Berlin-based cybersecurity startup revel8 has raised a €5.7 million seed round, bringing total funding to €7 million since its 2024 founding. The round was led by Peak, with participation from Fortino Capital, Merantix Capital, and angels including Mario Götze, Sergej Epp (CISO, Sysdig), Michael Schrank (CISO, Adidas), Rogier Fischer (Co-founder & CEO, Hadrian), and Alexander Rinke (CEO, Celonis). Generative AI has lowered the barrier to producing convincing fake voices, images, and messages. Vishing incidents surged in 2024, with high-profile deepfake attacks continuing into 2025. Despite the sophistication, most breaches still stem from human error. Founded by Julius Muth, Tom Müller, and Robert Seilbeck after observing gaps in defences against AI-based impersonation, revel8 aims to train “human firewalls” at scale. The company mirrors modern attacker tactics: its AI-native, deepfake-first platform rapidly replicates new social-engineering methods and uses OSINT to tailor simulations to each employee. Individuals receive adaptive, role-aware training “playlists” that evolve with behaviour and performance, turning the human layer into an active line of defense through multi-channel, in-the-moment exercises. Co-founder and CEO Julius Muth argues that traditional e-learning is outdated, and realistic simulations of current, relevant scams are far more effective: By continuously exposing users to cyberattacks across all communication channels, we help clients build a strong security culture and reduce the risk of costly incidents. The new funding will enable Revel8 to scale its team, enhance enterprise capabilities, and accelerate global expansion.

Stockholm-based Hedda, a startup developing an AI-powered bid writing platform, has raised €1.5 million in pre-seed funding from Zenith Venture Capital, Antler, and WaveVentures. Hedda is an AI-powered, centralised platform for bid writing that automates content creation, streamlines collaboration, and helps teams produce higher-quality bids faster. The company was founded by Zakarias Hedenfal (CEO), Maximillian Claesson (CTO), Fredrik Juvet (CPO), and Fabian Platoff (CRO), a team that combines technical AI expertise with startup and financial services experience and has previously collaborated on a machine-learning venture. In the EU, public procurement exceeds €875 billion annually, yet tendering practices have seen little change for decades. Hedda addresses this challenge by interpreting requirements, summarising key points, and drafting responses based on a company’s existing data and past bids. Its unified interface enables teams to extract mandatory criteria from large documents, find relevant information quickly, and work together efficiently. The platform integrates with tools like SharePoint, supports full data sovereignty, and provides transparent, source-based suggestions to increase confidence and compliance while materially reducing time to submit. Zakarias Hedenfalk noted that bid writing is a demanding and time-intensive task underpinning many of Europe’s largest and most significant public and private investments: The addressable market for this technology in public procurement in the Nordics is worth €55 billion. We are leveraging AI to transform bid writing and accelerate the process for teams and companies. With this new funding, the company will expand its engineering team and strengthen its go-to-market strategy.

The internet contains an enormous amount of valuable information — from product prices and financial data to news, research, and user-generated content.  But accessing this information at scale is difficult. Websites often block automated requests, limit access, or present data in formats that are hard to collect and structure.  For companies in e-commerce, finance, cybersecurity, and especially artificial intelligence, this creates a major barrier: they need vast, diverse, and constantly updated datasets, yet lack the infrastructure to gather them reliably and legally. Oxylabs is a Lithuanian tech company that provides large-scale web data collection and proxy infrastructure. Its proxy infrastructure, scraping technologies, and ready-made datasets give businesses and researchers a compliant, efficient way to tap into the public web.  In doing so, Oxylabs not only supplies the raw material that fuels innovation — from AI training to market analysis — but also sets ethical standards in an industry often criticised for misuse, ensuring that data-driven progress can continue without compromising ethics or legality. I spoke to Denas Grybauskas, Chief Governance and Strategy Officer at Oxylabs, to learn more.  According to Grybauskas, Oxylabs started in 2015 by renting out data centre IP addresses. He recounts: “We quickly realised there was a real need for robust, scalable public web data aggregation infrastructure. So we kept developing. Today, we offer many products related to public web data acquisition and aggregation. The public Web as the world’s largest dataset  Grybauskas contends that the public web is the most diverse and dynamic dataset we have. “If we want AI systems that are fair, representative, and globally relevant, access to the public web must remain available to everyone.” This year Oxylabs launched the world’s first ethical YouTube datasets, requiring creator consent for AI training.  According to Grybauskas, “When it comes to datasets — especially YouTube datasets — we noticed that generative AI companies are very interested in video content.” In December 2024, YouTube changed its policy to allow content creators to opt in to allowing third-party AI companies to train their models using YouTube videos.  In response, Oxylabs decided to build a dataset by aggregating videos that have either opted in for AI training or are licensed under Creative Commons.  All datasets offered by Oxylabs include videos, transcripts, and rich metadata. While such data has many potential use cases, Oxylabs refined and prepared it specifically for AI training, which is the use that the content creators have knowingly agreed to. "Selling picks and shovels in the data gold rush" Grybauskas contends that there’s a misconception that the internet is only about personal data: “In reality, there are petabytes of non-personal information — like e-commerce data — that are just as important. Datasets are a tiny part of our business. Primarily, we’re an infrastructure provider. We joke internally that we’re selling picks and shovels during the gold rush.” The company has also invested heavily in innovation, holding over 100 patents — mostly in the US. “In fact, if you look at Lithuanian companies filing US patents over the last five years, Oxylabs accounts for about 30 per cent of them. We’re very proud of our intellectual property team and our engineers who continue to innovate,” recounts Grybauskas. Building an ethical industry standard The release of ethically sourced YouTube datasets continues Oxylabs’ longtime mission to establish and promote ethical industry practices. Oxylabs also stands out for its work in creating a more ethical web and making data more accessible to not-for-profits and investigative journalists. It's one of the founders of the Ethical Web Data Collection Initiative, a global, industry-led group advancing responsible data aggregation. It defines best practices, promoting transparency, and helping organisations navigate the digital ecosystem ethically. According to Grybauskas, “When we launched the initiative with the first group of companies, we wanted to show that not all scraping is bad, and that scraping companies don’t have to be associated with botnets or shady practices." "We published a set of principles that define what’s acceptable and what isn’t. Over time, more companies have expressed interest in joining, but we only accept a select few.  As insiders, we know which players didn’t meet the standards. That selectivity helped us become a sort of guiding light for ethical practices in the industry.” Web data for public good The company is also behind pro bono Project 4β, which provides access to public web data gathering infrastructure, expertise, and legal/technical advisory to researchers, journalists, NGOs, academic institutions, and organisations engaged in social-impact missions. It lowers the barrier to high-scale web data access for people and organisations who might not have the resources to build it all themselves. Through it, Oxylabs offers free masterclasses, training, guidance on legal, ethical, and technical aspects of public web data gathering and funding or advising academic / public-interest projects that tackle challenging questions needing web data. For example, Oxylabs collaborated with Lithuania’s Environmental Protection Department (EPD) to detect and tackle illegal environmental advertisements on Lithuanian online marketplaces. They used web crawling / scraping infrastructure to monitor listings that might violate environmental laws — for example, banned chemicals, protected species, etc. It's a powerful example of how public institutions can adopt web intelligence to enforce regulation.  In Germany, Project 4β partnered with CeMAS (Centre for Monitoring, Analysis, and Strategy) which used the Web Scraper API to monitor news articles and content relevant to extremist mobilisation (especially around Pride events and counter-protests). The scraped data helps CeMAS track the behaviour and communication of far-right groups. Ethical scraping starts with how you source proxies Another initiative of Oxylabs is Honeygain, a passive income app that enables users to earn money by sharing their unused internet bandwidth.  Once installed on a computer or phone, the app connects the device to Oxylabs’ proxy network, where the pooled bandwidth is used by businesses for legitimate purposes like price comparison, SEO monitoring, ad verification, and market research. Instead of relying on shady or malware-based networks, Honeygain provides a transparent, opt-in model where users are compensated for their contribution. Grybauskas explained:  “Our infrastructure relies on proxy networks—millions of IP addresses, both data centre and residential. Some companies acquire these through malware, which is unethical. We chose a different path. We launched Honeygain, the largest passive income app of its kind. “ According to Grybauskas, “in some countries, it’s just beer money; in others, it’s a meaningful addition to income.” Users can also choose ad-free app experiences in exchange for sharing bandwidth. Consent and compensation are central to our model. However, in terms of residential proxies, Grybauskas admits that the company worries about competitors who don’t care about compliance.  “For example, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, we immediately cut ties with all Russian customers. Some of our competitors didn’t. For us, that was a moral decision. Ethical scraping involves the whole chain: how you get proxies, who you sell to, and how they use the data.”

Digital advertising platform Navigator has secured £4 million from IW Capital to advance privacy-first advertising in the post-cookie era. As regulators tighten privacy rules and consumers grow wary of third-party cookies, acceptance rates are falling, pushing up customer-acquisition costs and weakening campaign performance. Navigator is built to help brands adapt. The platform utilises exclusive, consented first-party travel data to deliver privacy-compliant, precision-targeting, enabling brands to reach relevant audiences with accurate signals while maintaining data-protection standards. Through partnerships with major airlines and online travel platforms, Navigator aggregates fully consented first-party data to target real people based on travel intent and timing. Because travel data indicates where consumers will be and when, it’s valuable across sectors, from luxury and leisure to financial services and healthcare, offering a secure, high-performance alternative to cookie-based models. Founded by Olympic medallist and former Ink Global CCO Steve Rowbotham, Navigator operates across the UK, US, and APAC, supporting a wide range of global brands such as L’Oréal, HSBC, Formula 1, and FC Barcelona. Commenting on the investment, Charlie Lyon Carroll, Investment Director at IW Capital, said the firm is backing Navigator for its ability to deliver effective advertising in a privacy-first environment. With this new investment, Navigator will advance its platform development, expand commercial reach, and launch a new SaaS product in collaboration with a global hospitality software provider.

Holy Technologies has raised €4.3 million to launch the world's first autonomous factory for lightweight components, which are essential for reducing fuel consumption, increasing range, and enhancing efficiency in various industries.  Powered by AI and robotics, the Hamburg-based facility enables manufacturers to build better components faster and on an industrial scale, while restoring competitiveness. Holy Technologies was founded by Bosse Rothe Frossard (CEO) and Moritz Reiners (CTO), who combine deep experience in venture building and composite engineering. Bosse is a serial entrepreneur who previously co-founded a software company in the recycling industry and helped scale multiple technology ventures. Moritz spent over a decade at Airbus, where he led automation and industrialisation efforts for advanced composite systems. I spoke to CEO and co-founder Rothe Frossard to learn more.  Holy Technologies unveils ‘Holy OS’ to automate composite manufacturing Autonomy enables manufacturers to adapt faster, reduce complexity, and build products that outperform on weight, strength, and sustainability.  Yet the materials that make this possible – composites – remain slow and costly to produce.  Today, the vast majority of components are made with manual processes. Holy Technologies is solving that. According to Frossard, from the start, the company focused on two principles: building a production system that is fit for autonomy, and designing for recyclability.  "We believe the next big transformation in industrial manufacturing will be autonomous robotics, and we wanted to create a system that could evolve toward that. At the same time, composites have a huge recycling problem, so we designed our process so that parts can be reused rather than destroyed at the end of life." Holy Technologies' platform automates the production of lightweight components through an AI-led robotic system with built-in closed-loop recycling. The latter enables full material recovery at the end of life for reuse in equivalent applications.  Holy Technologies' tech stack uses standardised robots programmed through our proprietary software layer — "what we call the 'Holy OS,"  shared Frossard. "The innovation lies in our fibre placement process (IFP), where continuous fibres are precisely placed around pins. Because the intelligence is in the software, the system improves with every component built. Engineers provide feedback, and the robots continuously get better — which is how we progress toward autonomy." Lighter, stronger, and scalable composites Since its founding in 2022, Holy Technologies has built a fully operational pilot line, secured offtake agreements for thousands of components, and partnered with leading OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers. Composites already make up more than 50 per cent of modern aircraft interiors, and we're working with sectors such as orthopaedics (prosthetics), automotive (mainly premium cars), and energy (hydrogen tanks, batteries, wind turbine blades). It's a highly horizontal material — lightweight, strong, and increasingly in demand. According to Frossard, "the main value we deliver is weight reduction." "Compared to traditional composites, we can reduce weight by 20–30 per cent. For example, we worked with a Formula One team and achieved a 20 per cent weight reduction on parts that were already highly optimised. Against metals, the reduction is even greater: usually 70–80 per cent lighter for the same stiffness and performance." Automation as Europe’s competitive advantage to Asian composite manufacturing Frossard asserts that automotive and industrial tooling are strong sectors, and in Europe, many companies are under pressure from Asian manufacturers. "We give them a way to differentiate — for example, making existing parts 50 per cent lighter, which creates tangible value for their customers.  Some customers have in-house production in Europe, while others already manufacture in China." We've had cases where clients considered both China and us, and chose to go with both before ultimately favouring us. The key issue is that composites are still very labour-intensive, and Europe has a shortage of skilled workers. That makes automation the only viable way to keep local production competitive," shared Frossard.  "In many cases, we're not just competing on composite expertise, but also introducing companies to composites for the first time. On cost, we're already competitive with Asian manufacturers, particularly in serial production. Since composite manufacturing is still very manual, a lot of production today is outsourced to China. Our process allows European companies to compete while keeping production local." Unlocking true circularity in industrial manufacturing And in terms of sustainability, traditional processes damage fibres during manufacturing, so at the end of life, parts can only be shredded. Frossard explained that the Holy Technologies process keeps fibres continuous — one long fibre from start to finish.  "That allows us to remove the resin at the end of life and reuse the fibres. In our tests, we've retained 97–98 per cent of the carbon fibre's integrity for reuse in the same application. But you have to design for that from the beginning." "The race to restore Europe's industrial edge is on," Frossard. "The race to restore Europe's industrial edge is on," said Frossard, CEO and co-founder. "This funding helps us scale our system to deliver what our customers need most: radically better components, at the highest speed." Backers include Rockstart, Vanagon, SANDS, Innovationsstarter Fonds Hamburg and EIT Manufacturing alongside notable angel investors, including Adrian Locher (Merantix AG), Matthias Dantone (Ellipsis Ventures), Christian Vollmann (C1), Markus Kerkhoff (Poppe+Potthoff), Kai Müller (PowerCo), Timm Moll (Moll Gruppe) and several others. According to Gem Kua, Investment Manager, Rockstart, in industries where cost, materials, speed, and quality define competitiveness, Holy Technologies is changing the game: "Their platform enables lightweight components at scale, with applications from aerospace to energy. Since our first investment, we have been impressed by the team's rapid progress and ability to turn cutting-edge tech into real industrial impact. We are excited to double down as Holy sets a new standard for manufacturing." "Holy Technologies' approach is a paradigm shift: They are building the AI-driven future of manufacturing. Holy's operating system transforms standard hardware into highly scalable, flexible autonomous production lines–cost-competitive with overseas production, while delivering higher product performance and enabling full material circularity. Such innovations are vital for Europe's long-term competitiveness," shared Susanne Fromm, General Partner, Vanagon Ventures.

Oriane has raised $1.5 million to build an AI-powered search engine for the video-first internet. The round was led by Clint Capital, with participation from Hartmann Capital, Secways, Archipelago Next, and strategic angels from Google, PayPal, Sony, and Jellysmack. Video now dominates online traffic, and short-form formats drive the highest engagement and ROI. Yet clips are often remixed and reuploaded without attribution, creating visibility and rights-management gaps for brands, creators, and IP owners. Launched in 2025, Oriane addresses this with a multimodal video search engine that makes millions of videos searchable across platforms. Its technology analyses visuals, audio, speech, faces, and trademarks, going beyond metadata, to pinpoint where and how content is reused and to surface insights on virality, engagement, and sentiment. The system is designed to index and analyse large volumes of video in seconds, lowering compute costs and enabling scalable monitoring. The semantic internet became searchable with Google. But 90% of today’s internet is video, and it remains a black box with some titles and captions attached. Oriane is fixing that by giving brands and creators visibility and control over how stories spread, said Julien Rosilio, CEO & Co-founder of Oriane. Oriane was founded by Julien Rosilio (ex-DRESSX) and Yuri Mihaileanu (ex-Jellysmack) to address the difficulty brands and creators face in finding, tracking, and understanding the videos shaping online culture. Industry estimates indicate that global losses from online piracy of film and TV content total tens of billions of dollars annually. Already used by major enterprises, Oriane operates across the US, London, Paris, and Barcelona. The new funding will be used to further develop the company’s AI-powered search engine for the video-first internet.

Encryption startup Belfort, a KU Leuven spinoff, has closed a $6 million seed round to make encrypted data processing practical in real time. The round was led by deeptech investor Vsquared Ventures, with participation from Anagram, Protocol VC, Inovia Capital, Syndicate One, Prototype, Credibly Neutral, and angels including Jeff Dean (Google) and Naval Ravikant. The funds will support team expansion, technology advancement, early enterprise pilots, and development of a custom chip. Protecting sensitive data during processing is increasingly essential, not just at rest or in transit. Belfort addresses this with a hardware accelerator purpose-built for encrypted compute, enabling computation directly on encrypted data without decryption and overcoming long-standing speed and cost barriers. The technology is available via AWS Marketplace and can be integrated with minimal effort across healthcare, finance, and government. Practical applications include fraud detection, genomic analysis, and secure government operations. Belfort originated from KU Leuven’s COSIC lab, led by Prof. Ingrid Verbauwhede, a specialist in cryptographic hardware and a two-time ERC grant recipient. The company was co-founded by Michiel Van Beirendonck and Furkan Turan, with Laurens De Poorter (formerly Kraken Ventures and Google) adding operational leadership experience. Its core research matured over several years through major grants, including from the European Research Council, and a competitive US government contract with DARPA. Belfort’s view is that in an AI-first world, encrypted compute is foundational to trust. By combining advances in hardware and algorithms, the company aims to make processing sensitive data without decryption practical at scale and to establish the next layer of secure computing. Michiel Van Beirendonck, Co-founder and CEO, said: AI is transforming everything, but the infrastructure to keep sensitive data and models secure hasn’t caught up. Encrypted compute is the answer, but without hardware acceleration, it doesn’t scale. The company that cracks that challenge could become the next billion-dollar business. Belfort will use the new funding to double its team and accelerate product, technology, and business development across its San Francisco and Leuven offices.

Warsaw-based sun.store, a B2B digital marketplace for solar components, has raised €6 million in seed funding to modernise how solar, PV, and battery equipment is sourced and traded across Europe. The round was co-led by Contrarian Ventures, Market One Capital, and Movens Capital, with participation from FJ Labs, Push Ventures, and Aidiom. Procurement in the sector remains largely manual, fragmented, and inefficient, especially for smaller installers, distributors, and engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firms. Email and spreadsheet workflows limit access to supply, slow transactions, and increase the risk of mismatches, delays, and opaque pricing. Europe’s solar and storage market represents €35–40 billion in installed components each year, and parts often change hands four to five times before installation, which further inflates transaction volumes and values. Much of this activity still runs through offline channels that lack transparency, scalability, and speed. Founded in 2023, sun.store was created to address these challenges. The company enables verified sellers to list products with structured data, dynamic pricing, and integrated logistics. Buyers, including installers, wholesalers, and EPCs, can search and filter offers in real time, obtain instant quotes, and complete transactions with flexible payment options and embedded support. The platform verifies counterparties, standardises product data, and provides end-to-end order tracking to reduce mismatches and delays while improving transparency and efficiency. While the initial focus is on solar and storage, sun.store’s longer-term aim is to become the leading digital platform for clean-energy equipment, spanning HVAC, heat pumps, e-mobility infrastructure, and electrical components. The company continues to grow its network of merchants and buyers and is hiring across multiple teams. The new funding will accelerate product development, expand the feature set, and strengthen go-to-market efforts. sun.store will also scale its operational and commercial teams, with an emphasis on merchant onboarding and support, strategic sourcing, and business development.

The responsible investment platform Goodvest has closed a €12 million Series B, two years after its Series A. The round was led by Serena, with participation from business angels and existing investors Ring Capital, Polytechnique Ventures, ALM Innovation (AG2R LA MONDIALE’s innovation fund), and Globivest. Founded in 2020 by Joseph Choueifaty, Antoine Bénéteau, and Aurore Pinon-Jacques, Goodvest positions itself as the first fintech to offer investment solutions fully aligned with the Paris Agreement. Its product suite includes life insurance (including children’s policies), retirement savings plans, savings accounts, and private equity. These offerings exclude financing for harmful industries (e.g., fossil fuels, tobacco, companies violating the UN Global Compact) and prioritise sectors central to the ecological transition, such as renewable energy, low-carbon transport, and sustainable agriculture. Goodvest applies a transparent methodology that, since 2024, also accounts for biodiversity impact. A 2024 Reclaim Finance study found its Goodvie life insurance to be the least exposed to fossil fuels. Since launch, the company estimates its portfolios have avoided more than 100,000 tons of CO₂e, while offering savers customizable allocations aligned with their preferences. With retail investing on the rise, Goodvest aims to meet demand through straightforward access and stringent ESG standards. It partners with impact-focused players, including Helios, Sycomore, and CFCAL-Banque (Crédit Mutuel Arkéa). The company seeks to strengthen its leadership in responsible savings and set a benchmark for transparent, positive-impact investments. The funding will be used to expand ecological and social impact offerings, develop new strategic partnerships, and hire additional team members, with a focus on scaling a private wealth management service launched in the spring.

This week, investment firm Antler kicked off its Berlin residency. After an intense sprint, the most promising teams receive up to €500K in pre-seed funding — along with access to over €4 million in perks from world-class partners. Antler has been backing startups in Germany, the Netherlands, France, and across Continental Europe for the last five years, investing in more than 180 companies. Many of these have become some of the region's fastest-growing tech ventures, including Lovable, Peec AI, NeoCarbon, and Klearly, with further backing from investors such as a16z, Coatue, and Accel.  I wanted to learn more about Antler's novel approach to supporting early-stage startups.  One of Antler's leading voices is Dr Christoph Klink, a Partner based in Berlin, who joined the firm in 2020 as it was building its regional presence. "We started investing in 2021, so we've already gone through a full venture cycle — ups and downs included," he says. Across Europe, Antler now has just over 500 portfolio companies, with hubs in London, the Nordics, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, and Munich. Klink stresses the importance of Antler's intentionally decentralised model. "When founders launch a company, they rarely move across continents. They usually build locally. So we want to be as close to them as possible right from inception." Inside the 'Day Zero' approach At the heart of Antler's strategy is its 'day zero' investment approach — its six-month pre-seed, pre-launch program designed for founders at the very earliest stages. "These may be people with little more than ambition, maybe a domain, maybe not even a co-founder yet," Klink explains. The focus is on supporting founders as they kick into gear during the critical first period of building and growth. "We get super excited about founders, and we're fine if, at the beginning, there are still a few rough edges to the business that need to be rounded off," Klink admits.  "Quite often, we meet founders who have built an initial product but don't yet have the momentum to raise a full round. In such cases, we invite them into our office as part of a residency program.  We bring founders into our offices, work closely with them, and then make our initial investment." From there, Antler continues to back portfolio companies with follow-on investments. While the firm doesn't lead Series A rounds or beyond — "we prefer founders to team up with strong lead investors," Klink notes — it can invest up to €30 million per company over multiple rounds, supporting teams all the way through Series C. From engineers to domain experts to generalists According to Klink, Antler sees three main types of founder backgrounds: Technical backgrounds: Think engineers, CTOs, people who can actually build. "This is increasingly important; when you look at the top 10 US tech companies, 96 per cent of the founders had a technical background," he contends. Domain experts: People with deep knowledge of a sector like payments, industrial tech, or manufacturing. That expertise and credibility are critical, especially in B2B contexts. Generalists: Founders coming from commercial or operational roles. Increasingly, even generalists are using no-code tools to build prototypes themselves. According to Klink, the most successful founders tend to share a set of common traits. He describes it as a "positive craziness" — the willingness to take on the risk of starting a company. Resilience is just as critical, given the near-constant rejection from investors, customers, and potential hires that most entrepreneurs face. Strong communication skills are another essential aspect, as founders are "always selling," whether to staff, investors, regulators, or customers.  Finally, humility and teamwork are integral as he believes that "most successful companies are built by co-founding teams, and while overlapping skills can be valuable, overlapping roles often lead to tension — this is one of the most common reasons startups fail." Navigating Venture's hype cycles To date, Antler has brought more than 1,400 startups into existence across all industries, with the goal of backing more than 6,000 by 2030. While Antler was founded in 2017 in Singapore, the European office began investing around 2020–21, a unique time in venture capital marked by notable trends. According to Klink, Venture follows clear hype cycles. "We saw Web3 and anything blockchain-related, then quick commerce, then fulfillment-by-Amazon roll-ups, and then climate tech. Sadly, climate tech cooled off quite a bit, which is a huge loss for the planet. Many funds that were raised with a pure climate focus are now diversifying." AI as a mega-cycle, not a fad Now, of course, we're in the AI cycle. But Klink sees this as different to other hype cycles, contending that "it's a genuine technological mega-cycle, comparable to the personal computer, the internet, or cloud computing." "And on the back of that technological mega cycle, there's a bunch of really, really cool stuff that's gonna be built. And I think that that allows a lot of things to happen, which is why I think it's a very, very interesting time to be building a business today and to be building in Europe." AI accelerates development dramatically. For example, companies are reaching revenue faster because they can iterate quicker and with fewer resources. Release cycles that used to take months now take weeks or even days. Klink is also seeing entirely new business models emerge that wouldn't have been possible a few years ago. For example, one of its portfolio companies, Peec AI is working on AI-powered search— "something you wouldn't have thought of as necessary 10 years ago, but which now feels indispensable," shared Klink. However, he contends that this also means that once someone figures something out, everyone else quickly follows, so you can't afford to rest or you'll be left behind.  "That's the flip side of rapid progress: the rules of the game have changed. We're back in a period where you need to move incredibly fast, stay close to your customers, and constantly react to both their needs and the competition.  You have to build hand-in-hand with your customers, because your competitors will be doing the same. That's especially true in areas like AI, which evolve rapidly and remain uncertain. Honestly, no one really knows what the landscape will look like in five years." When it comes to sector priorities for Antler, Klink highlighted four key areas: Defence tech: Antler is open to dual-use companies. In June portfolio company Voltrac officially launched its autonomous, electric tractor platform designed for agriculture and frontline logistics.  Robotics and hardware: Klink sees a resurgence in AI-enabled hardware, contending that climate tech showed VCs that you can't solve big problems with software alone—hardware matters. "Now, software-enabled machines are getting real traction." Cybersecurity: Klink argues that with the rise of hybrid threats targeting mission-critical infrastructure, the need for robust defences is only becoming more urgent. Longevity and preventive health: People and insurers are focused on health prevention. Antler portfolio company Skleo Health is developing preventive eye-screening technology and aims to make preventive eye care more accessible by offering quick, non-invasive eye screenings in everyday locations, such as opticians, pharmacies, and workplaces.  "Europe has rediscovered its voice" While the halcyon days of 2021 and 2022 are over, Klink is optimistic about tech in Europe, asserting that Europe has rediscovered its voice.  "Geopolitical shifts have forced the continent to show strength, and 2025 feels like a turning point. Europe had to find that voice for a long time, but didn't. Now it has. We're seeing real scale stories — the second German decacorn Helsing just emerged — , and there are more exciting companies scaling across Europe."  Klink admits that European founders are unlikely to out-raise international competitors, especially US companies, "So you have to out-execute. The good news is that AI helps level the playing field. With fewer resources, you can now achieve much more. Execution, customer traction, and speed are more important than ever." Raise when you are ready "In terms of early-stage funding, Klink advises founders to ensure they are solving a problem that's at the very top of your customers' agenda today.  "Most VCs are generalists. If payments are scaling faster than cybersecurity, they'll invest in payments, not cybersecurity. So your problem has to be urgent and important to your customer right now." He advises companies to ship constantly, work closely with customers, and let fundraising be an outcome of building, not the other way around. "Great founders build first and then raise." Third, run a structured fundraising process. Reach out broadly, use warm introductions, and tap into the ecosystem.  "Early-stage investment is a very people-centric bet, so you want investors to fall in love not just with your idea, but with you." With this in mind, he stresses, finally, raise when you're ready — when you have the right proof points.   "There is such a thing as raising too early. And remember: fundraising takes an enormous amount of time and energy. Don't let it distract you from actually building your business. Lead image: Antler. Photo: uncredited. 

Revolut today pledged a £3bn investment in the UK and the creation of 1,000 UK jobs, as it opened its new global HQ in London.Europe’s most valuable private tech firm said the £3bn investment included recruiting for 1,000 roles, particularly in its B2B business, the continued development of its new HQ, as well as capitalising the UK bank as it expects to exit the mobilisation phase and get its much-sought-after UK banking licence.Revolut, valued at $75bn, said the £3bn UK investment was part of a broader five-year plan to invest £10bn and create 10,000 jobs globally. Revolut currently has more than 10,000 employees.Revolut, which currently has over 65m customers globally, including 12m in the UK, says it aims to hit the 100m customer mark by mid-2027.Nik Storonsky, CEO & co-founder of Revolut, said: "Our mission has always been to simplify money for our customers, and our vision to become the world’s first truly global bank is the ultimate expression of that. "From our roots here in the UK, we've grown to serve over 65 million customers globally, and today's opening of our new Global HQ in London is the launchpad for our future. This HQ will be central to driving our growth towards our next milestone of 100 million customers."To power that journey from our home market, we are investing £3 billion in the UK over the next five years. This commitment will not only create 1,000 new jobs but will also fuel the innovation from our London hub that will help us deliver on our global ambitions."Revolut also announced updates to its international expansion plans, including launching as a bank in Mexico early next year and plans to soon launch in India.

Barcelona-based recruitment company Workfully has closed an oversubscribed seed round exceeding €4 million to reinvent recruiting by empowering independent recruiters. The round was led by Shilling VC, with continued support from Indico, Pitchdrive, and Secways. Founded in 2022, Workfully aims to create the world’s most trusted hiring experience by placing individual recruiters, not agencies, at the centre of the process. Unlike marketplaces that sideline recruiters, Workfully lets them own and monetise their talent communities, much like creators do with subscribers on platforms such as Substack or YouTube. Recruiters on Workfully get a free, AI-powered CRM to publish roles, manage pipelines, and retain full ownership of their talent pools. Built-in monetisation lets them offer companies on-demand access to their audiences, creating recurring revenue without building costly agencies or chasing clients. Rather than amassing LinkedIn followers with no clear path to income, Workfully recruiters can scale earnings directly as their networks grow. For employers, Workfully offers a credible alternative to traditional agencies, often expensive and inconsistent, with eight in ten businesses reporting dissatisfaction. Companies can see the exact talent profiles within a recruiter’s pool, review client feedback, check candidate-experience ratings, and verify each recruiter’s track record for similar roles. The seed round closed in just over 30 days, reflecting strong investor confidence in Workfully’s mission and early momentum. The new capital will fund expansion into Ireland, Germany, Benelux, and the Nordics, further development of the first AI-powered monetization platform for recruiters, and a series of in-person launch events for talent leaders.

Nvidia is to make a "strategic" investment in UK AI startup ElevenLabs, as the AI-audio generator looks to bring in strategic partners in a bid to grow its business over the long term. The investment for an undisclosed amount marks the first time the US chip giant will have invested in UK unicorn ElevenLabs, which was founded in 2022. ElevenLabs CEO and co-founder Mati Staniszewski said: “We need strategic partners. It is a good combination where they are coming in with more than capital. They are strategically bringing in the GPUs, which they have inside-out knowledge of. It is mostly from the strategic angle. “Currently, we don’t need the extra capital and now we are thinking about the strategic partners that we can really bring in for the next ten years.” The investment will be structured as a standard in-between round, said Staniszewski, speaking today at an event in London hosted by ElevenLabs, showcasing how companies were using its AI voice agents. Staniszewski did not reveal details of how much Nvidia was investing in ElevenLabs, which is also backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia. ElevenLabs trains its own text-to-speech and speech-to-text AI models, powered by Nvidia’s GPUs. Last week, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang listed several UK startups Nvidia was investing in, at an event in London, as part of a giant £2bn investment in UK AI startups. These were Wayve, Oxa, Revolut, PolyAI, Synthesia, Latent Labs and Basecamp Research. ElevenLabs was also on the list, but it is understood Huang did not read its name out, as it was on a different page from the other startups mentioned. Huang did, though, namecheck ElevenLabs as a notable startup building in the UK. Earlier this month, ElevenLabs confirmed an employee share sale valuing it at $6.6bn, which was double its valuation of nine months previous. In January this year, ElevenLabs tripled its valuation to $3.3.bn following a $180m funding round. 

UK-based technology company DaltonTx has exited stealth and completed a £4 million seed financing round. Backed by Redalpine, IQ Capital Partners, and Seedcamp, with additional support from Oxford University Innovation, DaltonTx will use this funding to redefine how technology transforms drug discovery. Pharma has a rare chance to make discovery faster and more effective with AI, but creating adaptive platforms demands years of engineering and deep scientific know-how. DaltonTx addresses this gap with a disease- and technology-agnostic platform that plugs into pharma, biotech, and CRO workflows, giving teams immediate access to AI-enabled discovery instead of building it in-house. DaltonTx was founded by Dr Garry Pairaudeau, Adrian Rossall, Dr Anthony Bradley, and Professor Charlotte Deane MBE, bringing decades of real-world experience in drug discovery, machine learning, and software engineering. Built by scientists for scientists, DaltonTx goes beyond predictive modelling to power the entire discovery loop, from raw data and model training to molecular design, synthesis, and decision-making. It’s not merely predictive, it’s adaptive: a reasoning engine that learns from every scientist, model, and experiment to improve outcomes continuously. DaltonTx’s platform is purpose-built for both small molecules and biologics, making it well-suited to the most complex R&D pipelines. It also enables collaborative intelligence, allowing scientists to work with an engine that iterates and learns, combining human insight with machine learning in real time. As explained by Dr Garry Pairaudeau, the company was created to change the status quo. It tackles high-impact problems with adaptive, AI-enabled systems that slot into scientific workflows, learn from every experiment, and equip organisations with durable AI capability. The funds will be used to build adaptive, AI-enabled discovery platforms that reshape the economics, timelines, and outcomes of R&D so breakthrough medicines reach patients faster.

Belgian healthtech startup Monsana has raised €500,000 in pre-seed funding from Seeder Fund, LRM, and private investors to accelerate patient access to innovative clinical trials. Recruiting patients remains a major bottleneck in the development of new medicines. About 70 per cent of trials are delayed by enrolment challenges, and too often, eligible patients aren’t identified in time to access promising treatments. Monsana addresses this challenge with an AI-powered platform that reads and interprets unstructured medical data, matching patients to the right studies quickly, accurately, and cost-effectively. The result is tighter collaboration between physicians and pharmaceutical companies, lower costs, and fewer eligible patients slipping through the cracks. Founded in June 2024 by Dr. Valerie Vandeweerd (CEO) and Simeon Devos (CTO), Monsana is rooted in medical and personal experience. Dr Vandeweerd, a former gynaecologist and clinical trial expert at Johnson & Johnson, saw firsthand how difficult it can be to connect patients with studies, even when her own family urgently needed experimental treatment. The platform has already proven effective in Belgian hospitals, doubling the number of patients identified in a fraction of the time, and Monsana is working with several Belgian hospitals and international pharma partners as it prepares to expand to neighboring countries. With this new investment, Monsana will deepen collaborations with hospitals, CROs, and pharmaceutical companies, while advancing a responsible, trust-first approach to medical AI.

Milan-based Pillar, a fintech digitizing construction finance, has closed a €3.2 million pre-seed round. Emblem led the investment, joined by international backers Pareto, Plug and Play, and Kima Ventures, as well as Italian investors B Heroes, Vento, Eden Ventures, and IAG. Prominent entrepreneurs also participated, including the founders of Aria, Convelio, Mobile First Company, 1000farmacie, Sibill, Futura, and Lexroom, alongside business angels such as Paola Bonomo, Ignazio Rocco Da Torrepadula, and Enrico Pandian. Founded by three entrepreneurs with deep tech and startup experience, Gabriel Guinea Montalvo, Paolo Tarsia Incuria, and Lorenzo Demaio, Pillar targets a core sector of the Italian and European economy that still relies on legacy processes. Construction remains central to Italy’s growth, accounting for 11.4 per cent of GDP in 2023 and roughly one-third of GDP growth over the past two years, yet advanced technology adoption is limited. The founders saw firsthand the gap between the complexity of construction finance and the potential of fintech, and set out to build software tailored to builders’ needs. Pillar gives construction companies a precise, real-time view of where money goes, tracking revenues, expenses, and margins at both the company level and for each project. Designed to be simple and intuitive, the platform uses AI to automate controls, reconcile bank transactions, and flag anomalies before they become real problems. Its key differentiator is its ability to integrate data from different sources (from tax records to bank accounts), while also automatically capturing information generated directly on site, such as delivery notes, hours worked, completed tasks, and progress reports. Since launch, Pillar has gained strong traction, with more than 100 clients, 350 projects managed, more than 500 workers tracked, and over 40,000 invoices processed. With the new funding, the company will accelerate product development, strengthen go-to-market efforts, and expand the team to scale.

Venture capital firm C4 Ventures announces the launch of its third fund, with a target fund size of €100 million.  C4 Ventures III will focus on early-stage investments in AI and deep tech startups across Europe, reinforcing the continent’s ability to create global contenders in the field.   C4 Ventures sees AI as the defining technological shift of our time, one that will transform both software applications, where most of the industry is focused, and Physical AI (robotics and autonomous systems), where C4 Ventures has been a pioneer since its inception. “The AI revolution is bigger than any previous technological shift we’ve seen since the Internet,” comments C4 Ventures Founder & CEO Pascal Cagni.  “We are at the forefront of a massive transformation that will redefine industries. With C4 Ventures III, we are doubling down on this moment, backing talented founders in AI, robotics, quantum computing and beyond”. C4 Ventures is recognised for its hardware expertise, with 5 hardware unicorns and leading portfolio companies such as NEURA Robotics (cognitive robots), Graphcore (AI processors), Alice & Bob and PsiQuantum (quantum computing), and more recently Arago (AI semiconductors). These investments reflect the firm’s unique ability to bridge frontier hardware and cutting-edge software, a combination it believes will shape the AI revolution. C4 Ventures has an operator-led, founder-first ethos. The boutique fund was built by former Apple and Microsoft executives like Pascal Cagni and Eric Boustouller, who have scaled tech companies across Europe and beyond, and now apply that experience to support visionary entrepreneurs from inception to exit.  Moreover, C4 Ventures draws on a global network of over 30 operating partners from the world’s leading tech companies. These experts provide strategic guidance, operational support, and access to a powerful network of industry leaders.  “C4 Ventures was built on a vision of Operators backing Entrepreneurs with global ambition and strong involvement,” says C4 Ventures Co-Founder and Managing Director Boris Bakech. “Fund III will extend this vision into the AI era, combining our operating and investing experience with the determination of founders to build Europe’s next champions.” Since its inception in 2014, C4 Ventures has invested in 54 tech startups, 12 of which have become unicorns. This exceptional ratio is rarely seen in European venture capital.  The firm has now seen a full investment cycle, with over 20 exits, 2 IPOs on NYSE (Riskified and Via) and 7 corporate M&A deals.  C4 Ventures II, launched in 2020, has significantly outperformed industry benchmarks. The fund already ranks in the top quartile for value creation and nearly the top decile for liquidity, just five years after inception, demonstrating the strength of C4 Ventures’ investment strategy and execution. “The success of C4 Ventures II has strengthened our conviction to launch C4 Ventures III to seize the defining technological shift of our time: artificial intelligence”, concludes C4 Ventures Partner Eric Boustouller. “Technology’s next chapter is unfolding right now, in Europe as much as anywhere else, and we are committed to supporting the founders who will shape it.”

Cologne-based Sunhat, the startup helping the enterprise automatically validate and share ESG and vital non-financial data, has closed €9.2 million in Series A funding. The round was led by CommerzVentures, with participation from existing investors Capnamic, EnBW New Ventures, xdeck, and WEPA Ventures. Enterprises are fielding a growing volume of requests for policies, certificates, audit records, ESG metrics, and other compliance evidence, each with specific formats and deadlines. Although this information is produced daily, teams often struggle to find, verify, and present it when needed. Research suggests employees spend roughly 360 hours a year searching for documentation, and about half of digital workers report difficulty locating required information. These pressures are intensifying as sustainability reporting and compliance become mandatory in more regions. With governance, risk, and compliance platforms projected to grow by $44.22 billion between 2025 and 2029, the ability to deliver instant, verifiable proof is becoming a meaningful operational and commercial advantage. Sunhat provides an AI platform that converts ESG and compliance data into verified, ready-to-send documentation for customers, investors, lenders, and regulators. The need for proof is not new, but its scale now exceeds the limits of legacy processes. Large enterprises receive thousands of requests each month across supply chains, financing, and commercial engagements, creating manual workloads that drain productivity, slow decisions, and complicate trust building. At the core of the platform is Proof AI, an intelligence engine trained on insights from thousands of successful questionnaires, audits, and assessments. It understands what counts as valid, verifiable proof for leading management standards, disclosure frameworks, and ESG ratings, and it maps those requirements to approved information companies already hold. The system learns continuously, refining rules and checklists over time. Proof AI Agents connect to existing systems, such as SharePoint and other core business platforms, as well as specialised ESG, EHS, and quality tools. They capture new information as it appears, check for recency and completeness, and alert owners before anything expires or becomes invalid. When a questionnaire or audit arrives, the agents generate a verified, ready-to-send response in minutes instead of weeks. The platform also scales across teams. Many customers begin with a single compliance or sustainability use case and then extend it to sales, legal, and procurement workflows. The new investment will support Sunhat’s next phase of growth. The company plans to expand its team, advance Proof AI, add integrations and partnerships, and continue closing the proof gap by making verified evidence instantly available.

Futurail, the European deep-tech startup developing an autonomy stack for self-driving trains,  announced the closing of a seed round, bringing total funding to €7.5 million.  Founded in 2023, Futurail is led by former Tesla, Argo AI, and Edge Case leaders, who previously shaped the rise of autonomous driving in the automotive sector. Now, they are bringing that expertise to rail with a clear mission: to make trains the most attractive mode of transportation.  I spoke to Maximilian Schöffer, co-founder and CCO, to learn more. The climate spark behind Futurail According to Schöffer, CEO Alex Haag led Tesla’s Autopilot team before moving to Audi, where he built its self-driving unit from zero to 300 people as CTO and Managing Director.  “That became part of the Argo AI joint venture with Ford and Volkswagen. After years in robotics and automation, he began asking what he could do for his kids regarding climate change.” Haag and his family started tracking their emissions and realised how much came from flying. He cut out flights almost entirely and began to rethink transportation. That reflection led him back to trains — still responsible for a third of global transport emissions, but with far more potential for decarbonisation. Schöffer detailed, “He asked himself: why don’t we have autonomous trains?  After speaking to people in the rail industry, he realised these were the same conversations the car industry was having 10–15 years ago — pilots here and there, but no real leader. His takeaway from the auto sector was clear: incumbents won’t be the ones to crack autonomy. It would be specialised software startups.” Schöffer had worked at a Pittsburgh-based autonomous driving startup and knew the space well. He recounted: “When a mutual friend reintroduced me to Alex, at first I thought: “Trains? Sounds boring.” But the more we spoke, the more I realised the economics made perfect sense." Schöffer contends, “We founded Futurail to bring that same revolutionary potential to rail, turning a 200-year-old industry into the backbone of sustainable mobility.”  Solving real industry pain points  Futurail offers two key selling points to the rail industry.  In Europe, operators spend about €500,000 per train per year on driver salaries, because they need 5–6 drivers per train.  “Utilisation is poor: on average, drivers are only productive about 50 per cent of the time. We realised we could cut those costs by up to 80% with an autonomous software stack.” Its first use case is depot autonomy. Up to 30 per cent of a driver’s time is spent in depots — moving trains to and from platforms, sidings, or yards. It's a fenced-off, restricted space, so it’s a perfect first use case.  Depot autonomy, for example, frees drivers from repetitive shunting and lets them spend more time on productive passenger routes. Further, there’s an acute driver shortage. According to Schöffer, almost half of Europe’s train staff is over 50 and will retire soon, while the EU wants to double rail kilometres.  “Training a driver takes 2–3 years. So we’re not replacing drivers anytime soon — we’re catching up with demand.” Cracking “the pilot problem” As of today, Futurail is already working with customers in Europe and the US, integrating and testing their system. Governments are under increasing pressure to offer flexible, cost-efficient and sustainable mobility for citizens and industries alike, which they can only achieve by shifting both passengers and freight from road to rail.  In mobility, many startups are able to successfully deploy their software in pilot projects but are unable to gain those critical first commercial customers, which lead to further product development, scale and customer acquisition. Critically, Futurail deliberately works with smaller, faster-moving players.  “This is not a fancy research project,” added Dr Patrick Dendorfer, CTO and co-founder. “It is about the serious ambition to build a certified, safe system that holds the expectations to redefine how people and goods move.” The startup already benefits from strategic early partnerships: in Europe with Lohr Group, a French global specialist in the design and manufacture of transport systems, including in railways; and in the United States with Parallel Systems, an automated, battery-electric freight rail vehicles startup founded by former SpaceX engineers. “What excites our partners is that autonomy unlocks both growth and efficiency,” said Maximilian Schöffer, CCO and Co-Founder. “Operators can run more trains, more often, at lower cost. That is a complete game-changer.” At scale, this shift will move millions of passengers and tons of freight from road to rail, avoiding more than 10 million tons of CO₂ emissions annually. Schöffer explained:  “In France, we’re in a government-backed consortium with a manufacturer and operator to build a new battery-electric train with autonomy integrated from the start. In the US, we’re working with Parallel Systems on retrofitting. Both projects are targeting certification in 2027, with mass production from 2028. That’s why our current funding is structured to get us to that certification milestone — so we’re not just running demos, but building systems that will scale.” Europe can’t miss the autonomy boat twice Significantly, the company’s autonomy stack, FUTURAILDriver, can be integrated into new trains or retrofitted onto existing fleets. Importantly, it also enables full use of secondary lines and the reopening of previously unprofitable routes, strengthening regional connectivity and unlocking new capacity across the network.  “All processing happens on the train, with off-the-shelf sensors integrated through our perception and sensor fusion systems. Retrofitting is critical because trains last 40 years. You can’t wait until 2060 to buy your first autonomous fleet,” stresses Schöffer. “We want to build Futurail into a global leader, but with a strong European base. Europe has the largest rail network in the world, and autonomy is a chance not to miss the boat — as we did with automotive AI." From depot autonomy, Futurail plans to expand to branch line autonomy, connecting rural towns with regional trains, before tackling mainline routes, which are much more complex,” he explained. “We see three phases: starting with depots and industrial sites — low-speed, restricted environments; moving to branch lines — rural routes with fewer trains and limited speeds; and ultimately mainlines — high-speed passenger and freight, which is the final goal.“Our autonomy stack doesn’t care if it’s pulling passengers or freight; the key challenge is perception and certification. By 2027, we aim to have our first certified systems on the tracks." Asterion Ventures (Paris) and Leap435 (Munich), co-led the round, which included EIT Urban Mobility and US investors Zero Infinity Partners and Heroic Ventures. Investors see in Futurail a unique opportunity to lead the train autonomy market. “ combines deep technical expertise and long-term vision with proven commercial traction to establish global relevance,” said Alexandre Sauvage, Partner at Asterion Ventures. “Their technology has the potential to transform rail into the backbone of sustainable mobility in Europe and beyond.” Dr Matthias Kempf, Founding Partner at Leap435, added: “Just as electric traction replaced steam and defined a new era, autonomy is the transformative technology of this century for the rail. Futurail is delivering this leap and ensuring Europe's industry stays ahead. With €7.5 million in funding, comprising €5.5 million in seed investment, €1 million in public grants, and €1 million from a pre-seed conversion, Futurail will accelerate team expansion, drive key projects with leading train OEMs and operators, and obtain regulatory approval for its first use case: depot autonomy. 

Veridox, an AI-powered platform for detecting document and image manipulation in insurance claims, has raised £1 million. The round was led by Outward VC with participation from Solo Investments Holdings Limited. Fraudulent insurance claims in Europe are estimated at around €13 billion a year, nearly 10 per cent of payouts, yet most insurers can quantify only what they’ve detected, not their total exposure. Veridox was founded by Dan Sandler, a former solicitor and serial entrepreneur who previously co-founded and exited Tabb (an order-and-pay app for hospitality), to address this gap. The company helps insurers move beyond manual, fragmented fraud detection by delivering AI-driven, litigation-ready insights on document and image tampering. Veridox’s platform forensically analyses claim files to flag potential manipulation that would otherwise be difficult or time-consuming to uncover. In an early pilot with a large insurer, the MVP identified approximately £50,000 of suspected fraud in a single case within seconds. Our mission is to help insurers make more informed decisions on fraud faster, which we do by offering reasoning behind why a document presents a risk of fraud to guide their investigation. This explainability sets us apart, and our development partners are already seeing the benefits, commented Dan Sandler. Unlike tools that surface only generic “red flags,” Veridox provides contextual findings with clear rationale, what was detected, why it matters, and where to look next, helping investigators distinguish benign edits (such as adding a signature) from manipulations with malicious intent. This level of explainability also supports the preparation of CPR 35 reports to meet compliance and evidentiary standards. The new funding will support team expansion, with a focus on product and sales, ahead of a broader market launch.