Wamo, a financial operating platform for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), has raised €10 million in a Series A funding round to support its expansion in Italy and the Nordic region, enhance product capabilities, and roll out AI-driven tools. The majority of the funding was provided by TCEE Fund IV, advised by 3TS Capital Partners, a technology-focused growth capital firm investing across Emerging Europe. Oleka Capital and existing investors also participated in the round. Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Helsinki and London, Wamo is licensed and regulated by the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority as a pan-European electronic money institution. The company provides a multi-currency business account integrated with cards, invoicing, expense management, and other embedded financial tools within a unified platform designed for SMEs. In addition to its core financial services, Wamo integrates lending into its platform, using real-time banking, payments, and operational data to enable faster, data-driven underwriting. Commenting on the development, Yanki Önen, Founder of Wamo, said: European SMEs need smarter infrastructure, not just digital banking. We are integrating AI and automation across our platform to reduce friction, unlock better insights and give businesses clearer control over their finances. Wamo’s platform is currently used by more than 15,000 customers across Europe, with adoption having tripled over the past 12 months. Growth has been particularly strong in Southern Europe and the Nordics, with Italy emerging as a key expansion market. The new funding will be used to accelerate geographic expansion, further develop AI-enabled features, and scale the company’s financial services offering, supporting SMEs with accessible financial infrastructure and data-driven tools to facilitate growth and operational efficiency.

The Tech.eu Q1 2026 Report reveals that European tech companies raised €20.2 billion across 855 deals during the first quarter of 2026. Approximately 6.9 per cent of these companies successfully closed seed rounds, amounting to €1.4 billion. Here is the list of the 10 largest seed rounds among European tech companies that were completed in Q1 2026. Amount raised in Q1 2026: $1B AMI (Advanced Machine Intelligence) is a frontier AI research lab developing a new class of systems that understand and interact with the real world. It focuses on building “world models”, AI that can reason, plan, and operate safely across complex physical environments, with applications in areas such as robotics, healthcare, and industrial systems. Founded by a global team of leading researchers and engineers, the company aims to advance reliable, controllable AI and enable real-world intelligence beyond traditional language-based models. AMI raised more than $1 billion in what it describes as Europe’s largest-ever seed funding round. Amount raised in Q1 2026: €40M Onodrim is an Amsterdam-based defence and industrial technology company developing integrated platforms that combine hardware, software, and manufacturing capabilities to strengthen Europe’s defence infrastructure and industrial capacity. Its approach focuses on building interoperable systems across sensing, production, and data networks, aiming to improve readiness, operational efficiency, and cross-border coordination in response to evolving security and industrial challenges. Onodrim Industries raised €40 million in seed funding to accelerate product development and expand manufacturing and R&D capabilities across Europe. Amount raised in Q1 2026: $40M PAVE Space is a Swiss aerospace company developing in-orbit transportation and servicing solutions, centred around its “kickstage” platform designed to move satellites from low Earth orbit to their final destination within 24 hours. The company combines propulsion, navigation, and autonomous systems to enable flexible satellite deployment, as well as future services such as in-orbit inspection, life extension, and space infrastructure operations. PAVE Space raised $40 million in seed funding to develop a new generation of spacecraft designed to move satellites rapidly between orbits. Amount raised in Q1 2026: €15M Hades Mining is a deeptech company developing next-generation drilling and subsurface technologies to unlock geothermal energy and critical minerals from ultra-deep underground resources. Its platform combines advanced techniques such as laser-based drilling and low-impact extraction methods to enable faster, more efficient, and sustainable access to resources that are currently difficult or uneconomical to reach. Hades Mining raised €15 million in seed funding to advance its laser-based drilling technology aimed at making deep hard-rock mining more economical. Amount raised in Q1 2026: €15M ShanX Medtech is a medtech company developing in-vitro diagnostic platforms for rapid antimicrobial susceptibility testing, enabling clinicians to identify the most effective antibiotic directly from patient samples. Its technology delivers results in around one hour, significantly faster than traditional methods, supporting faster, evidence-based treatment decisions and helping combat antimicrobial resistance. ShanX Medtech closed a €15 million seed funding round to support scaling, advance clinical validation, and prepare for market launch. Amount raised in Q1 2026: $16.5M Interloom is an enterprise software company developing an AI-powered “navigation system for work” that maps how teams actually operate and turns organisational knowledge into structured, reusable workflows. Its platform captures insights from documents, conversations, and processes to guide decision-making and enable AI agents to automate tasks based on real operational experience rather than rigid, pre-defined workflows. Interloom raised $16.5 million to advance its AI agent memory platform and expand enterprise automation capabilities. Amount raised in Q1 2026: $15M Zepo is a cybersecurity platform focused on human risk management, helping organisations detect, simulate, and respond to social engineering threats in real time. Its AI-driven system combines threat detection, behavioural analytics, and personalised training to reduce employee-related security risks and improve overall resilience against increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks. Zepo Intelligence secured $15 million to advance the company’s efforts to strengthen human risk management on a global scale. Amount raised in Q1 2026: $14.5M Plato is a Berlin-based AI software company that provides a sales intelligence and workflow automation platform designed for wholesale distributors, integrating directly with existing ERP systems to enhance sales processes. Its platform uses AI-driven insights and automation to identify sales opportunities, reduce manual tasks, and enable more proactive, data-driven decision-making across B2B sales teams. Plato raised $14.5 million to scale its AI platform for distributors internationally, starting with its sales intelligence offering. Amount raised in Q1 2026: €11M Oska Health is a digital health company that provides AI-supported coaching and virtual care tools to help patients manage chronic conditions such as kidney disease, diabetes, and hypertension between medical visits. Its platform combines human health coaches with data-driven insights and behavioural support to improve treatment adherence, reduce complications, and enable continuous care outside traditional clinical settings. Oska Health raised €11 million in seed funding to scale its continuous care model for high-risk, chronically ill patients. Amount raised in Q1 2026: $12M Chiral is a Swiss deeptech company developing high-precision manufacturing equipment for integrating nanomaterials into next-generation semiconductor and quantum devices at an industrial scale. Its proprietary robotic nanoassembly technology enables reliable, scalable placement of materials such as carbon nanotubes and graphene onto chips, unlocking higher-performance electronics beyond traditional silicon-based approaches. Chiral secured $12 million in seed funding to support the commercialisation of its robotic platform for wafer-scale integration of nanomaterials such as carbon nanotubes and graphene.

Peak Quantum, a Munich-based quantum computing startup, has raised €2.2 million in pre-seed funding to advance its superconducting quantum processor technology and establish a European pilot manufacturing line. The round was led by Cloudberry Ventures, with participation from United Founders, QAI Ventures, Golden Egg Check, and several business angels with industry experience. Including public support, such as funding from the EU Chips Act, the company’s total funding now exceeds €5 million. Founded in 2024, Peak Quantum is a spin-off from the Walther-Meißner-Institute (WMI), part of the Technical University of Munich. Established by scientists and experienced entrepreneurs, the company integrates expertise in chip design, fabrication, and system integration. Peak Quantum’s technological approach focuses on developing quantum bits (qubits) with intrinsic error resilience at the hardware level. While conventional quantum processors rely heavily on complex post-processing error correction, the company’s architecture integrates error protection directly into the physical design of the qubits, reducing system complexity and supporting the development of practically usable quantum computers. The quantum computing industry has focused for too long on scaling the number of qubits. But more qubits do not help if each individual one is unreliable. We are developing processors where error resilience is an intrinsic physical property of the hardware itself, said Leon Koch, CEO of Peak Quantum. A key element of the company’s roadmap is its involvement in the planned SUPREME European quantum chip pilot line under the EU Chips Act. Peak Quantum has been selected to operate the facility, with operations scheduled to begin in April 2026. The initiative is intended to support the development and manufacturing of quantum chips in Europe. The new capital will be used to further develop error-resilient superconducting qubits and to support the establishment of the European pilot production line.

Across Europe, millions of heat and hot-water metres accurately measure consumption every day. Many have been in the field for a decade or more, performing their metrological function with high reliability. By 2027, a significant portion of this infrastructure will fail to meet a new regulatory requirement. Not because the sensing is wrong, but because the telemetry is missing. The EU Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) mandates that heat and hot-water metres in existing buildings must support remote reading by 2027, with monthly consumption reporting to residents wherever remote infrastructure is in place. For engineering and operations teams, the challenge is choosing the most resilient path to compliance. In most real-world deployments, that path is not mass hardware replacement. It is a retrofit of the communication layer, adding transmission capability to metres that already measure correctly. The distinction is technical and consequential. The compliance gap is in connectivity, not measurement technology The EED's requirement is specific: remotely readable data. Any metre that cannot provide it must either be replaced or retrofitted to do so. For the large share of existing installations that already measure accurately, retrofitting the communication layer is sufficient for compliance. This allows for a clean architectural separation between the physical metre and the communication layer, a distinction with significant implications for compliance costs and infrastructure longevity. The overwhelming majority of legacy heat and hot-water metres already transmit data over wireless M-Bus (wM-Bus), the dominant short-range radio standard in European utility deployments. A smaller share uses wired M-Bus interfaces or pulse outputs. In all cases, the metres carry accurate, calibrated readings. What they often lack is the infrastructure to push that data upstream without a physical visit. A retrofit concentrator attached to the building's existing meter population collects and forwards those signals without touching any calibrated measuring component. Transmission upstream can be handled via several standardised protocols depending on installation density, building topology, and backhaul requirements. NB-IoT is well-suited for sparse or geographically distributed installations where cellular coverage is reliable, and gateway density is insufficient. The choice of backhaul protocol is an engineering decision, not a product decision, and an interoperable data concentrator handles both. Managing protocol heterogeneity at the edge The primary engineering obstacle in European urban digitalisation is rarely the metres themselves. It is the patchwork of mixed-manufacturer and mixed-generation hardware accumulated over decades. A typical residential building might contain heat meters from three different manufacturers, two different communication standards, and a 15-year generation gap between the newest and oldest units. This heterogeneity creates data silos that no single-vendor replacement programme can cleanly eliminate. The technical solution is a protocol-agnostic data concentrator: a device that operates above the metre layer, collecting signals from diverse devices and translating them into a unified data stream for the central head-end system (HES). Rather than forcing the metre estate to conform to a single standard, the concentrator absorbs the complexity at the edge. Adherence to Open Metering System (OMS) standards at the concentrator level is the key to making this architecture durable. OMS defines an open, manufacturer-independent protocol stack for utility metering communication across Europe. By conforming to OMS at the gateway layer, operators ensure that the site's connectivity infrastructure remains decoupled from any individual metre vendor's roadmap. The practical consequence is that metres can be replaced, extended, or sourced from different suppliers without requiring changes to the data collection layer above them. This is not just a procurement convenience. It is a structural defence against vendor lock-in, a scenario that has proven costly for utilities that standardised on proprietary systems in earlier smart metre rollouts and found themselves unable to source compatible hardware when those vendors changed terms, exited markets, or were acquired. Architectural resilience and OTA firmware management A dedicated communication layer offers an operational capability that embedded metre firmware cannot: over-the-air (OTA) updates across the entire deployed fleet. For infrastructure of this kind, this is not a convenience feature. It is a fundamental requirement for long-term viability. The threat landscape for connected utility infrastructure will not remain static. New vulnerabilities will be identified. Regional radio regulations will evolve. The EN 13757 standard governing wM-Bus communication has already been revised multiple times since its first publication, and further updates are expected as the installed base grows. Hardware that cannot receive remote firmware updates will require physical intervention for each of these changes, a cost that compounds significantly across large deployments. ACRIOS Systems develops both hardware and firmware internally, making OTA update capability a core design requirement for its concentrator platform rather than an afterthought. The closed loop between hardware design and firmware development allows the company to push verified updates across deployed fleets without compatibility uncertainty. Proven at scale in high-density environments The technical feasibility of this retrofit architecture has been validated in one of the most demanding deployment environments in Central and Eastern Europe: Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, with a residential population of over 500,000. For a network of this scale, zero field visits for firmware maintenance result in a total cost of ownership (TCO) profile that diverges significantly from that of static hardware over a multi-year lifecycle. The city required a unified data collection infrastructure capable of reading metres across a heterogeneous installed base with multiple manufacturers, multiple protocols, and no uniform baseline. ACRIOS delivered 10,000 data concentrators to the project, each capable of serving up to 800 individual metres. The infrastructure now collects consumption data from hundreds of thousands of residential units continuously and automatically, without field visits. The deployment directly addressed the installation bottleneck. Every unit shipped pre-configured: customer SIM cards loaded, settings applied, installation materials included. Field teams could commission hardware without specialist radio or networking knowledge at each site. The full rollout was completed within five months, a timeline that reflects both logistics discipline and the maturity of the plug-and-play approach. The density conditions in Vilnius, with its multi-storey residential blocks, mixed construction materials, and high device counts per building, are representative of the urban housing stock that EED compliance must address across Europe. The concentrator architecture mitigated radio interference and signal collisions typical of these environments without degrading data-collection reliability. What the data layer enables beyond compliance Meeting the 2027 deadline is the minimum requirement. The greater value of a well-designed remote metering infrastructure lies in what it enables operationally once the data is flowing. For building operators, the elimination of physical metre access removes the single most common source of billing delays and estimated readings. A single inaccessible flat in a stairwell can cascade into deferred reconciliations across an entire building. Remote reading removes that dependency at the root. For residents, monthly reporting as required by the directive enables behavioural change that annual billing cannot. Consumption anomalies, visible within weeks rather than at year-end, allow for earlier intervention on leaks, faulty equipment, or unexplained increases. The feedback loop tightens from 12 months to 30 days. For grid operators and infrastructure planners, granular and continuous consumption data at the building level feeds directly into demand forecasting, load balancing, and the kind of infrastructure investment modelling that regulators across the EU are increasingly requiring as part of national energy efficiency reporting obligations. The architecture decision determines the cost curve The 2027 deadline is fixed. The cost of reaching it is not, and the variance between a replacement-first and a retrofit-first strategy is large enough to be a strategic decision rather than simply a procurement one. For most existing European buildings, the metering hardware is not the problem. The metres work. The calibration is valid. The gap is in the communication stack, and filling that gap with a well-specified, OMS-compliant, OTA-capable concentrator layer costs a fraction of a like-for-like hardware replacement. It also avoids the disruption of accessing every metered unit, decertifying installed equipment, and reconfiguring billing systems around new device identifiers. The infrastructure to do this exists, works at the city scale, and can be deployed without discarding what has already been built. The question for utilities and building operators approaching 2027 is not whether the retrofit model is technically viable. The Vilnius deployment makes a strong case for that. The question is whether the right architectural decision is made early enough to be properly deployed. About ACRIOS Systems ACRIOS Systems is a Czech technology company specialising in hardware and software development for smart metering, IoT, and energy management. The company designs and manufactures its own OMS-compliant hardware and firmware in-house, delivering robust, scalable, and interoperable solutions for cities, utilities, and industry across Europe. For more information, visit ACRIOS Systems.

Convelio, a technology-enabled fine art logistics and storage company, has secured a Series C investment to expand its AI-powered logistics and collections management services for the global art and antiques market. The round was led by a prominent French entrepreneurial dynasty with strong ties to the international art sector, with participation from existing investors Forestay, Mundi Ventures, and Acton Capital. The financial terms of the investment were not disclosed. Founded in 2017, Convelio seeks to modernise an industry that remains largely under-digitised despite its scale. The company combines proprietary algorithms and AI-driven technology with the operational expertise of specialist fine art handlers to deliver more efficient and transparent shipping and storage solutions. Its platform enables end-to-end shipment management, real-time tracking, and AI-powered inventory visibility, addressing longstanding challenges such as opaque pricing, limited oversight of stored collections, and fragmented logistics processes. Convelio serves around 3,000 art businesses globally and has been appointed a global logistics provider for Phillips, supporting integrated post-sale services across major art markets. Edouard Gouin, co-founder and CEO of Convelio, commented: The art world has a tricky relationship with AI, with participants more inclined to view it as an existential threat than as a potent economic ally. For us at Convelio, that distrust is wildly misplaced. AI’s biggest contribution to art will not be to replace human artistic endeavour with cheap, quick AI-generated alternatives. It will lie in its ability to make the mechanisms of access, circulation and collection management more seamless, for the benefit of a wider community of collectors, art lovers and institutions. By leveraging AI to automate processes such as quotation generation and workflow coordination, Convelio has reduced administrative overhead and enhanced operational efficiency. These capabilities enable the company to provide a more integrated and transparent logistics experience, supporting the continued evolution of the global art market. The new funding will support the acceleration of Convelio’s hybrid growth strategy, including further development of its AI-led technology and the expansion of its global storage infrastructure. The company plans to launch additional specialist storage facilities, including a flagship warehouse in New York, complementing its existing sites in London and Paris, both of which reached operational breakeven within their first year.

Kelluu, a Finnish deeptech company operating the world’s largest autonomous airship fleet, has raised €15 million in Series A funding. The round was led by the NATO Innovation Fund, marking its first investment in a Finnish company. Additional participation came from Keen Venture Partners, GungnirCapital, and Tesi. The funding follows Kelluu’s successful completion of two phases of NATO’s DIANA (Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic) programme. Kelluu designs, manufactures, and operates autonomous hydrogen-powered airships that provide persistent intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities. The company’s unmanned fleet delivers continuous monitoring and high-resolution data collection across vast and remote areas, enabling earlier threat detection and more efficient operations. The airships are designed for silent, low-emission operation in challenging environments. By combining long-endurance persistence with high-precision sensing, Kelluu’s technology addresses a critical gap between satellites and drones. While satellites offer broad coverage and drones provide detailed imagery, both face operational limitations related to endurance, weather resilience, and regulatory constraints. Kelluu’s platform enables missions exceeding 12 hours and supports multiple sensing modalities, delivering real-time, ultra-high-quality imagery. Five airships operating from a single base can cover up to 30,000 square kilometres. We built Kelluu at the edge of Europe, in one of the hardest operating environments outside conflict zones, because we believe that persistent aerial intelligence would become critical infrastructure - not just for defence, but for the resilience of entire countries, said Janne Hietala, CEO of Kelluu. Founded as a dual-use company, Kelluu’s technology also supports civilian applications, including forestry monitoring, meteorology, smart-city sensing, and the protection of critical infrastructure. These capabilities enable the creation of high-resolution digital twins and provide cost advantages compared with traditional manned aviation. The new funding will be used to further optimise Kelluu’s technology, scale operations, and expand deployment of its autonomous airship fleet. The company is also advancing its long-term vision through Kelluu AI Labs, which aims to develop geospatial foundation models for the physical environment, supporting applications in defence, infrastructure resilience, and environmental monitoring. With increasing investment in European defence capabilities and a growing need for persistent aerial intelligence, Kelluu is well-positioned to contribute to strengthening security and resilience across both military and civilian domains.

Replenit, an AI decision engine for retail that turns customer signals into real-time, individualised decisions, has raised $2.5 million in a pre-seed funding round. The round was co-led by Movens Capital and Vastpoint, with participation from Logo Ventures, DigitalOcean Ventures, Finberg, Caucasus Ventures, and angel investor Mati Staniszewski, CEO and co-founder of ElevenLabs.  By adding a reasoning layer on top of existing data and orchestration systems, Replenit helps retailers improve retention, increase revenue, and deliver more relevant customer experiences. Developed with PhD-level AI researchers, the system interprets behavioural signals as indicators of intent and context, enabling retailers to decide what action to take in each moment rather than reacting to past events. Unlike a rules-based automation engine, it determines what each customer needs in real time. Then, selects the most relevant actions at scale based on analysis that more closely resembles human thinking than other standard retail AI models. This results in customer experiences that feel genuinely personalised rather than downstream of mass marketing. Ilyas Kurklu, Co-founder and CEO of Replenit, said: “Retailers can no longer rely on prediction alone. They need to understand intent, reason in context, and decide what to do next for each individual customer. Most AI tools today focus on efficiency or content generation, but the real challenge is decision-making. Replenit improves the quality of every commercial decision, helping retailers move from static rules to real-time, AI-driven actions that directly drive revenue. Our vision is to define a new standard for retail intelligence”. Replenit integrates with existing infrastructure  — including Databricks, Salesforce, Braze, Bloomreach, and Klaviyo —  adding an intelligence layer that drives stronger retention, repeat purchases, and greater value from existing data. The practical effect for retailers is significant increase in revenue, without increasing the volume of generalist campaigns. L’Occitane en Provence recorded a 235 per cent increase in post-purchase revenue after deploying Replenit’s engine. iBOOD, one of Europe’s best-known flash-deal retailers, now attributes 6.3 per cent of total company revenue to Replenit-driven decisions. Every contract includes an explicit 10× ROI guarantee with a contractual exit clause if results are not delivered. To date, no customer has invoked it. Lukasz Lewandowski, Investment Director at Movens Capital, said: "Retailers are sitting on tons of customer data, but very few can turn it into real-time decisions that drive revenue. Replenit is building the AI layer that closes that gap, helping brands act at the exact moment a customer is ready to buy again. With a team that has already scaled global martech platforms and early proof with major retailers, we believe Replenit has the potential to define a new category in retail infrastructure." Founded by entrepreneurs with experience scaling a martech company to unicorn status, Replenit is already working with more than 30 enterprise retailers globally within its first year. Replenit was founded by six Turkish entrepreneurs with more than 40 years of combined experience scaling B2B SaaS and martech companies internationally, including to unicorn level. Headquartered in Warsaw, the company chose Poland as its base to tap into one of Europe’s strongest engineering hubs and fastest-growing economies, with additional technical operations in the Netherlands. Replenit's story reflects a broader trend. Poland has long attracted founders from Ukraine and Belarus, entrepreneurs seeking stability and access to the EU market. Increasingly, teams from Turkey and the Baltic states are choosing Warsaw as their European base. Karolina Kukiłka, Partner at Vastpoint, said: “Higher diversity of talent is one of the keys to Poland’s long-term success as a technology hub. The Replenit team combines ambition, exceptional customer success, and operational efficiency, which made it an easy investment decision.” The $2.5 million round will support further product development, AI research, and the growth of operations and engineering teams in Poland and the Netherlands. Replenish also plans to expand its US presence and establish a local team before the end of 2026.

AI has made it easier than ever to build something that looks impressive. Polished demos, sleek interfaces, and convincing prototypes can now be produced in days, not months.  But how do investors cut through the shine to identify a product with real value, a defensible technology, and a team capable of building something that lasts? To find out, I spoke to Alison Imbert, Partner at Partech.  From Marseille to Partech: an accidental path into VC Partech is a global venture capital firm with roots dating back to 1982, originally founded in San Francisco and now headquartered in Paris. Today, it operates as a multi-stage investment platform backing technology startups from seed to growth, with offices across Europe, Africa, and the US. The firm manages roughly €2.5 to €3 billion in assets and supports a portfolio of more than 200 companies across 40 countries. Partech operates under a “full-stack” model: it runs multiple funds covering early-stage venture, growth equity, and impact investing. This enables it to stay involved with companies as they scale. Its investment focus spans sectors like fintech, enterprise software, AI, healthtech, and data platforms, with a strong emphasis on software and digital infrastructure.  Imbert grew up in Marseille, coming from a working-class background. She made her way into engineering school in Paris because she loved maths. She began her career in consulting, working as a Senior Consultant at Roland Berger in Paris for 4 years. She focused on private equity and data science projects.  After four years, Imbert returned to her technical roots, completing a master’s in data science while leading a small six-person team. Imbert transitioned to VC by pure chance. She admits that in 2018, in France, “the ecosystem wasn’t very mature. It wasn’t really considered 'sexy.'”  She ended up at Partech,  managing the €53 million Paris-Saclay Seed Fund, sharing, “I loved the team — Romain, Boris, the energy. The partnership was very direct, very challenging, but I liked it. I felt like I would learn a lot and be more concrete compared to consulting, where you do a lot of slides and long projects.” Imbert’s role was investing in top engineering talent, a space where  Imbert already had a network. While running the fund, she invested in companies like Epsor, Joko, METYCLE, Orus, and Pennylane.  Since then, Imbert helped raise a separate, larger fund that combines its Seed strategy with the main Partech Seed fund. Why early conviction — and go-to-market — define the job Imbert sees early-stage investing as a balance between conviction and challenge. It means backing founders before there is proof, while rigorously testing how they will build, sell, and defend their position as AI reshapes the landscape. She shared: “What I love most about VC is supporting founders at the very beginning. You’re the first person to believe in them — sometimes when they only have an idea. You build very strong relationships.” However, the relationship is challenging on both sides, with Imbert admitting that founders won’t just agree if you say something wrong, “So you have to keep learning and stay sharp.” Imber is bullish about B2B SaaS, declaring that “AI“is an amazing opportunity to reinvent a lot of SaaS and challenge incumbents. Who knows,  maybe Salesforce won’t look the same in 10 years. She also really enjoys the go-to-market side of startups — whether SMB or enterprise.: "I like product too, but where I think I add the most value is on go-to-market. Recently, I’ve been focusing more on enterprise and large corporates because there’s more moat. It’s harder, but if you succeed, the asset's value is stronger. Today, when everyone can build quickly, the key question is the moat.” What actually matters at Seed stage investor pitching Investing at Seed stage means going beyond the conventional pitch decks and demos — “the demo is worth nothing. It’s so easy to build,” asserts Imbert.  Further, the cost reduction in building means that funds have changed how they assess companies.  Imbert likes to focus on user research:  “AI won’t give you deep market insight — only direct conversations with customers will. I want founders who are obsessed with understanding the pain of their customers and willing to spend the next decade working on it.” One question she always asks founders is: How many clients or prospects did you interview in the last two months? “I don’t care about polished materials. I want to see messy notes. The depth of insight is what matters. For example, I worked with founders who travelled across France to meet customers much older than them, working the same way for decades. They built relationships, gathered insights, and showed real obsession with solving the problem. That’s what matters.” While some founders can say 20 to 30 interviewees, she explained that others say 100, and they can explain what they learned.  “Those are the founders I want to invest in. Because then you can go deeper: How is the pain articulated? Who is the buyer versus the user? What really matters in the workflow? Those insights only come from talking to customers.” She also provided an example of a founder who pivoted not just because the market wasn’t there, but because he realised he didn’t want to sell to a specific persona in the long term.  “That level of self-awareness matters.” It follows that, in the long term, proprietary data becomes a real asset. “We want to understand how founders will access and build unique datasets that improve their product over time,” shared Imbert. “That’s something we think about a lot.” In other words, in a market flooded with impressive-looking products, the edge comes from founders who have done the work — and can show exactly what they’ve learned. Distribution is the new moat Imbert also cites the importance of distribution. While some founders rely on capital to dominate distribution, others develop more defensible strategies with network effects, brand, or critical access to users.  “But founders need to understand this shift: differentiation is no longer just the product.” When it comes to AI-embedded products, there’s a clear tension between buyers and users. Decision-makers often push for adoption — “we need AI” — driven by board-level mandates. But on the ground, users can be far more hesitant, wary of changing established workflows or concerned about what it means for their roles. For founders, this creates a dual challenge: understanding both the strategic intent at the top and the practical resistance at the bottom. The product must solve a real, immediate pain point for users — something valuable enough that they actively choose to engage with it. “Onboarding is critical. You can’t force change — you have to guide it,” asserts Imbert. “I’ve seen this with payroll software. Owners want efficiency, but users resist switching from tools they’ve used for decades. Success depends on how well you manage that transition. Strong top-down demand doesn’t guarantee adoption.” Putting founders under pressure with customer credibility Imbert likes to test how founders interact with potential customers during user research.  “Are they credible? Do people trust them? This is especially important with very young founders — and we’re seeing more of them now.” Today, with many first-time and very young founders, the question of building credibility is vital, especially when selling into legacy organisations and needing to earn the trust of experienced buyers. To test this, Partech puts startups into real situations.  “We introduce them to CTOs or CISOs from companies we know and see how they perform.” From there, feedback becomes a key signal: were they credible? Did they handle difficult questions with confidence and clarity? The assessment doesn’t stop at live interactions. “We also stress-test them with hypothetical scenarios — For example, how they would react to a fast-moving competitor. We look at how they think, not just what they say.” Ultimately, what matters is how founders combine credibility with strategic thinking and adaptability — whether they can navigate complexity, respond under pressure, and evolve as the market changes. More than one kind of smarts It takes more than raw intelligence to build a company at scale. And inherent to this is both intellectual and emotional intelligence. Imbert asserts that founders need IQ and EQ, and loves founders who are real talent magnets —people everyone naturally gravitates toward. “Take Arthur Waller, CEO of Pennylane. Everyone likes him. Put him in front of his team, and people like him. Put him in front of founders, investors, journalists — same thing. He’s incredibly approachable, very articulate, and just easy to connect with. Everyone in the room wants to interact with him and be part of what he’s building. That’s the kind of profile we look for. Some people think arrogance signals strength, but you can be very strong without being arrogant.” Technical depth as a defensible edge Partech increasingly invests in areas where technical depth creates a moat — cybersecurity, infrastructure, robotics. In this space, Imbert looks for founders with real technical authority — not just credentials, but recognition from their community. She cites the example of the second-time founder and CEO of Alpic, Pierre-Louis Theron (previously of  Streamroot, which was acquired by Lumen). Alpic is building an MCP-native cloud platform that enables companies to expose their products as agent-accessible services. It provides the infrastructure for deploying, managing, and scaling Model Context Protocol (MCP) endpoints, enabling AI agents to securely discover, authenticate, and execute actions across software systems. Imbert shared: “I like to see signals of authority within the community. It’s a way for me to assess technical depth — if respected builders in the space are close to the founders, value their insights, and actively engage with them, that carries real weight. It’s not just about credentials or a polished CV; it’s about recognition from people who actually know what they’re doing.” Humility matters Imbert contends that the market is moving so fast that founders need to adapt quickly, admit when they’re wrong, and pivot. “We’re not just looking for smart people with a plan; we want people who can learn. They need to listen to customers, employees, investors — and then make their own decisions. Being able to say “I was wrong” is critical.” Humility aside, Imbert is equally focused on whether co-founders share the same fundamental vision for the company. She interviews co-founders separately and asks whether they’d take a €20 million exit tomorrow.  “Misaligned answers usually end the conversation,” she admits.  In the end, what makes a seed VC say “no” in 30 minutes has less to do with what’s been built than what hasn’t. For Imbert, the real signal lies in how deeply founders understand their users, how clearly they think about distribution, and how honestly they assess themselves and each other.  Conviction isn’t about polish — it’s about proof of work. And if that foundation isn’t there, no amount of AI-generated shine will change the outcome.

UK fintech GoCardless has reported a year-on-year revenue uplift in 2025, in a year in which it underwent a restructuring and made a provision for redundancies impacting around 90 jobs, a new filing shows. The cuts come as GoCardless, one of the UK's most prominent fintechs, looks to move to profitability. Financial figures for GoCardless for the year ending June 2025 have been published at Companies House. The figures cover a period before a deal to buy GoCardless by Dutch fintech Mollie for €1.1bn was announced in December last year. GoCardless is a payment platform that lets businesses collect one-off and recurring payments, such as subscriptions and membership fees, via direct debit, rather than credit cards or bank transfers. Figures show that turnover rose year-on-year from £131.3m to £155.5m, helped by landing new customers and renewals. London-headquartered GoCardless doubled the volume of payments processed, up to £79.2bn, it said, helped by its acquisition of open banking firm Nuapay. Losses were reduced from £33.6m to £25.5m in the year, as it focused on “cost control”, it said. GoCardless said it reported its first positive EBITDA (Earnings before Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation) quarter on an adjusted basis in the final quarter of 2025. It said it expected to achieve its first EBITDA-positive year on an adjusted basis in 2026. GoCardless also underwent a restructuring in the period, including a provision for redundancies impacting around 90 roles, as it looked to cut costs and support setting up new hubs in London and Lisbon. It said the benefits of the restructure would be realised this year. GoCardless said it was taking a £4.2m financial hit over the provision. The financial results show that overall headcount was up from 606 to 626 year-on-year at GoCardless. Fraud losses amounted to £2.6m in the period, it said.   Hiroki Takeuchi, co-founder and CEO, GoCardless, said: “The FY25 results demonstrate strong momentum across our business. Key wins, strategic renewals, and ongoing innovation within our platform fueled our growth and, with disciplined cost control, we’re on track for our first profitable year on an adjusted basis in FY26. "The Mollie news also reflects our bright future. We’re excited to bring together two highly complementary businesses that have built best-in-class products across Europe and beyond to better serve our customers and raise the bar for the industry." NOTE-This story has now been updated to show that the restructure took place in 2025, GoCardless says, and there are not planned job cuts, as previously reported.

Eka has announced the final close of its second fund at $107 million (£80 million), marking a significant milestone in the firm’s journey. With this raise, the firm becomes the UK’s largest early-stage impact venture capital firm investing across health, wellbeing, and sustainability. In a blog post, the firm says the announcement is also an opportunity to thank its supporters and outline the thinking behind its next phase. Rewriting the impact–returns equation Eka was founded in 2018. The prevailing view back then was that impact and returns were in tension. Eka’s thesis has consistently challenged that assumption, arguing instead that the most compelling commercial opportunities of the coming decade will emerge from companies reshaping the systems society depends on — including how people eat, stay well, move, consume, and power their homes. Three structural shifts underpin Eka’s investment strategy: The first is the transition from reactive to preventative healthcare. The UK spent 10.9 per cent of GDP on health in 2023, with total healthcare expenditure reaching approximately £317 billion in 2024. However, just 5.2 per cent of government healthcare spending is allocated to prevention. In effect, for every £1 spent treating illness, only around 5p is spent on preventing it. Eka sees significant opportunity in companies focused on early detection, behaviour change, improved access, and digitally delivered care. The second shift is the decarbonisation of consumer-driven emissions. While production-side emissions have declined, consumer activity now represents the largest share of UK emissions, accounting for 26.0 per cent of the 2024 total, with transport contributing a further 16.1 per cent. This reframes climate action as increasingly dependent on consumer behaviour — from food and travel to home energy and purchasing decisions — extending into supply chains and broader infrastructure. The third shift is expanding access to the social determinants of health. Eka highlights the role of technology in widening access to essential products and services such as insurance and housing for underserved populations. In these areas, commercial and social returns can align closely, with each new customer representing both growth and measurable impact. Themes under this pillar include legal access, education, community, safety, and identity. Together, these three areas intersect with some of the world’s largest consumer markets, where Eka sees founders building with a strong sense of purpose and long-term ambition. The learnings from Fund I Eka reports that Fund I ranks in the top 5 per cent for both DPI and TVPI within its 2021 vintage, bringing the firm’s total assets under management to $200 million following the second fund close. This reflects a consistent investment approach: leading or co-leading 90 per cent of deals, with an average cheque size of $2 million, and focusing on pre-seed and seed-stage companies. The Fund I portfolio includes Runna (seed round, later acquired by Strava), Urban Jungle, Axle, Hived, Foresight Data Machines, Jude, and Flok Health. Eka has also emphasised its sourcing strategy. Since 2021, 47 per cent of Fund I investments have originated from its in-house, AI-driven sourcing platform, designed to identify founders operating outside traditional venture networks. According to the firm, these companies typically share a focus on systemic challenges and category-defining potential. Increased support to founders at scale With Fund II, Eka plans to invest in up to 30 UK-based pre-seed and seed-stage companies. The firm will maintain an average initial investment of approximately $2 million, alongside significant reserves for follow-on funding, and will continue to lead or co-lead the majority of its deals. The core investment focus remains unchanged — spanning health, essential products and services, and sustainable consumption — but the firm notes that the scale of support it can provide to founders will increase. Eka's limited partners include the British Business Bank, Better Society Capital, Guy’s & St Thomas’ Foundation, The Health Foundation, WRAP, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, John Ellerman Foundation, and Vivensa Foundation, among others. The firm credits their shared conviction that commercial and societal returns can compound together as central to the growth of impact investing at scale in the UK.

Berlin-based Zell, an AI startup focused on automating sales management workflows, has raised €500,000 in a funding round. The round was co-led by P3 Ventures, SkyDeck Europe, UC Berkeley SkyDeck, Lendlease, and the Cariplo Factory accelerator, alongside a group of international angel investors and venture capital firms, including Mamba Ventures, Nicola Pivaro, Flavio Di Palo, Pietro Tansini, Thomas Hunziker, Gabriele Sidoti, and Ricardo Waller. Founded by Alberto Garagnani (CEO) and Moritz Beck (CTO), Zell was established to address challenges in effectively training and managing sales teams. Drawing on complementary business and technical backgrounds, the founders identified a persistent gap between the availability of sales performance data and organisations’ ability to act on it. Alberto Garagnani, CEO and co-founder of Zell, explained that the company developed the platform to bridge the gap between performance insights and actionable improvement, enabling organisations not only to analyse sales performance but also to enhance it. Zell’s platform introduces an additional layer to the existing sales technology stack, which is typically divided between customer relationship management (CRM) systems and conversation intelligence tools. By analysing sales calls, identifying behavioural signals, and generating personalised coaching plans, the platform enables automated performance improvement and continuous monitoring. This approach streamlines the operational responsibilities of sales managers while maintaining strategic oversight. We are building a system that executes the operational work of a sales manager while leaving strategic control in the hands of the manager. The goal is to make scalable something that still relies too heavily on human effort, added Moritz Beck, CTO and co-founder of Zell. The company has validated its model with enterprise and scale-up clients across several countries, including the United States, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Customers include Pack, Revenue Excellence Partners, Commerciali Digitali, Ladle, and HomeTown. Operating within a global sales management market undergoing significant transformation driven by artificial intelligence, Zell aims to establish a new category of AI-native systems that support the full cycle of sales performance management - from diagnosis to continuous improvement. The investment will support the company’s commercial growth, team expansion across technology and sales functions, further development of its AI engine, and geographic expansion across Europe beyond the DACH and Italian markets.

With only a few days left until the Tech.eu Summit London 2026, it is time to reveal the agenda for what promises to be one of the most substantive gatherings in the European tech calendar this year. The summit will take place on 21–22 April at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London, featuring sessions with leading investors, founders and technology executives from across Europe and beyond, including representatives from OpenAI, NATO Innovation Fund, Morgan Stanley, Mastercard, Notion Capital and the Competition and Markets Authority. The topics we will explore at the Tech.eu Summit London 2026 Artificial intelligence, fintech, deeptech and climate tech will be the central pillars of this year's agenda, explored through the lens of execution, market realities and the strategic decisions shaping European technology in 2026. Day one opens with a fireside chat on where value will actually be created in the AI stack, featuring Wulfie Bain, International Applied AI Lead for Startups at OpenAI, alongside Payton Dobbs of Hoxton Ventures. The session will examine how the market is shifting from hype to commercial reality, with a focus on where builders and developers are seeing real momentum today. Further sessions will explore AI beyond software and its application in physical industries, AI's role in rewriting enterprise software, and what it means for early-stage AI startups to compete against larger players. On the investment side, a panel will address how climate and deeptech companies are built and financed at scale, with Sanghamitra Karra, Global Co-Head of Inclusive and Sustainable Ventures at Morgan Stanley, bringing a perspective on impact investing across healthcare and the environment. The fintech track will examine why Europe remains one of the hardest and most defensible markets to scale a financial technology business, and day one will close with a discussion on whether Europe can win the AI race, featuring Kamil Mieczakowski, General Partner at Notion Capital, alongside voices from venture capital and regulatory advocacy. Day two opens with a presentation on the fintech landscape in the UK, followed by a session on AI in healthtech. A solo presentation from Axel Kalinowski of the London Stock Exchange Group will then address Europe's capital markets and their role in supporting tech growth. Later in the morning, Jessica Lennard, Chief Strategy and External Affairs Officer at the Competition and Markets Authority, will take the stage to discuss competition as a driver of scaling, a session that will set the context for debates on regulation, AI and the rules of growth. The afternoon of day two will turn to agentic commerce and what happens when AI starts transacting autonomously, with a panel moderated by Alexandra Edmonds, Vice President of Emerging Fin Tech & Agentic AI, Startup Investments & Partnerships at Mastercard. Further sessions will cover exit dynamics, how the next generation of AI-native startups can build defensible businesses, the future of creative production in an AI-first world, and a closing panel on deeptech founders scaling across Europe in quantum computing, autonomous systems and AI hardware. The full agenda for the Tech.eu Summit London 2026 is now available. You can explore the complete programme here. Networking and the Tech.eu Events App The Tech.eu Summit London 2026 is designed to facilitate meaningful connections across both days. Through the Tech.eu Events App, available on the App Store and Google Play, attendees can connect with fellow participants, schedule meetings in advance and receive live updates throughout the event. Get your ticket Last Chance tickets for the Tech.eu Summit London 2026 are available now. With the event just days away, this is the final opportunity to secure your place before the summit opens its doors at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre on 21–22 April. You can get your ticket here. We look forward to welcoming you in London. Partners Pavilion Partner Gold Partner   Silver Partners   Supporting Partner Community Partners            

Funding climbs to €20.2 billion despite declining deal count, with mega-rounds, the UK, and cloud and AI capturing an outsized share of capital.Click to read the rest of the news.

OpenAI says it’s moving into its first permanent London office, which has the capacity to more than double its current 200-strong headcount, days after pausing its flagship data centre project in the UK. The ChatGPT developer is moving into an 88,500-square-foot space in London’s King’s Cross, which is a key tech hub in the capital. It says the move is an indicator of the UK demand for its products, which includes flagship product ChatGPT and coding agent Codex. The US AI firm currently employs around 200 people in London across research, engineering, customer support, enterprise, startups, policy, communications, marketing and sales. It says it expects to continue growing its team across these areas in the coming years. The San Francisco-headquartered OpenAI says its new office will have capacity for up to 544 team members and is expected to open in 2027. OpenAI, whose European headquarters are in Dublin, has already committed to making London its largest research hub outside of its San Francisco headquarters. It currently employs around 30 researchers in the capital. Phoebe Thacker, global head of data research programmes and London site lead at OpenAI, said: “The UK has an incredible depth of talent and a strong track record in AI. London is already a key hub for our research and teams, and this new office gives us the space to keep building here. "We’re seeing real momentum in how businesses, developers and institutions across the UK are using AI, and we want to support that growth.  “This investment reflects our long-term commitment to the UK and the role it can play in shaping how AI is developed safely and used to benefit people all over the world.” King’s Cross is seen as a key tech hub in the capital and is home to tech giants like Meta and Google. Last week, OpenAI said plans to bring its flagship $500bn AI data centre project to the UK have been put on hold, with the ChatGPT developer citing energy costs and regulatory issues as factors which have halted its plans.

Today, Accenture, in partnership with Google Cloud, is launching a new Accenture and Google Cloud Sovereign Centre in Brussels, with a dedicated training facility.    The new centre comes as governments and regulated sectors in Europe, such as finance, healthcare, and defence look to scale AI adoption while maintaining control over data, security, and compliance. Through the Accenture Google Business Group, centre resources will combine Accenture’s industry, data and AI expertise with Google Cloud’s distributed cloud technologies.   This facility showcases Google Distributed Cloud air-gapped, which is designed to support organisations with strict sovereignty, resilience, and regulatory requirements. The centre provides organisations with a space to innovate, train, explore, design, and validate secure cloud and AI solutions in an air-gapped environment, supporting mission-critical workloads that cannot connect to public networks.  It also provides a collaborative environment for organisations, independent software vendors, and ecosystem partners to develop proofs of concept, demonstrate solutions, and co-innovate on sovereign cloud and AI use cases.    Accenture and Google Cloud will focus on helping organisations reinvent across three priority areas:   Sovereign Cloud and AI Adoption: organisations can design and validate AI-enabled use cases that align with regulatory, security, and data sovereignty requirements, supporting critical services across government, defense, and other regulated industries.  Modernisation of Mission Critical Systems: Organisations can modernise legacy systems, improve resilience, and increase operational efficiency without compromising control. These capabilities support hybrid and distributed deployment models, allowing organisations to modernise at a pace aligned with regulatory and operational constraints.  Workforce Enablement and Skills Development: The centre will also serve as a global hub for enablement and training, supporting the development of specialised skills required to operate and manage sovereign cloud and AI platforms.   By combining hands-on experience, technical validation, and industry expertise, Accenture and Google Cloud aim to help organisations responsibly adopt cloud and AI technologies while maintaining trust, security, and sovereignty.   Europe’s public sector pivots toward sovereign software solutions The launch comes at a time when across Europe, public administrations, enterprises and educational institutions are reassessing their dependence on non-European software platforms, cloud providers and other tech infrastructure.  Check out our guide to European-built options. In France, civil servants have ditched Zoom and Teams for Visio, an open-source videoconferencing solution developed by the government service for digital affairs (DINUM). In Germany, the Centre for Digital Sovereignty (ZenDiS) has developed openDesk https://www.opendesk.eu/en/, an office and collaboration suite designed for the public sector.  Last month, a coalition of European tech players, including IONOS, Nextcloud, Eurostack, XWiki, OpenProject, Soverin, Abilian and BTactic, launched Euro-Office, an open-source competitor to Microsoft's productivity suite aimed at reducing reliance on non-European platforms and strengthening digital sovereignty through European governance and infrastructure. According to Mauro Macchi, EMEA CEO at Accenture, trust, compliance and sovereignty are critical to public services and regulated industries as they accelerate AI adoption.  “However, even in these sectors, levels of control needed across data, models, and infrastructure can vary according to use cases. It’s rarely a full-control-or-nothing decision.  The centre will enable our clients to explore and validate different sovereign AI options, and make the right decisions according to their needs, so they can innovate with confidence. It will also enable them to train their people in sovereign AI skills, building in-house expertise to maintain appropriate oversight.”    Tara Brady, President of Google Cloud EMEA, said: “Together with Accenture, we are helping European organisations address the paradox of how to embrace the transformative power of AI while upholding the strictest standards of digital sovereignty. Our new Sovereign Innovation centre is a secure, collaborative space where public sector and regulated organisations can build, test, and validate real-world AI solutions, ensuring their most sensitive workloads remain protected."  

Last week, we tracked more than 40 tech funding deals worth over €720 million, and over 5 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.Click to read the rest of the news.

London-based Round, an AI-powered finance automation platform, has raised $6 million in seed funding to accelerate the development of its financial infrastructure and expand its product offering. The round was led by Alstin Capital, with participation from Backed VC and Love Ventures. Around 10 per cent of Round’s existing customers joined the round, alongside angel investors including Paul Forster, founder of Indeed. Existing investors, such as Passion Capital and early backers of Monzo, Tide, and GoCardless, also took part. Alongside the funding, Round announced the launch of two new products: Agentic Workflow Builder and Autonomous Payroll, both designed to streamline financial operations and reduce manual workload. Despite significant investment in finance software, many finance teams continue to operate across fragmented systems, manually managing tasks such as invoice approvals, payment execution, and payroll funding. Round addresses this challenge by combining intelligence with financial infrastructure to automate these workflows. Its platform integrates with existing banks and accounting systems, enabling finance teams to define rules for approvals, payment schedules, and cash management, while the system executes these processes automatically and synchronises data with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Pac O'Shea, co-founder of Round, said the company is not aiming to replace finance leaders with an AI-driven CFO but instead focuses on automating the repetitive operational tasks that finance teams typically handle manually. We are building for the finance team of the future, one that understands the importance of automation to keep up with the pace of modern companies. AI tools are rapidly being deployed across the industry, and finance teams do not need to be left behind, added Hayyaan Ahmad, co-founder of Round. The newly launched Agentic Workflow Builder enables finance teams to describe workflows in natural language, which the platform converts into automated processes running continuously in the background. Meanwhile, Autonomous Payroll streamlines the entire payroll cycle, from importing payslips and routing approvals to funding and executing payments, eliminating the need to manage multiple systems manually. The new funding will be used to accelerate product development, expand the company’s engineering and go-to-market teams, deepen integrations with banks and financial systems, and scale its infrastructure. Round also plans to support community-led growth initiatives, including finance-focused hackathons, workshops, and webinars aimed at helping organisations adopt automated financial workflows.

This week, we tracked more than 40 tech funding deals worth over €720 million and over 5 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe. Alongside the week’s top funding rounds, we’ve highlighted key industry developments, as well as notable trends in European venture activity, investor moves and emerging sectors shaping the current funding landscape. We also took a deep dive into the critical news and funding for March in our monthly report and shorter free roundup.  If email is more your thing, you can always subscribe to our newsletter and receive a more robust version of this round-up delivered to your inbox. Either way, let's get you up to speed. ? Notable and big funding rounds ?? Aura Aero secures €340M to launch from Toulouse and Florida ??  Xoople raises $130M Series B to build Earth’s system of record ??  MillTech receives $60M investment from Apax Digital Funds ??‍?? Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers ?. Eilla AI executes Europe’s first AI-native M&A deal ??  Finnish counter-drone startup Sensofusion acquires Atol Aviation, launches Sensofusion Aviation ??  Ad Terra takes majority stake in 45-8 Energy to support regional sovereignty and secure access to subsurface resources ??. London-based photo-organising startup Picnic acquired by French app publisher MWM ? Interesting moves from investors ?? Zurich’s Herbert Ventures launches €32.5 million Fund I to back European founders at pre-Seed and Seed ??. UK government launches £50m safety tech scheme  ??. Lisbon’s Bondstone launches VC arm and unveils €50 million DeepTech fund ?️ In other (important) news ?. Verne launches Europe’s first commercial robotaxi service in Zagreb ? European Tech.eu Pulse: key trends and investment in March (free report) March 2026's top 10 European tech deals you need to know about ⚛️. OpenAI hits pause on flagship UK data centre scheme ?️  Vinted’s revenues top €1BN but profits slide ?? New AI femtech competition in Portugal aims to fast-track women’s health innovation ?? nFuse raises $2M as messaging overtakes B2B ordering apps ?? Apex B2B launches its SaaS platform for merchants with £1.3M backing ??  Sybol raises €1M+ to advance its corporate digital identity wallet ??  Qoro closes $750,000 to bridge quantum and classical computing ??  WholeSum tops up pre-seed with $335,000 to fix AI’s trust problem in text analytics

Across Europe, education systems are under pressure to keep pace with rapid technological change. Countries are experimenting with new approaches, with Estonia introducing artificial intelligence into classrooms, while Lithuania is placing students directly into startup environments. At the centre of this shift is MVP (Moksleivių vienaragių paieška, or “Student Unicorn Hunt”), a prime-time national TV show where students aged 14–19 build and pitch real startups. Unlike traditional classroom exercises, participants work under real startup conditions, testing ideas, refining products, and presenting them to experienced founders in front of a live audience. Students are not just learning – they are building under real pressure. Their ideas are challenged, refined, and tested just like in actual startups. It’s similar to global formats like Shark Tank, but designed specifically for students, explain Marius Burgaila, a venture builder and an early-stage investor, CEO of Lost Astronaut, and co-creator of MVP. This approach reflects broader changes in Lithuania’s innovation landscape. The country has become one of the fastest-growing tech ecosystems in Central and Eastern Europe, supported by strong government backing and a dynamic startup culture. At the same time, Lithuania has built a diverse ecosystem of startups across sectors, with a strong global orientation driven by the need to scale beyond its small domestic market. Burgaila notes that while the ecosystem is mature enough to absorb new founders, early exposure to entrepreneurship remains critical: For Vilnius, this is part of a broader strategy to deepen its position as a tech hub. The city already attracts talent and investment, but long-term growth depends on creating more builders – people who start companies rather than wait to join them. This focus on building talent is particularly relevant as Lithuania accelerates the adoption of artificial intelligence. Progress increasingly depends on individuals who can combine technical expertise with product thinking, experimentation, and speed - skills that are difficult to develop through traditional education alone. Melita Tornau, Head of Marketing at Turing College, argues that existing education systems are not equipped to keep up with the pace of change. The technology changes faster than a university can print a new syllabus. That’s why entrepreneurship, data literacy, and AI skills need to start in school – not after graduation. Lithuania’s strategy reflects this shift. With limited natural resources, the country is investing in human capital, aiming to equip a large share of its workforce with both basic and advanced AI skills through coordinated efforts across education, employment, and business policy. Ultimately, the goal is not to turn every student into a founder, but to give every student encouragement to think, try, and take ownership. When education systems create that kind of environment, initiatives like these stop being exceptions and start becoming a natural part of how schools work, Burgaila adds. If successful, Lithuania’s model could redefine how countries prepare young people for the future of work, making entrepreneurship and AI literacy a standard part of education. In Vilnius, that shift is already underway, with new initiatives combining education and startup environments to better align learning with the realities of the modern economy.

Portugal is hosting a first-of-its-kind competition for femtech startups and research labs this spring. It will bring together innovators working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and women’s health. The initiative was launched by the scientific platform EmbryoNet-AI in partnership with FemTech Real Money Talks Media. It aims to accelerate real-world breakthroughs by transforming early-stage ideas and clinical questions into working AI solutions. Organisers have already launched an open call, which will remain open until 28 April 2026, with all submissions due by midnight CET.  The competition is open to Portuguese and international teams with a strong hypothesis and access to imaging or time-series data, and who are seeking to answer critical questions in women’s health using AI, whether in drug discovery, diagnostic support, or clinical research.  Early-stage startups in women’s health that do not yet have a product or MVP are also invited to apply. According to Elena Lipilina, co-founder and CMO of Embryonet AI, women's health has long been underfunded and under-researched.   “With this competition, we want to change that and bring light to talented teams that are moving this field forward.” The contest specifically targets clinical and drug discovery challenges where AI has the potential to make a meaningful impact on women’s health. This includes projects that leverage time-series phenotyping to better understand drug response and disease mechanisms in areas such as gynaecological cancers, endometriosis, and fertility research.  Lipilina explained: “We are also interested in teams that want to accelerate medical image pre-labelling for datasets derived from mammography, pelvic MRI, ultrasound, or pathology slides, as well as solutions that combine phenotypic and clinical data to support decision-making in clinical trials, biomarker discovery, and treatment stratification.”  Among the applications, organisers will select up to 10 companies based on their potential impact on women’s health, data readiness, alignment with EmbryoNet-AI’s capabilities, feasibility within the program timeframe, and the strength of their business case, alongside ethical and sustainability considerations.  The shortlisted teams will move into the next phase, a Mentor Sprint, taking place in early May 2026. During this period, participants will work closely with experts across technology, marketing, and clinical domains to refine their project scope and strengthen their approach.  The program will culminate in a Live Pitch Day in May 2026, where finalists will present their solutions to a panel of investors and experts in women’s health, AI, and biotech. The winning team will then enter an 8 to 10-week build period, running from May to July 2026, during which EmbryoNet-AI will deliver a fully developed, services-first pilot at no cost.  According to Lipilina, this will allow the team to save between €65,000 and €100,000—the typical cost of developing an MVP, depending on the product’s complexity.  The winner will also gain direct access to investors active in women’s health and AI-driven biotech, as well as enhanced public credibility through investor-ready materials, including pitch decks, and media exposure.