UK-based maritime defence startup Online Oceans has raised £4 million in funding to scale its autonomous surface vessels and fleet software platform. The round was led by Seraphim Space, with participation from investors including Peter Rive, Frank Thieser, Florian Seibel, and Koro Capital. Founded in 2025 by George Morton and Alistair Douglas, Online Oceans is developing autonomous systems designed to enable persistent maritime coverage. Its offering combines Scout, a compact solar-powered autonomous surface vessel, with Tether, a cloud-based command-and-control platform that allows operators to manage missions, monitor assets, and access data in real time. The company is targeting use cases including anti-submarine warfare, protection of subsea infrastructure, border security, and counter-drug smuggling. Its platform supports dense, continuously connected fleets, offering an alternative to traditional approaches that rely on costly crewed vessels or limited autonomous deployments. Commenting on the need for more cost-effective maritime monitoring, George Morton, founder and CEO of Online Oceans, said: We built Online Oceans to provide a more practical and scalable way for governments and operators to monitor critical waters, protect infrastructure, and maintain awareness over extended periods. The new funding will be used to scale manufacturing, support deployments, and expand the company’s ability to meet growing demand across defence and commercial markets. While building from Europe, Online Oceans is positioning itself to address global demand for persistent maritime monitoring and infrastructure.

London-based ManaMind has raised $1.5 million in a pre-seed funding round to advance its AI-driven game testing platform. The round was led by Sure Valley Ventures, with participation from EWOR, Ascension, SyndicateRoom, and Heartfelt. Founded by Emil Kostadinov and Sabtain Ahmad, ManaMind is developing autonomous AI agents designed to replace repetitive manual quality assurance (QA) processes in game development. As games grow in scale and complexity, testing has become an increasingly resource-intensive part of production, often requiring significant time and cost to ensure a polished player experience. The company’s system continuously plays through games to detect bugs, generating actionable reports and enabling teams to focus on resolving issues rather than documenting them. By running testing in parallel with development, the platform aims to support faster release cycles and improve overall software quality. Emil Kostadinov, CEO and co-founder of ManaMind, said that game development should prioritise human creativity over repetitive testing tasks: We're automating the manual, time-consuming parts so studios can focus on building amazing worlds. We've developed our own proprietary visual model specifically for virtual environments because gaming demands that level of precision. Gaming is our launchpad, but our vision is to build the autonomous testing layer for all software and, ultimately, robotics. ManaMind has already established design partnerships with Included Games and Crazy Labs, reflecting early demand for AI-native testing infrastructure within the global games industry. The funding will be used to expand the company’s technical team, accelerate development of its proprietary models, and support growth across key markets. While gaming is its initial focus, ManaMind aims to extend its autonomous testing approach to broader software and robotics applications over time.

Earlybird VC has closed its eighth early-stage fund at €360 million, marking the largest raise in the firm’s history and reinforcing its fundraising momentum, which it has maintained through both bull markets and downturns. Backed by a mix of large institutions and family offices, the fund continues a nearly three-decade track record of raising new capital every three to four years without exception. Across its technology investment strategies — including Earlybird Health and multiple growth vehicles — the firm now manages €2.5 billion in assets. I spoke to Partner Dr Andre Retterath to learn more. Dr Andre Retterath joined Earlybird VC’s Munich office in 2017, where he leads the firm’s AI and infrastructure investment practice, focusing on frontier models, developer tools, and software infrastructure. He sits on the boards of companies, including Aleph Alpha, Energy Robotics, Ethon.AI, Sintra AI, spAItial, and SLNG, among others, and leads Earlybird’s Flywheel team supporting portfolio growth across engineering, marketing, and community. Early bets from Fund VIII The first deployments from Fund VIII reflect Earlybird’s focus on AI infrastructure, vertical applications, and foundational technologies emerging across Europe. From the new fund, Earlybird has already backed promising companies such as Black Forest Labs, SpAItial AI, Sintra, Arago, Porters, and Rivia. A number of stealth and new investments will be announced. Where value is really accruing in the AI stack Earlybird invests across AI applications, infrastructure, and foundational models, and I was interested in where they see the most value accruing in the AI stack right now. According to Retterath, Earlybird’s thesis has evolved quite significantly over the past few years. He contends that if you look at the application layer, many companies operate with very thin margins — often negative. “Foundation models tend to sit somewhere in the 30 to 50 per cent range. But when you move further down the stack, into infrastructure and hardware, margins are materially higher — Nvidia is the obvious example, running at 70–75 per cent.” The deeper you go in the stack, the higher the barriers to entry and the stronger the defensibility. He asserts: “At the application layer, it has never been easier to build a product — you can spin something up over a weekend. The constraint has shifted from building to distribution. So while applications are noisy and highly competitive, infrastructure offers stronger moats. The risk at the top of the stack is that you can be replaced very quickly — sometimes within weeks.” How Earlybird built an edge by backing deeptech before it was obvious That same logic — favouring deeper, more defensible layers of the stack — has long shaped Earlybird’s investment strategy. It’s what led them to recognise Isar Aerospace long before space tech was on the radar, and to Marvel Fusion when laser-based nuclear fusion was mentioned only in academia. Both are now benchmarks of European frontier technology. Retterath attributes this to the firm's approach to technology. It's always focused more on technology-differentiated businesses than on purely business-model innovation. Many of the Earlybird partners come from technical backgrounds in areas like  aerospace and industrial engineering, which shapes how they see opportunities. Before joining Earlybird, Retterath worked as a process automation engineer at ThyssenKrupp and as a management consultant with GE North America. He holds a PhD from the Technical University of Munich, focused on machine learning and venture capital, alongside degrees in management and mechatronics, and has studied at Harvard University, the University of Cambridge, and the Georgia Institute of Technology. That technical grounding shapes how Retterath identifies and backs complex, high-barrier technologies ahead of the market. He contends that Earlybird started building its AI investment practice years before it became mainstream: “There are two ways to differentiate: through technology and through the business model. We are probably 90 per cent focused on the former and 10 per cent on the latter. That’s why we’ve consistently leaned into specific sectors, industries, and technologies very early on. That allowed us to develop conviction early. " To Retterath, early investment is crucial to accessing founders: “In highly competitive rounds, founders don’t just choose capital — they choose partners. If you’ve built credibility over time, founders will come to you earlier.” ​ Retterath invested in DeepCode, a Swiss startup using machine learning to analyse code and automatically detect bugs, vulnerabilities, and performance issues, which was later acquired by Synk in 2020. Further, he closely tracked the foundation space, which led to an early investment in Aleph Alpha. Through that network, he also learned that Matthias Niessner was leaving to start Black Forest Labs — an opportunity Earlybird would go on to back at a very early stage in 2024. Earlybird restructures for generational continuity and long-term independence Building challenger companies takes decades, and Earlybird VC is reshaping its own structure accordingly. With the close of Fund VIII, the firm has implemented what it calls a “perpetual active ownership” model — a generational approach designed to ensure long-term continuity without external ownership. Nearly three decades after founding Earlybird, co-founders Dr Hendrik Brandis and Dr Christian Nagel, alongside partners Paul Klemm, Tim Rehder, and Dr Andre Retterath, have formalised a structure in which ownership remains exclusively with active partners and is continuously passed on to the next generation. As part of the transition, Jochen Küst also assumes the role of Operating Partner in addition to his CFO responsibilities. At a time when several European VC firms are exploring partial exits or external ownership, Earlybird is taking a different route. The firm will not be sold, nor will it bring in outside shareholders. Instead, ownership is tied directly to operational responsibility: once a partner steps back, their shares are transferred to the remaining partners. For Retterath, the model is as much about access and incentives as it is about governance. “In many VC funds, becoming a partner requires significant GP commitment, which often means you need to come from a wealthy background or have already made money. That creates a structural barrier.” Earlybird’s approach removes that constraint. The firm aims to ensure that ownership is not gated by personal wealth, but instead tied to merit and long-term contribution. “We want to enable the best investors — no matter their background, education, or gender — to be in a position to build Earlybird.” The second issue is retention. Without a clear path to leadership, top investors eventually leave — a pattern seen across more established firms. “If you can’t present a clear trajectory — how someone becomes a true leader and eventually runs the firm — they will leave. You can only do that so many times before it becomes a problem for the firm and its LPs.” The model emerged from a broader reflection on succession — a topic Retterath argues is still largely unresolved across European venture. After benchmarking around 15 leading firms, he discovered that to no surprise, “there was no blueprint.” “Most firms haven’t really solved this. Often it’s still one or two founding partners in the driver’s seat, without a clear transition plan.” That led to a fundamental question: Should Earlybird eventually be sold — or built to endure? “Do we want to be sold — like many firms have been — or do we want to create something that lasts? A firm that’s always on?” The answer was clear: “We want to create a legacy. We do not want to sell Earlybird — and we expect that it never will be.” Under the perpetual ownership model, only active general partners can hold equity. There is no buy-in requirement, and equally, no ability to cash out. Ownership is passed forward — not monetised. “As long as you’re an operational general partner, you can be an owner. Once you retire, you step out and hand over your shares to the next generation.” The result is a structure designed to align incentives across decades — not fund cycles — while giving rising investors a clear path to leadership. “For the next generation, this creates real clarity. They know exactly what they are working towards — becoming an entrepreneur leading the firm.” In an industry often defined by short-term cycles and opaque partnership dynamics, Earlybird is making a deliberate bet: that long-term ownership, clearly structured succession, and open access to partnership will be a competitive advantage — not just for the firm, but for the founders it backs. Scaling into the next phase of European tech Fund VIII builds on decades of experience and an AI-native team with boots on the ground across Europe’s major hubs. “The majority of our LPs have backed us across several fund generations, and with our perpetual ownership model in place, it’s our mission to keep evolving without losing sight of the principles that have brought us to where we are today," shared Retterath. Europe is entering a new chapter, with AI accelerating the transformation of entire industries. Earlybird embarks on a new era that combines three decades of experience with a next generation of partners ready to back exceptional teams across AI applications, software infrastructure, and deeptech. ​ Retterath is bullish about Europe's future. He contends that the geopolitical developments that have forced Europe to take sovereignty more seriously are creating momentum across technology, infrastructure, and capital. “Europe has the talent, the research base, and increasingly the capital to build globally relevant companies. Historically, European startups have also been more capital-efficient, which is an advantage. So overall, I think we’re entering a very strong phase for the European ecosystem.”

Cleo Labs, a Paris-based company specialising in product regulatory compliance, has raised €1.5 million in a funding round to accelerate the development of its AI-powered platform for international compliance. The round was led by Larry Berger, with participation from Kima Ventures, Financière Saint-James, and several angel investors, including Boris Paillard (Le Wagon), Ambre Soubiran (Kaiko), Stéphanie Zolesio (Casino), and Charles Sutton (Datascientest). The round also includes a scout ticket from the Accel fund. The company operates in a growing regtech market, where businesses face increasing complexity in navigating fragmented and evolving regulatory requirements across different countries. Managing compliance remains a significant challenge, with many organisations still relying on manual processes and limited tools despite the high costs associated with non-compliance. Founded by Naomie Halioua and Anaelle Guez, who bring together expertise in both technology and legal compliance, Cleo Labs has developed an AI platform designed to automate regulatory compliance for companies selling physical products internationally. Its system continuously monitors regulatory developments across multiple jurisdictions and provides structured insights to help teams manage requirements, anticipate changes, and reduce time to market. Our ambition is to transform regulatory compliance - currently seen as a constraint - into a strategic lever for companies. Thanks to AI, it becomes possible to anticipate rather than react, says Naomie Halioua, co-founder of Cleo Labs. The platform supports both pre-launch and ongoing compliance by generating tailored regulatory checklists for each product and market, while continuously monitoring regulatory updates and providing real-time alerts with business impact analysis. This enables teams to process larger volumes of regulatory requirements without additional resources, streamline compliance timelines, and identify risks earlier in the product lifecycle. The new funding will be used to enhance the platform’s capabilities, expand its feature set, and support commercial growth in Europe, while laying the groundwork for further international expansion, including the United States.

London-based Dex, an AI-powered recruitment platform, has raised $5.3 million in a seed funding round led by Notion Capital, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz’s Speedrun programme, Concept Ventures, and angel investors including individuals from OpenAI and other organisations. The round follows a pre-seed round raised in 2025, bringing the company’s total funding to $8.4 million. Dex focuses on connecting software engineers with relevant job opportunities through an AI-driven approach. Its product operates as an AI “talent agent”, engaging users in detailed conversations to understand their experience, motivations, and career goals. The platform then matches candidates with suitable roles, while also supporting them with research, compensation benchmarking, and interview preparation through a conversational interface. On the employer side, Dex gathers insights into hiring teams, role requirements, and performance expectations. When a strong mutual fit is identified, the platform facilitates direct introductions between candidates and hiring managers. Commenting on the limitations of current hiring systems, Paddy Lambros, CEO and founder of Dex, said that recruitment processes frequently underperform, while AI has not yet delivered substantial improvements. We’re currently seeing an AI ‘arms race’ to the bottom, with companies being flooded by AI-generated applications, while individuals are often subjected to inhumane and unethical screening. Dex offers an alternative. The funding comes at a time when the global recruitment industry is facing growing pressure to evolve, with traditional hiring processes often criticised as inefficient and heavily reliant on manual decision-making. Dex positions itself as an alternative, aiming to improve how talent and opportunities are matched through AI. Dex plans to use the new funding to further develop its product and expand its go-to-market strategy. While currently headquartered in London, the company is preparing to expand into the US, targeting technology hubs such as New York and San Francisco. The company’s broader goal is to improve how individuals find meaningful work by aligning opportunities with their skills, ambitions, and values, while offering tools that support both candidates and employers throughout the hiring process.

All3, a company developing a robotic platform for construction, has raised $25 million in a seed funding round led by RTP Global, with significant participation from SuperSeed and additional backing from Begin Capital, s16vc and VNV Global. The company is developing an integrated construction model that combines autonomous robotics, AI-powered design software, and robotic manufacturing. Its system includes a legged robot for on-site assembly, alongside tools that enable the production of custom components, with the aim of improving efficiency, reducing costs, and lowering the environmental impact of construction projects. Construction remains one of the world’s largest industries, with limited productivity gains over recent decades and continued reliance on manual labour. Existing prefabrication approaches have struggled to scale in complex urban environments, while All3’s approach is designed to enable automation without imposing design constraints. Rodion Shishkov, CEO and co-founder of All3, said the company was founded to develop robotics and AI solutions to address fundamental challenges in construction, adding that the seed round confirms its ability to tackle problems long considered unsolvable. Construction is the largest global sector yet to experience a productivity revolution, representing a trillion-dollar opportunity. With this funding, we'll scale deployment of our technology with one clear mission: to solve the housing crisis once and for all. The company has already seen early demand for its platform, having processed more than 100,000 square metres of residential projects through its design software, contributing to a growing pipeline of projects in Germany. The funding will be used to advance research and development in London and Belgrade and to deploy an initial fleet of robots on commercial construction projects in Germany, the company’s first launch market. All3 operates across Europe, with offices in Berlin and Zug, and focuses on applying robotics and AI to modernise construction processes at scale.

KOMPAS VC, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on physical industries, has announced the €160 million final close of its second fund. The fund attracted support from existing backers such as VKR Holding, as well as new institutional investors including Realdania. With Fund II, KOMPAS VC will continue investing in technologies aimed at improving productivity, resilience, and decarbonisation across sectors such as manufacturing, the built environment, energy, advanced materials, and logistics. These industries are characterised by complex infrastructure and legacy systems, where transformation is both necessary and challenging. The investor focuses on solutions that can be deployed in real-world industrial environments, including industrial AI, robotics, and cybersecurity. Its strategy centres on supporting technologies that integrate with existing workflows and enhance how companies design, operate, and maintain physical assets. Founded in 2021, KOMPAS VC invests from seed to Series B across Europe and North America, typically deploying initial cheques between €1 million and €5 million. With the new fund, KOMPAS VC plans to expand its investment and platform teams, strengthening its ability to support founders through domain expertise, industrial partnerships, and commercial access. The investment strategy focuses on three core priorities: increasing productivity, strengthening resilience, and enabling decarbonisation. In practice, this includes backing technologies that optimise industrial workflows, secure critical infrastructure, and support retrofit and electrification efforts. Sebastian Peck, partner at KOMPAS VC, said the focus is on addressing barriers to adoption in industrial environments, ensuring that innovations can scale effectively within complex, real-world systems: We prioritise understanding the operational friction from legacy infrastructure to complex buying cycles that often stall transformation. By solving these real-world constraints, we ensure our investments don't just offer performance gains, but actually scale within the industry. The fund is expected to support a portfolio of early-stage companies and has already made several initial investments across industrial technology, energy, advanced manufacturing, and data infrastructure. 

SPREAD AI has raised $30 million in Series B funding to support international expansion, enhance its platform capabilities, and strengthen its position across key industries. The round included new investors such as DTCP Growth, IQT, OTB Ventures, Salesforce, and Thesiger Capital, alongside angel investor Christian Schulz. Existing backers, including HV Capital and Nauta Capital, also participated. The investment deepens the company’s collaboration with Salesforce, combining SPREAD’s product data capabilities with Salesforce’s Customer 360 platform to help address the gap between customer expectations, engineering, and operational execution. SPREAD’s platform integrates and contextualises product-related data across the entire lifecycle, from design through to production and operations. By connecting structured and unstructured data across enterprise systems, it enables the creation of “Product Twins” that help engineering and operations teams understand dependencies, assess trade-offs, and make decisions more efficiently. The company works with global manufacturers across industries, including automotive, aerospace and defence, and industrial equipment, and reports that its platform has contributed to faster development cycles, improved troubleshooting times, and significant cost savings. Commenting on the round, Robert Göbel, co-founder and co-CEO of SPREAD, said: Working with Salesforce gives us the reach to bring Engineering Intelligence to the industrial companies that need it most: the teams developing, operating or servicing defence systems, vehicles, and industrial machinery. Together, we're making sense of industrial data scattered across a sprawl of legacy systems with our AI-native data foundation that lets engineering, sales and service teams decide and act with speed and confidence. This is Industrial AI delivering tangible impact. Philipp Noll, co-founder and co-CEO, added that the focus is on helping manufacturers operate more efficiently by providing an AI-native foundation built on existing engineering data and designed to support long-term performance. The investment comes as European policymakers place increasing emphasis on AI capabilities in strategic industries, with initiatives aimed at strengthening regional leadership in industrial AI. SPREAD is positioning its platform to support manufacturers globally with data-driven operations aligned with European standards for transparency and data protection.

The UK government will develop an AI hardware plan, the Technology Secretary announced today, just days after US AI giant OpenAI paused a major UK data centre project. The announcement of the plan emerged today as Liz Kendall said that AI sovereignty was not about “isolation” and trying to “pull up the drawbridge and go it alone”. Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute, Kendall said: “We will continue to use the best technology and welcome inward investment because that’s what our public services and economy demand.” Her comments come amid government fears about the dominance of US tech giants, which control vast amounts of global tech infrastructure and compute power. The government recently announced the first investments from its £500m VC fund backing domestic AI startups. The government said it would announce the launch of its AI hardware plan at London Tech Week, which takes place in June. Kendall said the plan would help secure Britain’s capability in chips and the semiconductor technologies that underpin the full AI hardware stack. The government has already promised to buy emerging chip technology from British companies in a £100m bid to boost growth by supporting the AI sector. Kendall has previously said the government would offer guaranteed payments to British startups producing AI hardware that can help sectors such as life sciences and financial services.  Under a “first customer” pledge Kendall’s department will commit in advance to buying AI inference chips that meet set performance standards. The government is backing British strengths in the parts of the AI stack where it believes the UK has an edge, such as frontier research, compute and infrastructure, while working closely with other countries to shape the global AI ecosystem. Earlier this month, it was revealed OpenAI’s plans to bring its flagship $500bn AI data centre project to the UK have been put on hold, with the ChatGPT developer citing energy costs and regulatory issues as factors which have halted its plans.

Freepik today announced its relaunch as Magnific, a new identity that confirms its transformation into the world’s most comprehensive AI creative platform, set against the backdrop of a new creative industry in full bloom.  Magnific launches with $200 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), more than 1 million paid subscribers, and adoption across more than 250 enterprise clients, including the creative teams at BBC, DeliveryHero, Guess, Mayoral, Huel, R/GA, Damm, and Job&Talent, which are already running professional generative AI workflows on the platform.  Freepik was founded in Málaga in 2010 as a search engine for graphic resources.  “We started without any capital, three friends dreaming big,” said Magnific CEO Joaquín Cuenca.  “We didn’t know what we’d build. We just knew we weren’t comfortable staying still. We found new things to build. Now we’ll find new stories to tell.”  Check out our earlier interview with Magnific CEO Joaquín Cuenca. Built from Malaga, Magnific was acquired by Freepik in May 2024. It was named by Andreessen Horowitz as the top generative AI web company in Europe by users, competing directly with American AI platforms without a massive capital base. The rebrand helps bring the company's full picture into focus post-acquisition. “The problem was never the product,” said Joaquin Cuenca.  “People saw fragments: Freepik as stock, Magnific as an upscaler. This is the first time the full system is visible as one platform.”  The new no-collar creative class The relaunch reflects a broader shift already underway: from fragmented tools to integrated creative infrastructure, and from traditional creative roles to what CEO Joaquín Cuenca describes as the “no-collar economy.”  “The industrial revolution created the blue-collar jobs and the digital revolution created the white-collar jobs,” said Cuenca. “Creatives are about to become more powerful than anyone expected. That’s the no-collar economy. The economy of people who don’t wear a shirt collar. And it’s already underway.” The thesis is a direct counterpoint to the narrative that AI destroys creative jobs. Just as the digital revolution didn’t replace accountants, it multiplied them and allowed them to take on more complex tasks. From experiments to campaigns Enterprise teams are no longer experimenting with AI creative tools: they are actively building campaigns with them.  BBC, DeliveryHero, Huel, R/GA, Damm, and Job&Talent are among the more than 250 enterprise teams now running production workflows on Magnific, from generating assets and prototyping visuals to scaling content across campaigns and markets.  The company’s Business plan, launched in January 2026 for smaller teams, surpassed 2,000 subscriptions in six weeks and continues to grow at 150 new teams per week.  At the same time, a parallel shift is reshaping who participates in creative production.  72 per cent of new creators joining the platform identify as beginners. This signals a structural change: the cost and complexity of creating high-quality content is rapidly decreasing. What historically required a studio, a team, and significant capital can increasingly be done by individuals with the right tools. “In the future, we will make films like we write books,” said Cuenca. “One person with a vision and the tools to execute it.”  The relaunch brings together previously distinct capabilities — including image generation, video, upscaling, audio, and collaboration — into a single production environment.  Magnific covers the full creative stack, end to end:  The best image and video models in the market, including 4K with audio.  Industry-leading AI upscaling technology.  A real-time collaborative workspace used by tens of thousands of creators daily.  Exclusive 3D and virtual scene tools.  A library of 250M+ creative assets. 

London-based Marloo, an AI partner for financial advisers, has raised $10 million in a seed funding round led by Blackbird Ventures, which also participated in the company’s earlier pre-seed round. The latest investment brings Marloo’s total funding to $12.7 million within a year. The company is developing an AI platform designed to support financial advisers by automating administrative tasks such as note-taking, documentation, and compliance, allowing them to focus more on client relationships and advice delivery. Over time, the platform also identifies opportunities that may otherwise go unnoticed due to time or context constraints. Financial advice is a critical service, but it remains difficult to deliver effectively at scale. Existing tools often do not reflect how advisory work is carried out in practice, resulting in limited access to guidance for clients and a significant administrative burden for advisers. Marloo’s platform has been developed with input from industry practitioners, with a portion of its team having experience as financial advisers. The platform enables advisers to focus on client interactions by automating tasks such as note-taking, documentation, and compliance. It also identifies potential opportunities over time based on broader data context. Commenting on the development, Hardy Michel and Shakeel Lala, co-founders at Marloo, said it represents a significant shift for financial advice, enabling advisers to better leverage their time, expertise, and client relationships: For too long, the tools available to advisers have been unworthy of that responsibility. Marloo changes that. It does work that was never possible before. Every adviser deserves this, and every client deserves an adviser who has it. The new funding will be used to expand Marloo’s presence in the UK and Australia, where adoption is increasing, and to support its entry into the US market. It will also accelerate the development of a broader product suite intended to position the platform as a core operating system for advisory firms

Revolut is to open a retail store in Barcelona, marking its first move into retail bricks and mortar. Called Revolut Store, it will be located in the heart of Barcelona and has been likened to the Apple retail store in terms of its large size, according to Spanish media.  According to Revolut, the idea behind the store is to make the Revolut brand more accessible and its products easier to discover. A spokesperson for Revolut, which is valued at $75bn, said: “This will not be a temporary pop-up, but a permanent space. A high-visibility, immersive space that will bring our ecosystem to life.” Revolut didn’t confirm exactly what services Revolut Store will offer, but La Vanguardia said customers will be able to get advice on contracting services and enjoy brand-related experiences. The store will not be a bank branch. A Revolut spokesperson added: "We decided to open a physical space to engage with consumers as any other lifestyle brand would do. We also believe physical presence builds trust by putting a human layer on top of the digital experience.” Antoine Le Nel, Revolut global marketing director, told La Vanguardia: "We chose Barcelona because it has always been our testing ground. It’s an innovative city where we can find both local and international customers.” He said if successful, the store would be replicated in other markets. Revolut chose Barcelona, which is a strategic location for Revolut where it employs around 700 people, as the city to launch its first ATMs. The store will operate under a lease agreement and employ more than twenty people, according to the report, which said it would open at the end of this year or the start of 2027.

Functional drinks and supplements brand Neutonic has raised $6 million in funding at a $60 million valuation to support its global expansion across the UK, US, and additional international markets. The round includes backing from investors such as Alan Barrett, Ollie Marchon, Ross Edgley, Dan Martell, Codie Sanchez, Nomit Shah, and Zach Ranen, alongside continued participation from existing shareholders. Jay Parker has also joined the company as a special advisor. Founded in 2023 by Chris Williamson, James Smith, Luke Betts, and Shan Hanif, Neutonic has scaled rapidly since launch, selling more than 7.5 million cans to date. The company operates within the growing nootropics and functional drinks category, offering products designed to support focus, mental clarity, and sustained energy. Its formulations combine research-backed ingredients with a consumer-focused approach to flavour and usability, targeting increasing demand for performance-oriented alternatives to traditional energy drinks. Commenting on the funding, co-founder James Smith said: This raise gives us the firepower to keep building Neutonic across both the UK and the US whilst also launching in Australia. We have seen strong momentum in retail and this next phase is about scaling distribution, strengthening the team and continuing to meet growing consumer demand. The company is on track to exceed $25 million in revenue this year, supported by strong growth across both direct-to-consumer and retail channels. Its products are now stocked in over 10,000 retail locations globally, spanning grocery, specialist retail, and fitness environments. The new funding will be used to accelerate retail expansion, particularly in the UK and the US, while supporting entry into new markets, including Australia. It will also fund strategic hires across product, commercial, and operations teams, expand distribution across key channels, and drive ongoing product innovation.

dehaze, a Munich-based healthtech AI company, has raised €3.2 million in a seed funding round led by YZR Capital and DN Capital, with participation from Angel Invest, Zoho, and Better Ventures. The funding will support the company’s efforts to develop a foundational AI model for chronic disease detection. dehaze’s platform uses causal AI to analyse large volumes of patient data, enabling healthcare payers to identify individuals at risk of chronic conditions earlier, improve intervention outcomes, and reduce costs. Chronic diseases remain the largest cost driver in global healthcare systems, accounting for around 70 per cent of deaths and more than $8 trillion in annual spending, according to the World Health Organization. Despite the abundance of available health data, clinicians typically review only a small fraction before making decisions, contributing to a significant share of conditions going undetected at earlier, more treatable stages. dehaze aims to address this gap through a purpose-built model designed specifically for healthcare data. Its system processes heterogeneous datasets at scale and provides causal insights that support decision-making for both clinicians and insurers. The company says its approach can help reduce medical loss ratios while enabling earlier and more effective treatment. Marius Klages, co-founder and CEO of dehaze, said the company was built in Munich from the ground up as a foundational AI model for chronic disease detection, rather than as a chatbot or dashboard-style solution: Our customers are global from day one, because the problem is global from day one. The speed at which payers are signing with us confirms what we believed when we started: this is a category that will be defined over the next few years, and dehaze is going to define it. The new funding will be used to expand both the technical and commercial teams and to further develop platform capabilities, including features for recommending next-best actions and improving traceability.

Prague-based payments infrastructure startup Tapaya has raised €1 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Passion Capital, with co-lead participation from Depo Ventures and follow-on investment from BADideas.fund. Founded in 2025 by Laura Ďorďová, Roman Kuchařík, and Petr Zahradník, Tapaya is developing infrastructure that enables banks, fintechs, and software platforms to integrate in-person payment acceptance directly into their applications. The company is already working on integrations in the Czech Republic and expanding partnerships across Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltics. In-person payments continue to rely heavily on dedicated hardware terminals, creating cost and operational complexity for merchants and software providers. Embedding payment functionality into platforms such as POS systems, ERP software, or kiosks remains a lengthy and resource-intensive process due to certification requirements and fragmented infrastructure. Tapaya addresses this by consolidating compliance, certification, and processor integrations into a single software layer. Its platform allows developers to enable payment acceptance across Android, iOS, and other commercial devices, effectively turning standard hardware into payment terminals and removing the need for dedicated devices. By simplifying integration and reducing reliance on third parties, the company aims to shorten implementation timelines from months to days. Commenting on the company’s approach, co-founder and CEO Laura Ďorďová said: We want accepting payments to be as simple as turning on a light. For decades, it has meant relying on a piece of hardware, buying it, carrying it, connecting it, and reconciling it separately. Merchants are tired of that complexity. The system is designed to comply with evolving standards set by the PCI Security Standards Council, including the PCI MPoC framework, which enables secure card acceptance on commercial devices. By abstracting these requirements into a single integration, Tapaya allows partners to offer in-person payments without building their own certification infrastructure. The funding will be used to complete Tapaya’s PCI MPoC certification and further develop its in-house technology, while supporting the expansion of its partner network across Europe.

Scotland's Cnuic has raised $3 million in pre-seed funding led by Tensor Ventures, together with the Silicon Valley-based Blank Space Ventures. The round also saw participation from Silicon Roundabout Ventures, Phasechange, SANDS, and Superlative. The company based in Edinburgh has developed a working prototype of a completely new type of photolithography device, which makes use of the properties of light, enabling rapid, reconfigurable production of photonic chips with enhanced 3D control, something that was previously impossible.  This will enable a new scale of photonic chip production, and could result in a completely new balance of power in the global chip industry, in Europe’s favour.  In practice, Cnuic asserts this could be the biggest innovation in this field since the invention of the transistor. The semiconductor industry is facing its biggest transformation since the invention of the transistor. Silicon chips are nearing their physical limits. In contrast, photonic chips transmit data using light, that is, photons, rather than electrons, and therefore offer significantly higher transmission speeds without overheating. Until now, the main obstacles to the mass deployment of photonic chips have been their technological complexity and high manufacturing costs.  New technology represents a critical turning point for business, as these properties will enable global tech giants to operate data centres with radically lower cooling and electricity costs.  In the field of AI, model training will be significantly accelerated by photonic chips, which eliminate “bottlenecks” in communication among thousands of processors. The underlying technology also opens up possibilities across a broader range of light-based systems, including metalenses, 3D photonic crystals, AR and VR waveguides, flexible gratings, and similar applications.  According to Omar Durrani, co-founder of Cnuic, every major leap in human capability has come from learning to use a new medium better.  “We learned to use electrons. Now we are learning to use light. Cnuic is building the tools that make that possible at scale."  “Cnuic’s technology can democratise the production of photonic chips in much the same way that PCs democratized computing power,” says Ondřej Lipold, partner in Tensor Ventures.  Martin Drdúl, co-founder of Tensor Ventures, who oversaw the investment alongside Ondřej Lipold, adds:  “From a deep tech perspective, this is a completely new technology and a major breakthrough that could mean a whole new role for Europe in the semiconductor industry.”

Always Friday, an Italian AI-native platform for corporate event planning, has raised a €1.05 million Pre-Seed round led by Vento Ventures and P3 Ventures, with participation from Marco Migliore, Arnaldo Borghesi, and several angel investors from the Italian startup ecosystem. Founded in 2024 in Latina by Gianluca Sordano, Daniele Viccaro, Antonio Restaino, and Lorenzo Balzani, the startup has developed an AI platform that automates key workflows in event planning — from venue sourcing and supplier selection to operations, contracts, and payments. The product is designed around an AI interface that enables users to manage the entire event planning process. Behind the scenes, proprietary AI agents handle the operational heavy lifting, including contacting venues, negotiating pricing and availability, and coordinating suppliers end-to-end. Its AI agents can automate up to 90 per cent of operational tasks, reducing processes that typically take weeks to just a few hours. Always Friday currently employs nine people and has grown revenue fivefold year-on-year. In Q1 2026, it matched its full-year 2025 revenue, driven by demand from companies looking to streamline corporate event operations. The company is focused on enterprise and mid-market clients, where event volume and operational complexity make automation most impactful. “We’re building a platform that brings structure and automation to an industry that still runs largely on manual work,” said Gianluca Sordano, CEO and co-founder of Always Friday. “AI helps us remove operational overhead while keeping full control over execution and quality.” Always Friday is also building one of the largest proprietary event supplier databases in Italy, with plans to expand across Europe. The new capital will be used to expand the engineering team, further develop its proprietary AI agents, and strengthen its data infrastructure, which maps venues, suppliers, pricing, and event performance data.

Berlin-based Patronus has raised €11 million in a funding round led by 3TS Capital Partners, with participation from Grazia Equity and existing investors including Singular, Burda Principal Investments, Adjacent, NAP, and UVC Partners. Founded in 2020 by Ben Staudt, Patronus develops digital safety and companion solutions designed for older adults. The company focuses on addressing limitations of traditional emergency call systems, which are often underused due to usability and stigma, by offering a more accessible and user-friendly alternative. Its core product is a smartwatch that enables users to connect directly to an emergency call centre at the press of a button. Designed to resemble a standard wristwatch, the device integrates mobile connectivity and removes the need for dedicated home infrastructure. Patronus complements the device with a mobile app for family members, allowing them to stay informed and connected without intrusive monitoring. Commenting on the company’s vision, founder Ben Staudt said: We want to create a world where ageing means safety, independence, and connection, supported by technology that adapts to people, not the other way around. The company reports strong adoption, with tens of thousands of users and a high rate of daily usage compared to traditional emergency devices. The platform has also facilitated a significant number of emergency responses, reflecting growing demand for mobile safety solutions among ageing populations. With demographic trends pointing to a growing elderly population and increasing demand for independent living solutions, Patronus aims to further scale its platform and broaden its offering across Europe. The new funding will be used to expand Patronus’ position in the mobile emergency response market and to develop additional product features focused on family connectivity and wellbeing, including an AI-powered companion designed to support users in everyday situations.

Swedish AI company Redpine has raised €6.8 million in a seed funding round led by NordicNinja, with participation from Luminar Ventures and node.vc. The investment will support the company’s international expansion and further development of its AI data platform. Founded in 2024 by Anders Hammarbäck and David Österdahl, Redpine focuses on addressing a key limitation in artificial intelligence: the restricted availability of high-quality data. While only a small fraction of global data is openly accessible for AI training, the company works with content owners to unlock premium, non-public datasets in a compliant way, enabling broader and more reliable AI applications. Its platform operates as a headless API interface, allowing AI companies and agents to access curated datasets across domains, particularly in scientific and high-value fields. By combining proprietary retrieval and reranking technology with real-time data evaluation, Redpine aims to improve both the quality and reliability of AI outputs while ensuring that data providers are compensated. Anders Hammarbäck, CEO and co-founder of Redpine, said that the company is developing infrastructure to support the sustainable growth of a token-based agent economy for all stakeholders: The opportunities in this space are endless and we see applications across clinical guidelines, case law, physical research, financial markets data, and quality human-created news. The investment comes amid rapid growth in the AI agent market, where access to accurate, high-quality, and compliant data is becoming increasingly critical. The new funding will be used to accelerate product development, expand Redpine’s network of proprietary data partnerships, and scale hiring across engineering, data science, and commercial functions. The company is also collaborating with leading AI labs and international partners, including US-based biotechnology firm AsedaSciences.

Startup Ineffable Intelligence has just come out of stealth. The company, with a mission to make first contact with superintelligence, has raised $1.1 billion in Seed funding, the largest ever in Europe, at a valuation of $5.1 billion, according to the company. Ineffable Intelligence is using  Reinforcement Learning to create a “superlearner” that can endlessly discover knowledge and skills without relying on human data. The company was founded by David Silver, the former lead of the reinforcement learning team at DeepMind, and is a professor at University College London. Silver is committing to giving away 100% per cent of the money he makes from his Ineffable equity via Founders Pledge - the biggest pledge in their history, and it is likely to amount to multiple billions.  According to a statement by Silver on the company’s website:  "The world needs a place where the full ambition of the reinforcement learning paradigm can flourish. A place where the deep question of intelligence is faced head-on: how to discover new knowledge. The world needs a place where the full ambition of the reinforcement learning paradigm can flourish. A place where the deep question of intelligence is faced head on: how to discover new knowledge from experience in the environment. I have a unique opportunity to build this place, using my leadership, vision, track record, and the strength of my team." The fundraise is  co-led by Sequoia (Alfred Lin & Sonya Huang) and Lightspeed (Ravi Mhatre, Raviraj Jain), with participation from NVIDIA, DST Global, Index, Google, Flying Fish Ventures, EQT Ventures, Evantic Capital, UK Wellcome Trust, BOND Capital, The British Business Bank, and the UK’s Sovereign AI Fund, plus strategic angels.