French biotech company SeaBeLife has secured €2 million in a pre-Series A funding round to advance its drug development pipeline, with clinical trials expected to begin in 2026. The financing, led by existing investor iXLife and joined by new backers such as INEXT and Femmes Business Angels, will support two core therapeutic programmes targeting dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and severe acute hepatitis. Founded in 2019, SeaBeLife is developing first-in-class small molecules designed to inhibit both necroptosis and ferroptosis, two regulated cell death pathways implicated in tissue damage associated with rare, acute and chronic diseases. This dual-target approach is currently not available on the market and is seen as a potentially transformative strategy in organ protection. “The renewed backing from our longstanding investors, together with the addition of new partners, is a clear signal of confidence in our vision and development strategy, and I am extremely grateful for their support,” said Morgane Rousselot, PhD, CEO and co-founder of SeaBeLife. “This fundraising is a decisive step towards clinical trials and reinforces our ambition to create a new generation of cutting-edge treatments capable of blocking two major pathways for programmed cell death. We are now actively preparing for a Series A funding round to sustain this momentum.” SeaBeLife's lead candidates include SBL03, for dry AMD, and SBL01, for severe acute hepatitis. Both target therapeutic areas with significant unmet need and limited treatment options. The company recently reported positive in vivo efficacy data for SBL03 in geographic atrophy, a severe and advanced form of dry AMD. Alongside iXLife and INEXT, returning investors in the round included Breizh Angels, WeLikeStartup, Angels Santé, and Business Angels des Grandes Ecoles. Femmes Business Angels, a pan-European women-led investment group, also participated, with Marie-Pierre Sbardella joining SeaBeLife’s Strategic Committee as part of the agreement. SeaBeLife has now raised €9 million in total through equity and public funding, including support from Bpifrance, SATT Ouest Valorisation, Biotech Santé Bretagne, and the Région Bretagne. The company was also a winner of the i-Nov Competition 2024, a French national innovation grant aimed at accelerating high-potential startups. While still in the preclinical stage, SeaBeLife’s dual-pathway inhibition strategy reflects a growing interest in multi-target approaches in drug development, particularly in indications with complex pathological mechanisms. If successful, its therapies could unlock new options for conditions currently underserved by the pharmaceutical market, which in the case of dry AMD and hepatitis includes patient populations in the millions and multi-billion-euro potential markets. SeaBeLife is now preparing for a larger Series A round to fund clinical studies and scale up development of its pipeline. The company remains headquartered in Roscoff and is led by a scientific founding team with backgrounds in cellular biology, toxicology and pharmacology.

Building automation software company viboo has secured €3.3 million in seed funding. The round was led by Realyze Ventures, joined by Zürcher Kantonalbank, along with other new and existing investors. Buildings generate over 40 per cent of global CO₂ emissions. Regulatory pressure is increasing, and the EU targets net-zero emissions for existing building stock by 2050. By 2030, 5.38 million commercial buildings must reach at least energy class “E” or risk becoming stranded assets. Low-efficiency buildings are already losing about 4 per cent of value per year. Meanwhile, automation systems are becoming mandatory for many building types. viboo has developed a cloud-based building management system that can be retrofitted easily and wirelessly connects with common IoT devices such as smart thermostats in commercial buildings. Its AI learns heating patterns and controls them proactively, delivering savings without sacrificing comfort, with low upfront costs and fast ROI. The solution is already deployed in more than 100 buildings, producing average energy savings of 27 per cent. viboo’s model is built to scale. Rather than relying on proprietary hardware, it integrates with leading building tech vendors and uses open software interfaces. An installer app enables fast, straightforward deployment by any qualified installer. Beyond direct sales to municipalities and real estate firms, viboo works with installation and facility management partners. The investment from PropTech VC Realyze Ventures reflects confidence in viboo’s approach to improving building energy efficiency with minimal interventions, delivering measurable savings, and contributing to the decarbonization of existing building stock. Felix Bünning, Co-founder of viboo, commented on the seed round: Our solution convinces because it is easy to implement, delivers fast results, and generates immediate savings. Now we are taking the next big step with our entry into our first EU market, where a combination of energy prices and regulation creates a strong pull. The new funding will support expansion into the German market, where demand is rising due to the Building Energy Act (GEG). It will also drive the platform’s evolution from a dedicated energy management solution to a comprehensive building management system, adding features such as individual heating cost billing.

Paris-based Clarifeye, the platform enabling organisations to build expert AI agents at scale, has raised a €4 million pre-seed round led by EQT Ventures. The round also includes participation from Drysdale Ventures, Olivier Pomel (CEO and founder of Datadog), Jean-Luc Robert (ex-CEO of Kyriba), Alexandre Berriche (Fleet) and other prominent angel investors. Clarifeye provides a GenAI-ready data layer that connects raw data, human expertise, and LLMs, enhancing generalist models to reason like an organisation’s best experts and enabling teams of any size to build expert-level AI agents quickly. In complex sectors such as law and regulation, life sciences, and manufacturing, core value often rests with a small group of specialists who hold institutional knowledge, contextual experience, and distinctive reasoning methods. This expertise is scarce, slow to develop, hard to scale, and can create decision bottlenecks. Current generative AI cannot fully address this. RAG and LLMs handle general queries but lack traceability, repeatability, and the ability to capture nuanced expert judgment. As a result, many companies struggle to replicate expert work with GenAI, while proprietary knowledge remains fragmented across documents, databases, and people. Clarifeye addresses this gap with a data layer that links enterprise data to human expertise. The platform enables developers and domain experts to co-design, test, and refine LLM-powered workflows on proprietary, validated data. Experts can encode their reasoning, relationships, and decision patterns, turning informal know-how into operational intelligence that AI agents can use consistently. The result is domain-specific agents with greater reasoning depth, accuracy, and consistency, even on complex tasks, approaching the performance of top experts. Rolled out use case by use case, these agents help establish collective intelligence at scale, freeing experts to focus on collaboration and creating new knowledge. According to CEO Mathieu Grisolia, many GenAI initiatives fail because organisations are pushed to choose between fast but shallow generalist AI and specialised but rigid vertical AI, neither captures the full depth of expertise. Clarifeye takes a different path: we capture what is in your experts’ minds, turning it into an always-on AI that thinks like them, delivering ultra-specialised AI out of the box. This funding enables us to grow our team and accelerate that vision. Clarifeye will use the new funding to support ongoing platform development and the recruitment of top talent.

Austrian deep tech startup Optimuse has raised €4 million Seed funding. Optimuse was founded in Vienna in 2021 by Dominik Pezzei, Fabian Pitscheider, and Felix Maximilian Hofer. Optimuse is an AI platform that shows builders, developers, and planners early on which technical solutions for heating, cooling, ventilation, and building envelopes deliver the best results in terms of costs and emissions – in both new construction and renovation projects. It uses existing plans and documents to create a realistic digital building model, compares thousands of variants, and recommends the most economical, climate-friendly solution – including clear recommendations for action. Early design decisions shape the costs and emissions of buildings for decades. With OPTIMUSE, these decisions are data-driven – with measurable results: 70 per cent faster in preliminary engineering 10 per cent lower construction costs through better selection and dimensioning 20 per cent additional emission savings. These effects are evident across all projects – from residential to commercial to industrial. Optimuse quickly creates a realistic simulation-based digital model of the building from existing plans and documents. Based on this, the platform compares modernization paths (e.g., heating replacement, office to residential, gas to heat pump) and quantifies the effects on CAPEX, OPEX, CO₂, and comfort. The result: technically reliable cost/benefit analyses with transparent assumption documentation and sensitivity analyses, as well as prioritised action plans that focus investments, reduce implementation risks, and accelerate CO₂ savings. Optimuse analyses early designs using simulation, identifies variants with lower energy requirements, and precisely calculates the optimal sizing of the building services equipment. This ensures that systems are neither oversized nor undersized – investment costs are reduced, operating costs are lower from the outset, and the target values for efficiency and comfort are achieved in a technically sound manner. According to Dominik Pezzei, Managing Director and co-founder of Optimuse, buildings are becoming increasingly complex, both technically and in terms of regulations.  “Our AI solution provides clarity: it compares variants in a very short time and recommends the most sustainable and economical solution. This enables our customers to plan, transform, and operate buildings in a future-proof and cost-efficient manner." The capital comes from seed + speed Ventures  and Blum Ventures, as well as existing investors Matterwave Ventures and Gründungsfonds. Alexander Kölpin, Managing Director at seed + speed Ventures, shared:  "What convinces me about Optimuse is the combination of sound technology and practical application: using digital simulations, the team shows early on in the engineering phase which renovation measures are technically feasible and also economically viable. In a market with enormous renovation needs and strict efficiency requirements, this is a real game changer."    According to André Hammerer, Managing Director at Blum Ventures: "Optimuse addresses one of the biggest issues of our time: the sustainable transformation of the building stock. With its combination of AI, building physics, and practical simulation, the team creates real added value for builders, planners, and operators." With the fresh capital, Optimuse is accelerating the internationalisation and distribution of its AI solutions for the engineering, renovation, and operation of buildings. Lead image: Optimuse. Photo: Maximilian Salzer.

Serena, a European venture capital firm, announces the first close of its fourth flagship fund, Serena IV, at €200 million. Commitments come from longstanding LPs as well as new institutional and private investors in France and internationally. In line with prior funds, Serena IV will invest up to €15 million per company, supporting entrepreneurs from the earliest stages who aim to build global businesses. Over the past 15 years, Serena has invested in well-known companies, including Dataiku, Malt, Descartes Underwriting, and Electra. The new fund maintains this approach, emphasising clear investment theses, disciplined execution, and close collaboration with founders. Serena IV focuses on two areas: applied artificial intelligence (AI) and the energy transition. These shifts are reshaping global value chains and present Europe with an opportunity to strengthen its technological, environmental, and economic position. The fund has already made four initial investments, including Formality, an AI-powered contract management platform launched by the founders of TVTY (previously backed by Serena and later acquired by Nielsen). The launch of Serena IV follows a strong 2024 for Serena III. Portfolio companies raised over €600 million during the year, bringing total funding since 2018 to more than €1.5 billion. The 18 portfolio companies have a combined valuation approaching €5 billion, with several building international positions in climate and energy transition or applied AI. Recent activity also reflects the model’s effectiveness: in early 2025, Serena completed two exits, Salsify and Booksy, demonstrating its capacity to support startups from the seed stage to international expansion. An experienced team and a diversified international investor base Alongside co-founders Xavier Lorphelin and Marc Fournier, Serena IV is supported by partners Sébastien Le Roy, Olivier Martret, and Paul Moriou, who have worked together for six years on Serena III and have an established track record in the ecosystem. The team is expanding its sourcing and analysis capabilities with the arrival of its first Associate, Constance Gontier. This collective experience supports Serena’s approach of maintaining close relationships with founders; the team is largely composed of former entrepreneurs familiar with the operational and human challenges of growth. Serena has built a robust investor base of French and European institutions and private investors, many of whom have renewed commitments across successive funds. At the first close, 80 per cent of historical investors recommitted, and the base broadened to include new investors. In under five years, total capital raised has doubled to €1 billion, reflecting sustained LP confidence and the platform’s ability to create value across funds, while contributing to the emergence of European players with meaningful global scale.

Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek is standing down as CEO of the Stockholm-based streaming giant after nearly two decades in the role.Ek has served as Spotify’s CEO since he co-founded the company in 2006 with Martin Lorentzon. Ek is moving to the role of executive chairman of Spotify in January next year and he is being replaced by two internal co-CEOs.Gustav Söderström, co-president, and chief product and technology officer, and Alex Norström, co-president and chief business officer, will become Spotify co-CEOs.Ek said: “Over the last few years, I’ve turned over a large part of the day-to-day management and strategic direction of Spotify to Alex and Gustav–who have shaped the company from our earliest days and are now more than ready to guide our next phase.“This change simply matches titles to how we already operate. In my role as executive chairman, I will focus on the long arc of the company and keep the Board and our co-CEOs deeply connected through my engagement.”In a video post on X, Ek explained the reason for the change, citing that the time was right, highlighting how the co-presidents had scaled Spotify’s video podcasts and other successful products and that Spotify had been profitable for over a year.Ek said he would still be involved in the “big strategic decisions” undertaken by Spotify and would help guide the co-CEOs.

Czech startup Supernova has secured a $9.2 million Series A round to support the launch of Portal, an AI-powered product development tool that enables professional teams to accelerate workflows from ideation through to code. The round was led by Taiwania Capital, with participation from J&T Ventures, Reflex Capital, Kaya, Credo Ventures, EQT Ventures, Wing VC and Y Combinator. The funding will be used to grow the team, expand into Asian markets with the support of Taiwania Capital, and scale product and marketing operations. Built on Supernova’s existing unified platform for design systems and code, Portal introduces a new category the company refers to as vibe-coding: a method of using AI to manage and speed up routine and strategic tasks across product workflows. Unlike prototyping tools such as Lovable and v0, Supernova Portal targets the entire product lifecycle, offering features designed to integrate seamlessly with established enterprise processes. “As an engineer and product leader who's spent years in the trenches building and shipping products, I've seen firsthand how these bottlenecks bring teams to a halt,” said Jiří Třečák, founder and CEO of Supernova. “That's why we're launching this new product – to give individuals the power to ship like an entire team and enable full teams to push 10x faster, so they can focus on creating exceptional products rather than getting bogged down.” Portal is designed to eliminate common pain points in product development such as fragmented documentation, inconsistent handoffs, and resource bottlenecks. By embedding AI agents directly into collaborative product workspaces, Supernova is positioning itself to address what investors see as a major efficiency gap in product organisations.

NoBACZ Healthcare, a University of Cambridge spinout developing novel products that change the way lesions and wounds are treated in livestock and horses, has raised a £4.8 million funding round. Wounds on livestock and horses are typically treated with antibiotics and then covered with cloth bandages. However, this approach is often ineffective in agricultural environments where slurry can contaminate wounds, washing off antibiotics and turning bandages into infection risks. NoBACZ Healthcare was founded by Dr Jonathan Powell and Dr Nuno Faria following their research at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine into how the body naturally builds and utilises mineral structures for its own benefit. Initially developed to solve the problem of digital dermatitis, a disease that is painful for animals and costly for farmers – and affects a quarter of all cows at any given time – their research led to the creation of NoBACZ's patent-protected ‘liquid bandage’. The result is a robust, flexible, and waterproof coating that can be applied as a gel, dip or spray. Unlike antibiotics and cloth bandages, it creates an instant protective barrier that seals out slurry and bacteria, allowing lesions to heal without the risk of infection even in harsh environments. The coating is durable, yet biodegradable, safe in the food chain, intuitive to apply, and antibiotic-free. Independent large-scale studies have validated its effectiveness, including a Flock Health trial on 6,840 lambs, which demonstrated significantly lower mortality rates and higher market weights compared to the current industry standard. NoBACZ is already active in international markets, with an initial focus on the UK, Ireland and Europe, alongside launches in New Zealand, the USA and Australia.  Dr Jonathan Powell, CEO and Co-founder of NoBACZ Healthcare, said: “We founded NoBACZ Healthcare with the goal of transforming healthcare solutions for a more sustainable future whilst reducing antibiotic use. In parallel to the veterinary product roadmap, we are starting to define our human product opportunity. We are at a pivotal and exciting moment in our company’s journey, and we look forward to working with our new and existing investors on the next phase of our growth.” The Yield Lab led the round, with participation from Adjuvo , ACF Investors, the University of Cambridge, Parkwalk, The FSE Group, and Cambridge Enterprise Ventures. Gentiane Gorlier, General Partner at The Yield Lab, said: “At The Yield Lab, we are delighted to deepen our support for NoBACZ, having also backed the company in its previous round. The team has consistently impressed us with their vision, execution, and commitment to transforming animal healthcare with sustainable, antibiotic-free solutions. Leading this round reflects our confidence in NoBACZ’s leadership and technology, and we believe the company is poised for significant global impact.” Mark Foster-Brown, CEO of Adjuvo, said: “For too long, topical antibiotics and bandages have offered inadequate solutions for animal wound care. NoBACZ’s patented platform technology sets a new benchmark, delivering ground-breaking results while aligning with Adjuvo's mission to back innovation in underserved sectors. Led by globally recognised experts from the University of Cambridge, we are proud to support the team as they transform wound management in livestock and beyond.”  The investment will be used to finalise its new pipeline of products and accelerate the commercialisation and global distribution of its existing products. In parallel with the veterinary product roadmap, they are also defining their human product opportunity.

Concept Ventures today announced the close of an $88 million Fund II to back the UK and Europe’s most promising early-stage tech talent.  The fund, the second institutionally-backed raise from the firm, cements Concept Ventures' position as the largest dedicated Pre-Seed fund in Europe. The fund was oversubscribed, with the first close completed in three weeks. The raise was backed by LPs, including Aldea Ventures, Top Tier Capital Partners, Marktlink Capital, Dominus, and Granite Capital Management. 80 per cent of the funds’ institutional investors are US-based. LPs also include one of the world’s largest US investment banking institutions and a leading charitable trust. In addition, over 70 per cent of Concept Ventures' portfolio founders have also joined as LPs in this latest fund, including ElevenLabs CEO and co-founder, Mati Staniszewski  After launching its first institutionally-backed fund ($65m) in 2022, Concept Ventures has invested in over 44 companies at Pre-Seed. With a market-leading record of unearthing and backing exceptional talent at the concept stage, their portfolio includes voice AI giant ElevenLabs as well as physics simulation AI VSim, decarbonisation data platform Treefera, AI avatar generator Anam, and defence software firm Arondite. Concept Ventures now has $200 million in assets under management (AUM) and Fund I is a top 1 per cent performing fund for its vintage globally. 100 per cent of Concept Fund I portfolio companies that have gone to market to fundraise have successfully closed their next round. The Fund I startups backed by Concept at Pre-Seed stage since 2022 have now collectively raised over $450 million. The Concept team takes a people-first approach to decision-making, informed by their ‘outsiders backing outsiders’ mindset. All team members come from non-VC backgrounds, helping them spot unconventional talent and emerging market sectors earlier than other funds. For 90 per cent of portfolio founders, Concept is the first VC conversation they’ve had. With Fund II, Concept will back up to 50 companies at Pre-Seed stage across the UK and Europe. With an average cheque of $1 million, Concept aims to lead over 90 per cent of rounds. A proudly sector-agnostic fund, the investment team is looking for exceptional founders with global ambitions. Their Pre-Seed stage specialism also reduces signalling risk for founders as they look to graduate to Seed and Series A. This avoids the alignment issues that can arise at multi-stage funds. The Fund pledges 1 per cent of the total carry pool to charities of a founder’s choosing. This pledge has already enabled school facilities to be built in India and committed to funding youth mental health provision across the UK, as well as LGBT communities affected by HIV and AIDS. Reece Chowdhry, Founding Partner at Concept Ventures, comments: “As outsiders to VC, we’ve always believed Pre-Seed investing requires true specialists - partners who can spot and support founders before the wider market sees their potential. Raising an oversubscribed $88 million fund from a majority US investor base (as well as achieving first close in just three weeks) is a huge vote of confidence in this thesis and in the European market at large.  To have 70 per cent of our portfolio founders now backing us as LPs is a further validation of the people-centric approach we’ve worked so hard to develop and deploy. This close cements our position as Europe’s largest dedicated Pre-Seed fund and gives us the firepower to keep saying ‘yes’ at the very beginning of a founder’s journey.”

London-based energy tech company Boldr has raised an oversubscribed $3.2 million seed round to advance its mission of turning homes into active grid participants, helping homeowners reduce costs while supporting grid operators amid rising demand. The round included participation from venture capital funds across North America and Europe, including Ada Ventures, Unconventional Ventures, Inclimo Climate Tech Fund, Prosegur, Techstars, S20 Fund, and Viva Holdings, the latter being the owner of a leading HVAC contractor brand and a Boldr customer. Boldr is already backed by leading industry figures, including the former Head of Manufacturing at Tesla and the former Head of Engineering at SpaceX. The US power grid is under pressure as demand rises from the electrification of heating and cooling, the growth of EVs, AI, and data centres. While wind and solar output have expanded, generation often occurs outside peak demand, complicating peak management and raising reliability concerns. Large greenfield projects, such as nuclear or utility-scale renewables, are slow and capital-intensive. Practical technology solutions are required to close this gap. Boldr addresses this need at the household level. The company builds smart heating and cooling products and a companion app that automates climate control, supports grid-connected savings, and helps households manage bills in real time. Rather than waiting for long-lead infrastructure, Boldr leverages the existing installed base of HVAC systems, enhanced by EVs, home batteries, and rooftop solar, to unlock distributed, flexible capacity quickly and at lower cost. Delivered through contractor networks, Boldr’s hardware and software integrate seamlessly into homes to bring energy use under active management. Homeowners can optimise consumption, reduce bills, shift usage away from peak hours, and supply capacity back to the grid when needed. Madi Ablyazov, Boldr’s CEO and co-founder, said the company views each home as a potential power plant: By tapping into everyday energy devices, starting with HVAC, we can provide peak capacity to the grid while helping families lower bills and optimise usage. This round fuels our expansion across the US HVAC market and beyond. The funding will accelerate Boldr’s effort to make homes active grid resources, reducing costs for homeowners and helping operators manage rising demand. The company plans to expand partnerships with HVAC contractors and wholesalers, extend its platform to additional high-load household devices, and scale its residential power-plant model to boost grid flexibility.

The UK Government has announced £4.4 million in funding for a series of aviation technology projects, including drone delivery networks and heavy-lift unmanned aircraft, as part of its wider effort to maintain global leadership in aerospace innovation. The funding, delivered through the Future Flight Programme by Innovate UK, aims to accelerate the commercial adoption of uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) and zero-emission aviation technologies. It is part of the Government’s Plan for Change and its commitment to sustainable transport, with broader economic goals of supporting high-skilled jobs, regional growth, and public sector efficiency. Among the recipients is Apian, a UK-based drone healthcare logistics company, whose London Health Bridge Project will scale operations from 1,000 to 50,000 medical deliveries per month, including blood and pathology samples for the NHS. “This funding will enable Apian and our partners to develop multiple simultaneous operations (MSO) across our NHS network in London,” said Louisa Smith, Chief Aviation Officer at Apian. “MSO is a vital step closer to scaled, low-cost drone delivery operations in the UK, that will support NHS productivity and resilience while reducing emissions.” Another grant recipient is the Beyond Restoration project, which plans to deploy long-range, heavy-lift drones to deliver ecological materials to remote and environmentally sensitive areas across the UK. The project is led by AutoSpray Systems and includes partners such as the National Trust and the Woodland Trust “Our ‘Beyond Restoration’ project will apply innovation to vital conservation schemes: restoring our precious landscapes with efficiency and at scale,” said Andy Sproson, Chief Operating Officer at AutoSpray Systems. “By pioneering large-scale Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations, we are not only redefining how conservation can be achieved, but also building the skilled workforce needed for a new industry.” Also included in the funding round is a Scottish heavy-lift drone pilot for offshore wind farm cargo delivery, which aims to demonstrate cost and time savings in remote industrial logistics. The Government sees such technologies as critical to the future of UK aviation and the broader economy. According to Aviation Minister Keir Mather, the funding is part of a broader push to ensure the UK remains at the forefront of aerospace innovation. “We’re backing the next generation of British aviation businesses whose transformative technologies will reshape how we live and work in the years to come,” Mather said. “Investing in emerging technologies like drones and unmanned aircraft is key to build a greener and more efficient transport system. But this isn’t just good news for the environment; this tech will also save our public sector and businesses valuable time and cash, whilst helping to boost skills and support high quality jobs across the country.” The support for advanced aviation forms part of wider UK Government investments, including a £2.3 billion commitment over 10 years to the Aerospace Technology Institute, and efforts to develop Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) under the forthcoming Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill. The Civil Aviation Authority is working with funded partners to ensure new operations comply with evolving safety, regulatory, and integration standards. As the drone and advanced air mobility sectors continue to grow globally, governments are racing to provide the regulatory clarity and funding support needed to scale these systems. Startups and mid-sized tech firms are now playing a greater role in shaping the future of aviation, particularly in areas such as last-mile delivery, offshore logistics, and rapid-response healthcare.

Notion Capital has today announced the close of its new $130 million growth fund, Notion Capital Opportunities III  The new fund continues Notion’ strategy of supporting its best performing venture portfolio companies longer on their capital journeys. It also has nearly double the allocation to invest in selected external growth stage companies, where Notion believes they have what it takes to build category-leading outcomes. As well as its strong operational heritage and deep subject matter expertise in business software, the firm prides itself on its value-added model, with an extensive Platform team supporting its portfolio companies in areas such as product, go-to-market strategy, talent and pricing. The new fund follows the same proven strategy as its predecessors, where performance has been extremely strong across all metrics. With AI as the platform for the next generation of business software companies, the market has never been more dynamic, with opportunities across four categories:  Knowledge (SaaS accelerated and compounded by AI),  Money (fintech and adjacent industries),  Labour (AI reshaping the services market), and  Machines (AI interacting with and learning from the physical world). Notion has invested across all four categories in the past year with demand also increasingly fuelled by European sovereign resilience strategies spanning cyber security, supply chain and defence tech. The fund has already made several investments including existing venture portfolio companies Aikido, Upvest and Resistant AI plus new investments into Nelly and Kraken Technology Group.  Notion expects to make around a dozen core investments in total from the fund.  Like Notion’s most recent venture fund, Growth Opps III is Euro-denominated and Luxembourg-based, reflecting the firm’s pan-European focus. Notion also announced that Jess Bartos had joined the firm to help drive its growth strategy, Notion’s first-ever external partner hire. An ex-Rothschild investment banker, Jess joins from Salesforce Ventures, where she led or supported numerous investments, including ElevenLabs and Notion portfolio company Protex AI. Jess joins existing Notion partner, Stephanie Opdam, now focused on this fund and strategy.  This is the first time Notion’s growth funds have had dedicated leadership resources, reflecting the firm’s ambition to substantially increase the size and profile of this strategy over the coming cycles. Stephen Chandler, Managing Partner at Notion Capital, said: “Whilst the whole team will continue to support activities for this new fund, it is an important milestone to have dedicated resources focussed on it, which is testament to our ambitions for this strategy going forwards. I am delighted to welcome Jess Bartos to our firm where I am confident she has a profound contribution to make.” Investors in the new fund comprised sovereign wealth funds, fund of funds, pension funds, insurers, family offices and high net worth individuals from across Europe, MENA and the United States. Notion expects to be back in the market with its sixth venture fund in 2026.

Lithuania-based Joiner, a social platform that helps people make real-life friends through shared activities and events, has raised €500,000 in an angel round, bringing total funding to €1.2 million. The company will use the capital to improve product stability, test monetisation features, and lay the groundwork for expansion into new European markets. Loneliness is a growing public health concern. In 2023, the World Health Organisation flagged it as a global issue, and surveys show more than 30 per cent of young adults feel lonely daily. At the same time, reliance on dating apps is waning, with many users reporting “dating app burnout.” Demand is rising for simpler, lower-pressure ways to meet people offline. Joiner addresses this need by connecting people through shared activities. The app helps users, whether new to a city or looking to broaden their social circle, find others with similar interests and form friendships. By emphasising casual, group experiences, Joiner reduces the pressure of one-on-one meetings and supports more natural connections within local communities. Eduard Titov, founder and CEO of Joiner, outlines the mission to tackle loneliness through real-world group activities: We know the model resonates because we have attracted tens of thousands of users on almost no marketing spend. There is a genuine organic demand for genuine, social experiences. Activities on the platform include bar crawls, board-game nights, running clubs, day hikes, and car shows. Both expats and locals often act as informal ambassadors, with word-of-mouth complementing social media. Many dedicated users become hosts, organising activities directly in the app. With the new funding, Joiner plans UX upgrades to chat and event-creation features and will pilot a subscription offering with premium options for attendees and organisers. Expansion is on the roadmap for early 2026, starting with mid-sized European cities with active expat and digital-nomad communities, including Prague, Lisbon, and Málaga.

Arqh, an AI decision intelligence company, has closed a $3.8 million pre-seed financing round to grow its decision intelligence engine powering the most complex logistics operations. The round was led by Founderful, with participation from Merantix Capital. Arqh is a Zurich-based AI company developing a decision intelligence engine that turns business goals into real-time operational decisions. Many supply chains still rely on spreadsheets, phone calls, and legacy systems, resulting in slow responses, limited visibility, and margin pressure. Arqh addresses these challenges by combining language models with a proprietary optimisation engine that continuously re-plans operations, explains its recommendations, and keeps human dispatchers in the loop while meeting real-world constraints. Its platform supports industries including logistics, energy, fuel replenishment, food and beverage, and field services, unifying optimisation and language understanding to help organisations model scenarios, track KPIs, and respond dynamically to disruptions. Launched just 14 weeks ago, Arqh is working with Conrad-Storz and Feldschlösschen as design partners, already demonstrating more than 15 per cent savings in fleet operating costs and around 80 per cent less manual planning. Teams can also run over 1,000 “what-if” simulations in minutes to guide strategic decisions. Antonia Unger, Co-founder and CEO of Arqh, shared: For decades, the industry has been forced back to manual planning as rigid and off-the-shelf optimisers can’t handle the real-world messiness. We built Arqh to do both. Our ‘Hybrid Brain’ translates messy, real-world language into mathematically optimal plans, while keeping the human expert firmly in command. Arqh’s hybrid model combines a “Left Brain” logic engine, which generates optimal and practical plans, with a “Right Brain” language AI that interprets ambiguous requests and disruptions, providing teams with both mathematical accuracy and real-world context. The new funding will support the expansion of Arqh’s engineering and research teams and accelerate software rollout with design partners.

Munich-based industrial AI company Augmented Industries has raised €4.5 million in pre-seed funding led by b2venture, with participation from 1st Kind by Peugeot Family, xdeck, DnA Ventures, and industry angel investors from BMW, Siemens, and the German Mittelstand. The company also secured an EIC Accelerator grant support from the European Union. Globally, 500 million industrial operators work in complex, rapidly changing environments, and full automation will remain impractical for many factories and field service teams. As equipment grows more sophisticated, skilled technicians are a key competitive advantage, given the hands-on skills, contextual judgment, and broad troubleshooting they provide. Augmented Industries develops AI-driven software that enables technicians to rapidly create, manage, and follow work instructions and troubleshooting guides, boosting productivity and reducing downtime. Use cases include automated onboarding in pneumatics, electronics, and robotics, machine-specific changeover instructions, personalised AI troubleshooting for milling machines, and AI-assisted quality checks during wind turbine maintenance. The company’s mission is to empower industrial workers to drive digital and sustainable transformation. Its flagship Flow Tool helps manufacturers and service providers meet quality and uptime targets, providing an end-to-end platform for AI-accelerated (up to 8× faster) creation of step-by-step guides and training from multiple data sources, intuitive knowledge capture, and automated qualification management in regulated environments. Early adopters report a 29 per cent faster time-to-productivity. Originating from the founders’ PhD research at the University of Cambridge, the software applies learning science and instructional design and supports secure deployment across global networks. It is used by organisations such as Siemens, Vestas, BMW, ZF, and Ford, and is valued for AI-driven content creation, personalised technician support, and real-time feedback through MES and QMS integrations. The new funding will be used to advance enterprise-grade AI capabilities, accelerate go-to-market execution toward a technician-excellence platform, and expand the customer base among large manufacturers and industrial service providers across Europe.

Today is the last day to have your say. The European Commission’s consultation on the proposed 28th Regime championed by the EU Inc., closes tonight — if you’re a founder, investor or ecosystem-builder, now is your final chance to submit feedback.  Tell Brussels what you think before it’s too late. Europe’s founders and investors don’t lack ambition. What they lack are legal and regulatory systems built for modern, cross-border scale. Fragmentation, red tape, mismatches across jurisdictions — these are the invisible brakes holding us back.  From Draghi’s warning shot to a founders’ movement When Mario Draghi’s report on European competitiveness landed in September 2024, it pulled no punches: Europe’s innovation gap isn’t due to a lack of talent or capital, but structures that block their free flow.   One year on, that warning still resonates. Without a unified framework, the continent risks “slow agony” as capital and talent continue to gravitate to friendlier jurisdictions. In response, EU Inc. launched in late 2024 — a coalition of founders, investors, and ecosystem builders pushing for a truly pan-European startup entity. Their open letter framed the 28th Regime not as a technical tweak, but a fundamental reset for how we build across borders. By December, they’d released a detailed blueprint for what this could look like: a single legal vehicle, a digital registry for fast incorporation, a standard investment tool inspired by SAFE/BSA, and a unified ESOP regime. Not just vision — execution. European startups: running a marathon with their shoelaces tied Earlier this month, Goed­­ele “G” Mangelaars (founder of Pink Notebook) shared how Europe’s current system handicaps founders. "Startups don't have the luxury of waiting years for decisions. At some point, the EU has to take a risk. Even if the 28th Regime isn't exactly ironed out on all counts, being 80 per cent right and moving quickly is better than standing still." Estonia’s playbook: digital sovereignty in action Before Eu Inc., there was EE-Inc. Estonia’s digital infrastructure has long shown how small, coherent frameworks can leapfrog legacy bureaucracy. Its e-identity, digital registries, and automated admin aren’t theoretical ideals — they work. EU Inc.’s proposal channels that same ethos: interoperable, digital-first, sovereignty-minded. The difference is scale. Angels are hitting structural ceilings Today we reported on why angel investors are rallying behind the 28th Regime. The reality is stark: early-stage investors face notaries, tax ID bottlenecks, mismatched stock option regimes, and AIFMD red tape. Simon Leicht of SDAC put it bluntly: “We need common, streamlined frameworks that let capital flow to innovation. Let us focus on what we do best: backing great founders, not navigating redundant paperwork.” Fixed regulatory costs are often the same for a €10 million fund as for a €100 million one — but the resources aren’t. It’s no wonder micro-funds and angels max out at Europe’s edges. The 28th Regime directly addresses this: harmonised ESOPs, digital incorporation, standardised legal instruments, and shared investor frameworks. It’s not about erasing national sovereignty. It’s about giving startups and investors a legal route designed for scale — not fragmentation. Today is the last day to act The European Commission’s consultation on the 28th Regime closes today. Fill in the questionnaire. It's quick, and it shows that the startup community is engaged and active on this issue.  Or share your experience with an anecdote or two:  Examples to write about: The mental load of juggling multiple legal regimes while trying to build a product. How much money and time you’ve spent on lawyers vs. R&D. How bureaucracy has shaped your strategic decisions (e.g., where to raise, hire, or base HQ). Expanding from one EU country to another but having to re-do incorporation, shareholder agreements, or option plans from scratch. A “we wanted to launch in X, but our lawyers said don’t bother” story. Fragmented VAT, tax, or labour rules that meant months of legal bills before signing a single customer. when setting up cross-border entities turned into a bureaucratic obstacle course. Delays opening a bank account or getting a tax ID that cost you a funding round, grant, or key hire. Having to set up multiple national subsidiaries just to raise from investors in different EU countries. Deals, partnerships, or hires that fell through because timelines in Europe couldn’t keep up with the speed of global competitors. Grants or innovation programs you couldn’t access because your company structure didn’t fit national eligibility quirks. The “we went to Estonia to register because it was faster” story — or worse, “we went to Delaware.” Losing a great candidate because your ESOP terms didn’t translate properly across borders — or because exercising stock options was legally or tax-wise a nightmare. This is the most concrete chance Europe has had in decades to build a truly single market for startups and investors. If Europe wants its next generation of companies to build here and stay here, this is the moment to act. Submit your views now— and make sure Brussels hears from the people building Europe’s future.

Berlin-based FLIZpay, a startup developing a mobile payment method free of fees for 90 per cent of companies, has raised $1 million pre-seed funding round. The investment was led by Antler, with additional support from prominent angels in the German fintech ecosystem, including Johannes Schaback (former CTO of SumUp), Sebastian Seifert, Achim Bönsch, and Andreas Veller (viaFinTech founders), Manuel Sandhofer (EMEA Head of Wise Platform), and Philipp Kreibohm (founder of home24). Founded in 2023, FLIZpay is building a mobile payments platform designed to reduce transaction fees, making payments more affordable for small businesses and easing costs for consumers. It achieves this by removing intermediaries that inflate fees and by offering a European-first solution that operates independently of global payment providers, ensuring user data stays within the EU. The market potential is considerable, with Germany alone representing 50 million potential private customers and around €800 billion in annual card and cash payments. FLIZpay has already gained traction, with over 500 merchants and more than 50,000 users relying on its services, and is rolling out successfully with Trade Republic. “Payment fees are very significant, but hidden from consumers. With FLIZpay, we make payments more accessible for companies and give consumers control over the price of their purchases, said FLIZpay's co-founder, Konrad Holtkamp. FLIZpay was co-founded by Konrad Holtkamp and Roberto Ammirata, who bring strong professional backgrounds in the financial services sector. The funding will help FLIZpay pursue its goal of becoming the mobile payment method of choice in Germany and across the EU.

When big funding rounds grab headlines, it's easy to forget the quiet, powerful force at the base of Europe's startup ecosystem: angel investors.  This large and diverse group often backs founders with anything from a few thousand euros upwards, typically at the riskiest, earliest stages.  Many are former founders (sometimes of unicorns), others are industry specialists in niches like fintech, biotech, or deep tech. Collectively, they fuel innovation, create jobs, generate wealth, and push new ideas forward. It's little surprise, then, that many angels I spoke to — both on and off the record — are enthusiastic supporters of the proposed 28th Regime: an EU-wide legal structure that would allow startups to incorporate once under a single regime, rather than juggling 27 different national company laws. If implemented, it would harmonise company formation, shareholder rights, fundraising, taxation, and reporting — slashing the bureaucratic friction that comes with building and raising across borders. Submissions close on EU Inc's 28th regime today Here's what just a few angel investors had to say: Regulatory headaches in action Carmen Alfonso Rico, founder of Cocoa Ventures — a VC turned angel backing founders at pre-seed and supporting them as their "in-house VC" — knows this bureaucracy all too well.  Before launching Cocoa, she'd already tested the waters of US venture through a small AngelList side fund. When structuring Cocoa, she debated whether to set up in Luxembourg or the UK. At the same time, was working on a German investment — and that's when reality hit. "The complexity of the notary process made it clear: doing everything in-house would have been impossible for a $15–17 million fund," she told me. AngelList, on the other hand, offered a turnkey infrastructure. "AngelList handles state administration and cross-border formalities, allowing us to focus on investment rather than bureaucracy." The result: Cocoa was set up as a US fund, with its management company operating out of the UK under FCA regulation through an appointed representative structure. A classic case of European red tape pushing talent to pick simpler jurisdictions. Fixed costs, slow deals, and irrational admin For small fund managers in Europe, the regulatory load is crushing. "If you're making investment decisions in the UK or Europe, you need to be regulated — and that's expensive," Alfonso Rico explained. "The UK is arguably the most efficient, but fixed regulatory costs are so high that running a fund below $10 million is nearly impossible. A $10 million fund and a $100 million fund face roughly the same fixed costs — but only the latter can spread those costs across a much larger capital base." It's a frustration shared by Simon Leicht, a General Partner at SDAC Ventures, an early-stage venture partner based in Berlin that collaborates closely with deeply technical founding teams right from inception.  Their support spans from helping with first fundraises to recruiting initial commercial talent and securing early customers. They boast a portfolio of over 100 pre-seed and seed investments across sectors such as AI, climate, robotics, space, biotech, and crypto. Some notable names they've backed include Orbem, MarvelFusion, Meatable, Sorare, and Helium. On the role and burden of microfunds and small investment vehicles, he contends that in Europe, microfunds serve as the professional equivalent of the prolific US angel scene, writing the first critical checks that get founders off the ground.  According to Leicht, "the problem is, the system actively works against us." "Administrative and regulatory costs are disproportionately high for funds under €10 million, making the model incredibly challenging." "Since a smaller fund writes smaller checks, these fixed costs create a much heavier proportional burden.  A €10,000 lawyer bill, e.g. because of a legal DD on a foreign companies' documents, barely registers on a multi-million euro investment, but for a €100,000 check, it represents a crippling 10 per cent of the capital— money that vanishes before the founder can even start building. This is especially damaging in the fragile early stages where every single euro is crucial." Significant disincentives to cross-border invest According to Leicht, the administrative burden of investing across Europe is staggering: "We're pan-European investors because incredible talent is everywhere, but that means our lawyers and accountants have to untangle completely different legal and tax documents for every single investment." Further, that cost doesn't just hit once; it compounds over a fund's entire lifecycle.  "There's little standardisation—we lack a simple SAFE note equivalent, and in a major market like Germany, you can't even find one universal standard for a convertible loan. We recently made an investment where part of the documentation wasn't even in English - required by law to be in the national language." Alfonso Rico shared similar frustrations:  "Power of attorney, notary fees, and legal costs can make a €10K angel investment irrational if €3K goes to admin," she said. Deals routinely drag on for months.  "I've seen Spanish deals take months from term sheet to closing, including incorporation — that's normal. t In one Spanish company I invested in — the term sheet was signed before Christmas, legals started in January, and the investment closed in May." — Meanwhile, in Estonia, as a journalist, I've seen angels wire €100,000 on the same day after a quick chat at a conference networking table for a convertible. I spoke to a Ukrainian company that had a €50k raise just like this over the weekend, while here in Lviv, as I write this article.  The disparity is stark. And the reality of European complexity is that investors walk away.  One angel told me she planned to do a €10,000 deal late in one quarter earlier this year, but backed out when she realised it would mean spending a day at a notary's office in another city — right before a long-planned trip abroad. "I just couldn't justify the time and the complexity, as much as I supported the startup and its founders," she said. Leicht also shared an example: "One of our LPs is a Czech citizen living in the UK, investing through an Estonian entity into our German fund, which has its own famous notary requirements.  The process took several months, as you can imagine. We've had potential investors, capital ready to deploy, who simply give up. They don't walk away for lack of belief in the founders; they walk away because the bureaucratic maze is just too intimidating." Stock options: Europe's weak spot It doesn't stop at fundraising. Stock options — a critical tool for attracting talent in ecosystems where salaries lag behind the US — are still a mess. Alfonso Rico shared: "Option schemes are completely different across European countries. Some make little sense — you get taxed on money you haven't got. It makes hiring and incentivising talent much harder for startups. And all this in a world where the competition for talent is fierce." She pointed to Uber as an example: "From what I heard, Uber changed its remuneration strategy in Europe because options weren't as motivating as in the US. If you're Uber, you don't care so much. But if you're a startup, paying someone 120K instead of 80K salary is life or death — at team level, that's months of runway." Founders on planes, funding in San Francisco Many angels told me about founders who simply moved to the US for ease of doing business and fundraising. Alfonso Rico sees it constantly. "I spend three to four months a year in San Francisco," she said. "It's insane — I can be there for a month and just meet European founders all day. They move because it's the best ecosystem to build - it offers the most competitive conditions. The problem for Europe is that the value created and the flywheel effect will stay there." Leicht agrees, asserting: "The absurd result of all this? We're actively pushing our best founders to the US. We're seeing a growing number of European founders incorporating in Delaware from day one — not for the market, but simply to use a standardised SAFE note. We are literally exporting our future unicorns because of our own bureaucracy." The quicksand time suck of bureaucracy And then there's the other hidden cost: time. "Time is a founder's most valuable resource," Alfonso Rico told me. "Yet I see founders spending full days at notaries or struggling with visa and residency paperwork between Europe and the UK — work that could be automated or streamlined. It's not just time lost, it's mental load.  Every week spent on admin is a week spent building elsewhere in the world — progress compounds. If I get one step ahead, my next step compounds — and it gets harder and harder to catch up. Competition is global, but Europe doesn't have a system that supports founders in focusing on what drives advantage and value.. It definitely doesn't. And we need it." Italy: modern incentives, legacy red tape Italy is a perfect example of this push-and-pull. Luigi Amati — co-founder of Italian Angels for Growth and CEO of META,a European company with offices in several countries delivering Investment, Academy and Advisory Services in R&D. We met in Bologna a couple of weeks ago. He has seen the ecosystem evolve from the inside. "I was an angel investor before I knew I was one," he said. He started in 2007 with eight others, pooling €900,000. "We grew like a rotary club: inviting people we knew. We quickly expanded to 40, then 80, and today it's a club with over 300 members — one of the largest early-stage investor groups in Italy." The group operates through a club deal model, pooling €200,000 to €1.5 million per startup, following a US-inspired syndicate structure. Italy's angel market is now roughly 10× bigger than in 2007, and tax incentives are generous: individuals can claim a 65 per cent deduction on investments up to €100,000, and vehicles get 30 per cent. But the processes? Stuck in the 1990s. Capital increases still require in-person notary deeds, slowing rounds by weeks. Foreign investors must obtain Italian tax IDs, translate legal documents, and sometimes appear in person — not exactly a cross-border-friendly process. Amati says the incentives now rival the UK's EIS/SEIS schemes but shared, "the question is whether it will remain stable. The UK's EIS has been in place for over 30 years. We hope Italy has now chosen to stay with a comparable path." Further, cross-border investing remains another story entirely.  "Incentives are national, so you're biased toward investing in your own country. It's harder to invest cross-border unless you have strong personal networks." He shared how in the US, angel clubs invest across states under one legal framework. "In Europe, trying to do the same leads to all kinds of trouble," he said. For him, the 28th Regime "is the push we need." "For over 20 years we've tried to create a European startup passport or a single framework for business angels, but it's always failed against national legislation. Now, momentum is building — it really feels like now or never." AIFMD and the structural drag on funds Stefano Bernardi — founder of Unruly Capital — straddles the line between hands-on angel investing and structured VC, backing everything from climate tech to algae to psychedelics. He treats the fund as a continuation of his angel journey, just with LPs "tagging along." While Unruly has a few investments in Germany and Italy, he's frank: "They are substantially harder and more expensive to manage than the ones in the US and UK. We have more or less stopped investing in Germany also because of this," he said, though he makes exceptions for exceptional founders. "Most portfolio companies eventually flip to the US — a slow, expensive process that puts them at a disadvantage compared to US or UK companies." And then there's the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD). "It makes starting a VC fund MUCH more complicated and costly than what it is in the US," Bernardi said. To be clear, Europe's founders and angels don't lack ambition — they're constrained by structures that haven't kept pace with the reality of building globally competitive companies. Leicht contends that initiatives like the '28th regime' aren't just a 'nice-to-have'—they're absolutely critical for Europe's competitiveness. "We need common, streamlined frameworks that let capital flow to innovation. Let us focus on what we do best: backing great founders, not navigating redundant paperwork." The 28th Regime: Europe’s best shot at leveling the global startup playing field From notary queues and tax IDs to mismatched stock option regimes and AIFMD red tape, these frictions quietly drain time, money, and momentum from the ecosystem. The result is predictable: capital and talent flow to jurisdictions that make it easier to build. The 28th Regime is the most concrete chance Europe has had in decades to create a genuinely single market for startups and investors. If Europe wants its next generation of companies to build here — and stay here — this moment matters. The European Commission's consultation on the 28th Regime is open until close of business today.  If you're a founder, investor, or ecosystem builder, now is the time to speak up. Submit your views here and help shape the future of how we build across Europe.

Madrid-based Reveni, a company transforming global e-commerce logistics, has closed a €7.5 million Series A led by 13books Capital with participation from JME Ventures, BSV, and Bynd Venture Capital. The round brings total funding to €17.3 million. Returns and exchanges remain a major operational and financial burden for brands, especially in cross-border commerce, where shipping, customs, and differing regulations add complexity. Slow refunds, inventory mismatches, and weak returns handling drive dissatisfaction, higher costs, and missed revenue. For cross-border businesses, added layers like international shipping, customs, and differing regulations further complicate the customer experience. Reveni addresses these challenges by unifying sales, logistics, and returns in a single dashboard with deep integrations into major e-commerce platforms. Founded in 2022, its core product streamlines reverse logistics with instant refunds and exchanges. A proprietary risk model approves requests in real time with no client risk, and workflows integrate fully with retailers’ e-commerce and logistics systems. Extending beyond returns, Reveni launched Reveni Atlas in 2025 to automate direct international logistics, from real-time duties and taxes at checkout to customs clearance, fiscal declarations, and end-to-end tracking, aiming to reduce intermediaries and fees, preserve margins, and give brands greater control and visibility. Customers report saving around 25 per cent on logistics and 30 per cent on international sales management costs, alongside increases in repurchase rates, average order values, and retained revenue. Clients include Victoria Beckham, ME+EM, Castore, Ego, Jigsaw, Bella Freud, The Fold, and Hurley. Reveni was co-founded by Fernando Pedraz (CEO), Pablo Molinero (COO), and Gonzalo Martin (CTO), who bring deep experience in enterprise sales, operational strategy, and fintech engineering across product, go-to-market, and technology. We believe the next wave of global commerce won’t be built on legacy systems but on platforms that give brands the power to operate seamlessly across borders.Our goal is to build technology that adapts to an increasingly complex and unpredictable trade environment, helping brands stay resilient where many struggle, said Fernando Pedraz, co-founder and CEO. The new investment will strengthen Reveni’s presence in the UK and EU, accelerate product development, and support team growth.

Paris-based Qovery, a SaaS platform that automates DevOps and simplifies application deployment on any cloud, has raised $13 million in Series A funding. The round was led by IRIS, with participation from Speedinvest, Crane Venture Partners, Techstars, Irregular Expressions, and angels including Datadog co-founders Olivier Pomel and Alexis Le-Quoc, Docker co-founder Sebastian Pahl, and Checkout.com CTO Ott Kaukver (former Twilio CTO), who also joins the board. All seed investors participated in the Series A. Launched in 2020, Qovery helps teams reduce the complexity and cost of infrastructure management so developers can focus on higher-value work. A shortage of experienced DevOps engineers continues to slow delivery. In the UK in 2024, deployments were 26 per cent more likely to be delayed than delivered early. Meanwhile, major public cloud platforms offer thousands of services that are difficult to manage, particularly in multi-cloud or migration scenarios, and Kubernetes, while reliable, can be challenging to operate at scale. Qovery addresses these issues by automating the end-to-end lifecycle of application deployment and infrastructure management across public clouds and on-premises Kubernetes environments. The platform aims to provide full visibility and cost control while avoiding the vendor lock-in common to traditional PaaS solutions. Romaric Philogène, Qovery’s cofounder and CEO, emphasised that software companies often face a choice between building a costly, slow-to-scale in-house DevOps team or relying on external consultants at the expense of autonomy and flexibility. He added: Qovery solves this by enabling organisations to ship products faster, at lower cost, while letting developers spend more time coding and less time managing the cloud infrastructure. Our platform can be installed in just five minutes, delivering the output of four to five DevOps engineers - roles that typically take six to twelve months to hire and onboard. That’s the kind of leverage our customers need in today’s market.” This approach reduces setup from weeks or months to about a day, with installation taking roughly five minutes and requiring minimal DevOps expertise. Customers report roughly 3× DevOps efficiency on average, shorter setup times (from weeks or months to about a day), and release velocities in the hundreds or thousands of deployments per day, accelerating product cycles without compromising compliance or security. The new funding will support regional expansion, team growth, and continued AI-driven product development.