in 2022, led by General Atlantic. Other investors in the round included Blenheim Chalcot, Frog Capital, Highland Europe, and PayPal Ventures, PayPal's VC arm. Earlier this year, London-headquartered Modulr announced its expansion into the US through a strategic partnership with financial technology firm FIS. Stephenson added: “This is a foundation. It gives us greater flexibility to accelerate investment in the markets where business payments remain the most complex – particularly as we expand in the US and deepen our capabilities in AI-powered automation. Our focus remains on building products that businesses can rely on as they scale globally."

Spanish startup BCAS, focused on flexible education financing, has closed a €30 million debt round led by MyInvestor. The funding will be used to expand operational capacity, introduce instalment-based financing at affordable interest rates, and increase access to education funding for students. Founded in 2021 by Bosco González del Valle, Javier Ausín, and Manuel Avello, BCAS is an edtech platform offering flexible student financing solutions. The company aims to support equitable and sustainable access to education, enabling students to focus on their training without upfront financial barriers. To date, BCAS has financed more than 3,800 students and works with over 60 training providers, including Ironhack, The Bridge, thePower, ISDI, 4Geeks, UNIR, EIP, and HACK A BOSS. BCAS combines Income Share Agreements (ISAs), in which repayments begin once students secure employment, with affordable instalment-based payment plans, providing a flexible financing model tailored to different student profiles and the needs of training centres. We are a business that needs debt to operate. The more you grow, the greater your financing capacity needs to be. This new facility will allow us to reach thousands more students and expand our offering with more flexible solutions for both schools and learners, explains Javier Ausín, Co-CEO and co-founder of BCAS. The new financing supports BCAS’s continued scale-up, reinforcing its position as an education financing provider in Spain and as one of the Spanish edtech companies able to attract structured funding at scale. As a result of the round, more than 6,000 students are expected to gain access to high-employability training programmes. BCAS currently operates in Spain and Germany and plans to expand further across Europe after consolidating its position in its home market, with the aim of becoming a European education financing provider.

Today, February 4, is World Cancer Day. Cancer kills around 10 million people each year — more than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined. Fortunately, European startups are accelerating innovation across the cancer care pipeline, from early detection to post-treatment recovery. Here’s just some of the startups to watch: Aerion Bioscience (Luxembourg) Aerion Bioscience is developing a blood test for early lung cancer detection based on a specific pattern of proteins circulating in the bloodstream. Current lung cancer detection relies heavily on CT scans and biopsies, which are expensive, involve radiation, and are not widely used as population screening tools. A reliable blood-based test could be performed during regular check-ups and flag high-risk patients earlier, when treatment is far more effective.  Aerion’s work builds on biomarker research originally developed at the Luxembourg Institute of Health, translating academic discovery into a practical diagnostic platform designed for clinical labs rather than experimental settings. The Blue Box  The Blue Box is a deep-tech biomedical startup developing an AI-powered, non-invasive screening solution for breast cancer that uses a simple urine sample instead of traditional mammography. Their device combines a proprietary electronic nose to detect cancer-related volatile biomarkers in urine. Then a machine-learning algorithm recognises subtle patterns linked to early-stage disease.  This pain-free, low-cost, radiation-free diagnostic tool has the potential to outperform mammograms, particularly in women with dense breast tissue. and make reliable screening more accessible through clinics and future at-home solutions. Captain T Cell (Germany)  Captain T Cell is developing next-generation T cell therapies to treat solid tumours, a class of cancers where existing immunotherapies often fall short.  The company engineers tumour-specific T cells that express optimised T-cell receptors (TCRs) with enhanced persistence and the ability to survive and attack cancer cells even within the hostile tumour microenvironment. Its proprietary platform supports both personalised (autologous) therapies and “off-the-shelf” allogeneic products, ready for use in multiple patients. Concr (UK) Concr is a London-based biotech company tackling cancer’s 96 per cent drug failure rate by applying astrophysics-derived technology to predict which treatments will work for individual patients. Its FarrSight platform creates digital twins, simulations of a patient’s molecular biology, to predict the most effective therapies for them and to help drug developers design better clinical trials. The startup works with partners including the NHS, Roche, and the Institute of Cancer Research. Luminate Medical (Ireland) Image: helmet designed to reduce hair loss from chemotherapy. Luminate Medical develops wearable medical devices designed to reduce some of the most distressing side effects of chemotherapy, including hair loss and nerve damage. Its flagship products use targeted compression technology to limit how much chemotherapy reaches certain parts of the body, helping protect hair follicles and peripheral nerves without interfering with the treatment's effectiveness.  Beyond reducing side effects, the company is also working to shift parts of cancer care out of hospitals and into patients’ homes. Luminate is developing infusion and monitoring systems that allow certain low-risk treatments to be delivered remotely under clinical supervision.  SPARK Microgravity (Germany) SPARK Microgravity is developing what it describes as Europe’s first dedicated commercial orbital cancer lab, to enable life scientists and pharmaceutical researchers to perform experiments in the microgravity environment of low Earth orbit.  They aim to make space-based research — especially advanced cancer biology, 3D tumour growth models, drug screening and personalised oncology studies — accessible without researchers needing to manage their own space missions, with the goal of revealing biological behaviours and therapeutic targets that are hard or impossible to study on Earth due to gravity’s influence. 

Runeasi, a KU Leuven spin-off focused on running and movement analysis, has raised €1 million in a new investment round. The round was led by Smarter Ventures, with participation from existing investors Freshmen Fund, Gemma Frisius Fund, the company’s founders, and angel investor Sean Gourley. Runeasi enables physiotherapists, coaches, and speciality running stores to carry out running and jumping analyses quickly, without the need for complex or costly equipment. The platform uses an AI-powered motion sensor worn in a sports belt to capture biomechanical data, which is translated into personalised reports with actionable insights for rehabilitation, training, and exercise planning. The company focuses on translating scientific research into practical tools that support health and human performance, allowing practitioners to convert biomechanical data into tailored training programmes. Runeasi is currently used in more than 40 countries by sports physiotherapy practices and running specialists. To date, the platform has supported over 50,000 running analyses, with the United States representing its largest market. The company also works with sports footwear brands, enabling efficient and objective product testing and supporting scientific validation. Commenting on the funding, CEO Kurt Schütte said the investment will support the company’s next phase of growth, with a focus on accelerating international expansion, particularly in the United States, while continuing to serve the Belgian market where Runeasi has established long-term customer relationships. At the end of 2025, Runeasi was named among Belgium’s fastest-growing AI scale-ups. According to Schütte and co-founder and CTO Tim Op De Béeck, the recognition reinforces the company’s commitment to scientific integrity and validation, with a focus on using AI as a practical tool rather than a marketing feature.

Dutch-based startup QT Sense has raised €4 million to advance Quantum Nuova, a quantum-based platform that monitors cellular stress in living cells at single-cell resolution. The funding includes a €3 million seed round led by Cottonwood Technology Fund, alongside follow-on funding from QDNL Participations and an angel investor. The total funding includes a €0.6 million ONCO-Q grant to fast-track oncology applications, along with €0.4 million from the Quantum Forward Challenge to support collaborative deployment and validation of Quantum Nuova in real research environments. While traditional biological methods typically analyse fixed tissue or non-living cells, QT Sense’s Quantum Nuova platform measures biochemical activity in living cells and tissues in real time, enabling new approaches in spatial biology. The platform uses fluorescent nanodiamond quantum sensors to detect oxidative stress, metabolic changes, and free radical activity—signals that are central to disease processes but have been difficult to observe directly. By providing a live view of cellular behaviour at the individual cell level, Quantum Nuova allows researchers to study how cells respond to drugs, adapt to stress, and differentiate into distinct subpopulations, offering insights beyond those available through genomics, proteomics, or conventional imaging. The technology has already been used to study the mechanisms of action of FDA-approved drugs. With support from the ONCO-Q grant, it will now be applied to colorectal cancer research, with the aim of mapping oxidative stress and metabolic vulnerabilities in tumour models to support future diagnostic and therapeutic development. The new investment will support the transition of Quantum Nuova from a high-performing prototype to a deployable discovery platform. Planned developments include improvements in hardware robustness, throughput, and integrated analytics to support real-world use. Early-access systems will be deployed with strategic partners to enable mechanism-of-action studies, functional heterogeneity analysis, and rapid, label-free measurements across multiple samples.

Linda AI, a healthtech startup focused on automating front-desk operations for dental practices, has raised a €2.6 million pre-seed round led by 6 Degrees Capital. The funding comes as voice AI adoption accelerates across service-intensive industries. In healthcare, dentistry stands out due to high call volumes, complex operations, and detailed scheduling needs. Despite this reliance on phone-based booking, more than 25 per cent of inbound calls to dental practices go unanswered, leading to significant lost revenue. Linda AI addresses this challenge through agentic workflow automation built specifically for dental practices. Its AI agents integrate with existing practice management and communication systems to manage administrative tasks end to end, including appointment scheduling, confirmations, rescheduling, and patient follow-ups. The platform works alongside front-desk teams, using voice, text, and system integrations when staff capacity is constrained. As a result, the company reports measurable impact across its customer base. Approximately 25 per cent of new patient bookings are generated through Linda AI, overall bookings increase by around 15 per cent, no-show rates decline by more than 30 per cent, and front-desk teams save over 10 hours per week on administrative work. These outcomes support improved revenue performance, better calendar utilisation, and greater operational efficiency. The new funding will be used to expand the engineering team, strengthen the senior sales function, and scale deployments across additional dental practices in Ireland and the UK.

Cloover’s billion-dollar round headlines a fintech-heavy month led by GermanyClick to read the rest of the news.

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Soundtrack Technologies has acquired Tunify, a B2B music provider serving the Belgian and Netherlands markets, and Ambie, a UK-based background music service dedicated to hospitality, with global clients including Rocco Forte, Hyatt Hotels, D&D London, and Hilton.  Soundtrack, founded in Stockholm in 2013 as a joint venture with Spotify, is active in 75 countries with a major presence in North America. The Soundtrack music library is continually growing (currently featuring over 125 million tracks), and has over 100,000 subscribers and thousands of direct licensing deals.  With the Tunify and Ambie teams joining Soundtrack, the acquisitions mean that Soundtrack now has commercial and operational teams established across the UK and the Benelux region. It’s part of a broader strategy to consolidate the fragmented international music-for-business market. Soundtrack provides the global infrastructure for rights management and streaming reliability, while the incorporation of Tunify and Ambie (both of which will rebrand to Soundtrack) ensures that regional businesses continue to receive the hyper-localised curation and service they value.  According to Soundtrack founder and CEO Ola Sars:  “Music is a universal language, but business is local. By welcoming Ambie and Tunify to Soundtrack, we aren't just acquiring customer bases; we are investing in the specific cultural and musical nuances of several markets. We are thrilled to bring their expertise into the Soundtrack family: it’s a strategy of local focus and global scale.”

MyC, a software platform dedicated to managing employee health in industrial, multi-site, and high-risk environments, announces a €10 million funding round led by Hi Inov. and including IXO and existing investors, Elaia and OSS Ventures- In many high-risk sectors, such as energy, industry,  maritime, defense or specialised medical services, employee health management still largely relies on fragmented tools that are poorly suited to multi-site and international environments.  MyC addresses these challenges by providing an operational response tailored to such contexts. Its platform covers both occupational health and first-line medical care, while ensuring a high level of security and compliance with international standards. It improves  operational efficiency through process automation, including pharmaceutical management, medical records management with specialist consultations, and regulatory  reporting. Designed to operate in complex conditions, including limited connectivity, the platform enables rapid, large-scale deployments.  Founded in 2020 by Dr Laurent Bonnardot, an ENT physician and emergency doctor with extensive experience in isolated and complex environments, and Benjamin Crevant, an entrepreneur from the industrial sector, MyC develops a cloud-based platform that centralises and secures employees’ medical data.  According to Dr Laurent Bonnardot, co-founder of MyC: “For more than twenty years, from industrial sites to offshore platforms, I managed employee health using fragmented systems. Even the world’s largest organisations lacked truly fit-for-purpose tools. MyC was born out of this frustration: providing international  companies with a single platform capable of covering all their needs, from on-site medical  follow-up to multi-country regulatory compliance, where traditional solutions fall short." MyC addresses a structural challenge for many organisations: gaining access to a reliable,  secure and actionable view of employee health in complex, highly regulated environments,”  says Valérie Gombart, co-founder and Managing Director of Hi inov. “The platform combines strong domain expertise rooted in medical field experience with a robust SaaS technology designed for international deployment. This investment fully aligns with our  strategy to support European B2B companies delivering tangible operational value to  essential industries.”  With this funding round, MyC plans to strengthen its product roadmap and scale its sales and marketing teams to support broader adoption among international enterprise clients. 

A London-based startup that automates R&D tax credits for tech companies has emerged out of stealth, with $1m in pre-seed funding, including backing from Andreessen Horowitz's (a16z’s) accelerator. TaxNova has raised funding from a16z’s accelerator, a16z speedrun, early-stage angel fund, s16vc, accelerator Karaoke Club, and more than 20 CTO and CFO operators and investors from Revolut, digital whiteboard maker Miro, and other tech firms.  TaxNova has also entered into a16z’s accelerator programme.   R&D tax credits are government incentives that lower a company’s tax bill. Companies in the UK claimed £7.6 billion in R&D tax relief in 2023-24, figures show. TaxNova says the existing process for claiming R&D tax credits is long-winded, saying companies must gather documented qualified research expenses and supporting records to apply, which often requires engineering teams to reconstruct months of work from memory.   It says that most rely on inefficient processes, running an increasing risk of audit from tax authorities and wasting engineering time. It also says that tech companies are missing out on billions of pounds of unclaimed tax credits. TaxNova says its solution can speed up the claims process from months to weeks. Its solution is to connect directly to the tools engineers already use, including GitHub, Jira, Linear, Slack, and Notion, to automatically pull out the qualifying R&D work.    The platform leverages AI to identify projects, calculate eligible costs, and produce audit-ready documentation without pulling engineers away from shipping.   It says that its tech creates an audit trail linking every claim back to source documentation. It works alongside existing tax advisers rather than replacing them and has concluded a partnership pilot with a top-5 R&D tax advisory firm, it says. The startup was founded by George Nichkov, CEO, a former consultant, and computer engineer, Marya Malykh, CTO. Nichkov said: “TaxNova AI-powered platform extracts data from your existing systems to maximise R&D tax claims without wasting engineers’ time. 75 per cent of time is lost on data collection and we’re solving this bottleneck."

Swedish VC Kinnevik has written down the value of its stake in Swedish green steel startup Stegra by half, citing the higher anticipated costs of a plant it’s building as it looks to become a major player in Europe’s green industrial transition. Kinnevik’s latest financial report reveals it has written down the value of its stake in Stegra by 49 per cent to 649 million kronor in the fourth quarter from 1.280 billion kronor in the third quarter. Kinnevik holds a three per cent stake in Stegra. Stegra, one of Europe’s highest-profile green industrial projects, is developing fossil-free steel using hydrogen.  The write-down comes as Stegra looks to complete $1.1bn in financing to complete the construction of the plant in northern Sweden, which will generate steel using hydrogen.   Kinnevik said: “Stegra’s funding round is progressing positively but is still ongoing. Recent company developments have been positive, including the signing of a significant multi-year contract with ThyssenKrupp Materials Services, and continue to reinforce our underlying business case.    “However, the current funding round reflects a higher project cost than previously expected and is likely to cause meaningful economic dilution of our existing investment in the company.    “This expected dilution is what drives the write-down of our shareholding in the quarter, which remains sensitive to the successful conclusion and final outcome of the ongoing funding round.”   The Stegra plant had been due to open this year but has now been delayed until 2027.   Stegra has raised €6.5bn from investors, including Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, the Agnelli family, and the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC.   According to the Financial Times, Citigroup wants to stop being a lender to Stegra over concerns about its future.   Stegra is part of Kinnevik's climate tech portfolio, which also includes Agreena and Aira.  Kinnevik CEO Georgi Ganev described the performance of many of its climate tech investments as "unsatisfactory". Photo: Stegra

Denmark’s largest startup organisation, TechBBQ, has received a strategic grant of €2 million (DKK 15 million) from the Danish Industry Foundation (Industriens Fond). Since its establishment in 2013, TechBBQ has become one of Northern Europe’s leading platforms for technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship. The flagship event in Copenhagen now serves as a central meeting point for entrepreneurs, investors, business leaders, and decision-makers from Denmark and abroad. Specifically, the grant has been awarded to the TechBBQ – Denmark’s Tech Lighthouse project, which aims to strengthen Denmark’s international visibility and position in technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship, and to build on the long-standing partnership between the Danish Industry Foundation and TechBBQ. The grant runs from 2026 to 2028 and amounts to DKK 5 million (approximately €670,000) annually. Support from the Danish Industry Foundation during the period 2023–2025 has been a key driver of TechBBQ’s international development.  “Denmark has a strong entrepreneurial environment, but must continue to remain visible and attractive in the international competition for capital, talent, and knowledge. TechBBQ plays an important role in bringing the ecosystem together and creating the international connections that Danish startups need. With this support, we want to help Denmark position itself more clearly as a leading tech and innovation nation,” says Thomas Hofman-Bang, CEO of the Danish Industry Foundation. “The support enables us to build on the results we have already achieved and further develop TechBBQ as a leading international platform that unites the Danish ecosystem around a shared ambition. Above all, the funds are intended to benefit Danish entrepreneurs by giving them better access to international investors, specialised talent, technological knowledge, and global networks,” says Avnit Singh, CEO of TechBBQ. At the same time, the contribution from the Danish Industry Foundation and the collaboration with Bella Centre Copenhagen — TechBBQ’s base since 2025 — mean that TechBBQ now has optimal conditions to bring together global perspectives and create stronger connections across the Danish startup and innovation ecosystem over the next three years.   Over the next three years, the funds will be used to further develop TechBBQ’s role as an international platform and to unite the Danish startup ecosystem, with a particular focus on attracting international investors, experts, and talent to Denmark. The 14th edition of TechBBQ will take place on August 26–27, 2026, at Bella Centre Copenhagen.

London-based Veremark has raised $26 million in Series B funding, led by Gresham House Ventures, with participation from existing investors Samaipata, ACF Investors, and Stage 2 Capital, alongside a multi-million dollar debt facility from Salica Partners. Founded in 2020, Veremark is a global workplace trust company that provides background screening, whistleblowing, and credential verification services through a single platform. Veremark supports organisations by conducting background checks for new hires and rescreening existing employees, helping employers manage compliance, risk, and workplace standards across multiple jurisdictions. As workforces become more global and dynamic, with shorter employment tenures and increased use of AI-generated or misleading candidate information, verification and identity checks have become more complex for hiring teams. In addition to pre-employment screening, Veremark has expanded its offering to support workplace integrity throughout the employment lifecycle. This includes an anonymous whistleblowing and speak-up platform, reporting tools, and a digital career passport, Verepass, which allows individuals to store, manage, and share verified credentials. Built on blockchain technology, Verepass is designed to reduce the need for repeated checks and streamline verification processes for employers. Daniel Callaghan, CEO and co-founder of Veremark, noted that organisations are increasingly adopting continuous approaches to managing employee conduct risk. He added: Veremark provides companies with enhanced confidence in who they are bringing into the business and enables multiple checkpoints to ensure their behaviours remain ethical and appropriate. We help companies reduce hiring risk, improve auditability and help protect workplace integrity beyond the point of hire. Our goal is to make trust something employers can evidence and manage in practice, combining secure global screening with tools that help protect people, surface concerns earlier and strengthen workplace standards. The investment follows a period of continued growth for Veremark, during which the company expanded its capabilities through the acquisition of Agenda Screening Services, a background screening provider offering a broad range of checks, including criminal, employment, sanctions, credit, and bankruptcy screening across more than 180 countries. The new funding will be used to support further product development, investment in AI capabilities, and continued expansion of the company’s global operations.

enclaive, a German cybersecurity company specialising in confidential computing, has raised €4.1 million in seed funding, with the round co-led by Join Capital and the Amadeus APEX Technology Fund and supported by Auriga Cyber Ventures. Rising AI adoption, evolving data protection regulations, and increasingly sophisticated cyber threats have heightened security concerns around cloud computing. While cloud platforms offer scalability, many organisations remain cautious when it comes to migrating sensitive workloads. A particular challenge for security and compliance teams lies in protecting data during active processing. This stage of exposure can limit cloud adoption, especially in sectors such as the public sector, finance, healthcare, critical infrastructure, and AI, where even brief access to sensitive data can pose elevated risk. enclaive addresses this issue by enabling confidential computing across multi-cloud environments. Its platform allows organisations to deploy applications within secure enclaves, with the aim of protecting data throughout processing without requiring changes to existing code, tools, or operational workflows. Andreas Walbrodt, co-founder and CEO of enclaive, explained that the pace of cloud adoption has exceeded the level of trust many organisations have in existing security models, particularly as AI and sensitive workloads are increasingly deployed across multiple cloud environments. With enclaive, businesses don’t need to trust the cloud—their data, microservices, and AI models are shielded from unauthorised access at every moment. We’re making confidential computing accessible for any organisation, regardless of technical expertise, Walbrodt added. The platform is designed to support enterprise workloads such as Kubernetes clusters, virtual machines, and AI applications, using a modular and vendor-agnostic architecture intended to simplify deployment and operational control. The new funding will be used to support commercial growth, further development of the eMCP platform, expansion of engineering and operations teams, and initial international expansion.

Experts in healthcare and financial services have secured £2.5 million in seed funding to fund a startup geared towards providing health and wealth products for the over 60s.   The funding round in UK-based Lateral was led by UK fintech investor Augmentum with support from Triple Point and TinyVC. Lateral, which is a nine-strong team, believes it has spotted a gap in the market, namely the over 14m people who are over 60 in the UK who are in need of healthcare and financial wellness guidance. The funding will be used to support the rollout of Lateral’s first product, the Lateral Health Plan, which combines financial cover for private healthcare, care navigation, and "stay-healthy benefits" in one policy. Lateral says central to the plan is a nurse-led navigation service designed to help users make informed decisions and get the most from their healthcare, including NHS and private options. Run by qualified case-management nurses, the service includes NHS and private care, and offers personalised support to help members understand their diagnosis and explore the best treatment pathways, the startup says. Its founders say one of the plan’s key attractions is that it will focus on simple and transparent pricing. The startup was founded by Laura Ashforth, former managing director, insurtech unicorn Zego, and Steven Mendel, co-founder and ex-CEO of pet health unicorn ManyPets.   Ashforth said: “We’re on a mission to empower over 60s to live well for longer, helping them navigate the complicated world of retirement by offering them an affordable range of products expertly created just for them. “Many people find the health system increasingly hard to navigate as they get older. Lateral is designed to help members understand their options and make informed choices about care, while also embedding evidence-based preventative approaches, such as an annual health check, to support proactive engagement with their health.”   Mendel, executive chair, added: “People are living longer and with more active lives, yet the systems designed to support them haven’t kept up. For far too long, insurers have viewed people over 60 as old, immobile, and liable to injury. "The reality is that many people in their 60s and 70s are fitter and more active than ever. For them, retirement is a chance to do more, not less.” IMAGE: Lateral

SmartyPlants, a UK-based technology startup focused on plant care, has received £190,000 in funding from the British Design Fund (BDF) to support the continued development of its smart sensor system for houseplants. Caring for indoor plants can be challenging due to factors such as inconsistent watering, unsuitable light conditions, and limited visibility into plant health. SmartyPlants aims to address these issues by providing data-driven insights that help users better understand the conditions their plants are experiencing. Founded in 2023 by Ben Beavers, the company develops smart sensors that monitor key environmental and soil factors, including soil moisture, light levels, temperature, humidity, and nutrient availability. Used alongside a companion mobile app, the system delivers real-time information to support more informed plant care decisions across a wide range of indoor plant types. The company’s approach focuses on simplifying everyday plant care by reducing guesswork and providing clearer guidance. By translating sensor data into accessible insights, SmartyPlants seeks to help household plant owners manage their plants more effectively and respond to changes in growing conditions in a timely manner. According to founder Ben Beavers, the company was established to make plant care more straightforward for consumers who want their plants to thrive but lack clear, practical information. The technology is designed to give users greater clarity and confidence in their day-to-day care routines. With the new funding, SmartyPlants plans to further refine its technology and software in line with its goal of making plant care more intuitive and reliable for everyday users.

London-based Polaron, an AI-focused startup developing tools for materials science, has raised $8 million to support the development of an intelligence layer for materials research and development. The funding round was led by Racine2, with participation from Speedinvest, Futurepresent, and a group of angel investors from the industrial AI sector. Despite widespread automation in manufacturing, understanding material behaviour still relies heavily on manual analysis, fragmented tools, and trial-and-error methods. At the core of this challenge is the relationship between processing, structure, and performance, with microstructural features, observable through microscopy, playing a key role in determining material properties and manufacturing outcomes. Polaron addresses this gap by training AI models on microscopy images alongside measured material properties, enabling automated interpretation of microstructure and clearer links between processing decisions and performance outcomes. The platform automates material characterisation, significantly reducing manual analysis time, while also enabling capabilities such as three-dimensional reconstructions from two-dimensional images and the identification of complex microstructural features. Building on these capabilities, Polaron’s design layer applies generative methods to explore process-structure-property relationships. This allows engineers to identify optimal material configurations and the processing conditions required to achieve them, supporting the transition from laboratory research to industrial-scale manufacturing across metals, ceramics, polymers, and composite materials. Commenting on the company’s direction, Isaac Squires, CEO and co-founder of Polaron, said: For 150 years, industry has used machines to shape materials. Now, we are teaching machines to understand them. Polaron is building an intelligence layer powered by the world’s materials data for faster discovery, better design and a new generation of advanced materials. The new capital will be used to expand Polaron’s engineering team, accelerate the rollout of its generative design tools, and support growing demand from customers across the automotive, energy, and other industrial sectors.

UBEES, a company specialising in beekeeping applications for regenerative agriculture, has closed an €8 million Series A funding round, co-led by European funds Starquest and Capagro, with participation from Newtree Impact. The financing will support the company’s efforts to further integrate pollination into agricultural practices and value chains. Although a large share of food crops depends on pollination, it is often not fully incorporated into agronomic planning or operational decision-making. UBEES seeks to address this gap by developing structured pollination programmes designed to support both farmers and brands as part of their production systems. Founded in 2017, the company designs its programmes based on analysis of pollinators and their environments, combining beekeeping expertise, agronomic data, and field-level support. UBEES uses connected beehives equipped with sensors and analytical tools to monitor pollinator health and environmental conditions. The data collected (covering factors such as productivity, crop quality, biodiversity, and carbon footprint) is used to inform recommendations aimed at optimising agricultural practices and assessing ecosystem health. Beyond its technology, UBEES supports clients throughout the full project lifecycle, from programme design to on-the-ground implementation. The company operates in more than fifteen countries across five continents and works with organisations in sectors including agri-food, cosmetics, and energy. Its activities are focused on improving agricultural productivity and production stability, supporting biodiversity preservation, and contributing to income generation for smallholder farmers. According to CEO Louis Delelis-Fanien, the funding represents an important milestone for the company and reflects its progress in positioning pollination as a scalable and economically viable component of agricultural systems, with the potential to support more resilient and productive farming practices. With the new funding, UBEES plans to expand its operations in Latin America and Africa, key regions for crops such as coffee, berries, avocados, and cocoa, while continuing to strengthen its presence in Europe and the United States. The company also intends to further develop the embedded technologies in its connected beehives to enhance pollinator monitoring and data quality, as well as to strengthen its impact measurement capabilities across agronomic, environmental, and economic dimensions. In parallel, UBEES aims to build an international network of trained and supported farmers, creating additional income opportunities through beekeeping and improved access to agronomic data.

London-based Refute, an AI-powered counter-disinformation company, has raised £5 million in seed funding in a round led by Amadeus Capital Partners, with participation from Playfair, Episode 1, Osney Capital, and the National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF). The funding comes amid an evolving threat environment in which malicious actors are increasingly combining automated networks, influencer activity, and AI-driven tools to conduct coordinated disinformation campaigns. These efforts are no longer limited to governments and public institutions, but are increasingly directed at commercial organisations. Since emerging from stealth and closing a pre-seed round in 2024, Refute has developed AI-based capabilities that are now used by both commercial and public-sector clients. Its platform is designed to identify early indicators of online manipulation and to provide near real-time intelligence and response recommendations. The company reports a rise in disinformation activity affecting clients in higher-risk sectors. During recent European elections, including in Romania, Refute identified more than 32,500 inauthentic TikTok videos linked to coordinated influence operations targeting expatriate communities. In the mining sector, its monitoring has indicated that approximately 40 per cent of tracked sites have been subject to activity associated with misleading or inauthentic actors. Such campaigns are intended to influence online discourse and undermine institutional credibility, creating potential risks for organisations, reputations, and market stability. According to Tom Garnett, CEO and co-founder of Refute, Europe is facing an unprecedented level of hybrid warfare: Disinformation is no longer just a peripheral nuisance, but now a reputational threat and strategic weapon targeting nations, institutions and corporations alike. Refute was created to meet this moment. We help governments and commercial organisations strengthen their resilience, protect their operations, and outpace their adversaries to function in an increasingly hostile information environment. Refute plans to use the new funding to further develop its technology and support its efforts to help organisations and democratic institutions address the growing challenges posed by hybrid warfare and disinformation threats.