As consumer health shifts toward longevity, quantified wellness and personalised nutrition, one of Europe’s fastest-growing health tech companies is repositioning itself for the next wave. Founded in 2013, Kilo Health — now rebranded simply as Kilo — rose to become the second-fastest-growing company in Europe in 2022. After building direct-to-consumer health brands used by over 10 million people worldwide, the Lithuanian company is evolving into what CEO Žygimantas Surintas calls a “high-velocity venture studio”, co-founding startups and investing in early-stage companies across health, longevity, beauty and travel. In 2024, the company posted consolidated revenue of €234 million and EBITDA of €11 million. Its portfolio spans established brands including Moérie, Pulsetto, Bioma, Her Bodhi, ColonBroom, and RatePunk, alongside newer ventures Agava, Iteractive, and Go Health — with products now used by more than 10 million people across the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain, Italy, and beyond. I sat down with CEO Žygimantas Surintas to find out more. Kilo's shift to a high-velocity venture studio According to Surintas, the rebrand from Kilo Health to Kilo signals a broader strategic shift: "It was really about clarifying who we are. For a long time, people described Kilo Health in different ways — studio, ventures, startup studio — and we wanted one clear answer. We did a full exercise to define where we act as an investor, as a managing partner, as a co-founder, as a financial partner, where we run operations, and where we don't. We crystallised it and landed on calling ourselves a high-velocity venture studio. We want to start and invest in companies that can develop very fast. Our key advantage is speed — we have a strong foundation to launch businesses quickly — and extensive knowledge from years in this space." That infrastructure is formalised through Kiloverse — Kilo's internal ecosystem, giving founders access to marketing expertise, technology tools, global partnerships, and specialists in R&D, nutrition, and research. The company works with builders primarily in health and wellness, supporting them from the MVP stage through to scale. Investment tickets range from €50,000 to €1 million, with follow-on funding of up to €10 million. To date, Kilo has invested over €10 million in external startups and nearly twice that in its own R&D and product development. The value of market specificity Kilo operates across health, wellness, beauty, and travel. Surintas contends that they're different markets, but they also share a lot: they target the mid-market and often serve more mature customers. “That means we have data and understanding around what these people want — their needs, interests, and problems we can solve. So we’re not going broad. If we launch a beauty product, we’re very specific about the market — and it often overlaps with what we know from supplements. Same with travel. We exchange a lot of data internally and we’re clear on where we’re going.” ​ Venture strategy: the right fit over the obvious winner From a venture perspective, Kilo isn't chasing segment leaders. "We're not rich enough to invest in the obvious, loved-by-everyone winners," Surintas says. "We focus on ideas that fit our concept — and especially where money is not the only value we bring. We're not private equity. This is our own equity — our own money — so we want to know how we'll help the business grow." If capital is the only requirement, Kilo isn't the right partner. "There are people with cheaper money. Our money is expensive — so we need the right fit and real synergies." He's equally pragmatic about defensibility. In Kilo's core markets, what launches today gets copied tomorrow — and Surintas accepts that as inevitable. What separates the winners, he argues, is execution. "Copy-paste doesn't win. A one-to-one copy never works because business takes soul, heart, and effort." Europe’s opportunity — but America first ​ Kilo sees Europe as its biggest potential market in the coming years. ​ But, Surintas admits, “We still have a rule: when we start something from scratch, we start in the United States first. It’s one country — one market. Europe is one system, but in practice it’s fragmented. You lose speed." "But if you’re afraid of wolves, don’t go into the forest.” Balancing speed, science, and data-driven decision making When asked how Kilo balances scientific rigour and regulatory compliance with the pace of growth he describes, Surintas says it is actually one of the company’s key strengths. “We have nutritionists, a legal team, and compliance specialists working on this every day. If someone comes with an idea tomorrow, we can quickly say: this path works, that path doesn’t.” While Kilo operates primarily in supplements and consumer health, the company does not manufacture its own products. Instead, it works with established partners — primarily in the United States — allowing it to develop scientifically grounded products while moving quickly. “We know who we work with, how to create unique formulas and blends, and how to build something scalable and compliant,” Surintas says. “That know-how saves time — and that’s where speed comes from.” Data, he adds, is central to how the company evaluates both products and new opportunities. After more than a decade of building direct-to-consumer health businesses, Kilo has accumulated extensive internal datasets about consumer behaviour and product performance. Looking ahead, Kilo plans to invest up to €20 million in AI development over the next three years, with an ambitious target of $1 billion in consolidated annual revenue. With the rise of quantified health, machine learning and AI are becoming increasingly prominent in wellness products. But Surintas says Kilo is deliberately cautious about how quickly it adopts new technologies. “We saw one company in our segment automate media buying with machine learning and let go of more than half their team — and sales dropped 40 per cent. That’s a hard lesson.” While he acknowledges the potential of AI, Surintas believes it should be introduced gradually rather than treated as a silver bullet. “As a leader, of course, I want AI to do everything today,” he says. “But the right approach is consistency and gradual adoption.” Why Kilo sees longevity as the next big health market In terms of what’s next in the health and wellness space, Surintas contends that diet will be a big shift: “Trends change — keto and fasting had their moment, and keto is declining year over year. People try something, then they look for the next thing. Even GLP-1 requires specific diets to reduce side effects — so it’s all connected.” He also sees growing demand emerging around mental health and longevity, arguing that the longevity market in particular has reached a turning point after several years of experimentation. “People are educated enough now that we can talk about mass products — what works and what’s proven versus what’s just noise,” says Surintas. “That’s a good moment for us. This year we’re planning to introduce four or even five longevity products.” Kilo prefers to invest once there is early traction rather than at the pure idea stage. “We invest when there’s real initial data and strong early development,” he explains. “The longevity point is more than the market foundations are now in place — so it’s the right moment to build and launch.” When it comes to navigating hype cycles versus genuine opportunity, Surintas says the company relies heavily on its own long-term dataset. “Kilo has 12 years of data and learning in this business. That’s central to our decision-making — and as machine learning improves, the importance of data only grows.” ​ Bootstrapped to €500M: Kilo’s biggest win and toughest lesson Surintas sees Kilo’s independence as its greatest achievement. “The biggest success is that the company got here without external funding. We expect to close 2025 at around €500 million in revenue — without external investment.” The business, he notes, was originally built by its founders from a small office and scaled organically. “Times were different then, but it’s still a major achievement. And I should stress — I joined two years ago. Others built this foundation.” But the biggest failure is also connected to success: the company grew too fast. Surintas explains. “When turbulence came, it was difficult to control and adjust the business quickly. It took time — but it also made the company stronger. Now we’re more consistent: doing less, but with better quality.” ​ "We want grinders" For founders considering the venture side, his advice is direct: take the help, and don't try to protect all the equity early. "You can have 100 per cent of something very small, or less than 100 per cent of something very big. Don't be afraid to share your ideas — we have plenty of ideas. For us, it's not your idea we need. It's you. We want strong partners we can grind with. Read this word: grinding. We don't look for hustlers. We look for grinders." Hustling, he contends, doesn't work anymore — especially post-COVID. "It's tough, it takes time, and you'll spend a lot of life in the office. It's doing the work — heads down. And no AI or machine learning will change that." Kilo’s ambitions for the next phase are both bold and pragmatic. The company aims to reach €1 billion in revenue within the next few years while maintaining strong high-digit profitability. At the same time, it plans to expand into new markets and verticals — particularly travel and longevity. “We want consistency — not chasing the latest FOMO. We don’t have a goal to be a unicorn or whatever the new term is. We could have chased that. Our goal is a stable, strong business.”

The European Investment Fund (EIF), part of the EIB Group, today announced a €50 million commitment to Join Capital’s third fund as Europe moves from defence spending announcements to rebuilding industrial capability. The commitment is the EIF’s largest to date in defence and is supported by the InvestEU Defence Equity Facility, which is designed to strengthen Europe’s defence technological and industrial base by backing venture capital funds.  Join Capital’s Fund III, targeting €235 million, will invest in 25 early-stage deeptech startups across Europe developing technologies with critical capabilities in defence, dual-use, security and space. Join Capital has backed early-stage defence and deeptech innovators across Europe, including Optics11 (Netherlands), Quadsat (Denmark), Kreios Space (Spain), Quantum Optics Jena (Germany) and 2D Photonics (Italy). These companies span fibre-optic sensing for critical infrastructure, quantum-secure communications, advanced electronic payloads, and cybersecurity. “We back founders whose technologies create an asymmetric advantage for their customers in the military and commercial industry. Investments in such dual-use technologies have a doubling effect, they create both deterrence and economic growth for Europe,” said Jan Borgstädt, a Founding Partner at Berlin-based Join Capital. "This investment, backed by the InvestEU fund, could not come at a better time, given the strategic importance attached to the fields of space, security and defence," said EIF Chief Executive Marjut Falkstedt. "With this backing, we are confident that additional investments will follow, helping Europe in building a robust ecosystem for innovative defence solutions.” “Innovation and disruptive technologies are crucial for the EU's defence readiness. By investing in specialist defence Venture capital funds, like Join Capital, the Commission and the EIF are strengthening the financial ecosystem that nurtures and supports our defence innovators, startups and SMEs to grow and scale up in Europe,” said Commissioner Andrius Kubilius.

London-based Diligent AI, a Y Combinator-backed startup developing autonomous AI analysts for financial crime compliance, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding. The round was led by Speedinvest alongside fintech investor Shapers, with participation from strategic angel investors including the CEOs and founders of N26, Allica Bank, IDnow, Billie and Cybersource (acquired by Visa). KYC and AML teams play a critical role in safeguarding the global financial system by verifying customer legitimacy, monitoring transactions and identifying potential fraud or money laundering. However, the expansion of sanctions regimes, rising fraud levels and the growing velocity of digital payments have significantly increased their operational burden. As a result, much of the work has become repetitive and time-intensive, with skilled professionals often focused on routine data gathering rather than deeper investigative analysis. Diligent AI addresses this challenge by replacing static compliance workflows with autonomous AI analysts designed to read, reason and investigate. Its agents automate routine KYC and AML tasks, including reviewing SMB risk profiles, analysing adverse media and resolving sanctions and payment screening alerts, reducing the need for manual information gathering and contextual analysis. Founded by Edoardo Maschio and Ahmed Gaber, Diligent AI develops AI agents that automate complex financial crime compliance processes such as AML screening and merchant due diligence, helping institutions reduce operational costs while improving risk detection. Edoardo Maschio, CEO and co-founder of Diligent AI, said the company is designing its platform specifically for analysts: When you strip away repetitive tasks - like clearing false positive alerts, searching corporate registries and public records, cross-referencing adverse media - you free up the human mind to focus on judgment and strategy. It’s decision-making instead of data processing. We’re not just making teams faster; we’re enabling them to do the job they were hired to do. The company’s agents are already deployed across financial institutions in Europe, the Middle East, the United States and Japan. Customers use the platform to resolve sanctions, PEP and adverse media alerts, conduct merchant risk reviews and streamline customer onboarding. Users report measurable operational efficiencies alongside improved decision consistency. Diligent AI plans to use the new funding to expand its engineering capabilities and accelerate the rollout of its agents across the UK and Europe as it continues to develop tools for financial crime compliance teams.

A British defence tech startup developing AI software which helps improve the deployment of drones when communication is lost in combat has raised over $2m in a seed funding round.   Mutable Tactics has raised $2.1m in a funding round, led by spacetech investor Seraphim Space, with funding also from the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund, Koro, Entrepreneurs First and Transpose.    Mutable Tactics is building AI software, in what it calls the “decision-layer”, that sits between the human operator and a drone, helping defence forces leverage multiple drones simultaneously.    It says its software translates a commander’s instructions into actions, meaning that mixed fleets of drones can operate together as a coordinated team, rather than as individually piloted platforms.   It says it’s solving the problem of drone deployment relying on one operator controlling one system, which limits how many drones can be used effectively at any given time.    The startup said that in battle environments, where communications are disrupted, drone systems that depend on constant human control quickly reach their limits.   Mutable Tactics was founded in 2024 by former British Army officer Colin MacLeod and robotics AI specialist Enrique Muñoz de Cote.   The startup says it will use the funding to increase the size of its engineering team in Cambridge and speed up the development of its software.    It also says the funding will be used to validate its tech in collaboration with two European governments.   MacLeod, CEO and co‑founder, Mutable Tactics, said: “Increasingly, the constraint is no longer hardware but human attention. We can deploy more drones than ever before, yet we still ask operators to control them one by one, often in environments where communications are unreliable.    "True autonomy breaks that one‑to‑one link, allowing humans to supervise and direct teams of systems rather than individual machines. That shift is essential for supporting modern military missions, where scale, speed and resilience matter, and where operators must remain focused on intent and outcomes rather than manual control.”

GHARAGE Ventures has launched its €40 million Fund I, positioning itself as an independent venture capital platform focused on early-stage technologies shaping the future of global travel and retail. Anchored by Gebr. Heinemann, the firm plans to collaborate with additional strategic investors to support innovation across the travel and retail ecosystem. As air travel continues to grow, many operational areas across airports and travel retail remain under-digitalised. GHARAGE Ventures aims to invest in startups addressing this gap, with a focus on automation, AI-enabled operations, digital infrastructure, travel technology services, and logistics and supply chain innovation. The fund invests globally from seed to Series A. Emerging from the venture capital and innovation activities of Gebr. Heinemann, GHARAGE Ventures has built a network of operators, brands, technology partners and investors across the travel and trade ecosystem. With Fund I, the platform is now open to additional limited partners seeking access to emerging technologies, real-world testing environments and global market insights. Lennard Niemann, Managing Partner at GHARAGE Ventures, noted that significant parts of the airport and travel retail ecosystem remain structurally under-digitised: The fund brings together capital, operational know-how and immediate access to industry environments. This is exactly where long-needed innovation can be turned into scalable, profitable impact. Through Fund I, GHARAGE has already invested in several companies targeting structural challenges in the travel and retail sectors. Looking ahead, Fund I plans to make around 30 additional investments across the travel and trade value chain, backing companies that deliver measurable operational improvements. The fund’s focus remains on technologies that enhance efficiency and support sustainable growth across global travel and trade markets.

British self-driving startup Oxa has raised $103 million from investors to expand autonomous vehicle operations at ports, airports, warehouses and other industrial sites. The company said $50 million of its Series D funding came from the UK’s National Wealth Fund, with additional investments from chipmaker Nvidia’s venture arm NVentures and BP’s bp Ventures. The round brings Oxa’s total funding to more than $250 million. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Oxford, Oxa develops configurable autonomous driving software that can be integrated into different types of vehicles to automate repetitive driving tasks in industrial environments such as ports, airports, warehouses and manufacturing sites. Its technology combines autonomy software, modular hardware and fleet management tools designed to enable the safe and scalable deployment of driverless vehicles. Unlike many autonomous vehicle developers focused on robotaxis and passenger cars, Oxa concentrates on what founder Paul Newman calls “industrial mobile autonomy”, where environments are more controlled and involve fewer interactions with pedestrians and regular traffic. We think trying to do that in the passenger car space is super, super hard. In the industrial space, it's extremely clear what you need to do to make a product, Newman said. The company designs both the software and hardware required to equip vehicles with autonomous capabilities and says it can convert a heavy-duty port truck to autonomous operation in under a day. The funding will support expanding deployments with customers including DHL, BP and Vantec, and will also be used to roll out Oxa’s technology in projects the company plans to announce in the near future. Oxa CEO Gavin Jackson will speak at the Tech.eu Summit London 2026, taking place on 21–22 April at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre.

Norwegian energy storage scale-up Photoncycle has raised €15 million in Series A funding to address a key renewable energy challenge in Europe: enabling households to store surplus summer solar power for winter heating and electricity. The round was led by NordicNinja and Voima Ventures, with participation from existing investors Lifeline Ventures, Eviny Ventures, Luminar Ventures and Momentum. Photoncycle develops solid-state hydrogen energy storage systems that allow households and businesses to store excess renewable energy for seasonal use. Its patented technology converts surplus solar power into solid-state hydrogen stored underground and releases it later as clean heat and electricity when needed. The investment comes as Europe continues to face energy vulnerabilities exposed by the 2022 crisis. In 2025, the EU imported €396 billion in fossil fuels (about €880 per citizen), underscoring ongoing reliance on external supply. Winter risk remains high, with space heating accounting for 62.5 per cent of household energy use and natural gas still a major component. Photoncycle’s distributed, household-level seasonal storage is designed to reduce the volume of imported gas required to meet winter heating demand. At full industrial scale, the company’s proposed 1.4 TWh manufacturing facility would represent storage capacity equivalent to roughly 140,000 homes each storing 10,000 kWh of seasonal energy. Bjørn Brandtzæg, founder and chief executive of Photoncycle, said the company was focused on moving seasonal energy resilience closer to consumers: Europe is beginning to solve short-duration storage. The remaining gap is seasonal. If households can store summer energy for winter use, they reduce exposure to imported fuel and price volatility as well as to increasing grid costs for consumers. The company plans to offer its system through a subscription-based model covering solar panels, storage, servicing and access to energy trading markets, with the aim of lowering upfront costs for homeowners. By shifting summer solar energy into winter use, Photoncycle aims to provide households with more predictable year-round energy costs and reduced exposure to volatile gas markets. The new funding will support commercial rollout in Denmark and the Netherlands and finance the first phase of the company’s industrialisation plan, including the proposed 1.4 TWh annual manufacturing facility. Beyond its initial European markets, Photoncycle also sees longer-term expansion opportunities in regions such as Japan and the United States.