Revolut, Mistral, Wayve and ElevenLabs are backing a six-figure “Built in Europe” advertising campaign, challenging the idea that European startups must move to Silicon Valley to scale. The campaign, the brainchild of VC Balderton, the European investor, is backed by more than 100 European founders and CEOs and calls for more people to build or join a tech startup in Europe. It comes amid long-standing concern that Europe is losing its top startup talent as they look to deep-pocketed US investors to scale up, as well as concern from European governments and investors that European founders feel they need to be in Silicon Valley to make it big. Suranga Chandratillake, partner at Balderton, which backs European founders and has invested in Revolut and Wayve, explained the genesis of the campaign. He said that Balderton had an "incredible" 2025, with notable exits and significant investments and that Balderton was broadly optimistic about the European tech ecosystem, a feeling that, he said, was not reflected on social media and in the media. He said: “Every time the team opened up our LinkedIn or opened up the newspaper, we would read all this negative stuff about ‘Europe is not doing this right, it needs more money, we’re losing people to this, we’re losing people to that’. "We thought, while there is obviously some truth in all that, actually why don't we sometimes sit back and say ‘well we have done a lot’. “There are people who read those headlines and think there is no funding for companies in Europe, so 'I am going to have to move to the US'. And it’s just not true.” He said the campaign was “trying to shift the conversation from Europe could be great to pointing out that it already is great”. The campaign, which launches today, runs on billboards and digital formats in London, Paris, Stockholm, Berlin and Munich. It is timed to coincide with London Tech Week, Founders Forum, SXSW (South By South West) Festival, Sommarminglet in Stockholm and will run throughout VivaTech in Paris. The campaign, which costs hundreds of thousands of pounds, also points to BuiltInEurope.com - home to a new jobs platform aggregating tech startup roles in Europe.  The site lists positions from the top 1,000 European tech startups, to connect founders with talent and help build on the sector’s momentum. Alex Kendall, CEO of Wayve, said: “If you think about what’s going to matter in the next 100 years, it’s the really hard, deep technology, and startups are where that’s built. It’s the most adventurous, exciting thing you could do - build or join a startup in Europe.” Anton Osika, CEO Lovable, said: "There has never been a better time to build from Europe than now. The talent is here, the capital is here, the ecosystem is here. And we have the ambition to match." The EU and UK governments are making moves to try to keep European talent in Europe. The EU’s €5bn Scaleup Europe Fund is investing in promising European startups while the UK government-backed Sovereign AI fund is aimed at keeping the UK’s best AI startups in the UK as they scale up.

Invisix, a semiconductor metrology company developing next-generation measurement tools for advanced chip manufacturing, has raised an oversubscribed €20 million seed round. The financing includes participation from Hitachi Ventures, Transition Ventures, imec.xpand, Doosan Investment Co., and a tier-one semiconductor manufacturer. As semiconductor devices become smaller and more complex, measuring the critical structures inside advanced chips is becoming increasingly difficult. Manufacturers must verify each layer before adding the next, yet conventional optical metrology tools can no longer resolve many of the buried features that determine device performance. As these chips power high-performance computing and AI, demand is growing for faster, non-destructive measurement solutions that can improve yields and accelerate production. Founded by ASML alumni and PhD physicists Christina Porter and Sietse van der Post, Invisix is developing a soft x-ray metrology platform designed to enable high-volume, non-destructive measurement of some of the most challenging semiconductor structures. According to Christina Porter, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Invisix, the growing complexity and three-dimensional nature of advanced semiconductors is driving demand for a new generation of metrology tools capable of inspecting critical internal structures without damaging devices. We are entering the market with technology that has been incubated inside ASML for more than a decade — a level of technical de-risking that is unusual for a seed-stage hardware company and gives our customers a faster path to deployment. The company's technology is based on High Harmonic Generation (HHG), a process rooted in scientific discoveries recognised by the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physics. HHG uses a short-pulsed laser to excite noble-gas atoms into a high-energy state, causing them to emit soft x-rays across multiple wavelengths. This generates a richer three-dimensional signal than conventional single-wavelength laser systems. By combining HHG with proprietary reconstruction algorithms and machine learning, Invisix reconstructs detailed three-dimensional images of internal device structures without damaging the wafer. The system architecture has also been designed to deliver the throughput required for high-volume semiconductor manufacturing. Invisix applies to metrology the same principle that transformed semiconductor lithography: as device dimensions shrink, the wavelength used to measure them must shrink as well. By using soft x-rays, the company aims to provide visibility into buried nanoscale structures that are increasingly inaccessible to conventional optical inspection methods. The technology has already been validated through industry collaborations, including work with Intel and imec, and the company continues customer demonstrations from its new Eindhoven cleanroom facility. Invisix is now focused on bringing its first commercial system to market and enabling semiconductor manufacturers to measure the next generation of advanced devices at production scale. The funding will be used to expand the Invisix team, accelerate development of its first commercial system, and support customer demonstrations at the company's new cleanroom facility in Eindhoven.

This week, we tracked more than 60 tech funding deals worth over €3.1 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 ?? Focused Energy raises $240M ?? IQE plc has raised £81M ??  WeRoad lands $58M to scale real-world travel experiences ??‍?? Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers ?? TrueLayer acquires Dutch fintech In3 to offer credit at checkout ?? Finland’s Grundium acquires Denmark’s Visiopharm to build an end-to-end AI precision pathology platform ? Interesting moves from investors ?  Gary Lineker’s Goalhanger launches VC business ? Marvelous and Joachim Herz Foundation launch €20M deeptech fund to bridge Germany’s commercialisation gap ? Lovable owner raises 1.4 billion in new fund ? SwissVC repositions as a peer network for active venture investors ? Transition Ventures’ $150m fund to back ground-breaking founders ?️ In other (important) news ??  London topples Paris to regain European tech top spot ?? ICEX launches Desafía Ciencia to boost the internationalization of scientific spin-offs in the United Kingdom ?️  Nearly a third of European founders are considering transferring their headquarters to the United States. ??  Kyiv delivers: How Glovo scaled one of its fastest-growing markets in wartime Ukraine ? InRento crosses €100M in financing as European property developers look beyond banks ?️ Telecom: 10 companies that raised the most in 2025 ? Interview: Oliver Prill, CEO of London fintech unicorn Tide ? European tech startups to watch  ??  Kopa.ai raises €2M to build AI agents for end-to-end e-commerce operations ?? Perplant raises €1M to equip tractors with AI “eyes” to cut herbicide use and boost profits for farmers ??  Publicit secures €700,000 to reinvent programmatic advertising ?? Voxmind raises £546,000 pre-seed funding as cloud giants exit voice biometrics market ?? Atheni secures £350,000 to help teams use AI more effectively

MokN, a French cybersecurity company focused on protecting organisations from credential theft and identity-based attacks, has raised $15 million in Series A funding. The round was led by GV, marking Google Ventures’ first investment in a French startup, and included participation from Datadog, existing investors Moonfire and OVNI Capital, as well as angel investors. The funding follows MokN’s €2.6 million seed round announced in October 2025 and will support the company’s next phase of growth. The startup plans to expand its product portfolio, strengthen its presence in France and the United States, and launch operations in the United Kingdom through the opening of new offices. Founded to address the growing threat of credential theft, MokN has developed technology designed to proactively recover compromised identities before they can be exploited by attackers. The company currently protects more than one million users across large enterprises and mid-sized organisations. Its first product, Baits, is designed to combat phishing attacks by deploying highly realistic decoy access points that mimic corporate environments, such as VPN and webmail portals. When attackers attempt to use stolen credentials, they reveal those credentials to security teams, allowing organisations to identify and neutralise threats before the information is misused or traded on the dark web. The rapid adoption by major companies and the results achieved with our first solution have confirmed one thing: this approach must go further. Today, we are laying the groundwork for Active Identity Recovery by extending proactive recovery to all forms of identity, with the ambition of making it a new global standard for identity protection, said Gautier Bugeon, CEO and co-founder of MokN. MokN is positioning itself around the emerging category of Active Identity Recovery, which focuses on helping organisations regain control of compromised identities rather than relying solely on passive monitoring approaches such as dark web surveillance. The new funding will support increased investment in research and development as the company builds what it describes as the first multi-product platform dedicated to active identity theft protection. Upcoming products will focus on securing customer accounts, stolen browser cookies and compromised sessions - attack vectors that are becoming increasingly common but remain inadequately addressed by existing security solutions.

A London-based AI lab, founded by DeepMind, Microsoft and White House former staff, has come out of stealth, emerging with a $50m raise and a pledge to try to “write the playbook for AI-native science”. The $50m seed round in Inherent was co-led by Index Ventures and Radical Ventures. The AI lab is building Faraday (named after the famous scientist Michael Faraday), an AI system that, it says, allows humans and self-improving AI to work together and tackle what it says are some of the hardest problems in science. Co-founders Tantum Collins, Edward Hughes and Louis Kirsch previously worked at DeepMind, while another co-founder Kaloyan Aleksiev worked at Reka AI and Microsoft.  Collins has also worked at the White House on AI policy under president Biden. Matt Clifford, the co-founder of Entrepreneurs First and former government AI advisor, is an advisor to Inherent. Clifford said the founders were some of the "most impressive, thoughtful founders" he'd met. Inherent says it “will explore the frontiers of scientific discovery and has set out to write the playbook for AI-native science”. Index’s Danny Rimmer said that Faraday was “a system designed to help humans and self-improving AI work together on genuine scientific discovery — not AI plugged into the same methods we've used for 400 years, but a reimagining of the scientific method from first principles”. IMAGE:PIXABAY

TrueLayer, a UK payments fintech looking to disrupt the dominance of card payments, has acquired a Dutch fintech, in a move to expand its offering to credit products.   Backed by Stripe and Tiger Global, TrueLayer leverages open banking technology to allow customers to make online transactions. These payments are called account-to-account payments or pay by bank and are an alternative to going through card giant intermediaries Visa and MasterCard. TrueLayer says its technology has transparent pricing, no hidden fees and eliminates fraud. TrueLayer has acquired 20-strong Dutch fintech In3, which specialises in consumer credit via bank payments. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. TrueLayer said the acquisition means it can offer consumers the option to pay by debit and now credit at checkout- saying it’s the only pay by bank network in Europe to offer the combination.  Until now, pay by bank has been focused on debit transactions. It says its first credit product launch will be a Buy Now Pay Later product, with longer-duration credit products to follow later this year. Pay by bank payments are still dwarfed by those of card transactions.  According to the FT, open banking powered a total of 27mn payments in the UK in March 2025, according to Open Banking Limited. By contrast, the Payments Systems Regulator recorded 1.92bn card transactions in February. But TrueLayer, whose merchant partners include Amazon, Just Eat Takeaway and Coinbase, pointed to figures showing pay by bank transactions now account for up to 17 per cent of European ecommerce transaction value. The fintech also pointed out the deal comes at a time of concerns about European reliance on US tech and financial institutions. TrueLayer, which operates across 22 countries, says it processes more than $150bn in annualised payment volume. Francesco Simoneschi, CEO and co-founder of TrueLayer, said: "With the addition of In3's team and their deep expertise in consumer credit, we now have the people, the network and the products to build a truly independent European payments alternative to the card networks."

Earlier this week, an image went viral in Ukraine. It features a dark and apocalyptic image of Kyiv, with a burning shopping and entertainment centre near Lukianivska metro station in Kyiv engulfed in flames, with thick black smoke billowing into the sky — the result of Russia’s massive missile strike on Kyiv on May 24. Image: Pavlo Petrov @petrovp.photo, DSNS Kyiv At the forefront of the image is a rider on an electric scooter, wearing the distinctive yellow Glovo food-delivery backpack.  Rest assured, the delivery rider, Vladyslav, wasn’t working at the time – he was, in fact, going to meet a friend at the train station — but it offers a stark snapshot of the reality of running a delivery service business during wartime.  In Kyiv, like the rest of Ukraine, life goes on. Shops, cafes, and restaurants are open, and meals, groceries, pharma, and flowers are ordered and delivered at a rapid pace.  And critical to that success is Glovo, with Ukraine becoming one of the company’s top five global markets in just a few years as business as usual persists despite the challenges of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  I sat down with Maryna Pavliuk, GM of Glovo Ukraine, on a recent trip to Kyiv to learn more. Ukraine became one of Glovo’s fastest-growing markets Pavliuk describes Ukraine as a “phenomenal” market for Glovo because, prior to 2018, food delivery in Ukraine was largely phone-based, and services like Glovo began to scale rapidly. At the same time, credit card adoption and digital payments accelerated, transforming consumer behaviour almost overnight.  In just three to five years, usage reached around 11 orders per person annually in Ukraine, compared to roughly 12 or 13 in Spain. According to Pavliuk: “It was just the right point because people were super ready. And it came really naturally when we showed them that this is possible.” Glovo Ukraine is now a standalone entity that operates across 40 Ukrainian cities, with continued expansion despite ongoing wartime challenges. Its ecosystem includes more than 12,000 partners, over 85 per cent of which are small and medium-sized businesses, reflecting Glovo’s strong integration into the local economy and SME sector. Since 2018, more than 80,000 couriers have completed at least one order through the platform. Pavliuk explained that, before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian team played a much broader regional role across Central Asia and the Caucasus. “Ukraine was the first country we launched in the region, and from there the team went on to launch Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, and Armenia. For around four years, Ukraine served as a major talent hub and operational centre for those markets.” However, the war significantly changed how the regional structure operated.  “After the war started, it became much harder to travel and maintain the same level of exchange between teams,” she said. Ukraine still remained an important regional centre, but the model evolved and started working differently. More than an on-demand delivery company Glovo describes itself as a tech company first and foremost because of the technology behind its three apps. “You have the app for customers, the app for riders, and a separate app for partners. Then you combine it all together, and it’s all powered by engines that in real time define who is driving to which restaurant and delivering to which customer. That’s all happening in real time,” explained Pavliuk. “We count every minute because every minute costs money, so we need to be incredibly efficient and fast. That’s why there’s so much technology behind the platform, including AI. We have a huge global engineering team constantly working on the product." At the moment, around 70 per cent of the business comes from food partners — from major restaurant chains to smaller local restaurants. Quick commerce is also growing fast. In Ukraine, for example, it increased from around 17 per cent of the business to 28 per cent in just over two years. According to Pavliuk, deliveries have increased over the four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion began. Factors such as nightly curfews, air raid alerts, and harsh weather conditions have all influenced consumers’ willingness to go out for meals or shopping. But she also attributes this to the company’s efforts building trust with customers: “Customers are more attached, they fully use the app, they discover new categories, and that’s why they are making more orders.” Blackouts forced Glovo to reinvent operations During the winter of 2025–2026, power outages in Ukraine became both widespread and frequent, particularly following large-scale Russian attacks on energy infrastructure. In some regions, residents experienced rolling blackouts daily, while more severe strikes triggered outages lasting several days. In Kyiv and other major cities, electricity was often available for only a few hours at a time during peak periods of the crisis. Businesses and households increasingly relied on generators and backup batteries to cope with repeated disruptions. The situation intensified during extreme cold spells in January and February 2026, when temperatures dropped below -20°C and electricity demand surged. Russian strikes on substations, thermal plants, and transmission lines further destabilised the grid, forcing emergency outages across most regions of the country. According to Reuters, around 80 per cent of Ukrainian businesses reported being affected by electricity outages during the winter period, with restaurants, cafés, salons, and retailers among the hardest hit due to heating costs and generator expenses. For Pavliuk, blackouts remain the biggest challenge facing the company — and they are no longer limited to Ukraine’s notoriously harsh winters. Any period of extreme weather that increases electricity demand can trigger outages. As blackouts intensify, they are reshaping how many businesses operate, forcing companies to adapt to rising energy costs and ongoing power instability. Image: During winter, Glovo also employs walking couriers due to heavy snow conditions. She explained:  “For us as a tech company in 2022, when the first blackouts appeared, the biggest issue was that we are super dependent on cell connection and the internet. If there is no electricity, nothing is there. And the infrastructure was not prepared at that time. There were no batteries available to power the cell stations. No UPS systems for Wi-Fi. Only small batteries that could support the internet for a short time.” She admits the situation created enormous challenges for the company’s operations. “For us as a tech company, it was super hard because our entire operating model and the way the engine works were never designed for blackouts,” she said. “It’ was not built for situations where a partner can suddenly disappear from the system. We keep receiving orders, but the partner may not be able to receive them or prepare the food. And even for restaurants, there’s huge uncertainty around planning shifts and ordering supplies.” But the country quickly went through an energy transformation. People started storing power at home, and businesses started rebuilding infrastructure to ensure they had cell service, Wi-Fi, generators, and batteries. However, this represents a major investment for restaurants in Ukraine. As Pavliuk explained, “It’s very hard to take out €50,000 to €150,000 for generators and backup systems.” And then you need fuel for the generator, someone to manage it, and to deal with the inconvenience of its noise and smell.  Pavliuk admits the local team had to become creative, realising that, as part of a large global company, no one would rebuild infrastructure or develop technology solutions solely for the local team’s needs. “My team is super creative, and we did a lot of ad hoc developments and integrations with city services that provide real-time blackout information on each street. It wasn’t easy, but I think we succeeded.” At the same time, the local team was dealing with the personal impact of the blackout. Glovo supplied each team member with a three-kilowatt EcoFlow battery – which provides enough charge to power their fridge, hair dryer, internet, and a lamp at home for 10 hours.  “It's just a small example of how we adapt.” While Ukraine’s brutal winter is thankfully over, Pavliuk admits that the summer won’t be easy, with many predicting rolling blackouts.  Building a wartime operating playbook Glovo Ukraine’s experience has become a reference point for operating under extreme disruption. Pavliuk shared that the CEO in the Middle East recently reached out asking whether the company had developed a manual for running operations during wartime because, according to her, “People simply couldn’t realise that war is there and that there are basic safety rules. You need a safety backpack, you need cash, you need water and food, and you need a plan because everything can be disrupted.” Delivering through air raids Back to delivery riders like Vladyslav, it's a job not without risk. Air raids in Ukraine can occur at any time, day or night, and often last for unpredictable periods.  Fortunately, Ukraine has become super advanced in early detection and understanding exactly what is flying and where. Pavliuk explained:  “We monitor everything closely in real time and manually close cities where we see a real threat of attack. Some partners automatically close operations depending on the level of threat or as soon as an air raid alarm sounds. Our ultimate position is that we don’t want couriers on the streets when there is a real threat. We also have local insurance for couriers — health insurance, third-party responsibility, and support.” That said, life in Ukraine does continue, even during air raids. During my trips to Ukraine, I rarely go to air-raid shelters during alerts because local apps let me assess the risk level in real time. In most cases, people remain on the streets or in the office, businesses stay open, and daily life carries on despite the constant backdrop of war. Why companies should enter Ukraine now — not later Pavliuk shares the sentiment I hear consistently about international companies scaling into Ukraine.  “It is better to enter Ukraine now, start building the business, understand the market, and establish relationships, rather than staying on the sidelines and arriving too late.” She admits that the challenges of operating in a country at war are real and numerous.  “But at the same time, if you look at us and at many other businesses operating here, companies are not just surviving — they are growing and thriving. I believe that once there is a ceasefire, or hopefully the war ends, the cost of entering the Ukrainian market will rise significantly.” ‘It doesn’t feel heroic — it’s simply our reality’ Image: Glovo delivery during sunnier weather. Pavliuk admits that at times exhaustion is unavoidable. “But if you look at the average Ukrainian, people are still living their lives,” she says. “New businesses are starting. Just yesterday we had a startup competition. We still have a lot of good talent.  And another thing that is very unique for Ukraine is that many people don’t want to leave.” Pavliuk and her team get offers and promotions to lead businesses in other countries. They reject them. “For a long time I was offered different countries and opportunities, but I really don’t want to leave until the war is over.” She reflects on how this period will eventually be remembered. “I’m curious what will be written in history books 10 or 20 years from now about this time — and about the phenomenon of Ukraine and its people. I think there will be many stories of heroism. But for us, it doesn’t feel heroic. It’s simply our reality and the way we live.” Glovo’s long-term bet on Ukraine: Glovo has invested a total of €120 million in Ukraine, including €55 million committed before the full-scale invasion.  The company has also been officially recognised as a “critical company to the economy in wartime” for three consecutive years. Early backing from the Ukrainian venture capital firm GR Capital https://gr.capital/ helped support its growth in the market.  Beyond its commercial operations, Glovo has contributed more than €1 million in donations and humanitarian support initiatives across Ukraine. Lead image: Rider delivering to a warm-up tent during winter 2026 during a blackout.

Geordie AI, a security and governance platform for AI agents, has raised $30 million in a Series A funding round led by Balderton Capital. The round also included participation from Crosspoint Capital, alongside follow-on investment from existing backers General Catalyst and Ten Eleven Ventures, bringing the company’s total funding to $36.5 million. As part of the investment, James Wise, Partner at Balderton Capital, will join the company’s board. As AI agents become more widely deployed within enterprises, organisations are facing growing challenges around visibility, governance and operational control. Geordie AI is positioning itself as a central platform for understanding, securing and governing AI systems at scale. The platform provides enterprises with real-time visibility into which AI agents exist within their systems, what they can access, how they behave and the risks they may introduce across enterprise environments. Alongside this, Geordie’s runtime remediation suite, Beam, is designed to help organisations proactively shape and constrain agent behaviour without slowing deployment and innovation. The organisations today that can safely approve and deploy AI agents are the ones that are capturing a new competitive advantage in their space. Geordie enables teams to take a holistic, defence-in-depth approach so they can deploy their AI agent systems safely at scale, said Henry Comfort, CEO and co-founder of Geordie AI. The new funding will be used to expand Geordie AI’s platform capabilities for enterprise security and AI teams, as organisations continue adopting AI agents across their operations. The company also plans to grow its engineering and go-to-market teams, with a particular focus on expanding its presence in the US.

Atheni, an AI adoption company, has raised £350,000 to further develop its platform designed to help organisations use AI more effectively across their workforce. The company is backed by angel investors, including Alex Chesterman OBE and is supported by Innovate UK. Founded by Mackenzie Howe and Louise Ballard, Atheni was developed through two years of client work before raising external funding. During that time, the company refined a methodology focused on embedding AI guidance directly into day-to-day workflows rather than relying on standalone training sessions or workshops. The funding will support the rollout of the Atheni Accelerator, a browser-based platform that provides employees with personalised, role-specific guidance for using AI tools such as ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot within their daily work. The platform is also designed to help organisations measure whether AI capability and practical adoption are improving across teams. Although access to AI has become more widespread, many organisations are still working to achieve meaningful adoption. According to the company, employees often remain limited to basic use cases and lack support in applying AI to improve decision-making, critical thinking and work quality. Over the past two years, Atheni has tested its approach across sectors including further education, executive education, manufacturing, financial services and private equity. The company says it has consistently achieved adoption rates above 90 per cent within 90 days of implementation. “Most AI startups are building better tools. At Atheni, we are building master craftspeople. Organisations can tell you how many people have access to AI, but not whether anyone is using it to think more clearly, challenge assumptions or do work they couldn’t do before. That is the gap. Atheni measures it and shows organisations how to close it, said Mackenzie Howe. Louise Ballard explained that while many organisations already have access to advanced AI tools, most employees are still using them in limited ways. She said Atheni is focused on helping people unlock the broader potential of AI within the work they already do. Atheni is currently rolling out the platform with existing clients ahead of a planned future funding round to support broader expansion.

Kopa.ai, an agentic AI platform for e-commerce teams, has raised €2 million in seed funding in a round co-led by XTX Ventures and Practica Capital, with participation from Inovia Capital and angel investor Etan Ilfeld. The company is building what it describes as an operating system for e-commerce businesses, designed to help teams delegate operational and analytical work to AI agents that can understand context, make decisions, and execute tasks autonomously. Founded by a team with more than a decade of hands-on experience in e-commerce, Kopa.ai is built around the idea that running a successful online business requires thousands of expert decisions every week. Rather than focusing solely on automation, the platform aims to enable merchants to delegate work to AI agents in the same way they would rely on experienced internal operators. Kopa.ai connects directly to a merchant’s existing tools and storefront, continuously analysing areas such as products, campaigns, inventory, customer behaviour and site performance. Based on this understanding, its AI agents identify opportunities to improve business performance and take action accordingly — including generating creatives, adjusting campaigns, reallocating budgets, or publishing updates across connected systems. The platform is designed to interpret intent rather than rely on prompts or predefined workflows. Teams provide high-level objectives, while the system determines how to execute them. Actions can run with human approval or autonomously, depending on customer preferences. According to the company, every action and outcome feeds back into the system, allowing the AI to improve its judgment and execution over time through a continuous cycle of analysis, decision-making, execution and learning. According to Donatas Benaitis, founder of Kopa.ai, many e-commerce businesses have the potential to scale significantly faster, but are often slowed down by increasing operational complexity: We’re building Kopa.ai to feel like handing work to your best expert - someone who understands what you’re trying to achieve from just a few words, makes smart decisions on your behalf, and delivers results that are often even better than you imagined. Unlike point solutions focused on individual functions such as advertising, analytics or inventory management, Kopa.ai takes a broader approach across the entire e-commerce operation. Under the hood, the company is developing proprietary systems for structuring business knowledge, managing operational context and orchestrating specialised AI agents at scale. The newly raised funding will be used to further develop the company’s core AI infrastructure, improve the intelligence and reliability of its agents, and expand its go-to-market efforts.

Orbital Industries, a London-based company developing industrial hardware and infrastructure using AI-driven engineering and materials discovery systems, has raised $50 million in a Series B funding round led by Plural, with participation from existing investors including NVentures, Radical Ventures, Compound, and Fly Ventures. Founded by Jonathan Godwin, James Gin-Pollock, and Daniel Miodovnik, Orbital Industries is focused on applying AI to accelerate how physical technologies are designed, tested, and brought to market. The company describes its approach as an “AI industrial” model, integrating materials discovery, engineering, and manufacturing into a single system aimed at reducing development timelines and enabling smaller engineering teams to develop industrial technologies more efficiently. Orbital Industries is initially targeting data centre infrastructure through Orbital IT, its commercial division focused on cooling and deployment systems for high-density AI computing environments. As AI workloads continue to increase, data centres face growing pressure around power consumption, heat management, and deployment speed, with existing cooling systems approaching technical limitations. To address these challenges, the company has developed a dielectric cooling fluid and refrigeration system designed for next-generation GPUs and high-density compute environments. According to Orbital Industries, the fluid is free from PFAS chemicals and was developed using its materials discovery platform. Underlying these products is Orb, the company’s simulation engine designed to model the quantum mechanical behaviour of atoms at scale. Orbital Industries says the system enables significantly faster materials simulations compared to traditional approaches and is being used to accelerate industrial product development. The company is also developing modular data centre infrastructure intended to reduce deployment timelines for new compute capacity. Orbital Industries says the systems are manufactured off-site and delivered as ready-to-deploy units designed to accelerate the rollout of AI infrastructure. According to Jonathan Godwin, co-founder and CEO of Orbital Industries, advances in AI are allowing smaller teams to move more quickly from scientific discovery to commercial hardware development. Frontier AI gives us PhD-level expertise across every discipline, meaning small, agile teams can move from materials discovery to commercial hardware in a way that simply wasn't possible before, so what used to take a decade, we can now do in months. We're starting with some of the most pressing challenges in data centres, but the scope of what this approach can unlock is much, much bigger. The funding will be used to scale Orbital Industries’ data centre products, expand its AI and engineering teams, and accelerate the development of industrial applications beyond data centre infrastructure.

Monzo, the UK digital bank, today unveiled details about its move into offering mobile phone contracts, with Monzo Mobile pitching itself as rewarding “staying, not switching” customers. Built on top of the Virgin O2 network, Monzo Mobile will launch this summer and is offering mobile plans as cheap as £8 a month. Monzo will hope to be able to cross-sell its mobile proposition to its more than 15m banking customers, as it looks to shake up the mobile industry and offer its banking customers more products. It will go up against the likes of EE and VodafoneThree while newer entrants like Revolut and Klarna have also made moves into offering mobile services. Monzo is offering three plans using a digital sim priced £8, £12, and £20 a month, with varying data allowances. The digital bank says it will offer customers five per cent off their monthly bill every year, increasing to a maximum of 30 per cent, as Monzo rewards longevity. Monzo customers will be able to track data usage, roaming and mobile spend all within the Monzo app and customers can upgrade or cancel at any time with no hidden fees, Monzo said. The waiting list for Monzo Mobile opens today. Duygu Yenidogan-Schmidt, general manager, core banking, Monzo, said: "Monzo Mobile is a natural extension of our mission to make money work for everyone.  “By bringing mobile connectivity into the Monzo app through a simple eSIM experience, we’re giving customers more visibility and control over another essential part of their everyday spending.”

London has reclaimed its position as Europe’s top tech ecosystem, knocking Paris off the top spot, driven by record AI investment, according to new data. The Dealroom Global Tech Ecosystem Index data also shows that Europe is home to more of the world’s highest-performing tech ecosystems relative to population size than North America and every other region in the world.   In 2024, London lost its position as the top tech ecosystem to Paris, but in 2025 it has reclaimed the top spot, powered by a record $7bn in AI investment, up from $3.9bn in 2024, the creation of new unicorns, and its depth across sectors, Dealroom said. In 2025, London tech companies raised $17.8 billion, up 45 per cent from 2024, with the city now home to 138 unicorns, including the likes of Wayve, Granola and ElevenLabs.   ChatGPT developer OpenAI is to make London its largest research hub outside of its San Francisco headquarters, while Anthropic recently announced plans for a major new London with capacity for 800 staff. London, ranked fourth globally, came in ahead of Paris, Stockholm, Berlin and then Munich across Europe. Paris, home to AI startups like Mistral and the newer AMI Labs, raised $5bn in VC funding in 2025.   The data shows that AI now accounts for around 30 per cent of VC investment in Europe, underlining the region’s focus on next-generation technologies.   The data also shows that Europe dominates the global Density Leaders rankings, with 45 European cities featured in the global top 100, ahead of North America’s 40.  Cambridge ranks as the world’s third-highest Density Leader behind only the Bay Area and Boston.   The Density Leader rankings measure innovation output per capita, including startup activity, enterprise value creation, unicorns and university linkages.   The data also shows that specialist ecosystems focused on AI, defence tech and deep tech, like Munich, Kyiv, Athens and Sofia, are accelerating rapidly.   It also shows that smaller specialist ecosystems, including Ghent and Lausanne, are emerging as globally competitive centres for research, deep tech and entrepreneurship.   Yoram Wijngaarde, founder & CEO, Dealroom.co, said: “What stands out is not just the strength of leading hubs like London and Paris, but the rise of high-performing smaller ecosystems often built around leading research and academic institutions." Bobby Jäckle, Partner at Visionaries, said: “From London’s leadership in AI and fintech to deep tech hubs like Munich, Cambridge and Lausanne, we’re seeing a new generation of founders building with greater ambition and urgency." The data scrutinised venture capital investment, enterprise value creation, unicorns, ecosystem momentum and university linkages.   But comparing 2025 and 2024 data is not directly comparable, as the 2025 data accounts for more factors. IMAGE: PIXABAY

Germany conducts research at a world-class level. Yet many technologies fail to make the transition from the laboratory to the market, not because of their quality but because of a lack of capital. The Joachim Herz Foundation and the Berlin-based investment platform Marvelous are addressing this with the new Marvelous Scito Fund, which has a volume of €20 million.  German venture capital volume has fallen from $24.7 billion in 2021 to $9.8 billion in 2025. By 2030, the growth capital gap in the deeptech segment could increase to around €10 billion annually. Traditional venture capital funds avoid these early stages because technological, market-related, and operational uncertainties do not align with their risk-return profiles.  The Marvelous Scito  Fund offers foundation capital with a long-term investment horizon and social mission that can provide stability and momentum during these phases. It invests in teams developing and commercialising technologies with clear potential for industrial scaling, societal benefit and ecological impact. It focuses on Advanced Materials, Waste Valorisation and Robotics.  The Joachim Herz Foundation was founded in Hamburg in 2008 to enable effective solutions for resource efficiency, climate protection, and the securing of skilled labour. It helps ensure that more innovations from cutting-edge research reach practical application and supports entrepreneurial talent in developing innovative business models. It promotes future skills and digital transformation to provide new impetus for vocational education and training.  With its investment, the Joachim Herz Foundation aims to set an example within the German innovation ecosystem – and serve as a model for how philanthropic capital in Germany can play a stronger role as an innovation driver.  Marvelous is a European investment platform focused on the commercialisation of physical deeptech innovations. Based in Berlin, the company combines scientific excellence with industrial execution capabilities, investing in early-stage technologies that support the transition to an emission- and waste-free economy. Marvelous Capital manages the Marvelous Scito Fund and operates through two complementary investment strategies. First, through its early-stage vehicle, Marvelous Ventures, the firm invests directly in deeptech startups at the pre-seed and seed stages. Second, through the Marvelous Scito Fund, Marvelous manages capital on behalf of the Joachim Herz Foundation, investing both in selected deeptech venture funds and alongside them in startups. This dual approach provides broad yet targeted exposure to Germany’s deeptech ecosystem. According to Ulrich Müller, CFO of the Joachim Herz Foundation, the Foundation’s asset management strategy is being continuously developed.  “By expanding into venture capital, we are complementing our existing investment strategy with another asset class, aiming to generate sustainable market-level returns here as well.  At the same time, we are increasingly investing part of the foundation’s capital while taking impact-oriented aspects into account.”  Chris Heyer, General Partner at Marvelous, sees this as the core of the platform strategy: “The  Marvelous Scito Fund is a consistent step in implementing our vision of a platform. Marvelous  Capital and Marvelous Catalyst work hand in hand: while we invest specifically in startups  through our various funds, we also support them operationally through the Catalyst in achieving market readiness.” Lead image: Magnific.

Caudal Energy, a company developing a new class of predictable renewable power systems, has raised £4.3 million in funding, led by Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE) and Empirical Ventures, with participation from other investors, including existing investors Zero Carbon Capital and Creator Fund. The funding represents one of the most significant recent institutional venture investments into tidal energy in the UK, reflecting the important role predictable renewable power will play in balancing costs and system volatility.  Caudal Energy, founded as Porpoise Power in 2024 on breakthrough hydrodynamic research originating from co-founder Professor Adrian Thomas at the University of Oxford, is rethinking how tidal energy is generated from first principles.   Inspired by the efficiency of the tail or caudal fins of marine mammals, the company’s proprietary oscillating foil system works with tidal flows rather than against them, enabling a simpler, smarter and more commercially scalable approach to marine energy generation.   Its modular design simplifies installation, reduces maintenance costs and lowers operational complexity, creating a more commercially practical pathway for tidal energy to scale as part of future renewable infrastructure and complement intermittent renewable sources with dependable baseload generation.  The Caudal Generator is designed to deliver predictable, reliable and scalable renewable power from a significantly broader range of tidal sites than traditional systems, at costs competitive with established technologies such as offshore wind. At a system level, tidal energy enhances energy security and significantly reduces grid system costs by providing a consistent source of baseload energy.  Caudal’s fin-based technology will dramatically expand where tidal energy can be deployed. While tidal energy has long been recognised for its predictability, commercial deployment has historically been constrained by the complexity and economics of turbine-based systems operating in a limited number of extreme conditions with peak flows above 5 knots.  Caudal Energy’s modular, surface-mounted architecture is designed to overcome these constraints. By operating efficiently in abundant mid-flow tidal locations, with peak flows above 3 knots, the platform dramatically expands the viable deployment footprint for tidal energy.  This unlocks a materially larger global market opportunity across utility-scale, industrial and distributed energy applications.  Already at Technology Readiness Level 5 (TRL), the investment will support the next phase of development and full-scale testing of Caudal Energy’s breakthrough fin-based tidal technology at Strangford Lough, Northern Ireland. The company’s first commercial deployment is targeted for 2028, taking it to TRL8. According to John Kennedy, CEO of Caudal Energy, the future energy system needs renewable power that is not only clean, but dependable and built to scale.  “We founded Caudal to challenge the assumption that tidal energy has to remain complex, costly and niche. Our approach combines smarter hydrodynamic design with modular deployment architecture to create a system designed for real-world performance.  By unlocking the potential of mid-flow tidal sites, we believe Caudal can dramatically expand where tidal energy can be deployed and how commercially competitive it can become.” Andy Straiton, Investment Lead at Oxford Science Enterprises, commented: “Caudal Energy is addressing one of the most important challenges in the transition to renewable energy: how to provide predictable, scalable generation that complements intermittent power sources such as wind and solar. Caudal’s approach is designed around the economics required for large-scale deployment, not just technical performance. The combination of simpler deployment, lower operational complexity and access to a far broader range of viable sites can make tidal energy cost competitive with established renewables such as solar and wind.”  Johnathan Matlock, General Partner at Empirical Ventures added: “Grid operators are increasingly pricing predictability into the system, and the renewables that benefit are the ones that can deliver deterministic output without storage costs. Caudal is one of the only tidal platforms we have assessed with a credible path to LCOE parity with offshore wind, and the team has done the detailed engineering work to back up the modular deployment claim at scale. This is what made it investible for us.” The funding will be used to expand Caudal Energy’s engineering and modelling capabilities, advance demonstration and deployment activities, and accelerate commercial partnerships across utility, industrial and distributed energy markets.  Caudal Energy is currently progressing development and deployment discussions with a range of strategic partners as it moves toward commercial-scale demonstration. Lead image: Magnific.

UK biotech iFAST Diagnostics has closed a £5 million funding round. iFAST is addressing the $4 billion (and growing) Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (AST) market. It has developed a test delivering results in under three hours from a positive blood bottle or 3 to 4 hours from a raw urine sample, saving lives and reducing the spread of antimicrobial resistance.. The round was led by Meridian Health Ventures (MHV), with continued participation from almost all existing subscribers, including QantX, RAW Ventures, and OKG Capital, as well as members of Cambridge Capital Group, and included £2.1 million of non-dilutive loan funding from Innovate UK.   The over-subscribed round values the company at almost 5 times more than the previous funding just 18 months ago and brings the total investment to date to £12 million. Tim Irish, General Partner at Meridian Health Ventures, said: “We are exceptionally proud to be partnered with iFAST Diagnostics. Their breakthrough technology has the potential to transform clinical practice, improve patient outcomes, and significantly slow the spread of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR). AMR is one of the defining public health challenges of our generation – and iFAST is taking that challenge head-on with a cost-effective solution already being placed in UK hospital laboratories. The iFAST rapid AST system is a game-changing innovation, delivering susceptibility testing in less than 3 hours, significantly faster than the current standard process which takes more than 40 hours.” Dr Toby King, iFAST CEO, said:  “We are hugely grateful and motivated by the continued enthusiasm and confidence from our investors to support our mission to meet the urgent global need for rapid, low-cost antimicrobial susceptibility testing. This investment is hugely significant as it allows us to continue our go-to-market strategy at pace, only three years after founding the company.” The funding will be used to expand the UK rollout, secure EU approval, and accelerate our clinical and regulatory programme for the company’s US regulatory approval through the FDA.

Mykor, a UK biotechnology company developing low-carbon construction materials from industrial and agricultural waste, has secured £4 million in funding to accelerate the scale-up of its industrial biofabrication technologies. The round was led by Clean Growth Fund, with participation from the British Business Bank’s South West Investment Fund via The FSE Group, Green Angel Ventures, and support from Innovate UK’s investor partnership programme. The construction sector remains a major contributor to global emissions, with growing pressure on developers and contractors to reduce both embodied and operational carbon in buildings. At the same time, many traditional insulation and construction materials remain carbon-intensive, non-renewable, and difficult to recycle. Founded in 2021, Mykor develops construction systems using engineered mycelium, green chemistry, and industrial manufacturing processes to create low-carbon alternatives to conventional building materials. The company focuses on converting agricultural and industrial waste streams into scalable construction products designed to meet mainstream fire safety, acoustic, and performance requirements. Rather than operating solely as a materials manufacturer, Mykor positions itself as a technology and process platform, enabling contractors and manufacturers to integrate biomaterials into existing production lines and construction systems. Its first commercial product, MykoSIP, is a prefabricated partition wall system designed to reduce embodied carbon while maintaining comparable thermal and acoustic performance to conventional alternatives. According to the company, the panels also use significantly less water and electricity during production compared to polystyrene-based systems. According to Olivia Page, the company was built around the idea that lower-carbon construction materials must remain commercially viable and practical for large-scale adoption. We’ve built Mykor around the idea that decarbonising construction cannot come at the expense of cost, performance or practicality. The challenge has never just been inventing a biomaterial - it’s been manufacturing these systems at an industrial scale and integrating them into real construction supply chains. The funding comes as tightening building regulations across the UK and Europe increase demand for lower-carbon construction materials and more energy-efficient building systems. Mykor is already working on active construction projects and has signed large offtake agreements with contractors across the UK and Europe, while the new funding will support production scale-up and expansion into additional markets.

A London-headquartered data centre firm today said it had secured $2.7bn in financing, with the funds earmarked to expand across Europe and the Middle East amid soaring AI workload demands.   Pure Data Centres (Pure DC), which is backed by Oaktree Capital, purchases land to build data centres, which are then leased out to hyperscalers to run AI and cloud workloads. Hyperscalers include the likes of Microsoft, Google and Amazon.   A big chunk of the $2.7bn loan was secured against Pure DC’s Dublin and Amsterdam data centre campuses. The fresh funds brings in new lenders SMBC, the Japanese multinational bank, Allianz Global Investors (the investment management arm of Allianz), and Dutch bank ABN AMRO.   Pure DC is investing over €1 billion in a giant data centre campus, which will support AI workloads, in Amsterdam. The 78MW campus is fully leased to Microsoft, according to Dutch media.    It says the site, which comprises three 85-metere towers, will provide over 1,000 jobs. There is no firm date on when the data centre will be fully operational. Pure DC, which also operates a data centre in Abu Dhabi, is looking to expand its presence in the Middle East, which it believes is a key AI growth market.   However last month, Pure DC told CNBC that it paused investment in AI infrastructure projects and data centres in the Middle East amid the Iran war. Pure DC CEO Gary Wojtaszek said: "Over the past 12 months, we have materially strengthened and diversified our financing platform, bringing in high-quality institutional partners and increasing available capital.    "The successful syndication of the $2.15 billion facility and the expansion of our corporate facility demonstrate both the depth of market demand and the confidence lenders have in our assets, structure and strategy."

RevEng.AI, a cybersecurity company focused on software supply chain verification, has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by NATO Innovation Fund, with participation from Sands Capital, In-Q-Tel, IQ Capital, and Episode One. The company is building a binary-native verification layer for the software supply chain, helping organisations analyse compiled software to determine what is actually inside executables, firmware, and third-party applications without requiring access to source code. Software supply chain attacks are becoming a growing risk as organisations increasingly rely on third-party software, open-source components, and vendor updates. At the same time, AI-generated code is making it harder for security teams to verify that deployed software is secure and free from hidden vulnerabilities or malicious functionality. RevEng.AI aims to address this challenge through its foundational AI model, BinNet, which analyses software directly at the binary level. Trained alongside government cyber units and commercial security teams, the system is designed to automatically identify hidden vulnerabilities, backdoors, suspicious functionality, and abnormal changes in released software before it is deployed or purchased. According to James Patrick-Evans, PhD, Founder and CEO of RevEng.AI, as AI takes on a growing role in software development, executable binaries are becoming the most reliable way to verify what software actually does once it runs on machines. RevEng gives organisations an independent way to verify software at the binary level before it is released, bought, or deployed. This is critical because much of the software being built today is never reviewed or seen by a human, making it untrustworthy. It needs to be automated, and that’s exactly what RevEng delivers. Unlike traditional application security tools that primarily focus on source code and repositories, RevEng works directly on compiled executables, including closed-source and third-party software. The platform is designed to help organisations identify hidden or undeclared components, detect vulnerabilities and malicious behaviour, compare releases against trusted versions, and verify software before deployment or procurement decisions are made. David Ordonez, Senior Associate at NATO Innovation Fund, said modern economies and critical national infrastructure increasingly depend on software across sectors such as energy, transportation, healthcare, finance, and defence. RevEng.AI gives organisations the ability to understand what is actually inside the software they rely on, even when that software is closed-source or delivered by third parties. That closes a critical gap in software supply chain security and strengthens the resilience of the systems our societies depend on. The company says it is already seeing early demand from enterprise and defence customers, while continuing to integrate its technology into existing security and software delivery workflows to support more proactive software verification processes. The funding will be used to support the growth and deployment of RevEng.AI’s binary-level software verification platform as demand increases from enterprise and defence organisations.

Barcelona-based Publicit has raised €700,000 in a pre-seed funding round co-led by BStartup Banco Sabadell and Successful Fund, with participation from AticcoLab and several business angels from the Spanish technology and media sectors. Founded by former CERN engineer Gabriel García Asensio alongside Andrés Buendía and Jordi Orteu, Publicit is developing an advertising infrastructure designed to improve access to digital and omnichannel advertising for small and medium-sized businesses. The company is focused on addressing what it describes as a structural limitation within the advertising industry, where access to channels beyond platforms such as Google and Meta often requires manual negotiations, agency involvement, and large advertising budgets. This has historically limited access to formats such as connected TV, out-of-home advertising, digital audio, radio, and local press for smaller companies. Publicit is building an omnichannel advertising platform centred around an AI-powered media planning system capable of autonomously planning and activating campaigns. The platform enables businesses to launch campaigns across connected TV, out-of-home advertising, radio, digital audio, and press through a single interface without minimum spending requirements. The company has also developed its own European bidding infrastructure capable of processing advertising auctions in milliseconds while applying AI-based optimisation during campaign delivery. The funding comes amid continued growth in connected TV advertising and broader changes in the digital advertising market, with companies increasingly exploring alternative self-service advertising tools beyond major online platforms. Publicit plans to use the new funding to continue developing its advertising infrastructure, expand its AI capabilities, and further simplify access to omnichannel advertising tools for smaller businesses.