Germany-based agricultural photovoltaics company feld.energy has closed a seed round of more than €10 million led by HV Capital, with participation from Future Energy Ventures, AENU, and Angel Invest. feld.energy enables farms to grow food and generate solar power on the same land with modular, machine-friendly agricultural photovoltaics (Agri-PV) systems for arable fields, pastures, and speciality crops. Operating end-to-end, from feasibility to construction, the company makes dual land use easy to deploy and economically attractive, even without subsidies. Under its lease model, farms can earn over €100,000 across 20 years while maintaining agricultural output. This supports the company’s vision to show that farming and renewable energy can reinforce one another to create lasting value. By pairing clean energy with agriculture, feld.energy strengthens farm income and resilience, reduces water use, and advances Germany’s energy transition. The opportunity is significant, as Germany targets about 60 per cent renewables in gross final consumption by 2050, and Fraunhofer ISE estimates 2,900 GW of technical Agri-PV potential nationwide. Co-founder and CEO Dr. Adrian Renner says feld.energy aims to bolster agricultural resilience and accelerate the shift to a climate-neutral economy by enabling farmers to generate clean power without reducing food production. This funding will help us strengthen our team and scale our solution so that farms everywhere benefit from this dual-use approach, Renner added. With fresh funding, feld.energy will accelerate growth, expand operations, and strengthen its team. Its long-term aim is to make dual-use farmland, boosting farmers’ income while helping the planet, the rule rather than the exception.

Last week, we tracked more than 95 tech funding deals worth over €3.1 billion, and over 10 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.Click to read the rest of the news.

German software company encentive has raised €6.3 million to expand its AI platform, connect more industrial assets, enter new markets, and strengthen its technological leadership. The round was led by General Catalyst, with participation from existing backers Summiteer, SIVentures, Vireo Ventures, HelloWorld, and angels Stefan Müller and Bernhard Niesner. As industry, the world’s largest energy consumer, electrifies to reach net zero, power demand is rising, while expanding renewables increase supply and price volatility. In this environment, harnessing flexibility becomes a decisive lever for competitiveness and decarbonization. encentive reduces industrial energy costs and emissions with its AI energy-management platform. Its core product, flexOn, serves as an intelligent control centre that aligns bidirectional energy flows with local and market renewable availability, automatically shifting consumption to green, low-cost periods and leveraging existing storage and flexibility. By unlocking flexibility in refrigeration, heating processes, batteries, and production lines, flexOn generates optimised schedules and autonomously controls assets in real time, helping medium and large industrial users (≥2 GWh/year) cut electricity costs by up to 20 per cent while significantly reducing CO₂. Already deployed at leaders such as Metro Logistics, Dachser, and Klingele, and now used by major utilities as a flexibility platform, encentive will use the new funding to hire talent and scale core capabilities. This will enable large customers and partners to integrate flexOn independently via a dedicated onboarding suite as it expands into new sectors and markets.

Evertrace – the founder detection engine for data-driven VCs – today announced the acquisition of Whisper AI. Whisper AI brings deep expertise in company data, trade registry integrations, and a strong foothold in the DACH market – a key step in Evertrace’s wider European and global expansion. The acquisition accelerates Evertrace’s mission to give investors the earliest and most precise signals on emerging founders and companies. By combining Whisper AI’s registry and company data with Evertrace’s detection engine, the company moves closer to executing on this mission and be the key player in the market. "Whisper AI’s expertise in company registries and their position in the DACH region give us access to a unique set of data sources and a crucial market. Together, we can strengthen our ability to surface the founders and companies investors need to know about - earlier than anyone else,” said Jacob Graubæk Houlberg, Co-founder at Evertrace. We founded Whisper AI to make company and registry data more accessible and actionable to VC investors. Becoming part of Evertrace allows us to scale that mission significantly - and directly contribute to building the leading sourcing engine for early stage investors,” said Nikolai Niklaus, founder of Whisper AI. Whisper AI’s technology will be fully integrated into the Evertrace platform, giving customers richer signals, faster updates, and broader geographic coverage. About Evertrace Evertrace is the founder detection engine for data-driven venture capital investors. Using machine learning and unique data signals, Evertrace helps funds identify founders earlier than anybody else About Whisper AI Whisper AI specializes in advanced company data and registry integrations, with a particular focus on the DACH market. Its technology enables the early detection of new companies and founders for European early stage investors by turning complex data pipelines into actionable insights

This week, we tracked more than 95 tech funding deals worth over €3.1 billion, and over 10 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe. In addition to this week's top financials, we've also indexed the most important/industry-related news items you need to know about. If email is more your thing, you can always subscribe to our newsletter and receive a more robust version of this round-up delivered to your inbox. Either way, let's get you up to speed. ? Notable and big funding rounds ?? Mistral bags €1.7B funding round as ASML takes significant stake ?? EcoDataCenter secures €600M for sustainable high-performance AI and cloud growth ?? Fintech Factris secures €100M funding facility ??‍?? Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers ?? Bending Spoons to buy Vimeo in $1.38B deal ?? Hedepy acquires HearMe to become CEE’s largest online psychotherapy platform ?? fonio.ai acquires fluently to strengthen DACH presence ?? Opus acquires Embarc to accelerate early-stage entrepreneurship  ?? Opper AI acquires FinetuneDB for AI model tuning ? Interesting moves from investors ? Claret Capital Partners secures €350M second close for Fund IV ?Quadrille Capital raises €500M to invest in European and US tech ? From Lovable to ElevenLabs: Antler study charts Europe’s fastest-ever unicorn boom ?️ In other (important) news ?? OpenAI to roll out ChatGPT Edu in Greek schools and support startups ? ElevenLabs confirms employee share sale at $6.6BN valuation, double valuation of nine months ago ? BlackRock-backed Scalable Capital wins European banking licence ?? Quantum Systems commits €50M to UK expansion ?? AI coding assistants save UK government workers 28 working days a year, claims government  ? Recommended reads and listens ?? One year on from Draghi report: Europe’s innovation future hangs on the 28th Regime ? “European startups are asked to run a marathon with their shoelaces tied” ☕ The LAP coffee Berlin backlash: when innovation meets resistance ?? CUTISS secures €57.9M Series C to advance regenerative skin therapies ?? Innovation lives on: European startups shine at IFA 2025 ? Beyond the hype cycle: Why retention and community will decide the winners in vibe coding ? European tech startups to watch ?? Kashimi raises $1.36M to expand alternative payment infrastructure ?? Renewcast raises €1M from 2C Venture to accelerate global expansion ?? Saltfish emerges from stealth with $730,000 in initial funding ??  uRoutine raises £555,000 to fight doomscrolling with a ‘productive social network’ ?? Eterny raises €400,000 to tackle the problem of forgotten assets ?? Innovate UK backs Hormona with £100,000 grant for menopause diagnostics

PayPal-backed UK fintech Modulr has reported a reduction in annual pre-tax losses of £11m in 2024, as it targets US expansion and pulls back from working with crypto clients. Modulr provides white-label payment infrastructure for businesses, calling itself an “embedded payments platform”. Modulr, which has an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) licence and employs over 300 people, provides payment services for the likes of Sage, Wagestream and HMRC. Modulr is backed by PayPal's VC arm. Financial results for Modulr Holdings show pre-tax losses of £11m in the year ending 2024, a reduction compared to losses of £13.9m the year previous. Revenue came in at £52.8m, compared to £47.9m the previous year. Modulr says its losses were funded by its 2022 £83m Series C funding raise and that Modulr remained “well funded” at year-end 2024, with £31m of cash. Modulr said that during 2024, it focused on client sectors of travel, merchant payments and lending but “ceased active marketing” into non-focus sectors, including crypto, remittance, and consumer banking. Modulr is understood to have previously worked with crypto outfit Ripple but it's unclear how many crypto clients it had. It does, however, have some crypto clients, it said. It cited the “increasing complexities, risks and costs” of operating in these sectors as the reason for pulling back. Additionally, it cited new Consumer Duty rules, aimed at setting strict standards of consumer protection in financial services, and Authorised Push Payment rules, which it said “disproportionately impact those sectors”. Separately, the UK fintech said it had made its first international move, securing a contract with a “major" US financial technology firm. Last year, Modulr acquired UK-based accounts payable fintech Nook.  Modulr processes over 200m transactions and over £100bn of payment value on its platform, on an annualised basis. It has over 240 enterprise and over 4,000 SME customers. Modulr said: "Our statutory group accounts for 2024 show double-digit growth and a strong balance sheet. We are growing strongly in 2025 and are on track to be profitable. "We are scaling across a number of verticals and have seen particular growth in payroll, accountancy, travel and lending. In addition, we continue to serve some customers in other sectors, including crypto companies, remittance firms and consumer banking, which continue to become a declining proportion of our revenue."

Patents are the backbone of protecting innovation, yet the process of securing them in Europe can take years and cost founders precious time and money.  Swedish startup Lightbringer, founded in 2023, believes it has a better way.  I sat down with CEO and co-founder Dominic Davies to hear how his journey from software engineer to patent attorney — and a breakthrough moment with GPT-3 — sparked the creation of a category-defining legaltech company.  Lightbringer aims to transform how patents are created and managed. It combines AI-powered tools with experienced patent attorneys to offer a faster, clearer, and more accessible patent process for innovators, startups, and tech teams. I spoke to CEO and co-founder Dominic Davies to learn more. A eureka moment with GPT-3 sparked Lightbringer’s creation Davies originally studied software engineering at Imperial College London and started out working for Merrill Lynch. He admits,“after a few years in banking, I realised it wasn’t as exciting as I’d hoped. I wanted to work with cutting-edge technology, and one route was through intellectual property. So I retrained as a patent attorney at the world’s oldest patent firm in London and became fully qualified.” Over the past 20 years, while practising as a patent attorney, he continued writing software to solve problems in his field. At one point, he founded a law firm called Invent Horizon, where he developed software to automate all administrative work so that the firm could operate with only lawyers and no administrative staff.  He had also been working for years on software to write patents.  According to Davies, “for nearly a decade, it didn’t work — the AI just wasn’t good enough yet.”  “Then, in 2022, I read that GPT-3 was available via API. I plugged it into my project, and suddenly it sprang to life. That moment was both euphoric and terrifying. Euphoric because the software finally worked.  It was terrifying because I immediately realised the key problem I’d spent ten years grappling with — and that underpinned my career—had just been solved. I couldn’t sleep for a month. Eventually, I decided I had to act. I approached a couple of former founders, showed them a demo, and they said right away: “Let’s build this.”  That was the beginning of Lightbringer. Slow, costly, complex: the reality of filing a patent in Europe The current patent process looks something like this: Imagine you’re building a product and preparing to show it to customers, partners, or investors. Someone advises you that unless you file a patent application, you won’t be able to protect your technology. All in all, patents are a laborious process. The European patent grant procedure takes about three to five years from the date your application is filed. It is made up of two main stages.  The first comprises a formalities examination, the preparation of the search report and the preliminary opinion on whether the claimed invention and the application meet the requirements of the European Patent Convention.  But before you get to filing your patent, you usually need to find a patent lawyer. You book a meeting, explain your business and your technology in detail, and only then does the lawyer begin drafting an application. According to Davies, “it’s expensive because you’re working with highly qualified people, and it’s slow — it usually takes at least a month before you have a draft. The lawyer has to spend significant time building context for your invention and conducting research.” Reimagining patents with SaaS-style onboarding  Lightbringer aims to speed up the legal part of the process by replicating the seamless onboarding you’d expect from SaaS tools.  “Think of signing up for Google or HubSpot—you just create an account and you’re off. That’s what we’ve built for patents,” explains Davies. On the Lightbringer homepage, inventors can immediately begin describing their ideas. The system guides them through the process, helps them articulate the details, and explains how the patent process works.  Drafts can be generated within hours instead of months.  It’s largely self-serve, but with a human in the loop: qualified attorneys review the AI’s work, speak with inventors, and ensure everything is accurate and aligned with their needs. Since launching its subscription model in May 2024, Lightbringer has already filed more than 100 patents, attracted over 500 users, including founders and legal teams, and achieved a 90 per cent success rate for patents filed within just 30 days. The platform reports 95 per cent user satisfaction and delivers workflows up to ten times faster than traditional drafting processes. The company’s customers are early adopters, companies that want to buy legal services the way they buy SaaS. According to Davies: “They’re used to tools like Vanta or HubSpot, so they expect a consumer-like experience. That’s what we deliver.”  While the company is primarily working with smaller companies right now, it’s built an AI-first virtual patent department that can scale to any company. Davies admits that the company would love to work more with law firms, but they can be conservative, and there’s an inherent business conflict.  “Their model is built around billing by the hour, and we’re reducing the time it takes. Some firms are becoming more open, but our core users are technology companies themselves.” How Lightbringer keeps startup IP safe I was curious about data security in that founders are essentially putting their intellectual property into a startup’s software platform. According to Davies, security was a priority from day 1. Lightvringer is SOC 2 Type II certified. Customer data is protected and segregated. Its contracts with LLM providers, such as Google and OpenAI, ensure that it does not train on customer data: “We actually have stronger data security provisions than many alternatives.” That said, the company is very aware of developments — like the New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI that exposed private data — and for that reason doesn’t use OpenAI for certain key functions.  Lightbringer raised a €4.2 million Seed round in 2024 and is growing quickly. It has over 70 customers, many of whom, explained Davies, previously worked with traditional firms.  “They love being able to handle patents in a modern way.” Lightbringer eyes expansion as patent automation takes off Looking ahead to 2026, Davies believes companies will take a hard look at how they buy business services — legal, accounting, patents — and will demand more modern, efficient options.  “We’re placed to meet that demand. We also plan to expand to the US, which we see as a key market. For now, our core market is northern Europe and the UK.” Lightbringer describes itself as “category creators.” According to Davies, investors see what’s coming, sharing: “They know the way business services are sold is changing, and they see us as well-positioned to grab the market. It’s disruptive, especially for the patent industry, which could be one of the first legal sectors to undergo major automation.”

AI coding assistants are saving UK government workers 28 working days a year, the government claims, as it looks to leverage AI to save £45bn across the public sector. AI coding assistants are becoming increasingly common in the private sector, and the UK government is hoping to use them to make billions in savings across government departments. New trial results from the UK government show that government coders and tech engineers have saved almost an hour a day by using AI assistants to help them write code and build new technology. This is equivalent to 28 working days a year, the government said. The trial involved more than 1,000 tech experts using AI coding assistants across 50 different government departments. They used coding assistants such as Microsoft GitHub Copilot and Google Gemini Code Assist. It helped them build more tech like Whitehall’s Humphrey AI assistant and healthcare tech, the UK government said. The government said savings from the AI assistants mostly came from using them to write first drafts of code that experts then edit, or using them to review existing code. It said just 15 per cent of code generated by the AI coding assistants was used without any edits. The results show that 72 per cent of users said the tools offered good value, while over half ( 58 per cent), said they would prefer not to return to working without AI assistance, whilst 65 per cent reported completing tasks faster and 56 per cent said they could solve problems more efficiently. Technology Minister Kanishka Narayan said: ”This is exactly how I want us to use AI and other technology to make sure we are delivering the standard of public services people expect – both in terms of accuracy and efficiency. With a £45 billion jackpot at stake, it’s not an opportunity we can pass up, as it can help cut backlogs and save money.”

Ukrainian defense technology company Falcons has raised funding from US-based Green Flag Ventures to scale production of its radio frequency (RF) direction-finding system and work toward NATO certification. Founded in 2022 following Russia’s full-scale invasion, Falcons develops cost-effective systems designed for GPS-denied environments. Its flagship product, ETER (Direction Finder Set), helps detect enemy devices emitting radio signals, including drones, communication equipment, relays, and electronic warfare assets. According to the company, ETER has already seen combat use and contributed to the destruction of a Russian system valued at around $90 million. Falcons positions the device as a compact, GPS-free alternative that is up to 30–50 times cheaper than comparable NATO systems, with operational coverage exceeding 600 km. Falcons’ CEO and co-founder Yehor Dudinov, an active-duty serviceman with experience in strategic planning and product management, said the investment demonstrates the wider potential of technologies developed under fire in Ukraine. The funding will support Falcons in scaling ETER’s production, growing its team of engineers and frontline practitioners, and developing a NATO market-entry strategy. Green Flag Ventures, co-founded by Justin Zeefe and Deborah Fairlamb, invests in dual-use startups with both defense and civilian applications, with a particular focus on Ukraine’s defense technology ecosystem. The investment comes as Western investors show increasing interest in Ukrainian defense startups, many of which have rapidly developed solutions in response to wartime needs. NATO nations have also signaled interest in cost-effective and agile alternatives to traditional, often slower-moving defense procurement.

French deeptech company Cailabs has raised €57 million to accelerate its industrial expansion and global growth. The round of structured financing, led by the European Investment Bank (EIB), combines a €37 million financing from the EIB and a €20 million investment from Definvest and Fonds Innovation Defense (Armed Forces ministry and Bpifrance), NewSpace Capital, the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, Starquest Capital, and CAIVE. Cailabs is a deeptech photonics company founded in 2013, operating in France and the United States. Leveraging expertise in photonics and systems engineering, it designs and manufactures laser-light solutions for the space, telecommunications, industrial, and defence markets. Its portfolio includes turnkey optical ground stations that use atmospheric turbulence compensation to enable high-throughput, low-latency links across space and terrestrial networks, with a focus on precise light control to deliver faster, safer, and more reliable performance. Commenting on the strategic importance of Cailabs’ work and the rationale for the investment, Ambroise Fayolle, Vice-President of the European Investment Bank, noted that space technologies are increasingly vital for civilian, security, and defense applications: As the bank of the European Union, the EIB supports Cailabs’ investments in manufacturing capabilities and in research & development of its laser communication technologies. Fayolle added that the project fully aligns with the EIB’s strategic priorities in security and defence, as well as technological innovation, under its TechEU programme. Securing this structured financing signals Cailabs’ growing commercial maturity, supported by a backlog of more than ten optical ground stations already under contract. The funds will accelerate manufacturing scale-up and strengthen the supply chain. A new industrial platform, capable of assembling and validating five stations in parallel, will support the goal of producing up to 50 OGS annually by 2027. The financing will also support international expansion and advance the product portfolio with turnkey 100+ Gbps solutions, transportable optical ground stations, and expanded orbit coverage. This funding round reflects our solid fundamentals and the confidence investors have in our strategic vision. It enables us to scale up industrial capabilities and prepare for the next stage of growth, concluded Jean-Francois Morizur, co-founder and CEO of Cailabs.  

Barcelona-based Altan, a platform that assembles teams of AI agents to autonomously design, build and operate software, has raised $2.5 million in a pre-seed round. The round was co-led by VentureFriends and JME Ventures, joined by 4Founders Ventures and ElevenLabs’ Carles Reina. Angel investors participating in the round include Pau Suris and Pau Sabria (Remotely), Albert Armengol (Doctoralia), David Baratech (Yaba), and Lluis Faus (vLex). Altan is an agent-native platform that reimagines how software is built and run. Founded in Barcelona in 2024, Altan set out to make production-ready software creation accessible to everyone, from individuals to enterprises and agencies. Users describe a product via text or voice, and Altan orchestrates role-based AI squads, full-stack engineers, UX designers, and product managers to design, build, and deploy production-ready applications. Because the software is created to be operated by agents, not just humans, Altan enables autonomous operations after launch, making it possible to stand up entire businesses rapidly and move from idea to revenue in hours. Albert Sagueda, Altan’s CEO and co-founder, emphasised that conventional no- and low-code solutions produce software intended to be run by people. At Altan, we're pioneering a completely new category of software: fully autonomous software designed to operate without human intervention. Our goal is to let you be the “idea” person, and let the agents do everything else. Altan’s agents collaborate to handle the entire software lifecycle (design, build, and deploy), including front- and back-end development, payment integrations, workflow design, and customer-database hosting. The platform can also embed agentic interfaces (voice, text, or video), making projects ready for autonomous operation from day one.

A new report by Antler, published today reveals a new generation of ‘rocketship’ unicorns —  tech companies, like Lovable, Mistral and ElevenLabs, that were founded since 2020 and have already achieved billion-dollar valuations — have disproved the myth that it is impossible to scale tech companies in Europe as fast as the US.   The report, Europe’s Era of Execution, is one of the largest studies of European founders ever conducted. It analyses 3,400 founders of 900 unicorns in Europe and the US, 35 founders of the fastest-growing software companies of all time, 1,200 Antler-backed founders, and 60,000 aspiring entrepreneurs. Europe’s rocketship Unicorns There are 14 rocketships in Europe. On average, they have taken two years to reach a billion-dollar valuation. This is significantly faster than the previous rate of 7.2 years. And they are keeping pace with the US, where the average time to unicorn is now 1.6 years. Contrary to misconceptions that European companies need American capital to scale, two-thirds of the VCs backing European rocketships are from the local ecosystem. Accel is Europe’s most prolific rocketship backer, investing in Lovable, Fuse Energy and Helsing.  Christoph Klink, Partner at Antler, comments:  “We are seeing a wave of European rocketships led by a new generation of technical founders using AI to smash through Europe’s scaling bottleneck.  As a result, Europe is producing unicorns faster than ever before. In fact, two of the top five fastest-growing software companies of all time are now European (Lovable & ElevenLabs)." He contends that while Europe may never match the US dollar-for-dollar in fundraising, “it can compete, and win, through relentless execution." "The Execution Era has begun, and Europe’s founders are redefining what is possible.” Rocketship Fuel - AI and Technical Founders AI is the driving force behind the execution era. In a survey of 1,200 European founders, 93 per cent said that AI has allowed them to execute faster, with half saying AI allows them to move 5x faster than before.  85 per cent of companies have used AI to build their MVPs. And for products in full production, up to 40 per cent of the code is AI-generated, which is 3x higher than 2020.  And Europe’s unicorn founders are more technical than ever before. 90 per cent of the founders who started rocketships since 2022 have technical backgrounds. In fact, Europe is now producing a higher share of technical founders than the US, where 80 per cent of unicorn founders since 2022 are technical. This is the first time that has happened.  Unsurprisingly, technical AI founders are the fastest-growing breed among founders starting businesses today.  Between 2023 and 2025, the number of AI engineers becoming founders in Europe increased by 14x.  And since 2022, the number of founders who previously held AI engineering roles has increased by 4x.  Europe’s challenges: London, diversity and Big Tech Despite this momentum, the report highlights a number of hurdles that Europe’s tech ecosystem still needs to overcome:  AI founder talent is not gender diverse: Europe has only produced one female AI unicorn founder, and none of the AI unicorns in the last five years have female foundersRocketships are leaving London behind: only one rocketship has come out of London, raising questions about the future dominance of the world’s third largest tech ecosystem.  Europe needs big tech engine rooms: 50 per cent of US rocketship founders hail from big tech companies, whilst only 30 per cent of European founders do The Lovable Effect In the study of 1,200 European founders, when asked to name a tech company they admired the most in the world, 40 per cent named Lovable.  80 per cent of founders said they wanted their speed of execution to be faster.  And, for the first time, speed of execution (44 per cent) has overtaken access to funding (40 per cent) as the biggest challenge facing European founders.  Rocketships such as Lovable are driving increased velocity in Europe that is also being seen at the early-stage. Startups founded in the last year in Antler’s European portfolio get to first revenue 3x as fast, and generate up to 10x more revenue in their first year, compared to startups founded three years ago.  Anton Osika, co-founder of Lovable, comments:  “The speed at which AI capabilities have been advancing mean we couldn’t have launched Lovable a couple of years ago. We have focused on building in a capital efficient way that is very common to Europe but doesn’t fit with the traditional US startup playbook.”  Marius Meiners, co-founder of Peec AI, comments:   “In the AI space, the companies that win are the ones that scale the fastest. Now more than ever, most ideas with potentially huge outcomes are fairly obvious.  Working on these ideas where you might face 50 competitors requires more than just the belief that “I can build a big company. You need a deep conviction that you can outperform everyone else, and then the discipline to execute on that belief.”

For many European startups, the US is seen as the ultimate market to scale into. Since we often frame competitiveness in terms of Europe versus the US, I wanted to hear the perspective on the 28th Regime from a founder now operating in the US. Goedele "G" Mangelaars is the founder and CEO of Pink Notebook, a travel venture built on the belief that trip planning shouldn't have to start with fixed dates. Instead, her company helps travellers secure the best offers across destinations, accommodations, activities, and transportation — with greater flexibility and inspiration. Having seen first-hand how the US ecosystem enables innovation, she is a strong advocate for Europe adopting a 28th Regime to create a more unified and competitive environment for founders. I spoke to her to learn more.  Europe has the talent, the US has the infrastructure Originally from the Netherlands and now based in New York, Mangelaars brings extensive international experience in strategy, partnerships, and marketing across the travel and technology sectors.  About 85 to 90 per cent of Mangelaars is spent in the US, where her startup Pink Notebook is headquartered. Her investors are split between the US and Europe — "I have one American investor and two European ones who also invest in US companies", she explained. When it comes to the US vs Europe, Mangelaars' perspective comes as no surprise. She contends that the US is built for startups: "You eat, sleep, breathe entrepreneurship in places like New York or San Francisco. The infrastructure is designed to help companies start and scale. In Europe, the entrepreneurial spirit is definitely there — citizens are highly educated and incredibly entrepreneurial — but the environment is slower, more fragmented, and often bogged down in bureaucracy." "European startups are asked to run a marathon with their shoelaces tied" When it comes to investment, Mangelaars believes that Europe is playing a completely different ballgame to the US: "In Europe, even at pre-seed, investors often want detailed user data — attrition rates, user metrics—before they'll even consider investing.  In the US, it's more of a people play. If you can sit across from an investor and convince them you'll 10x their fund, they'll back you." Mangelaars contends that on the founder side,  "European startups are often asked to run a marathon with their shoelaces tied." "They get smaller rounds, which makes it harder to take risks, test theses, and experiment.  Bigger rounds in the US give founders more room to try things out." From hours to weeks: the startup incorporation lottery across Europe Starting a company in Europe can mean anything from a few hours online in Estonia to several weeks of notary visits in Germany — while in the US, you can set up a Delaware C-Corp in 1–5 days. Some European countries do it well — in Estonia, through its e-Residency program, you can incorporate a company online in as little as a few hours to a day. In the UK, forming a private limited company can be done online in 24 hours. In Ukraine, startup formation can be done entirely online in minutes using the Dia platform, even during wartime.  But in Spain and Italy, it can take a couple of weeks. And in places like Germany, incorporation requires a notary – this is also the case in the Netherlands —, bank account setup, and registration with the commercial register and can take several weeks. Even logistics like opening a startup bank account can be a daunting task in Europe. According to Mangelaars, opening a corporate bank account in the Netherlands took two weeks.  "In the US, it took two hours at Chase—even without a Social Security number, just with a visa and a passport. Those little differences add up, they take founders away from critical work, and they make Europe less competitive." Europe is "committeed to death" Mangelaars and I share the opinion that Europe is obsessed with meetings and committees. She contends that while Europe's strength is its consultative approach — "every voice is heard, legislation is carefully crafted, and that creates stability. " But it also means things move very slowly. "Startups don't have the luxury of waiting years for decisions. At some point, the EU has to take a risk. Even if the 28th Regime isn't exactly ironed out on all counts, being 80 per cent right and moving quickly is better than standing still." Although many Europeans still view the US as the ultimate destination—"the ecosystem, the infrastructure, and the opportunities are stronger there, so many still want to spend a few years in the States before coming back," says Mangelaars — she notes a growing trend in startup circles of Americans heading the other way, often joining scale-ups rather than founding their own companies:  "Portugal has been popular because of its visas. I've also seen more people interested in the UK post-Brexit." "'Just try it'" Mangelaars has advice for anyone in Europe looking to form a startup: "Just try it. Start small. Test your idea in the scrappiest, cheapest way possible.  The best advice I ever got — from an Italian founder — was to find the simplest way to get user feedback. For us, it was to build an email list, ask people about their next dream trip, and then handcraft an itinerary.  It doesn't have to be perfect. Ship something, learn from it, and keep going." Europe's hubs will survive, but without the 28th Regime, scaling will suffer. Mangelaars urges Europeans pushing for the 28th Regime to keep going. "I believe deeply in rewriting the rules for startups in Europe. If legislation takes years, then founders themselves need to build networks—mentor, share contacts, make introductions." She also contends that European founders who've scaled to the US should give back: "Mentor others, share investor contacts, review MVPs. If we can't move legislation, the best thing we can give is our time. Saying "I believe in European startups" isn't enough if you're not actually helping." Ultimately, Mangelaars believes that if the 28th Regime doesn't succeed, Europe will still have strong hubs — London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Paris, Lisbon, Barcelona.  "We want Europe to thrive, we can't just wait for Brussels. We need to make it happen ourselves. But the landscape will remain fractured. Startups won't be able to scale across borders easily, and investors will continue to face obstacles in cross-border deals.  That's the real loss—not the hubs themselves, but the ability to grow and invest seamlessly across Europe."

Vibe coding is a relatively new term people are using to describe building software through natural language prompts instead of traditional programming. The term first entered commercial consciousness in a X post by OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy in early 2025, marking a shift in how people interact with code and software creation. Instead of writing lines of code, you type what you want an app or feature to do in plain English (or another language), and an AI system generates the code or even the full application for you. It's often seen as the next evolution of low-code/no-code platforms, powered by AI. It promises to democratise software creation, allowing anyone to build products, reduce costs and time, as AI handles repetitive coding, and shift competition from pure technical ability to product quality and user experience. However, it also presents challenges such as technical debt, enterprise readiness, and the risk of a market flooded with replicable tech without commercial traction. Thomas Cuvelier is a partner at early-stage VC RTP Global and was an early angel investor in the red-hot coding startup Lovable, which in July 2025 raised $200 million in a Series A round, reaching a valuation of approximately $1.8 billion just eight months after founding.  I spoke to Cuvelier to learn more.  Where are we in the hype cycle for vibe coding? According to Cuvelier, we're still early.  "This isn't hype based on nothing — it's hype based on revenue. Companies are scaling quickly, going from one to 10, one to 20. The growth is real, so I don't think we're at the peak yet." According to Cuvelier, most vibe coding users are non-technical people: "We see a lot of school kids creating simple apps and products with zero technical knowledge." The second group consists of technical or semi-technical users who utilise it to speed up coding. They might still go into the code to make adjustments for more complex applications, but the repetitive work is abstracted away. While Cuvelier predicts that most markets will be big, his interest lies in giving "superpowers" to the 99 per cent.  "These tools let anyone become a developer. No one should have that moment of thinking, 'I have a great idea, but I need to find a developer and I don't know how.' That's a huge problem to solve." However, AI code tools can’t escape technical debt or the need for review I wondered about the problem of vibe coding generating technical debt, in the context of the hidden "cost" of quick coding decisions that trade long-term stability for short-term speed. "That's the biggest issue with vibe coding today," shared Cuvelier.  "These products are great for simple apps, but enterprise use is another matter. They can create a significant amount of technical debt, and the code still requires review. Tools like GitHub Copilot have been generating code for years, but you still need to review it. That won't go away anytime soon. Right now, the apps aren't entirely enterprise-ready. This will get fixed in time, but today it's a limitation." What about explainability?  Coding is also about communicating and reasoning through ideas—pair programming, design processes, and peer reviews. Does a vibe coding approach change that? "You'll always need an audit trail," contends Cuvelier.  "These tools will increasingly include features showing how something was built — like an ingredient list on food packaging. Transparency will remain essential, even as more gets automated." Vibe coding to fundamentally change how entrepreneurs work While Cuvelier contends that technical skills are indeed necessary for startups, he argued that vibe coding democratises entrepreneurship.    "Anyone — a business leader, a biochemist — can now get started.  Over time, people won't compete on who has the best technical team, but on who builds the best product. User experience will be the differentiator, and the winners will ultimately be the users." Cuvelier contends that the core concepts will remain, such as building products and adding features, but developers will spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on design, user experience, and creativity.  He suggests that education must change, too. "If you're learning to code today, you should also learn how to use vibe coding tools alongside traditional coding." Looking forward, Cuvelier predicts that as coding becomes accessible to everyone, the cost of building software will fall close to zero, like the cost of storing data "We'll see more apps, more products, and much better quality overall, because competition will push companies to focus on user experience. Incumbents with average, clunky software will be disrupted. This shift will be visible within the next 12 to 24 months." Cuvelier: In 24 months, software costs could fall to zero — and incumbents should worry However, more access to product-building tech means more products and even with easy tools, teams still need to focus on building something users actually want. Cuvelier admits, "That's always the hardest part. It will come down to empathy — understanding how consumers think and giving them a great experience. You won't be able to get away with forcing users to adapt to bad software or locking them in." It's somewhat reminiscent of how "plug-and-play" and no-code transformed industries like IoT. Suddenly, traditional companies could implement digital tools in-house, without huge deployments. AI is finally making that possible.   However, Cuvelier cautions that incumbents should be worried: "If you're a large company with mediocre software, and you've survived by locking in customers, you're in trouble." Cuvelier sees consumer applications as particularly ripe for disruption, but also enterprise tools like CRM, accounting, and productivity software — "basically anything you use every day that you don't like." "These tools will be disrupted quickly. Some areas, though, are more protected, like apps with strong network effects.  For example, it's going to be hard to build something better than WhatsApp because all your contacts are already there." Retention is the ultimate metric As an investor, Cuvelier looks for startups with retention. "Do users stick with your platform? That's the key metric," he shared.  While a few dominant players are already emerging with strong communities, and they're hard to catch up with, there's still room for niche players—startups that specialise in verticals or unique use cases.  "If you can build community and keep users engaged, that's a good sign." Ultimately, Cuvelier contends that Europe's strength lies in its talent.  "We have deep pools in AI and machine learning. The startup ecosystem is improving, with more funding available, and companies like Lovable show that European startups can attract strong backers.  But Europe still lacks the large-scale funding rounds —€10, 20, 50 million — that Silicon Valley can provide.  That needs to change.  At the same time, the US is a huge part of the market, so European companies must think globally from day one."

Opper AI, a UK-based startup focused on production-grade reliability for generative AI systems, has acquired FinetuneDB, a platform known for its streamlined approach to dataset curation and fine-tuning of large language models (LLMs). While financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, the integration signals a broader trend in the generative AI sector, where fine-tuning and real-world reliability are becoming crucial differentiators as companies move beyond experimentation and into scaled deployment. Founded in 2023 by Göran Sandahl and Johan Gustafsson, previously part of the founding team behind Unomaly (acquired by LogicMonitor in 2020), Opper AI provides a Task-Completion API designed to ensure generative AI models perform consistently in real-world applications. The startup’s customer base includes GetTested, Beatly, Ping Payments, and Steep, and it is backed by investors including Luminar Ventures, Emblem, Greens Capital, and a network of angel investors. FinetuneDB, for its part, has established itself as a go-to platform for simplifying the fine-tuning process of LLMs, with tools that streamline training workflows and enable teams to rapidly build models tailored to specific use cases. With the AI industry in the midst of a shift from foundational models to task-specific systems, fine-tuning has become a critical battleground. From OpenAI to Anthropic, players across the board are exploring ways to make LLMs more adaptable and efficient in targeted use cases. Opper’s acquisition of FinetuneDB places it among a cohort of companies aiming to own the full lifecycle of autonomous agents, from training data pipelines to deployment monitoring.

Healthtech continued to demonstrate its strength in Europe in the first half of 2025, attracting €4 billion in funding, around 12 per cent of the €33.7 billion raised across all European tech sectors. Although healthtech accounted for just 237 deals out of 1,923 total tech transactions (about 12 per cent), it delivered some of the largest rounds of the year, underscoring investor appetite for innovation in biotech, digital health, and medical devices. The top ten healthtech deals alone brought in over €2.1 billion, more than half of the sector’s total. The UK dominated the rankings with five of the ten biggest rounds, while Sweden and the Netherlands also stood out. Spain, Switzerland, and Ireland each contributed major rounds. This concentration of capital signals both the maturity of European healthtech and its growing role in tackling global challenges, from AI-driven drug discovery to obesity treatment, surgical robotics, and digital-first care delivery. Here are the 10 biggest healthtech deals in H1 2025. Amount raised in H1 2025: $600M Isomorphic Labs is a company with the mission to “solve all diseases.” Building on DeepMind’s AlphaFold, it combines advanced AI and drug discovery expertise to model biological complexity digitally. By creating predictive and generative models, the company designs novel molecules, predicts drug behaviour, and accelerates the development of new therapies. Its approach aims to transform how humanity understands, treats, and ultimately cures diseases. In March, Isomorphic Labs raised $600 million in its first external funding round to accelerate its AI drug design engine and advance therapies into the clinic. Amount raised in H1 2025: $411M Verdiva Bio is a company on a mission to transform the lives of millions living with obesity and related cardiometabolic disorders by developing next-generation, more patient-friendly therapies. Its lead asset, VRB-101, is an oral, once-weekly GLP-1 peptide with promising efficacy and dosing convenience demonstrated in a Phase 1 study. Verdiva also advances a robust pipeline of oral and injectable amylin agonists, both alone and in combination, designed for enhanced efficacy, tolerability, affordability, and access. Leveraging gut-brain biology and a team with proven drug-development expertise, Verdiva is poised to address significant unmet needs in obesity and cardiometabolic care. In January, Verdiva Bio launched with a $411 million Series A financing round, backing development of its next-gen oral and injectable obesity and cardiometabolic treatments. Amount raised in H1 2025: $260M Neko Health is a preventive healthtech company headquartered in Stockholm, with clinics in Stockholm and London. The company delivers a groundbreaking health check, the Neko Body Scan, that uses non-invasive, AI-enabled technology to capture millions of data points (skin imaging, cardiovascular metrics, bloodwork, etc.) in under an hour. Clients receive instant results and an unhurried doctor consultation, empowering early detection and personalised care to shift healthcare from reactive to proactive. The team spans over 100 doctors, researchers, and engineers across Europe. Neko Health secured $260 million in Series B funding in January to fuel US and European expansion and boost R&D in its preventive health scanning technology. Amount raised in H1 2025: $200M CMR Surgical is a British medical device company founded in 2014 and headquartered in Cambridge, UK. Their flagship product, Versius, is a compact, modular, and portable robotic system designed to advance minimal access surgery, also known as keyhole surgery, by enhancing precision, surgeon ergonomics, and operational flexibility. Versius seamlessly integrates into existing operating-room workflows without requiring infrastructure changes, accelerating surgeon adoption through familiar port placements. CMR's mission centres on expanding access to robotic-assisted surgery globally, leveraging innovative deployment and financing models to benefit both patients and healthcare systems. In April, CMR Surgical raised over $200 million in a financing round (combining equity and debt) to drive global expansion and innovation. Amount raised in H1 2025: €150M Cera is a digital-first home healthcare provider. It enables longer, healthier lives at home by shifting services like nursing, telehealth, repeat prescriptions, and in-home care out of hospitals. Powered by AI and machine learning, its platform empowers carers with smarter planning and early detection tools, predicting and preventing deterioration up to 30 times faster than traditional methods, significantly reducing hospitalisations. With nearly 10,000 carers delivering over 60,000 daily in-home visits across the UK, Cera is shaping the future of connected, preventative healthcare. In January, Cera secured $150 million in a combined debt and equity financing round to scale its AI-driven home healthcare platform. Amount raised in H1 2025: €132M Azafaros is a company developing new treatments for rare genetic diseases called lysosomal storage disorders. Its lead medicine, nizubaglustat, is an oral drug designed to reach the brain and target the underlying cause of diseases such as GM1/GM2 gangliosidoses and Niemann-Pick type C. Founded in 2018 and based in the Netherlands, Azafaros is backed by European investors and is preparing to start Phase 3 clinical trials to bring the first disease-modifying therapy to patients in need. In May, Azafaros raised €132 million in an oversubscribed Series B round to advance its lead therapy. Amount raised in H1 2025: $135M SpliceBio is a clinical-stage genetic medicines company based in Barcelona, pioneering Protein Splicing, an innovative gene therapy platform, to deliver large genes that exceed the limitations of traditional AAV vectors. Its lead program, SB-007, is a dual AAV therapy currently in Phase 1/2 trials for Stargardt disease, aiming to restore full-length protein expression in retinal cells. With a strong, experienced team and a growing pipeline across ophthalmology and neurology, SpliceBio seeks to broaden the impact of gene therapy where there are no current options. In June, SpliceBio closed a $135 million Series B financing to advance its lead gene therapy candidate for Stargardt disease and expand its genetic medicine pipeline. Amount raised in H1 2025: $130M GlycoEra is a pioneering biotech company based in Switzerland and the US, transforming autoimmune disease treatment through its novel CustomGlycan platform. By engineering bispecific biologics that selectively target and degrade disease-driving circulating proteins, especially autoantibodies like IgG4, it offers unmatched speed, precision, and safety compared to traditional immunosuppressive therapies. In. May, GlycoEra closed an oversubscribed $130 million Series B financing to advance its lead IgG4-targeted protein degrader into human trials, bring a second program into the clinic, and expand its precision immunology pipeline. Amount raised in H1 2025: $120M CeQur is a diabetes technology company simplifying mealtime insulin delivery with its innovative CeQur Simplicity™, a discreet, wearable patch that eliminates the need for injections. Based in Switzerland, with US, CeQur offers injection-free mealtime dosing using a flexible cannula, enabling convenient one-click insulin delivery for up to four days per patch. Clinically shown to reduce A1C and boost time-in-range, it enhances adherence and helps people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes manage their health more easily. CeQur closed a $120 million equity financing round in January to accelerate commercial growth. Amount raised in H1 2025: $120M FIRE1 is a Dublin-based, clinical-stage medtech innovator focused on transforming heart failure care. Born from The Foundry incubator in Menlo Park, the company has developed NORM, an investigational remote monitoring system that directly measures fluid levels via the inferior vena cava. With a simple same-day implant, wearable activation belt, and connected patient–clinician app, NORM empowers patients to monitor their heart health at home and stay connected to medical teams. In January, FIRE1 secured $120 million in financing to expand operations and development of its heart failure management solutions.

Italian fintech platform Tot has closed a pre-Series A investment round of €7 million. The round was led by CDP Venture Capital, with participation from Azimut Group, The Techshop, X-Equity Venture Club, ClubDeal Digital, and early backer Banca Sella. Co-investors also include a Chapeau Media–led consortium of entrepreneurs and executives, Matteo Pichi (Poke House), Pietro Marchetti (Humamy; acquired by Bending Spoons), Giuseppe Nicola Ramonda (Sorelle Ramonda), Francesco Fiorese (Simon-Kucher Italy), and Alessandro Rimassa (Radical HR) via Happy2C Holding, alongside angels Paolo Galvani (Moneyfarm) and Gianluca Cocco (Qomodo). Tot is an online platform for company administrative and financial management. It offers a business account with an Italian IBAN, payment and collection services, physical and virtual cards, integrated administrative tools, and collaborative, team expense-management features, with data and payment security controls. Tot’s strategic goals are to become the Italian fintech champion in banking and administrative management for SMEs, targeting over 40,000 clients within two years and expanding its team to more than 100 employees. According to CEO Doris Messina, the company differentiates itself through a strong Italian identity and a deep understanding of the domestic market’s dynamics. With this new capital, we will further strengthen our mission to support Italian companies with cutting-edge financial tools for the development of the local real economy, showing that it is possible to challenge international giants in a market like ours, which is the largest in Europe by number of potentially interested companies. The funding will support the development of new products and features in administration, expense management, and financial optimisation. Tot also plans to increase investment in AI to enhance efficiency, expand automation for clients, and improve internal processes, aimed at further automating and simplifying administrative and financial tasks for Italian SMEs. In parallel, the company plans a significant team expansion, with hiring focused on technology, product management, marketing, sales, customer success, and compliance.

Quadrille Capital, which invests in VC and directly invests in tech, has closed a €500 million funding round, which will see it invest in the European and US tech sector.The Paris and San Francisco-based firm’s funding round runs across various funds. These are direct investments, €285m, while its primary fund has raised €70m, and its secondary fund has raised €150m. It brings Quadrille’s total assets under management to €1.8bn.Quadrille invests in tech sectors in the EU and the US in areas such as software, AI and healthcare. A quarter of its direct investment fund has already been deployed in firms such as Sanas in AI, Homa in gaming and Wisetack in fintech.The primary fund invests in VC funds and growth funds, while the €150m raise for the secondary fund, Quadrille says, was more than three times the amount raised in its first vintage.Jérôme Chevalier, CEO of Quadrille Capital, said: "Over 20 years, Quadrille Capital has built a leading independent investment platform that offers its investors the means to capture all growth opportunities in the tech sector in both Europe and the United States. “Our pioneering and cross-functional strategic vision, deployed through our multi-strategy model, gives us a unique positioning in the industry. These fundraisings illustrate the recognition of this model and demonstrate confidence in the expertise of our teams, whose talent and commitment are the foundation of our success."

Helsinki-based ONEiO, an automation-first platform redefining enterprise IT integrations, has raised €8 million in a growth round. The round was led by Bocap, with renewed participation from existing investor Fairpoint Capital. ONEiO is a Managed Integration Service Provider delivering IntegrationOps, a cloud-native, automation-led integration model for enterprise IT. In a world where teams ship weekly, orchestrate multi-party service ecosystems, and face constant cost pressure, legacy integration approaches can’t keep up. ONEiO’s fully managed platform replaces slow, project-based work with an always-on, scalable service that removes bottlenecks, lowers costs, and accelerates time-to-value. By productizing the delivery and operations of integrations, ONEiO treats them as core infrastructure that can scale and evolve continuously to deliver ongoing business impact, much like DevOps transformed software delivery. Powered by ONEAi® and deep domain expertise, ONEiO simplifies complex IT estates so organisations can scale faster and focus on outcomes. Juha Berghäll, CEO and co-founder of ONEiO, shared: For decades, integrations have been built as one-off projects: expensive, brittle, and impossible to scale. With IntegrationOps, we’ve turned integration into an ongoing capability that’s live in weeks, evolves automatically, and runs without manual work. In the AI era, this isn’t optional, it’s the only way to keep up. ONEiO has helped major organisations automate complex integrations in IT service ecosystems, from Service Integration and Management (SIAM) to global multi-vendor environments. Delivered as a fully managed service, ONEiO replaces custom code, middleware, and months-long delivery cycles with automation and speed. Customers connect internal systems and external partners through a ready-to-use, cloud-based platform with built-in automation, monitoring, security, and compliance. Integrations are deployed faster and at much lower cost, without sacrificing control or security. As the gap widens between enterprise needs and what legacy tools can deliver, IntegrationOps closes it, turning integration from a hidden operational burden into a strategic capability that accelerates innovation and improves customer experience. The new funding will advance IntegrationOps as a Service, while supporting key hires and expansion across the UK and DACH, where organisations face mounting pressure to modernise ageing infrastructure without escalating costs. 

Munich-based collaborative robotics specialist Hive Robotics has raised €2 million to further build a world-class engineering team and advance the technology roadmap for resilient, scalable robotics. The oversubscribed pre-seed round was led by b2venture, with participation from renowned VCs and business angels including Firedrop, Pareto, Matthias Hilpert and Klocke Group. Founded in 2025, Hive Robotics builds integrated, compact, and modular systems that fuse robot control, perception, localisation, and secure communications, engineered for resilience in complex, GNSS/GPS-denied environments. Through distributed sensor fusion and a proprietary Onboard AI module, its technology enables unmanned systems, from lightweight drones to heavy ground and maritime vehicles, to operate collaboratively. As unmanned systems expand rapidly across air, land, sea, and space, the need for secure, reliable, and cost-effective infrastructure is critical. Hive Robotics addresses this with its C3 (Command, Control, Connect) architecture, which compresses robotics complexity into a single framework so multiple platforms can collaborate more effectively than the sum of their parts. Examples include air swarms that detect wildfires or threats and instantly share data across the flock, to search and rescue missions where drones with heat sensors and cameras collaboratively locate people after disasters. By teaming air, ground, and maritime systems, rovers and unmanned boats gain aerial overwatch to navigate in GNSS-denied environments, aid defence operations, and monitor infrastructure (pipelines, offshore wind). This foundation also lets companies build additional, market-specific civil and defence use cases. According to Sebastian Mores, CEO and co-founder of Hive Robotics, the world is nearing a major automation shift, with millions of unmanned systems expected to operate across air, sea, land, and space. He commented: While the core technologies have existed for years, true integration into human environments requires rigorous safety, robust security, and globally aligned standards, as well as systems that can seamlessly work together. Global demand for robotics and autonomous systems is growing rapidly, with estimates pointing to multi-billion-dollar annual markets by 2025 and beyond. Two critical challenges remain: complying with safety regulations for use in populated areas and achieving seamless cross-domain integration. Hive Robotics addresses both, unlocking swarming capabilities for applications in disaster response, defence, critical-infrastructure monitoring, mining, and space exploration. The new capital will enable the company to recruit top engineering talent and advance the technology roadmap, enabling the team to deliver differentiated solutions faster and at scale.