Enlightra, a deeptech startup developing chip-scale multiwavelength lasers for next-generation data transmission, has raised a total of $15 million. Investors include Y Combinator, Runa Capital, Pegasus Tech Ventures, Protocol Labs, Halo Labs, Asymmetry Ventures, and TRAC VC, among others. Modern AI training increasingly depends on faster connections between GPUs, yet many systems still rely on copper links constrained by bandwidth and power consumption. As AI clusters and data centres scale, these limitations are becoming more pronounced. Enlightra’s approach uses multiwavelength lasers that consolidate many discrete lasers into a single integrated source, reducing power use, cost, and physical footprint. Each wavelength functions as an independent data channel, enabling multiple high-bandwidth connections from one laser source and supporting a shift from copper wiring to compact optical links. The world’s AI infrastructure is hitting the limits of copper. Our lasers unlock a new level of energy-efficient connectivity by turning light into the backbone of GPU communication, said Maxim Karpov, co-founder and co-CEO of Enlightra. Using additional wavelengths allows optical fibre networks to operate closer to their full capacity, co-founder and co-CEO John Jost explained. Our technology enables AI clusters and data centres to scale more efficiently by decoupling performance growth from energy and cost increases. Built using industry-standard silicon photonics fabrication processes, the lasers are designed for large-scale manufacturing, enabling production at volumes suitable for global data centre deployment. The company has developed 8- and 16-channel lasers aligned with customer requirements for AI chip interconnects and reports error-free data transmission at target speeds and power levels. Pilot production is planned for 2027. The company’s vision extends beyond AI clusters. Its scalable comb-laser platform could power future optical links across entire data centres, subsea cables, and even chip-to-memory interconnects, with potential applications in quantum and space-based communications. The funding will support Enlightra’s next steps to improve data-transfer speed and energy efficiency for AI infrastructure.

Italian-based Exein, a company focused on embedded cybersecurity for connected devices, has secured €100 million in new funding, following its €70 million Series C round in July 2025. This brings the company’s total capital raised in 2025 to €170 million. The round is led by Blue Cloud Ventures, with participation from HV Capital, Intrepid Growth Partners, Geodesic Capital, and J.P. Morgan. The €100 million comprises an equity investment alongside a financing facility led by J.P. Morgan. As cyberattacks increasingly affect physical infrastructure, disrupting hospitals and airports, interrupting transport systems, and compromising supply chains, manufacturers are placing greater emphasis on security embedded directly into devices, rather than relying primarily on perimeter-based defences. Exein’s platform integrates AI-enabled runtime security into firmware, enabling connected devices to detect, contain, and respond to threats in real time, including in environments where continuous connectivity is not available. This approach can support integrity and provenance checks across supply chains and help organisations meet requirements under frameworks such as RED 3.3, the forthcoming EU Cyber Resilience Act, and the US Cyber Trust Mark. The company says its embedded, hardware-agnostic platform currently protects more than 1.5 billion devices across sectors, including energy, healthcare, defence, automotive, aerospace, industrial automation, semiconductors, and robotics. Exein expects the number of devices running its software to exceed two billion in the first quarter of 2026, driven by new deployments, growth in active devices, and increasing regulatory focus on device-level security. Commenting on the product roadmap, Gianni Cuozzo, Founder & CEO of Exein, said: We’ll unveil the first wave of this breakthrough at RSAC in Q1, as we continue building the digital immune system that will protect the connected world for years to come. Exein plans to use the new funding to develop its next generation of embedded runtime security technology for connected devices, including AI-enabled protections for on-device AI and large language models, with an initial release expected to be presented at RSAC 2026. The company also intends to support a multi-transaction M&A programme in 2026 across Europe and the United States, and to accelerate international expansion, with a particular focus on the US and APAC markets. The company’s valuation increased significantly in the five months between the July fundraising round and this extension, reflecting changes in its commercial position and broader demand for device-level cybersecurity.

In the first half of 2025, European deeptech is characterised by a strong emphasis on engineering, a focus on climate and industrial applications, and an increasing concentration on hardware-based solutions. The landscape is dominated by technologies that require long R&D cycles, specialised talent, and close ties to labs, pilot customers, and regulated markets, yet many ventures are clearly moving from prototype into industrialisation and early-scale deployment. A lot of effort is going into making core systems cleaner and more efficient, like energy, materials, and infrastructure that sit underneath everything else. At the same time, there is a growing focus on technologies that improve how industrial systems are monitored and managed, enabling organisations to gain clearer visibility into complex operations, identify issues earlier, and improve performance in reliability-critical environments. The following are the ten largest funding rounds in the European deeptech industry during the first half of 2025. Amount raised in H1 2025: €50M Marvel Fusion is a company focused on developing commercially viable fusion power systems. Founded in 2019, the company is pioneering a laser-driven approach to nuclear fusion that aims to deliver safe, reliable, and low-carbon energy at scale. Its technology combines intense, short-pulse lasers with advanced fuel targets to initiate fusion reactions, seeking a pathway to compact and efficient fusion power plants. Marvel Fusion collaborates with industrial and research partners as it works toward building the first generation of fusion energy facilities, positioning itself as a leader in the emerging private fusion energy sector. In March, Marvel Fusion secured a €50 million extension to its Series B round, bringing total funding in the round to €113 million, as the company moves from research and development toward industrial deployment. Amount raised in H1 2025: €36M H2SITE is developing advanced solutions to enable the sustainable production and transport of high-purity hydrogen. The company’s proprietary membrane reactor and separator technology uses highly selective palladium-alloy membranes to extract and purify hydrogen from a range of feedstocks, including ammonia, methanol, syngas, and biogas, as well as from mixed gas streams. Founded in Bilbao in 2020 as a deep-tech spin-off, H2SITE’s innovations are designed to address key challenges in the hydrogen value chain by making hydrogen more accessible and cost-effective for a range of uses. In January, H2SITE raised €36 million to support the next phase of development of the company’s hydrogen technology, including plans to increase purification capacity to more than 20 tons per day by 2026. Amount raised in H1 2025: £17M Intelligent Energy is a hydrogen fuel cell manufacturer that develops and produces proton-exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell power systems. The company offers zero-emission fuel cell products ranging from approximately 800W to over 300kW for various applications, including automotive, aerospace, stationary power, telecommunications, marine, rail, unmanned aerial vehicles, and materials handling. Headquartered and manufacturing in the UK, Intelligent Energy works with partners and customers globally to support the deployment of hydrogen-powered solutions. Intelligent Energy received £17 million in government-backed funding in June. Amount raised in H1 2025: €18M KEEY Aerogel is a materials company founded in 2015 that develops and manufactures aerogel-based thermal insulation solutions. The company produces sustainable silica aerogel using a patented process that upcycles construction waste, positioning its material as a local, competitive alternative to conventional insulation products. KEEY Aerogel also provides R&D support and scale-up services to adapt and industrialise aerogel products for customer needs, with a stated goal of building a network of local production facilities in Europe. In January, Keey Aerogel raised €18 million in Series A to scale Europe’s first green aerogel. Amount raised in H1 2025: €17.5M SemiQon is a quantum hardware company developing silicon-based quantum processors designed to support the scale-up of quantum computers toward the “million-qubit era.” The company builds quantum integrated circuits using standard semiconductor materials and manufacturing methods to improve scalability, cost efficiency, and sustainability. In addition to quantum processors, SemiQon develops cryogenic CMOS (cryo-CMOS) chips for next-generation technologies that require reliable performance at very low temperatures. SemiQon raised €17.5 million in funding in February to boost its cryogenic CMOS technology. Amount raised in H1 2025: $17M Chipiron is a French medical imaging company developing an ultra-low-field, portable MRI system designed to make MRI more accessible and easier to deploy. The company’s approach uses very low magnetic fields and aims to reduce the size, cost, and infrastructure requirements of conventional MRI, while targeting diagnostic-quality imaging for broader screening and clinical use. In April, Chipiron raised $17 million in a Series A round to complete the development of its compact and lower-cost MRI system. Amount raised in H1 2025: $15M ATLANT 3D is a deeptech advanced manufacturing company developing atomic-scale fabrication technologies for microelectronics, optics, photonics, sensors, and other high-precision industries. Its proprietary Direct Atomic Layer Processing (DALP) platform enables atomically precise material deposition and patterning, supporting rapid innovation across the full value chain from materials R&D and prototyping to scalable production of micro- and nano-devices. ATLANT 3D’s tools and services aim to reduce design iteration time, lower costs, and expand manufacturing capabilities for complex applications, while maintaining compatibility with semiconductor industry standards. In March, ATLANT 3D secured $15 million for space manufacturing, with support from NASA and ESA. Amount raised in H1 2025: $13.5M Lidrotec is a laser systems company focused on high-precision wafer dicing and micromaterial processing for the semiconductor industry. Its technology combines ultrashort-pulse laser processing with controlled fluids to cool and clean the cutting zone, aiming to reduce heat damage, particle defects, and material waste while improving yield and cut quality. The company develops equipment for cutting and structuring microchips and other high-tech components, with applications also extending to areas such as electronics, energy, and medical technology. In June, Lidrotec raised $13.5 million to tackle semiconductor yield bottlenecks. Amount raised in H1 2025: €8.5M FononTech is an advanced manufacturing company developing Impulse Printing, an additive manufacturing technology designed for high-volume assembly of complex 2D and 3D microelectronic structures used in semiconductor and display manufacturing. The company’s core products (including an impulse printhead and plate system) are built for integration into production environments and aim to enable smaller, higher-performance electronics while reducing material waste, energy use, and the overall manufacturing footprint. In May, FononTech raised €8.5 million to finalise the development of its first product and accelerate customer acquisition efforts. Amount raised in H1 2025: €6M Axiles Bionics is a company that designs and develops next-generation bionic prosthetics for lower-limb amputees. The company focuses on intelligent ankle-foot prostheses that aim to better replicate natural movement by combining biomechanics with technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence to support improved mobility and comfort in everyday use. In June, Axiles Bionics closed the first €6 million of its €8 million Series A round to globalise its biomimetic prosthetic foot.

Dutch aerospace and defencetech company  Destinus has secured a €50 million financing facility from Commerzbank, marking the company’s first commercial bank facility and supporting the next phase of its industrial expansion across Europe.   The Commerzbank facility complements €140 million in recently completed convertible instruments and shareholder loans, following the company’s earlier equity financing.  Together, these new financings build on more than €200 million in previously raised equity, bringing Destinus’ total capital raised to nearly €400 million to date. Check out an earlier interview we did with Martina Lofqvist, Senior Business Development Manager at Destinus. From fast hypersonic flight to dual-use tech When Destinus launched in 2021, it captured my attention with a highly ambitious vision: hydrogen-powered hypersonic aircraft capable of flying at Mach 5+, potentially cutting intercontinental journeys such as Europe to Australia from around 20 hours to four. Early experimental aircraft, including the Jungfrau and Eiger demonstrators, were explicitly designed to test aerodynamics, propulsion concepts, and materials for a future hypersonic “hyperplane,” positioning Destinus as one of Europe’s boldest bets on green, ultra-high-speed aviation. Over the past two years, however, the company has recalibrated toward more immediate and commercially viable opportunities. Rather than prioritising a full-scale hypersonic passenger aircraft, Destinus has shifted its centre of gravity to near-term, dual-use aerospace technologies, particularly autonomous and uncrewed systems. Its current portfolio includes UAV platforms such as LORD, RUTA, and Hornet, aimed at surveillance, mapping, rapid response, and defence applications. This strategic refocus was reinforced in 2025 with the acquisition of Swiss AI avionics specialist Daedalean in a deal reported at around $220–225 million, signalling that Destinus now sees its competitive edge less in raw speed and more in AI-driven autonomy and deployable systems — especially in defence and security markets where demand and timelines are clearer. Destinus is strengthening its role within the Dutch and broader European defence industrial base. With 750 engineers and specialists across Europe, the company combines AI-driven engineering, vertical integration, and large-scale production to design and manufacture autonomous systems and effectors at an industrial scale. “Securing this facility is an important milestone for Destinus and a strong signal of confidence in Europe’s ability to build high-performance autonomous flight systems at scale. It reinforces our production roadmap and accelerates the industrialisation of our platforms for European and allied customers,” said Mikhail Kokorich, Founder and CEO of Destinus.  The new capital will accelerate the expansion of Destinus’ production lines, integration facilities, and testing infrastructure, enabling the company to supply scalable, cost-efficient autonomous systems that reinforce European defence readiness and strengthen sovereign industrial capacity across allied nations.

Tallinn-based ÄIO, a biotechnology company developing sustainable, non-animal fats and oils through fermentation, has been awarded a €1.2 million grant from Enterprise Estonia to advance its FERM-OIL project. The total project budget is €2.3 million. Founded in 2022 as a spin-off from TalTech (Tallinn University of Technology), ÄIO produces food-grade fats and oils by using specialised yeast to convert wood and agricultural by-products, such as sugars derived from sawdust. The approach is designed to reduce reliance on animal fats and palm oil through a faster, lower-impact production process. To date, the company has raised €6.8 million in seed funding and secured around €3 million in grants from Enterprise Estonia, the Environmental Investment Centre, and the EU CBE-JU programme. While alternative and plant-based proteins have seen rapid progress, the food industry continues to face a shortage of sustainable lipid ingredients that complement these products. Many early-stage lipid alternatives struggle to scale or meet industrial and regulatory requirements. FERM-OIL aims to address this gap by supporting the transition from laboratory development to industrial food production. As explained by Dr Mary-Liis Kütt, ÄIO’s Chief Innovation Officer and lead of the project, FERM-OIL focuses on one of the most challenging steps in food innovation: moving from lab-scale validation to factory-scale manufacturing. We already know that our Flavoured Fat performs well in prototypes, from replacing cocoa powder and brown sugar to adding a silky texture to broths and sauces. This project allows us to validate the process on industrial lines, generate robust safety data for the novel food dossier, and better understand consumer responses to these new lipid ingredients. Over the next three years, the project will advance ÄIO’s Flavoured Fat, a lipid-rich yeast biomass designed to deliver umami flavour and functional mouthfeel, from lab and pilot stages to validated industrial production. The work will include optimising the fermentation process, validating second-generation feedstocks sourced from food, forestry, and agricultural side-streams, and transferring production to an industrial contract manufacturing facility. Test batches will be used for downstream processing optimisation, quality and shelf-life studies, and novel food safety assessment. By the end of the project, ÄIO aims to reach TRL6, demonstrating readiness for industrial-scale production. This will include confirming process requirements at scale and completing the safety work needed to submit a novel food dossier to the European Commission. The project is also expected to support follow-on investment plans for a 4,000-tonne-per-year production facility and potential large-scale licensing agreements. Fermentation gives us a way to turn side-streams into stable, nutritious, functional lipids that are not dependent on climate, seasons, or fragile global supply chains. This grant allows us to demonstrate that our process can operate at industrial scale and that novel lipids can become a reliable part of future food systems, said Nemailla Bonturi, co-founder and CEO of ÄIO. Within FERM-OIL, ÄIO will also evaluate Flavoured Fat across savoury, bakery, and beverage applications, working with potential customers to assess performance in their processes and gather feedback on taste, texture, and consumer acceptance. The broader aim is to enable local production of key lipid ingredients using manufacturers’ own side-streams, reducing dependence on animal fats and land-intensive tropical oils.

Brussels e-bike company Cowboy has officially closed its deal with ReBirth Group Holding SA — the French mobility group behind renowned cycling brands including Peugeot, Gitane, and Solex.  This agreement signals a significant new phase for Cowboy, bringing together the company’s design, software, and product expertise with ReBirth’s robust industrial and recapitalisation capabilities. ReBirth’s proven experience in supporting and scaling mobility brands gives Cowboy the new operational foundation it needs to stabilise production, increase delivery reliability, and move toward long-term sustainability.  The combined transaction, including new capital from ReBirth and reinvestment from existing shareholders (€15 million) for a majority stake in the company. In addition to the conversion of legacy obligations into equity, are new financial measures designed to stabilise and strengthen Cowboy for the long term.  The transaction includes a full financial restructuring with Cowboy’s primary lender, providing a stronger balance sheet and a clean slate.  New funding will be received in several stages and is primarily dedicated to supporting the restart of the production and delivery of spare parts.  The move has been received positively by Cowboy’s existing shareholder base, with both investors and the Crowdcube community voting overwhelmingly in favour of this new chapter and endorsing the long-term vision shared by both companies.  A partnership built on shared expertise  ReBirth contributes deep expertise in industrial operations, supply chain management, and a robust distribution network in France. In turn, Cowboy brings into the ReBirth Group a market-leading connected platform, award-winning design DNA, and one of the most engaged rider communities in the urban e-bike segment.  Cowboy’s digital expertise and platform capabilities will also support innovation across other ReBirth brands, applying the same data-driven systems and tools that have defined Cowboy’s approach to connected mobility.  This vertical integration enables greater production efficiency, cost optimisation, and shared innovation across ReBirth’s ecosystem of brands – with Cowboy maintaining its distinct design and technology-driven identity. A stronger foundation for customers  With the transaction now complete, Cowboy reaffirms that its community of over 80,000 riders will continue to receive full support on the road. All existing bikes remain operational, with hardware, software, and customer services operating as normal.  The ongoing recall programme that has expanded its efforts into major cities around Europe and the UK already, will also continue, with a detailed progress update to be shared in the New Year.  Backed by ReBirth’s industrial strength, Cowboy’s production will restart at its French assembly facility in the New Year. A reinforced manufacturing schedule is now in motion, in addition to a comprehensive production plan of over 1,500 bikes in January, which will support the fulfilment of the existing backlog and beyond. In the coming weeks, all waiting customers will receive updated delivery timelines aligned with this new plan.  Operational planning for 2026 is being built around significantly improved capacity, predictability, and access to components. This enhanced industrial foundation allows Cowboy to operate with greater resilience and consistency, ensuring riders receive their bikes faster and enjoy the high-quality experience the brand is known for.  Marta, Head of Customer Success at Cowboy, said:  ‘We previously set a high benchmark for after-sales service, and this new chapter allows us to return to that standard. With stronger operational capacity and clearer timelines, we’re focused on rebuilding trust and delivering the consistent support our customers expect from Cowboy.”  Industrial integration and supply chain excellence   While Cowboy bikes have already been assembled in ReBirth’s French production facilities, this next phase marks a deeper operational integration – improving quality control, lead times, and scalability across ReBirth’s established European and Asian supplier networks.  This increase will enable Cowboy to offer shorter, more competitive lead times for new customers from Spring 2026 onward.  This integration provides Cowboy with the industrial leverage necessary to return to stable, large-scale production, positioning the brand to achieve sustainable profitability.  Expanding retail and after-sales support  Leveraging ReBirth’s extensive retail and service network – including 95 Oxygen and 10 Ovelo bike stores as well as 500 Independent Bike Dealers – Cowboy will significantly strengthen its physical presence in France.  Plans include the rollout of new retail and service points in major cities, improving local availability, after-sales care, and visibility. Currently, Cowboy’s fourth-largest market behind the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany, France is expected to become its fastest-growing market, supported by ReBirth’s infrastructure and logistics expertise.  Leadership for the next chapter As part of this transition, Cowboy’s leadership team is now working in close alignment with ReBirth Group leadership. Together, they will guide the brand into its next phase, with a focus on operational excellence, customer satisfaction, and continued innovation.  Adrien Roose, Founder and outgoing CEO, has supported the transition period and has now left the company.  Grégory Trébaol, CEO of ReBirth Group Holding SA, said:  “I would like to thank Cowboy’s founders for their vision, ambition, and the remarkable company they have built in a difficult market. This transaction opens a new chapter for Cowboy. Following Peugeot, Gitane, and Solex, Cowboy now stands as Rebirth Group’s fleuron for connected urban mobility, completing a string of pearls of iconic brands. Combining our industrial capabilities with Cowboy’s innovation will enhance efficiency, reinforce margins, and create a strong foundation for long-term growth.”   Adrien Roose, Founder of Cowboy, said:  “My hope is that this new partnership will make Cowboy more reliable for riders in the long term. To keep them on the road and supported in the best way possible.”  Cowboy will continue to operate independently from its Brussels headquarters, maintaining its in-house design, engineering, and software teams. Working hand-in-hand with ReBirth, the company’s priorities are now to strengthen production, optimise supply chains, and expand its retail and service footprint across Europe.  Together, the two companies are building a more resilient foundation for the future, one that prioritises reliability, efficiency, innovation and rider satisfaction. 

German stock trading app Trade Republic has confirmed a €12.5 billion ($14.7bn) valuation, following a secondary share sale which saw Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Sequoia buy more shares.The new €12.5bn valuation propels Trade Republic to decacorn status (privately held company valued at over $10bn), more than doubling its 2022 approximate valuation of €5bn.Investors sold shares worth €1.2bn to existing investors, including Founders Fund, Sequoia, Accel, TCV and Thrive Capital, Trade Republic said.New investors in Berlin-based Trade Republic include Wellington, Fidelity and Khosla Ventures, it said. The deal doesn’t bring any new capital into Trade Republic.Christian Hecker, co-founder and CEO, Trade Republic, said: ‘“This transaction underlines that the cultural shift to retail investing in Europe is only starting. Especially since governments such as Germany start meaningful pension reforms to foster private stock ownership in the broader public.” 

As a small business owner, you have to be scrappy. You need to find ways to break out in today’s crowded market — reach new audiences, automate processes, improve efficiencies, and do more with less — without overextending your team. The right technology can unlock all that, and then some. A 2024 study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported that 99% of small-business owners use at least one tech platform or tool to run their business, with 47% using four or more platforms. Two out of five small business owners (40%) said they were using generative AI, nearly double the percentage of generative AI users in 2023 (23%). But some may not realize that they only need one platform for their communication and collaboration needs, with generative and agentic AI built in. Zoom Workplace with AI Companion brings together phone, team chat, whiteboard, meetings, smart documents, and supported third-party integrations into a single user experience. Whether you’re looking to get more done for your current customer base or actively grow your business, check out the tips below to see how Zoom Workplace can help you save more time while getting the biggest bang for your buck. 1. Boost productivity with AI Companion The U.S. Chamber of Commerce small-business survey reports that 91% of businesses said they were optimistic that AI would help their business grow in the future. However, 22% of businesses that don’t use AI cite concerns about cost as a barrier to adoption. While some companies charge a premium for AI capabilities per user, Zoom AI Companion is included at no additional cost with your eligible paid Zoom plan.* Just click the AI Companion sparkle icon when you’re hosting a Zoom meeting. This will allow you to turn on meeting summaries or ask a question like “catch me up” to get the details on what has been discussed so far. In addition to summarizing meetings, AI Companion can also help you compose emails and chat messages, brainstorm and organize content on a whiteboard, and prioritize your voicemails and summarize phone calls on Zoom Phone. You can ask AI Companion to pull insights from your meeting transcripts to jumpstart a project brief, blog post, or other content in Zoom Docs. You don’t need to spend time going through colleagues’ calendars to schedule your next check-in — AI Companion can check availability and schedule that meeting on your behalf. These capabilities enable you to be more efficient, which means you can spend your valuable time doing more meaningful work. Visit our AI Companion page to learn more about specific ways your small business can use AI to improve your workday. 2. Cut down on app switching You might be familiar with Zoom Workplace as the app you use to join Zoom Meetings. But there’s so much more you can do from the Zoom Workplace desktop app: Chat with teammates on Zoom Team Chat, which is included with all Zoom accounts — you can create channels with groups of people or send direct one-on-one messages. You can even add external contacts and chat with them, for communication that feels easier, faster, and more organized than email. Connect your Google or Microsoft calendar with your Zoom account to see all your meetings in the Calendar tab. You can join Zoom Meetings with a few simple clicks (you won’t have to hunt for the meeting link anymore!), schedule meetings directly in the Zoom Workplace app using AI Companion, and more. Connect your Google or Microsoft email account with your Zoom account (or set up a free email address with Zoom Mail) to easily access email messages without having to navigate to a different app. You can even use AI Companion to help you compose emails. If you have Zoom Phone, use the softphone interface in the Zoom Workplace app to make calls, view and listen to voicemails, send text messages, and more. AI Companion can help out here, too, with post-call summaries and the ability to prioritize and extract tasks from your voicemails. Access a suite of built-in productivity tools to create notes, video clips, and whiteboards, which you can easily share with your colleagues. If you have Workvivo, you can access it directly in the app to view colleagues’ posts, give kudos to a teammate, read company news, and explore different department spaces. If you haven’t already, download the latest version of the Zoom Workplace app and explore the tabs in the top navigation bar to see how you can get more out of Zoom while you work. 3. Streamline your appointment scheduling Appointment scheduling apps can help your team cut down on the time spent setting up meetings with prospects, customers, and clients. Instead of emailing back and forth to schedule an appointment, all your customer needs to do is click on a scheduling link and select a date and time that works for them to book a spot on your calendar. If you have a Zoom Workplace Business or Business Plus account, you get access to Zoom Scheduler right in your desktop or mobile app at no additional cost. Zoom Scheduler syncs with your Google, Microsoft, or Zoom Calendar to make booking easy, and you don’t have to worry about sending an email with a Zoom meeting link — it’s all taken care of automatically. If your Zoom Workplace plan doesn’t come with Scheduler, you can add it on for less than other scheduling apps like Calendly. Learn more about how Zoom Scheduler stacks up against Calendly. 4. Keep the conversation going after meetings Important conversations don’t end when a Zoom meeting is over. In fact, a lot of critical action items, discussions, and decision-making actually happen once you leave your Zoom call. Learning how to use Zoom Workplace throughout the meeting lifecycle (the time you spend before, during, and after your meetings) is key to spending your time more efficiently. When you schedule a meeting in the Zoom Workplace app, click the option to enable continuous meeting chat. This lets you start a group chat with meeting attendees beforehand to align on agenda items or share pre-meeting materials for review. Once the meeting starts, you can refer back to those messages and continue chatting in the meeting. After the meeting is over, continue the conversation in Team Chat. You can share the AI Companion meeting summary and revisit discussion threads to close the loop on outstanding items. 5. Work on the go with Zoom Phone According to a 2024 Morning Consult survey commissioned by Zoom, 82% of small-business owner respondents said they use phones to stay connected, versus 70% of respondents at companies with over 1,000 employees.** Even in the digital age, phone communication is still critical — but it needs to fit your business’s on-the-go or hybrid work style. Zoom Phone brings your phone communications into the cloud, letting you and your employees access your business phone from the Zoom Workplace desktop or mobile app. That means you can make and receive calls from any compatible device, whether you’re in the office, at home, or on the go. You can keep your existing compatible desk phones if you want, or choose supported desk and conference phones from our leading hardware partners. Here are just a few ways Zoom Phone helps improve communications among your employees and customers: Employees can save time by leveraging AI Companion for Zoom Phone to summarize calls and text messages, prioritize voicemails, and more. You can use your favorite business tools in tandem with Zoom Phone. Our phone solution integrates with essential applications like Salesforce, Google G-Suite, ServiceNow, and HubSpot. It’s easy to add and manage users in Zoom Phone. This makes it especially great for small business owners who might wear many hats and lack the IT resources to manage a more complex solution. You can set up call queues to help lessen response times. Divide and conquer customer inquiries by routing calls to a designated group of users, such as a sales or support team, so the first person available can answer the phone. Employees may be on a phone call and want to draw a quick sketch or pull up a document to review with the other people on the phone. With Zoom Workplace, they can easily go from a phone call to a video meeting when the situation requires, giving them more ways to have a productive conversation. Get more tips for running your small business If you want more tips for running your small business with Zoom, check out our on-demand webinar. It breaks down the top 10 time-saving Zoom Workplace features to help small business leaders like you improve how you work.

Monzo has been given the green light to expand across Europe, after winning a banking licence. The UK digital bank announced today that it has secured a European banking licence.The winning of the licence comes amid reports that well-known Monzo shareholders are agitating to reinstate the Monzo CEO and push out the Monzo chair. Monzo outgoing CEO TS Anil was asked to step down by the fintech’s board amid concerns over international expansion and his post-IPO commitment, according to reporting from the Financial Times. Anil's exit was announced by Monzo in October this year.It has now been reported that venture capital firms Accel and Iconiq are among the investors who have hired lawyers as they look to bring back Anil as CEO, who is set to be replaced by ex-Google executive Diana Layfield early next year. The VCs also want greater representation on the board and for Monzo chair Gary Hoffman, who has been in the role since 2019, to step aside.The revolt is said to have the backing of investors holding more than 40 per cent of shares, the report says.Separately, Monzo has won a European banking licence from the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI), as it looks to expand across the EU. Monzo, which has over 13m customers, already has a UK banking licence. The challenger bank has been vocal about its EU expansion plans. In its 2024 annual report, Monzo said: "We've set our sights on Ireland as the destination for our EU base as we start laying the foundations for expansion across Europe."The licence, which can be passported across the EU, means Monzo can begin offering its banking products across the EU, kicking off in Ireland, which is Monzo’s EU headquarters. The licence will allow Monzo to hold customer deposits, opening the door to income streams such as loans and mortgages.In the coming month, Monzo’s Irish customers will be able to apply for retail and business Monzo accounts, Monzo said.Michael Carney, EU CEO at Monzo, said: “The approval from European regulators means we can now take our much-loved products and services to millions more personal and business customers. “Monzo has already proven that by combining the trust of a regulated bank with cutting-edge technology, we can truly transform people’s relationship with money. Today marks a significant step forward in our global mission to make money work for everyone."Elaine Deehan, country manager, Ireland, Monzo, said: “We’re excited to be launching an Irish digital bank serving customers and businesses."

As digital ordering reshapes how people buy food, one of the biggest operational bottlenecks in restaurants isn’t the kitchen — it’s the pickup counter.   Off-premises orders now dominate in many markets, yet the moment where digital orders meet the physical world remains largely manual, inefficient, and data-blind.  Startup Pickpad was founded in 2024 with a hardware-first system designed to bring automation and real-time data to restaurant pickup operations. I spoke ot co-founder and CEO Yaro Tsyhanenko at Slush this year to learn all about it.  Tsyhanenko has been building technology for the restaurant and food-delivery sector for more than 15 years. He began with a simple city guide — a better way to help people discover where to eat and how to spend their time. That product gradually evolved into a marketplace model similar to today’s delivery platforms. Across Europe, the company scaled the marketplace to 15 cities in Ukraine, facilitating millions of orders along the way. “We started with a city guide, just helping people understand where they could go and what they could do,” Tsyhanenko explained. “That naturally evolved into a marketplace, and in Ukraine, we scaled it across 15 cities and delivered millions of orders.” Building on that foundation, the team launched a ghost kitchen designed exclusively for delivery. The experience of running both the marketplace and the kitchen revealed the strength of the underlying infrastructure they had developed. “Once we started operating ghost kitchens, we realised we’d built really strong internal technology,” he said.  "At that point, it made sense to turn it into a product.” The company then began offering its platform as a service to third parties, including delivery providers and fast-food chains, effectively transitioning from an operator to a technology supplier for the broader restaurant ecosystem. “We started providing our technology as a service — first for delivery providers, and later for fast-food chains — because we knew it worked at scale,” Tsyhanenko added. The pickup counter Is restaurants’ new front line Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and he had to move his family abroad. Once in the US, he began rediscovering the restaurant space — not as an operator, but as an observer: “I was sitting in different restaurants — fast food, fast casual, coffee shops — with my stopwatch and my notebook, making notes. Just to better understand how flows are changing. Because tech is changing how millions of people order food and drinks, and how businesses operate.” He observed a shift in demand, with many restaurants seeing pickup and off-premises orders overtake in-store dining. “Statistics say that three out of four orders in the US leave the building. So it’s a complete change in consumption patterns. We all like ordering — grabbing and going, or delivery.” (In the future, it will be robots like with Estonia’s Starship). He discovered that every store has a designated place where all the digital orders are placed — the pick up area. The data gap at the pickup counter A new set of challenges is emerging at the intersection of digital ordering and physical pickup — and they all stem from the same issue: a lack of real-world data. The first is labour efficiency, he shared.   “Staff spend hundreds of hours of manual work every month just managing interactions with drivers and customers. Every interaction takes time. It creates an operational bottleneck.” There’s also a huge problem with order accuracy. People forget drinks, mix up orders — it’s very common. That leads to food waste. And there’s a data problem.  “No one knows when an order was placed on the shelf or when it was taken. That means they can’t control the full order cycle — customer experience or delivery driver performance.” In other words, restaurants don’t have the data to effectively monitor orders. Pickpad provides that missing layer of data points.  How Pickpad connects digital orders to the physical world Pickpad is a smart order-pickup system that connects the digital order world with the physical pickup counter in a seamless and automated way.  Its proprietary hardware offers a differentiation from other order management services . As Tsyhanenko shared, “We can source those unique data points and make operations better for restaurants and delivery providers.” At the core of Pickpad is a modular system of smart pads placed in a restaurant’s pickup area, each equipped with sensors and machine-learning capabilities that automate the handoff between digital orders and physical pickup. Each pad combines four sensors, a microcontroller, and a display into a simple, proprietary, and cost-efficient unit designed to work seamlessly at scale. It helps restaurants measure their pickup operations: Was the order ready on time?  Was it accurate?  What was the prep time — from receiving the order to placing it on the shelf? What was the waiting time? Was there a delivery driver delay? Where exactly was the problem when the customer complained? Pickpad sources those missing data points. “We create a new data layer using sensors. A lot happens in the real world, and no one wants to build physical hardware because it’s harder. But someone needs to do it.” The system integrates directly with existing point-of-sale (POS) software, pulling order data and updating statuses in real time as orders move through the pickup workflow. When an order is ready, the corresponding pad lights up with a customer name or identifier, prompting staff to place the prepared order on the pad. Using its sensors, Pickpad verifies order completeness by matching the physical order against POS data, helping catch missing items before pickup. Once the customer or courier collects the order, the system automatically updates the order status — eliminating manual clicks and reducing friction for both staff and customers. The user experience is intentionally minimal. “The idea is to help people without bothering them with extra tech,” Tsyhanenko said. He illustrated the flow with a simple example: “You order your coffee. The order goes into the system. The restaurant has shelves or a countertop — that’s the pickup area — and they upgrade it with Pickpads." And here the order flow works like this: “For example, Starbucks uses stickers. We just print the pad number on it. And they know where that order goes. No RFID, no expensive tags — nothing special about the cup.” The system assigns the order to a pad, which can show a number or a customer name. If something’s missing — like a doughnut — the pad shows a red light. When it’s complete, it turns green. “At that moment, we record a timestamp automatically. Staff don’t press buttons — no one does that in reality. Customers and delivery drivers get notified. The order is ready, you grab it, and it’s done.” Pickpad has gained traction for its frictionless tech. Restaurants are small — especially in cities like Berlin, New York, and London. Drivers are milling around, space is tight, and if you add complexity, it breaks. “So this is about synchronisation — timing, statuses, readiness. Not fancy displays. Data and protocols,” shared Tsyhanenko. Making hardware viable for price-sensitive hospitality Pickpad’s business model is straightforward. Restaurants receive a box containing 10, 15, or 20 smart pads, which connect to each other and require minimal setup. “It’s very simple,” said Tsyhanenko. “We ship a box with 10, 15, or 20 pads. They connect to each other, and you just plug one into a socket.” Installation is entirely self-serve, with no need for specialist technicians or complex configuration. “The setup is like IKEA,” he explained. “You unpack it, arrange the pads based on your layout, and plug them in.” Pickpad operates on a subscription model, with pricing starting at $9 per month per pad, including the hardware itself. “You pay a subscription — there’s no capital investment,” Tsyhanenko added. “Hospitality is very price-sensitive. Price can’t be the blocker.” So far, the product has gained the most traction in the UK and US, especially in fast food, fast casual, and coffee chains, where up to 80 per cent of orders leave the building. “We want inexpensive hardware for reliability and scale. We’re building physical infrastructure. Both our hardware and software are patent-pending.” Why timing beats temperature Of course I wondered about temperature monitoring as a potential data asset. Tsyhanenko admits that this was his first idea:  “I tested mug heaters, disassembled them, and talked to Starbucks managers. But temperature isn’t the problem. Many cups contain plastic. Some foods shouldn’t be reheated. It’s a timing and data problem. If you know how long an order has been waiting, you can remake it quickly and make the customer happier.” Industry validation for Pickpad’s pickup tech Pickpad’s proprietary tech has gained significant interest from tech enthusiasts and industry insiders:  CES 2025 Innovation Award honoree in the Artificial Intelligence category. Best of Tech Podcast Network recognition during CES 2025. Winner in Fast Company’s 2025 Innovation by Design Awards, which celebrate excellence in design and innovation across industries. And in terms of sector support, Pickpad won at MURTEC Startup Alley 2025 — a competition for emerging tech solutions in restaurant and hospitality operations.  50 locations, seven countries — and this is just the beginning Today, Pickpad have LOI in over 650 locations across seven countries as the startup is still in the pilot phase, rather than a full commercial rollout. Tsyhanenko is building the hardware in-house, with early versions produced using three 3D printers in his lab. “The first pilots were really about proving the concept,” he said. “Now the second wave is focused on measuring everything, building strong case studies, and getting ready for mass production.” Pickpad has built 50 new pads for the next pilot wave, which will include one large Ukrainian brand with hundreds of locations and a  US brand with about 100 locations. “The pads are approved by cybersecurity and IT teams. Now we measure everything, then scale production and sales. That’s why I’m raising a pre-seed round,” shared Tsyhanenko.

IP patent platform Ankar has raised a $20 million Series A round led by Atomico, with Index Ventures doubling down and Norrsken VC and Daphni participating.  This Series A brings Ankar’s total funding to $24 million. AI is fundamentally changing how inventions become protected assets. It enables patent teams to analyse novelty, draft claims and evaluate prior art with unprecedented depth and speed.  Yet fragmented tools, gaps in AI trust, and slow enterprise adoption have held organisations back. Ankar solves these challenges with an operating system that unifies the entire patent lifecycle into one secure workflow for the first time.  I spoke to co-founder Wiem Gharbi to learn more. Why Ankar’s founders saw an untapped problem For Ankar’s founders, these challenges were not theoretical — they had seen them firsthand. Alongside co-founder Tamar Gomez, Gharbi previously built mission-critical software at Palantir in Europe and the US. Gharbi helped adapt Palantir’s platforms to real-world business needs, supporting organisations in extracting value from complex data environments. Beyond customer deployments, she was also involved in strategic initiatives, including efforts to make Palantir’s software more accessible to startups, and worked closely with executive teams on high-level collaboration and product strategy. Toward the end of her time at Palantir, Gharbi began to notice a recurring pattern: “While exploring new ideas with other alumni, we began looking at intellectual property as a way to create long-term value.” Gharbi said. “Coming from a company that builds software for governments and large organisations, I was struck by how little innovation had actually happened in IP tooling itself.” At the same time, her co-founder, Gomez, was working in defencetech as a product manager, responsible for managing IT lifecycles. She was encountering the same issues — innovation data being tracked through tickets, spreadsheets, and fragmented systems.   Those shared experiences really became the spark for Ankar. The broken reality of modern patent workflows In practice, the traditional patent process is stubbornly manual. Most teams manage innovation and IP work largely by hand. To understand the state of the art in areas such as additive manufacturing, companies often relied on patent engineers or PhDs to read hundreds — sometimes thousands — of patent filings and scientific papers, manually extracting insights, assessing relevance, and tracking everything in spreadsheets. The process was is, fragmented, and highly inefficient. Patents can take up to 24 months to secure and still rely on scattered Word documents, spreadsheets, emails and outdated IP systems. This inefficiency slows teams down and discourages inventors from filing altogether. In response, Ankar is building an operating system for innovation. Turning data into defensible assets Ankar's platform helps patent teams go from idea to granted patent in a fraction of the time, delivering an average 40 per cent boost in productivity and hundreds of hours shifted to high-value work. That efficiency matters as IP increasingly underpins long-term competitiveness. “Today, around 90 per cent of company value is already intangible — patents, know-how, R&D output — and that proportion will only grow in the age of AI,” shared Gharbi. At the same time, enormous volumes of innovation data already exist: patents, research publications, and technical documentation. But they’re extremely hard for teams to digest and act on. “What we do is provide AI-powered assistance that accelerates that process dramatically — extracting, structuring, and surfacing relevant insights so teams can move much faster and more confidently,” explained Gharbi. Ankar aims to make that data usable. It builds AI tools that sit at the intersection of IT teams and R&D teams, helping them analyse existing innovation, build on top of it, and turn it into structured, defensible assets that actually contribute to enterprise value. One core use case is analysis and synthesis.  “Imagine a pharmaceutical company developing a new compound,” shared Gharbi.  “To understand what already exists, teams need to analyse millions of patents and research publications — for example, to identify relevant excipients or prior formulations.”  Ankar’s system uses LLMs to aggregate, analyse, and synthesise that information so teams can make sense of it quickly and make informed decisions. Once a team has created something new — say, a novel product feature or technical solution — they often need to formalise it as a patent. Writing a patent application is time-consuming, highly structured, and can run to dozens of pages.  “Our tools assist with structuring and drafting those applications, helping teams move faster while maintaining quality,” shared Gharbi. Ankar replaces the fragmented patent process with a unified platform that orchestrates the entire patent lifecycle, helping teams turn ideas into defensible global IP in hours rather than weeks.  Acting as an assistant rather than an autopilot, it combines instant novelty and prior-art analysis across 150+ million patent applications and 250+ million scientific publications with strategic drafting, prosecution support, and a single consolidated view of examiner responses—delivering stronger claims, clearer framing, and more defensible portfolios as competition for IP intensifies. However, for enterprise adoption, speed and intelligence are only part of the equation. Designing patent AI for high-sensitivity R&D environments Patent workflows require the highest confidentiality in the enterprise world, and Ankar has been built for this.  This matters more than ever: generative AI is making it easier for competitors to replicate designs, architectures and experimental approaches. As a result, C-suites, especially in automotive, electronics and other R&D-heavy sectors, are prioritising deeper, more defensible patent portfolios to secure future revenue. Ankar ensures that customer data is not fed back into shared models, implementing strict access controls and designing strong checks and balances throughout the system.  Gharbi asserts:  “Innovation data is extremely sensitive, so security and confidentiality were not afterthoughts for us — they were foundational design principles. We’ve spent significant time ensuring that data stays isolated, secure, and confidential within each customer environment.” “We also pursued ISO 27001 compliance very early, which many startups only tackle much later." For us, security isn’t a feature — it’s a prerequisite,” shared Gharbi. Further, because accuracy is critical when dealing with chemical formulas or engineering specifications, Ankar ensures its models are grounded, meaning they operate only on verified data sources such as patent databases and research publications rather than relying on free-form model memory. “On top of that, we’ve added verification layers in the product itself, so users can trace outputs back to source documents and validate results before acting on them,” explained Gharbi. According to Tamar Gomez, co-founder of Ankar AI:  “Invention is how we solve humanity’s biggest challenges, yet the systems that protect those ideas are decades out of date. AI will redefine how global organisations innovate over the next five years, turning IP from a cost centre into a growth driver. The companies that adopt Ankar now will shape the future of innovation." Andreas Helbig, partner at Atomico, said: “Tamar and Wiem bring exceptional technical depth and first-hand experience of how broken the patent process is. Their momentum with Fortune 500 companies shows they’re building the right product at exactly the right moment. We’re proud to support their mission as they build the foundational infrastructure for how the world’s most important ideas are protected and commercialised.” Ankar’s long-term ambition is to become the software layer that orchestrates how ideas become globally defensible patents, serving as the core infrastructure for innovation in the AI era.  The capital will be used to double the company’s 20-person team, expand engineering, product and design, and grow Ankar’s go-to-market organisation to support rising demand across Europe and the US. 

What continues to fascinate me about Ukrainian startups and scaleups is their ability to solve problems for other countries — problems many of those countries are still struggling to fix. From edtech and lifelong learning to mental health, cybersecurity, and HR, Ukrainian founders are building globally relevant solutions shaped by constraint, resilience, and deep technical skill. Take Brighterly (edtech), Headway Inc  (lifelong learning), Pleso Therapy (mental health support), Stackbob.ai (enterprise IAM) and PeopleForce  (HR). All of these companies are addressing systemic challenges at scale. Kyiv-founded health product marketplace Liki24 fits squarely into this pattern. Its ambition is unapologetically European: to build the continent’s leading health marketplace across fragmented pharmacy markets. But that ambition was tested earlier — and harder — than most startups ever face. Founded in Kyiv, the company has navigated COVID, war, and investor flight, emerging with 70 per cent of its revenue now coming from the EU and €19 million in funding since its founding in 2017. I sat down with Anton Avrynskyi, CEO and co-founder at IT Arena in Lviv, earlier this year to learn all about it. How Liki24 lets customers trade speed for price in healthcare Liki24 is a marketplace for health products. It connects sellers with buyers of physical health products — medicines, supplements, vitamins, medical cosmetics, and OTC drugs. Liki24 operates as a marketplace that aggregates products from multiple pharmacies and optimises for price, speed, and availability. A customer, for example, may choose from: Delivery in one hour from a local pharmacy, Next-day delivery from within the country, or Delivery from another EU country at a much lower prices. Besides Ukraine, its present in 10 European countries and the UK. And, the model was shaped by a very personal frustration Avrynskyi had experienced years earlier. A mid-career leap: how Anton Avrynskyi walked away from stability to fix a broken pharmacy market Anton Avrynskyi is from Kyiv, Ukraine. He studied computer science at Kyiv Polytechnic University and, from his second year, began working at a tech company that developed and implemented ERP systems for large enterprises and corporations. He went from developer to project manager, then head of the project department, and eventually became a shareholder and the company's CEO. After 15 years, he started thinking that he wanted to build a big international interest. He walked away from the company and sold his shares without fully knowing what he would do next, a leap that highlights how much harder risk-taking becomes for founders with families and long-built careers. Avrynskyi admits, “It was a big risk. At the time, I had two kids — one was four years old, the other just one — and my wife. She asked me, “What are you doing?” But she supported me, which was incredibly important. I understood that if I didn’t leave, I would stay there for the rest of my life. My biggest internal fear was losing motivation and internal drive.” He spent a few months in the US with his family, attended many conferences, and saw how fast digital health was growing. At that time, Avrynskyi remembered the problem he faced in Ukraine when his children were born: There were huge price differences for the same medicines between pharmacies — sometimes two or three times; lack of availability — you couldn’t buy everything you needed in one place; and inconvenient or impossible delivery of everything in one order. He realised that the US hadn’t cracked this problem, so he decided to create a solution in Ukraine. He asked former colleagues from his previous company to join him and started the company in mid-2017, about half a year after exiting his previous business. Things moved fast. He recalled: “We built an MVP very quickly, saw good traction within a few months, and then I was invited to Austria to present the company. We won a startup competition there. After that, we raised our first funding round of €1 million. Two years later, COVID hit — and our growth accelerated dramatically, as demand for remote access surged. During that period, we raised a €5 million round led by Horizon Capital. That’s when we began executing the company’s full-scale vision.” From investor pause to European expansion By the end of 2021, just months before the full-scale invasion, Liki24 was experiencing strong growth and had already begun fundraising. But as geopolitical tensions escalated, that momentum stalled. By mid-December, investor conversations abruptly paused. “We had great numbers and a clear direction, but Ukraine was suddenly seen as too high risk,” he says. “Everyone was talking about the possibility of war.” When the team re-engaged investors in April 2022, the message was consistent — and blunt. “They told us, ‘Let’s talk only when more than half of your business is outside Ukraine.’ Some said it directly, others said it more carefully, but the reason was obvious.” At the time, around 97 per cent of the company’s business was still inside Ukraine, with international operations not yet financially sustainable. “From an investor perspective, it was absolutely fair. The risk was simply too high.” How Liki24 mobilised medicines for a country at war On 24 February 2022, Avrynskyi was in Kyiv with his family. He recalls: “We woke up to bombs. During the first two weeks of the war, more than 80 per cent of pharmacies were closed — not because products weren’t available, but because pharmacists had fled." Just a day later, Liki24 created a free map of open pharmacies across Ukraine. Almost 2 million Ukrainians used it in the first two weeks. Then the team expanded it so that people could find pharmacies that actually had the medicines they needed. However, Liki24 also observed that when supply chains were disrupted, people began facing shortages of essential products. Fortunately, during that time, Avrynskyi received many messages from international friends saying, “We’ll send you everything you need — just tell us what’s missing.” Friends from Greece, Turkey, and France sent entire trucks — big trucks — filled with medicines, an incredible range of much-needed medications. Avrynskyi explained: “We created three logistics centres and sorted everything. It was extremely hard because product names differed across languages, and dosages were sometimes different. We worked with more than 50 volunteer pharmacists and built a platform that allows Ukrainians to order exactly the medicines they need for free. This was crucial — medicine requires precision. In total, we distributed around $5 million worth of medication and helped more than half a million Ukrainians.” However, the project was a victim of its own success. Healthcare organisations told them that free humanitarian medicine was hurting local pharmacies' finances. So they changed the model, asking international partners to send money instead of medicines, created an NGO, and upgraded the platform so Ukrainians in need could upload documents and order what they needed — donations covered around half the cost. “This way, we supported local pharmacies and helped around one million Ukrainians. Donors could see exactly where every euro went via an online dashboard.” Business survival vs humanitarian responsibility However, what made the situation especially complex was that the business was operating on two fronts at once: running a company while simultaneously responding to a humanitarian crisis. “On the outside, it was a 24/7 charity effort. Inside the company, there was still a business that had to survive — with a team to support and salaries to pay.” But while still running humanitarian operations, Liki24 focused on European expansion — Romania first, then Italy, Germany, France, and Spain. While many companies focus on their US for growth, according to Avrynskyi: “Europe is underestimated. Over 500 million people, fragmented markets, and around $400 billion in pharmacy sales — larger than the US. Fragmentation is our advantage. Our goal is to become Europe’s leading health marketplace.” By 2023, 35 to 40 per cent of revenue came from the EU. Today, it’s 70 per cent. Revenue in Ukraine has still grown twofold since the invasion, and Liki24 raised €9 million this year, bringing its total funding to €19 million. AI under the hood: product matching, logistics, and support at scale AI was a key enabler of making European scale possible and plays a major role across three key areas at Liki24: Product mapping. Avrynskyi explained: “There are thousands of sellers, each with thousands of products, often the same products with different names. We use machine learning to match them accurately.” So the company used AI for three specific needs: Product mapping: Thousands of sellers, each with thousands of products, often the same products with different names. Likl24 uses machine learning to accurately match them. Logistics: Traditional carriers failed for cross-border delivery—slow and expensive. “We broke logistics into local segments and built an AI delivery agent that chooses the optimal chain. This cut delivery times sevenfold and costs fivefold.” Customer support: Liki24 reduced its support team from 80 to about 40 people while expanding to more countries, using AI-driven multilingual support available 24/7. The company also uses AI for recommendations, marketing, and B2B pharma advertising—without sharing personal data. But this is not the end of innovation for Liki24. The company launched a lab test marketplace and a health coaching platform focused on prevention. “People do regular blood tests, track trends, and receive personalised health plans. It’s especially valuable for expats navigating unfamiliar healthcare systems. Eventually, everything will connect: diagnostics, coaching, doctor access, and product delivery via Liki24,” shared Avrynskyi. Avrynskyi stresses that readers should support Ukraine — not only through aid but also by supporting Ukrainian businesses. “Ukraine should not be seen only as a country in need, but as a country that creates value and innovation. Our story shows that even during war, it’s possible to build and scale international companies."

AI-powered unmanned systems company Quantum Systems today announced the acquisition of FERNRIDE.   With the acquisition of FERNRIDE, Quantum Systems is expanding its leadership position from air and software intelligence to autonomous ground mobility,  creating a connected, cross-domain offering for intelligent unmanned systems.  FERNRIDE offers an industry-proven software platform for ground autonomy in the areas of container terminals, defence logistics, yard operations and autonomous driving. The technology is already in use by well-known customers.  In 2025, FERNRIDE became the first company to obtain TÜV approval for autonomous trucks in Europe, and has already used them in initial tests with the  German Armed Forces and expanded its portfolio to include defence logistics.  Check out our earlier interview with Hendrik Kramer, CEO and co-founder of FERNRIDE. “‘FERNRIDE has developed one of the most advanced and scalable autonomous ground platforms,’ said Florian Seibel, Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Quantum Systems. "By integrating their technology into MOSAIC UXS, we are consistently  implementing our vision of creating a connected ecosystem in which unmanned  systems think, move and act as a single entity across different dimensions." "Europe urgently needs sovereign autonomy solutions. By joining forces with  Quantum Systems, we can take our technology to a new level,"  said Hendrik Kramer, CEO and co-founder of FERNRIDE. "Together with Quantum Systems, we are accelerating the deployment of our platform in the European defence sector, which is currently the most urgent environment globally for scaling autonomous ground systems. In the future, this experience will also be applied to civilian logistics applications, making our society safer and more resilient." Earlier this week, Quantum Systems and Frontline Robotics announced the creation of “Quantum Frontline Industries” (QFI), a German-Ukrainian joint venture that will establish Europe’s first fully automated, industrial-scale foreign production line for drones for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Quantum Systems' operational experience in Ukraine has demonstrated the relevance of the interaction between air and ground robotics. The integration of FERNRIDE solutions into MOSAIC UXS, Quantum Systems' autonomous mission software, is intended to enable multi-domain operations that improve situational awareness and decision-making. The financial deals have not been disclosed.

London-based deeptech AI company geoSurge has launched out of stealth, focusing on helping brands understand and improve how they are represented within large language models. As AI increasingly serves as a starting point for everyday decisions, visibility within generative AI systems is becoming more commercially significant. Recent reports find that ChatGPT prompt volume rose by nearly 70 per cent in the first half of 2025, while shopping-related queries doubled over the same period. In this context, appearing in LLM-generated answers can influence consideration, while brands that are not surfaced may be less likely to be evaluated. geoSurge says its data indicates that even well-known brands can lose visibility between GPT releases. Its platform helps organisations assess how their brands appear in LLM-generated responses, identify weaknesses in representation, anticipate how upcoming releases may affect them, and take steps intended to improve and maintain visibility as models change. geoSurge’s approach, which it describes as “corpus engineering,” is designed to strengthen how large language models learn, store, and surface brand information, with the aim of making generative visibility more stable across model updates. Francisco Vigo, co-founder and CEO of geoSurge, explained: LLMs don’t pull from a live index. They generate answers from compressed memory that shifts with every update. That means a brand can go from ‘high visibility’ to ‘completely gone’ overnight - and most organisations won’t even know it’s happened. Founded in London, geoSurge works with companies across retail, travel, fintech, and consumer services, supporting visibility in AI-driven discovery as LLMs evolve.

Wodan AI, a startup specialised in running artificial intelligence models directly on fully encrypted data, has closed a €2 million pre-seed round led by Spanish funds JME Ventures, Swanlaab and Adara Ventures, with additional participation from ScaleFund in Belgium. Wodan AI is a European company developing homomorphic encryption technology for use in artificial intelligence. Its platform is designed to enable ML, computer vision, and LLM models to run on encrypted data without decryption, reducing exposure of sensitive information. Its platform ensures compliance with the EU’s most stringent requirements on privacy, regulation and digital sovereignty, especially relevant in sectors such as finance, defence, healthcare and critical infrastructure. Commenting on the investment, Bob Dubois, CEO and co-founder of Wodan AI, said the funding will support the company’s plans to expand its technology and strengthen its position in the European secure AI landscape. Recent advances in homomorphic encryption allow, for the first time, large organisations to use artificial intelligence on sensitive data without compromising security. The company plans to make Spain a central part of its European strategy by relocating its global headquarters to Madrid and consolidating its R&D team there, with a focus on advanced cryptography, machine learning, and privacy technologies. It also develops a pilot projects with a Spanish financial institution, which it describes as an early validation of encrypted AI for critical-sector use cases. Spain has the technical talent required to develop critical sovereign AI technologies. With our headquarters, R&D centre and team growth in Madrid, we aim to consolidate a European hub of reference in private, secure AI designed for the most demanding sectors, adds Manuel Pérez Yllan, CTO and co-founder of Wodan AI. The funding will support R&D hiring, accelerate the technical roadmap, and extend the platform to more advanced encrypted computer vision and LLM capabilities, with an aim to deploy these technologies at scale. It will also be used to strengthen commercial capacity and pursue contracts with European organisations in strategic sectors.

Global connectivity provider Roamless has closed a $12 million Series A funding round led by Rasmal Ventures, with participation from Shorooq, Revo Capital, Finberg, and JIMCO. The new capital brings Roamless' total funding to $18 million, following a $6 million seed round in 2024. Founded in Türkiye and headquartered in the US, Roamless was established in 2023 by Emre Demirel, Ali Gazioglu, Asim Alp, Selim Aykut, Cagdas Yalti, and Cengiz Oztelcan. It offers a borderless mobile connectivity platform built around a single eSIM intended to work across multiple countries. Roamless provides a “Single Global eSIM” with pay-as-you-go and trip-based plans across 200+ countries, designed to keep travellers connected without changing SIM cards. The company says it operates on its own telecom infrastructure and plans to add features such as local numbers, voice, SMS, and partner APIs. Roamless reports serving more than one million travelers and working with partners in travel, aviation, and financial services. Roamless telecom stack is a cloud-based, carrier-grade infrastructure layer that manages connectivity across hundreds of networks through a single service. This supports cross-border coverage and is intended to enable services beyond data-only offerings, while giving it more control over the customer experience than a resale model. The eSIM market has been growing quickly, supported by wider adoption from smartphone manufacturers. While fewer than 20 per cent of global smartphone connections used eSIM in 2024, the GSMA projects penetration could reach up to 88 per cent by 2030. Roamless also expects adoption to continue rising as more devices move away from physical SIM trays. Emre Demirel, co-founder and CEO of Roamless, said the company expects the market to grow significantly and believes long-term winners will combine a strong product with reliable infrastructure and carrier-grade technology. We are rolling our local market, b2b and AI-enabled features in our next phase - all to ensure we continue to lead on innovation, and give global mobile users what they need to maximise their experience. In the next phase, the company will expand network coverage, scale its global go-to-market and customer support efforts, and deepen supplier and corporate partnerships. It plans to launch Roamless Numbers, which would allow users to obtain local numbers in more than 20 countries and make calls or send and receive SMS within the app. The company will also invest in APIs and B2B solutions so airlines, airports, online travel agencies, financial institutions, and superapps can embed connectivity into their customer journeys. In addition, it expects to roll out AI-driven features aimed at improving network quality, lowering costs, and surfacing relevant partner offers, while growing its team across regional offices in major travel hubs.

A David vs. Goliath shift is emerging in AI as a small Nordic team is challenging Big Tech’s cloud-LLM dominance by bringing Small Language Models (SLM) directly to users’ devices. Copenhagen-based open-source startup NobodyWho has raised €2 million in pre-seed funding. The company aims to strengthen Europe’s position in global AI by championing Small Language Models as a cost-efficient, data-secure, and climate-aligned alternative to today’s massive cloud-based LLMs. I spoke to founder to CEO, Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm, to learn all about it. NobodyWho is founded by award-winning entrepreneur and artist Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm, whose pioneering work with interactive AI dates back to 2016. Together with co-founder and CTO, Asbjørn Olling, and a team of software engineers, she has spent nearly a decade advancing local-AI technologies — from UN-commissioned projects to a 2021 edge-AI experiment aboard NASA’s International Space Station.  Today’s cloud-based LLMs are controlled by a handful of non-European tech giants and require massive computational resources, constant internet access, and the transfer of vast amounts of data to third-party servers. This creates high costs, lock-in, and a structural loss of European data security.  NobodyWho takes a fundamentally different approach. Its engine enables Small Language Models (SLMs) to run locally on laptops and mobile phones, so organisations and individuals keep full control over their data. With device-first architecture, no data needs to leave the device enabling true data sovereignty and privacy by design.  Waagner Falkenstrøm explains: “These models are still large by most standards, but they’re much smaller than systems like ChatGPT. They’re comparable to earlier generations of large modelsn— and they’re more than capable for many real-world use cases.” Local inference as a security and privacy advantage Running models locally has immediate privacy and security implications. From a security standpoint, this also creates a more resilient architecture. Rather than relying on a single, centralised cloud server that can be targeted, computation is distributed across thousands—or even millions—of devices. Further, local inference shifts the cost burden away from cloud infrastructure entirely. Users bring their own hardware, meaning the system can scale without increasing inference costs. Whether an application serves ten users or ten million, there is no escalating cloud bill.  This makes advanced AI accessible to organisations that would otherwise be priced out, including NGOs, public-sector bodies, and early-stage startups. A 500x reduction in AI’s carbon footprint NobodyWho’s local-first SLM architecture dramatically reduces this footprint by shrinking the models and moving them close to where they are used. Early benchmarks show up to 100x lower training footprint and up to 500x lower inference footprint. So this approach isn’t just cheaper and faster — it’s also dramatically more sustainable. Open source by default Everything core to NobodyWho is open source — from its inference engine and inference libraries to its developer integrations — and that will remain the case. Rather than building proprietary language models, NobodyWho focuses on the infrastructure layer that makes existing open-source models usable in real-world products. Its engine enables more than 10,000 open-source language models to run efficiently across devices and operating systems. “Our belief is simple: the models already exist,” says founder and CEO Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm. “The real bottleneck is making them practical to deploy — especially for developers who don’t have machine-learning expertise.” Most developers, she explains, aren’t ML specialists. NobodyWho’s goal is to make running a local language model as straightforward as integrating any other software dependency. “An app developer should be able to run a local model with two lines of code,” she says. “You shouldn’t need a PhD in machine learning to ship AI.” To achieve this, NobodyWho integrates directly with major developer frameworks. The company recently launched Python support and is expanding into additional ecosystems, allowing developers to drop NobodyWho into existing projects without deep ML knowledge or custom infrastructure work. The company operates on an open-core business model. While all core components remain open source, NobodyWho monetises fine-tuning services — an area where compute requirements quickly become expensive and operationally complex for teams to manage alone. “Companies could fine-tune models on-prem,” Waagner Falkenstrøm explains. “But that means servers, engineering time, and ongoing maintenance. Instead, they can fine-tune models using our engine, pay for the compute, and we take a small cut. It’s still significantly cheaper and simpler than doing it themselves.” Once a model is fine-tuned, it can be deployed to millions of end users with no additional inference cost, a key advantage of running models locally rather than in the cloud. Small language models, running where the data lives I was curious what the trade-off is from using SLMs instead of LLMs. “Historically, making an API call to a cloud-based model was easy, and running models locally was hard. "We've solved that problem,” shared Waagner Falkenstrøm. “With NobodyWho, the traditional complexity gap of local inference is effectively removed.” There are still some use cases where very large models are necessary — extremely broad or complex reasoning tasks. Those models won’t disappear. But for most real-world business applications, such as chatbots, HR assistants, customer support, and domain-specific tools,  Small Language Models are more than sufficient, especially when fine-tuned. “Fine-tuning smaller models is also easier, explained Waagner Falkenstrøm., “You need less data and less compute, and you get more controllable behaviour. Most companies operate within specific contexts, and small models excel there.” NobodyWho uses the European Public License (EUPL) 1.2, which explicitly allows both individuals and companies to build commercial products on top of its code — a deliberate choice aimed at driving real-world adoption with cross-platform support across mainstream operating systems and development frameworks included. “If you want genuine uptake, commercial use has to be allowed,” says Waagner Falkenstrøm. “Otherwise you don’t get an ecosystem — you get a demo.” Over 5,000 devs building The ecosystem is already forming. NobodyWho now has more than 5,000 developers building with the platform via GitHub, alongside an active Discord community where contributors discuss use cases, share feedback, and help shape the roadmap. “The open-source aspect is critical,” Waagner Falkenstrøm adds. “It’s what allows a real community to emerge — not just users, but contributors.” With the platform well beyond MVP, the company’s focus has shifted firmly to scale. “We’re past the experimentation phase,” she says. “Now it’s about expanding framework support and enabling more developers to build production-grade applications.” She believes the next leap forward in AI will come from making models smaller, more local, and more human-centric.  “The future of AI won’t be won by size, but by decentralised models that anyone can run on their own devices.” Investors view the rise of local, energy-efficient AI as a major strategic opportunity for Europe, especially as demand grows for privacy-compliant and cost-effective alternatives to cloud models. The round is backed by PSV Tech and The Footprint Firm, and Norrsken Evolve. “I’ve known Cecilie for nearly a decade and have seen first-hand how she consistently turns bold ideas into real, working technology,” says Christel Piron, co-founder and General Partner at PSV Tech: “Backing NobodyWho was a no-brainer for us: this is an exceptional team building critical European AI infrastructure that is privacy-protecting, energy-efficient, and accessible to developers and companies everywhere”. Sofie Käll, CIO at The Footprint Firm, shared: “NobodyWho is pioneering the infrastructure that makes these ultra-efficient models truly plug-and-play for developers.  This is a transformative climate-tech opportunity in one of the fastest-growing emissions categories, and we’re excited to support a team capable of moving the industry toward more responsible AI."  Waagner Falkenstrøm contends that no matter what we do, Europe will not outcompete the US or China in the “bigger is better” game.  “The compute, capital, and hyperscale infrastructure simply aren’t comparable. “But from our experience, we knew that smaller models are genuinely powerful in many fields. That creates an opportunity for Europe to compete differently.” At the same time, there’s a strong values-based dimension to what NobodyWho is doing.  She asserts: “Coming from the EU and the Nordics, we care deeply about data security, GDPR compliance, sustainability, and data sovereignty. NobodyWho is designed to reflect those values.” “Technology is power” Waagner Falkenstrøm asserts that Europe needs to believe in itself. We have some of the best education systems, software engineers, and research institutions in the world. “We don’t need to copy the US — we need to build AI that reflects European strengths and values. Further, technology is power. If we care about privacy, sovereignty, sustainability, and democratic control, those values must be embedded in the technology itself. That’s what we’re trying to do with NobodyWho: decentralised, open, privacy-preserving AI that anyone can build on.” Waagner Falkenstrøm sees NobodyWho as part of the first real wave of companies building infrastructure specifically for Small Language Models. “A year ago, SLMs weren’t widely discussed. Today, developers and investors understand the category. The models are improving rapidly, and the tooling has matured. Big tech companies will enter this space — but they’ll optimise for their own ecosystems. Apple will build for Apple. Microsoft will build for Microsoft. We’re platform-agnostic. That creates a meaningful opportunity.”

Oxford-based materials science startup A&B Smart Materials has closed a £1.5 million pre-seed funding round. The round was led by existing investor Sake Bosch, with new strategic investors Caesar and Living Hope VC, alongside participation from Archipelago Ventures, Triple Impact Ventures, Cranfield University Seed Fund, Oxford Seed Fund, and several business angels from Cambridge Capital Group and Oxford Innovation Finance. The superabsorbent polymers (SAP) market is sizeable and growing, driven mainly by demand from absorbent hygiene products such as nappies and menstrual pads, with additional use in agriculture and smaller applications in areas like medical products, construction, consumer goods, and water treatment. Most SAPs in use today are synthetic and fossil-based, and because they are not designed to biodegrade, they can persist in the environment and contribute to microplastic pollution, including through high-volume single-use products such as disposable nappies. A&B Smart Materials is developing fully biodegradable alternatives to fossil-based superabsorbent polymers, using polymer science and natural feedstocks to create absorbent materials intended to match existing performance requirements and fit within established manufacturing processes. Its approach is based on modified biopolymers derived from widely available, lower-cost natural materials. A&B Smart Materials co-founder and CTO Dr. Benjamin White said the persistence of synthetic superabsorbent polymers contributes to long-lasting pollution, including microplastics in the environment. We intend to completely replace these products with biocompatible and biodegradable materials, without compromising on product performance or affordability. The funding will primarily be used to accelerate R&D to refine A&B’s sustainable superabsorbent polymer formulations and target a combination of strong performance, competitive cost, and industrial-scale validation for hygiene and agricultural applications. The company’s longer-term objective is to replace synthetic SAPs in a market projected to reach about $17 billion by 2035.

Resale platform Bought, launched in March 2025, has announced its third acquisition of the year, Robes Rental, to strengthen its position in Europe and explore peer-to-peer renting. Earlier this year, Bought acquired the Finnish secondhand platform Zadaa as well as the bankruptcy estate of Vähänkäytetty.fi. Bought was the first to launch peer-to-peer local logistics in partnership with Wolt earlier this year. Check out our earlier interview with Erik Kymäläinen, co-founder and CEO of Bought. Robes Rental is a Finnish peer-to-peer rental platform focused on luxury fashion. Featured in Vogue and loved by celebrities and politicians alike, Robes’ technology, industry knowledge, and dedicated community allow for Bought to strengthen its position as the up-and-coming circular platform arising from the Nordics. “Robes and Bought have been aligned in many ways from the start. Both were founded in Helsinki by young and ambitious teams with the goal of changing the way we buy, sell, and own. Both believe that technology plays a key role in enabling this shift in circularity. This collaboration gives us the tools to realise our vision even more efficiently,” says Erik Kymäläinen, co-founder and CEO of Bought. “Two years ago, we set out to build a new kind of wardrobe experience, one that made luxury fashion accessible and circular. By combining Bought’s automated resale and digital closet technology with Robes’ expertise in rental and circular wardrobes, we can offer a more complete circular fashion experience and create greater impact from one place. This is an exciting new chapter for our community and for the entire circular fashion ecosystem in Europe,” says Anna Sillanpää, co-founder and CEO of Robes Rental. Moving forward, Robes’ technology will be transferred to Bought to support the development of advanced circular wardrobe capabilities on Bought’s platform. This means that the standalone Robes app will sunset at the end of the year, making way for something even more impactful through Bought.

Monzo is making its first-ever acquisition, buying UK digital mortgage broker Habito. The acquisition of Habito, which employs around 100 people, comes as the UK challenger bank looks to beef up its mortgage offering and diversify beyond its core digital banking products. Kunal Malani, Monzo chief banking officer, posted on LinkedIn: “Buying a home should be exciting - not overwhelming. Together, Monzo and Habito will make it easier for customers to find, compare and secure the right mortgage, all from the Monzo app." Monzo said the deal, for an undisclosed amount, means it’s the first UK bank to offer an end-to-end mortgage broking experience within its app. Monzo, which has more than 14m customers, currently offers users a Homeownership feature, which it says more than 450,000 users use to track their mortgage, home value and mortgage deals. The UK digital bank pointed to data showing 87 per cent of UK mortgage seekers used a mortgage broker. London-based Habito, founded in 2016, is a digital mortgage broker which provides tools, including mortgage switching and home-buying services. It is backed by investors including Augmentum Fintech, SBI Investment and Volution. Ying Tan, CEO of Habito, said: “At Habito, we’ve always believed mortgages should be easier, fairer, and simpler for everyone. "I’m incredibly proud of what our team has built, and I couldn’t be more excited for this next chapter with Monzo. Together, we’ll transform what the mortgage experience feels like - effortless, empowering, and truly built around people." Financial terms of the transaction are not disclosed, with the deal expected to close in the spring of 2026.