According to the Tech.eu 2025 Annual Report, European technology companies raised €72 billion in 2025, making it the second-strongest year of the past three for tech investment. With more than 3,740 deals completed, investor activity remained resilient across the ecosystem. The largest funding rounds of 2025 highlight a European tech ecosystem that is becoming more selective, strategic and infrastructure-driven, with investment flowing into technologies that support economic resilience, industrial competitiveness and long-term growth. The companies attracting the most capital reflect a wide range of growth strategies and financing structures. While traditional venture and equity rounds continued to dominate in AI, software and defence technology, many of the largest transactions took the form of debt financing, particularly across infrastructure, energy, mobility and financial services (excluding acquisition-specific debt facilities). Geographically, the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands emerged as key funding hubs, with strong contributions from the Nordics and Southern Europe. Below is a list of the 25 European tech companies with the highest funding totals in 2025. Amount raised in 2025: £2.3B CityFibre designs, builds, and operates one of the UK’s largest independent full-fibre broadband networks, providing gigabit-capable fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) infrastructure to homes, businesses, public sector organisations, and broadband providers. The company raised £2.3 billion in financing to support the continued expansion of its full-fibre network across the UK, including new home and business connections and potential acquisitions of additional fibre network assets. Amount raised in 2025: £1.5B Propel Finance provides fast, flexible asset, vehicle, embedded and green finance solutions that help businesses access essential equipment and technology, combining digital tools with personalised service. It supports companies in financing growth-critical assets and improving cash flow. Propel Finance raised £1.5 billion to expand its lending capacity and support continued growth in SME financing. Amount raised in 2025: €1.7B Mistral AI develops advanced generative AI models and tools that help organisations build, customise, and deploy large language models, AI assistants, and autonomous agents for tasks like search, coding, automation, and data processing. Mistral AI raised €1.7 billion, more than doubling its valuation to around €11.7 billion, to accelerate research, expand computing infrastructure, and scale its AI platform globally. Amount raised in 2025: $1.53B Nscale builds and operates high-performance AI infrastructure, offering scalable GPU-powered cloud and data centre solutions for training, fine-tuning, and deploying AI workloads. The company focuses on vertically integrated compute, networking, and tools to support advanced AI development and large-scale deployment. The company raised approximately $1.53 billion across two rounds to expand its AI data centre capacity and support global infrastructure growth. Amount raised in 2025: €1.16B Ubisoft creates and publishes interactive video games and entertainment across console, PC, and online platforms, with well-known franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Tom Clancy’s, Just Dance, and Watch Dogs. The company focuses on delivering immersive gaming experiences and expanding its digital entertainment ecosystem for players worldwide. In 2025, the company raised €1.16 billion to strengthen its core game development operations and support long-term content production. Amount raised in 2025: € 1.1B Bending Spoons develops, acquires, and scales consumer software products across multiple digital categories. In 2025, the company raised approximately €1.1 billion across two corporate financing rounds to support the continued expansion of its product portfolio. Amount raised in 2025: € 1.05B EcoDataCenter designs, builds, and operates high-performance data centres with a focus on sustainability, energy efficiency, and support for AI and cloud workloads, using renewable energy and innovative cooling solutions. EcoDataCenter raised €1.05 billion over two rounds to expand capacity and meet growing demand for AI and cloud services. Amount raised in 2025: €1B FINN offers a flexible car subscription service with all-inclusive monthly plans that cover insurance, maintenance, taxes and delivery, letting users order and receive a vehicle through a fully digital process without long-term ownership commitments. Finn raised €1 billion to expand its vehicle fleet and support international market growth. Amount raised in 2025: €1B NXP Semiconductors designs, develops, and manufactures a broad range of high-performance semiconductor products, including microcontrollers, processors, sensors, and secure connectivity solutions used in automotive, industrial, IoT, mobile, and communications applications. Its technologies enable devices to connect, sense, and act intelligently across smart and embedded systems. NXP Semiconductors secured €1 billion to fund research, product development, and manufacturing expansion. Amount raised in 2025: $1B Grammarly offers an AI-powered writing assistant that helps users improve clarity, correctness, and tone across documents, emails, and messages, with tools for grammar, spelling, style, and communication enhancement used by individuals and teams. Grammarly has raised $1 billion in financing to scale sales and marketing and for strategic acquisitions to grow its customer base and extend the reach of its AI productivity platform. Amount raised in 2025: $1B Nebius provides scalable, full-stack AI cloud infrastructure with high-performance GPU clusters and tools to support the development, training and deployment of advanced machine learning and AI workloads on a secure, cost-optimised platform. Nebius Group raised $1 billion through the issuance of convertible notes to support ongoing business growth, including expanding compute capacity, extending its data centre footprint, and covering general corporate purposes. Amount raised in 2025: $1B Nokia develops advanced network infrastructure, connectivity solutions and digital technologies that enable secure, high-performance communication across fixed, mobile, and cloud networks, helping organisations meet modern connectivity needs. Nokia has secured a $1 billion equity investment from Nvidia as part of a strategic partnership focused on integrating AI into telecommunications networks and advancing data centre development. Amount raised in 2025: €810M Enpal offers integrated renewable energy solutions, including solar panel systems, energy storage, heat pumps, wallbox chargers, and flexible purchase or rental options to help households produce and manage clean energy with lower costs and greater independence. Enpal raised €810 million to expand installation capacity and scale its clean energy platform. Amount raised in 2025: €800M Your.World operates a platform that acquires, develops, and scales online services companies, offering web presence, cloud, productivity, security and digital transformation solutions to support business growth. It serves over a million customers through a network of brands, and a serial acquirer model focused on long-term value creation. Your.World raised €800 million to support acquisitions and strategic investments aimed at strengthening its market position and expanding its industry presence. Amount raised in 2025: $900M Oura Health develops the Oura Ring, a sleek smart wearable that continuously tracks sleep, activity, heart rate, and other biometric data to provide personalised health and wellness insights through its connected app. Oura raised over $900 million in a new funding round, valuing the company at approximately $11 billion. The capital will be used to accelerate AI and product development, expand global distribution, and support the creation of new health features. Amount raised in 2025: €600M Helsing develops AI-driven software and decision-support tools for defence and security applications, aiming to enhance operational insights, planning, and situational awareness for organisations using advanced machine intelligence. Helsing raised €600 million in a Series D funding round, increasing its valuation to approximately €12 billion. Amount raised in 2025: €600M IONITY operates a network of ultra-fast electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across major European routes, enabling high-power charging to support long-distance EV travel with shorter stop times. The company focuses on expanding reliable, renewable-energy powered charging infrastructure and solutions for both individual drivers and fleet operators. IONITY raised €600 million in a major financing round to support the expansion of its high-power EV charging network, with plans to significantly increase the number of charging points and broaden its energy supply coverage by 2030. Amount raised in 2025: £500M Capital on Tap provides small and medium-sized businesses with flexible credit solutions, including business credit cards and financing products, to help manage cash flow, support growth, and simplify access to working capital. Capital on Tap secured a £500 million funding package through the completion of its third asset-backed securitisation, backed by receivables from its business credit card portfolio. Amount raised in 2025: $600M Isomorphic Labs uses artificial intelligence to accelerate drug discovery and life sciences research, developing AI-driven platforms that help identify and design novel therapeutic candidates more efficiently. Isomorphic Labs raised $600 million in its first external funding round. The capital will be used to advance development of its next-generation AI drug design platform and support progress of its internal programs toward clinical development. Amount raised in 2025: €505M Bees & Bears offers a digital embedded-finance platform that lets installers and vendors provide flexible, real-time financing for renewable energy products like solar panels, batteries, and heat pumps, helping accelerate the adoption of sustainable technologies. In 2025, Bees & Bears raised €505 million, comprising a €500 million financing framework with a listed European bank and €5 million in seed funding. The capital is intended to support scaling operations, expansion into commercial and industrial segments, market entry across nearby European regions, workforce growth, and the financing of renewable energy installations, including solar, heat pumps, and battery systems. Amount raised in 2025: €500M Brevo provides an all-in-one customer communication and marketing platform that helps businesses manage email, SMS, chat, CRM and automation tools to engage customers, grow audiences, and streamline workflows. Brevo secured €500 million in funding, reaching unicorn valuation status. The investment will support additional acquisitions and continued expansion in the US market. Amount raised in 2025: €500M Elvy develops energy management and optimisation solutions that help businesses and utilities monitor, control, and reduce energy consumption using real-time data and intelligent automation to improve efficiency and lower costs. Elvy raised €500 million to accelerate the development and adoption of its next-generation home energy solutions and expand access to modern energy systems for homeowners. Amount raised in 2025: €470M Lovable offers an AI-powered no-code platform that enables users to build software applications and automate workflows using natural language, making app creation more accessible to non-developers. Lovable raised approximately €470 million across multiple funding rounds (including the most recent $330 million Series B round in December, valuing the company at $6.6 billion) to scale its AI-powered no-code platform, expand product capabilities, accelerate growth, and drive broader adoption of its software-building tools for non-developers. Amount raised in 2025: £400M Ferovinum provides specialised financing solutions for the wine and spirits industry, offering flexible credit and funding options that help producers, distributors, and retailers grow their businesses and optimise cash flow. Ferovinum secured a £400 million asset-backed securitisation facility with support from credit investors and investment banks. The funding will be used to expand its service offerings beyond the UK, including planned entry into the US, the EU, and Australia. Amount raised in 2025: €433M Electra builds and operates a network of ultra-fast electric vehicle charging stations, offering high-power chargers and a seamless app-based experience to help drivers recharge quickly and support wider EV adoption. Electra secured a green loan facility of up to €433 million to accelerate the deployment and expansion of its high-power EV charging infrastructure across Europe, strengthening its network and supporting growth toward its target of thousands of charging points by 2030.

Ukrainian-born edtech startup Headway Inc has raised Series A extension funding from Endeavor Catalyst. Headway Inc has closed the second tranche of its first external funding round, with Endeavor Catalyst participating and investing above its typical check size.  While financial terms were not disclosed, Endeavor Catalyst typically invests up to $2 million per company, according to its public disclosures. In this case, its investment in Headway Inc exceeded its usual allocation. The investment follows Headway Inc becoming the first Ukraine-born company selected into the Endeavor network in early 2025.  Endeavor Catalyst coinvests exclusively in companies founded by Endeavor entrepreneurs. Its portfolio includes 66 companies valued at over $1 billion. The fund leads globally in early-stage unicorn investments outside the US, China, and India. Headway Inc is a global technology company with over 160 million users that transforms lifelong learning through gamified and personalised digital products.  Check out our earlier interview with Anton Pavlovsky, Founder and CEO at Headway Inc. "Being backed by one of the world’s most active unicorn investors outside traditional tech hubs sends a strong signal about the quality of innovation emerging from Ukraine," says Anton Pavlovsky, founder and CEO of Headway Inc. "Our focus is on helping busy adults build a lasting habit of self-growth through personalised learning. We want to bring this experience to hundreds of millions more people." The investment in Headway Inc marks a defining moment for Endeavor Ukraine, strengthening the entire ecosystem and expanding the global network of investors supporting Ukrainian scale-ups. "When a fund with 60+ unicorns in its portfolio invests above its typical allocation in a Ukrainian-born company, it represents a pivotal moment not just for Headway Inc, but for our entire ecosystem. We've always known that exceptional entrepreneurial talent exists everywhere, and now we have the institutional backing to prove it,” says Sviatoslav Sviatnenko, Founding Managing Director at Endeavor Ukraine.   “We're honoured to help pave the path for the Ukrainian founders, making it easier for the next generation to raise capital and scale faster."

For decades, financial control was a function of accounting discipline. Budgets were set annually, spend was reviewed retrospectively, and finance teams relied on reports generated long after money had left the business. Technology supported the process, but it rarely defined it. That model no longer holds. As companies digitise their operations, financial control has quietly migrated from spreadsheets and policies into software architecture. Today, the biggest risks to financial visibility are not accounting errors but broken integrations, delayed data flows, and tools that were never designed to work together. The result is a fundamental shift in responsibility. Finance leaders are increasingly forced to think like technologists, while engineering teams are inheriting financial constraints they did not previously own. leaders are increasingly forced to think like technologists, while engineering teams are inheriting financial constraints they did not previously own. Financial control has moved into the stack In modern businesses, spend does not happen in one place. It is distributed across cloud infrastructure, advertising platforms, subscription software, contractor payments, and regional operations. Each system generates its own data, follows its own rules, and updates on its own schedule. From a finance perspective, this fragmentation creates a problem. Traditional controls were designed for centralised payment systems and predictable workflows. Today, money moves at the speed of APIs, not month-end close. A marketing team can deploy a new campaign in minutes. A product team can spin up infrastructure instantly. Without real-time visibility into how these systems interact, finance teams are left reconstructing reality after the fact. This is why financial control is no longer just a governance issue. It is an infrastructure challenge. Finance teams now manage systems, not just spend As organisations scale, finance teams are being pulled into decisions that look increasingly technical. Questions about spend limits turn into questions about permissions. Approval workflows depend on system logic rather than policy documents. Reconciliation hinges on whether platforms can exchange clean, consistent data. In practice, this means finance teams are now responsible for outcomes they do not fully control. A failed API connection can delay reporting. An incompatible data model can obscure compliance risks. Manual workarounds become permanent fixtures, introducing operational fragility into what should be core financial processes. The uncomfortable truth is that financial control without technical understanding is becoming impossible. If finance does not understand how data moves through the organisation, it cannot guarantee accuracy, compliance, or accountability. The CFO–CTO relationship is no longer optional This shift has implications for leadership structures. Historically, the CFO and CTO operated in parallel, intersecting occasionally on tooling decisions or security concerns. Today, their responsibilities are converging. Financial decisions increasingly depend on technical implementation. At the same time, engineering teams must account for regulatory, audit, and reporting requirements that were once handled downstream by finance. Consider a fast-growing European SaaS company operating across multiple markets. Its engineering team builds a product designed for rapid iteration and decentralised decision-making. Its finance team must ensure spend controls, auditability, and compliance across jurisdictions. Without shared ownership of the underlying systems, neither side can succeed. In this environment, financial control becomes a shared discipline. It requires collaboration on architecture, not just alignment on budgets. Scaling exposes the limits of manual control These challenges often remain hidden until a company begins to scale. Early-stage teams can rely on trust, small numbers, and manual checks. At scale, those approaches break down quickly. As transaction volumes increase, manual reconciliation becomes a bottleneck. As teams expand geographically, local autonomy collides with central oversight. As systems proliferate, the cost of poor integration compounds. What looks like a finance problem on the surface is usually a systems problem underneath. Controls that are not embedded into the technology stack cannot keep pace with modern operating models. This is why many growing companies experience a sudden loss of financial visibility just as they need it most. The tools that worked at one stage of growth are no longer fit for purpose. Where finance-grade compliance meets developer tooling In response, a new category of financial infrastructure is emerging. These platforms are designed to serve both finance and engineering teams, combining regulatory rigour with technical flexibility. Instead of treating financial controls as external constraints, they embed them directly into workflows and systems. Permissions, limits, and reporting are handled programmatically. Data flows in real time. Compliance becomes a property of the infrastructure, not an afterthought. Platforms like Wallester Business illustrate this shift. By offering finance-grade controls through developer-accessible tooling, they reflect a broader trend in how companies approach financial management. The emphasis is no longer on retroactive oversight but on designing control into the system itself. Importantly, this is not about replacing finance expertise with technology. It is about enabling finance teams to operate effectively in a software-driven environment. Financial management is becoming a technology discipline The implications of this shift are clear. Companies that continue to treat financial control as a purely administrative function will struggle to maintain visibility as they scale. Those that recognise it as a technology challenge can design systems that support growth without sacrificing governance. For finance leaders, this means developing a deeper understanding of how tools integrate and data flows. For technology leaders, it means acknowledging that financial constraints are not obstacles to innovation but parameters that must be engineered into the product. The future of financial management does not belong exclusively to CFOs or CTOs. It belongs to organisations that understand that control, compliance, and scalability are now properties of their technology stack. In that sense, financial control has already become a technology problem. The only question is how deliberately companies choose to address it.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation has allocated up to €736 million (DKK 5.5 billion)  to BioInnovation Institute (BII), a leading institute for life science and deep tech innovation in Copenhagen.  The funding will enable BII to expand its activities into new strategic areas and geographies, and support even more entrepreneurs and startups, strengthening innovation in Denmark and Europe. The BioInnovation Institute (BII) accelerates world-class innovation through its programmes: Venture Lab, Bio Studio, and BII Quantum Lab. It supports life science and deep tech startups with access to expertise, networks, infrastructure, and funding of up to €3 million per project and €1.8 million per startup.    The new funding frame runs from 2026 to 2035. Europe faces a critical challenge: Europe produces world-class science, but lacks behind other leading regions in translating discoveries into groundbreaking innovations that create jobs, drive economic growth and address urgent societal challenges. Now, the Novo Nordisk Foundation empowers BII to take a leading role in Europe’s response to pressing issues within human health, planetary health and societal resilience.   With BII’s proven platform that has already helped create and develop more than 130 companies and attracted more than €938 million (DKK 7 billion) in external funding, the aim is to ensure that Denmark’s innovation engine can scale in a way that supports broader European competitiveness. Over the coming years, BII expects to scale its activities by significantly increasing the number of start-ups supported each year. While supporting life science and biotech start-ups will remain key, the new long-term support from the Novo Nordisk Foundation enables BII to venture into new scientific and technological fields, such as AI and quantum. “We are giving BII the opportunity to expand its reach and further strengthen its position as a European powerhouse for innovation. This will prove instrumental in securing that even more science is translated into new companies, jobs and solutions benefitting people and our planet – and ultimately driving the growth and entrepreneurial culture that will benefit European competitiveness,*  says Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, CEO of the Novo Nordisk Foundation. According to Jens Nielsen, CEO of BII, none of this would be possible without the long-term support from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, which provides exceptional conditions for bringing more scientific breakthroughs to the market to address global challenges: “We have proven that our innovation platform is successful, but we cannot push the boundaries of innovation alone. Strengthening partnerships will remain a top priority as we continue to develop Denmark’s innovation ecosystem and help ensure Europe’s competitiveness.”  BII’s platform has already attracted major commercial and philanthropic partners. Notable collaborations include joint initiatives with Ferring and the Gates Foundation to advance women’s health innovation, and more recent partnerships with the Villum Foundation and the Lundbeck Foundation to support early-stage start-ups in Power-to-X technologies and brain disease treatment. The new funding will further strengthen BII’s position as an attractive destination for investors, enhance its ability to collaborate with academic institutions across Denmark and Europe and support the formation of new partnerships with industry and foundations - all of which are critical elements in sustaining a vibrant innovation ecosystem.

Ghent-based startup Feedelity has raised €510,000 to support its next phase of growth, in an investment round backed by private investors including Gilles Mattelin and Jorn Vanysacker (Henchman), Wouter Fransoo (Delaware), Robbrecht Delrue (Smartendr), and the venture funds Newschool VC and Scalefund. Processing a single customer review takes companies several minutes on average, and hospitality groups with multiple locations may need to manage large volumes of reviews each week. These are spread across platforms such as delivery apps, search engines, email and social media, making it difficult for customer support teams to keep up. At the same time, customer feedback plays a critical role in purchasing decisions, with a significant share of consumers relying on reviews when choosing where to dine. Businesses that actively engage with feedback are therefore better positioned to encourage repeat visits. To address this, Ghent-based entrepreneurs Martin Vander Ghinste (CEO), Achilles Demey (CTO) and Henri Coorevits (CPO) founded the feedback management platform Feedelity. The AI-powered solution centralises feedback from multiple channels, enables semi-automated responses and flags urgent or high-priority issues. It also aggregates review data to provide customer support teams and sales managers with clearer insights into customer behaviour. Henri Coorevits said the platform allows for more personalised customer responses while reducing the workload for support teams, helping them focus on priority feedback and faster follow-up. He added: What makes Feedelity unique is our ability to turn feedback into usable operational data for in-depth analysis. A restaurant chain recently discovered that wooden bowls did not resonate with part of its customers, even though they were more expensive. They were able to act on that insight immediately. Since launching in March 2025, Feedelity has attracted established hospitality brands including Panos, Hawaiian Pokebowl and Pureto, and recently won the top prize at the pitch competition of startup festival Tectonic. Looking ahead, the company plans to expand beyond hospitality into sectors such as multi-location retail and real estate, where feedback is widely collected but often underused. The new funding will support team growth, further product development and expanded marketing efforts as Feedelity scales its platform.

Luna Systems, a leading provider of AI-powered Advanced Rider Assistance Systems (ARAS) for cycling and motorcycles, has secured a €1.5 million investment to bring to market a portfolio of new AI safety camera hardware. Founded in Dublin City University in 2020, and inspired by the safety benefits of automotive ADAS, Luna Systems focuses on accelerating the adoption of similar systems for cycling and motorcycles, where fatalities continue to rise. Luna is a company I’ve been following for several years, and I first encountered them when they were building technology for shared e-scooters. But mobility is an agile sector — and one that demands the ability to pivot. I spoke with CEO Andrew Fleury, and Maria Diviney, COO, to learn about it.  A pivot born from a contracting e-scooter market Initially, Luna put cameras on the front of e-scooters, with a compliance mindset: helping operators win city tenders by demonstrating safer behaviour. Fleury recalled: “We built a strong product and deployed it in around a dozen cities, but only ever at innovation scale. The shared scooter market then contracted, and that demand largely disappeared.” However, they still believed strongly in their tech, so the team asked, where does this really matter?  “That led us to cycling and motorcycling,” shared Fleury.  “The investment we’ve just raised validates that shift and allows us to move from pilots to real-world scale. It lets us bring our first consumer camera to market this year, and that same platform becomes the backbone for our future B2B and OEM integrations.” Fear as the biggest barrier to urban cycling At the mission level, Luna aims to make cycling safer and get more people on bikes. Fleury admits, “I used to think the future of urban transport was self-driving cars. Now I think it’s people cycling. It’s faster, healthier, and more efficient in cities. “ However, he sees fear as the main barrier to getting people on bikes. “Will I be hit by a car or a truck? Six in ten people are still too afraid to cycle in their area. Fear of mixing in traffic is a crucial barrier preventing people from getting on a bike - especially in a busy city.  Technology can help bridge the gap until infrastructure catches up.” Bringing ARAS to e-bikes: From software to full systems According to Fleury, ADAS technology for cars advances daily. “We believe that, just like cars, ARAS will be as commonplace on bikes and motorbikes in the coming years. ARAS can help the bike industry to capture new segments, especially the commuter cycling segment, where the element of fear is highest. In most countries, people will wait years for the perfect cycling infrastructure. Meanwhile, technology is here that can play a huge role to bridge that gap, helping everyone to feel safer as they move through their city.” To date, the company has serviced the market with its advanced Vision AI safety software only. This fresh round of funding accelerates its route to market as a full system provider vastly widening its commercial scope. 2026 product launches include: A dual AI camera system designed for integration by e-bike and motorcycle manufacturers, providing a suite of safety features, including collision warning, blindspot detection, headway monitoring and more, paired with a connected smartphone app for cyclists. Launching later this year, it will be available directly, as well as through selected European distributors. Building on the concept of radar cycling products, Luna’s solution will provide similar in-ride vehicle proximity warnings, but also leverage its AI for intelligent evidence recording as well as post-ride mapping of incidents for blackspot identification.  Fleury explained:  “On the bike, you have a rear-facing camera and an app that gives you real-time situational awareness. The system understands context: when you have plenty of space, vehicles are shown as safe; when things tighten, you get visual and audio warnings so you know you’re in a higher-risk situation, like being passed closely by a bus or truck.” The team also plans to introduce what they call a “reverse blind spot” feature. With both rear- and forward-facing cameras, the system will be able to detect when a cyclist is sitting in a vehicle’s blind spot — one of the most dangerous positions on the road. “For the first consumer product, we’re launching with the rear camera only, because that delivers the most immediate safety value, explained Fleury. “Dual-camera setups will come later, and for OEM-integrated bikes, we expect that to happen sooner.” From raw video to interpreted risk After the ride, you get a post-ride safety analysis. The system automatically detects and tags incidents such as close passes, rear proximity, blind-spot risks, and overtakes in bike lanes.  You can review exactly where and when you were exposed to danger.  “It’s not just recording video,” asserts Fleury  “it’s interpreting it.” The software blurs faces and licence plates for privacy, and everything is processed with that in mind. AI at the edge on two wheels I was curious why this tech hasn’t become a standard safety feature in connected e-bikes the way it has in cars. Fleury cites cost and complexity are big factors, but also context.  “Radar systems exist, but in cities they’re too noisy — there’s always a car behind you. They don’t understand lanes, relative motion, or whether something is actually dangerous. Vision does. From a hardware perspective, it’s also hard." He explained that on an e-bike, you have very limited space, power, and cooling. “The chips have to be low-power, low-cost, and capable of running advanced AI in real time. That’s only now becoming possible.” “Almost like starting again”   Pivoting from scooters to consumer cycling and OEM partnerships is a big shift. I wanted to understand how difficult it was in practice. Fleury admits, “it was almost like starting again. The core technology is related, but the AI models are much more complex, and the automotive and two-wheel OEM world operates very differently.  “The sales cycles are long, the validation processes are heavy, and the culture is cautious. We had to learn the language, the standards, and the way decisions are made. And globally, the market is changing fast: Chinese manufacturers operate at a very different pace than traditional European OEMs. It’s been a steep learning curve, but also extremely energising.” The company opted for a direct-to-consumer launch first rather than going straight to manufacturers because, according to  Diviney, OEM lead times are simply too long.  “To build a great product and a credible brand, we need real-world usage, feedback, and iteration. Selling to cyclists directly allows us to validate the technology at scale, refine the user experience, and build a safety record. Those learnings then become incredibly valuable when we integrate with bike and motorcycle manufacturers. It’s the same path companies like Mobileye took in automotive: prove it in the aftermarket first, then become a standard feature.” Targeting commuters, enthusiasts, and cargo bikes as the first ARAS adopters The company is initially targeting enthusiast and commuter cyclists — people who ride regularly and already invest in their safety. Cargo bikes are also a key segment.  “From there, we’ll broaden as the product matures,” explained Diviney.    The late seed round was led by cycling-focused VC firm Fundracer Capital and EIT Urban Mobility, and supported by Enterprise Ireland. According to Fleury this funding enables the team to accelerate our hardware development and push on with our mission.   "We are extremely grateful to all of our shareholders and honoured that Fundracer has come on board. Each of the Fundracer team members has made an incredible contribution to the industry, and we are thankful to be able to benefit from their guidance. We are equally appreciative to EIT Urban Mobility and Enterprise Ireland for their continued support and trust”.  Fundracer, founded in the Netherlands, is led by industry-renowned cycling entrepreneurs, René Wiertz (Founder, 3T Cycling), Gerard Vroomen (Founder, Cervélo), and Andy Ording (Founder, Zipp Wheels). The firm invests in emerging technologies with a focus on safety, efficiency, and innovation. Its portfolio includes Specter, Blubrake, and Litelok, reflecting Fundracer’s commitment to advancing the next generation of cycling and mobility solutions. René Wiertz, Founder and Managing Partner at Fundracer Capital, believes that Luna’s technology and philosophy exactly align with their vision: "To date, high-level innovation has focused significantly on supporting the needs of professional and experienced cyclists, but to support the industry’s growth as a whole, everyone needs to feel safe navigating busy urban environments."  He asserts that while radar solutions have captured market attention over the past decade, AI advancements make vision a better choice from our perspective. "Vision AI doesn’t just detect. Its data capture capabilities help identify risk blackspots resulting from unsuitable cycling infrastructure, empowering cyclists to map safer routes." According to Peter Vest, Investment & Portfolio Manager at EIT Urban Mobility: “We are proud to continue supporting Luna, a company that embodies EIT Urban Mobility’s mission to make urban mobility safer. We are equally delighted to welcome Fundracer, whose deep expertise in the cycling industry brings invaluable insight. With both investors actively engaged in advancing mobility innovation, I am confident we can help Luna scale across Europe and beyond to make cycling more accessible for all.” The additional funding from Enterprise Ireland, the Irish government agency responsible for supporting innovation and scaling Irish businesses globally, underscores national support for Luna’s growth and international ambition.

Munich-based startup lytra has completed its pre-seed financing round, led by High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) with participation from additional investors, to expand its AI-driven platform for manufacturing service automation. Service operations represent a significant strategic opportunity for manufacturing companies, accounting for a substantial share of revenue and typically delivering higher margins than new equipment sales. At the same time, increasing machine complexity and rising customer expectations are making effective service delivery more critical. Unlocking this long-term potential requires scalable processes and the efficient use of existing product and process knowledge, a challenge further intensified by ongoing skills shortages. Lytra addresses these needs with an industry-specific AI operating system designed for manufacturing service operations. The platform integrates multiple AI agents that automate core service processes such as spare parts ordering, technician scheduling, and technical support. Built on existing domain expertise and fully integrated into customers’ IT environments, the system is operational from day one. This enables service teams to focus on complex cases while significantly reducing response times and operational workloads. According to Timo Bertsch, Investment Manager at HTGF, after-sales service remains one of the largest untapped sources of value in manufacturing. He adds that lytra addresses this structural challenge with a strong focus on automation, scalability, and the preservation of expert knowledge through AI. As an industrial technology company, lytra supports mechanical engineering firms in transforming after-sales service into a scalable revenue driver by automating service request handling across a single, integrated platform. The company plans to use the new funding to further develop its platform and expand its customer base among mid-sized manufacturing companies in 2026, building on the results of its initial pilot projects.

London-based Cyb3r Operations has raised £4 million to provide organisations with continuous visibility into third-party cyber risk. The round was led by Octopus Ventures, with follow-on investment from Pi Labs, bringing total funding to £5 million. As organisations increasingly depend on expanding networks of SaaS platforms, cloud services, AI tools and external suppliers, cyber risk is becoming more distributed and harder to control. More than a third of major cyber incidents now involve third parties, yet many companies continue to rely on periodic questionnaires, spreadsheets and static audits that fail to reflect how risk evolves in real time. Cyb3r Operations was founded to address this challenge by replacing fragmented, manual processes with continuous, automated oversight integrated across an organisation’s technology environment. The company works with large enterprises to identify and monitor third-party cyber risks across their supply chains on an ongoing basis. Rather than producing abstract risk metrics with limited operational value, the platform highlights the most critical external relationships, tracks how risk changes over time, prioritises response actions and supports organisational resilience. It also surfaces vulnerabilities across third-party ecosystems, including compliance gaps, shadow IT, extended supply-chain exposures and other risks often missed by traditional point-in-time assessments. Commenting on the company’s mission, Vincent Cook, founder and CEO of Cyb3r Operations, said many of today’s cybersecurity challenges stem not only from increasingly sophisticated threats, but also from internal processes that prevent organisations from clearly understanding where risk sits. He added that effective risk management requires continuous detection, assessment and response as relationships and dependencies evolve. The funding will support platform expansion, further development of threat intelligence capabilities, and broader adoption by organisations managing third-party and supply-chain cyber risk.

Helsinki-based product growth automation platform Skene has closed a €800,000 pre-seed round led by Superhero Capital, with participation from NVIDIA executives. As AI accelerates the pace of software development, a widening gap has emerged between building products and achieving commercial success. Many startups struggle to reach market fit, while a significant portion of SaaS tools remain underused. This execution gap leads to substantial wasted investment each year. In response, companies often expand sales and customer success teams, which can mask a product’s underlying ability to drive growth on its own. Skene was founded to address this challenge. The company has developed an AI agent that analyses a product’s source code to understand its logic, structure, and intended use, and then generates continuously updated user guidance integrated into everyday tools and workflows. By helping users realise value more quickly, Skene supports higher adoption, broader product usage, and stronger retention throughout the user lifecycle. Skene positions its platform as an autonomous value layer for SaaS products. Its AI agents read software codebases to deliver personalised, outcome-driven customer success at scale, automating key growth functions such as onboarding, adoption, and retention. According to CEO Teemu Kinos, many established products still rely heavily on sales teams, customer support, and manual workflows to execute growth strategies, while remaining cautious about adopting scalable AI-based solutions. He adds: The opportunity for exponential product-led growth is in the hands of AI-native teams looking for ways to ship at a speed and scale manual growth strategies can’t match. Skene automates the path to growth at every step, continuously improving user outcomes with every release. Skene has already launched its first agent and plans to expand coverage across the full product growth loop by early 2026. The company intends to use the new funding to surpass €1 million in ARR and broaden its platform to support growth across the entire user journey by spring 2026.

German startup osapiens, which provides software-as-a-service (SaaS) services to help companies meet ESG targets, says it has become a unicorn after raising $100m. The Series C round was funded solely by Decarbonization Partners, the joint venture between BlackRock and Temasek focused on late-stage VC investing in decarbonising tech. The company is now valued at over $1.1bn, following this round, it said. The Mannheim-headquartered firm has previously raised $147m with Goldman Sachs and German VC Armira Growth previous investors. Osapiens provides enterprise software that helps companies manage regulatory compliance and sustainability across their businesses on a single platform. Its customers include Tesco and packaging company DS Smith. It employs around 500 people and has a presence in markets including Germany, France, Spain, UK and the US. The company says it will use the proceeds to speed up product innovation and fuel growth in existing and new international markets. Alberto Zamora, co-CEO and co-founder of osapiens, said: “This investment is a strong validation of our strategy and our long-term vision. It demonstrates that sustainable growth and AI-driven efficiency remain top priorities for global investors. Decarbonization Partners is an exceptional partner for us. “With a focus on sustainability and the combined global presence and investment expertise of BlackRock and Temasek, they bring exactly the perspective and scale we need for our next phase of growth to become the indisputable global category leader in sustainable growth for enterprises of all sizes.”  Matthias Jungblut, co-CEO and co-founder, osapiens, said: “Decarbonization Partners understands both the regulatory dynamics companies face today and the business opportunity of AI-drivenefficiency that comes with it. “Their deep experience in scaling category-defining technology companies makes them a perfect strategic fit alongside Goldman Sachs Alternatives and Armira Growth.”

Belgian cybersecurity company A‍ikido has raised a $60M millionSeries B at a $1B valuation, led by Tom Stafford at DST Global, with participation from PSG Equity, Singular, Notion Capital, and others. Aikido is one of the fastest cybersecurity companies to reach unicorn status — in just three years — globally, and according to the company, the fastest ever in Europe. Aikido’s Series B follows a year of rapid growth for the company, including five-times revenue growth and nearly three-times customer growth. Aikido is now the fastest-ever European cybersecurity company to reach unicorn status, reflecting this growing demand for security systems that can operate effectively as software development accelerates. Aikido is a developer-first cybersecurity platform that helps software teams find, prioritise, and fix security issues across their entire software stack — from code to cloud and runtime — in a unified, automated way. Built by developers, for developers According to a blogpost written by CGO Madeleine Lawrence, “We didn’t start Aikido because we thought the world needed another security product. We started it because we were developers ourselves, and we were tired of security being something that happened to us instead of something that helped us.  We were tired of tools that created noise instead of clarity, complexity instead of progress, and process instead of outcomes. As Willem reminds us every day, “Developers just want to get back to building fun features.” But too often, they can’t. Instead, they’re forced to wade through a haystack of alerts, dashboards that look like the inside of an F-16 cockpit, and a barrage of four-letter acronyms developers are somehow expected to care about. “ She contends that somewhere along the way, security drifted away from how software is actually built and operated – “abstracted into quadrants, point tools, and snapshot reports that live far outside the reality of modern engineering teams.” “That disconnect is the real problem. Today, organisations spend billions on disjointed products that can’t talk to each other. Risk correlation becomes impossible; noise becomes the only consistent outcome. As vendors and analysts chase the next four-letter acronym, vulnerabilities that matter slip by unpatched or unseen entirely.”‍ Aikido is built around the premise that security begins and ends with better engineering. That requires a single, unified platform to secure the entire software lifecycle — built for the people who actually ship software. Instead of fragmenting security across five vendors, Aikido brings code, supply chain, cloud, runtime, and testing together so teams can answer one core question: “Are we actually at risk?” Detection alone, however, is not enough. “The magic comes when we close the loop,” Lawrence writes. With full code and application context, Aikido automatically triages and remediates issues from the moment vulnerabilities are introduced through to discovery in production, turning security from a reporting function into an engineering system. Software is being built at a pace that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago. AI-generated code is now the norm, and autonomous agents are writing and modifying systems faster than humans can review them. As engineering evolves, she argues, security must evolve with it. Towards self-securing software The next chapter, according to Lawrence, is “self-securing software” — systems that can secure themselves on demand. Aikido has launched Aikido Attack, an AI-driven penetration testing capability designed to deliver “hacker creativity at machine speed.” The system deploys hundreds of specialised agents to hunt vulnerabilities, validate exploits, and provide built-in remediation and retesting to ensure fixes hold — all observable in real time. Over time, this will evolve into continuous, autonomous testing embedded directly into every feature release. The goal is to close the ship-test-fix loop and return developers’ focus to building, not firefighting. Today, Aikido is used by more than 100,000 teams worldwide, including organisations such as the Premier League, SoundCloud, Niantic, and Revolut. Over the past year, the company has grown revenue fivefold and more than tripled its customer base. Proof Europe can build and scale world-class software Lawrence contends that in an industry long dominated by US and Israeli heavyweights, Aikido’s rise demonstrates that Europe can build and scale a world-class software security company on the global stage. “Everything about Aikido shouldn’t have worked. A European team, based in a village, with no traditional cybersecurity pedigree, no CISO network, and a bottom-up, developer-led go-to-market strategy." But that outsider position became an advantage. With no established network to sell into, the company had to grow inbound. With limited budget and powerful incumbents, it had to counter-position sharply. With a freemium, developer-first model, it had to deliver real value every day or fail. Internally, that mindset is reflected in a team of 180 people, including more than 21 former founders, shipping over 60 deployments a day. This next phase is backed by continued support from existing investors including Notion Capital, Singular.vc, Syndicate One, Entourage, Connect Ventures, and Innovia Capital, alongside early individual backers such as Christina Cacioppo (Vanta), Gilles Mattelin and Jorn Vanysacker (Henchman), Pieterjan Bouten (Showpad, Entourage), Louis Jonckheere (Wintercircus, Showpad), and Matthias Geeroms (Lighthouse). Aikido has also welcomed new investors for this chapter, including Mark Coucke and Alychlo, Joris Van Der Gucht (Silverfin), Ian Thiel (Sublime Security), Lorenz Bogaert (StarApps), Hendrik Isebaert (Showpad), Nik Storonsky (Revolut), VDK Bank, Dovesco, and PSG Equity.

Three-quarters of UK fintech founders are using AI to identify candidates and speed up recruitment, says a new survey. But findings from the survey also show that human judgment remains critical to ensure founders are finding the right talent and mix of individuals to recruit. The survey gauged the opinions of early-stage fintech founders, with 45 founders responding to the survey, within which the survey spoke to six founders in depth on an array of questions, on areas such as recruitment, culture and leadership.These were founders from insurtech Loxa, data platform Hace, money management startup Munny, property tech firm Grand Bequest, financial planning AI assistant PlannerPal, and gifting platform GiftRound.The survey found that founders were curious enough to dip their toes into using AI-powered assistants and talent-matching platforms but were not ready to commit.Mark Whitcroft, CEO, co-founder, PlannerPal, said: “We’re trying AI-first hiring platforms, ike Cord and Jack & Jill,  to improve funnel speed at a fraction of recruiter cost.”Andy Lang, CEO, Munny, said: "I’m not from a technical background—an AI assistant helps describe the role we need.”Katherine Gunderson, CEO and founder, Grand Bequest, said: “We’ve opened an Asana ‘R&D opportunities’ board to universities to surface candidates."Gunderson added: "Onboarding still takes 8–10 weeks. That’s too long. I want tools and mechanisms to operationalise faster.” Other findings include that a company’s purpose is crucial in driving hiring and retention, with 21 per cent of new hires stating they joined a firm specifically for its purpose, while over half (53 per cent) said they would stay because of it. The report was compiled by Ninety Two Ventures, the advisory firm, media consultant Sam Shaw, accountancy firm EY and fintech trade body Innovate Finance.  IMAGE: PIXABAY

Automation platform creator Cast AI has announced an investment from Pacific Alliance Ventures (PAV), the US-based corporate venture arm of Shinsegae Group, an over $50 billion Korean conglomerate with leading businesses across retail, consumer, and digital platforms.  With this round of funding, Cast AI’s valuation exceeds $1 billion, marking the company as Lithuania’s 5th unicorn.  Unlike traditional solutions that merely monitor clusters and provide recommendations, Cast AI leverages advanced machine learning algorithms to continuously analyse and automatically optimise clusters in real-time, cutting cloud costs, improving application performance, and boosting DevOps efficiency. “Shinsegae Group’s investment, and our over one billion dollar valuation, underscore the market’s confidence in our platform vision and our ability to execute it globally,” said Cast AI Co-Founder and CEO Yuri Frayman. “Enterprises don’t just need cheaper infrastructure – they need infrastructure that adapts automatically as workloads and constraints change. That is what our automation agents were built to do, and this investment helps us scale that globally.” Cast AI also expands its platform with the introduction of OMNI Compute, which connects external capacity, including GPUs, as native compute, allowing workloads to run on the most appropriate resources, locally or across clouds, without code changes, reconfiguration, or operational changes. It enables organisations to run any workloads, starting with AI inference, without cloud lock-in, while maintaining control over where they execute, to meet compliance and regulatory requirements. Teams can scale services without pinning workloads to a single region or provider, while keeping infrastructure behaviour automated, governed, and predictable as demand increases.  It applies the same optimisation used across the Cast AI platform to this external capacity, including GPU sharing, monitoring, and rightsizing, ensuring AI workloads remain efficient and consistent at scale. “OMNI Compute makes GPUs fungible at the infrastructure layer so capacity isn’t trapped inside a single cloud or region,” said Cast AI President and Co-Founder Laurent Gil. “Teams can move, allocate, and run production workloads wherever compute is actually available, with control over cost and performance.” Global expansion has been a core pillar of Cast AI’s growth strategy following its Series C funding round. Since then, the company has significantly expanded its regional footprint by opening new offices in Bangalore, London, New York, and Tel Aviv, as well as subsidiaries in Canada, France, India, Korea, Lithuania, Singapore, and the UK. “Cast AI has built a category-defining automation platform that aligns with the needs of modern, cloud-first enterprises,” said Hyuk Jin Chung, Managing Partner at PAV. “We see strong demand for the company’s platform globally, and we’re excited to support the company’s continued expansion in Asia and help it realise its long-term Application Performance Automation platform vision.” “With Cast AI, we’ve automated continuous infrastructure optimisation on Amazon EKS – reducing operational overhead while improving application efficiency and cost control in real time,” said Kyotack Tylor Kim, Head of Next Gen Cloud Group at Samsung Electronics. “OMNI Compute’s unified control plane has the potential to change how enterprises like Samsung run AI infrastructure globally.”

Klarna is launching a service which allows its customers to send money to each other through its app, as it continues its shift to reposition itself as a bank. The Swedish fintech, best known as a BNPL fintech, is launching peer-to-peer payments across 13 European countries, including the UK. The feature means that Klarna customers can send money to other registered Klarna customers, such as splitting bills or gifting cash with friends and family, directly from the Klarna app. Klarna customers will have to have the required funds in their Klarna wallet to send the money. To send money, users choose a recipient using a phone number, email address, QR code, or a saved contact. After confirming the amount, Klarna runs fraud and eligibility checks before proceeding with the payment. Klarna, which has over 100m users globally, hopes to broaden the service to non-Klarna customers and cross-border payments. The launch forms part of a move by Klarna to reposition itself as a digital bank and shed its BNPL image. It has launched a debit card, which it says has registered four million sign-ups in four months and has bagged an Electronic Money Licence in the UK. Sebastian Siemiatkowski, co-founder and CEO of Klarna, said: “Customers are sick of the friction and fees of traditional banking, which is why millions signed up to Klarna Card within a few months of launch. "With peer-to-peer payments we’re making it even easier to manage all of your payments through Klarna, now including small transfers, making managing your money quicker, easier, and cheaper.” Siemiatkowski yesterday told Bloomberg that Americans are being ripped off by high credit card fees, amid President Trump’s calls for a one-year 10 per cent cap on credit card interest rates.

Spot Ship, the SaaS platform modernising global ship chartering, has raised £1 million in a round led by Ventures.eu, marking the Lisbon-based VC fund’s first investment from Fund I. The round included Improbable CEO Herman Narula, industry specialists, Tradeworks.vc and Marcel Kind. Spot Ship is a British cloud-based company focused on improving efficiency in maritime logistics. Its platform uses advanced AI and machine learning, combined with global fleet tracking and a continuously expanding data set, to provide brokers, charterers, ship owners and operators with high-quality, actionable data. By automating complex data processing and streamlining decision-making, the company reduces typical vessel chartering timelines from several days to a matter of hours. Its API-first technology addresses longstanding data and efficiency challenges across the shipping industry, enabling seamless integration for major market participants. Commenting on the investment, James Kellett, Founder and CEO of Spot Ship, said the company is focused on bringing faster, more modern processes to an industry that has traditionally moved slowly. He noted that Ventures.eu closely aligns with this vision and has already delivered strategic value by connecting Spot Ship with major players across the global shipping sector. Ventures.eu leveraged its corporate network to introduce Spot Ship to leading shipping companies and industry experts, bringing potential customers into the investment process. This approach provided early market validation and supported rapid commercial progress, with new customers onboarded and additional co-investors joining the round. The new funding will support continued product development, commercial expansion, and the scaling of Spot Ship’s AI-driven platform across global shipping markets.

A quantum startup based in the UK, Ukraine and the US has raised what it says is one of the largest seed rounds in quantum software, bagging $11m.The funding round in Haiqu was led by Primary Venture Partners, with participation from Qudit Investments, Alumni Ventures, Collaborative Fund, Silicon Roundabout Ventures and returning investors Toyota Ventures and Mac Venture Capital.Haiku is focused on building the software layer that can optimise the current state of quantum hardware. The startup said the funding will be used to support the upcoming launch of Haiqu’s operating system for quantum applications, which it says makes quantum more efficient and more resistant to errors. The funds will also be used to expand its team.Haiqu was co-founded in 2022 by Richard Givhan, a Stanford-trained engineer, and Mykola Maksymenko, a former quantum researcher at Max Planck Society and Weizmann Institute.Givhan said: “Quantum teams need to make empirical progress on hardware to close the gap toward industrially useful quantum applications. Today, too little experimentation happens because quantum cloud costs are prohibitive and hardware performance remains insufficient. "Our goal is to change that overnight with a software system that can run larger applications at a fraction of the cost. We are grateful to have found investors who recognise the ugly truth: middleware isn’t sexy, but it matters.”Brian Schechter, partner, Primary Venture Partners, said: “Quantum computing must demonstrate commercial advantage over classical compute in some domain in order to scale. The premise underlying our investment in Haiqu is that software is essential to realise this goal.“More specifically, quantum hardware needs to operate more noise-resiliently and at greater scale. Haiqu minimises hardware shortcomings to get the best of what quantum has to offer today and in the many years before we have fully fault-tolerant qubits." According to Crunchbase, Haiqu has raised $5.8m in total to date, prior to this funding round.

Istanbul-based Dataroid has closed a $6.6 million pre-Series A funding round led by the FinAI Venture Capital Fund of Tacirler Asset Management, with participation from the Tacirler Asset Management Future Impact Venture Capital Fund and Endeavor Catalyst. The company had previously raised $2 million in December 2023 from Koç Group’s Private Venture Capital Investment Fund and İşbank’s 100th Year Venture Capital Fund. Dataroid is a digital analytics and customer engagement platform that enables organisations to measure and analyse customer interactions across multiple digital channels. The platform integrates customer data, behavioural analytics, application performance monitoring, and data modelling into a single system, providing marketing, product, and technology teams with comprehensive insight into customer experience and performance. It is used by medium and large enterprises across sectors, including financial services, aviation, and retail. According to co-founder Fatih İşbecer, the company’s long-standing work with large banking customers in Turkey has helped establish a strong foundation for international expansion. He added: As the market-leading digital analytics platform for banking and financial services in Turkey, our platform today enhances the digital experience of more than 120 million users. We see expanding this value to new markets as a priority. With this new funding, we aim to strengthen Dataroid’s AI-focused capabilities in line with customer needs and accelerate our global marketing initiatives, particularly across EMEA and Europe. In 2025, G2, a B2B technology marketplace, recognised Dataroid as a leading digital analytics platform in the Middle East and awarded it top placement in the “Best Support” category for both product and customer journey analytics, based on user feedback. The company reported net revenue retention of 127 per cent by the end of 2025, with no customer or revenue churn. With the new funding, Dataroid plans to expand into additional geographies, strengthen its presence in EMEA, accelerate global marketing efforts, and further develop its AI-powered self-service analytics capabilities.

As we close the chapter on 2025 and look ahead to what 2026 may bring, we’ve released a special Tech.eu podcast episode that does something a little different. Instead of our journalists alone unpacking the biggest stories of the year, we turned to what you read most in 2025 — and invited the founders and investors behind those headlines to share their perspectives on the moments that shaped Europe’s tech and innovation landscape, and the forces they believe will define the year ahead. From defence tech and deeptech to venture capital, regulation, and Europe’s ambitions for global scale, the conversation brings together voices from across the ecosystem to reflect on what really mattered in 2025 — and what is now coming into focus for 2026. Watch or listen: ? Hosts Cate Lawrence, Senior Journalist, Tech.eu John Reynolds, Journalist, Tech.eu ?Guests Ricardo Mendes, TEKEVER Andreas Klinger, co-initiator of the EU-INC, former CTO, investor, and entrepreneur Simon Schaefer, Founder of Factory, angel investor, President at Allied for Startups, and co-initiator of the EU-INC Filip Dames,  Founding Partner, Cherry Ventures Jevgeni Kabanov, President, Bolt Gilles Retsin, co-founder of AUAR Riam Kanso, CEO, ConceptionX Jed Rose, Partner, Antler  Some of the stories you read most in 2025 TEKEVER becomes the latest unicorn in Europe's defencetech industry Inside Antler’s "Day Zero" strategy: backing founders before the first round Cherry Ventures launches $500M in funds to propel Europe’s first trillion-dollar company One year on from Draghi report: Europe’s innovation future hangs on the 28th Regime Conception X launches angel syndicate for Europe’s deeptech PhDs h Bolt sounds alarm over Lyft's €175M FREENOW acquisition: “We’re the last European  Construction tech startup AUAR raises £5.1M to expand robotic micro-factories

At 42 pages, Tech.eu's 2025 Annual Report is our largest to date and packed with a comprehensive review of topics including investments, geographic and industry performance, top M&A and exit activities, insights and predictions from startups and VCs, and much more. While there's plenty more information packed inside the full report, let's dive into some top-level items. Key findings €72 billion In 2025, European tech investment reached €72 billion, positioning the year as the second-strongest of the past three years and reinforcing the market’s long-term growth despite a modest 3.2 per cent correction from 2024’s peak. 3740+ deals 2025 saw a steady stream of investments both in terms of the number of deals and the total amounts raised month-over-month. UK on top From a geographic view, 2025 saw little change in the top countries funded, with the UK retaining its lead position. Fintech reins supreme in 2024 In 2025, fintech was the best-performing industry, with €11.1 billion raised over 397 rounds. 715 M&A and exit activities In 2025, the number of exits increases to 715, compared with 648 in 2024, indicating a moderate recovery in exit activity. While this is an improvement on the previous year, exit volumes remain below the 2023 level of 847, suggesting that 2025 reflects a stabilisation phase rather than a full return to earlier highs. Pre-Seed and Seed investors drive deal flow in 2025 In 2025, the European tech ecosystem was supported by a balanced mix of public institutions, early-stage specialists, and global venture capital firms, creating a resilient and scalable funding environment. Investors such as Bpifrance, CDP Venture Capital, and High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) played a central role in backing innovation, particularly at early stages, while specialised pre-seed and seed investors, including Antler, SpeedInvest, and Seedcamp, led overall deal activity. The entire Tech.eu 2025 Annual Report is now available for download. Gain a deeper understanding of the European tech landscape and make informed decisions for your business with data-driven analysis, exclusive reports, and valuable research. From all of us here at Tech.eu, we wish you a very happy, healthy, and prosperous 2026.

LIV4 an Italian startup applying generative AI to enterprise processes, has closed a €500,000 Pre-Seed funding round to accelerate the development of its platform, expand its team and strengthen strategic partnerships.  Today, quality management is often perceived as a complex, mandatory process, slowed down by repetitive manual activities and a high risk of human error. Feedback from companies involved in early pilot projects confirms the need for a concrete solution capable of reducing operational time, increasing accuracy and improving data analysis across internal systems. LIV4 develops a proprietary platform designed to query, analyse and generate complex technical documentation in a fast, intuitive and fully compliant way. It enables companies to interact with their quality data using natural language, automating activities that are still largely manual and time-consuming today: from information retrieval and regulated technical documentation to process traceability and validation. Founded in 2025 by Patricia Achinca and Matteo Giunchedi, LIV4 originally started in 2023 as a solution for intelligent information management in travel organisations, before evolving into industrial-quality processes. After years of research, experimentation and early prototypes, the founders identified a clear and unmet need in the industrial sector: simplifying and accelerating data management and documentation activities within quality processes. “Our vision is to help companies turn industrial quality into a truly strategic process through the use of generative AI,” said founders Patricia Achinca and Matteo Giunchedi. “We do this through a proprietary platform capable of understanding technical contexts, querying enterprise data and automatically generating documents that are already formatted and compliant with industry regulations. With this round, we will expand product features, strengthen the team and accelerate validation within the Italian industrial market”. LIV4 has already launched pilot projects with Nupi Industrie Italiane, as well as companies in the Food & Beverage and Earthmoving sectors. The team currently consists of seven people and plans to expand in the coming months, particularly in tech and product roles, to support platform development and scale the technology to additional regulated industries. The investment was led by a group of business angels with direct experience in the industrial, software and manufacturing sectors, including Bernhard Konzet (General Manager at Blulink), Claudio Ognibene (President and CEO of Ognibene Power), Sean Milloy (entrepreneur and senior executive with global experience at Cummins, now CEO of LHP Europe), and Giovanni Giunchedi (former executive at Bottega Veneta, Sergio Rossi and Richard Ginori – Kering Group). The round was also supported by Intesa Sanpaolo and Banca d’Imola, further validating the project's solidity and the relevance of applying generative AI to industrial quality processes. “We decided to invest in LIV4 after analysing its potential in an industrial context that is undergoing an inevitable transformation,” said investor Bernhard Konzet  “I am very familiar with the complexity of quality management and the amount of time required for documentation and analysis. LIV4’s approach is concrete, immediately applicable and built on a deep understanding of the industry.  Many organisations already rely on structured information systems: this is the ideal way to finally unlock the value of data that has been collected for years.”