London-based Kinfolk, an AI-native HR workforce operations platform, has raised a $7.2 million seed round led by AlbionVC, with participation from PROfounders Capital and existing investors Ascension and Emerge. Angel investors, including Tony Jamous, Founder and Executive Chairman of OysterHR, also participated. The latest round brings Kinfolk’s total funding to $8.5 million. HR and People Operations teams face growing productivity pressure as headcounts shrink and complexity rises. Much of their time is spent on repetitive administrative work, while legacy ticketing systems and basic AI chatbots often fall short, creating friction as companies scale. Kinfolk is positioning itself to address this gap with what it describes as a new Workforce Operations category, starting with HR and People Operations. The platform combines agentic AI in Slack, request management, lifecycle automation, and analytics to manage employee support and people programs end-to-end. Commenting on the challenge, Jeet Mukerji, co-founder and CEO of Kinfolk, said HR teams remain burdened by manual administrative work and outdated tools, often forced to choose between cumbersome ticketing systems and limited chatbots. We built Kinfolk to break this cycle. By shifting from manual coordination to autonomous execution, we enable HR teams to scale their operations and focus on the strategic work that drives company growth. We’re excited to give People teams the operating system they deserve, one that performs work instead of simply managing it, Mukerji added. By replacing fragmented tools and manual coordination with a unified system, Kinfolk aims to help organisations scale operations, deliver more consistent employee support, and increase team capacity without adding headcount. Unlike standard chatbots that primarily retrieve information, Kinfolk’s AI agents are designed to execute tasks autonomously across systems, including drafting documents, updating HRIS records, and managing employee lifecycle changes directly within Slack or Microsoft Teams. The shift from manual coordination to autonomous execution is intended to help HR teams scale operations while maintaining control. With the new funding, Kinfolk plans to accelerate its agentic AI platform development, expand enterprise readiness, extend beyond core HR into payroll and IT workflows, and scale its go-to-market teams to meet growing demand.

London-based SolveAI, a platform that enables employees to build compliant enterprise software without writing code, has raised a $45 million Series A led by GV alongside a previously undisclosed $5 million pre-seed round led by Accel. Northzone, Mantis VC, and NeverLift also participated, along with angel investors including Mike LoSapio, CISO of Palantir, Pushmeet Kohli, and Olivier Godement. As AI-powered low- and no-code tools gain traction, many remain geared toward developers, hobbyists, or small teams operating outside the constraints of large enterprises. Larger organisations typically require applications that integrate with legacy systems, run on existing infrastructure, comply with strict governance standards, and scale reliably. As a result, employees closest to day-to-day inefficiencies - across operations, sales, finance, and frontline roles - often lack the ability to build tools tailored to their workflows and data environments. This can leave companies reliant on outsourced custom software that is costly to maintain and slow to adapt. Founded in July 2025 by former Palantir engineer Steve Basher, SolveAI is designed to address this gap. The platform enables employees across departments to use natural language to generate proposals, designs, and fully functional applications that integrate with existing IT infrastructure and meet security and compliance requirements. It first produces a written proposal outlining the recommended solution, its rationale, and planned features, along with a technical specification covering implementation steps such as data integration and algorithmic considerations. Teams can iterate on the proposal, after which SolveAI orchestrates specialised AI agents responsible for different stages of the development lifecycle, including UX, frontend, and backend, ultimately generating a complete custom software product. Commenting on the development, Steve Basher, CEO and founder of SolveAI, said organisations see the greatest impact when technology is tailored to their specific needs. He noted that while enterprises are eager to capitalise on the AI coding wave, few products fully reflect the complexity, regulatory demands, and scale at which large companies operate. SolveAI puts the power to build software directly in the hands of the people closest to the problems, without compromising security or compliance, Basher added. The approach is intended to support faster innovation while maintaining enterprise controls, reduce pressure on developer and IT teams, and decrease reliance on legacy custom applications. Companies in sectors such as manufacturing, retail, and financial services are already exploring the platform to accelerate internal development in complex technical environments. With the new funding, SolveAI plans to continue expanding its platform capabilities and scaling adoption across enterprise customers.

Get ready to feel old. According to a recent report, the average age of AI unicorn founders dropped from 40 in 2020 to 29 in 2024. And the trend continues. It’s been called a “youthquake,” shaking up the Silicon Valleys of the world. An ambitious Gen Z, coming of age in the AI-era, is not waiting for permission from their elders, or even college degrees, to start turning their dreams into reality. Instead, they’re getting down to business and making things happen. This wave is catching attention in some of the world’s fastest-growing startup ecosystems, where key players are getting on board to fuel the ambition and send more next-generation founders out to compete on the world stage. In the Baltics, for example, all this energy is being matched with real investment and structured support. FIRSTPICK, a first-check venture capital fund backing Baltic founders, and Lost Astronaut, a venture builder and an early-stage investor known for early bets on bold ideas, have launched a new collaboration focused on helping young startup founders at the very start of their journey. With a goal to invest in 100 early-stage startups over the next three years, they aim to give Gen Z founders a platform to build globally competitive businesses right from idea inception. By combining resources and hands-on programs, the two partners aim to fill the funding and knowledge gap at the early stage and keep young talent in the region moving forward. Baltic data mirrors this global surge, according to the latest Baltic Startup Funding Report . In Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, early-stage funding hit new records, with venture investments in the region rising from €505 million in 2024 to €607 million in 2025, with much of this growth coming from pre-seed and seed rounds. This creates a competitive environment for new startups, making it harder to break into the market. With global funds moving in earlier and bigger, Baltic founders need a stronger push at the outset to keep up. According to Tadas Burgaila, investor, entrepreneur, and founder of Lost Astronaut, FIRSTPICK is not a traditional accelerator. It’s a league of All-stars, a roster of the best builders in the Baltics. “We’re bringing together first-contact experience for founders at the initial stage and strategic depth for when it’s time to scale. This creates an environment where Gen Z upstarts can get the right support at the right time, to learn fast and compete at the highest level.” At the core of the collaboration between FIRSTPICK and Lost Astronaut is the All-stars program, built on covering the full journey for early-stage founders, beginning with a €100K investment for each selected company. Lost Astronaut brings to the table its first-contact experience working with founders at the -1 → 0 stage.  With a background rooted in self-funded, fast-paced investments, Burgaila says his team will focus on creating a competitive arena where All-stars can earn their position, raise their level, and compound performance over time.  FIRSTPICK picks up where early validation ends, giving All-stars access to a platform for practical learning and scaling. “Our approach does more than write checks,” says Andra Bagdonaitė, Partner at FIRSTPICK.  “It connects early founders to a community of 100+ experienced coaches and more than 250 other All-star founders who have learned from growing real companies. In our seven years of investing, backing nearly 100 startups like Ondato, Turing College, and Jeff App, we’ve built up a huge archive of workshops, templates, and insider operator advice. With access to these valuable resources through the All-star programs, new teams don’t have to start from scratch.” This extends to hands-on guidance for fundraising strategy, feedback on their materials, and warm introductions to the right VCs in a network of over 700 funds.  For the Baltic region, this joint approach is meant to build not just more startups, but a deeper talent pool and a more competitive ecosystem overall.  “The strength of the Baltic ecosystem lies in this quality-over-quantity mindset,” says Burgaila.  “Many first-time founders today don’t fit traditional venture patterns. They are less interested in pitch theatre and more focused on shipping, testing, and learning in real time. This collaboration is built for this shift, investing early and moving fast to make sure strong builders aren’t filtered out by slow decision cycles. Not everyone is chasing the next big headline. Some are building quietly but relentlessly. We see value in that, and ultimately, we are backing people before metrics.”

Ukraine's startup scene has long punched above its weight, and the companies emerging from it today are proof that innovation doesn't pause for adversity. Ukraine has quietly become a dynamic source of startup innovation, producing companies tackling challenges in energy storage, compliance technology, sustainable food, and more.  Here’s some to have on your radar  Crosscheck Crosscheck is a B2B SaaS startup that has built an AI-powered compliance and audit-preparation platform to help companies streamline and automate audit preparation and achieve sustainability or certification standards. Its software uses AI to collect, organise, analyse and verify evidence and documentation against standards such as ISCC and other international certification requirements, reducing manual work and errors while making audit reporting more efficient.  The platform gives auditors a private workspace to manage tasks, customise checklists, and collaborate with clients on compliance documentation, helping businesses prepare for certification audits faster and with clearer oversight. FIZI FIZI makes plant-based, sugar-free snack bars that are free from white sugar, lactose and gluten and designed as healthier alternatives to traditional chocolate and protein bars.  The bars combine flavours like nuts, caramel and cocoa with functional ingredients (e.g., plant protein, vitamins) for energy and wellbeing, and they’re sold in individual bars and variety boxes across many European markets. The brand was founded in 2022 and has expanded beyond Ukraine into countries including Poland, Spain, Lithuania, the UAE, and Western Europe.   Geodesic.Life Geodesic.Life designs and builds affordable, eco-friendly geodesic dome homes using natural, low-impact materials such as mass timber (CLT), hemp-lime insulation, and clay plaster.  The company’s spherical housing modules emphasise energy efficiency, reduced material use, and comfort — the dome shape results in about 33 per cent less external surface area than a conventional rectangular building, cutting heat loss and lowering construction and living costs. Their prefabricated homes are engineered for optimal natural daylight, indoor air quality (with CO₂ sensors and hybrid ventilation), and a minimal environmental footprint. Oh My Grant Oh My Grant helps organisations, startups and research teams find, apply for and secure grant money, especially from European and international funding programmes.  The team works with clients to review project ideas and materials, draft and polish full grant applications, and guide submissions to improve organisations' chances of winning funding. On the practical side, they act as full-cycle grant management specialists — starting from an organisation’s initial project descriptions and budgets, through clarification and drafting, to final submission of proposals.  They also leverage their expertise and networks across EU programmes to match projects with the most suitable grants and maximise success rates, reportedly reducing preparation time substantially and supporting clients across sectors like deeptech, healthcare, energy, agriculture and nonprofits. Marvilon Marvillion manufactures the MARV-2EX, an industrial continuous monitoring instrument that measure dust particle concentrations in industrial gas streams. The device is engineered specifically for hazardous and explosive environments  meeting stringent industrial safety standards.  The system uses optical sensing and extractive sampling to continuously draw gas from a process (like a furnace stack or industrial exhaust), heat and condition the sample, and then measure dust levels with an optical detector in real time. Unlike conventional systems that monitor only gas composition or require separate analysers for dust, MARV-2EX integrates dust detection specifically suited to wet and explosive atmospheres, making it particularly useful for heavy industry processes such as steel production, power generation or chemical manufacturing, where particulate emissions must be tracked and controlled for compliance and process optimisation.  SorbiForce SorbiForce is developing a metal-free, sustainable battery technology designed as an alternative to lithium-ion systems. Instead of relying on lithium, cobalt, or other mined metals. The company uses carbon derived from agricultural waste, salt, and water to create a safe and environmentally friendly energy storage solution.  The batteries are designed to be non-flammable, non-explosive, and non-toxic, even if damaged — addressing major safety and supply-chain concerns associated with conventional batteries. The company’s systems are built to scale from modular units to large industrial energy storage installations, targeting applications such as renewable energy storage, grid balancing, and backup power.  Critical to circularity, SorbiForce claims its batteries can last for many years with simple maintenance (such as water replenishment), and that up to 95 per cent of the materials are biodegradable or recyclable at end of life. TechNovator TechNovator is developing long-range wireless power transfer technology. Unlike conventional wireless charging (which relies on close-contact inductive pads), the technology is designed to transmit energy over distance with high efficiency, minimal heat loss, and automatic device detection while eliminating cables and enabling seamless, contactless charging. Its target applications span consumer electronics, smart homes, industrial robotics, IoT infrastructure, and potentially medical devices.  The broader vision is to create wireless power infrastructure that can be embedded into everyday environments — offices, factories, cities — so devices can charge continuously without plugs or battery swaps. 

Clee Medical, a Swiss neurotechnology startup developing ultra-high-resolution real-time imaging for brain surgery, has closed its seed financing round. The round was led by High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), with participation from Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB), Kickfund, FONGIT, and Venture Kick, alongside continued support from existing partner Wyss Geneva. Many neurosurgical procedures require navigating delicate brain structures with millimetre-level precision, yet anatomical shifts and limited intraoperative visibility can make targeting during surgery challenging. Clee Medical is developing minimally invasive neurotechnology solutions to address this gap. Founded in October 2024 by Matt Lapinski and Abed Hammoud, the company’s flagship Neuro Access platform combines ultra-high-resolution real-time intraoperative Optical Coherence Tomography imaging with advanced navigation capabilities to support precision neurosurgery. The technology is designed to provide real-time imaging inside the brain, helping surgeons navigate complex anatomy with greater confidence and enabling safer access to deep brain targets for more targeted neurotherapies. Built on years of translational research, the platform is being developed to support applications including functional neurosurgery and neuro-oncology. With the new financing, Clee Medical plans to expand its development and clinical programs, advance toward its first-in-human clinical study, and accelerate the clinical validation of Neuro Access. The company’s long-term vision is to enable neurosurgeons to operate with enhanced real-time insight, improving safety, efficiency, and patient outcomes in complex brain procedures.

London-based Thema has secured $6.2 million to address gaps in how private equity firms assess portfolio risk and plan expansion strategy amid shifting software market valuations. The total includes $4.5 million in pre-seed funding from a round led by Stride.vc, with participation from KDX, Capital Allocators, and angel investors with backgrounds in private equity, investment banking, and enterprise software, including the former chair of KPMG. In addition, Thema received a $1.7 million UK government grant, in partnership with the University of Cambridge, to advance trustworthy AI. A repricing of software markets has exposed weaknesses in how private equity firms evaluate portfolio exposure and expansion opportunities. As valuations compress, these assessments often remain fragmented and manual. For investors building platform companies, expansion strategy drives much of the value created, yet decisions are still frequently made using disconnected tools and individual judgment. Thema is building what it calls Portfolio Expansion Infrastructure, a system designed to help PE investors determine where to expand, originate opportunities, and assess risk across a portfolio. Existing sourcing tools typically focus on identifying companies rather than analysing markets, often lacking broader context. Thema aims to replace fragmented consulting reports and sourcing tools with a continuously updated view of market structure. Thema’s AI infrastructure provides versioned representations of companies and market structures that track how markets evolve over time. Using proprietary AI techniques developed by co-founder Dr Dimo Angelov, the platform processes web-scale data to identify how companies cluster into markets, what adjacencies exist, and how those structures change. The result is a continuously refreshed map of market structure intended to highlight adjacencies, competitive dynamics, and potential expansion paths that conventional databases may miss. Developed in collaboration with tier-one private equity firms and as part of a UK government-backed programme with the University of Cambridge, Thema aims to help investors build conviction more quickly, define clearer platform theses, and support investment cases grounded in market structure. With the new funding, the company plans to expand R&D and commercial operations and is actively onboarding customers.

Grodi, a company focused on autonomous robotics and computer vision for intensive agriculture, has secured a €2.5 million investment round led by Swanlaab Innvierte Agri FoodTech, with participation from Axon Desarrollo Andalucía and Innvierte, SICC del CDTI. Founded in 2022 in Almería by Samuel Ruíz, Natalia Gálvez, and Ana Molina, Grodi has built a multidisciplinary team spanning engineering, robotics, artificial intelligence, and agronomy. The company develops technology tailored to the specific needs of Mediterranean intensive agriculture, enabling growers, cooperatives, and seed companies to work with objective, standardised, and continuous data to reduce uncertainty and improve decision-making. At the core of its offering is VEGA 11, an autonomous robot designed to operate independently in Mediterranean greenhouses while delivering full plant visibility through advanced computer vision. The system combines proprietary hardware, machine-learning algorithms, and large-scale data analytics to help growers optimise agronomic management, anticipate plant health issues, and estimate crop yields with high precision. Grodi’s digital platform centralises this information in real time to support safer, more efficient, and more sustainable operations. Providing practical tools that simplify farmers’ day-to-day production management remains a central objective for the company. As CEO Ana Molina noted: The sector needs solutions that reduce costs, improve resource-use efficiency, and standardise processes. VEGA is demonstrating that automation and computer vision can radically transform daily crop management. Grodi is now in a key growth phase, focused on scaling the commercial deployment of VEGA 11 while expanding its broader technology portfolio with additional products designed for real-world agricultural use. The new funding will support the industrialisation of the VEGA 11 robot, strengthen the company’s commercial presence across Spain’s main horticultural regions, and advance its international expansion strategy in a market increasingly demanding productivity, efficiency, and sustainability gains.

London-based BeyondMath, a deeptech company that has developed a novel generative physics model, has raised a $10 million seed extension led by Cambridge Innovation Capital, with participation from existing investors including UP.Partners, Insight Partners, and InMotion Ventures. This brings total seed funding to $18.5 million. Engineering and industrial companies are under increasing pressure to design more complex systems faster and more sustainably, yet many still rely on legacy simulation tools that struggle to keep pace with modern hardware and AI-driven workflows. BeyondMath aims to address this gap with a foundational AI model trained directly on first-principles physics. The platform enables engineering-grade simulations to be produced in minutes rather than hours or days, delivering results up to 1,000 times faster than traditional supercomputing methods. Founded in 2022 by AI industry veterans Alan Patterson and Darren Garvey, BeyondMath has built what it describes as the world’s largest foundational physics model, capable of simulating complex physical phenomena ranging from aerodynamics to thermal management. The company’s customers include major automotive, aerospace, and electronics manufacturers, and it has established partnerships with NVIDIA and AWS. Speaking about the market need, BeyondMath CEO Alan Patterson said engineering teams require faster and more flexible simulation capabilities but currently lack the technology to meet these demands: Generative physics introduces a fundamentally new approach to engineering, unlocking innovation across fields ranging from aerospace and automotive to data-centre design. We now have the capital and investor support to accelerate our research roadmap and scale commercial adoption. This could be the ChatGPT moment for physics. BeyondMath’s technology has potential applications across sectors, including automotive, aerospace, electronics, data centre design, and semiconductor manufacturing. The new funding will be used to scale commercial deployment of BeyondMath’s generative physics technology and expand its research capacity. The company expects to double its headcount this year and grow its customer base across Europe, the United States, and Japan.  

Ai for autonomous driving company Wayve today announced it has raised $1.2 billion in a Series D investment round, bringing its post-money valuation to $8.6 billion.  The funding accelerates the company’s shift from AI research leadership to scaled commercial deployment of its end-to-end AI platform. The round was led by Eclipse, Balderton and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, and brings in new investment from Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Baillie Gifford, British Business Bank, Icehouse Ventures, Schroders Capital and other global institutional investors. Microsoft, NVIDIA and Uber participated in the round, reflecting support for Wayve's embodied AI as a foundational software layer for deploying autonomy at a global scale. Leading global automotive manufacturers Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Stellantis also invested, in support of advancing Wayve's unified AI platform spanning L2+ “hands off” through L3/L4 “eyes off” driving across vehicles, brands and markets. Wayve pioneered the application of end-to-end AI to autonomous driving in 2017 and has since industrialised its safety-by-design architecture into a production-ready autonomy platform. From 2026, consumers will experience Wayve-powered robotaxis through commercial trials with Uber. From 2027, they will be able to buy passenger vehicles equipped with Wayve’s AI Driver, starting with L2+ “hands-off” capability that allows the vehicle to steer, navigate and respond to traffic under driver supervision. Wayve licenses its AI Driver directly to automakers, providing tools to customise driving models for specific vehicles and brands. The system runs entirely on onboard vehicle compute and embedded sensors, and doesn’t rely on high-definition maps or location-specific engineering. By partnering with automakers and mobility platforms rather than vertically integrating, Wayve enables autonomy to scale globally with lower capital intensity. In the past year, Wayve became the first and only AV developer to drive zero-shot in more than 500 cities across Europe, North America and Japan, meaning without city-specific fine-tuning before deployment. That performance is enabled by Wayve's foundation model trained on globally diverse data spanning over 70 countries and a wide range of vehicle platforms, creating unmatched data diversity that allows autonomy to generalise to new markets. Robotaxi deployment with Uber Uber participated in the Series D and has committed additional capital to support multi-year deployments of Wayve-powered robotaxis on the Uber network, with plans to scale to more than 10 markets globally. The companies plan to launch their first service in London in 2026, with broader international rollout to follow. Under the partnership, Wayve will deploy its AI Driver in L4-capable vehicles from participating automakers, while Uber will own and operate the fleet, creating a scalable model for autonomous ride-hailing using mass-produced vehicles. Alex Kendall, Co-Founder and CEO of Wayve, said: “With $1.5 billion secured, we are building for a total addressable market that spans every vehicle that moves. Autonomy will not scale through city-by-city robotaxi deployments alone. It will scale through a trusted platform that automakers and fleets can deploy globally and improve continuously. This investment accelerates our path to widespread commercial deployment and positions us to build the autonomy layer that will power any vehicle everywhere.” Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft: "Wayve is pushing the frontier of embodied AI for autonomous driving, and Azure supports the scale, reliability, and safety needed to bring that innovation into the real world. Through our partnership and investment, we’re helping accelerate the path from breakthrough research to scaled commercial deployment with automakers worldwide." Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO, Uber, said: “We are very proud to continue to deepen our partnership with Wayve, with plans to deploy together in more than 10 markets around the world. Wayve’s powerful end-to-end approach is purpose-built for scale, safety, and effectiveness, and we’re excited to work with them across multiple OEMs and geographies, which we’ll share more about soon.” tion.” Antonio Filosa, CEO, Stellantis, said: “Wayve’s embodied‑AI approach and end‑to‑end learning architecture represent an important innovation in autonomous driving technology." Their work aligns well with Stellantis’ platform‑driven strategy and our focus on scalable, safety‑first vehicle intelligence. We see strong potential for collaboration as we advance our autonomy roadmap, including our driverless AV Ready Platforms™, with the clear objective of delivering safer and more intuitive driving experiences for customers worldwide”. Suranga Chandratillake, General Partner at Balderton, commented: "We've been proud to support Wayve since the early days, backing Alex and his team as they pursued an ambitious - and at the time rather contrarian - vision for embodied AI. The technical achievements are extraordinary, but what's more impressive is how this team has taken cutting-edge research out of the lab and deployed it in complex, real-world driving environments - turning breakthrough science into commercial reality. Born out of a tiny lab in Cambridge and now a global leader in its field, Wayve represents the very best of European innovation: world-class technology, global ambition and real-world deployment at scale."

Munich-based Secfix, an end-to-end security compliance platform, has closed an oversubscribed $12 million Series A round led by Alstin Capital, with participation from Bayern Kapital and existing investor neosfer, an early-stage investor of the Commerzbank Group. The funding will support the company’s expansion across Europe and the further development of its AI-native capabilities and CISO-as-a-Service offering. European companies have traditionally faced lengthy and resource-intensive certification processes, often requiring months of manual work and delaying commercial opportunities. Secfix was founded to address this challenge by automating compliance across standards, including ISO 27001, the EU AI Act, NIS2, GDPR, and SOC 2, helping small and mid-sized businesses reduce manual effort and streamline certification. However, certification often proved to be only the first step. As customers achieved initial certifications, many encountered growing security and compliance demands as their organisations scaled, creating demand not only for automation tools but also for ongoing expert support. In response, Secfix expanded its offering into an end-to-end security compliance platform that combines automation with an AI-native CISO-as-a-Service model. The platform provides continuous monitoring, incident management, security questionnaires, gap assessments, policy reviews, access management, cloud security scanning, penetration testing, and broader security leadership support. Fabiola Munguia, CEO and co-founder of Secfix, said the company initially focused on helping businesses achieve certification more efficiently and is now expanding its role to support customers as a broader security and compliance partner beyond the certification phase: Our vision is to solidify Secfix as Europe's leader in end-to-end security compliance - one that grows with companies from their first ISO 27001 certification through their entire security and compliance journey. With regulatory requirements such as ISO 27001, NIS2, DORA, and the EU AI Act increasing the compliance burden on European organisations, Secfix positions its platform as a combined automation and AI-driven solution informed by audit experience, customer feedback, and extensive cybersecurity expertise. The Series A funding will support Secfix’s continued European expansion, further product development to enhance its AI-powered automation capabilities, and the scaling of its CISO-as-a-Service offering to meet growing mid-market demand.

UK challenger business bank Allica Bank is to become the latest UK fintech unicorn, following a $155m (£111m) Series D funding round, according to a report.   Allica is expected to announce tomorrow that its new valuation will hit $1.2bn (£890m), following the Series D round, Sky News says.   It will mean that Allica will join the likes of Revolut, Monzo, Starling and Zilch in being valued at more than $1bn, giving it unicorn status. Allica targets the established SME sector (between five and 250 employees), offering them lending, such as commercial mortgages and equipment loans, and current and savings accounts.   The Series D round includes investment from Ventura Capital and existing investor, the US fund TCV. Allica last raised in 2022, raising a £100m Series C round. The funds are understood to be earmarked for expansion in Northern Europe, where it is considering buying a bank, as well as developing its AI offering.   Allica is headed up Richard Davies, a former Revolut executive.   Davies said: “We are building the category-defining digital bank for established small and medium businesses, and are excited to be taking our proprietary platform into new markets.   “This Series D investment is a major vote of confidence in Allica’s strategy and performance.” Image: Allica Bank

UK scaleup Radiant today announced its merger with Ori Industries, combining Ori’s distributed AI infrastructure platform with Radiant’s global infrastructure capabilities and marking the company’s transition into full operations. Radiant is a vertically integrated AI infrastructure company combining utility-scale powered land, long-term capital, and a proprietary AI infrastructure software platform. Radiant builds and operates AI factories for enterprises, telecommunications providers, and sovereign institutions, delivering scalable compute with utility-grade economics, operational resilience, and planning horizons aligned to the long-term demands of the AI economy. Ori provides sovereigns, telcos, & corporates with the software stack to build, manage, and deploy AI cloud. Through this merger, Ori will be the 'spark' that fires up Radiant -- it will be the software & team layer sitting on top of its compute + physical data centres.  As part of the merger, Radiant enters its operating phase as the first compute deployment vehicle and second seed investment for Brookfield’s AI Infrastructure Fund (“BAIIF”). BAIIF provides Radiant with a direct pipeline to a $100 billion investment program for AI Infrastructure, ensuring the company has the long-term capital required to deliver a fully integrated, utility-scale ecosystem that unites proprietary software, sovereign compute, and powered land into a single, global AI utility. Radiant’s infrastructure will be based on the NVIDIA DSX reference design, offering AI compute infrastructure for sovereign governments, select global enterprises, and telecommunications providers under long-term contracts.  Mahdi Yahya, Founder and CEO of Ori and President of Radiant, said: “We could not be more excited to continue the Ori journey through Radiant. For more than seven years, our team has been building toward this moment - designing software that could enable infrastructure for AI at scale. It was immediately apparent that Brookfield was the ideal partner for Ori.  Through Radiant we can challenge the supply-demand imbalance that has defined AI since the release of advanced LLMs in 2023. With deep, structural advantages in capital costs, powered land, compute, and software, Radiant is building the infrastructure to enable a global age of abundance for AI." Radiant will continue to grow and operate the Ori Global AI Cloud for customers who need on-demand capacity and rapid deployment.

French foodtech startup Verley has raised €32 million in a Series A financing round, only four years after its inception.  Verley develops functional whey protein ingredients, more precisely beta-lactoglobulin (BLG), designed to deliver the nutritional and functional performance expected by food and nutrition manufacturers. Verley has built its approach to integrate seamlessly into existing food value chains, responding to concrete industrial and market requirements.  Verley’s ingredients made through precision fermentation use only a fraction of the natural resources required by conventional production, addressing a growing demand from manufacturers and consumers for reduced-impact products.   The company focuses exclusively on B2B ingredient solutions, supporting manufacturers developing high-protein, clean-label and digestible products across multiple applications.  Its portfolio, marketed under the FermWhey™ range, consists of functionalized whey proteins engineered for performance in real-world formulations (high-protein yoghurts,  protein shots etc), combining high purity, advanced solubility, emulsification, gelling properties and optimised nutritional profiles.  High-protein nutrition has become a mainstream expectation, while demographic growth, evolving dietary habits, and the rapid expansion of GLP-1 treatments (1 in 8 adults in the US were taking a  GLP-1 drug in 2025) are further increasing demand for high-quality, digestible protein ingredients. At the same time, conventional whey protein production is facing structural constraints, limiting its ability to meet these needs at scale while reducing environmental pressure.  Since its creation, Verley has followed a methodical development path, combining rapid execution with industrial discipline. In less than four years, the company has secured key regulatory milestones, including a self-affirmed GRAS status in 2024, followed by an FDA “No  Questions” letter in 2025, validating the safety and robustness of its approach for the US market.  Beyond regulation, Verley has built a strong intellectual property portfolio around both fermentation and proprietary protein functionalisation technologies. These technologies do not aim solely to replicate dairy proteins but to enhance their performance, unlocking new formulation possibilities for manufacturers.   Stéphane Mac Millan, CEO and co-founder of Verley, said:  “Verley’s mission is to address the growing global demand for high-quality nutrition while preserving the planet’s natural resources. Verley is now ready to help alleviate the pressure the dairy industry is facing. We are very proud to be building a European champion  leveraging decades of know-how in the dairy industry.” The round brings together top European players: new investors, including Alven, leading the round, Blast, and the French Tech Seed fund, managed on behalf of the French government by Bpifrance as part of France 2030, and historical investors Sofinnova, Sparkfood, Captech and Founders Future. With additional non-dilutive support from Bpifrance, this funding round supports Verley’s next phase of industrial execution and market deployment.  The proceeds of the round will primarily support Verley’s US market entry, including  commercial deployment and early customer scale-up, alongside a ramp-up of production  capacities. The company will also continue investing in R&D to further strengthen the performance, efficiency and sustainability of its technologies. Following the US launch,  Europe and the Middle East will be priority regions for expansion. 

A Dutch chipmaker which designs and manufactures chips for AI inference use has raised more than $250m, with backing from new investor BlackRock. Innovation Industries, the European VC fund, is the lead investor in the round in Axelera AI. The round also features new investors BlackRock and SiteGround Capital as well as existing investors, including Bitfury, CDP Capital, the European Innovation Council Fund and Samsung Catalyst Fund. The startup has raised more than $450m in total to date. Axelera AI makes chips and software for inference, the computing process of running an AI model, as opposed to training an AI model, which has become increasingly important as more enterprises embrace AI. The startup's chips are designed for use locally on edge devices, such as mobile phones, as it looks to make AI more energy efficient by processing data directly on devices rather than in the cloud.   The startup said the funding represented the largest ever by an EU AI semiconductor firm. It said it had 500 customers across industries such as defence, agritech and robotics.   Describing its approach, it said: “Axelera AI’s success is rooted in a fundamental insight: to deploy AI at scale, the industry must first solve for energy consumption and cooling requirements.    “The company’s edge-first architectural approach delivers uncompromising AI inference performance that fits within the power and thermal envelopes of real-world deployment environments to drive real business value." Fabrizio Del Maffeo, CEO and co-founder of Axelera AI, said: “Data centres are hitting power and cooling limits, and as analytics move closer to where data is being created, edge AI solutions must operate within strict energy and bandwidth constraints.     “We designed our architecture from the ground up to overcome these obstacles. Our edge-first approach isn’t just about efficiency; it’s about making AI deployment economically viable at scale for real-world applications while protecting data and privacy by processing customer information locally.”

Glasgow-based Quantcore has secured £2.5 million in seed funding to develop a sovereign supply chain for quantum hardware, as the UK seeks to strengthen domestic capacity in technologies linked to national security and economic competitiveness. The round was co-led by PXN Ventures, Blackfinch Ventures, and Scottish Enterprise, with additional backing from Quantum Exponential and STAC. Founded in 2025 by Dr Jack Brennan, Dr Valentino Seferai, Wridhdhisom Karar, and Prof Martin Weides as a spin-out from the University of Glasgow, Quantcore designs, manufactures, and tests superconducting processors, resonators, and sensors that underpin quantum computers and advanced sensing systems. Quantcore manufactures niobium-based components, a material that can operate at higher temperatures than aluminium, which is widely used by global competitors. By leveraging niobium, the company aims to help customers, including UK national laboratories, reduce energy consumption while improving the scalability and performance of quantum components. Beyond computing, Quantcore’s quantum sensors support secure communications and high-precision medical imaging beyond the capabilities of classical technologies, with potential applications in neuroscience, early disease detection, secure infrastructure, and fundamental physics. Highlighting the strategic implications, Quantcore CEO and co-founder Dr Jack Brennan said quantum computing’s code-breaking potential makes domestic manufacturing increasingly important, arguing the UK must build sovereign capability as classical computing approaches its limits. The investment comes amid geopolitical uncertainty and follows the UK government’s commitment to invest £670 million in quantum computing as part of its 10-year modern industrial strategy. Following the funding, Quantcore plans to expand its team with new engineering roles across design, manufacturing, and cryogenic testing, alongside commercial hires.

The New Era of Shopping today announced the close of a $1.4 million Pre-Seed round to help traditional brands become discoverable, trusted, and purchasable inside AI assistants and agent-driven shopping experiences. ​ The investment was co-led by a European VC firm Presto Ventures, and an NYC-based AI accelerator Alliance, with participation of a16z Scout Fund, a super angel and a founder of ZFellows Cory Levy, AI-focused fund Davidovs VC, Ukrainian VC hi5 Ventures, Japanese Rokubunnoni, early-stage Typhon VC, and a group of angels: Greg Tkachenko (Unreal Labs), Guillaume Roux-Romestaing (Wordware), Kacper Kielak (Magic), Andrei Nenadov, Quinn Campbell, Urvit Goel, Evgeny Yurtaev, Nicole Buss, Matthieu Tissot, and Zituo Chen. ​ The storefront is moving into the chat window Today, millions of shoppers are abandoning traditional keyword searches in favour of direct answers from AI assistants, and the storefront is moving into the chat window. ​ Roughly 5 per cent of consumers ask AI chatbots what to buy instead of browsing online stores. ​ Industry projections suggest that figure will reach 15 per cent by 2027 and could exceed 50 per cent within two years after that. ​ When AI agents become the buyer Agentic shopping describes a new shopping lifecycle in which AI agents — acting on user preferences, history and explicit prompts — discover products, request checkout authorisation, and complete purchases on behalf of people. ​ The Agentic Commerce Protocol and related platform tooling are lowering the bar for both agents and merchants to transact programmatically, and instant checkout inside assistant experiences is already live in early platforms. ​ Era is an agentic commerce platform that helps brands make their product catalogues discoverable, trusted, and purchasable inside AI answer engines — including ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity. ​ By combining catalogue sync, AI visibility analytics, competitive intelligence, and prompt-level demand research in one platform, Era gives merchants the infrastructure to compete in the next generation of e-commerce. ​ “If you’re not optimised for AI, you don’t exist” I spoke to Era co-founder and CEO Oleksii Sidorov, who told me that in the old era, being on the second page of Google was bad. In the new era, if your product metadata, content, and flows aren’t optimised for AI agents, you don’t exist. ​ “We built Era so that every brand, not just the ones with large engineering teams, can be present and purchasable wherever consumers are asking to buy. The future of commerce is being written right now, and we are here to make sure our merchants are in it.” ​ Key features of Era’s platform include two-way catalogue syncing with PIMs/ERPs, SKU-level intelligence to measure AI visibility and product ranking in LLM responses, user prompt analysis for trend and volume insights, and automated content optimisation to improve how products rank in conversational answers. ​ The product is already integrated with all major eCommerce platforms, including Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, Wix, etc., as well as the main AI discovery platforms: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity. ​ The company is currently running pilots with the first cohort of brands and will use the Pre-Seed to expand pilots with the Enterprise segment, scale data infrastructure, and integrate new platforms. ​ Why brands aren’t moving fast — yet ​ Pilots so far have revealed that, even though this seems like an obvious edge, not every brand is rushing to capture it. Sidorov explained: ​ “E-commerce brands especially are still conservative — they're busy with channels that already work, and a lot of them genuinely have no idea what's going on in AI search. Enterprises are particularly slow-moving. Where it's been easier is with tech startups and software companies. They're more AI-literate; they use LLMs themselves to find tools and write code, so they immediately understand the value. We've broadened our focus as a result — we don't limit ourselves to e-commerce anymore. Any brand that benefits from online traffic is a potential client.” According to Sidorov, there are already companies that exist almost entirely on AI traffic — they happened to be well-indexed by accident, and now that's where most of their traffic comes from. ​ Two YC alumni bet on agentic commerce ​ The company was founded by a team with deep experience at the intersection of AI, eCommerce, and advertising. Between them, the two co-founders have been through Y Combinator twice — and sold two companies. Ukrainian-born Sidorov previously conducted AI research at the University of Oxford and Meta AI Research before pivoting into entrepreneurship. He first founded Suggestr, an AI-driven e-commerce startup accepted into Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 cohort. ​ He later launched two additional ventures — Slise (advertising analytics) and Dise (an AI-native CRM) — both of which were acquired. Much of this was built while relocating across Europe after fleeing Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and supporting family back home. Sidorov studied in Ukraine, then continued his education across Europe through Erasmus, moving from physics into computer science and eventually AI. He worked in Belgium and Oxford, built a research track record, and then joined Facebook AI Research right after my master’s. He moved to Silicon Valley and followed a very academic path — conferences, papers, internal research. “But when COVID hit in 2020, I realised I wanted to build something tangible. I had deep expertise in AI, but I wanted to apply it in the real world — not just write papers. Being in Silicon Valley definitely reinforced that instinct.” His first startup, Suggestr, sat at the intersection of AI and e-commerce. “We joined YC Winter ’22, which was an incredible experience. Suggestr was an AI recommendations engine that brought Amazon-level personalisation to smaller e-commerce brands. We worked with more than 100 brands and generated over half a million dollars in additional sales for customers. But ultimately, we felt the market was too small to scale to the level we envisioned. So we made the hard decision to shut it down and start again.” The next venture was Slise, a Web3-based media analytics company built on blockchain data, which was acquired in a full exit, including IP and clients. While building Slise, Sidorov identified another gap — this time in Telegram-based sales infrastructure. “In crypto, especially, a lot of deals happen on Telegram, but there wasn’t proper tooling for sales teams. So we built Dise, an AI-native CRM for messenger-based sales. It gained traction, but by 2025, we stepped back and asked ourselves: Why are we building a niche SaaS for Telegram when AI is reshaping the entire internet? We sold it and redirected our focus toward what we believed was a much larger opportunity — AI-driven search and product discovery. That became ERA.” His co-founder and CTO, Sergey Drozdkov, is a serial founder and CTO with more than 12 years of experience in software development and AI. As CTO of Sensorium, he built one of the first AI chatbots two years before ChatGPT's release, and later went through Y Combinator’s W23 cohort with one of the first AI sales agents, Intently AI. ​ Hype vs reality in AI commerce Given his research background, I was curious how Sidorov sees AI platforms changing the way people shop. He admits, “I'm genuinely sceptical of the hype. What's already happening is real but still early. You can now buy products directly through ChatGPT in the US without ever visiting a merchant's website. The orders still flow to the merchant on the back end, so they receive the data and fulfil it — but the customer experience is increasingly detached from the brand's storefront.” He asserts that there are good arguments that, in five to ten years, as we now ask AI assistants questions instead of Googling and exploring links, people will also use them to find and buy products. “Especially when you consider that ChatGPT already stores your payment information and remembers your address — it's becoming a one-click experience. But this varies a lot by category. Food and beverage, you don't think much about. But supplements, personal care, health-related products — you want to compare specific ingredients, formulas, dosages, pricing. You don't care what the packaging looks like. That's where chatbots are genuinely efficient.” Reputation as a ranking signal In terms of customer brand relationships, the retail shift represents a substantial change. Sidorov contends that when someone buys through ChatGPT or Google Shopping, they're not really thinking about which brand or store they're choosing. “So the traditional levers — beautiful storefronts, brand storytelling, direct customer relationships — become less powerful. What matters now is your internet footprint: your reviews, your content, your references, what AI crawlers can find and interpret about you.” However, the upside is that once you build that reputation, it's more durable than paid ads. But the downside is you can't change it overnight, and the ranking factors shift constantly. “Six months ago, Reddit was enormously influential on LLM outputs,” explained Sidorov. “Then it dropped off. Now, HTML structure and other signals matter more. It's nearly impossible for one marketing manager to keep up with all of that — which is why we exist.” In the AI era, discoverability is no longer about search rankings — it is about being legible to machines that decide on behalf of humans. Era is betting that brands will need infrastructure, not intuition, to compete in that world. ​

London-based Power Protocol, a blockchain infrastructure platform for gaming and digital entertainment, has secured a $3 million investment from BITKRAFT Ventures, bringing total ecosystem funding to $15.4 million. Power Protocol is a Web3 gaming ecosystem designed to connect games, studios, players, and digital assets through shared infrastructure. Powered by the $POWER token and developed by Pixion Games, the platform is built to support multiple game titles, in-game economies, and live service features while enabling digital asset ownership and long-term player engagement. The protocol is designed to scale economic systems across multiple titles rather than a single game. It supports multi-game interoperability, progression systems, reward distribution, live service functionality, and on-chain asset tracking. BITKRAFT’s investment targets the protocol layer, enabling third-party studios to integrate into the $POWER ecosystem and use shared infrastructure instead of building standalone token utilities. The ecosystem is anchored by Fableborne, a mobile-first action role-playing game from Pixion Games that is currently in global open beta. Early performance data shows more than 400,000 players have participated across open playtests. Previous beta phases reached a peak daily active user count of 108,000 and generated $21.5 million in NFT presale revenue ahead of the POWER token listing. These results indicate early interest in Fableborne’s hybrid ARPG and base-building gameplay and align with Pixion Games’ view that skill-based mobile design combined with optional on-chain features can support competitive gaming experiences at scale. Commenting on the investment, Kam Punia, founder and CEO of Pixion Games, said: Capital in gaming and Web3 is selective right now, which makes their belief in what we’re building even more meaningful. The response to our open beta and the $POWER launch showed us there’s a strong foundation to grow from.This investment helps us keep moving toward that vision and develop an ecosystem built on progression, competition, and lasting engagement. BITKRAFT’s support gives us confidence to keep improving thoughtfully for the benefit of our players and partners. The new funding will be used to accelerate product and ecosystem development, including content expansion, competitive season design, new progression systems, and deeper integration of the $POWER economy across gameplay loops.

An Estonian defence startup building what it says are “affordable, mass manufacturable” missile defence systems has raised €30m in Series A funding. Frankenburg Technologies, founded in 2024, is headed up by CEO Kusti Salm, the former permanent secretary of Estonia’s defence ministry. The startup, which touts its sovereign credentials, says it was founded in response to a structural shift in Europe’s security environment, namely that modern aerial threats can now be produced cheaply and at scale, while missile manufacturing has historically prioritised performance over speed, cost and regeneration. Its latest funding round comes four years after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It says that it can build “affordable missile systems designed for mass production”, which addresses Europe’s air-defence bottleneck. It says it will use the funding to build sovereign missile-manufacturing capacity in Europe, with a focus on production, resilience and regeneration. According to the FT, one of its priorities is to set up two EU-based “mass production sites” to make more than 100 missiles per day per site. The funding round was led by new investor Plural, the Estonian fund founded by Wise's Taavet Hinrikus and other high-profile investors, with participation from another new investor, the Estonian investor SmartCap. The startup has now raised €40m in total. Salm said: “Europe’s deterrence problem is not just about budgets, it’s about availability. You cannot deter with systems that are too scarce, too slow to replace, or too expensive to use at scale. Frankenburg was built to restore speed, scale and sustainability to missile defence. "This funding allows us to put real industrial capacity behind that mission and build missile systems Europe can actually afford to fire and produce at scale.”

Today, Marathon VC is leading a €1.1 million Seed round for Straion, the rules layer built to turn the current chaos of AI coding into governed,  production-grade engineering. We have entered the "Prompt-and-Pray" era of software development. Tools like GitHub Copilot and Cursor have turned every developer into a high-speed generator, but for engineering leaders at scale, this velocity is creating a new kind of crisis. We are seeing more code than ever before, but it often lacks the "organisational DNA" required to survive in a complex enterprise environment. The current struggle with AI-first coding is the constant need for manual course correction. An AI agent might suggest a brilliant piece of logic that technically works, but it doesn't know your company’s specific Kafka naming conventions or your PII masking protocols. This leads to an exhausting trial-and-error loop where senior engineers spend their days "babysitting" the AI’s work to ensure it doesn't break architectural patterns. Straion helps teams centralise engineering standards in a single rule hub, dynamically select the right rules for each task, and validate plans before implementation — not just after code generation. It integrates seamlessly with existing workflows such as Claude Code, Cursor, and Copilot. The goal is simple: move faster, reduce drift, and increase confidence in the reliability of generated code. "The industry has spent the last two years obsessed with making AI faster.  But in an enterprise environment, speed without alignment is a liability,"  says Lukas Holzer, co-founder of Straion. "We built Straion to give AI  the organisational context it was missing—moving it from a trial-and-error  tool to a precision instrument that understands how your company actually  builds software." Straion solves this by transforming static documentation into active,  machine-readable guardrails. It doesn't just wait for a mistake; it provides the AI with the right context at the right millisecond. Most importantly, it validates the AI’s plan before implementation begins.   This shifts the process from reactive "cleanup" to proactive precision. By building a platform that uses machine learning to dynamically retrieve only the rules relevant to a specific task, they have enabled true, governed autonomy. It’s about giving the AI the steering wheel it was missing. According to  Marathon VC, to understand why Straion is the missing piece of the modern dev stack,  you have to look at the founders' roots in Linz, Austria. This isn't a group of "vibe coders" chasing a trend; they are seasoned operators who have spent a decade in the trenches of enterprise software. Lukas Holzer, Fabian Friedl, and Katrin Freihofner were colleagues at Dynatrace, the observability giant. While at Dynatrace, they noticed a recurring friction point: as teams grew, the "invisible rules" of the organisation—architectural standards, security mandates, and naming conventions—became increasingly difficult to enforce. These rules usually lived in "rotting" documentation: Confluence pages that no one read and 300-page PDFs that were updated once a year. When AI agents began generating code at superhuman speeds, this  "documentation gap" became a canyon. The AI could write a function in milliseconds, but it had no idea how that function fit into the broader organisational architecture. "Most investors are looking for the next AI code generator. We were looking for the guardrails," says Panos Papadopoulos, Partner at Marathon  VC. "Lukas, Fabian, and Katrin aren't just building a tool; they are building the governance layer that makes the autonomous future possible for the enterprise. They have the technical pedigree from Dynatrace to solve what we believe is the most critical bottleneck in modern engineering. We are proud to back this team as they build the governance layer that will define the next decade of software engineering." The funding will accelerate three priorities: deepening the product’s capabilities in rule governance and plan-stage validation, expanding integrations for scaled engineering workflows, and hiring mission-driven builders across AI engineering and full-stack development.

London-headquartered payments fintech Checkout.com today said it upped headcount by double digits last year to 2,000 staff, and pointed to the diversity of its merchant partners to indicate the robustness of its business, as it released selected financial figures.   In Checkout.com’s 2025 annual letter, penned by Guillaume Pousaz, founder and CEO, the fintech disclosed some financial figures for 2025 while Pousaz declared his long-term commitment to the startup he has been running for 15 years. He said: “As I close my first 20-year chapter, I can confidently declare that Checkout will be my life-long journey. I want to dedicate all my energy to compounding every learning, to further our mission and create value for our merchants.”   Checkout.com, valued at $12bn last year following an employee share sale, said it had grown headcount by 15 per cent year-on-year to 2,000 staff, opening new hubs in San Francisco, Atlanta, and Sao Paulo last year, despite fears AI was curtailing recruitment in fintech.   The fintech, whose merchant partners include Vinted and eBay, said that its top ten merchant partners account for 18 per cent of its revenues, indicating the diversity of its revenues. Other figures disclosed by Checkout.com were that it processed over $300bn in total payment volume last year, a 64 per cent increase on 2024, and that revenue grew by over 30 per cent for the second consecutive year.   It also said it was EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) profitable for the full year in 2025. Last year, it was revealed that Pousaz, who is Swiss and has been running Checkout.com since 2011, has quit the UK as his country of residence for Monaco, amid changes introduced by the Chancellor to crack down on non-doms.