AI-native internal tool builder Bricks.sh has raised €1.6 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Primo Capital, with participation from Octopus First Cheque Fund, Eden Ventures, Vesper Holding, and Vento. The round also included several angel investors, including Gianluca Cocco of Qomodo, Filippo Conforti of Commerce Layer, and the founding team of online operations automation company Smartness. The company also announced the launch of its public beta today. Bricks.sh provides an automated approach to building internal tools. The platform allows developers to generate an admin panel by connecting their APIs and databases to its AI system. With minimal setup, teams can create a ready-to-use admin panel for both technical and non-technical users, making it easier to interact with internal systems. The platform keeps admin panels synchronised with underlying APIs and databases. When changes occur, such as the addition of new fields, updated tables, or modified endpoints, the interface updates automatically, reducing the time developers spend on both initial development and ongoing maintenance. Dario Di Carlo, CEO and founder of Bricks.sh, said that a significant share of engineering time is spent building internal tools, often forcing teams to compromise between speed and customisation. This trade-off, he noted, frequently results in solutions that slow technical teams and fail to meet business needs. We built Bricks.sh to end this trade-off once and for all. The outcome: speed where developers need it, customisation where operators demand it—and a path out of the months-long grind of building internal tools that don’t drive revenue, but do drain time. The real, positive impact we’re seeing is on user bottom line, Di Carlo added. The company plans to use the new funding to expand its core team and continue developing the product.

Amsterdam-based Klearly, a payments platform for restaurants, bars, and clubs, has raised €12 million in Series A funding, bringing its total capital raised to €20 million. The round was led by PayPal Ventures, with participation from Italian Founders Fund and existing investors including Global PayTech Ventures, Antler Elevate, and Shapers. Although the payments market is highly competitive, many restaurants continue to rely on generic, legacy payment systems that are not specifically designed for hospitality operations, particularly during peak service periods. Klearly addresses this gap by providing a payments platform built for the restaurant industry, with a focus on performance and reliability in high-volume environments. By integrating with existing restaurant POS systems, the platform supports smoother service operations, increased revenue per guest, and improved customer retention. Klearly can be used as a standalone payments system and is compatible with existing hardware, allowing merchants to adopt the platform without replacing their equipment. For operators seeking deeper integration, Klearly also offers a payments layer that connects to current POS systems, enabling faster and more reliable transactions without requiring a new POS solution. Sam Koekoek, CEO of Klearly, said the company’s goal is to develop a leading payments system for restaurants, bars, and clubs across Europe, adding that Klearly is not a generic payments provider and does not require merchants to replace their existing POS systems. Instead, we provide a payment layer purpose-built for hospitality that supports leading operators and leading POS providers. Klearly has achieved significant adoption in the Netherlands, with thousands of merchants processing payments through its platform, and is now expanding its presence in Italy and Belgium in collaboration with restaurant groups and point-of-sale partners. The new funding will support this growth by strengthening local go-to-market capabilities in Italy, broadening the company’s partner network, and continuing investment in product development, POS partnerships, and team expansion across commercial, operations, partnerships, and engineering.

Tallinn-founded startup Flashka, an AI-driven study app for university students, has closed a €1 million Pre-Seed round led by Outlast Fund, a Nordic-Baltic early-stage VC. Additional investors in the round include UCP and Vento Ventures. The app helps university students master complex subjects through automated flashcards, quizzes, and personalised learning tools.  It has also reached 1 million users just one year after launch and has become the #1 on several major App Stores in Italy and Spain. Flashka has seen its recurring revenue triple over the past three months. The platform has gained popularity among university students in Italy and Spain, where it recently debuted at number one on the App Store, and is now rapidly increasing its user base in the DACH region.  ”Students are the reason we build this product. They message us every day with feedback, and they are the ones telling us what actually helps them learn,” said David Djokovic, co-founder and CEO of Flashka.  “For too many students, AI is currently used only as a shortcut. Flashka is a part of the countermovement where a new generation of students uses its features daily as a way to deepen their learning, not avoid it,” said Kristaps Prusis, Founding Partner of Outlast Fund.  The new capital will be used to expand Flashka’s technical team (remote) and accelerate product development. Upcoming features include advanced personalised analytics, social study features, and broader support for different learning modalities.

Corporate watchdog Ekō has today filed a formal complaint with the European Ombudsman, challenging the European Commission and other EU institutions over their systematic promotion of US-based social media platforms on official europa.eu websites, including Elon Musk’s “X”.   The complaint argues that prominent “Follow us” and “Share this page” buttons — accompanied by the logos and direct links of platforms such as X (formerly Twitter), Meta services, and YouTube — amount to active endorsement of third-country commercial platforms whose data-processing practices have repeatedly been found incompatible with EU fundamental rights standards.    Logos of the problematic social media companies even appear on EU publications made expressly for children, including an “I colour in Europe” colouring book available on the europa.eu website.   The complaint highlights that EU institutions already operate a rights-respecting, EU-controlled alternative via Mastodon — which can be accessed anonymously and without exposure to unlawful international data transfers and AI manipulation. Despite this, US-based platforms receive far greater visibility and prominence on EU webpages.   According to Ekō, this practice undermines the EU’s own obligations under the Charter of Fundamental Rights, particularly the rights to privacy and data protection, as well as the principles of good administration and institutional neutrality.   “EU citizens should not be nudged into using invasive third-country platforms which are riddled with scams and illegal content, just to follow or share public information from their own government institutions” said senior campaign manager Eoin Dubsky, who submitted the complaint on behalf of Ekō. “And corporations which repeatedly violate law shouldn’t be rewarded with free advertising on EU publications.”    Ekō also raises specific concerns about children’s rights, noting that social media logos and links appear even on EU publications aimed at children, including educational materials. Conditioning access to public information on the use of platforms that pose documented risks to children’s privacy, safety, and wellbeing is, according to the complaint, incompatible with the EU’s obligations under Article 24 of the Charter.   In addition, the organisation points to indirect economic and promotional effects, including search-engine optimisation advantages conferred by outbound links from the highly authoritative europa.eu domain — links that are not marked with the keyword “nofollow” to prevent search ranking benefits. Ekō has asked the European Ombudsman to investigate whether these practices constitute maladministration and to recommend that EU institutions remove third-country social media links and logos from official EU webpages and ensure that all public communications published on external platforms are also made available on EU-controlled, rights-respecting channels. “It is deeply inconsistent for EU institutions to harshly criticise certain social media corporations on the one hand, while simultaneously promoting their platforms through their logos and links on official EU websites,” Eoin Dubsky added. “Governments shouldn’t encourage citizens to use harmful apps.”  

A UK startup aiming to solve key challenges in life sciences through AI has unveiled the “world’s first AI models for programmable gene insertion”, as it confirms Nvidia has invested in the startup. London-based Basecamp Research harnesses biodiversity to design new medicines. It does this by building its own AI models and today it has unveiled a family of AI models capable of programmable gene insertion, which it says offers a new way to replace faulty genes and reprogramme cells for therapeutic use. It is hoped the models can propel a new generation of treatments for cancer and other inherited diseases. John Finn, chief scientific officer, Basecamp Research, said: “We believe we are at the start of a major expansion of what’s possible for patients with cancer and genetic diseases. By using AI to design the therapeutic enzyme, we hope to accelerate the development of cures for thousands of untreatable diseases, potentially transforming millions of lives.” The models have been released with a paper, co-authored by Nvidia, Microsoft and academia, and are being unveiled at Nvidia's presentation at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in the US. The new AI models cost tens of millions of pounds to produce, according to Basecamp Research CEO and co-founder Glen Gowers, and have been built in collaboration with Nvidia, whose GPUs the models were trained on. Gowers said: “It is very similar to the GPT style of models. In fact, the scale of this model is roughly parallel to GPT4 in terms of the training data it has seen.” The models are trained on Basecamp Research's proprietary genomics dataset, which scientists have gathered from around the world. According to the startup, the models learn the language of DNA and patterns of evolution, allowing the algorithms to design new, programmable therapies for cancer and genetic disease. Gowers said: “In this model, what we test it on is multiple different disease types and multiple different types of medicine.” He added: “We can type in a pathogen that we want to kill and with about 97 to 100 per cent accuracy, it then produces a peptide that, currently kills in the lab, that pathogen.” On being able to build models on a much smaller budget compared to US AI labs, Gowers said: “You want to really carefully pair the amount of data with the right size of model. It’s not just the case that you throw larger and larger amounts of compute at it. “We ourselves built the training dataset and we trained the model, which means we can very, very tightly make sure that we have the optimal combination of both.” On the post-training of the models, it used lab-generated data, which helped keep costs down, Gowers said. The models are not being released as a chatbot, but will be used by the startup in partnership with pharmaceutical companies to design therapeutics. On applications, Gowers pointed to its advantages over CRISPR-based approaches. He said: “What we are showing in this paper is the ability to do large edits, large insertions, which opens the door to tens of thousands of genetic diseases that today wouldn’t be treatable by CRISPR.” Basecamp Research has also confirmed that it has secured investment from Nvidia’s VC arm NVentures, in a pre-Series C round, but did not declare how much the chip giant has invested. Basecamp Research was one of the UK startups named last year by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, which he said Nvidia planned to invest in, along with others such as Revolut and Wayve, as part of a £2bn investment to support the UK AI industry.  Basecamp Research has raised around $85m to date. Its investors include VC firms Singular, True Ventures and Hummingbird Ventures and Paul Polman, the former Unilever CEO.

Finnish protein engineering company Avenue Biosciences has raised  $5.7 million in a Seed extension funding round co-led by Balnord and Tesi, with support from existing investors Voima Ventures, Inventure, University of Helsinki, and Dimerent. The funding aims to help scale its high-throughput protein engineering technology that accelerates the discovery of protein-based therapies and tools for the biotechnology industry. The financing brings Avenue Biosciences’ total funding raised to date since 2024 to $8.7 million. I spoke to Katja Rosti, co-founder and COO, to learn more. Avenue Biosciences is dedicated to accelerating the discovery and development of protein biologics – drugs made using living cells, designed to treat disease by targeting specific pathways in the body in a more complex manner than traditional drugs, but whose complexity also makes them difficult to manufacture at scale. Why modern biologics are so powerful — and so hard to make  Modern biologics have been available for several decades; typical examples include human insulin and antibodies for treating breast cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. However, much life-saving therapy goes unrealised because of production barriers, particularly the cell’s limited ability to correctly fold and secrete complex proteins. In response, Avenue Biosciences has developed what it describes as the first platform to measure and modulate the secretory pathway at scale.  It combines organic biology and machine learning to boost protein production through a proprietary approach grounded in years of scientific research at the University of Helsinki, Finland.  According to Rosti, several factors have held the field back from making this possible earlier.  She contends that although signal peptides — short amino-acid sequences that act as address labels, telling the cell where to send a newly made protein before it is removed from the mature molecule — were identified as early as the 1980s, this knowledge remained largely academic for decades. “These signal peptides operate within the secretory pathway: the cell’s internal machinery that transports proteins from their site of synthesis to their final destination, most often outside the cell, to the cell membrane, or to other organelles.  For therapeutic proteins, this pathway is critical, because this step often determines whether a biologic can be manufactured at all.” When the science was largely there, but lacked a platform For a long time, however, the biological understanding of this system was incomplete, and the tools needed to explore it systematically and at an industrial scale simply did not exist. Beyond technical constraints, Rosti also cites an organisational and cultural dimension. “Biotech development tends to rely on established workflows,” she shared. “Traditionally, companies have worked with a small set of well-characterised “safe” signal peptides, optimising expression through slow, sequential trial and error. The idea of screening thousands of signal peptide variants in parallel, early in development, was neither technically feasible nor part of standard practice.” In other words, until now, as with many breakthroughs, the pieces of the puzzle were already there — the biology, the industrial relevance, and the unmet need, ”but no one had yet assembled them into a scalable, integrated platform. While biology gets smart, the secretory pathway is still a black box. But even with today’s tools, the secretory pathway is still not fully understood, which, according to Rosti, makes it such a powerful frontier for innovation: “As biological insight deepens, new parameters can be mapped and exploited, allowing the technology to evolve in step with scientific discovery.” Novel protein-based biologics under development, for example, in cancer, rare diseases, or immunology, are becoming increasingly targeted and effective, performing several functions with a single therapeutic component: bringing immune cells to the right place, activating them, and recognising disease cells more specifically.  “However, this adds complexity to the protein structure, adding manufacturing cost, or in the worst case, preventing the development completely”, shared Rosti. “Ultimately, the signal peptides are removed from the mature protein, keeping the target essentially the same as the original, making this approach highly useful also in manufacturing biosimilars, the lower-priced versions of existing therapies.” How Avenue Biosciences is cutting years from protein development timelines To scale without slowing down or driving up costs, Avenue Biosciences has built its platform around massively parallel testing. Instead of trying to improve protein secretion one signal peptide at a time, the company screens thousands of variants in a single experiment, dramatically shortening development timelines. “When a customer gives us a target sequence, we combine it with a library of about 5,000 to 6,000 different signal peptides,” says Rosti. “These peptides act as the molecular ‘addresses’ that guide the protein out of the cell and into the culture medium, which is essential for large-scale manufacturing.” This high-throughput approach replaces what is still the industry norm: sequential trial-and-error. “Today, most teams test one signal peptide, tweak the conditions, then try another. It’s a slow, inefficient process,” Rosti explains.  “By screening thousands in parallel, we can identify the best-performing variants in a single experiment, which is where the real time and cost savings come from.” The economic impact is particularly significant for late-stage development, where expression problems can quietly derail years of R&D investment. “There is a lot of hidden cost in projects that fail simply because the protein cannot be produced at sufficient yield,” she says. “In some cases, we can step in late and actually rescue a programme by improving secretion without changing the therapeutic target itself. We’re effectively adding a booster to the molecule.” Where wet-lab reality meets machine learning While there’s plenty of noise around AI in biotech right now, Rosti holds close to her roots as a protein scientist, considering wet-lab biology as fundamental.  “AI-designed proteins may look promising in silico, but that doesn’t guarantee they can be produced in cells,” she shared.  "We use experimental data from large-scale screening to train machine-learning models. This helps us understand patterns, refine libraries, and improve prediction. At the same time, computational insights can guide future experiments. It’s a two-way relationship. A company may design a protein using AI and bring the sequence to us for real-world validation. But biology always has the final say.” From research to business Crucially, Avenue Biosciences has had the home advantage of being the company’s first customer, validating its own platform, meaning the technology was already well validated during the research-to-business phase.  “We came out of stealth at the end of 2024 and quickly gained customer traction,” explained Rosti. “We generated revenue in our first year, which is encouraging. Today’s customers are established CDMOs and pharmaceutical companies," because, according to Rosti, “They already understand the limitations of current secretion strategies and see the need for better solutions.Protein expression challenges vary widely, so collaboration is essential.“ Investors say Avenue is addressing one of the most fundamental and undersolved bottlenecks in biologics manufacturing,  “Avenue’s technology taps into some of the largest opportunities in biotech right now: it significantly lowers the costs of biologics and transforms therapeutic protein manufacturing with the use of AI. Their combination of wet lab and machine learning enables the development of high-quality prediction tools for therapeutic developers, targeting the biggest bottlenecks in the industry. The team has shown incredible execution, with really strong industry names as their clients”, comments Gabriele Poteliunaite, Investor at Balnord. “Many life-altering therapeutic innovations remain out of reach for most of the global population. We see significant growth opportunities for Avenue’s technology, which is deeply rooted in Finnish scientific discovery, and has the potential to become a gold standard in its field”, comments Investment Director Miia Kaye from Tesi. The funding will be used primarily to invest in people and scientific capability.  According to Rosti “We are hiring wet-lab scientists to work on core technology and customer projects. Knowledge building is our priority. Commercial expansion will follow, but the foundation is biological expertise.” Lead image: Avenue Biosciences COO Katja Rosti and CEO TeroPekka Alastalo.Photo: uncredited.

French autonomous defence systems startup Harmattan AI says it has hit a $1.4bn valuation, after raising $200m, in a funding round led by French aerospace group Dassault Aviation, which has inked a strategic partnership with the startup. The startup has previously raised over $40m in funding. It is unclear what its valuation was prior to this latest funding round. French President Emmanuel Macron heralded the partnership and funding announcement, highlighting the startup's elevation to unicorn status. On X, he posted: “An essential partnership with Dassault Aviation and a significant fundraising round for Harmattan AI grant it the status of a new French unicorn! "This is excellent news for our strategic autonomy, for the technological superiority of our armed forces in the field of AI-activated defence drones, as well as for our economy." Founded in 2024, Paris-based Harmattan AI develops autonomous defence systems, including strike and surveillance drones. It has deployed its tech with multiple NATO partners, it says. Proceeds from the Series B will be used to expand Harmattan AI's product offering into new areas and scale industrial manufacturing of its drone interception and electronic warfare platforms, the startup said. The partnership between the aerospace group and startup will support the development of embedded AI capabilities by Harmattan AI within Dassault Aviation's future air combat systems. The startup says it has been awarded several "programs of record" by the UK and French Ministries of Defence. Eric Trappier, chairman and CEO of Dassault Aviation, said: “Dassault Aviation has always placed technological excellence and sovereignty at the heart of its values.  "This partnership with Harmattan AI reflects our commitment to integrating high-value autonomy into the next generation of combat air systems. "By joining forces with a fast-moving and innovative company, we reinforce our ability to deliver the advanced capabilities required by our armed forces in the decades ahead.” Mouad M’Ghari, CEO and co-founder of Harmattan AI, said: “This partnership with Dassault Aviation marks a decisive step in the emergence of a new generation of autonomous defence systems. Dassault Aviation’s trust and leadership accelerate our mission: delivering scalable, sovereign AI capabilities to allied forces. "By combining frontier AI with world-class military aviation expertise, we are shaping the future of collaborative air combat."

The CEO of Locai Labs, Britain’s answer to ChatGPT, James Drayson, says no tech company can guarantee their AI won’t produce explicit images – and accuses Silicon Valley rivals of pretending the problem doesn’t exist. Drayson is the son of former science minister Lord Drayson. He is appearing before MPs and the Human Rights and the Regulation of AI committee on Wednesday as part of their probe into AI regulation and human rights risks. Grok’s new image-editing feature allowed men to manipulate images of women and children - including everyday people and public figures - to remove their clothes and put them in sexualised positions, as well as to create unconsensual images of women being shot and killed. And last year in the US, 14-year-old Sewell Setzer III took his own life after allegedly being manipulated by an AI chatbot.  Parliament’s Human Rights Committee is probing the risks and benefits of AI, how it might impact privacy, and discrimination, and whether current UK laws and policies are sufficient or if new legislation is needed to hold AI companies and developers accountable. UK's AI rival outperforming US tech giants Launched last year by founders James and George Drayson, Locai is the UK’s first rival to ChatGPT, and according to the company, is already outperforming US tech giants such as Claude, DeepSeek, and Gemini on key measures. And with the Grok scandal splashed across headlines and parents worried about what AI might expose their children to next, Drayson says Locai Labs is taking a stand. Unlike Silicon Valley rivals, Locai refuses to roll out image generation until it’s truly safe. It has also banned under-18s from accessing its AI chatbot, and is calling for radical transparency across the industry. Drayson urges action and challenges the government to back British innovation. He asserts that industry needs to wake up. "It’s impossible for any AI company to promise their model can’t be tricked into creating harmful content, including explicit images. These systems are clever, but they’re not foolproof. The public deserves honesty. We’re the only AI company openly working to fix these problems, not pretending they don’t exist. If there’s a risk, we’ll say so – and we’ll show our work." According to Drayson, the UK is relying on foreign AI "that doesn’t share our values". "We need our own models, built for Britain, with British laws and ethics at their core. That’s how we protect our rights and our kids. “We believe the UK can lead the world in responsible, values-driven AI, if we choose to. That means tough regulation, open debate, and a commitment to transparency. “AI is here to stay. The challenge is to make it as safe, fair, and trustworthy as possible, so that its rewards far outweigh its risks.”

Last week, we tracked more than 35 tech funding deals worth over €407 million, and 5 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.Click to read the rest of the news.

FluoSphera, a Swiss biotech startup focused on drug safety and efficacy testing, has raised €1.23 million (CHF1.15 million) in funding. The round was led by Soulmates Ventures and a Swiss business angel, with participation from IndieBio New York. Developing a new drug is a lengthy and costly process, and a large proportion of drug candidates do not succeed in clinical trials. One of the main reasons for these failures is that existing preclinical models often do not accurately predict how compounds will behave in the human body. Traditional two-dimensional cell cultures cannot represent interactions between organs, and animal models do not fully reflect human biology, which can result in key toxicities being overlooked and delays in the development of effective treatments. To address these limitations, FluoSphera has developed a multiplexed in vitro platform designed to predict drug responses in a more human-relevant manner. The company’s patented technology allows multiple human tissue models to be combined in a single experiment, with each tissue tracked independently using proprietary fluorescent coding. This enables researchers to observe interactions between different organs and assess both efficacy and potential side effects earlier in the development process, before proceeding to animal or human testing. Dr. Clélia Bourgoint, CEO and co-founder of FluoSphera, said the company is developing a new generation of preclinical tools aimed at accelerating and lowering the cost of bringing medicines to market, while also improving the overall quality of drug discovery. By improving human relevance and reducing reliance on animal models, we help our partners bring safer, more effective treatments to patients faster. The platform is designed to help drug developers reduce development risk, shorten timelines, and lower overall costs, while also supporting alignment with evolving regulatory frameworks that encourage the validation of non-animal testing methods for preclinical research. With the new funding, FluoSphera plans to expand its business development activities with pharmaceutical companies and contract research organisations, increase integration of its platform into drug development workflows, and further develop its AI-based image analysis capabilities. The company intends to focus on growth in the United States and Europe, with initial expansion into Asian markets underway.

Today, Nico Rosberg announced that Rosberg Ventures  has just closed its $100 million Fund III, describing it on LinkedIn as “oversubscribed, with unprecedented demand, and capped for performance.” Rosberg Ventures was founded by former Formula 1 World Champion Nico Rosberg after his retirement in 2016, transitioning from racing into technology investing. Rosberg Ventures builds its portfolio primarily through a VC fund-of-funds strategy and over the last year has begun making direct co-investments in standout companies. These include ClickHouse, a real-time data analytics platform used by large tech companies and Ivy the developer of a global API for instant bank payments. Beyond the firm’s direct activity, founder Nico Rosberg also has a track record of personal angel and syndicate investments — historically backing startups such as Jack & Jill AI, Clyx, Fyxer AI, and Black Forest Labs, among others, across software, AI, and enterprise sectors.  On LinkedIn, Rosberg cited a few lessons from Formula 1 that have shaped how the firm thinks about building and investing: Take your chances. Sometimes that means going for the 10% probability opportunities — when the upside is truly transformational. How do you commit when failure is more likely than success? Preparation. You map every downside scenario, stress-test it, and work out how to mitigate or even turn those outcomes into acceptable ones. That’s what gives you the confidence to go all in. In sport, progress often comes from attacking — not playing it safe. "Intuitively deciding on which chances to take, and then sometimes succeeding, will compound very powerfully." According to Rosberg: “Venture is a long game. There’s no chequered flag, no single finish line. But crossing $200M+ in AUM is a milestone that gives us the firepower to keep pushing, keep building, and keep racing forward.”

Zepo Intelligence, the company redefining human-centric security, has closed a $15 million seed funding round, with participation from Kibo Ventures, eCAPITAL, and TIN Capital. Traditional cybersecurity approaches, such as isolated training tools and email filtering, are becoming increasingly ineffective as generative AI accelerates the scale and sophistication of social engineering. According to the World Economic Forum, social engineering attacks have risen by 1,200 per cent since the launch of ChatGPT, contributing to more than $1 trillion in losses in 2024. To address this challenge, Zepo provides a workspace security platform that combines human risk management with real-time threat detection. The platform enables organisations to simulate real-world, AI-driven social engineering attacks (including deepfakes, voice calls, cross-platform messages, and personalized phishing) so they can identify human vulnerabilities and strengthen team readiness through real-time metrics and behaviour-based training. This integrated approach supports continuous protection of employees across multiple digital communication channels through a unified and proactive security framework. Antonio Muñoz, CEO and co-founder of Zepo Intelligence, noted that artificial intelligence has transformed social engineering into one of the most serious challenges facing organisations today. As attackers increasingly rely on generative AI and multi-vector personalised attacks, traditional cybersecurity—focused on isolated training tools and email filters—no longer provides sufficient protection. Zepo addresses this gap by advancing agentic social intelligence for workspace security, The funding will support the expansion of Zepo’s team and the global scaling of its proprietary technology. Following the investment, the company is launching a hiring strategy focused on data engineering and artificial intelligence. According to Enrique Holgado, CPTO and co-founder, AI is central to the platform, and Zepo aims to provide an environment for engineers to develop advanced technologies at the intersection of AI and cybersecurity. Supported by fivefold year-over-year revenue growth and adoption by several global enterprises, Zepo plans to expand its workforce and operations across Europe and the United States over the next 18 months. The investment will further advance the company’s efforts to strengthen human risk management on a global scale.

This week, we tracked more than 35 tech funding deals worth over €407 million and 5 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories In addition to this week's top financials, we've also indexed the most important/industry-related news items you need to know about. 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 ?? E-commerce operating startup Swap raises $100M ?? FineHeart raises €35M in Series C first closing and receives €48M in grants ?? With €30M+ Series B, Bactolife prepares shift from R&D to commercial scale ??‍?? Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers ??  UK AI firm Faculty to be acquired by consulting giant Accenture ??  Diginex buys Plan A for €55M: What it means for Europe’s carbon accounting scene? ?? BENTELER acquires ioki to expand autonomous mobility in Europe  ?? Taskbase acquires Micromate redefine corporate learning

Today, CES exhibitors and attendees ready themselves for a final draft of traversing booths, dodging bright lights and choosing the most coveted swag (always say NO to the USB sticks, folks).  Meanwhile, Europe’s startups are going to the last mile, showcasing innovative tech in the hope of catching the eye of investors, customers, retailers, and ecosystem partners. If you’re at the show today, here are some more can’t-miss startups:  Chimera Tech (Italy) Chimera Tech brings together AI, engineering, design and strategic thinking to build practical technology solutions for real-world problems. The most interesting is SmartSailor, an AI + IoT platform for smarter boating.  SmartSailor links data from sensors and devices on board — such as batteries, bilge pumps, weather instruments, cameras and navigation instruments — into a unified view. This lets owners see the status of key systems both locally and remotely, even when they’re not on the boat. The platform can detect anomalies and unexpected events — for example, low battery levels, rising bilge water, anchor drift or critical weather changes — and send alerts to the owner’s phone. It tracks energy consumption and onboard performance, turning raw sensor data into clear, actionable information.  Owners can analyse how systems are performing over time and make decisions about power use or maintenance. Further, depending on the hardware installed, users can remotely activate systems — such as lights, pumps or refrigeration — directly from a cloud dashboard.  Coroflow (Ireland) Image: Coro breastfeeding monitoring device. Coroflo has developed Coro, a device designed to help breastfeeding parents accurately measure how much breast milk their baby is getting in real time. It’s intended for use when someone wants more detailed information than traditional signs (like weight gain, wet nappies or feeding cues) can provide.  Coro looks like a nipple shield — a soft silicone shield some parents already use during breastfeeding — but it has a tiny built-in sensor that measures milk flow and volume as the baby feeds.  A corresponding app displays real-time feed information such as how much milk flowed, how quickly, and for how long.  Factorial Robotics (Ukraine) Factorial Robotics has developed Shapid,  a family of autonomous warehouse robots that move goods independently around warehouses, factories, and distribution centres guided by sensors and software. Using onboard sensors such as lidar and QR-code guidance, the robots navigate warehouse floors independently and operate as a goods-to-person system, bringing pallets, parts, or items directly to workers instead of requiring staff to walk long distances to retrieve inventory. Each unit can carry loads of up to around 600 kg and operate for extended periods, while 360-degree sensors support obstacle detection and safe navigation.  Shapid robots communicate wirelessly with each other and a central fleet management system, which coordinates tasks and routes across multiple units. The platform is modular, allowing hardware to be reconfigured or upgraded for different warehouse tasks, and it integrates with existing warehouse software for tracking, routing, and scheduling. Willo (Finland) Willo is building truly wireless power delivery systems — a wireless power technology that aims to replace traditional power cables with over-the-air energy transmission. Inspired by Nikola Tesla’s early ideas about wireless electricity, the startup aims to power a wide range of sectors, including consumer electronics, industrial automation and robotics, smart buildings, healthcare devices, logistics and IoT sensor networks.  Willo’s core tech enables power to be transmitted through the air in all directions — similar to how Wi-Fi transmits data — but with energy instead of signals, allowing devices to receive power without physical cables or strict alignment constraints. Crucial to real-world applicability, Willo’s system is designed to deliver uninterrupted omnidirectional power — meaning multiple devices can be powered simultaneously without needing to be pointed directly at a transmitter, unlike traditional power cables.  GYM 3000 (Croatia) Image: GYM 3000 smart towel. Bringing the quantified self up a notch, GYM 3000 has developed the FitButlr Smart Fitness Towel, a fitness towel embedded with NFC (near-field communication) technology.   It aims to combine comfort, hygiene, and a digital identity in one product.  The towel is cut to fit gym machine seats and has a dual-zone design: one side is for your body and the other is for gym equipment. Each towel has tap-to-connect technology (NFC). You can tap it with your phone to claim it, name it, and link it to your profile, making it personally identifiable.  While let’s face it, the towel is only a “nice-to-have” for serious gym users, the longer-term plan is for it to function as a digital key or interaction device, replacing traditional gym cards or keys, and to connect with an app that tracks workouts. The company is also developing biosensor modules designed to analyse sweat and translate that data into practical training insights. Yneuro (France) Yneuro is redefining digital identity by leveraging unique brainwave patterns — essentially turning your brain’s electrical activity into a biometric key with Neuro ID.  It is developing a device that uses EEG (electroencephalography) sensors to identify a person. EEG sensors capture the brain’s electrical activity through wearable headsets or ear-worn devices, producing raw neural signals. Yneuro’s platform then applies AI and machine-learning models to this data to identify a unique neural signature. That signature is transformed into a cryptographically secure authentication key — effectively replacing traditional passwords with one generated directly from a person’s brain activity. The neural signal is unique and non-duplicable and harder to spoof than fingerprints or facial recognition. Potential use cases include: Secure login to devices and services, Identity verification for financial and government systems, Wearables and future AR/VR human-computer interactions. XIVIX (Belgium) Image: XIVIX, Will robotics make going to the dentist better?  XIVIX is developing an end-to-end digital and robotic workflow for dental restorative care that uses advanced imaging, AI planning, precision manufacturing, and clinician-supervised robotics to improve how crowns, veneers, and other prosthetics are delivered.  3D scanning is used to make a digital twin of your teeth and mouth. Ai then designs a precise fitting crown in advance so it's ready before you even fit in the chair.  During the visit, a six-axis robotic arm, equipped with force sensing and operated under continuous human supervision, helps prepare the tooth and place the pre-made crown with very high accuracy, adjusting in real time to tiny movements, removing the need for jaw clamping or rigid head immobilisation.  The result is that many crowns or bridges can be completed in a single appointment instead of multiple visits, and are more likely to fit the first time with less drilling, fewer adjustments, and less time in the chair.Lead image: Factorial Group's Shapid AGV.