This week, we tracked more than 65 tech funding deals worth over €1.4 billion and over 5 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe. If email is more your thing, you can always subscribe to our newsletter and receive a more robust version of this round-up delivered to your inbox. Either way, let's get you up to speed. ? Notable and big funding rounds ?? Nscale secures $790M financing to underscore commitment to Norway data centre ??  Recursive Superintelligence emerges from stealth with $650M raise ?? N8N's valuation doubles to $5.2B following SAP strategic investment ??‍?? Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers ?? Glocalzone acquired by MovitOn to expand decentralised logistics network ?? Blackstone acquires Greek market leader Skroutz ??  Superprof acquires its Italian rival ? Interesting moves from investors ?  BioInnovation Institute launches AI Lab with €7M from Danish Industry Foundation ?  New Arāya Sie Fund closes at £7.5m to back female-led startups ?. Ofgem and Innovate UK launch £500m energy fund ?️ In other (important) news ?  Corti launches no-equity accelerator for healthcare AI startups ?  Nordic Compass launches to fast-track Nordic resilience and industrial competitiveness ? Keel unveils fintech infrastructure business after pivot from neobank ? Startup nsave is bringing international banking access to Syrians shut out of the financial system ?  Meet the startup taking on gaming's cheating problem ??  From outsourcing to AI-native delivery: Poland’s software evolution ? European tech startups to watch  ??  Gyver scores €1.4M to help power Europe’s industrial workforce ??  Regulate raises €1.4M seed to bring science-backed breathwork into the workplace ?? DDD Invoices raises €1.31M to simplify global e-invoicing compliance ??  Holmes launches with €1.1M pre-seed for autonomous software testing ?? Minima secured £780,000 in the form of a convertible loan

Today YEP Accelerator announced that it is opening a new office in California and launching an international track for growth-stage Ukrainian startups looking to enter the US market.  The new track is designed for Ukrainian startups that already have a live product, paying customers, and ambitions to scale in the US. Unlike traditional accelerator programs, this program focuses on hands-on market-entry preparation rather than theory. The San Francisco residency includes a five-week immersion into the local startup ecosystem. Founders will live and work together through a coliving and coworking setup designed to help them stay fully focused on growth, fundraising, and networking. Participants get access to major tech events, including San Francisco Tech Week. At a final Demo Day, startups will pitch for access to up to $1.8 million in potential investment from partner venture funds, including u.ventures, ZAS Ventures, Geek Ventures, Angel One Fund, Vesna Capital, Green Flag Ventures, Network VC, Dnipro VC, and Flyer One Ventures. The European startup ecosystem has increasingly focused on building stronger international support networks for founders expanding abroad. It joins initiatives such as the European Startup Embassy, a shared landing pad and community hub for startups and VCs from Central and Eastern Europe expanding into the US, and Entrepreneur First, which has also created The Bridge for startups operating in Silicon Valley. The program is open to startups that: Have a product on the market and paying customers. Operate in B2B SaaS or other scalable business models. Are planning to enter the US market within the next 12 months. Are preparing to raise venture funding in Silicon Valley. Throughout the program, founders will work on: Building a US sales pipeline; Developing a scalable go-to-market strategy; Expanding their network in Silicon Valley; Preparing for meetings with potential customers and investors. The YEP acceleration program is supported by the Ukraine-Moldova American Enterprise Fund, which invests in building a competitive economy and creating strong, sustainable business opportunities across the region. The program is also implemented with support from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development as part of its Star Venture Programme in Ukraine, funded by Switzerland through the EBRD Small Business Impact Fund. YEP’s broader development and acceleration capacity expansion are additionally backed through the same initiative, supported by an international group of fund donors including Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the Taiwan Business–EBRD Technical Cooperation Fund, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Applications are open through May 31.

Finding information is no longer the main challenge, as most companies today have access to more market data than ever before. Identifying the right signals early enough to act on them is another story. That is the gap Bounce Watch aims to address. Founded in 2023 by Cem Otkun (CEO) and Sedat Yusuf Ergunes (CTO), Bounce Watch is a signal-based AI platform for private market intelligence. The platform continuously monitors company activity, detects emerging signals, and generates actionable insights and workflows for users. The idea for the company emerged from the founders’ experience with traditional market intelligence processes after spending significant time manually tracking companies across LinkedIn, news sources, and databases while still working with fragmented or delayed information. That led the founders to realise that by the time information becomes widely visible, the opportunity to act is often already gone. Initially, the founders believed the solution lay in improving access to data. Over time, however, the company shifted its focus toward signal detection, interpretation, and real-time intelligence. So, how does it work? In practice, Bounce Watch focuses on identifying real-time company signals and translating them into prioritised actions. Rather than functioning as a static database, the platform aims to help users detect market developments in real time and respond more quickly based on predefined interests and workflows. The platform provides more than 100 continuously updated data points per company, including funding activity, investors, hiring trends, team growth, web traffic, technology stack, competitors, social signals, domains, and market classifications. Bounce Watch operates continuously in the background, monitoring activity, surfacing signals, and generating tasks and action boards automatically. To maintain data accuracy, the platform combines real-time enrichment, AI-based classification, and continuous monitoring across millions of company sources. Signals are cross-checked across multiple inputs and updated automatically over time. The broader goal is to reduce manual research workflows and help teams make faster, more informed decisions. Bounce Watch is used by investors, corporate venture and M&A teams, sales and partnership departments, consultants, and innovation teams looking to monitor markets, competitors, portfolios, and emerging companies more efficiently. Since its founding, Bounce Watch has evolved from a single product into a three-product ecosystem consisting of its core platform, Signal Tracker, and an API module. Among them, Signal Tracker has become the company’s fastest-growing and most widely adopted offering. So far, the company has reached more than 50 customers across Europe and surpassed 5,000 freemium users within its first year. Bounce Watch also completed a pre-seed funding round at a €2.5 million valuation, which helped support product development, attract early customers, and refine the company’s positioning around real-time intelligence. More recently, the company completed a bridge round with existing investors using a SAFE structure and says it is currently in discussions with strategic investors for its next funding round. Over the next 12 to 24 months, Bounce Watch plans to scale Signal Tracker globally, expand further across European, UK, and US markets, and strengthen its AI capabilities to move beyond signal detection toward automated recommendations and workflow-triggered execution. The goal is to help teams respond faster and make more informed decisions.

Euan Blair’s Multiverse has raised £70m in fresh funding, as it looks to expand across Europe and take a chunk of the enterprise AI training market. The funding round in the edtech, which originally specialised in digital apprenticeships at tech firms, was led by new investor Schroders Capital. Existing investors, including General Catalyst, Lightspeed, D1 Capital Partners, Index Ventures, Bond, and StepStone group also participated. It raised the funding at a $2.1bn valuation, a $400m increase on its last funding round in 2022. Multiverse, founded by Blair, the son of former UK prime minister Tony Blair in 2016, has raised around $570m in total. Multiverse, which has mainly focused on the UK market, said the new funds would be used to expand across Europe, as it looks to offer AI training services and capitalise on enterprise adoption of AI. The edtech has moved into the German market following its acquisition of Berlin-based data and AI training company StackFuel in January this year. It said its goal was to ensure that AI benefits the workforce, rather than displacing it. It said the last year has seen it focus on strategic tie-ups, with the likes of Palantir and Databricks. Blair said: “There are companies who desperately need the benefits AI can bring. There are AI companies. What has been missing is the layer that bridges the two. "This investment marks the moment Multiverse defines that category, and takes it across Europe. Getting outcomes from AI and unlocking productivity is not just a technology problem. It is a people problem. We exist to solve it." Alongside this raise, Multiverse said all employees regardless of seniority, have been offered equity and a long-term stake in the company as a result of the funding round. In the year ending 2025, Multiverse reported widening year-on-year losses from £60.3m to £63.3m and cut staff numbers from 822 to 813. Multiverse today said that for the first time, it had a cash-positive quarter from January to March 2026. Chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “Multiverse is a fantastic example of a British company helping turn that ambition into reality. “This investment will support its expansion across Europe, strengthening a UK firm that is competing globally and equipping people with the skills to make AI work in practice.”

In 2019, the Portugal-based startup Anybrain filed a patent application claiming its AI could detect game cheating solely from player inputs such as keyboards, controllers, and joysticks. It was met with disbelief. At the time, anti-cheat systems relied heavily on invasive software monitoring. Behavioural input detection was seen as too abstract, too ambitious and too difficult to prove. Just a few years later, Anybrain, based in Braga in northern Portugal, has secured a European patent granted after international filing and is working with AAA studios on some of the world's largest titles. What began as a research thesis has become a commercially deployed, game-agnostic infrastructure across PC, console, and mobile gaming. I spoke to André Pimenta Ribeiro, Anybrain’s CEO, to learn all about it.  Anybrain is a platform designed to protect gamers from toxic behaviours such as fraud, hacking, and cheating in multiplayer games and esports events. It aims to ensure everyone can have a safe, secure, and fair environment to play games by building a strong gaming defence. From AI fatigue detection to esports fraud prevention Ribeiro has a background in computer science, completing both a master’s and a PhD focused on artificial intelligence. During his  PhD, he worked on an algorithm to detect mental fatigue based on how people use a mouse and keyboard.  “The idea was to understand when someone becomes tired while using a computer, since interacting with machines requires a lot of cognitive effort — visual processing, hand-eye coordination, and so on,”  During his studies, he joined a startup programme in Braga and decided to explore how these techniques could be applied in real-world scenarios. He explained: “We knew everyone gets tired, and we had a strong technical background. The team also had some business background, so we went to the market to explore.” Initially operating across several industries, including call centres focused on corporate wellness, the company pivoted to esports.  He recalled: “The industry was growing quickly, and performance in gaming is heavily tied to mental focus. We worked with teams and learned a lot, and about a year later, we began focusing more directly on fraud and cheating detection.” Why cheating has become a major business problem for gaming companies Cheating can take different forms in gaming, but according to Ribeiro, it broadly means gaining an unfair advantage over other players. “In casual games, that could mean manipulating a leaderboard. In competitive games, it becomes more serious — for example, using software that automatically aims or reacts faster than a human can. From a player’s perspective, it’s frustrating because it removes fairness and destroys the experience. Whether it’s casual or competitive, cheating undermines the integrity of the game.” I wanted to understand who cares most about this problem — players, developers, or publishers? Ribeiro contends that players want a fair experience.  “Gaming communities are very vocal. If cheating becomes widespread, players will complain and often move to another game.” Developers and publishers care because it directly impacts retention and reputation.  “If a game is perceived as unfair, it loses players. In entertainment, people only have time for one game at a time, so fairness is critical.” He contends that initially, hacking was more about curiosity or fun, especially in single-player games. But today, it’s become an industry. There are people making significant money selling cheats — some users even pay thousands per week for tools like aimbots (cheating software used mainly in shooting games that helps a player aim at opponents with unnatural speed and precision). “Developers are improving their defences, but attackers are also becoming more sophisticated. It’s an ongoing battle, and increasingly, companies see anti-cheat as a strategic priority.” How Anybrain’s tech works Anybrain’s anti-cheat analysis is based on player behaviour analysis. Its platform focuses on the HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) approach — how people use input devices such as a mouse, keyboard, gamepad, or touchscreen. Using machine learning algorithms, it can learn from the game and players, understanding gameplay and detecting fraud by interpreting abnormal behaviours. Ribeiro explained:  "We analyse these inputs and determine whether they come from a human or something synthetic.  For example, bots behave very differently from humans when typing or moving. In games like first-person shooters, some players inject artificial inputs to create extremely precise or fast movements. We process this data in real time and use proprietary algorithms to analyse it at a very granular level — millisecond timing, even down to pixel-level behaviour. We look at whether an action is physically plausible for a human." Anybrain can also analyse behavioural patterns to verify whether someone is actually the account owner based on how they typically interact.  “Each person has a unique interaction pattern, so we can detect if behaviour changes or if multiple accounts are being used.”   In short, Anybrain turns raw input data into meaningful signals that help detect fraud or abnormal behaviour. Anybrain is notable for its decision not to use a camera-based approach, which Ribeiro attributes to privacy and accessibility.  “By focusing on input behaviour, we can provide a solution that works across all devices without raising privacy concerns.” Most traditional solutions focus on the client side: “They analyse the game’s memory to detect if someone is modifying it by changing enemy positions or extracting hidden information. It’s similar to antivirus software, you look for known cheat signatures.” But there are always ways to bypass these methods as AI makes it easier to build new hacks. By comparison, Anybrain doesn’t focus on how cheats are built; it focuses on behaviour.  “Even if someone creates a new type of hack, the behaviour it produces will still look unnatural. That makes our approach more proactive and harder to bypass,” shared Ribeiro. How cheating impacts revenue and reputation As cheating has become more sophisticated and widespread, anti-cheat systems are increasingly viewed as a business necessity rather than a moderation tool. In terms of measuring ROI for anti-cheat solutions, standards vary by game. Ribeiro explained that in games with internal economies — like MMOs — cheating can directly impact revenue. For example, bots can farm resources and sell them on secondary markets, which reduces in-game purchases. “But more broadly, it’s about player retention and brand reputation. If players feel the game is fair, they stay longer. If not, they leave. Some companies, like Riot Games with its Vanguard system, have built strong reputations for fairness, which contributes to player trust and long-term success.” In extreme cases, games have shut down because cheating became too widespread. Combating false positives  Anybrain’s platform is designed to minimise false positives by combining continuous behavioural monitoring with full contextual visibility into player activity rather than relying on isolated detection events.   The system provides visual references and detailed metrics that support each flagged moment of suspected fraud. Detections are continuously reviewed and refined, helping quickly address inaccuracies and reduce erroneous bans. In more complex or contested cases, the Anybrain team also supports operators during ban appeals with deeper investigations and additional technical explanations. As AI cheats evolve, anti-cheat systems must adapt According to Ribeiro, cheating has already increased significantly, and AI will make it even easier to develop hacks.  “Technologies like computer vision can analyse gameplay in real time and automatically assist players. We expect cheating to become more widespread and more accessible.” To keep up with new cheating methods, Anybrain’s system can detect new hacks even if the team has never seen them before, as it adapts and learns the most effective detection methods. Recently, the team has seen more advanced techniques, like using a second PC or AI-based computer vision to analyse the screen and inject inputs without modifying the game itself. “But regardless of how the cheat is implemented, the interaction still needs to happen — and that’s where we detect it.” From AAA game integrations to broader digital safety ambitions Over the past year, Anybrain has focused on integrating with major AAA titles, such as Arc Raiders from Embark Studios. Now, its focus is on scaling by onboarding more customers, improving its algorithms, and expanding detection capabilities. It's also exploring other applications of human-computer interaction, such as age prediction based on input behaviour, which could help protect younger users in online environments. It recently received a patent for detecting abnormal behaviour based on input data, granted in the US, Europe, and South Korea.  According to Ribeiro: “For now, gaming remains our core focus, but long term, we see opportunities anywhere we can help make digital environments safer and more secure.”

Nsave , a UK-founded offshore banking platform built for people from distressed economies, today announced the launch of financial services for Syrians in two phases: inbound transfers into Syria and international accounts for residents inside Syria.  For the first time, Syrians will have access to a stable foreign currency account, providing a hedge against local economic instability. I spoke to the founder and CEO, Amer Baroudi, to learn more. For millions of Syrians, access to basic financial services has been out of reach for generations. Baroudi started the company after experiencing firsthand the challenges Syrians face in accessing reliable financial services. He shared that as a Syrian, he spent most of his adult life effectively unbanked. Despite studying at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and later building companies internationally, accessing financial services remained one of the biggest barriers he faced: “Not because of anything I did, but because of where I was from. nsave exists because I know firsthand what it costs: in dignity, in opportunity, in the exhaustion of navigating a financial system that treats your nationality as a disqualifier.  Over 700 million people globally come from distressed economies where inflation is high, and banking is broken — they face similar challenges as I did simply because of where they are from.” According to Baroudi, legacy banks have deliberately adopted blanket compliance frameworks that treat entire nationalities as too risky to serve.  Now sanctions on Syria have been lifted, and that has contributed to nsave being able to launch.  “At nsave, we've built technology specifically designed to assess individual risk accurately, not to write off populations by virtue of their passport.  The gap is the willingness to do the work required to serve people responsibly.” However, the main challenge for Syria, like some of the other markets it serves, is building a platform that is both accessible and fully compliant with international standards.  The Syria transfer corridor has been built with a strong compliance-first approach by leveraging technology and building enhanced onboarding, sanctions screening, AML monitoring, and risk controls from day one to ensure the corridor operates safely and responsibly.  It is structured in complete separation from partner financial institutions, allowing nsave to serve Syrians without exposing partners to country risk they are not yet ready to take on. “This didn't happen by accident. It took deep regulatory work and a team that refused to give up”, Baroudi added. “We've structured these services carefully –– fully separated from partners still finding their footing in Syria –– because we weren't prepared to wait. Syrians have waited long enough. They deserve modern, safe and affordable financial services, and today we start delivering that.” Through nsave, users can access international USD, EUR and GBP accounts, international cards, global transfers and savings products. nsave’s addition of transfers to Syria, alongside its existing markets across North Africa and Asia, expands its mission to serve people from countries where inflation is high, and access to safe financial services is difficult or impossible, whether due to instability, sanctions complexity or weak banking infrastructure.  The launch comes at a significant moment for Syria’s financial future, as renewed focus on economic reconstruction, financial inclusion, and the rebuilding of trusted financial infrastructure creates an opportunity to reconnect Syrian families, businesses, and the diaspora. nsave will continue expanding its product and transfer capabilities for underserved communities globally, with a focus on building compliant financial infrastructure for people historically excluded from the international banking system. According to Baroudi:   “Our long-term ambition is to become the default, compliant gateway between distressed economies and the global financial system: providing the full stack of financial services that people in stable economies take for granted. There are hundreds of millions of people who deserve that access. We're building for them.” The company raised $18 million in January 2025.

Frontier AI lab for defence and security Twin Prime has raised have $10 million in pre-seed funding led by Expeditions, with additional investment from American and European VCs, Theon, family offices, and angels from within Palantir, Anduril, Quorum, and more.  Twin Prime is developing AI models that natively reason on data from a large number of sensor modalities in the physical world, notably across the national security landscape, compressing the perception-to-decision layer to enable smart, real-time action against threats.  The company was founded in 2025 by George Lentzas, Stephane Sezer, Drew Calcagno, and Michael Leite-Garcia, a multinational team of researchers in frontier AI, quantitative finance, and national security.  Collectively, they have extensive experience at top institutions, including Hudson River Trading, Google Research, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Columbia University, the White House, the Pentagon, and various branches of both the US and European armed forces.  Mikolaj Firlej, Co-founder and GP of Expeditions, said:  “Current AI models are not specialised enough to capture the complexity of modern war and wider security challenges. They usually have limited applicability at the edge and often overlook sensor integration and critical data feeds.  Twin Prime is developing models purpose-built for high-stakes environments where size, fusion and speed are critical. At a time when most defence prime contractors struggle to integrate advanced AI models, the Twin Prime team presents a clear commercial value not just by retrofitting legacy systems, but by transforming their operations.” Twin Prime and Theon, a large European defence prime, also intend to form a Joint Venture to develop, commercialise, and deploy bespoke AI solutions built upon Twin Prime's proprietary models. The JV will augment Theon’s extensive deployment of sensors and other defence product offerings, particularly as a continuation of its Theon Next initiative.

Iceotope Group, a provider of precision liquid cooling solutions for data centres and edge infrastructure, has raised $26 million in a Series B funding round led by Two Seas Capital and Barclays Climate Ventures, with participation from existing investors Edinv, ABC Impact, Northern Gritstone, and British Patient Capital. Founded in 2005 as a research-driven green computing venture, Iceotope has evolved into a specialist in precision liquid cooling for AI infrastructure, high-performance computing (HPC), and edge deployments. The company’s chassis-based liquid cooling approach is designed to replace traditional air cooling with liquid-based thermal management across infrastructure components, helping high-performance systems operate more efficiently while reducing energy consumption and water usage. Iceotope said its solutions are designed for both core data centre environments and enterprise and edge deployments where cooling constraints can be particularly demanding. The company currently holds more than 200 granted and pending patents related to its liquid cooling systems. We’ve spent years developing a differentiated IP portfolio and products purpose-built for AI infrastructure, and we’re now focused on scaling alongside growing demand for more advanced and sustainable cooling technologies, said Simon Jesenko, CEO and CFO of Iceotope. The new funding will support product and engineering development, expansion of the company’s patent portfolio, and ecosystem partnerships aimed at bringing solutions powered by its technology to market.

Ouinex, a Paris-based crypto asset exchange, has raised $3.5 million in a new equity round, bringing its total funding to $9 million, all of it from retail and professional traders using its own platform and with no venture capital participation. Alongside the funding round, Ouinex introduced Ouinex Launchpad, a token sale platform designed to give users access to early-stage token launches based on platform engagement and loyalty metrics. Ouinex is a trading platform combining crypto and traditional financial markets within a single environment. The platform offers access to spot crypto, crypto perpetuals, forex, indices, stocks, and commodities derivatives through one account, using crypto assets as collateral. Founded around a community-funded model, Ouinex positions its users as both traders and shareholders. The company said more than 10,000 retail and professional traders have participated in its funding rounds since launch. Ouinex operates on a proprietary No-CLOB (No Central Limit Order Book) execution model, designed to prevent the platform from acting as a counterparty to user trades. According to the company, the system aims to reduce practices such as stop-hunting and front-running by limiting market maker visibility into retail order flows. Ilies Larbi, CEO of Ouinex, said the company’s community-funded structure allows it to approach regulation as part of the product rather than simply a compliance requirement. Since our shareholders are our users, we aren’t cutting any corners to satisfy distant investors. We’re investing heavily in legal frameworks across five continents to ensure that Ouinex remains a safe, sustainable, and fully licensed platform for the years to come. The new funding will be used to support regulatory expansion, product development, and the rollout of additional trading and risk management features.

Most people think of additive manufacturing — better known as 3D printing — as small plastic prototypes or desktop machines producing objects you can hold in your hand. Since emerging in the 1980s, the technology has steadily evolved from a rapid prototyping tool into a serious industrial process used across aerospace, automotive, healthcare, and defence. But scaling additive manufacturing to produce very large industrial components has remained far more difficult. Industries such as aviation, maritime, and energy still rely heavily on expensive molds, long production cycles, and highly centralised supply chains to produce metre-scale components using methods that are costly, labour-intensive, and generate significant material waste. According to Francesco De Stefano, additive manufacturing largely accepted the physical “box” of the printer as a limitation until around 2015.  There was still a lot of work needed inside that box to industrialise the technology.” But what if you broke the box entirely? De Stefano’s Italian-founded advanced manufacturing company, Caracol, is solving the challenge of producing industrial-scale, large, and mixed-volume parts through Large Format Additive Manufacturing (LFAM), using robotic arms, advanced software, turnkey additive manufacturing systems, materials, and factory integration to reliably manufacture large polymer, composite, and metal components at production scale. Caracol combines robotics, automation, software, and manufacturing engineering into integrated production systems that can create complex lightweight structures and industrial components at scale. Industrial robotic arms were already widely used in automotive manufacturing, welding, and pick-and-place applications. A traditional 3D printer operates on three axes, while industrial robots operate on six, enabling far greater geometric freedom and scalability. “That combination allowed us to move beyond the traditional limitations of additive manufacturing,” he explained.  Prior to founding Caracol, De Stefano studied business in Milan and London and later moved into consulting, working in executive advisory, particularly in aerospace and industrial sectors. At some point, he realised that while PowerPoints and Excel were great, he wanted to work on something with real industrial impact. “I already knew Giovanni and Paolo, two of the other co-founders, from university. Back in 2015, they already believed additive manufacturing was the future, but they felt the technology was still too limited in scale.” Their insight was to combine additive manufacturing with robotics. Between 2015 and 2017, they worked on integrating the two technologies to bring additive manufacturing into large-scale industrial production. With another co-founder, Jacopo, on board by the end of 2017, they realised their technology could have a real impact on industrial manufacturing.  Breaking manufacturing’s entrenched habits Geopolitical tensions, supply chain fragility, and industrial sovereignty have become increasingly important across aerospace, defence, energy, and transportation. After COVID and the ensuing supply chain disruptions, many companies realised the old model of highly centralised manufacturing was no longer resilient. As labour shortages grow, supply chains regionalise, and industries seek more flexible production models, additive manufacturing is increasingly shifting from an experimental technology to a strategic industrial capability. Yet startups and scaleups typically struggle to disrupt traditional industries like manufacturing and supply chains.  When it comes to additive manufacturing, one of the first challenges is certification. Take a boat component as an example.  “Traditional composite manufacturing processes are certified, well understood, and supported by decades of production data. Certification bodies already recognise those manufacturing methods,” explained De Stefano.  The second barrier is mindset. In industries like maritime or composites:  “You build moulds by hand, operators manually place carbon fibre and glass fibre, and finishing work is also largely manual. It works, it’s relatively inexpensive, and people have been doing it that way for decades. So when you introduce a new technology, the first reaction is often: ‘This is never going to work. We’ve always done it this way.’” Caracol addressed the challenges facing additive manufacturing with a scientific approach. For the first five years, it didn’t sell the technology at all. Instead, it operated as a service bureau, qualifying and certifying the process before commercialising it. It worked with aerospace, maritime, and automotive OEMs on testing, prototyping, material characterisation, and certification.  Only once the applications were qualified and the business case was validated, did it start offering the technology commercially in 2022. At the same time, it focused heavily on training customers. De Stefano explained: “Because we operated the systems ourselves for years, we were able to guide customers not just on the machine itself, but on how to redesign and scale their production processes around the technology.” The benefits of robotic additive manufacturing Image: Caracol. Instead of 3D printing small prototype parts, Caracol’s robotic systems manufacture large-scale marine structures, molds, and functional components for boats and yachts.  Rather than relying on traditional tooling or moulds, Caracol’s systems manufacture parts layer by layer directly from digital designs, helping companies reduce waste, lower production costs, and accelerate manufacturing timelines. Its core sectors today are transportation (including dual defence applications across maritime, aerospace, and land mobility), creative industries like architecture, construction, retail environments, and design applications using sustainable materials and customised geometries. The company launched a metal additive manufacturing platform around two years ago, expanding into energy applications, including propulsion systems, industrial components, and nuclear-related applications. The company is also exploring solutions for manufacturing in space. In maritime composite manufacturing, producing a component traditionally involves several months of lead time. It can take three to four months just to create the mould, then several more weeks to laminate and finish the part. Caracol eliminates the mold entirely. De Stefano detailed:  “You go directly into production and then perform the same finishing processes afterwards. In many cases, lead times are reduced by more than half.” This not only saves time but also money. A project with yacht makers Ferretti Group achieved cost savings of more than 30 per cent. The benefits also extend to waste reduction. In conventional aerospace tooling,  traditional manufacturing often wastes 70 to 80 per cent of the material during machining. With Caracol, waste drops to below 5 per cent. Caracol’s process also leads to significant weight reduction. In some cases, tooling components are now one-tenth the weight of traditional alternatives, making them much easier to move and manage in factories. Building a transatlantic manufacturing footprint  The company is currently the only large-format additive manufacturing player operating manufacturing facilities in both Europe and the US. According to De Stefano, Caracol made this decision early in recognition of how important the US market would become, particularly for aerospace, defence, and industrial manufacturing. In the US, manufacturers have historically relied more on very large and expensive gantry systems. Flexible robotic manufacturing is gaining momentum there now as companies increasingly understand the importance of deployable, localised manufacturing. Comparing the two markets, De Stefano said: “Interestingly, Europe is actually more advanced in robotics integration than parts of the US. I think that comes from Europe’s industrial heritage and manufacturing traditions. “One major difference is that US customers are generally faster to adopt new technology. There is less resistance from a mindset perspective and more willingness to take risks. At the same time, expectations around support and responsiveness in the US are much higher: “Customers expect you to be physically close, react quickly, and support them directly throughout implementation.” From supervised machines to autonomous manufacturing Automation within large-scale additive manufacturing has evolved rapidly over the past decade, shifting from highly supervised production environments toward increasingly autonomous and self-optimising systems. De Stefano describes progress in the sector as “dramatic”. In 2017, the company’s systems required constant oversight.  “Operators had to supervise the machines continuously and manually intervene throughout the process.” Today, he explained, “Caracol’s systems can operate lights-out for days at a time. Once the print is launched, the machine can run autonomously with very minimal intervention.” While there is still some manual work involved in setting up prints, loading materials, and post-processing parts, AI and machine learning are increasingly automating those operations as well. The next stage is machines becoming capable of understanding and optimising their own processes in real time. The company already has its Nexus software platform, which monitors large amounts of production data.  “Last year, we also launched our ADOS AI platform, which allows the system not only to monitor the process but to understand deviations from the target outcome and automatically adjust parameters live. That improves productivity, reduces waste, minimises downtime, and even enables predictive maintenance.” To support that vision, Caracol built its own integrated hardware, software, and automation ecosystem designed to centralise manufacturing intelligence across its global network. De Stefano explained: “All our systems connect through the Nexus platform, which allows us to aggregate and analyse production data globally. That means the machines are effectively learning from one another already. For Caracol, what began as an effort to “break the box” of traditional 3D printing has evolved into a broader vision of distributed, software-driven manufacturing systems. Its long-term ambition is not just autonomous machines, but globally connected manufacturing systems capable of collectively learning and improving over time. Rather than robots directly ‘talking’ to each other individually, the learning happens through a centralised data and software layer. The more data we gather across the network, the faster the systems improve collectively. “That’s really the long-term vision: globally connected manufacturing systems continuously learning and optimising together,” shared De Stefano.

When VivaTech first opened its doors in 2016, it gathered 45,000 visitors. This June, the 10th edition is expected to welcome more than 180,000 attendees from 171 countries, a 300% increase that reflects not just the event's growth, but the pace of transformation reshaping the global tech landscape. From 17 to 20 June at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, VivaTech 2026 promises to be its most ambitious edition yet: 15,000 startups, 4,000 investors, 1,500+ live demos, and a program built around the questions that actually matter right now, AI and productivity, cybersecurity and defense, the energy transition, and the frontier technologies redefining what's scientifically possible. Here's a look at some of the conversations and speakers you won't want to miss. The Energy Transition Gets Real The climate debate at VivaTech 2026 moves past ambition and into execution. The Energy, Greentech & Mobility track tackles the uncomfortable math behind decarbonization: can renewables scale fast enough? Can AI be sustainable when data centers are consuming energy at record rates? Who pays for electrification and who profits? To answer these questions, VivaTech is bringing together some of the sector's most consequential voices. Lei Zhang, CEO of Envision, one of the world's leading renewable energy and smart energy companies, will be at VivaTech alongside Philippe Piron, CEO of Electrification at GE Vernova, the energy technology spin-off now at the center of the global grid modernization effort. François Provost, CEO of Renault, will represent the mobility side of the equation at a moment when the European automotive industry is navigating one of its most complex strategic pivots. Rounding out the track: Siddarth Singh, Co-lead of Energy and AI at the International Energy Agency, and Kate Williams, CEO of 1% for the Planet, bringing both data-driven rigour and accountability frameworks to a conversation that needs both. On the floor, startups like Nyobolt (ultra-fast charging), Bienesis (climate-resilient agriculture), and Tenaka (ocean regeneration, world exclusive) will demonstrate that the energy transition isn't a future story. It's shipping now. Tech Beyond the Obvious If one track captures why VivaTech still surprises after a decade, it's Tech Beyond the Obvious, dedicated to deeptech, radical science, and the innovations that seem implausible until suddenly they aren't. Jerry Chow, IBM Fellow and CTO for Quantum-Centric Supercomputing at IBM, will be at VivaTech to present the "quantum chandelier", a world exclusive demonstration of a system capable of computations that classical computers simply cannot perform, with applications in healthcare, telecommunications, and industrial optimization. On the space side, Helene Huby, Founder and CEO of The Exploration Company, represents a new generation of European private space ventures redefining what independent orbital infrastructure looks like. And Madeline Lawrence, Chief Growth Officer of Aikido, speaks to a parallel frontier: AI-assisted tools that detect and fix code vulnerabilities at the speed the threat landscape now demands. The track also features Adel Haddoud, CEO of Infinite Orbits, working on satellite life-extension technology, and world exclusives including Xpanceo's AI-powered smart contact lens capable of projecting information directly into the field of vision. Where Tech Leadership Gets Tested The Tech Leaders Summit, powered by QuantumBlack AI by McKinsey, Nebius and Orisha, is where the conversation shifts from what's possible to what's actually hard. CTOs, CIOs, CISOs, and CDOs gather to work through the tensions that don't resolve neatly on a slide deck: how do you harden cybersecurity while accelerating deployment? Where does digital sovereignty end and operational paranoia begin? When every layer of the stack is becoming intelligent, who actually controls it? The speaker lineup reflects the stakes. Elizabeth Stone, Chief Technology Officer at Netflix, brings the perspective of an organization that has made infrastructure a competitive advantage, and must now navigate what AI-native product development means at global scale. Jens Holtinger, CTO of Volvo Group, represents an industry in the middle of one of its most complex technological transitions: electrification, software-defined vehicles, and autonomous systems converging simultaneously. Damien Lucas, CEO of Scaleway, speaks from the front line of European cloud sovereignty, a question that has moved from policy debate to operational urgency. And Thomas Dohmke, Founder & CEO of Entire, brings a builder's perspective on what it actually takes to modernize enterprise infrastructure from the inside. At a time when cyberattacks surged 75% in a single year (Accenture, 2024) and AI is simultaneously the most powerful tool available to defenders and attackers alike, this forum is less a conference track and more a pressure test for tech leadership in real conditions. A New Format, A New Audience VivaTech 2026 also marks two firsts in the event's history. On 14 June, three days before the main event, VivaTech will take over the Champs-Élysées for a free, public-facing day of innovation, pedestrianizing one of the world's most iconic avenues and transforming it into an open showcase for AI, robotics, mobility, health, and climate tech. On 20 June, the general public day becomes the VivaTech Festival, opening the event's final day to 18-35-year-olds, with programming focused on AI & Society, the Creator Economy, and career opportunities in tech, including a dedicated Careers Festival and exclusive demos. Join VivaTech from June 17 to 20 at Paris Porte de Versailles. Book now at vivatech.com, before the robots do.

A London-founded payments fintech backed by US investment giant Bank of America has been acquired by Australia’s top business lender, the lender has announced.   Banked, founded in London in 2018, has built technology which allows users to pay online from their bank accounts, as opposed to using a credit or debit card. The payment method is known as account-to-account payments. The fintech has been acquired by National Australia Bank (NAB) for an undisclosed sum, with Banked boss Brad Goodall saying the deal will allow its tech to reach more people.   Banked, which is backed by Bank of America, Insight Partners and Citi, has raised over $50m in funding rounds. NAB is an existing customer of Banked, which has offices in London, Palo Alto and Vilnius, and has also invested in Banked via its venture arm.   Sources told Tech.eu that Banked would now be exiting the UK and US market and focus on Australia. NAB executive Shane Conway said: “Pay by Bank is part of a broader shift in Australia’s payments landscape toward real‑time, account‑to‑account options that sit alongside cards and digital wallets. Customers expect making payments to be fast, easy and reliable, and Banked helps us deliver that.” Goodall, Banked CEO and co-founder, said: “The Banked team have worked hard to build a globally proven payments platform focused on the modern demands of developers and merchants of all sizes and scale.  Having the backing of NAB will allow the platform to reach more customers.” Earlier this year, Tech.eu reported that Banked’s proposed acquisition of UK fintech VibePay did not go through, despite a press release announcing the deal last year.  Sources said the deal failed due to issues arising out of the due diligence process carried out by Banked.

In 2025, European energy tech companies raised €7.5 billion, with funding concentrated in large infrastructure-focused rounds spanning EV charging, battery storage, grid flexibility, home energy systems, and sustainable fuels. Debt financing played a major role, particularly among companies scaling capital-intensive assets such as charging networks and storage systems. Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, France, and Sweden stood out among the most active markets. The largest deals show investor focus on deployment-ready infrastructure, with EV charging companies IONITY, Electra, and Believ ranking highly, while battery and grid storage companies, including Green Flexibility, Zenobē, Lion Storage, Return, and Energy Vault, also attracted significant capital. Overall, 2025 points to a European energy tech market increasingly shaped by scale, infrastructure buildout, and the need to support electrification and renewable energy integration (for more detailed analyses of the European technology ecosystem, check out Tech.eu’s annual report: EuropeanTech 2025 - The Big Picture). Here are ten energy tech companies that raised the most in 2025 Amount raised in 2025: €600M IONITY is a European electric vehicle charging infrastructure company operating a high-power charging network across 24 countries. Founded in 2017 as a joint venture between major automotive manufacturers, the company provides ultra-fast EV charging services designed to support long-distance electric mobility across Europe. In 2025, IONITY secured €600 million in financing backed by nine European commercial banks to expand its network to more than 13,000 charging points by 2030. Amount raised in 2025: €500M Elvy is a Sweden-based energy technology company providing subscription-based home energy systems that combine solar panels, heat pumps, and battery storage with installation, maintenance, and energy management services. The company uses data analysis and AI-driven optimisation to help households reduce energy costs and increase energy self-sufficiency through fixed-price energy plans. Elvy raised €500 million to support the expansion of its home energy solutions platform and increase access to integrated residential energy systems. Amount raised in 2025: €433M Electra is a France-based electric vehicle charging company operating a network of ultra-fast charging stations across Europe. The company develops and manages high-power EV charging infrastructure designed to support long-distance electric mobility through a simplified charging experience, integrated software, and charging capacities of up to 400 kW. Electra secured a €433 million green loan in 2025 to support the expansion of its ultra-fast EV charging infrastructure across Europe, bringing its total funding to more than €1 billion. Amount raised in 2025: €400M Green Flexibility is an energy technology company developing, building, and operating large-scale battery storage systems designed to support grid stability and renewable energy integration across Europe. Founded by battery industry veterans, the company manages the full project lifecycle, from site development and permitting to financing, operation, and commercialisation, with a focus on flexible and grid-supportive energy storage solutions. In 2025, Green Flexibility secured €400 million from Partners Group for large-scale battery storage systems. Amount raised in 2025: €350M Lion Storage, part of Return and specialising in energy storage, focuses on the development and construction of large-scale battery energy storage systems directly connected to the high-voltage grid. The company aims to accelerate the energy transition by delivering reliable, efficient, and long-duration storage solutions that support a more sustainable and resilient power system. In 2025, Lion Storage secured €350 million in financing for ‘Mufasa’, one of Europe’s largest battery storage projects. Amount raised in 2025: £300M Believ is a UK-based electric vehicle charging infrastructure company developing and operating publicly accessible EV charging networks for local authorities, businesses, and landowners. The company provides renewable energy-powered charging solutions across on-street, destination, rapid, and ultra-rapid charging locations to support the expansion of electric mobility across the UK. Believ secured a £300 million investment facility in 2025 to support the installation of at least 30,000 public EV charge points across the UK. Amount raised in 2025: €325M Zenobe is an energy storage and fleet electrification company that develops and operates battery storage systems and electric vehicle infrastructure for public transport, commercial fleets, and power grids. Founded in 2017, the company focuses on supporting the transition to renewable energy and electric mobility through battery optimisation, grid services, and financing solutions. In 2025, London-based Zenobē secured €325 million in debt financing from a syndicate of seven international banks to accelerate electric vehicle fleet expansion across Europe. Amount raised in 2025: $378M Energy Vault is an energy storage technology company that develops and deploys utility-scale solutions designed to support the transition to renewable energy. Its technologies include gravity-based storage systems, battery storage, and hybrid hydrogen solutions, combined with software platforms that help utilities and industrial customers manage and optimise energy assets. Founded in 2017, the company is known for its gravity energy storage technology, which stores electricity by lifting heavy composite blocks using cranes and releasing the stored energy when the blocks are lowered to generate power for the grid. In 2025, Energy Vault secured $378 million across three funding rounds to support the continued development and deployment of its energy storage projects. Amount raised in 2025: €300M Return is an energy infrastructure company specialising in large-scale battery energy storage systems and flexibility services. The company builds, owns, and operates storage assets that help balance electricity supply and demand, integrate renewable energy, and improve grid stability. Return raised €300 million in growth capital in 2025, to scale battery storage capacity. Amount raised in 2025: €250M SkyNRG is a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) company founded in 2009 that focuses on sourcing, supplying, and producing high-integrity SAF to help airlines and corporates reduce the carbon footprint of air travel. SkyNRG works with global partners to scale SAF production, develop dedicated fuel plants, and make sustainable aviation a viable alternative to fossil jet fuel, supporting the aviation sector’s transition toward lower-emission flying. SkyNRG secured €250 million in 2025 to build SAF plants in the Netherlands, Sweden, and the US.

Zerops, a Platform-as-a-Service startup redesigning cloud architecture, has raised a $2 million seed round led by Gi21 Capital.  Zerops removes the separation between development and production environments, a long-standing flaw in cloud architecture that causes deployment failures for developers and AI coding agents alike. It creates a unified environment where applications behave identically from development through to production, enabling reliable deployments from the start. On Zerops, there are no environment tiers; applications run within a single project where code behaves the same way, regardless of scale. This means developers build, test, and deploy in genuinely identical conditions, eliminating an entire category of deployment failures. Because the infrastructure is consistent from the start, deploying a production-ready system requires a single click, not weeks of configuration.Zerops is built on its own bare-metal infrastructure, with data centres across Europe and the United States, enabling cost efficiencies that make it up to four times cheaper than legacy platforms. It runs applications in full Linux containers, not restricted app containers, giving developers the same level of access as on their own machines, including real-time visibility and control over running processes. The platform also includes more than 15 built-in services such as databases, search engines, and messaging systems, reducing the need for external integrations compared to the typical two or three offered by most platforms. As applications grow, they remain within a single environment, removing the need to re-architect infrastructure at scale.Aleš Rechtorík, co-founder and CEO of Zerops, said:  “Most platforms ask you to trust that development and production are close enough. We removed the gap entirely by rethinking how cloud architecture should work from the ground up. That's the same guarantee we now give AI coding agents, and it's why the code they produce is production-ready from the first deployment. What works once continues to work as applications scale. Our goal is to make running software predictable, not something teams have to constantly debug.”The company is also introducing Zerops Control Panel (ZCP), a feature designed for AI-driven development. ZCP connects AI coding agents, like Claude, Codex, or Gemini, directly to real cloud infrastructure inside a Zerops project, allowing them to build, deploy, and debug applications in real conditions rather than isolated environments. Because AI operates in the same environment used for production, the code it produces works from the start. Developers can collaborate with AI within the same workspace, reviewing and modifying outputs using their own preferred tools.According to Damir Špoljarič, founder of Gi21 Capital, the market is reaching an inflection point.: "Rising cloud costs are forcing a shift, while AI is changing not just how software is written, but who is building and running it. We’re moving from millions of developers to millions of developers working alongside AI agents. Most platforms weren’t designed for either of these changes.  Zerops was. Its economics come from owning the full stack, and its architecture works because it never abstracts away the underlying infrastructure." The new funding will be used to expand Zerops’ global infrastructure in the US and Asia, accelerate product development, and grow its team.

DDD Invoices, a Ljubljana-based company building API-driven infrastructure for global e-invoicing compliance, has raised a €1.31 million seed round backed by Fil Rouge Capital, 500 Global, and experienced operators from the ERP and e-invoicing ecosystem. The company is also supported by angel investors and advisors from the e-invoicing and ERP ecosystem, including former executives and founders from IFS, Pagero, Tickstar, Arratech, and Docupath. As governments increasingly mandate real-time e-invoice reporting to local tax portals, businesses and software providers face growing compliance complexity. Different countries apply their own formats, validation rules, and submission requirements, creating costly and fragmented integrations for companies operating across markets. DDD Invoices is building an API-first infrastructure designed to simplify this process. Through a unified API, the company connects ERPs, accounting systems, and SaaS platforms to tax portals, Peppol networks, and real-time reporting systems worldwide. Its platform automates the issuing, receiving, and archiving of tax-compliant e-invoices across jurisdictions while ensuring compliance with local Continuous Transaction Control (CTC), e-invoicing, and fiscalization requirements. The company uses proprietary AI-driven logic to transform standardised invoice data into local formats, validate invoices against current regulations, route them to the relevant tax systems, and return status information to the originating application. For unstructured files such as PDFs, DDD Invoices also applies AI-based document processing to extract and structure invoice data automatically. Denis Vehovec Pondelak, CEO and co-founder of DDD Invoices, said modern software companies are increasingly challenged by local compliance complexity as they scale across markets. Compliance is already not the most exciting part of building a company, but now it is becoming increasingly more complex due to governments tightening the regulations and companies scaling globally from the get-go. We’re building the infrastructure to take that off their plate. Founded by a team with more than 30 years of experience building business software, including ERP systems for public and private institutions, DDD Invoices is already working with companies such as Access Group, Zenoti, Logitude, and WheelSys across multiple global markets. The platform also offers native integrations with systems including Stripe, Bitrix, Shopify, and Chargebee. With the new funding, DDD Invoices plans to expand its country coverage, accelerate deployment and integration capabilities, and grow its product, engineering, and go-to-market teams.

UK company Fractile has today raised a $220M Series B as it continues to build next-generation inference hardware for AI. The round was led by Accel, Factorial Funds, and Founders Fund, with participation from Conviction, Gigascale, O1A, Felicis, Buckley Ventures and 8VC. Founded in 2022, Fractile is building next-generation inference hardware for frontier AI. Its thesis is that the next major limit on AI progress is the time and cost required to produce useful outputs at scale. As advanced AI systems take on harder, longer-running tasks that can require tens of millions of tokens to generate, Fractile is developing chips and systems designed to make faster inference economically viable, spanning AI research, chip microarchitecture, and foundry process innovation. According to a post by Walter Goodwin, CEO and Founder of Fractile, the company was founded on the bet that, eventually, the world’s most capable AI systems would be limited in their impact by the amount of time they take to produce useful outputs.  “We bet everything on the logical conclusion: that the only way to truly unlock this latent value, to make speed viable at scale, was to radically re-invent the hardware that we run our frontier AI models on. Ever since, we have been building chips and systems that tackle this problem.”   He contends that since then, raw AI capability has already reached the point where time from query to output is the key limit to frontier capabilities. As models have improved, so has their ability to be orchestrated over increasingly long output sequences. However, the unit economics of inference have become a brutal constraint. “Inference is both the revenue engine of the AI industry and the rate-limiting factor on expanding it.“ He further contends that today’s LLMs are already producing up to 100 million tokens in pursuit of tackling hard problems.: “At the ~40 tokens per second or so at which these models tend to run on existing chips, a single output of this length takes a month to complete. The technical and economic limits on inference speed, above all from memory bandwidth that has failed to scale on current architectures, are what is constraining progress. This is exactly the problem Fractile has been building from the ground up to tackle”.  Looking ahead, Goodwin sees value in not accelerating today's workloads, but rather in the entirely new workloads that hardware like Fractile will enable. The company is hiring across London, Bristol, San Francisco, and Taipei. 

A London-based AI startup set up just months ago, which believes it’s pursuing the fastest path to surpassing human intelligence, has today come out of stealth, having raised over $650m at a $4.65bn valuation. Called Recursive Superintelligence, the funding round was led by GV, Google’s VC arm, and US VC Greycroft, with participation from chip makers Nvidia and AMD. The disclosure of the funding round, follows previous reports about the expected raise. Recursive Superintelligence’s “bold bet” is that AI systems will improve themselves by analysing their own performance, without human intervention. The startup's co-founders include Richard Socher, its CEO, who was previously chief scientist at Salesforce, and Tim Rocktäschel, a professor of AI at London’s UCL and a former Google DeepMind scientist. Others who work at the startup, which has a team of less than 30, previously worked at Meta and OpenAI. The startup, which was incorporated in London and has offices in London and San Francisco, said a clear trend was emerging in AI. In a blog post on X, it said: "The fastest path to superintelligence will be realised by AI that recursively improves itself, and does so via open-ended algorithms that drive endless innovation. “We will first focus on the science of AI itself (by creating AI that improves AI), but the playbook we create will soon allow us to revolutionise every scientific discipline. The potential benefits for humanity of safely creating such an advance cannot be overstated.” Recursive Superintelligence is one of several new AI startups looking at new ways to make improvements in AI intelligence. These include Yann LeCun’s AMI Labs and David Silver’s Ineffable Intelligence.

Glocalzone, the platform connecting travellers with cross-border delivery requests, has been acquired by MovitOn as part of a deal focused on expanding peer-to-peer logistics infrastructure and integrating decentralised delivery technology. Founded as a marketplace linking travellers with users seeking international deliveries, Glocalzone has built a network of more than 1.3 million registered users. The platform says it has facilitated over 600,000 delivery orders, with users regularly posting travel routes across destinations including Turkey, Brazil, Mexico and the United States. MovitOn said the acquisition gives it access to an established international user base while expanding the reach of its decentralised logistics network. The company is developing a delivery platform that combines AI-powered courier matching with blockchain-enabled payment and verification systems. Following the acquisition, Glocalzone’s platform and user community will be integrated into MovitOn’s decentralised physical infrastructure network (DePIN), which uses smart contracts, escrow systems and token-based transactions to coordinate deliveries and payments. Doğan Turan, co-founder of Glocalzone, said the integration would combine the company’s existing marketplace with MovitOn’s AI-powered delivery infrastructure. The synergy between our trusted marketplace and MovitOn’s AI-powered courier-matching system is nothing short of transformative. We’ve spent years building trust among travellers and senders alike, and now, we integrate our 1.3 million users into a DePIN framework powered by smart contracts to eliminate all the pain points of today’s logistics systems. This is the moment peer-to-peer logistics truly goes mainstream and provides a secure, transparent alternative to models of the past. The integration process will begin immediately, with existing Glocalzone users gradually onboarded into MovitOn’s courier-matching platform, where delivery assignments are determined using factors including route, schedule and user reputation. The platform will continue operating under the name “Glocalzone by MovitOn” as the companies transition users to the updated infrastructure. MovitOn said loyalty programmes and transition tools will be introduced to support the adoption of its MVON token and broader Web3 payment ecosystem.

Gyver, the Italian startup developing workforce infrastructure for Europe’s industrial and energy sectors, has raised €1.4 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Brighteye, with participation from āltitude, Vento Ventures, Zanichelli Venture and existing investor Antler, alongside several business angels. Founded by Francesco Defendi, Leo Acciarri and Mattia Zarrelli, Gyver is focused on addressing the growing shortage of skilled blue-collar workers across Europe, particularly in sectors linked to electrification, energy and industrial infrastructure. As Europe accelerates investment into renewable energy, data centres and grid modernisation, demand for skilled electrical workers continues to increase. While there are currently around 28 million skilled blue-collar workers across the EU, industry estimates suggest an additional 5.8 million workers will be needed by 2030. Gyver has developed an AI-powered conversational hiring platform designed to replicate the referral and word-of-mouth processes commonly used by electricians to find work, while helping employers identify and access skilled workers more efficiently. The company plans to expand the platform beyond recruitment into areas including upskilling, learning and workforce productivity tools for electricians. Gyver says its long-term goal is to provide modern technical tools for tasks such as electrical design and PLC workflows, helping improve productivity across skilled trades. Francesco Defendi, co-founder of Gyver, said: We want the job of an electrician to be as cool as being a VC or a famous entrepreneur. Electricians are the most important yet neglected workers category in the modern economy. They embody the combination of brain and manual craft that cannot be replaced by AI, yet they have been left behind by modern technology. The future of work in the AI age is the future of manual craft. Gyver’s broader aim is to become a workforce platform for electrical employers, supporting hiring, workforce management and worker enablement. The new funding will be used to strengthen Gyver’s technology platform, including its AI agents and workflow systems, and to support growth while improving the experience for both electricians and employers.

Bucharest-based DesignVerse, the enterprise software startup using AI to modernise complex legacy systems, has raised more than $5.5 million in seed funding as demand grows for tools that can safely accelerate software development in mission-critical industries. The round included investment from Begin Capital, Gapminder VC, Underline Ventures, and strategic angel investors from companies including Adobe, LSEG and UiPath. Prior to the seed round, the company raised $850,000 in pre-seed funding to build its core platform and begin working with early enterprise design partners. Founded by former Oracle product design lead Andrei Manolache and software engineer Robert Dragutoiu, DesignVerse develops AI-powered infrastructure for organisations operating complex software environments across sectors, including aviation, finance, cybersecurity and government. The company’s platform generates software using a customer’s existing design systems, component libraries, technical documentation and internal rules, enabling applications to be built in line with current architectures and engineering standards. The approach is intended to reduce the manual translation between design and engineering teams, a process that often creates delays and inconsistencies in large organisations. While general-purpose AI coding tools have made it easier to create prototypes and simple applications, many organisations continue to face challenges integrating AI-generated software into production environments that require reliability, compliance and security. DesignVerse says its platform was built specifically for enterprise and mission-critical environments, where software must integrate safely with existing infrastructure. Andrei Manolache, CEO of DesignVerse, said large organisations still spend significant time translating product design into production-ready software, often leading to inefficiencies between teams. DesignVerse removes that friction by allowing teams to generate functional enterprise applications directly from their design systems, validate behaviour earlier with stakeholders, and streamline the transition from design to production. The new funding will be used to expand DesignVerse’s engineering team and accelerate growth across enterprise markets in Europe and the United States.