Earlybird and AVP are pleased to welcome Airbus Defence and Space as the anchor investor in E2D, the €500 million dual-use and defence technology growth fund the two firms launched last month. The fund is also announcing its first investment in French-headquartered Alta Ares, a company developing AI-powered hardware and agnostic software for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) and counter-unmanned aerial systems (UAS) missions. This follows a recently signed MOU between Airbus Defence and Space and Alta Ares to co-develop and integrate next-generation European counter-drone solutions into Airbus' battle management suite. E2D is a new dual-use and defence technology growth fund jointly owned and advised by AVP and Earlybird with a target size of €500 million. It was established to back the next generation of European technology champions across space, air, land, maritime and subsurface domains, targeting around 20 companies at an average ticket size of approximately €25 million. Providing capital at scale, it funds the next wave of technological innovation created by European growth-stage companies, fosters new technology adoption across the continent’s armed forces and strategic industries, and thus supports European sovereignty and economic growth.  Airbus Defence and Space's commitment as anchor LP underscores the growing conviction among European industrial and defence leaders that dual-use innovation is essential to closing capability gaps and reinforcing continental sovereignty.  "Airbus's Defence and Space's commitment as anchor LP brings E2D closer to the operators and industrial primes our portfolio companies need to scale. Alta Ares is exactly the kind of business we set out to support: agile, mission-focused, and already delivering for European armed forces," said Roland Manger, Co-Founder of Earlybird.  “Welcoming Airbus Defence and Space as anchor LP is a strong vote of confidence in E2D's mission, and a clear signal that Europe's industrial leaders are ready to back the growth-stage companies that will close our capability gaps. Alta Ares's rapid progress from the battlefield to the boardroom is precisely the kind of European deep tech story we want to invest in,” added Benoit Fosseprez, General Partner at AVP.

Humanoid, a UK-based AI and robotics company building industrial humanoid robots, today announced a $152 million Series A financing at a $1.35 billion post-money valuation.  This funding brings the total amount raised to date to $270 million.   The round was led by Prime Movers Lab, with participation from Schaeffler, Bosch, Fubon Financial Holding Venture Capital, and Aglaé Ventures.  The valuation reflects both Humanoid's speed of execution and growing market confidence that humanoid robots are becoming commercially viable. With its wheeled robots, Humanoid aims to address global labor shortages across manufacturing, logistics and other critical sectors, solving real operational problems for its customers.  The company's vertically integrated approach combines proprietary robotics hardware with its own AI brain, KinetIQ, which enables robots to understand, reason, and execute complex physical tasks in real industrial environments.  Humanoid has become one of the fastest-growing companies in the industry and secured major partnerships with Fortune 500 companies, including SAP, NVIDIA, Bosch, and Siemens.  The company recently signed the industry's largest publicly announced commercial agreement with Schaeffler for the large-scale deployment of thousands of humanoid robots in manufacturing environments. According to  Artem Sokolov, Founder and CEO of Humanoid: “In just two years, we've gone from an idea to becoming Europe's first pure-play humanoid robotics unicorn, partnered with some of the world's leading industrial companies and built one of the strongest pipelines in the industry. What we've accomplished in such a short time would typically take a decade. None of this would have been possible without an extraordinary team that challenges every single day what people believe is possible. This funding gives us the resources to move even faster and to turn humanoid robots from breakthrough technology into everyday industrial tools." ”Humanoid robotics will be one of the defining technologies of the next decade, reshaping how commercial and industrial work gets done. We expect the field to consolidate around a handful of category leaders across the US, Europe, and China. Humanoid AI will be one of a small cadre of robotics companies that will define humanoid robotics in Europe and beyond," said Zia Huque, General Partner at Prime Movers Lab. "Humanoid has demonstrated exceptional execution in a remarkably short period of time, transforming breakthrough AI and robotics technology into real industrial deployments. We are excited to support the company's next stage of growth as a long-term strategic partner and look forward to contributing to its global expansion,” Fubon Financial Holding Venture Capital said.  The new capital will fund Humanoid's next phase of growth, strengthening its technology leadership and accelerating its commercial deployments and business expansion. The company will focus on: Development and launch of its next-generation humanoid robotics platform; Long-term commercial deployments at customer facilities across logistics, manufacturing, retail, and other sectors, beginning with the roll-out of Beta version robots in Q4 2026; Start of mass manufacturing of wheel-based humanoid robots; AI and software development, including Humanoid's proprietary AI brain KinetIQ, on our way toward a general-purpose robot for industrial applications.

A London-based startup which is using AI to predict engineering and construction projects before they become live has raised a $3.5 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz Speedrun. Called Cascade, the startup is founded by Hannia Zia and Joana Ferreira, two former Google operators who met at UnlikelyAI, the startup founded by the co-creator of Amazon Alexa, William Tunstall-Pedoe. Ada Ventures, Blitzscaling Ventures, Indico Capital, shuckerVC, G2C Ventures and Snowball VC also invested in the round. The startup, which is also based in New York, is leveraging AI to help architecture, construction and engineering firms win projects early, it says, reducing the reliance on manual processes. It says its tech can predict projects before they become public, reading signals like bond filings, budget announcements, permits, capital plans, property transactions, earnings transcripts, budget announcements and meeting minutes. It claims to have surfaced over $10bn in project opportunities for its clients, including major players who build for the likes of JFK and LaGuardia airports. It says it will use the funding to "deepen its network" and speed up adoption of its tech. Zia says: "Every firm we work with can point to a project they should have won but never even had a chance to see. Cascade is built around the bottom line: find the right work early, understand where you have a real advantage, and turn that into revenue delivered.”

Ukrainian defence tech investment platform Resist.UA has announced the launch of Resist 2.0, a new European fund designed to connect international capital with Ukraine’s rapidly growing defence and dual-use technology sector and support the scaling of battlefield-proven technologies.  The fund targets up to €50 million in capital commitments. Check out our earlier interview with Resist.UA. The new fund is being established in Estonia as a European investment platform focused on working with qualified international investors.  Founded in 2023, Resist.UA operates at the intersection of international capital, military expertise, and battlefield-tested innovation. Their first fund was backed by Ukrainian capital and focused on early-stage miltech companies at the pre-seed and seed stages. The fund supported teams at the earliest stages, combining investment with hands-on operational involvement to help transform prototypes into scalable businesses. Resist.UA operates through a hybrid model combining venture capital and private equity approaches, with a strong focus on long-term company growth and manufacturing capacity development. One of the platform’s core principles remains its reinvestment-first approach, where returns are primarily directed toward further scaling companies and strengthening the broader ecosystem. Through its first fund, Resist.UA built a portfolio valued at over $10 million, reviewed more than 600 projects and engaged with over 100 Ukrainian defence tech teams.   Publicly known portfolio companies include Farsight Vision and M-FLY, while a significant portion of the portfolio remains undisclosed for security reasons. Through these investments, it aims to support the long-term growth of Ukraine’s emerging defence technology industry by backing Ukrainian and European companies with Ukrainian roots, developing technologies shaped by real frontline requirements and validated in combat. Unlike traditional defence investment vehicles focused primarily on products, Resist.UA places a strong emphasis on teams and founders capable of building globally competitive technology companies under extreme conditions. The fund’s team brings together expertise in international finance, legal structuring, investments, and talent management. Among the platform’s founders is Roman Sulzhyk, who has more than 20 years of experience in international capital markets, including previous roles at J.P. Morgan and Deutsche Bank in New York and London According to Roman Sulzhyk, Founding Partner of Resist.UA,  over the past two years, Ukrainian defence tech companies have attracted more than $500 million in private investment, reflecting growing international interest in the sector and its long-term potential.  “And we see Ukrainian defence tech not only as a wartime necessity, but as an emerging industry being built in real time under the most challenging conditions.  Ukraine has exceptional human capital – engineers, entrepreneurs, and teams capable of creating world-class products. Our goal is to help these companies scale and to make Ukraine attractive for international investment.” Oleksii Komlichenko, Partner of Resist.UA, asserts that the key factor is people.  “Technologies can evolve, products can pivot, but strong teams are what ultimately build scalable companies. That is why we pay close attention to founders, their values, their resilience, and their ability to operate in highly complex environments.” Lead image: Roman Sulzhyk & Oleksii Komlichenko at Invest in Bravery (KDTW-2).

Italian cleantech company Circular Materials, which develops technology to recover critical and strategic raw materials from industrial wastewater, has secured €11.8 million in Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE) financing. The round was backed by CDP Venture Capital, the European Innovation Council Fund, EIT RawMaterials, 360 Capital, Corbites and Lumar S.r.l. Founded in 2019, Circular Materials has developed a proprietary process that treats industrial wastewater containing dissolved metals and recovers valuable secondary raw materials for reuse in industrial supply chains. Its Supercritical Water Precipitation (SWaP™) technology is designed to recover more than 99 per cent of dissolved metals from complex wastewater streams while reducing the generation of hazardous sludge. As European industries face growing demand for critical raw materials and more resilient supply chains, the company's technology aims to transform industrial wastewater into a domestic source of valuable materials. Marco Bersani, CEO of Circular Materials, said: Wastewater is not simply waste, but a highly valuable and often untapped resource. Our focus remains on building the infrastructure needed to recover valuable materials, support industrial competitiveness, and contribute to more circular supply chains. The funding will support the company's next phase of growth as it moves from industrial validation to broader commercial deployment. The capital will be used to develop its next Circular Materials Hub in Ferrara, strengthen operational capabilities and continue scaling its proprietary SWaP™ technology. The Ferrara facility is expected to significantly expand treatment capacity and serve as the foundation for future recovery hubs across Europe's industrial regions.

Munich-based deltaVision, a manufacturer of fluidic systems for launch vehicles, satellites, lunar landers and orbital servicing spacecraft, has raised €10.2 million in its first funding round to expand production and accelerate the development of technologies supporting in-orbit refuelling. The round was led by KT Ventures and Valemount Capital, with participation from Futury Capital, private industrial family offices and additional investors through a newly established investment vehicle. Founded in 2022, deltaVision develops valves, pumps, pressure regulators and other fluidic systems that control propellants, pressurants and other fluids used in spacecraft and launchers. As demand for these components continues to outpace supply, the company is scaling production with manufacturing processes designed to improve reliability and reduce lead times. The company serves more than 60 customers across four continents, ranging from startups to established aerospace companies and space agencies. Among its programmes is the European Space Agency's Argonaut lunar lander, for which deltaVision is supplying around 50 products, including closed-loop pressure regulation subsystems. Alongside increasing production capacity to 5,000 valves and other propulsion components annually, deltaVision is advancing a modular technology stack for orbital refuelling. The company is developing fluidic couplers, utility interfaces and integrated refuelling modules designed to enable spacecraft servicing, propellant storage and fluid transfer in orbit. Alex Plebuch, CEO and co-founder of deltaVision, said the company is focused on scaling production to meet growing market demand, while supporting the development of an open and interoperable in-orbit services ecosystem through technologies that enable spacecraft to connect and transfer propellant and other fluids. The funding will support the expansion of manufacturing capacity, further industrialisation of the business and the development of integrated fluidic systems. The company also plans to expand research and production through its newly established French subsidiary and establish valve manufacturing capacity in the United States.

The European Innovation Council (EIC) and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) have announced the winners of this year's European Prize for Women Innovators, recognising female entrepreneurs whose technologies are addressing major challenges across healthcare, space and industrial sustainability. The annual awards celebrate women founders and co-founders from EU Member States and countries associated with Horizon Europe whose innovations are creating positive impact for people and the planet, while increasing the visibility of women entrepreneurs, inspiring the next generation of innovators and highlighting the vital role women are playing in shaping Europe's technology ecosystem. Since 2023, the EIC and EIT have jointly presented the prize, awarding nine winners across three categories: In the EIC Women Innovators category, Katerina Spranger, founder and CEO of Oxford Heartbeat, took first place for developing AI technology that helps clinicians plan safer and more precise treatment of brain aneurysms. The EIC Rising Innovators award, which recognises entrepreneurs under the age of 35, was won by Marta Oliveira, co-founder and COO of ATMOS Space Cargo. Her company is developing reusable space capsules designed to return materials safely from orbit, opening new opportunities for in-space manufacturing and scientific research. The EIT Women Leadership Award went to Ella Frances Cullen, co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Minespider. The Germany-based company uses blockchain and AI to create digital product and battery passports, helping businesses improve supply chain traceability, transparency and regulatory compliance.

Kanishka Narayan has been named as the minister for AI in the new UK prime minister's government, in a role in which he will attend cabinet meetings. Narayan, previously a junior AI and online safety minister, said the move to make the AI minister a cabinet-level role indicated the government's “deep commitment to AI’s importance”. The promotion of the role comes amid a major cabinet reshuffle under new prime minister Andy Burnham. The changes include the department of science, innovation and technology (DSIT) axed as a standalone entity and the departure of high-profile science and tech ministers. Rumours about the possible axing of DSIT led to considerable pushback from the tech community. Speaking on X about his role, Narayan said: "The Prime Minister today asked me to attend cabinet as minister for AI, a sign of his deep commitment to AI’s importance. AI is likely the most significant technology in human history, its impact will dwarf other things.” Other changes see Jonathan Reynolds appointed as secretary of state for business, innovation, science and trade, a department which combines the department of business and trade (DBT) and DSIT. Some of DSIT's responsibilities have also been dispersed to other government departments. Reynolds previously led DBT in 2024 before moving to a different role a year later.   Liz Kendall, who headed up DSIT, has stood down from the role while Peter Kyle, who headed up DBT, has left his role. In her resignation statement, Kendall seemed to warn Burnham about axing DSIT. She said: "The latest ONS figures show that science and technology are the key drivers of economic growth in this country. It is essential that we maintain this momentum in order to create the jobs and businesses of the future and allow all parts of the country to thrive.” She added: “If we are to build a modern Britain for a modern age we must do everything we can to support and nurture our world-leading tech sector.” Lord Patrick Vallance also quit his post as science minister ahead of the cabinet reshuffle. Vallance said: “After nearly a decade in Government I am stepping down as a minister, for personal reasons. It has been a privilege to serve as the chief scientific adviser and, more recently, science minister and minister for nuclear.”

ORiS, a Turin-based deeptech startup developing laser-based wireless power transmission (WPT) systems for space and dual-use applications, has secured €5 million in funding to accelerate the development of its technology. The €4.5 million pre-seed round was led by Earlybird and co-led by Pitchdrive, with participation from Galaxia, Vento and Piemonte Next Fund. ORiS also received a €0.5 million grant through the Piedmont Region's Consolidamento patrimoniale e crescita delle start up innovative programme. Founded by Politecnico di Torino engineers Andrea Villa (CEO), Anna Mauro (CTO), Domenico Edoardo Sfasciamuro (CCO) and Francesco Lopez (COO), ORiS is developing an in-orbit energy distribution grid using laser-based wireless power transmission to provide satellites with additional energy directly in orbit. As satellite capabilities continue to grow, so do their energy requirements. ORiS' technology is designed to address this challenge by enabling on-demand power delivery in orbit. For satellites already in operation, this could increase payload availability, support operations during eclipse periods and extend mission lifetimes as solar panels degrade. For future spacecraft, on-demand energy in orbit could fundamentally reshape mission design, influencing how electrical power systems are sized, payloads are operated and missions are planned. ORiS' vision is to support the disruptive growth of the space economy by reshaping the standard for how satellites are designed and operated. We want to optimize satellites for high performance and profitability. Our first step is to make energy in orbit a commodity, available at any time, just as we are used to here on Earth, said Andrea Villa, CEO and co-founder of ORiS. Alongside its long-term space ambitions, ORiS is validating its laser-based wireless power technology through LOONA, a drone charging platform developed within NATO DIANA's accelerator programme. The company has already demonstrated wireless power transfer to a hovering drone over distances of more than 100 metres, providing an early dual-use validation of its technology. Beyond drones and satellites, ORiS is also exploring lunar applications, including wireless power transmission for surface assets such as rovers. The company has already completed a feasibility study on the concept for Thales Alenia Space. The funding will support the expansion of ORiS' engineering team, accelerate research and development of critical subsystems, enable the company to move into new laboratory and clean-room facilities, develop a flight model for a future satellite-to-satellite wireless power transmission mission, and advance LOONA from a prototype platform towards a commercial dual-use product.

Wind energy is an important part of Europe’s shift to clean power, with €45 billion raised for new wind projects across the region in 2025. But that investment comes with a sustainability challenge: today’s wind turbine blades are made of fibreglass, a material that is difficult to recycle. Around 78 per cent of decommissioned blades end up buried in landfills, raising serious environmental and cost concerns for the industry. To tackle this challenge, Germany's Voodin Blade Technology and three partners have secured a €48.18 million grant from the EU Innovation Fund for the Voodin Blade 1st Factory (VB1F) project. The initiative will scale the production of fully recyclable wind turbine blades made from Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL), replacing conventional composite materials with engineered wood. The consortium comprises project coordinator VMG Wood Invest and VMG Technics from Lithuania, together with Germany's Voodin Blade Technology and Anker-Tec. Voodin Blade Technology has developed a fully automated, mold-free manufacturing process, which can produce wooden wind turbine blades anywhere in the world where clean energy is needed. This approach avoids the limitations of centralised factories and enables blade production with less specialised labour and investment. “Our manufacturing system is designed for fast-scale deployment,” says Tom Siekmann, Co-Founder and CEO of Voodin Blade Technology.  “By enabling local blade production, we can help build stronger, more resilient European supply chains, reduce dependence on overseas manufacturing, and accelerate the deployment of wind energy where it is needed most. Our approach is designed for both scale and flexibility.” A first-of-its-kind factory in Navarre, Spain, will be established to create an all-European sustainable supply chain in line with the European Green Deal, the Net-Zero Industry Act, and REPowerEU. VB1F as the first automated, mold-free wind turbine blade factory in Spain Launched in 2031, the Navarre facility will produce up to 160 sets of blades per year, supporting the manufacture of wind turbines that can collectively generate around 13.5 million MWh of electricity over a decade.  The process relies on advanced automation in a fully electric, mold-free environment, enabling flexible production without retooling for each new blade design. The operation is expected to support about 450 local jobs at full capacity. The technology not only removes supply bottlenecks but also helps meet Europe’s ambitious energy and climate targets. The plant can be licensed and replicated in other regions worldwide. 

Sereact, a provider of physical AI for warehouse robotics, today announced that Zalando, Europe’s leading technology platform for fashion and lifestyle, has joined its ongoing Series B round as a strategic investor. The total Series B funding grows to $116 million. The Series B financing round was originally led by Headline in April 2026, with participation from Bullhound Capital, Daphni, and Felix Capital, as well as returning investors Air Street Capital, Creandum, and Point Nine. Sereact builds physical AI for warehouses and manufacturing. Its Cortex brain spans single-arm picking cells, dual-arm return stations, humanoid robots, and Sereact Lens, a 3D perception system for inventory and quality control.  Founded in 2021, headquartered in Stuttgart. Customers include Daimler Truck, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, MS Direct, Ikea, Active Ants, DeltiLog, Rohlik Group, and Austrian Post. With Zalando's participation, Sereact has now raised over $145 million to date. Founded in Berlin in 2008, e-commerce fashion and lifestyle platform Zalando connected 62 million active customers with more than 7,000 brands across 29 markets, with operations built on a unique AI-powered data and infrastructure platform.  By joining as a strategic investor, Zalando recognises the potential of Sereact's Cortex technology and its role in the future of fulfilment automation.  According to Gulde, as often happens after a successful financing round, many investors reached out. Upon speaking with Zalando, they recognised a major strategic opportunity, particularly in packing and returns handling.  For an e-commerce company like Zalando, efficiently processing both outbound orders and returns is critical for customer satisfaction.  Germany, for example, has one of the highest rates of fashion over-shipping, with items eventually returned because customers often order multiple sizes or styles before deciding what to keep. According to Zalando, around 50 per cent of items ordered are returned. Returns are a huge operational challenge in ecommerce because items coming back from customers have to be unpacked, inspected, folded and processed, and today that's still largely manual work. Further, explained Gulde, “in Europe, retailers generally can't simply destroy returned goods, so everything has to be handled efficiently.“ Sereact has developed a dual-arm robotic system that can open boxes, remove items, fold garments and process returns automatically.  “We're currently the only company offering this level of automation,” explained Gulde. That made the opportunity very compelling for Zalando.  “They saw a strong fit for their operations, particularly because finding enough labour for these tasks is increasingly difficult. Demographic trends mean pressure on supply chains will only increase. Automation is really the only long-term solution, especially in Central Europe. We're delighted that Zalando is now a strategic investor.  That's a strong signal to the market: companies that focus on operational excellence believe in our technologies.“ As a strategic investor, Zalando is committed to supporting Sereact's growth and development.  Masood Choudhry, SVP Fulfilment, Zalando, shared:    “This strategic investment underscores Zalando’s commitment to supporting European technology companies, driving industry innovation, and shaping the standards of modern e-commerce.” Why warehouse robotics is finally scaling While robotics and automation have been instrumental to Industry 4.0 innovation over decades, many startups have languished with pilots – even successful ones – that failed to commercialise.  According to Gulde, the biggest difference now is that customers are now expanding deployments. “Ultimately, robotics has to deliver measurable value through cost savings and operational improvements. The breakthrough came from better AI models. After the transformer architecture emerged and ChatGPT demonstrated what was possible, we built what we called PickGPT in early 2023 — the first commercially available vision-language-action model. These models dramatically improved the ability to translate what a robot sees and senses into physical actions. Since then we've continued improving the models, culminating in Cortex 2.5. But as important as the models themselves is the data. Frontier research matters, but collecting real-world data matters even more.” The data flywheel behind Cortex Sereact’s technology is already demonstrating significant market impact, with over 200 systems currently live across Europe and more than one billion real production picks successfully completed on the Cortex platform.Cortex acts as a universal AI operating system that can run across multiple hardware forms —  from single-arm picking cells and dual-arm returns stations to humanoid robots. Sereact’s intelligence level has created a data flywheel by deploying robots with real customers, so every robot contributes valuable real-world data back into its central robotics brain, Cortex. Gulde explained:  “Large language models had a huge advantage because they had the internet as a training dataset. Physical AI doesn't have that luxury. We've now collected more than one billion picks. Every successful pick, every edge case and every new environment strengthens the model.” While many robotics companies rely heavily on simulation or laboratory environments, he believes robots need to learn in the environments where they'll actually operate. “That's why we deliberately started with a relatively simple task: single-arm warehouse picking. After deploying more than 200 robots and collecting hundreds of millions of picks, we expanded into increasingly complex use cases. Rather than trying to solve everything at once, we move from one use case to the next, allowing the model to generalise gradually. Our long-term vision is a general robotics brain that can operate across many different tasks and many different robot form factors.” Regarding the cost of robotics versus workers, Sereact offers customers a price guarantee based on the per-return cost.  In most regions, Sereact-embedded robotics is around 30 per cent more cost-effective than manual processing. From reactive robots to robots that plan ahead The enormous dataset Sereact has accumulated is also enabling the next generation of its robotics brain. As with the rest of the Series B, the additional capital will fund the scaling of Cortex 2.0, the next generation of Sereact's robotic brain, and further international expansion.The upcoming Cortex 2.0 model shifts robotic automation from a "try-and-see" to a "plan-and-try" approach by using a learned world model to anticipate physical outcomes, score potential trajectories for risk and efficiency, and plan movements before the robot even acts. Gulde explained:  “Imagine you're unpacking groceries. You have eggs, a bag of chips and a bottle of water. You instinctively know not to put the heavy bottle on top of the eggs because you understand how the physical world works. Humans constantly predict the consequences of their actions." Sereact robots can now do something similar. Before acting, they simulate multiple possible futures internally. They evaluate different action sequences, predict the likely outcomes, rank those possibilities and then choose the sequence with the highest probability of success. Why Sereact isn't betting on humanoid hype During our interview, Gulde showed me an injured foot caused by a walking humanoid robot. He remains more cautious about hyped aspects of robotics, such as legged humanoids, noting that they are expensive, technically fragile, and battery-constrained. “Walking, manipulating objects, balancing and carrying loads simultaneously is technically very challenging.” Further, industrial customers don't actually care what a robot looks like. They want something reliable that works every day for 10–15 years, delivers a strong return on investment and is safe. In terms of household usecases, he admits,“I wouldn't want a 100–150 kilogram humanoid operating around my dog if the software failed and the robot tipped over. That's why our current systems combine dual robotic arms with mobile wheeled platforms. They're safer, proven, can't fall over, have larger batteries and are much more practical.” Also, in Europe, you can't simply deploy legged humanoids commercially yet because they still need to meet the EU's CE marking and machinery safety requirements, and the regulatory framework for humanoid robots is still evolving. Gulde asserts:  “If a serious accident happens anywhere in the industry, it could damage public confidence across the entire robotics sector.” The road to a general robotics brain Sereact opened its first US office in June in Boston. Over the next year, further North American expansion is a major priority for the company.  “It's a huge unified market, and we want to deploy many more robots there,” explained Gulde. While Sereact’s overall ambition remains to build a general robotics brain, Gulde retains a sense of realism by following a milestone-based approach. This year, the company launched a dual-arm returns-handling product and wheeled humanoid systems for retail replenishment and shelf management. “Those products were only possible because of all the data we gathered from earlier deployments. Once we've deployed those systems at scale, the next step is to move into much more contact-rich tasks, such as assembly. I don't think today's models are quite ready for that yet, but with more data they will be.”

ETH spin-off goNEON Agentic Systems has secured €160,000 (CHF150,000) in funding from Venture Kick to accelerate the development of its agentic AI platform for infrastructure planning. The funding comes as infrastructure planning continues to face significant efficiency challenges. The sector still relies on manual engineering workflows, disconnected software, and time-intensive analyses. As projects become more complex and budgets tighter, evaluating multiple design alternatives remains a slow and resource-intensive process. goNEON addresses these challenges with an AI-powered platform that automatically generates infrastructure designs based on engineering requirements, local regulations, and real-world constraints. Rather than replacing engineers, the platform supports decision-making by rapidly generating technically feasible planning options, enabling teams to assess and refine projects in a fraction of the time required by traditional methods. By allowing engineers to generate and evaluate infrastructure scenarios in minutes instead of weeks, the platform enables planning teams to explore significantly more design alternatives while maintaining engineering standards and regulatory compliance. The technology has been developed by Raphael Eder (CEO) and Dr Lukas Ballo (CTO), who combine expertise in entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, and urban planning to build AI solutions that improve the way infrastructure projects are planned and delivered. Venture Kick helped us make the leap from research to customers. It pushed us to validate the market early, connected us with an exceptional network of founders and investors, and gave us the momentum to build a global company, said CEO Raphael Eder. The new funding from Venture Kick will help goNEON prioritise pilot projects with the strongest market potential, transform its most repeatable planning workflows into scalable product modules, and validate the use cases that will form the foundation of its broader infrastructure planning platform.

Last week, we tracked more than 60 tech funding deals worth over €2.7 billion and over 10 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe. ? The top three industries that raised the most were artificial intelligence (€1.6 billion), healthtech (€622.6 million), and software (€94.2 million). At the country level, ?? Germany took first place (€1.7 billion), followed by ?? Sweden (€620.5 million) and ?? the UK (€231.9 million). ❗ Be sure to check out the Tech.eu Funding Explorer, free and open to everyone, for deeper insights into funding data, investor activity, company profiles, and market trends. Now, let's get you up to speed on everything that happened last week. Have a great week! Funding deals by amount GERMANY: European defencetech leader Helsing secures $1.8B Series E at $18B valuation SWEDEN: Neko Health raises $700M as demand grows for preventive health scans SWITZERLAND: SWISSto12 raises $70M Series C to scale multi-orbit business GERMANY: Microagi has received $55M in investment UK: Valarian raises $50M in Series A funding UK: Greenjets raises €35M Series A with NATO backing UK: Velocity raises $38M in Series A funding FRANCE: Syntetica raises $30M Series A for circular nylon recycling UK: Risk Ledger raises £24M in Series B funding NETHERLANDS: Monumental secures $32M Series B to accelerate construction automation NETHERLANDS: Raxio raises $30M in extension funding UK: BGF invests £20M in Urban Zoo to drive global growth UK: Applied Computing lands $20M to expand foundation AI for energy NETHERLANDS: Dutch Clean Tech raises €15M after acquiring 25% stake in Guatemalan drinking water firm Agua del Mariscal GERMANY: Expeditions, Hensoldt, Heliad, and existing investors are investing €15M Series A in Project Q UK: Meticulous has raised $15M in a Series A GERMANY: Skalar snaps €12M from Headline to build a tax and accounting firm designed around AI SPAIN: Kintai raises €10M in a Series A round led by Barlon Capital SPAIN: Wenea raises €10M to expand its electric vehicle charging network in Spain UK: ABB, Axpo, DNV, and VERBUND back Gridcog in a $10M round to enhance modelling of critical energy projects NETHERLANDS: Nopan raises €7.2M to date for payment performance platform Nopan NETHERLANDS: Promptwatch raises €6M to expand its end-to-end AI search optimisation platform UK: Silicon Microgravity secures €7.08M to scale its GPS-free sensing and navigation tech FINLAND: Hyperion Robotics secures $7.4M to expand robotic construction FRANCE: ENGO raises €5.1M to advance lightweight smart sports eyewear UK: Prolo raises £4.2M to modernise construction procurement SWEDEN: Float raises €4.5M Series A to bridge Europe's funding gap UK: Cue raises £3.7M for its AI-powered customer service platform GERMANY: TGFS Technology Founders Fund Saxony and SBG – Saxon Investment Company are investing €4M in MAIA AUSTRIA: Sodex Innovations secures €4M to bring real-time intelligence to construction sites UK: Saible raises £2.9M to tackle construction's chronic late-payment crisis DENMARK: Visibuilt raises €3.3M from EIFO and Unconventional Ventures to grow roads from fungi instead of paving them with oil UK: Juno Bio secures $3.8M and opens first sequencing lab dedicated to women's health BELGIUM: Sightera Biosciences closes €3M pre-seed to expand its patient-derived AI drug discovery platform UK: Tyred raises £2.5M in funding TÜRKİYE: Pulpo secured $2.7M in a bridge funding round ITALY: Nous secures €2.3M+ seed funding to scale Koncentra GERMANY: The business angel network Companisto is investing €2.1M in Energyminer GERMANY: NextGO Epi raises €2M pre-seed funding SWEDEN: InfiniNode secures €2M to scale on-chip data movement technology FRANCE: Mio emerges from stealth with €1.9M to build an AI colleague that lives inside Slack SPAIN: BZERO closes a $1.5M seed round to accelerate the production of compostable bioplastics UK: Arq secures $1.4M pre-seed for quantum internet technology FINLAND: Cornea Sense lands €1.1M+ pre-seed to develop non-invasive corneal hydration measurement UK: StratX raises $1.19M to tackle landfill methane with living biocovers ITALY: Doctorsa raises €1M to expand global telemedicine platform for travellers SPAIN: Sensesbit closes a €1M funding round to accelerate its international expansion in Europe and America SPAIN: SoccerSolver closes an €850,000 pre-seed round to boost its AI-powered sports planning platform UK: Edtech Gaia Learning raises £400,000 in equity investment CZECH REPUBLIC: HTG Medical raises €450,000 and secures MDR certification to automate ICU urine monitoring SWEDEN: Liveday raises €270.000 in new funding TÜRKİYE: Kant Labs received a $250,000 investment from Anka Ventures SWITZERLAND: RAROG secures €162,000 to turn everyday devices into life-saving rescue beacons ROMANIA: Deeptech startup QuickLegal wins €75,000 Women TechEU Grant SWITZERLAND: Proptech Nestind secures multi-million dollar seed funding SWITZERLAND: Cleantech Arrhenius secures seed funding GERMANY: All About Accuracy receives seven-figure sum investment GERMANY: Ascléa secures an undisclosed sum investment UKRAINE: Angel One Fund invested in defense startup Vigilant Works SWITZERLAND: CDDS secures seed capital for further development steps SWITZERLAND: valuemize secured a seven-figure sum investment Exits and M&A activity GERMANY: SAP acquires Prior Labs just 18 months after launch in €1B+ deal FRANCE: Omio Group to acquire Rail Europe in bid to create global rail travel powerhouse AUSTRIA: Salzburg-based energytech FlexPowerHub acquired by Norway's Volue GERMANY: Munich-based investment company FairCap is acquiring InterNations GERMANY: The French investment company Ardian is acquiring a majority stake in the Berlin-based startup Pflegia SWITZERLAND: The American company Apryse is acquiring PDF Tools GERMANY: The New York-based software company VisualLogix is acquiring refyne NETHERLANDS: Fourthline to merge with Veridas AUSTRIA: The Linz-based AI company Ubitec is merging with the German provider aicx SWEDEN: Swedish AI startup Plenty Labs acquired by Epidemic Sound shortly after launch GERMANY: The British job service Adzuna is acquiring the insolvent Hamburg-based HR growth company Joblift

Jeff Bezos and the UK government-backed VC fund backing domestic AI startups have invested in a UK startup developing AI systems to discover and design new materials for clean energy and chipmaking in a $450m raise. The $450m Series B funding round in Cambridge-based CuspAI values the startup at $2.6bn, which is a five-fold jump from its valuation in September last year when it raised $100m at a valuation of $520m. In total, the two-year-old startup has now raised more than $670m. CuspAI today has confirmed details of the Series B round, some of which had previously been reported by the media. The round was co-led by US VCs Kleiner Perkins and NEA with “significant participation” from Bezos Expeditions, the Amazon founder's family office. Additional new investors in the round include Glade Brook Capital Partners, Lux Capital, AMDVentures, Tru Arrow Partners, StepStone and the UK’s Sovereign AI Fund, the UK government-backed VC fund backing domestic AI startups. Sovereign AI, which publicly launched this year, invests between £5m and £10m in UK AI startups. Existing investors in CuspAI, including Temasek, Basis Set Ventures, Giant Ventures, Phoenix Court and Northzone, also participated. CuspAI, which counts AI bigwigs Yann LeCun and Geoffrey Hinton as advisers, is using its technology to discover how to develop new physical materials for industries such as clean energy, the semiconductor industry, manufacturing, water treatment, and carbon capture. It works as a kind of search engine, whereby its customers, which include ASML and Meta, indicate the properties they need, whether it be a semiconductor with a particular property or a material that captures carbon dioxide efficiently. CuspAI says it will use the funding to help power its expansion across the US, APAC and Europe, including its new "AI Materials Foundry". It describes the “AI Materials Foundry” as a global network of data, labs, compute and scientific expertise for the design of new materials. Founding partners of the network, which aims to build software that helps researchers develop new materials quicker and cheaper, include Nvidia, Meta, Samsung and Hyundai, along with more than 40 other companies. John Doerr, Doerr Capital, said: "Materials discovery has quietly been a bottleneck behind progress in energy, semiconductors, and climate. What’s remarkable about Cusp is that a single platform is already solving hard problems across industries-from stripping forever chemicals from drinking water to designing next-generation chip materials.”

This week, we tracked more than 55 tech funding deals worth over €2.7 billion and over 10 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. If email is more your thing, you can always subscribe to our newsletter and receive a more robust version of this round-up delivered to your inbox. ❗ Want to explore the data in more detail? The free, open-access Tech.eu Funding Explorer offers deeper insights into funding rounds, investor activity, company profiles and market trends. Either way, let's get you up to speed. ? Notable and big funding rounds ?? European defencetech leader Helsing secures $1.8B Series E at $18B valuation ?? Neko Health raises $700M as demand grows for preventive health scans ?? SWISSto12 raises $70M Series C to scale multi-orbit business ??‍?? Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers ?? Uber to acquire Delivery Hero in €13B deal, creating platform spanning 99 countries ?? SAP acquires Prior Labs just 18 months after launch in €1B+ deal ?? Omio Group to acquire Rail Europe in bid to create global rail travel powerhouse ?? Salzburg-based energytech FlexPowerHub acquired by Norway's Volue ? Interesting moves from investors  ? Acurio Ventures launches €115M fund to unlock liquidity in Europe's VC secondary market ? SuperCharger Ventures launches Fund I to back global edtech and future-of-work startups ?  Norrsken Evolve plants roots in Amsterdam after €62M fund close  ?  British Business Bank backs EQT Life Sciences with €25M commitment ?️ In other (important) news ? Revolut to launch US bank in 2027, says US boss ?  Finland clears Bliq.ai for driverless vehicle operations ? Scaling startups create Europe's most successful founders, Antler finds ?️ Five startups spearhead coalition to put small air quality sensors at the heart of EU clean air policy ? Recommended reads and listens ? Pollen is building the battery-swapping network electric motorcycles have been waiting for ?? Why the best time to invest in Ukraine is now ?  Why TensorX believes Europe's AI race will be decided by who owns the GPUs ? European tech startups to watch  ?? Nous secures €2.3M+ seed funding to scale Koncentra ?? Arq secures $1.4M pre-seed for quantum internet technology ?? Doctorsa raises €1M to expand global telemedicine platform for travellers ?? HTG Medical raises €450,000 and secures MDR certification to automate ICU urine monitoring ?? RAROG secures €162,000 to turn everyday devices into life-saving rescue beacons

Today sees the launch of Clean Tech for Clean Air (CT4CA), a coalition launched in Brussels to support the role of small sensors in Europe's clean air framework under the revised EU Air Quality Directive. Spearheaded by Wiktor Warchałowski, CEO and Co-Founder of Poland's Airly, the coalition also includes France's Ecomesure and Ellona, Spain's Kunak Technologies, and US-based Clarity Movement Co. Together, the five companies specialise in small sensor systems, environmental data and air quality monitoring. CT4CA was created to support the delivery of Europe’s clean air ambitions at a critical moment for EU air quality policy. As Member States prepare to implement the revised Ambient Air Quality Directive, it asserts that public authorities should be equipped with the data, tools and technical expertise needed to better understand local pollution patterns, improve air quality planning and turn information into action. While Europe has made significant progress in reducing air pollution, 95 per cent of urban residents are still exposed to air pollutant concentrations that exceed World Health Organisation (WHO) guideline levels. Air pollution can worsen chronic conditions such as asthma, while also contributing to serious illnesses including ischaemic heart disease and lung cancer, leading to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each year. Emerging evidence also links long-term exposure to air pollution with dementia, with studies suggesting its overall disease burden may exceed that of many other air pollution-related conditions. The coalition contends that as Europe moves from clean air ambition to implementation, public authorities need more local and actionable data to understand where pollution is happening, who is exposed and which measures are working. Fixed monitoring stations remain essential. High-quality small sensor systems can complement them by helping authorities identify pollution hotspots, strengthen monitoring networks and act where people are most exposed.  CT4CA calls for: Formal recognition of high-quality small sensors as a tool to close gaps in air quality monitoring across EU member states. Use of existing European technical specifications to enable sensor deployment today. Greater acceptance of reliable sensor data by public authorities, enabling more targeted and responsive clean air action.

The AI industry has become obsessed with generating images, videos and text. But one London startup is tackling a different challenge: making sense of the enormous personal archives we've already created. I’ll be honest, usually the closest I get to curating my photos is deciding which cat photos to delete from my Google pics to avoid having to pay for storage. And I’m not alone.  According to research by the startup Popsa, people now take an average of 551 photos per month — more than 6,600 per year. Yet 70 per cent of photos are buried and never revisited.  It's an issue Popsa co-founder and CEO Liam Houghton experienced firsthand. He had more than 200,000 photos in his personal library due in part to digitising his childhood archive, including old computer files and printed photographs, and adding locations and timestamps wherever possible.  “I've effectively created a complete photographic record of my life from birth until today. Increasingly, younger generations will have that automatically. That makes photo organisation an even bigger opportunity over the coming years.” This created the inspiration for Popsa. People document their entire lives through their smartphones — not just birthdays and holidays, but everyday moments, receipts, screenshots and everything in between. It creates clutter Popsa uses AI to help people turn photos on their smartphones into personalised printed products. Its platform analyses the people, places, activities and relationships in your photos to organise, remove duplicates and create a curated version of your life story. Today, the app generates around 89,000 smart albums, demonstrating the scale at which these AI systems are already helping people organise their memories. “We’re not a printing company; we’re a memory curation platform” Automation has always been central to Popsa. From day one, its goal wasn't to build another photo editing app, it was to remove as much manual effort as possible from organising and preserving memories. One important decision the company made was to move the AI onto the user's device.  “Unlike cloud-based services that upload and process your photos remotely, our models analyse everything locally.  In most cases, we never see your photos unless you decide to print them,” explained Houghton. Behind the scenes, hundreds of AI models work together to understand what's happening in each image. For example, one model scores photographs for composition, lighting and visual quality. Others identify activities, recognise the people who appear most often in your life, and distinguish them from those who simply happen to be in the background. Taken together, those models allow the system to understand what is likely to be meaningful rather than simply recognising objects within a picture. The company is now moving beyond curation into AI-generated storytelling by developing technology that can automatically create narratives from your photos. The AI converts images into rich descriptive tokens that capture not only what's visible but also relationships among people, locations, activities, and emotions. Houghton explains that, in doing so, AI creates a digital version of writing on the back of a digital photo. Instead of simply recognising "a person standing near a structure", the system understands that you're standing in front of the Eiffel Tower during a holiday in Paris with your family. It can then combine those moments into a coherent story. 12 million captions were generated in the last year, based on analysis of photo data. Scaling with AI, not headcount Today, Popsa operates in over 50 countries. It generated $58 million in revenue last year and expects to reach between $70 million and $80 million this year.  America is now one of the company’s fastest-growing markets and is on course to become its largest. The company stands out for its comparatively low headcount despite its growth. Today, it generates around $1.2 million in revenue per employee, putting it alongside some of the world's most efficient technology companies. “A large part of that comes down to AI,” shared Houghton. “Because we've spent years developing AI for our customers, it was natural to use those same technologies internally. AI now supports operations across virtually every part of the business, allowing our teams to achieve far more without simply working longer hours.” Creating at Global Scale with AI  According to Popsa’s research, 77 per cent of Europeans have made no plans for what happens to their digital photo libraries after they die. Digital memories don’t get passed down through families like traditional photo albums, but Houghton sees a trend of people printing chapters of their lives — annual photo books that build into a lasting personal archive. "That's why we deliberately focus on memory preservation rather than becoming a general photo-printing company. We don't want to print mugs or keyrings. Our goal is to help people tell the story of their lives in a way that can be shared across generations.” Internationalisation has been part of Popsa's DNA from the beginning. Rather than building for one market and localising later, it designed the platform to support multiple countries from day one, including languages, currencies, local holidays, and date formats.  Houghton contends: “It sounds like a small detail, but those things matter when you're creating something as personal as a family photo book or calendar. Because localisation was built into the platform from the start, launching in new markets has become much more efficient. The underlying problem we're solving is universal.” Further, the company creates all of its advertising in-house, and this year will create around 30,000 different video adverts across its international markets.  “AI helps us generate different personas, localise languages through AI dubbing and adapt creative assets much more efficiently than traditional production methods.” Profits before publicity Popsa has remained relatively under the radar despite its scale, which Houghton views as somewhat intentional, explaining: “The technology we've built is incredibly complex. There isn't a single AI model driving Popsa — it's hundreds of different systems working together. We didn't want to reveal too much before those pieces were fully developed. Building this kind of platform also takes time because you first have to create the training data. In the early years, users made many of those decisions manually, which helped us understand what good curation looks like. Those hundreds of thousands of decisions became the foundation for our automation.” This approach has also allowed Popsa to focus on building the business. Its international growth generated the revenue needed to fund increasingly sophisticated R&D without relying heavily on external investment. “Because we've been able to grow without needing additional capital, we've chosen that path. We may raise funding again in the future, but it's valuable to have the flexibility to decide when — and whether — to do so. In today's environment, optionality is incredibly important,” explained Houghton. Popsa has been EBITDA-profitable since 2022, but has continued to increase its annual R&D investment.  Preserving reality in the age of AI I was curious how Popsa was thinking about AI-generated images, which may in the future become part of people’s curated lives.  Houghton predicts that while there will be an explosion of AI-generated content over the next few years, the material Popsa works with is fundamentally different.  “Ironically, I think the more synthetic content fills the internet, the more valuable genuine photographs become. People will increasingly want trusted records of real experiences, whether that's family events, holidays or everyday life. Customers can already upload AI-generated images if they want to, and we wouldn't stop them. But I don't think our role is to become another image-generation platform. Our value lies in helping people preserve and tell the stories behind their real memories.” Rather than competing to create ever more synthetic images, Popsa is betting that the next frontier for AI lies in helping people reconnect with their existing memories. As our camera rolls continue to expand by thousands of photos every year, the challenge is no longer capturing life's moments, it's making sense of them.

SAP has acquired the German-founded frontier AI company Prior Labs for over €1 billion. The transaction, which comes just 18 months after Prior Labs was founded, establishes it as one of Europe’s pre-eminent AI research labs.  Prior Labs pioneered tabular foundation models (TFMs), a category of AI purpose-built for enterprise data. Rather than requiring organisations to train a separate AI model for every dataset, TabPFN uses a single pre-trained foundation model capable of solving prediction tasks such as payment delays, churn, supplier risk and demand forecasting directly from structured enterprise data. Its technology is already helping prevent train failures with Hitachi, improve financial forecasting with TD, and has been applied across hundreds of published research projects, from pancreatic cancer diagnosis to wildfire prediction to next-generation battery materials.  TabPFN-3-Thinking, the company's latest model, is state-of-the-art and enterprise-grade for all prediction tasks.  SAP's investment will fund infrastructure, hiring, and long-term frontier research. Prior Labs will continue under its own brand, leadership, research agenda and customer relationships, publish its research and make its models openly available, with SAP's support. With the help of SAP's enterprise data ecosystem and global scale, the company plans to build the next generation of foundation models for enterprise data. "Eighteen months ago, Prior Labs was a research project,” said Frank Hutter, Co-founder and CEO of Prior Labs. “Today we're beginning our next chapter as an AI lab with the resources to tackle problems we simply couldn't before. Taking tabular foundation models to the next level requires better data environments, deployment surfaces, and long-term research investment, and SAP is uniquely positioned to provide all of these."  The acquisition by SAP enables Prior Labs to pursue multi-year frontier research programmes that would have been out of reach for an 18-month-old company. Access to enterprise data environments and long-term investment will allow the company to pursue more ambitious research across enterprise AI, scientific discovery, causality, relational data and agentic systems, as well as even more ambitious “moonshots” towards solving some of the most important problems of our time, e.g. medical data and material sciences. “Early on, SAP recognized that the greatest untapped opportunity in enterprise AI wasn’t large language models; it was AI built for the structured data that runs the world’s businesses,” said Philipp Herzig, CTO of SAP. “Prior Labs has defined the category of TFMs and has built the world's strongest research team in this category, topping the public benchmarks since day one. Combining their frontier model work with enterprise data and customer reach is how we intend to lead this category globally.”

EQT Life Sciences’ EQT Health Economics 3 Fund (EQT HE3), a multi-stage life sciences and medtech-dedicated fund has received €25 million from the British Business Bank.  EQT Life Sciences backs companies focused on the development of therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics and healthtech. With a 30-year track record, the firm has raised over €3.7 billion across 13 private funds and supported more than 150 companies from early clinical development through to commercialisation. This commitment is the latest in the British Business Bank’s ongoing work to back the UK’s high-potential life sciences companies, which is one of the eight growth sectors of the UK Industrial Strategy. The Bank has an existing relationship with EQT Life Sciences, having co-invested in both Phagenesis’ (2023) $42 million Series D and Cyted Health’s (2025) $44 million Series B funding round. EQT HE3 is targeting commercial stage, de-risked medtech and digital health technologies driving innovation and transforming healthcare delivery. Drew Burdon, Partner at EQT Life Sciences, said: “Over recent years, we have built an excellent relationship with The Bank through co-investments in leading UK health tech companies. The Bank's investment will further contribute to our commitment to tap into the attractive UK health tech ecosystem and grow strong companies together. “ Christine Hockley, Managing Director and Head of Commercial Equity Funds at British Business Bank, said: “ The UK is home to a world-class life sciences sector, but scaling companies in the sector requires specialist investors. By investing in high-quality international funds, we encourage greater investment to flow back into the UK and ensure UK companies benefit from the capital and expertise of leading investors.” Lead image: Magnific.

Sightera Biosciences, a Belgian techbio company using generative AI to develop novel small-molecule therapies, has raised €3 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Entourage, Anacura and QBIC. A spin-off from the University of Antwerp and Antwerp University Hospital (UZA), Sightera is developing an AI-native drug discovery platform focused on oncology and fibrosis. Unlike many AI drug discovery companies that rely on public or generic datasets, Sightera trains its models using proprietary data generated from patient-derived biological samples collected from individuals with advanced, therapy-resistant disease. These samples are used to create preclinical models, including organoids, that closely replicate human disease biology and generate large-scale drug-response datasets. The proprietary datasets underpin Sightera's AI platform, enabling it to design small molecules based on biological responses observed in patient-derived systems rather than chemical properties alone. By placing human disease biology at the centre of the discovery process, the company aims to improve the likelihood that AI-designed drug candidates will translate successfully into clinical development. The funding will support the expansion of Sightera's AI-powered drug discovery platform, accelerate the development of its preclinical pipeline and advance its lead molecular glue oncology programme towards preclinical candidate selection. The company also plans to strengthen strategic partnerships with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies while expanding its research, AI and data science teams.