Today Romanian-founded SaaS marketplace Tekpon has acquired 100 per cent of the TNW media and events brands from the FT. The financials of the deal have not been disclosed, but the transaction is Tekpon’s largest investment in media and events so far. Alexandru Stan is CEO of Tekpon, a SaaS marketplace he founded in 2020 after building 21 companies and exiting five.  In late 2025, he quietly acquired TNW from the FT — without seeing any financials before signing the deal.  I spoke to him about why he bought TNW, his view on the role of journalism, what the new editorial strategy will look like, and how he plans to position TNW in Europe’s evolving tech ecosystem. From SaaS entrepreneur to media owner Founded in 2020, Tekpon is a marketplace and buying/ procurement service for software (especially SaaS & AI tools). It helps businesses discover, compare, and purchase software through a combination of a software tool directory and a human-led procurement service.  Stan describes himself as a serial entrepreneur:  “I built 21 companies, did five exits, the rest failed — which is normal for an entrepreneur.  In 2020, I launched Tekpon with former co-founders from previous businesses. We built a SaaS marketplace with the idea of becoming the first honest software review platform.” When I queried Stan to understand the state of the financials at TNW, he admitted,  “The deal happened without me seeing any data. TNW is so well-known—especially across Europe and the US—that the brand’s strength alone meant they didn’t show me anything.” The acquisition is part of Tekpon’s long-term plan to build an international ecosystem connecting software, media, events, advisory, and innovation. “TNW was too small for FT” I wanted to understand why Stan thinks TNW was closed down. I mean, I’ve heard everything from the post-COVID financials to the lack of profitability of its much-esteemed annual conference.  Stan asserts: “The Financial Times is extremely powerful. TNW was a strong brand and community—but too small for the FT. TNW wasn’t a business that could generate a billion dollars in annual revenue It’s like someone very rich buying a bicycle: it doesn’t matter to them.” According to the deal with FT, TNW’s brand and editorial standards will be maintained, while its events and digital platforms will be integrated into Tekpon’s wider strategy. The FT will continue to own and operate TNW Spaces, offering private offices and coworking spaces that support a thriving community of startups, scale-ups, and innovators. TNW will support all major European ecosystems—Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, the Nordics, and more, as well as Romania, even though it’s still a small market.  When asked about verticals or niches, Stan says TNW will stay away from politics and by default defencetech, but focus on: AI, especially startups with a positive societal impact. The software industry. What’s next in tech, staying true to the brand’s name. M&A and investment insights: “We have multiple M&A partners in Tekpon’s community who give us information months before it becomes public as well as a community of 136,000 people at Tekpon who can provide insights from across the ecosystem. Journalists can turn those insights into real news. It will become very powerful for Europe.” TNW staff to have independence — and better conditions Tekpon already hosts annual awards, an AI summit, a podcast and a magazine. With this in mind, I asked Stan about editorial independence. He asserts that “independence is essential. Tekpon makes money selling software. We take commissions on HubSpot, Monday.com, etc." "This means TNW can stay 100 per cent independent. We don’t need to mix software sales with journalism.” However, Stan also admitted that he loves writing, saying, “I’ll be involved daily in finding what’s interesting in the market, supporting the community, and avoiding conflicts of interest. I’ll help the newsroom understand what deserves coverage, but journalists will stay independent.” And, he shared that he has no intention of making journalists work for peanuts. “I care about people first. I want them to have a good life and the means to perform well.”   Stan is undecided on how many journalists the publication will fund throughout Europe, but shared that the company is calculating how many new quality pieces it needs monthly.  He asserts: “If I need 10 people, 20, or even 30, I’ll hire them. And if I need capital, it’s easy to raise it.” According to Stan, the first order of business is to transfer the 100,000-plus TNW articles currently in FT's possession.  Plans for 2026 include an expanded TNW Conference, new SaaS and AI program tracks curated by Tekpon, and cross-regional executive programmes. The brand also plans to launch a 1,000-member exclusive TNW community called TNW Inner Circle — an exclusive community for founders and executives. It aims to help members succeed and to make Europe more competitive globally. “Europe doesn’t fully know what’s coming, so we need strong networks” shared Stan. “I’m a big fan of real journalism. I analyse articles deeply—why something was written, what’s behind it. There are not many tough tech journalists — you are one of them —, and Europe needs them. With TNW, I want people — executives, founders — to share things they don’t usually share in public. That’s how we’ll build something meaningful.” The state of tech media in Europe It's not been an easy year for Europe’s tech media. Private equity firm Regent LP bought Techcrunch from Yahoo Inc. in March 2025 and shed the vast majority of its European office.  June saw European layoffs at Business Insider by 21 per cent, and  TNW’s media and event management closed in September.  That said, it's not all doom and gloom. Defender Media was launched in April. etn began its YouTube channel in September, and Pathfounders started publishing articles in October.  In June, The Recursive tripled revenue, and announced the launch of a global advisory board. Resiliience Media bagged funding in August. Tech.eu recently celebrated our 12th birthday. There are other acquisitions, too. Silicon Canals was sold to Brown Brothers Media in September, while EU-Startups was sold to MeOut Group in November. These moves reflect a broader consolidation across European tech media—but also raise questions about editorial integrity and long-term strategy. However, the most controversial example is Silicon Canals, which has rapidly shifted away from its original newsroom model and now resembles an AI-driven content mill producing low-quality, click-optimised articles at scale. Having seen this pattern before, I’m wary. As I noted on LinkedIn, I previously worked at ReadWriteWeb — once one of the world’s top ten tech blogs, syndicated by The New York Times and ranked in Technorati’s top 100. After multiple ownership changes, it too devolved into AI-generated clickbait. It devalues the ecosystem for us all. That said, competition is always a good thing. There are enough stories in Europe for all of us. Disclosure: I’m a former Senior Writer at TNW, where I focused primarily on mobility. TNW always felt like FT’s errant little brother compared to the more stoic Sifted — but being under the FT banner had its perks.  People recognised the FT name, even if they’d never heard of your publication. And it’s the only newsroom I’ve ever worked for that paid out a Christmas bonus — much less to freelancers — so for that alone it has a place in my heart.

There are a whopping 64,142 people currently living with dementia in Ireland. With age being the leading risk factor for dementia, this number is expected to rise alongside population ageing to 150,131 by 2045. Dementia describes a group of symptoms that affect memory, thinking, and social abilities severely enough to interfere with daily life. Among its many forms, Alzheimer’s disease is the most common, accounting for 60–70 per cent of dementia cases worldwide. With millions of people and families impacted globally, early and accurate diagnosis has never been more critical. MemoryTell is a digital health tool that uses speech-based biomarkers to support the early detection of dementia. Instead of relying on lengthy memory tests or medical imaging, it analyses short recordings of a person speaking — looking at patterns in language, rhythm, pauses, and acoustics that research shows can signal cognitive decline.  I spoke to Corrina Grimes to learn all about it.  Turning a research breakthrough into a clinical tool Grimes started in health and social care 25 years ago as a clinician, and then moved into policy and commissioning.  Parallel to that, in 2017, she became an Atlantic Fellow at the Global Brain Health Institute, affiliated with Trinity College Dublin and UCSF in San Francisco. That’s when she became interested in brain health and how to reduce the scale and impact of dementia through a life-course approach, and where she met Adolfo García, a neuroscientist who spent 15 years researching how speech can be used as a biomarker. Garcia is an internationally recognised neuroscientist with 200+ publications and a global authority in speech biomarkers and brain health, and he has already developed a tool called TELL — “Toolkit to Examine Life-Like Language”. The duo joined forces with Fernando Johann, an engineer and serial entrepreneur with two successful exits, venture capital experience, and experience scaling tech to international markets to co-found MemoryTell, to take the technology from the lab to frontline services in Europe.  MemoryTell’s real-time speech analysis supports dementia diagnosis While in relatively early stages, MemoryTell is a web-based AI platform that records, transcribes, and analyses a person’s speech and provides a real-time report to support clinicians in diagnosing and monitoring dementia. MemoryTell’s approach makes analysis objective. The AI compares a person’s speech against a dataset of 13,000 clinically coded records — labelled with disease status and validated in clinical practice, plus healthy volunteers. A 10-minute, non-invasive assessment designed for primary care A person engages in a short conversation or performs structured speech tasks (e.g. picture description, story-retelling, spontaneous speech) that are recorded.  Advanced algorithms analyse the recording. They extract a large number of acoustic features (pauses, speed, tone, prosody, silence duration, jitter, etc.) and linguistic features (lexical diversity, syntactic complexity, fluency/disfluency, phrase structure, word usage, etc.). The speech is compared against a validated database of prior speech samples from people with known clinical status (healthy, MCI, dementia).  Using machine-learning or statistical classifiers (or, in some newer approaches, deep learning), the system estimates the likelihood that the speech sample corresponds to cognitive impairment, or flags patterns indicative of early signs of neurodegenerative disease. The output is packaged into a real-time result/report that clinicians can view. Over time, repeated assessments allow tracking of changes in speech biomarkers — useful to monitor disease progression, cognitive decline, or possibly responses to interventions/therapies. MemoryTell slots into primary care with fast, consistent dementia assessment “It doesn’t diagnose, but it provides a proposed classification that helps clinicians,” explained Grimes. According to Grimes: “Our first use case focuses on people who present to their GP with symptoms and are then referred for assessment.  Providing an alternative to invasive assessments Across Europe, the diagnostic pathway varies — in some countries, initial assessments happen in primary care, while in others they’re carried out in specialist memory clinics — but MemoryTell is designed to slot naturally into the primary-care stage because it offers a quick, non-invasive 10-minute assessment with real-time, objective scoring.” It's an approach that contrasts with today’s common methods, which typically rely on pen-and-paper psychometric tests such as the ACE-III, alongside clinical conversations, multidisciplinary meetings, functional assessments, and, when needed, further diagnostics like MRI, lumbar puncture, or other scans. “Further, it provides longitudinal tracking — something our systems lack today. Speech biomarkers can objectively track disease progression or the efficacy of new treatments over time.” It can also be used to plan other interventions — including social care — as conditions progress. It’s an objective, consistent way to document change.” And, unlike other tests, results are instant. The healthcare provider receives a real-time PDF or API-delivered report. There’s no waiting period. MemoryTell is currently developing validation studies, which will assist in determining whether (and how) the tool assists with: Screening, Prioritising waiting lists. Shortening diagnostic timelines. “It won’t replace other tests, but it can be used earlier in the pathway, and it’s faster than standard care,” detailed Grimes. Momentum builds after winning Catalyst Invent 2025 MemoryTell has been received positively from healthcare providers and clinicians, policymakers, and government — “you don’t usually get that 3D level of support,” admits Grimes.  “Investors have also been extremely positive. Being part of the Global Brain Health Institute also brings credibility, and we have strong institutional letters of support." In October 2025, MemoryTell won big in the Catalyst Invent startup competition, winning the bio breakthrough category and the overall category, which has generated a lot of momentum. Further, Grimes asserts that “a lot of people have been personally impacted by dementia, so they understand the mission: shifting from invasive, subjective tests to something faster, more dignified, and more objective.” Once it obtains CE marking, MemoryTell will be a software-as-a-service medical device. The first customers will be public sector primary care and memory clinics, then the private sector. “Many startups go private first, but for us, the mission is rooted in public services,” shared Grimes.  “I have 25 years’ experience working across health systems — policy, commissioning, service redesign — so I understand the implementation challenges from inside the system.” From here, MemoryTell’s priorities focus on completing clinical validation studies, advancing its regulatory strategy, building a robust quality-management system, securing CE marking, forming partnerships across Europe, and applying for targeted European grants to support further development and deployment.

News service Freepress has raised €1M in seed funding to advance its platform and prepare for international expansion. The AI-powered service plans to enter global markets in collaboration with local publishers, sharing up to half of its revenue to help sustain quality journalism. Freepress curates verified news from multiple global sources and presents it as concise, bite-sized stories in users’ own languages, making international news easier to follow. Founded in 2023 by Joel Uussaari and Aleksi Kaistinen and launched in Finland in autumn 2025, its AI acts as a virtual news editor, analysing hundreds of thousands of publicly available and licensed articles from multiple countries and generating key information on each topic in the user’s language. Users can follow news events from different countries in real time or have Freepress track them automatically. When the international media covers a chosen topic, the service sends a notification. According to Joel Uussaari, CEO of Freepress, AI enables a level of information organisation that allows the service to deliver exactly the news readers want, without requiring them to search for it: "Through Freepress, publishers can reach readers outside their own language and market area. For publishers, this means reaching audiences far beyond their home market." Freepress provides its AI-generated news content free of charge and complements it with quality journalism from publishers in various countries. The company shares up to half of its revenue from both consumer and business users with publishers and is in discussions with several international media partners. Freepress also plans to expand to additional languages and markets and, alongside its consumer service, is developing business tools for content use, media monitoring, and market behaviour forecasting.

Paris-based Corma, a SaaS management solution that helps IT teams better control software usage and sprawl, has raised €3.5 million in seed funding. The round was led by XTX Ventures, with follow-on investments from Tuesday Capital, Kima Ventures, 50 Partners, and Olympe Capital. It also includes participation from business angels such as Thomas Wolf (co-founder of Hugging Face), Jean-Louis Quéguiner (co-founder of Gladia), and Doreen Pernel (CSO of Scaleway). Internal software stacks have grown more than tenfold, turning software into a drag on productivity and financial performance. At the same time, tracking and understanding software costs has become increasingly complex due to company growth, evolving workforces, new subscriptions, and changing business models. As the number of tools grows, many IT departments lack clear visibility into how many applications are in use, how much is being spent, and whether those tools are actually delivering value. Founded in 2023, Corma focuses on helping small and mid-size companies understand, manage, and optimise their software spend. Developed in response to the rapid expansion of software tools and rising AI-related complexity, the platform aims to bring greater clarity and efficiency to software management while providing a stronger foundation for productivity. Its specialised agents collect key information such as licence renewal terms, authorised users, and usage metrics, giving organisations an accurate view of their software landscape. This enables more informed investment decisions, helping reduce overall spend by up to 20 per cent and saving hundreds of hours on provisioning and access reviews. We see teams everywhere that are overwhelmed by the number of apps they need to manage every day. They lose money left and right and spend their day on operational tasks instead of strategic initiatives. At the same time, the risks of data leaks and access abuse increase with the rise of Shadow AI and overall permission sprawl, says co-founder and CEO Héloïse Rozès. The funding will be used primarily for product development, AI buildout, and commercial expansion.

Last week, we tracked more than 65 tech funding deals worth over €1.3 billion, and over 15 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.Click to read the rest of the news.

This week, we tracked more than 65 tech funding deals worth over €1.3 billion and over 15 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe. In addition to this week's top financials, we've also indexed the most important/industry-related news items you need to know about. If email is more your thing, you can always subscribe to our newsletter and receive a more robust version of this round-up delivered to your inbox. Either way, let's get you up to speed. ? Notable and big funding rounds ?? French CRM outfit Brevo hits unicorn status following a €500M funding round ?? Black Forest Labs secures $300M Series B at $3.25B valuation ?? Shop Circle secures $100M credit facility as it positions itself as Europe’s alternative to VC funding ??‍?? Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers ?? Bending Spoons to acquire Eventbrite in $500M all-cash deal ?? Wayve acquires German startup Quality Match ?? Shiftmove acquires Ocean, expanding its European fleet technology footprint ?? FORMEL SKIN joins MANUAL to expand from skin health to whole-body care ?? KKR completes £4.7B acquisition of Spectris ? Interesting moves from investors ? Europe’s overlooked alpha: Growathon Ventures targets Venture’s biggest market failure ? SwissHealth Ventures doubles fund volume to CHF 100 million ?? Backing founders from “day zero”, Dutch VC Volve Capital closes Fund I at €9 million ?️ In other (important) news ?? Former Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billström joins Nordic Air Defence ?? New programme fast-tracks European defence innovation with controlled testing in Ukraine ? UN Development Program and Wazoku invite startups to pioneer new tech for underwater mine detection ? From heat waste to heat source: Power Mining launches shipping-container data centres for city heating ? Entrepreneurs launch European “venture studio” ? Recommended reads and listens ? The biggest European edtech deals in H1 2025 ?? Mater-AI secures £1.5M to tackle one of energy’s oldest problems: wasted heat ?? “I definitely want a European listing”, says Nvidia-backed n8n CEO ? Biotech scaleup NADMED launches $30K global award to advance innovation in cellular health ? European tech startups to watch  ?? Complir raises €1.7M to help retailers manage global compliance with AI infrastructure ??  Sky Spy lands $1.6M to fix SIGINT failures in saturated signal environments ??  Liablix secures €1.2M to modernize automotive claims analysis ?? Fronted lands $1M to modernise global hiring using AI ?? Bestie Bite raises $700,000 to reinvent restaurant choices with AI gamification ?? Lovable-built Lumoo gets €550,000 funding from Lovable CEO

A Swedish startup built on vibe coding startup Lovable, which aims to reduce the age-old problem of customers returning ill-fitting clothes, has bagged funding from the Lovable CEO as part of a SEK 6 million (around €550,000)  angel investment round.Lumoo's AI platform, built on Lovable, helps brands and retailers with product visualisation, such as virtual try-ons and automated brand modelling, and content production. It says its AI-powered tech is a notch above current virtual try-ons.It aims to reduce the problem of customers returning clothes, which costs the retail industry billions of pounds every year. Lumoo has signed deals with brands including Gant, Brothers and AWNR Group. Lovable co-founder and CEO Anton Osika is part of a "strategic group of prominent angel investors", who are mainly from the fashion and tech industry.Lumoo will use the capital to target international expansion and cater for the demands of its clients. Osika said that Lumoo was on track to hit €1M ARR within its first year.Lumoo was founded by Peter Thörngren and Henrik Skagerlind Fasth, who between them have 25 years in the fashion and retail industry. Thörngren, CEO, Lumoo, said: “This investment is a strong validation of the rapid growth we are experiencing and the trust we’ve built with some of the most influential brands in the Nordics. "The capital enables key recruitment and faster development of our AI platform, with the goal of establishing Lumoo as the global industry standard." Image: Lumoo

London-based yuv, a beauty technology company developing the world’s first smart hair colour lab system for salons and freelancers, has closed a $12 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Nineyards Equity, with participation from Founder Francisco Gimenez, existing investor VNV Global, and a network of strategic angel investors. yuv is modernising the professional hair colour market through patented hardware, AI-enabled software, and refillable packaging. Its flagship product, the yuv Lab, is a compact, app-connected dispensing system that replaces single-use tubes with refillable aluminium cartridges, delivering precise, customizable formulations at the touch of a button. Designed for both salons and freelancers, the platform combines patented hardware, AI-powered software, and Swiss-developed formulas optimised for customisation, performance, and safety. By pairing refillable packaging with intelligent data systems, yuv helps beauty professionals reduce waste, cut costs, streamline operations, and expand creative possibilities. Commenting on the round, Francisco Gimenez, Founder & CEO of yuv, said the new investment marks an important step in the company’s development: With the backing of Nineyards Equity, VNV Global, and our wider investor community, we are strengthening our commitment to reshaping professional hair colour through sustainability, design, and technology. The new funding will support yuv’s growth in the UK and its planned US launch in 2026, scaling its patented platform and subscription model to a wider network of salons and freelancers worldwide.

Sky Spy, a technology company developing compact signal intelligence (SIGINT) systems for contested and congested environments, has raised $1.6 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed round to go-to-market, launch production and expand its team to deliver fully autonomous AI-driven systems.Sky Spy was founded to address a critical gap in SIGINT in today’s saturated signal environments. Lessons from the war in Ukraine have highlighted that forces contend with thousands of civilian, commercial, and military transmitters.  In practice, many units have been forced to lean on visual intelligence due to the failure of traditional ground and airborne SIGINT to deliver reliable, timely results in dense, contested environments – leading to 80 per cent of small, high-priority targets being missed.The announcement follows the successful frontline validation of Sky Spy’s first product, Agent 001, conducted with active military units in Ukraine, where the system proved its ability to detect and geolocate hostile emitters – including UAS control stations and jammers – in one of the world’s most saturated and contested electromagnetic environments. Soldiers described Agent 001 as the first solution of its kind that has proven its capability in live combat situations. Sky Spy’s flagship payload, Agent 001, turns small drones into autonomous spectrum hunters by combining RF intelligence with visual confirmation. Weighing just over 500 grams, it detects, classifies, and localises radio emitters in real time – providing actionable intelligence in environments where legacy systems fail. The system uses proprietary filtering algorithms, custom RF hardware, and unique combat data to deliver market-leading precision even under jamming and GPS-denied conditions. Unlike existing systems designed for large aircraft or static networks, Agent 001 runs its full signal-processing pipeline onboard, allowing immediate response without external compute. It integrates seamlessly with any existing COP/C2 infrastructure at a fraction of the price of legacy SIGINT platforms. Sky Spy has already attracted the attention of several world-leading UAS producers and is in the process of integrating its technology into next-generation tactical ISR platforms, introducing a new capability and data layer for intelligence operations. The company is carefully selecting its first partners to deploy the system at scale. Founded by a Ukraine-origin team, and now operating across the US and EU countries, Sky Spy’s multinational team combines technical expertise with operational experience from active combat zones. “Sky Spy was built by people who’ve seen how unreliable intelligence costs lives,” said Arsenii Hurtavtsov, CEO of Sky Spy. “Our mission is simple: to give forces real-time awareness in the spectrum – because the side that dominates the spectrum dominates the war.” The Pre-Seed round was co-led by Expeditions Fund and Superangel, joined by Freedom Fund, Sunfish Partners, Crosscourt Ventures, and Material Ventures. Andrzej Rościszewski, Investment Associate at Expeditions Fund, said: “We were looking for a while to find a product that could radically improve signal intelligence in contested environments. Sky Spy’s initial product, trained on battlefield electromagnetic data, offers an attritable, airborne radio-reconnaissance platform, which aims to solve one of the most pressing problems in today's battlefield. The team is highly motivated, brings strong credentials from their prior work on C2 systems, and has already validated their solution with end users. We look forward to supporting their international expansion.” Jaan Kokk, Senior Associate at Superangel, said: “From the first meeting, Sky Spy impressed us with their deep technical talent and real operational insight. Their work aligns with the growing need across Europe and NATO for practical, rapidly deployable sensing capabilities. We believe they have the rare ability to move fast, solve hard problems, and deliver capabilities that work where it matters.” Lead image: Sky Spy.

Türkiye digital asset platform Paribu has acquired CoinMENA, the largest local crypto exchange in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), in a transaction valuing the company at up to $240 million. It also underscores the ongoing consolidation of the global digital asset industry, as established regional players seek greater scale, regulatory strength, and broader market reach. With this acquisition, Paribu will expand its operations from its home market in Türkiye into a region with high crypto adoption. Through CoinMENA, the local entity licensed by Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) and the Central Bank of Bahrain, Paribu will access two active digital asset licenses. This expanded regulatory footprint positions Paribu as one of the region’s few regulated multi-jurisdiction operators and supports its strategy of compliance-driven growth into new markets. Paribu is among Türkiye’s leading companies in the digital asset and fintech sectors, pursuing a growth roadmap focused on regulatory compliance, product innovation, and geographic expansion. In 2024, Paribu introduced Paribu Custody, Türkiye’s first and only digital asset custody provider powered by its proprietary multi-layered security technology, ColdShield. In October 2025, the Capital Markets Board (CMB) authorised Paribu to establish a brokerage firm, marking its entry into the capital markets. The acquisition of CoinMENA further strengthens Paribu’s role as a regional fintech leader. Founded in 2020 by Talal Tabbaa and Dina Sam’an, CoinMENA is a licensed crypto asset service provider operating under Bahrain and Dubai regulatory authorities. The platform now serves more than 1.5 million users across 45 countries, offering access to over 50 cryptocurrencies and supporting multiple local currencies across the MENA region. According to Yasin Oral, Founder and CEO of Paribu, the transaction is a turning point not only for Paribu but also for the digital asset and broader finance ecosystem in Türkiye and the MENA region: "With this acquisition, we have expanded our licensed operations to a wider geography, becoming a regulated player in one of the world’s most crypto-adoptive markets. We are proud to be leading Türkiye’s largest fintech acquisition and its first international digital asset platform deal.” He shared that the deal opens a new chapter in Paribu’s growth journey, “extending our presence into the MENA region and contributing to the ongoing consolidation of the global digital asset industry, building on the strong foundation we have established in Türkiye.” Talal Tabbaa and Dina Sam’an, Co-Founders of CoinMENA, said in a joint statement: “The MENA digital asset market continues to grow and mature, and joining forces with Paribu will help accelerate that momentum. By combining CoinMENA’s regional expertise with Paribu’s technology, we are poised to develop a comprehensive suite of digital asset products for users across Türkiye and the MENA region. This acquisition is the most transformative milestone in CoinMENA’s history. Paribu’s investment validates the strength of what we have built, and together we aim to set new standards for access and innovation in the region’s digital asset space.”

UK agentic AI startup Superbo has secured a strategic investment from Deep Capital Group. Superbo’s platform enables organisations to streamline operations and unlock efficiency through AI agents and cognitive flows. Through its Opero Suite, Nova, Solo and Aeon, the company turns enterprise knowledge into intelligent dialogue, connects APIs and systems into seamless cognitive workflows and deploys autonomous agents that deliver measurable outcomes, rewiring the operating models of businesses, instead of just adding new systems. According to Demetri Papazissis, CEO and co‑founder of Superbo: “At Superbo, we believe that conversation is just the beginning, true transformation happens when AI agents can act, drawing on enterprise knowledge and systems to drive outcomes.  Partnering with Deep Capital is like harnessing the energy of a supernova. Its experience in scaling technology companies and its visionary leadership will allow us to accelerate our Opero roadmap, hire exceptional talent and bring our agentic vision to more businesses worldwide.” Founded by Dimitris Maris following the successful creation and expansion of Kaizen Gaming International, Deep Capital Group is an international investment group overseeing a diverse portfolio of assets, across multiple geographies.  The investment will accelerate enterprise adoption of Agentic AI‑powered intelligence and scale Superbo’s operations across EMEA and the US. Beyond capital, Deep Capital will provide strategic guidance and access to its extensive network across technology, media and gaming. Lead image: Demetri Papazissis and Agis Stathakis from Superbo. Photo: uncredited. 

UK healthtech platform MANUAL has acquired FORMEL SKIN, Germany’s largest digital dermatology provider. Together, the companies will form one of Europe’s fastest-growing healthtech groups, united by a bold vision: to build the world’s leading unified health platform.  Since its founding in 2019, FORMEL SKIN has offered patients expert guidance, personalised treatments, and long-term support through a digital platform that bridges the gap between medical expertise and everyday life.  Today, FORMEL SKIN has provided over 2 million treatments and is one of Europe’s fastest-growing health techs, with tens of thousands of monthly users. The company set the standard for digital dermatological care in Europe through partnerships with leading European universities and treatment journeys that show more than 90 per cent improvement in treatment outcomes. Headquartered in Berlin with a team of 125 employees, the company has become a trusted name in dermatology, empowering patients to take control of their skin health from home.  By joining MANUAL, FORMEL SKIN will accelerate its mission and expand beyond dermatology, delivering better outcomes for patients across a broader range of conditions and markets.  “This acquisition is the most important milestone in FORMEL SKIN’s journey,” said Florian Semler, Founder and CEO of FORMEL SKIN. “For six years, we’ve been on a mission to make dermatology more accessible and to build a platform that serves millions of patients. From humble beginnings, FORMEL SKIN has grown into Europe’s leading digital dermatology provider. Now, we’re ready to take the next leap. Together with MANUAL, we are excited to go beyond dermatology and build the world’s leading global health platform." "We’re deeply impressed by FORMEL SKIN’s achievements since its founding in 2019 and enthusiastic about the company’s future growth potential,” said George Pallis, Founder and CEO of MANUAL. Under a new brand VOY, the company will launch Germany’s most advanced, medically supervised weight loss program, combining personalised, clinically proven treatments with comprehensive lifestyle and behavioural support. 

In schools, digital learning has become part of everyday life. Students turn to apps for homework help, explanations, and practice. At the same time, maths and STEM get special attention, with playful games, interactive tools, and even smart toys helping younger learners build confidence and skills. For adults, learning is increasingly tied to work and career shifts. Intensive coding and tech programmes help people move into software, data, and AI roles, while companies invest in platforms that train and upskill their employees continuously. Across all of this, AI runs through the ecosystem as a common layer: shaping content, adapting difficulty, giving feedback, and personalising the learning path. And while many solutions are born in specific countries or regions, they increasingly think and operate at a European scale, expanding across borders, but still tuned to local languages, school systems, and regulations. The following are the ten largest funding rounds in the European edtech industry during the first half of 2025. Amount raised in H1 2025: €240M AMBOSS is a digital medical-education and reference platform created by physicians to support medical students, residents, and clinicians worldwide. It provides a comprehensive Knowledge Library, a high-yield Qbank for exam preparation (including USMLE, COMLEX, Shelf exams), a rich set of clinical-decision tools (like drug databases, differential diagnosis support, management checklists), and integrations for study tools and mobile access. Founded in 2012, AMBOSS has a mission to “empower all medical professionals to provide the best possible care” by distilling medical knowledge into a single accessible, evidence-based platform. In March, AMBOSS secured €240 million to strengthen medical knowledge and support healthcare professionals. Amount raised in H1 2025: €27M Knowunity is an AI-powered learning platform, originally founded in 2020 in Germany, with the mission to revolutionise education globally by making personalised learning accessible to all students. It combines a vast library of user-generated study materials, such as summaries, notes, flashcards and quizzes, with an AI “study companion” that delivers individualised tutoring, tailored study plans, interactive quizzes, and homework help across many subjects. Knowunity serves tens of millions of students across multiple countries, helping them study more efficiently, prepare for exams, and access peer-generated learning resources whenever and wherever they need them. In June, Knowunity raised €27 million to scale its personalised AI tutor globally. Amount raised in H1 2025: $25M Attensi is a Norwegian company that delivers AI-powered, gamified simulation training and corporate learning solutions. The platform uses immersive 3D simulations, realistic role-play scenarios with virtual humans, and behavioural-science-backed gamification to help organisations worldwide train employees in skills like onboarding, sales, leadership, compliance, and customer service, often achieving higher engagement, faster learning, and stronger retention than traditional training. Attensi serves clients across diverse industries and operates globally, with content available in dozens of languages and deployments in 150+ countries. Attensi secured over $25 million in growth funding in May for gamified training solutions. Amount raised in H1 2025: €16.5M doinstruct is a German company that builds a mobile-first, multilingual training and compliance platform for frontline workers across industries. It enables businesses to deliver onboarding, training and compliance content (e.g. safety, hygiene, standard operating procedures) to employees on any device. Trainings can be automatically assigned and tracked, and companies can even upload their own content or use doinstruct’s existing library, all while staying GDPR-compliant and using secure hosting. In March, doinstruct secured €16.5 million to help companies navigate growing regulatory complexity. Amount raised in H1 2025: €10M Didask is a SaaS e-learning company that aims to revolutionise corporate and organisational training by combining artificial intelligence with insights from cognitive science. Their platform lets any subject-matter expert, regardless of pedagogical background, quickly convert raw content (slides, PDFs, text) into engaging, effective training modules. Using their proprietary “Instructional AI,” Didask automates course design (sequencing, layout, quizzes, simulations, micro-learning, etc.) and tailors learning paths to individual learners, supporting onboarding, upskilling, soft skills education, compliance, product knowledge, and more. In May, Didask secured €10 million to scale its AI- and cognitive science-driven e-learning platform, with plans to accelerate international expansion and launch a new tool focused on informal workplace learning. Amount raised in H1 2025: €7M ubiMaster is a German company that offers on-demand, unlimited online tutoring and learning support to students via chat or video. Through its mobile app, students (from grade 5 onwards, including vocational and secondary school students) can get help in core subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, German, English, and more, anytime they need it, without needing to schedule or travel. ubiMaster partners with employers, banks, and other institutions to offer its tutoring services as an employee benefit, helping families balance work, school, and learning while expanding access to education through institutional support. In April, ubiMaster raised €7 million to expand its presence in Germany and to support international growth and the development of additional educational products. Amount raised in H1 2025: €5.9M Bethink Group is a Poland-based e-learning company that operates multiple brands reshaping how students learn, especially in medicine, med-prep and effective learning. Using its own custom technology and evidence-based teaching methods, Bethink delivers cutting-edge online courses and learning experiences to tens of thousands of learners each year, with a strong presence in the medical education market. Bethink secured €5.9 million in February to expand e-learning platforms and prepare for global growth. Amount raised in H1 2025: €4.2M Alice.tech is a Copenhagen-based EdTech startup that offers an AI-powered study platform designed to help students learn faster, retain knowledge better, and prepare more effectively for exams. By uploading their course materials (e.g. lecture slides, PDFs, textbooks), students get automatically generated notes, structured summaries, flashcards, quizzes, exam-style practice, and adaptive study paths tailored to their individual learning needs. Alice.tech also supports collaboration through study groups and offers educators tools to integrate AI-powered learning and track student progress, while preserving control over course materials and maintaining academic integrity. In May, Alice.tech secured €4.2 million to redefine how students learn and succeed – at scale. Amount raised in H1 2025: £3.5M HowNow is a London-based edtech company that offers an AI-powered learning and upskilling platform designed to help organisations train, develop, and support their teams efficiently. Their platform acts as both a Learning Experience Platform (LXP) and a Learning Management System (LMS): it allows companies to create, curate, deliver, and track learning content, from onboarding and compliance training to upskilling and continuous development. With built-in content libraries, AI-driven skills mapping, and integrations into everyday business tools (Slack, MS Teams, etc.), HowNow ensures learning is accessible “in the flow of work,” helping employees acquire skills where and when they need them. In February, HowNow raised £3.5 million to accelerate product development and further integrate AI. Amount raised in H1 2025: €3.5M BRUM Patenti is an Italian digital driving school that modernises the licensing process by offering a fully online, flexible alternative to traditional driving schools. Through its app, users can register, access official theory materials, complete ministerial-quiz practice, book driving lessons, upload required documents, and track progress, all from home. BRUM takes care of the bureaucracy (medical visit, paperwork, exam registration) and lets learners choose when and where to study and take lessons, making the path to a driving licence more convenient and transparent. Brum raised €3.5 million in March to expand its service to new cities, enhance its technology, scale its operations, and strengthen its network of qualified instructors.

Two experienced entrepreneurs are launching an early-stage European "venture studio", which will invest in startups it co-founds as it looks to unearth the hot industrial AI companies of tomorrow.Founded by Kostas Fetfatsidis, a mechanical engineer turned entrepreneur, and Dimitrios Kourtesis, a founder, investor, and engineer, the new entity is called The Flywheel and is billing itself as a “venture studio”.Based in Thessaloniki, Greece, The Flywheel co-founds startups from scratch, providing co-founding partnership, operational support, and up to €300,000 in initial investment per company.  It will invest in startups across manufacturing and supply chain, defence and security, and energy and sustainability. In contrast to traditional early-stage venture capital funds, which typically invest after a startup has been founded, staffed, and acquired its first customers, The Flywheel starts earlier, co-creating startups around the technical or business expertise that founders bring to the table. Other venture studios exist in Europe but are usually generalist in their investment strategies.The. Flywheel is now recruiting for five Founder-in-Residence (FiR) positions, who will research a specific industrial AI venture concept. If successful, The Flywheel invests up to €300,000 in the startup.It is backed by a diverse group of private investors, including US-based entrepreneurs with European roots, tech founders who have scaled and exited startups, experienced business angels, and European industrial enterprises."Europe is a global engine of scientific and technical skill, yet we face a massive chasm between this world-class talent and the scalable, sustainable companies needed to secure our future," said Fetfatsidis. “The Flywheel venture studio is designed to bridge that chasm.” “By acting as a co-founder, providing early risk capital, and continued operational support through the growth phases of our ventures, we are building the on-ramp for Europe’s best engineers, operators and researchers to build the next generation of industrial AI champions," said Kourtesis.

London-based Curvestone AI has raised $4 million in seed funding led by MTech Capital, with participation from Boost Capital Partners, D2 Fund, and Portfolio Ventures. The company addresses a key challenge that most AI tools fail to solve in financial and professional services: making automation reliably accurate at scale. While individual AI tasks may achieve accuracy levels above 98 per cent, in complex multi-step workflows this small error rate can compound, with overall accuracy dropping to around 30–40 per cent by the twelfth step. Curvestone AI’s technology is designed to maintain stable performance at each stage, delivering dependable automation for document-intensive workflows commonly found in regulated industries. The platform is compatible with all major large language models and integrates with existing systems, such as CRMs, document management tools, and loan origination software, without requiring changes to current workflows. Its no-code configuration enables operations teams to adapt processes as regulations evolve, without needing engineering support. Curvestone AI works with organisations across law, mortgage services, and wealth management, including Stephenson Harwood, Browne Jacobson, Walker Morris, and Pivotal Growth, and is now expanding into the insurance sector. According to Dawid Kotur, co-founder and CEO of Curvestone AI, regulated industries have long struggled to balance quality with the ability to scale: You can review everything and go broke, or cut corners and hope for the best. AI that actually works changes that equation by handling routine validation at scale while humans focus on the complex cases that need expert judgment. With the new funding, Curvestone AI plans to accelerate product development and broaden its go-to-market efforts, expanding its library of validated workflows and strengthening its position as a reliable automation layer for agentic AI in regulated industries.

Paris-based Spark Cleantech has closed a €30 million Series A funding round (including €17 million in equity). The round was led by 360 Capital and Taranis, with participation from the Île-de-France Reindustrialisation Fund (initiated by the Île-de-France Region and operated by Innovacom), alongside Asterion Ventures, the company’s long-standing investor. Founded in 2022 in the laboratories of CentraleSupélec by Erwan Pannier and Patrick Peters, Spark Cleantech is a deeptech company focused on decarbonising heavy industries such as glassmaking, metallurgy, polymers, and batteries. The company has developed a patented process based on pulsed plasmolysis that replaces fossil-fuel combustion in high-temperature industrial furnaces and materials production with an alternative that is fully decarbonised, economically competitive, and requires minimal changes to existing operations. Spark Cleantech’s modules are installed between a client’s existing gas network and their high-temperature industrial burners. Using pulsed plasma, the technology removes carbon from the gas before combustion, leaving hydrogen as a fully decarbonised energy source. The extracted carbon is converted into a solid nanomaterial used in polymers and battery production, replacing a petroleum-derived material with a significantly higher carbon footprint. This approach relies on proprietary pulsed plasmolysis technology, initially invented at Stanford University, further developed at CentraleSupélec, and industrialised by Spark Cleantech in France. It reduces the energy required for separation while generating a high-value carbon nanomaterial. In practice, the process converts a hydrocarbon, without combustion, into two decarbonised materials, hydrogen and solid carbon, whose combined economic value is increased by a factor of four, while reducing emissions by up to 85 per cent. Spark Cleantech’s technology is currently being piloted with major customers in metallurgy, glassmaking, polymer production, and battery manufacturing. The new investment will support Spark Cleantech’s next phase of growth, allowing the company to complete and operate its first production module before rolling it out across customer sites. It will also fund the qualification of Spark Cleantech’s first commercial carbon grades, one of the two outputs of its pulsed plasmolysis process. In addition, the team will expand by around 20 new hires across commercial operations, engineering, and R&D.

French customer relationship management (CRM) company Brevo has become a unicorn following a €500m funding round.The funding round sees General Atlantic and Oakley Capital joining Brevo’s roster of investors while Bpifrance and Bridgepoint remain minority investors, with the latter reinvesting via Bridgepoint Development Capital V.  The round sees Partech fully exiting its stake while Brevo’s management and employees are now the company’s largest shareholders.Brevo did not disclose its exact valuation following the round but said it had now achieved unicorn status, valued at least at $1bn.Brevo previously raised a $35m Series A and $163m Series B, in rounds where its valuation was not publicly disclosed.The Paris-headquartered company says it will use the funds to pursue further M&A, having banked 11 acquisitions since its inception, while investment in its growing US market has also been earmarked. Brevo employs over 1,000 people and has seven offices around the world, including in Paris, Berlin, Sofia and Austin.Founded in 2012, Brevo began life as an email marketing startup targeting small businesses. But it has broadened its offering to become an all-in-one CRM and marketing platform, helping businesses manage their relationships with their customer base by unifying their communication channels.It is seen as a challenger to US heavyweights like Salesforce and Hubspot. It has more than 600,000 customers, including eBay, H&M, Louis Vuitton and Carrefour.Sascha Günther, managing director, General Atlantic, added: “We see strong secular tailwinds in AI-driven customer engagement software platforms that serve SMBs and mid-market clients. "Brevo is uniquely positioned at the centre of this shift with a product-led, capital-efficient foundation, and a visionary founder in Armand. We’re excited to support Brevo in becoming a global category leader.” Thomas Moussallieh, partner, Bridgepoint, said: “Brevo’s journey over the past five years has been extraordinary. Together, we’ve scaled the business internationally, expanded its capabilities, and built a platform that now leads its category in Europe."

London-based Hypercritical has raised £2 million in pre-seed funding to accelerate development of its foundation model and expand its engineering team. The round was led by Join Capital, with participation from Octopus Ventures, Tiny Supercomputer Investment Company (tiny.vc), and Plug and Play. Hypercritical is a deeptech company that develops machine learning models to generate fully correct control software for safety- and mission-critical systems. Using a novel, logic-driven architecture that eliminates hallucinations and errors, it enables engineers in sectors such as automotive, aerospace, defence, and robotics to design and deploy control systems more quickly and cost-effectively, with mathematically guaranteed reliability. Instead of writing code directly, engineers define the tests a system must satisfy, and Hypercritical’s AI automatically generates algorithms that meet all of them, enabling fully automated control development for highly demanding physical systems. Its Copilots deliver immediately usable, domain-specific output, while its Autopilot produces unsupervised software that passes 100% of tests. This results in software generation that is significantly faster, more cost-efficient, and mathematically precise, essential in industries where errors are unacceptable. Hypercritical aims to make its technology the benchmark for generating control software in safety- and mission-critical systems, and ultimately envisions its methods being incorporated into ISO standards to help modernise global software certification and compliance. The company’s flagship product, Hyperpilot, is already in use by engineering teams to automate the development of systems that rely on control software. In parallel, key components of its technology stack, including domain-specific “copilots” such as a QA engineer and a systems engineer, have been deployed with customers, demonstrating its applicability in real-world, safety-critical environments. Following the raise, Hypercritical plans to double its team, with funds primarily allocated to hiring and to cloud compute for training its proprietary model. Image: Freepik

Track Titan, an AI-powered motorsport tracking platform, has raised a $5 million seed round co-led by Partech and Game Changers Ventures, the fund led by Alpine F1 co-owner Roger Ehrenberg. The round also includes participation from investors such as Colton Parayko, Trevoh Chalobah, Sequel, Martin Hoffmann, and Emmanuel Tahar. Existing investor APX, a joint venture between Axel Springer SE and Porsche AG, also participated, increasing its previous pre-seed investment. Motorsport represents a sizable global market, with more than 1 billion fans worldwide, over 190 million people playing console and PC-based racing games each month, and more than 90 million hobby drivers visiting race tracks. Track Titan aims to serve this broad audience by positioning itself as a digital coaching and community platform for motorsport enthusiasts, by providing an AI-powered coaching and community solution for gamers and drivers of all ability levels. Founded in 2021 by gamer-turned-professional racer Max Teichert, who launched his racing career after success in the Gran Turismo Academy, the company focuses on making the type of high-level insights and training he received accessible to a much wider group of users. Through its AI coach, Track Titan gives racing-game players detailed feedback to help them reduce lap times in titles such as EA’s F1 series and iRacing, as well as in real-world driving. On average, users improve their fastest lap by more than half a second after their first session. The platform has grown to more than 200,000 users and has recorded a tenfold increase in ARR over the past two years. Our ambition at Track Titan is to be the Strava for motorsport - a rich community where people can further their passion for racing whilst building a true sense of belonging. Having these investors on board means we can unlock a new level for this technology and what it can deliver for the hundreds of thousands of people who already use it, said Teichert, explaining that his goal was to take the insights and support typically reserved for professional racers and make them available to the 190 million people who race online and the 90 million hobby drivers who take to real tracks. Track Titan also partners with hardware manufacturers such as MOZA and Fanatec to integrate its software into sim-racing equipment, enhancing immersion and performance analysis. While the primary focus is on “ambitious amateurs” looking to improve their performance and connect with a global community, professional racing teams have also started adopting the platform, incorporating Track Titan’s AI tools into their off-track training. In response, the company plans to continue advancing these AI capabilities to support the growing number of elite drivers and coaches integrating the platform into their preparation.

Fronted, the Nordic startup building an AI-powered platform to simplify international hiring, has closed a $1 million pre-seed funding round led by Antler and Sondo Capital.  Fronted is a global talent operating system that provides a unified platform for companies to manage their international teams. It addresses two key challenges for scaling businesses in a single solution - hiring and managing employees across borders. While many companies still depend on separate tools for sourcing, interviewing, onboarding, payroll, and compliance, Fronted brings these elements together. Its platform uses AI to streamline recruitment, contracts, onboarding, payroll, and offboarding, providing an end-to-end solution for global hiring. According to Marius Blaker Hogevold, co-founder of Fronted, many tech companies hope to expand internationally but often run into difficulties because cross-border hiring remains complex, costly, and fragmented. He explained that recruiters may invest months in finding strong candidates, only to encounter legal, payroll, and compliance hurdles that delay progress. With Fronted, we’re building a seamless, AI-powered platform that manages the entire process, from job description to contract signing and payroll. We’re finally bringing simplicity to something that has been too complex to scale, added Blaker Hogevold. Fronted was founded by a team of experienced operators in global hiring and fintech, including Marius Blaker Hogevold (CEO), Hans Nyvold Kjellby (Chairman and CCO), Håvard Liltvedt Dalen (CPO), Gelo Torres (COO), and Antonina Kruhlikova (CTO), along with early team members such as Kurt Alexander Bakke, Jørgen Riiser, and Lars Smith. With ARR rising 230 per cent since July 2025, Fronted plans to allocate the investment toward strengthening its product and engineering teams and speeding up work on the platform.