Reflow has closed a seed funding round of more than $15 million to support ongoing technology development and broaden access to its workflow and AI automation intelligence, alongside the launch of its workforce and workflow intelligence platform for enterprise customers. As organisations adopt AI, many are able to measure outcomes but have limited visibility into the processes that produce them. As operations scale, this can make it more difficult to assess capacity, identify automation opportunities, or evaluate the impact of AI initiatives. Reflow is designed to address this challenge by making operational work observable. The platform provides real-time visibility into how work moves across people, systems, and processes, without relying on time tracking, self-reported data, or complex integrations. By converting operational activity into structured data, it enables organisations to identify workflows suitable for automation and assess the results of those efforts. The platform takes a system-level approach, observing workflows end to end to surface task flows, bottlenecks, and process deviations. This supports more informed decisions around automation and optimisation and is suited to mid-market and enterprise organisations with large operational teams performing high-volume, computer-based work across functions such as customer support, accounting, legal, and compliance. Reflow is built to support understanding of workflows and capacity rather than monitoring individual employees. The platform incorporates privacy-focused design principles and enterprise-grade controls, including configurable metadata collection and flexible visibility settings. Founded by Ugur Kaner, a founder with Turkish roots now based in the United States, Reflow builds on prior experience in developing technology platforms for business users. Commenting on the launch and funding, Kaner said: Reflow gives leaders a clear, shared view of how work actually happens, so automation decisions are grounded in reality, not assumptions. In an AI-driven world, that visibility becomes essential infrastructure. Early users of the platform have reported improved visibility into operational capacity, more efficient resource allocation, and clearer identification of workflows suitable for automation. Looking ahead, the company plans to scale its platform to support a broader set of mid-market and enterprise customers while continuing to invest in product development. Its focus is on expanding workflow and workforce intelligence capabilities that help organisations better understand how work is performed before applying automation or AI, with the goal of establishing the platform as foundational infrastructure for AI-driven enterprise operations.

The boss of one of Europe's most high-profile AI startups today called on European unity in the global AI race, as it committed €1.2 billion to build its first data centres outside of its native France, in Sweden. Arthur Mensch, the CEO and co-founder of French AI startup Mistral, said: “We think it is a bit of a trap to think about AI as something that is owned by states. "This is not a state project. The only way to think about this technology is at a community level. "In the US, it is a big market. Their strength is they can scale quickly. If you want to compete, and we need to compete because it is too important a technology to give up on, we need to think of Europe as a unified market. “We need to come together and think of Europe as a single market, with enterprises buying European technology, with states buying European technologies.” Speaking at the Techarena tech conference in Sweden, Mensch pointed to Mistral's work with German firms and new European office openings as indicators of its commitment to Europe, but said Mistral was "really a global company”. At the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year, Mensch said Paris-headquartered Mistral, which is seen as a competitor to the bigger US LLM firms, should top €1 billion in revenue this year. Mensch today said Mistral had experienced 20 times growth over the past year, helped by increased enterprise demand. The French AI startup, valued at around €11.7bn, also announced that it was building new AI data centres in Sweden, working with Swedish data centre provider EcoDataCenter, which will design, build and run the infrastructure, on a 23 MW power facility, "which is quite significant and can actually serve a lot of enterprises". The data centre is part of a €1.2bn AI infrastructure investment Mistral is making in Sweden. On why Sweden, Mensch said: “Because it has access to clean energy, so low-carbon energy. We work with a lot of European enterprises and sustainability is a big concern for us.” Also speaking at the event, Sweden's deputy prime minister and business minister Ebba Busch said Europe's edge in the global AI race against the US was its "political stability", pointing out that stable markets helped bring in investment. In an apparent criticism of Donald Trump, she said: “One of the main things we have is political stability. The Swedish position on AI is not going to change tomorrow in a new tweet. It is what it is." Busch said the key to European success in the global AI race would not be which country built the biggest AI models but “who builds the most trusted system”. Meanwhile, Lovable co-founder Fabian Hedin responded to a question about whether there was a current AI bubble by pointing out Lovable was getting more usage from the apps built on top of Lovable, than Lovable itself. He said: “This demonstrates that what is being created, there is value in it. I think that is hard to debate."

When Russia’s invasion overwhelmed Ukraine’s mental-health system, clinicians faced a surge of trauma patients with no increase in staff or therapy time. That constraint — rising need without added capacity — is also familiar in the US, where provider shortages, long waitlists, and brief appointments are common. But now, a Ukrainian startup, Luminify, has found a way forward. I met with co-founder Viktor Samoilenko at TechChill Kyiv to learn all about it.  Extending therapists, not replacing them Instead of trying to automate therapy, Ukrainian founders Viktor Samoilenko and  Max Goncharuk built a clinician-guided immersive VR system designed to help patients regulate faster, allowing therapists to use limited session time more effectively. The goal was not to replace clinicians, but to extend their reach under extreme system strain. Developed by health-tech company Aspichi, Luminify translates evidence-based approaches such as cognitive behavioural therapy, mindfulness, and trauma therapy into guided mixed-reality experiences delivered through headsets. Patients engage in structured therapeutic environments while clinicians retain oversight, using the system to monitor progress and shape treatment. AI tools personalise exercises and generate outcome data, helping practitioners adapt care to individual needs. The platform is designed for clinics, rehabilitation centres, and workplace wellness programs that aim to scale mental health support without sacrificing quality. In essence, Aspichi positions Luminify as a bridge between clinical psychology and immersive technology — turning therapy into repeatable, measurable digital interventions that can reach more people than traditional one-to-one care alone. From automotive AR to emotional VR Samoilenko’s background spans IoT and automotive technology, and the origins of his current work trace back more than a decade. He previously co-founded Apostera, a developer of mixed-reality navigation solutions for the automotive industry. Apostera’s technology — which projects navigation directly onto a vehicle’s windshield — was later acquired by Harman International, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics. After the exit, Samoilenko began reflecting on how access to experience shapes people. “I was travelling a lot and realised how much money is spent on travel, and how many people simply don’t have that ability,” he said. “That limits their experience. Experience is what makes us more advanced as people — more empathetic, more flexible, more understanding of diversity.” Together with a partner, he began exploring the idea of an audiovisual “teleportation” platform. Drawing on his venture background and familiarity with 360° cameras and VR headsets, the concept was to let one person stream their surroundings while another experienced it immersively in virtual reality. “The idea was that someone could appear in another place for the first time,” he explained. “We wanted to build a platform that could share experience and knowledge at a fraction of the cost of travel.” The company was registered in the United States, with an office opened in Ukraine shortly after. “Five days later, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began,” he said. “It was a moment where we were reconsidering everything — our lives, our place in the world, our place in the country. We decided to use the initial idea to build something impactful for Ukraine.” Building a psychologically safe space in virtual reality In the early days, the team saw friends go out to battle in jeans, armed with guns. According to Samoilenko, they were coming back psychologically broken and traumatised.  “We realised we could provide an ability for them to move from a stressful environment into a safe place where they could feel peaceful and comfortable. It’s a kind of teleportation, but emotional. As we delved deeper into psychology, we realised that VR is a powerful tool for influencing emotional states. It also solves the stigma problem — it’s much easier to put on a headset than to open up immediately to a therapist.” Four years in fight-or-flight When asked whether mental-health awareness is growing locally, Samoilenko says the shift has been driven more by necessity than by campaigns. “We’re trying to build it. After four years, it has become a real topic because everyone in Ukraine feels it,” he explained. While awareness may not yet match countries with large-scale public health initiatives, he notes that more people are independently seeking support. The prolonged strain of war has reshaped the population’s psychological baseline. “For four years, we’ve been in fight-or-flight mode. Now there’s no energy left to sustain that. You want to run, but you don’t have the energy,” he said. Aspichi’s work focuses on restoring that depleted capacity. "We help people restore energy and self-awareness through mindfulness and psychological techniques — basically helping them take care of themselves again.” That said, Samoilenko stresses that trauma is delicate work: ”It cannot be optimised. We don’t replace professionals. We augment their work by helping people relax and become ready to approach trauma. We prepare them. The actual trauma processing is left to specialists.” Turning trauma response into valuable data Image: Luminify VR headsets. Photo: Oksana Lahzdukalns. However, what began as an emergency intervention quickly became measurable science. In Ukraine, Luminify has already been used by more than 1 million people across rehabilitation settings, effectively serving as a large-scale test of a clinician-extension model in crisis conditions. In a controlled study at a Veterans’ Mental Health & Rehabilitation Centre in Kyiv, the VR-supported group showed measurable reductions in anxiety and depression compared with standard rehabilitation alone.  Aspichi published its first clinical research on Luminify in the European Psychiatry and Psychology Journal.  “On average, we saw a 20–30 per cent reduction in depression and anxiety symptoms and about a 40 per cent increase in overall wellbeing,” shared Samoilenko. The ethics of learning from trauma Samoilenko acknowledges the ethical tension of working at such a scale in a country shaped by trauma. Ukraine’s crisis, he says, is devastating — but it also creates conditions for unprecedented research. “Unfortunately, Ukraine has many traumatised people, but it gives an opportunity to make a global breakthrough in psychology,” he said. Demand from practitioners reflects that urgency. “In Ukraine, there’s basically a queue,” Samoilenko explained. Luminify currently supports around 150 rehabilitation centres and has already delivered therapy to more than one million people, with capacity projected to reach two to three million annually. The resulting dataset is drawing international attention.   “Scientists worldwide are very open to collaboration because the scale of data is unprecedented,” he said.  Typical psychological studies involve hundreds of participants; Luminify is operating at a national scale.   “That’s three or four orders of magnitude more. We’re already validating in multiple countries and working with universities.” Crossing into mainstream care The system is now being tested beyond trauma recovery, including post-acute rehab through a partnership with Rocky Mountain Care. It already has customers in assisted living, nursing homes, and acute care facilities. In the US, in assisted living, there is almost no competition.  “The niche is conservative and not open to innovation. We compete with mindset, not technology,” shared Samoilenko. Facilities can be reimbursed by insurance, so there are no objective financial barriers. However, the challenge is staff exhaustion. Medical and social workers worldwide are burned out. “Ironically, they could benefit from the technology themselves,” admits Samoilenko. “We’re seeing improvements even in dementia and Alzheimer’s cases, including some very bright recoveries.” The program recommends at least ten consecutive days of daily therapy practice. It’s a structured program rather than weekly sessions. Progress is measured using professional clinical questionnaires. Aspichi received a large donation of headsets from a manufacturer, allowing the company to provide up to 20,000 sessions per day. The headsets have built-in cameras for eye, head, and body tracking. That allows the team to capture behavioural changes similar to those therapists observe in person. “It's a trend to use biometric data, but what we're doing is capturing behavioural data. Biometric data can't tell a lot about psychoemotional state, but behavioural data can. Amazing results can be achieved when both approaches are used,” shared Samoilenko. From here on in, objective diagnostics is the priority. The company is scaling in the US, using generative AI to deliver therapy in multiple languages, building personalised programs, and doing deeper research into the human brain. Luminify’s journey so far shows how care delivery changes when time and staff are the binding constraints, and why models forged under wartime healthcare pressure may be relevant to the US system now and beyond. WhileUkraine has become an unwilling laboratory for psychological resilience, Luminify is trying to ensure that what’s learned there reshapes care far beyond its borders.

London-based Overmind, which is developing a supervision layer for AI agents, has closed a £2 million seed funding round. The round was led by specialist cybersecurity investor Osney Capital, with participation from 14Peaks, Portfolio Ventures, Antler, and Endurance Ventures. As agentic AI systems advance, security requirements are becoming more complex and are increasingly difficult to address with existing tools. These systems can be exposed to adversarial inputs and data integrity issues, particularly when operating autonomously in production environments. As a result, risk management has become a limiting factor for deployment. Overmind develops technology designed to support the secure deployment of agentic AI. Its platform provides visibility into agent behaviour, enabling monitoring and intervention when deviations occur during live operation. The system also applies reinforcement learning techniques to improve agent performance and reliability over time. Overmind was founded by a team with backgrounds across intelligence and technology, including Tyler Edwards (CEO), Akhat Rakishev (CTO), and Sam Brunt (CRO). According to Edwards, the company’s focus is on addressing risks that arise when AI agents operate in live environments, where behaviour can change over time and direct oversight is limited. The company plans to use the funding to expand its technical teams, continue product development, and scale go-to-market efforts in regulated industries such as legal, healthcare, and fintech, where agentic AI deployment requires strong compliance and data protection controls.

Berlin-based Andercore, an AI-enabled industrial supply trade platform, has raised $40 million in a Series B round comprising equity and debt to support its expansion in Europe. The round includes participation from existing investors Atomico and Project A, with Inven Capital joining as a new investor, alongside institutional financing from Commerzbank and KfW. The company has raised a total of $75 million to date. Andercore operates in global wholesale trade, which supports industrial supply chains across multiple sectors. Despite its size, the market is characterized by manual processes, fragmented workflows, relatively high transaction costs, and limited direct access for international suppliers. The company initially focused on industrial categories such as infrastructure, energy, and building materials. These categories serve as an entry point for a platform intended to expand across a broader range of industrial supply segments. Over the past five years, Andercore has developed an asset-light, cross-border trading model supported by a proprietary AI platform. The company purchases products from international suppliers and sells them to local buyers on its own account. Its technology supports pricing, quoting, quality assurance, distribution, and embedded financing. The platform currently supports thousands of transactions per month across seven European markets. Philipp Andernach, founder and CEO, said the company’s core focus is using AI to support cross-border trade in physical goods: Our system brings prediction, discipline, and speed to supply chains that still rely on manual work. Buyers get faster quotes, better pricing, and frictionless execution across complex industrial categories. Suppliers gain a partner that drives consistent demand, expands their customer base, pays promptly, and handles operational complexity on their behalf. The new capital will be used to support geographic expansion, broader category coverage, and continued development of the company’s AI platform. Over time, the platform is intended to enable suppliers to sell directly through the system, with the aim of integrating supply, demand, and financing within a single environment. Andercore continues to expand its operations in global industrial trade, with an initial focus on Europe.

London-based Seamflow, an AI-focused software company serving the global testing, inspection, and certification (TIC) industry, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding. The round was co-led by Northzone and Initialized Capital, with participation from Entrepreneur First, Nebular, and angel investors including Charlie Songhurst and Mario Götze. Before products can be commercialised, facilities can operate, or infrastructure can become operational, independent experts are required to conduct audits, review extensive documentation, and issue formal approvals. These processes are managed by TIC organisations across most sectors of the economy and are becoming increasingly complex as regulatory requirements expand. The challenge is particularly acute in the medical device sector. In the European Union, a large number of devices are currently awaiting certification by notified bodies, and approval timelines can extend well beyond a year due to the limited availability of qualified experts and the volume of documentation involved. Seamflow applies AI to certification workflows to help organisations organise documentation, coordinate reviews, and reduce administrative workload, allowing experts to focus on substantive assessments. According to the company, this approach can significantly reduce certification timelines. Konstantin Klingler, CEO and co-founder of Seamflow, said the company aims to support TIC professionals as regulatory complexity and demand increase, while maintaining the trust and rigour required in certification processes. The TIC industry is essential to global safety and innovation, and it relies on highly skilled professionals. Our goal is to support those teams with AI that helps them manage growing complexity and demand, without compromising the trust and rigor the industry is built on. Initially focused on medical devices, Seamflow has expanded to work with organisations across the broader TIC industry, addressing operational challenges such as auditor scheduling, documentation management, and review coordination. The company is working with enterprise clients to deploy its platform across certification workflows at scale. The funding will be used to expand Seamflow’s team, further develop its product, and support additional testing, inspection, and certification organisations globally.

London-based Mozart AI has raised $6 million in an oversubscribed seed funding round led by Balderton Capital. The round included participation from Mercuri, EWOR, Kevin Hartz, Charles Ferguson, and Emery Wells, alongside existing investors and strategic angel backers from the music, AI, and creator technology sectors. The round follows a pre-seed round raised earlier this year, bringing the company’s total funding to more than $7 million. Mozart AI has also launched its mobile application. Mozart AI is developing an AI-native digital audio workstation that combines traditional music production with AI-assisted and prompt-driven workflows. The platform supports both ground-up composition and agent-based music creation, enabling users to work with varying levels of technical involvement. The software includes tools for stem generation, MIDI progressions, drum patterns, synth and effect creation, and sound remixing, while also automating time-intensive production tasks such as quantisation and time stretching. Users can also create accompanying music videos and share content directly on social media platforms. Throughout the creative process, users retain full control over their work and ownership of their copyrights, using AI as a support tool to reduce technical friction. Mozart AI is built on commercially cleared third-party generative models, and the company notes that its model providers are trained on licensed material, allowing music created on the platform to be used for commercial purposes. Commenting on the funding, Sundar Arvind, CEO and co-founder of Mozart AI, said: Mozart AI is building powerful generative tools for the next era of collaborative music creation that will enable every artist – from casual creators to professional producers – to turn any idea into a release-ready song in minutes, with commercial rights.We’re building toward a world where a spark of creativity – a guitar riff, a melody, an idea – can be transformed into a fully produced, monetisable song with a professional music video, without requiring technical knowledge or fragmented tools. Since its beta launch in September, Mozart AI reports strong early adoption, with more than 100,000 users registering within the first two months and over one million songs created on the platform. The funding will be used to grow the team, expand the company’s core technology, and prepare for a full public release.

Berlin-based Circle Health has closed a €9 million seed round of equity and debt financing, led by Atlantic.vc, with participation from CRB Health Tech, Calm/Storm Ventures, and Kfund. The funding comes amid a highly fragmented preventive healthcare landscape in Europe, where care is delivered by a large number of small providers and chronic conditions are often identified only once symptoms appear. Founded by Peter Malmqvist (CEO) and Jannik Tiedemann (COO), Circle Health is developing an integrated preventive care platform, Circle OS, that combines in-person diagnostics, AI-enabled clinical support, and consumer-facing digital health tools. The platform is designed to aggregate data from multiple sources, including wearables and laboratory tests, to support personalised and proactive health programmes across areas such as metabolic health, hormonal balance, fatigue, and gut health. Peter Malmqvist said that healthcare delivery is typically reactive, with patients often accessing care only after illness has developed. We’re building a new model that empowers people to understand, improve, and maintain their health proactively, and are bringing that freedom to patients across Germany. Since opening in 2023, Circle Health’s Berlin clinic has treated several thousand patients across a large number of appointments and reports strong patient satisfaction based on customer feedback. The company’s AI-enabled therapist model is designed to support clinicians with personalised insights and care recommendations, with the aim of improving both patient experience and clinical outcomes. The funding will be used to support ongoing product development and to expand Circle Health’s hybrid clinic model across Germany, with plans to open additional locations in cities including Munich, Hamburg, and Düsseldorf over the next year.

Porters has closed a €2.7 million pre-seed funding round to develop AI-based software for banking operations. The round was led by Earlybird, with participation from Seedcamp and a group of fintech founders and industry professionals. Angel investors include Martin Kassing (Upvest), Alexandre Prot (Qonto), Lukas Zörner (Penta and Integral), and Adrien Treccani (Metaco). Additional participants include Casper Wahler (Hedosophia) and Jonathan Brander (Upvest, FNZ, Schröders), bringing experience in scaling financial services operations. Founded by Konstantin Kotulla, Christopher Barth, and Dr Michael John, Porters is developing software to support banking teams in managing regulated and time-sensitive workflows more efficiently. By combining AI-based technology with a vertical service offering, the platform aims to reduce manual oversight and improve operational productivity without increasing headcount. The platform initially focuses on account seizure and insolvency management, where institutions often face high case volumes and strict compliance requirements. By automating routine tasks, Porters enables teams to process cases more efficiently while maintaining regulatory standards, allowing internal staff to focus on exception handling. Commenting on the round, Konstantin Kotulla, co-founder of Porters, said that many banking operations remain largely manual despite long-running digitalisation efforts. We're solving this by building an AI-native service that doesn't just automate tasks, but truly allows scaling without adding headcount. All while maintaining the resilience and compliance that financial institutions require. This funding accelerates our mission to redefine financial service operations for the AI era. The funding will be used to further develop the product and scale the platform to support additional back-office services for banks and fintechs.

Elaia has announced a first close of its fifth Digital Venture Fund (DV5) at €120 million. The fund will focus on investing in European B2B technology companies with strong intellectual property foundations, spanning both foundational infrastructure and application-level innovation. The first close includes commitments from both returning and new investors. Participants include Bpifrance, investing on behalf of the French state under the France 2030 initiative and through its Spark fund, as well as MACSF, BNP Paribas, SMABTP, Arundo Re, and Groupe AG2R LA MONDIALE. Elaia also highlighted the support of Lazard Frères Gestion in achieving the first close. DV5 builds on Elaia’s long-standing investment approach, which combines early identification of advanced technologies with active support to help companies scale into sustainable, category-leading businesses. The fund is managed by a team with technical expertise and experience in building, scaling, and exiting technology companies, and takes a hands-on role in supporting product-market fit and execution. The fund will invest across early stages, from pre-seed to Series B, with ticket sizes ranging from €1 million to €15 million. DV5 targets B2B technology companies across Europe, with a focus on areas such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, techbio, industrial innovation, and core digital infrastructure. Xavier Lazarus, CEO and co-founder of Elaia, said the firm’s full-stack investment model enables it to support companies across all stages of growth: As a full-stack investor with a platform to invest across all stages, we are well-positioned with DV5 to build the next chapter in our mission to supercharge Europe’s most resilient, high-growth companies. Pauline Roux, managing partner at Elaia, added that the firm’s strategy centres on investing in complex, high-impact technologies with the potential to shape entire sectors: Portfolio successes like Mirakl, Shift Technology, Vibe.co, iBanFirst, HarfangLab, Dexory, and SeqOne underscore our ability to identify disruptive potential at an early stage and support its development into market leadership. Founders in our portfolio continue to partner with us as advisors and investors, reflecting the long-term relationships we have built across the European ecosystem. DV5 has already made its first investment in Mimic Robotics, a Zurich-based company working on physical AI. The investment reflects the fund’s focus on backing advanced technologies emerging from key European innovation hubs.

A Hungarian robotics hardware startup says it has raised the "highest-ever" pre-seed funding round in the country’s history.   Allonic has raised $7.2m in pre-seed funding, in a round led by Visionaries Club, with participation from Day One Capital. Other investors include angel investors from Hugging Face and OpenAI. Allonic's play is to speed up how robot bodies are manufactured.   It says the physical construction of robots is outdated, involving putting together robotic hands, arms and manipulators piece by piece, relying on bearings, screws, cables, and delicate joints that are costly to manufacture and tedious to assemble.   Allonic, which is a 15-strong team, is looking to disrupt the industry, taking on the challenge at the manufacturing layer.   Its proprietary production process, known as 3D Tissue Braiding, replaces manual assembly with a fully automated, scalable manufacturing system, it says.   Inspired by how ropes achieve strength through structure rather than rigid parts, Allonic 3D-weaves tailored robotic “tissues” directly over a skeletal core.   Instead of assembling hundreds of individual parts, Allonic’s tendons, joints and load-bearing soft tissues are formed together in one continuous process.    It claims its process results in robotic bodies that are “strong”, “compliant”, and simpler to manufacture.   Since revealing its technology in 2025, Allonic says it has completed its first pilot project in electronics manufacturing,    The Budapest-based startup also says it is seeing strong inbound interest from the humanoid robotics sector and large consumer technology companies, including US big tech players.  Benedek Tasi, co-founder & CEO of Allonic, said: “A lot of attention is on intelligence and software, but hardware still holds many of the hardest problems.   “The trade-offs between durability and softness, dexterity and strength have always been dictated by the limits of manufacturing. "We are removing those constraints and building a platform that allows robotics teams to design, build and iterate freely, without hardware cost or complexity holding them back. “Being able to go from idea to physical robot in minutes instead of weeks fundamentally changes how we can think about robotics design."

Dublin-based MARC, an AI company focused on real estate asset management, has raised a $1 million pre-seed round from 23 angel investors, with no venture capital participation. Backers include Jack Pierse (Wayflyer), Tom Kennedy (Hostelworld), Susan Spence (SoftCo), Eoghan Quigley (the Dublin Chamber of Commerce), and James McGann (Unmind), alongside institutional real estate investors and US-based multifamily operators. Large real estate portfolios often involve thousands of vendor contracts covering services, licences, and certifications. Key information such as renewal dates, escalation clauses, termination rights, and fee structures is frequently scattered across inboxes, shared drives, and legacy systems, making budgeting, audits, asset sales, and invoice reviews slow and error-prone. MARC was founded by Aaron Devitt to address these challenges. After seeing firsthand how fragmented and inefficient contract and expense management practices affected both renters and asset managers, 22-year-old Devitt began building the platform, deferring his studies to focus on developing a solution for managing asset data at scale. MARC addresses this problem through AI-powered contract agents that connect directly to existing document repositories, including email inboxes and SharePoint. The system automatically locates contracts, extracts and structures critical terms, and organises them into a continuously updated source of truth that teams can search and query instantly. According to the company, this approach significantly reduces the time required to process contract data. In addition, MARC compares contract terms with monthly invoices, allowing operators to identify discrepancies and potential overbilling before they affect net operating income. Since launching in 2024, MARC has expanded from working with Irish property managers to serving institutional owners in the United States and Canada. The funding will be used to further develop the product and support expansion into the North American market.

UK tech startups are being urged to take bold risks, by the UK’s AI minister, saying the government will back them, as a UK chip startup pledges to invest £100m in its business.   The call comes as the UK government looks to make the UK an AI superpower, attracting investment from tech giants to build massive data centres and also be home to a flourishing domestic AI ecosystem.  However, questions persist as to whether the UK can meet its ambitious goals, and there are also concerns about the UK not building enough of its own AI tech, and being too reliant on US tech firms. In a speech in London today, AI minister Kanishka Narayan calls on more UK tech startups to follow UK chip startup Fractile in committing fresh investment, saying the government will back them. Narayan says: “I am setting Britain’s AI leaders a challenge – bang the drum for startups, spread the opportunities to every corner of our country, and embrace risk. “This is how we leverage AI to serve hard-working people, our economy, and British values.”   The minister says greater British technology ownership is needed for the UK to command deeper influence.   He also says that future growth cannot be built for elites alone, and how, unlike previous waves of frontier technology, AI’s potential is broad, with an opportunity to spread the potential across regions and communities.     In his speech, Narayan will announce that Fractile, founded in 2022, which is developing next-generation chips looking to compete against chip heavyweight Nvidia, will be investing £100m in its UK HQ over the next three years.    Fractile, which is focused on LLM inference, the process where a pre-trained LLM generates text output, like answers to user prompts, intends to expand its London and Bristol sites and create a new UK industrial hardware engineering facility.   Fractile, which currently employs 80 people and is backed by the NATO Innovation Fund and Kindred Capital, also intends to grow its UK-based team to develop and optimise next-generation systems.

Gothenburg-based Vesiro, a spinout from Chalmers University, has raised €1.6 million in a seed funding round. The round was backed by Chalmers Ventures, Industrifonden, Länsförsäkringar Göteborg & Bohuslän, Yuncture, First Gate Invest, E14 Invest, Mach One, and a group of angel investors including Stefan Mahlstein, Staffan Truvé, Jan Sparud, Petter Eriksson, and Magnus Lundgren. The funding comes as global data generation continues to grow rapidly, increasing demand on servers and data centres, which are already significant and rising consumers of energy. In 2021, data centres accounted for around one per cent of global energy use, a share expected to increase substantially by the end of the decade. Against this backdrop, Vesiro develops a performance-focused plug-in for Elasticsearch designed to improve search efficiency in large-scale data environments. The software targets organisations operating extensive Elasticsearch clusters, enabling them to process large datasets more efficiently while reducing server requirements and associated energy consumption. According to internal benchmarks and pilot deployments, the plug-in can significantly improve search performance, allowing customers to achieve the same workloads with fewer servers. Data volumes are growing faster than today’s infrastructure can handle, and our technology makes it possible to analyse large datasets using far fewer servers. This lowers costs while also reducing energy consumption, said Oskar Hagman, co-founder and CEO of Vesiro. The solution is intended for organisations with substantial server costs linked to Elasticsearch use cases, including business intelligence, e-commerce, and AI. By improving performance without requiring changes to existing systems, the plug-in allows companies to maintain service levels while lowering operating costs and energy use. The funding will be used primarily to expand Vesiro’s technical team and to accelerate product development and market rollout.

London-based xWatts, an intelligent energy management platform focused on decarbonising complex real estate assets, has closed a £1.6 million seed funding round. The investment was led by Cambridge Enterprise Ventures, with participation from Cambridge Angels, Parkwalk, and R42. xWatts develops AI- and machine-learning-based technology to manage energy use across large and complex real estate portfolios, with the aim of reducing energy costs and carbon emissions while improving operational oversight of building systems. The company focuses on non-domestic buildings across Europe, where energy consumption represents a significant operational cost, particularly for estates with energy-intensive systems that can benefit from improved monitoring and optimisation. Commenting on the funding, Yigit Akar, CEO and co-founder of xWatts, said: Our aim is to decarbonise complex real estate in an intelligent, automated, and scalable way. Rather than only providing insights, our platform actively manages energy systems. This funding supports continued product development and growth as we scale the business. Unlike solutions that primarily analyse or report data, xWatts connects directly to building energy systems to model facilities in real time and automate optimisation across generation and demand, including HVAC, solar, and combined heat and power systems. The company says its technology has been deployed across healthcare, education, and manufacturing facilities, supporting reductions in energy consumption, operating costs, and associated carbon emissions. The funding is intended to accelerate product development and support growth in key European markets, particularly within healthcare, higher education, and industrial sectors.

Naboo, a Paris-based event-tech company, has closed a $70 million Series B funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors Notion Capital, ISAI, and Ternel. The round follows the company’s €20 million Series A announced in January 2025 and comes after its expansion into the North American market. The funding comes as the corporate events market undergoes structural change. The increasing use of AI, alongside the continued growth of customer- and partner-focused events such as conferences and product launches, has positioned corporate events as a strategic area of spend for many organisations rather than a discretionary cost. Founded in 2022, Naboo offers an all-in-one platform for booking, managing, and running corporate events across the MICE segment, centralising venue sourcing, catering, activities, and transportation. The platform combines software with operational support to provide transparent pricing, instant quotes, and coordinated event management as an alternative to traditional agency-based models. The company has expanded across Europe and into North America and reports growing adoption among large international organisations, including Meta, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, HubSpot, Figma, and ElevenLabs, for both internal and client-facing events. Maxime Eduardo, CEO and co-founder of Naboo, said the company’s objective is to equip large organisations with a global infrastructure that brings together procurement efficiency, compliance, and automation. With the new funding, Naboo plans to move beyond its core events offering and develop a broader procurement platform focused on so-called “tail-spend” categories. The company says the capital will support the development of an AI-based booking agent to complement its concierge service, the rollout of a corporate payment card integrated into clients’ existing systems, and the use of AI to manage tenders for events of different sizes with the aim of improving cost efficiency. Naboo is also exploring expansion into adjacent procurement areas characterised by fragmented spending, complex supply chains, multiple payment flows, and compliance requirements.

Uber is acquiring the domestic delivery business of Turkish speedy grocery company Getir from its controlling shareholder, as it looks to beef up its presence in the country.   The US ride-hail and delivery giant is buying the business from Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala.   The deal runs across Getir's delivery offering, including food, grocery, retail, and water delivery. Details of the size of the deal were not disclosed.   Uber said the deal represents “another milestone" in its investment in Turkey. It follows Uber's purchase of a $700m controlling stake in Turkish food and grocery app, Trendyol Go, last year, as it looks to up its presence in Turkey and in the Middle East. Uber said it plans to combine the two businesses, “increasing selection for consumers, supporting more delivery opportunities for couriers, and driving increased demand to restaurants and retailers". Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, said: “By bringing together these leading platforms, we aim to support the continued growth of a vibrant and competitive ecosystem that delivers even more value for consumers, couriers, and merchants.’’   Batuhan Gultakan, CEO of Getir, said: “This agreement is a significant milestone for Getir and is a testament to the strong operating model and leading brand our team has built in our home market of Türkiye.    “We are excited to bring Getir’s pioneering ultrafast delivery expertise to Uber’s global ecosystem, as we continue to enhance the experience for consumers, couriers, restaurants, and retailers. We are proud of what we have achieved with the support of Mubadala and look forward to the next chapter of growth as part of the Uber family.”   Getir, founded in 2015 in Istanbul, became known for its pledge to deliver groceries in minutes. The speedy grocery sector flourished during the pandemic and Getir hit a valuation of $11.8bn in 2022. However, Getir has since retreated from some international markets, including Italy and the UK, to focus on its core Turkish business.

Music education hasn’t changed much in generations. Children still attend weekly lessons, practise inconsistently at home, and teachers rely largely on instinct rather than measurable data. But now a startup believes AI can fix that gap and bring gamification and feedback loops to one of the most traditional corners of education. MuseCool is a London-based music education company founded in 2017 that provides personalised music lessons for students of all ages, both in person and online. The company connects learners with professional, conservatory-trained tutors for instruments such as piano, guitar, violin, and drums, and supports exam preparation, performances, and workshops. MuseCool combines traditional teaching with AI-supported practice tools to help students progress between lessons, positioning itself as a modern private music school focused on flexibility, high-quality instruction, and making music learning more accessible and engaging. I spoke to CEO Petru Cotarcea to learn more. Cotarcea grew up poor in Romania. But because of the Communist legacy, music education there was extremely cheap. “That meant I could learn an instrument, which wouldn’t have been possible in the West,” he shared. “It was one of the few good things about that system.” From scholarship student to West End performer Music became Cotarcea’s pathway to opportunities he wouldn’t otherwise have had. By 14, he was already competing internationally and had earned a scholarship to Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester, one of the UK’s most prestigious boarding schools for young musicians. He later continued his training at the Royal Academy of Music and quickly entered the professional world. He recalls: “By 18, I was playing in the West End production of Sweeney Todd and met Stephen Sondheim. I was performing with professionals much older than me, and I realised I’d been lucky — right place, right time. It made me think about what came next.” A failed peppermint farm — and a pivot After his first year in the West End, Cotarcea had saved about £10,000, “which felt like a lot of money at the time”. At 19, he invested in a peppermint farm in Romania. The logic was that he could keep studying in London while this grew in the background. After a year, Cotarcea planned to apply for grants and build an essential oil processing facility. However, he revealed, “the crop turned out to be toxic. It didn’t contain menthol, but it contained a chemical illegal in the EU. The lab told me I had to burn it. So I literally burned the entire field. That was my first venture.” This failure convinced him to build something in a field he understood: music education. Cotarcea now runs one of the largest music schools in London, with operations in the UK and New York. It aims to change how music is taught. The school’s audience is children aged 5–14.  The problems with traditional music teaching The fundamental problem is that music education is still very traditional, kids don’t practise enough, and there’s almost no data on what actually works. “If they don’t practice, they don’t improve. If they don’t improve, parents stop paying for lessons. Fix practice, and you fix the entire system,” asserts Cotarcea. Cotarcea describes music education as deeply traditional. “Teachers tend to teach the way they themselves were taught — often following methods passed down for generations. There’s real pride in lineage: my teacher taught me this method. Kids who enjoy their lessons often stay for years. Piano dominates the beginner market, accounting for roughly two-thirds of new students.” However, music teaching has largely failed to adapt to a more digital-first world and fails to reflect how children today learn. Why audio AI is harder than text AI Put simply: audio isn’t discrete like text — it’s a moving, layered signal, and teaching machines to understand it is closer to decoding a performance than reading a sentence. According to Cotarcea, Audio AI is lags behind text and image AI. “There are very few mature tools for music understanding. Most of what we built is based on research and custom development. The big challenge is interpreting imperfect human performance. If a child plays slightly out of time or tune, humans recognise it instantly. Machines don’t.” 'A big challenge is interpreting imperfect human performance. If a child plays a snippet of music, humans can recognise it — and its mistakes — instantly. Machines don’t.' MuseCool’s approach is different. Teachers press “start” at the beginning of a lesson and “finish” at the end. “We listen to the lesson, understand what happened musically, and automatically generate practice games and analytics. This empowers teachers to better understand the individual needs of each student and plan accordingly,” shared Cotarcea. Gamifying music education MuseCool’s flagship product is The Muse, an AI-powered practice assistant that supports music students between lessons by turning what was taught into guided, motivating home practice. It uses lesson data to generate short, personalised practice sessions that feel more like games than repetitive drills, helping children practise more consistently and with better focus. Parents receive practice analytics and simple progress updates, while tutors can seamlessly integrate the tool into lessons, keeping practice aligned with what was taught and boosting continuity week to week. Early software testing revealed a surprising reality — beginner lessons contain less playing than you’d expect. There’s a lot of conversation, encouragement, and attention management, especially with young kids. “Historically, no one has had large-scale data about what happens inside music lessons. If we scale, we could reshape music education research simply by providing real data,” asserts Cotarcea. A future built on data and scale Looking ahead, Cotarcea sees MuseCool evolving on two fronts: a global practice platform and a data-driven marketplace. “There are two layers,” he explains. “First, a global platform where tutors can use our platform for free while parents subscribe. The goal is simple: kids practise better, and lessons become more effective.”  The second plan is a teacher marketplace. As tutors adopt the platform worldwide, the school can match families with teachers using real performance data, creating smarter connections than traditional directories. The company is already testing the model at its large London music school, which serves as a live ecosystem for product development before a public launch in March and a wider international rollout.

The Tech.eu Summit London 2026 is set to take place on 21-22 April at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre, bringing together leaders from the global startup and investment ecosystem. Over two days, the event will host in-depth discussions, high-level networking opportunities and collaborative sessions, placing London once again at the centre of Europe’s technology landscape. There are only a few days left to secure Early Bird tickets for the Tech.eu Summit London 2026. This discounted ticket tier is approaching its deadline, after which pricing will move to the next phase. Ticket pricing will be updated on 11 February 2026 Ticket pricing for the Tech.eu Summit London 2026 will be updated on 11 February 2026. The Early Bird tickets' new price is £450 + VAT. Planning to attend with colleagues or friends? A 10% group discount applies for groups of three or more tickets, with Early Bird (3+ people) tickets priced at £405 + VAT per person. The Tech.eu Summit London 2026 will bring together founders, investors, executives and policymakers from across Europe and beyond. The programme will feature keynote sessions, panel discussions and curated networking opportunities focused on topics such as artificial intelligence, fintech, SaaS, sustainability and emerging technologies. Attendees can also download the Tech.eu Events app via the App Store and Google Play to start connecting ahead of the summit. The app enables participants to browse attendee profiles, arrange meetings, explore the full agenda and manage their schedule in advance. It will also be used for fast and easy on-site access through QR code check-in. Get your tickets today! Secure your ticket for the Tech.eu Summit London 2026 and take advantage of the current Early Bird pricing before it ends on 11 February. Join us at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre on 21-22 April for two days of insight, networking and collaboration with some of the most influential voices in technology and investment. We look forward to welcoming you in London.

Last week, we tracked more than 70 tech funding deals worth over €1.4 billion, and 5 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.Click to read the rest of the news.