Quanscient, a Finnish company focused on cloud-based multiphysics simulation technology and quantum algorithms, has raised €10 million in a Series A funding round to support its international expansion and further develop its simulation, quantum computing, and AI capabilities. The round was led by 55 North and B&C Group, with participation from existing investors Maki.vc, Crowberry Capital, QAI Ventures, and First Fellow Partners. While AI has reshaped many industries, hardware engineering continues to rely heavily on complex and time-consuming simulation processes. According to research conducted by Quanscient, many engineers simplify physics models to keep runtimes manageable, limiting the accuracy and effectiveness of simulations. At the same time, existing AI models struggle to accurately represent real-world physics due to limited access to high-quality multiphysics data. Quanscient aims to address these limitations by making physics simulation code-driven, cloud-scalable, and capable of generating the large volumes of data needed to train and improve AI systems for engineering. Its platform is designed to support faster product development, improve simulation quality, and shorten development cycles across industries, including energy, aerospace, and automotive. Quanscient co-founder and CEO Juha Riippi said AI’s impact on hardware engineering will remain limited unless simulation technology is redesigned to support it. By making multiphysics code-driven and cloud-scalable, we generate the volume of physics data that AI needs, turning simulation from a bottleneck into the engine of data-driven design. This brings to hardware engineering the same shift AI has delivered for software. Quanscient’s platform supports fully digital product development and testing, reducing reliance on physical prototypes and allowing engineers to evaluate multiple design options earlier in the development process. Its technology is designed to significantly reduce simulation runtimes, while AI integration helps identify optimal design trade-offs and improve engineering decisions. Industrial competitiveness depends on both speed and accuracy. The architecture we’ve built for cloud and quantum simulation is also the foundation for an entirely new category of AI and will enable the physics-aware AI models that hardware engineering has been waiting for, Riippi said. According to the company, its technology is already being used by industrial customers across Europe, North America, and Japan, including Fortune 100 companies. The new funding will be used to accelerate international growth and continue developing a unified platform combining simulation, quantum algorithms, and AI integration.

Avrea, a modern Continuous Integration (CI) platform built for the agentic AI era of software development, has emerged from stealth after securing $4.7 million in total pre-seed funding led by Earlybird. As AI tools generate an increasing share of software code, development teams are entering a new phase of accelerated output. However, the systems responsible for testing, validating, and shipping that code have largely remained unchanged, creating a widening gap between how quickly software can be written and how quickly it can be delivered. This imbalance has become a growing bottleneck for engineering teams and a persistent drag on developer productivity. Founded by Hannu Valtonen and Juha Valvanne, Avrea is addressing this challenge by rebuilding the software delivery layer for the AI era. The platform is fully compatible with existing CI/CD workflows and can be adopted with a single line of code, enabling teams to integrate it into their environments without changing established processes. Avrea is also designed to be directly accessible by AI agents, allowing automated systems to participate natively in how code is built, tested, and shipped. According to Avrea co-founder and CEO Hannu Valtonen, while AI has dramatically accelerated the process of writing code, the testing and delivery infrastructure behind it still scales in line with the growing volume of software being produced. If teams generate five times more code, they also need to run five times more tests, and the strain on CI/CD systems becomes impossible to ignore. Avrea removes that friction without requiring teams to change the way they work. In addition to improving delivery speed, Avrea provides full observability into pipeline performance, helping teams identify the root causes of flaky tests, stalled builds, and infrastructure bottlenecks that are often difficult to diagnose in traditional CI/CD systems. Juha Valvanne, co-founder and CSO of Avrea, added that software development is increasingly becoming a collaborative process between humans and AI, making it essential for AI agents to integrate directly with software delivery systems as they take on a more active role in development workflows. Avrea is designed for this new reality, with the goal of simplifying software delivery so developers can focus more on building products and less on managing tooling complexity. The new funding will be used to grow the engineering team, expand the platform beyond CI/CD runners, and accelerate go-to-market efforts as Avrea continues building the foundation for the next generation of software delivery.

Last week, we tracked more than 65 tech funding deals worth over €1.1 billion, and over 5 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.Click to read the rest of the news.

Tequipy, a platform that ships, services, and retrieves employee IT devices in 180+ countries, has raised over €3 million in a round led by Smedvig Ventures, with participation from Manta Ray and Unfold.vc.  The company already works with more than 150 fast-growing tech companies, including Booksy, Connecteam, Gigs, ICEYE, RemoFirst, and Taptap Send, and has grown 7x in the last year. The company will use the funding to expand its platform beyond hardware into software and security operations. For globally distributed companies, an employee laptop is no longer a simple procurement item. It is the start of a cross-border operation that can run across 10, 30, 60 or 180 countries at once. Every device has to be purchased, configured to security policy, delivered on time, serviced, recovered during offboarding, and then routed back into circulation, storage or resale. That process is still largely manual. IT teams are left stitching together spreadsheets, local suppliers, couriers, customs brokers, warehouses and endless follow-ups. Global vendors solve parts of the problem, but often through long contracts, centralised warehousing and hardware markups that make the model too slow and expensive for fast-growing companies. According to Tequipy’s co-founder and CEO, Tomek Stawarski: “I’ve seen ambitious, talented IT specialists who should have been building scalable systems end up repacking boxes and wiping laptops with rags, while also trying to solve the problem of a device stuck at the border. Across thousands of companies, this is not an exception. It is an everyday reality. We built Tequipy so IT can supervise the process instead of executing every step of it by hand.” Customers come to Tequipy for one country and stay for many. They see one system — underneath, software coordinates several hundred local partners who source, configure, deliver, service and retrieve devices on the ground, in the country of employment. No central warehouse, no cross-border shipping, no customs to manage on the client side. Tequipy started with hardware because it is the hardest part of IT operations to automate. The company’s broader goal is to remove around 80 per cent of manual operational work from global IT teams. The next layer is software: employee accounts, licences, access, passwords, the processes around the full employee lifecycle, and security.  "Tequipy has unlocked exceptional operational efficiency in global IT hardware management driven by their back-end automation. For Tequipy’s customers, this means significant time and cost saved through a service and platform they can’t live without," says Freddie Kalfayan from Smedvig Ventures. According to  Lawrence Barclay, managing partner at Manta Ray;   "Distributed hiring is now the default, but the operational layer around it – devices, accounts, access – is still stitched together country by country.  Tequipy is providing the missing layer. This team is one of the best placed to solve this, having built this system inside Europe’s most valuable private company.”

This week, we tracked more than 65 tech funding deals worth over €1.1 billion and over 5 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe. 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 ??  EOS-X Space raises $140M ??  Verdane is reportedly investing more than $100M in Eterno ??  Primer raises £75M to accelerate US expansion ??‍?? Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers ?  Mistral acquires Austria’s Emmi AI ??  Cosmico completed the acquisition of Flatmates ??  The Dutch bike rental company Swapfiets is acquiring the e-bike growth company Dance ?? Factorial acquires YepCode to drive a new generation of AI-powered HR integrations ? Interesting moves from investors ?  Mouro Capital secures $400M first close for latest fund ?  Skybound launches with $38M to back early deeptech founders ?. Ispania Growth Fund is launched, a €300M fund to support the green and digital transition in Spain ?️ In other (important) news ?? Dunia Innovations unveils €280M Berlin GigaLab to industrialise AI-driven materials discovery ?  Bliq.ai wins approval for fully driverless road operations in Estonia ? Monzo reports revenue and profits leap ?  After the hype, Europe’s foodtech sector is rebuilding around fundamentals ?  AI model "capability overhang" biggest challenge facing European businesses, says OpenAI revenue chief ?  AI: 10 companies that raised the most in 2025 ? European tech startups to watch  ?  Alcolase raises €1.5M to tackle alcohol intolerance with enzyme technology ?? NEX Health Intelligence secures €1M to tackle hospital infection spread ?? Overwatch AI secures $1.5M to streamline airline operations ??  Irish Better Futures raises €600K for AI-driven engineering documentation automation ?? Retailgrid targets retail spreadsheets with €358,000 pre-seed round

In March, Tech.eu reported on the story of “Rachel,” an AI voice agent created by AI engineer Matt Cortland to call more than 3,000 pubs across Ireland and ask a simple question: how much does a pint of Guinness cost? Using voice AI tools, Rachel successfully collected over 1,000 verified prices from pubs across all 32 counties, with most bartenders unaware they were speaking to an AI. The story went viral, demonstrating the real-life impact of voice AI. But beyond the price of Guiniess, voice technology is rapidly reshaping customer support infrastructure, replacing rigid phone menus and repetitive call centre workflows with conversational AI systems that can handle millions of interactions autonomously. Berlin-based startup Synthflow AI is part of a new wave of companies building this infrastructure layer for enterprise communication. Founded in 2023, Synthflow’s technology primarily automates high-volume customer phone interactions with AI voice agents that can hold natural conversations, route calls, schedule appointments, qualify leads, answer support questions, and update CRM systems in real time. Companies deploy the system across customer support, BPO operations, healthcare scheduling, telecom, utilities, sales qualification, and public services — often replacing rigid IVR menus with conversational AI that can escalate to human agents when needed. Its platform now handles more than 5 million calls per month for over 100+ enterprise customers globally, following a $20 million Series A led by Accel, bringing total funding to roughly $30 million. ​ I spoke to co-founder and CEO Hakob Astabatsyan to learn more. ​ The death of “Press 1 for support” Traditional IVR systems are the familiar automated phone menus most people associate with prompts like: “Press 1 for sales, press 2 for support.” Modern AI-powered IVR systems replace rigid menu trees with natural, conversational interactions. Instead of navigating keypad options, callers can simply speak normally: “I need to reschedule my appointment.” or “I’m calling about a payment issue.” The system uses speech recognition, large language models, and workflow automation to understand intent, respond conversationally, route calls, retrieve information, and complete tasks automatically. For example, in a healthcare clinic with multiple doctors, AI asks what you need and routes you to the right doctor. That alone saves several minutes per call. Multiply that across thousands of calls, and you have an industry change. Why AI voice agents are becoming the new front desk for business According to Astabatsyan, the emergence of LLMs has fundamentally changed what these systems can do: “With the emergence of LLMs, suddenly there’s an opportunity to make these conversations dynamic. You can interrupt the AI, change direction naturally, and flow through the conversation much more like you would with a person." The goal isn’t to trick people into thinking they’re speaking to a human. Quite the opposite — you should clearly disclose that it’s AI. The real objective is simply to create a better experience. For many simple tasks, people actually prefer speaking to AI. If it’s something straightforward — checking a number, rescheduling an appointment for Thursday at 2 pm, or resolving a basic support issue — it’s much faster and more efficient. "People are busy. They don’t want to wait through endless menus. The technology is now smart enough to handle appointment scheduling, troubleshooting, support queries, and information capture. It’s not there to give life advice, but it’s highly effective for structured, repeatable workflows.” Inside the rise of conversational IVR The automation potential extends beyond the conversation itself. AI systems can automatically transfer information into backend business software, update customer records, and trigger workflows without human intervention. Astabatsyan contends that what becomes really interesting is what happens after the call.  “ I think of it as RPA 2.0. The AI can take information from the conversation, update HubSpot or Salesforce, change CRM fields, and automate thousands of repetitive tasks at scale. I always try to demystify the AI side of this. People immediately jump to ideas like Skynet or Terminator, but the reality is much more practical. The technology still has limits. But there are specific tasks it’s extremely good at, and those are ripe for automation.” For Astabatsyan, it's about how you implement voice AI. You might say, “Hi, I’m the AI assistant. How can I help?” Then disclose it's recorded. And give the option to speak to a human. If someone insists, you transfer. He contends, however, that the biggest use case the company sees is still human transfer, where AI acts as the first line of defence. “There’s also a lot of noise in contact centres. People dial wrong numbers or departments. AI filters that out. In large centres with thousands of calls, even 20,000 might be misdirected. AI can deflect that.” Initially, many in call centres were sceptical about chatbots, online banking, or voice assistants like Alexa. Further, voice cloning is now ubiquitous. Astabatsyan shared: “Early on, we saw impersonation attempts. We built algorithms to detect and block them. But now the industry is professionalising." In 2023, the sector was the Wild West in terms of its lack of regulation. But now there are fines for unsolicited calls. Phone numbers require identity checks. “We also invested heavily in compliance — healthcare, GDPR, HIPAA, and penetration testing.” ​ Regarding the company’s success in fundraising and rapid expansion, Astabatsyan admits that speed creates challenges in hiring quickly and maintaining culture. “Your business can grow faster than your organisation.” “Voice is not a market — it’s a communication medium” In terms of the future for Voice AI, Astabatsyan adds: “Voice is not a market, it’s a communication medium. No one company will own it. The question is who you serve. For us, it’s contact centres. We want to disrupt that industry and free humans for more meaningful work.”

Driverless car startup Bliq.ai this week announced that it has received approval to operate its vehicles on public roads in Estonia without a driver behind the wheel.  The approval marks the first authorisation of its kind in an EU member state and enables Bliq to begin fully driverless road operations under remote supervision. With a dozen vehicles already in operation and further expansion underway, Bliq currently operates what the company believes to be the largest completely driverless vehicle fleet in Europe. The approval follows an extensive validation process, including rigorous test-track sessions and real-world testing in Tallinn city traffic with a safety driver onboard. “Europe has now crossed a major threshold for driverless mobility,” said Julian Glaab, CEO and Co-Founder of Bliq. “This approval shows that fully driverless vehicles can be developed, validated, and deployed in Europe today. Our goal is to bring this technology to consumers and businesses across the continent as quickly and safely as possible.” Bliq is building driverless cars for private and business use, starting in Europe. Rather than manufacturing purpose-built autonomous vehicles, the company upgrades existing software-defined vehicles with a fast-to-integrate sensor and compute stack, turning them into fully driverless cars. Its current product generation combines an AI-based Level 2 driving system with remote human supervision, enabling rapid deployment while maintaining robust safety oversight. The company’s platform has been developed with a strong focus on safety and regulatory compliance. According to Bliq, its system has undergone extensive real-world driving validation and has been assessed with involvement from technical services and Estonian authorities. The Estonian approval is also a key step in Bliq’s broader European expansion. The company says it is actively pursuing regulatory processes in several countries and plans to bring its driverless technology to multiple EU markets in the near future, with Germany positioned as an important next market.   “Driverless cars should not be limited to robotaxi fleets,” said Torgen Hauschild, CTO and Co-Founder of Bliq. “We believe the biggest opportunity is making autonomous mobility available in the vehicles people and businesses use every day. Our retrofit model, remote-supervised architecture, and shipping-focused engineering approach are designed to make that possible.”  Bliq is backed by investors including NEA and Atlantic, and operates from Berlin, Germany, and Tallinn, Estonia. The company’s team combines experience across autonomous driving, automotive engineering, regulation, functional safety, and transportation operations. In April, autonomous vehicle startup Verne announced the launch of Europe’s first commercial robotaxi service, starting in Zagreb, Croatia, enabling members of the public to book and pay for a Pony.ai-powered autonomous ride through the Verne app. The initial commercial deployment uses electric vehicles equipped with Pony.ai’s seventh-generation autonomous driving system. These vehicles operate autonomously, with trained autonomous vehicle operators onboard during the early phase of the rollout, covering key districts of the Croatian capital, with plans to expand coverage across the city. Lead image: Bliq founders Julian Glaab and Torgen Hauschild (left to right).

French fault-tolerant quantum computing company Alice & Bob has raised investment from NVentures, NVIDIA’s venture capital arm, that expands its €100 million Series B round.   The investment supports Alice & Bob's development of an architecture towards fault-tolerant quantum computing.   According to Théau Peronnin, CEO, Alice & Bob:  “We’ve been working alongside NVIDIA to connect our cat-qubit architecture with its full accelerated computing ecosystem, from hardware to software, in support of the first fault-tolerant quantum computers. NVentures’ investment marks a new phase in that relationship and reinforces our common view that the future of quantum will be hybrid, combining quantum and classical computing to solve real-world problems.”   “NVIDIA has built the platform the quantum ecosystem needs to develop and run hybrid quantum-GPU supercomputers, connecting quantum processors to state-of-the-art accelerated computing. Alice & Bob shares NVIDIA's vision for accelerated quantum supercomputing, and has worked closely with us to integrate their qubits with our quantum platform for advancing the scientific computing of the future,” shared Timothy Costa, Vice President and General Manager of Quantum at NVIDIA. Alice & Bob and NVIDIA have built close technical collaboration since 2024, including work with NVIDIA CUDA-Q, cuQuantum, and Dynamiqs, Alice & Bob's open-source quantum simulation library, as well as on NVQLink, NVIDIA's open architecture for hybrid quantum-classical computing.   Alice & Bob will continue to collaborate with NVIDIA to bring quantum computers to high-performance computing centres worldwide, integrating cat-qubits with their accelerated computing infrastructure and software stack, as integration projects are ongoing between the two organisations.   Financial details of the investment were not disclosed.

Tyrol energy generation startup REPS today announced a $23.6 million equity financing round to scale its Road Energy Production System, a patented “road power plant” that converts vehicle traffic into electrical energy.   Its core product is a patented road power plant that installs directly into existing road infrastructure and harvests energy from trucks and cars driving over it, without disrupting traffic flow or logistics operations. Every day, enormous amounts of energy are lost through motion, pressure, and vibration.  On roads, that loss is constant, predictable, and concentrated in the same places over and over again: entrances, exits, curves, speed-limited zones, loading areas, and any point where heavy vehicles naturally slow down. REPS was built to recover wasted mechanical energy and convert it into clean electricity at scale, using existing infrastructure.   The technology is particularly effective where vehicles naturally slow down or brake, or where slopes create additional force. REPS is initially targeting ports, logistics hubs, cities, industrial sites, and other high-traffic infrastructure operators that want to reduce energy costs while improving sustainability.   “Roads are everywhere. Traffic is everywhere. What was previously wasted energy can now be transformed into clean electricity through REPS,” said  Alfons Huber, Founder and CEO of REPS.  Most renewable energy has focused on generating new power through solar and wind. REPS takes a different approach by recovering energy that’s already being wasted. The company’s first application is roads, where the energy lost through traffic alone could theoretically cover around 5 per cent of global electricity demand. REPS says its converter delivers 254x higher efficiency than the next-best alternative currently on the market, and unlike weather-dependent renewables, the system operates independently of time of day and weather conditions.   The broader opportunity sits inside a category called energy harvesting, converting lost mechanical impulses into usable electricity. REPS believes the reason energy harvesting hasn’t become a major force in the energy transition is straightforward: existing mechanical converters have historically failed on efficiency and durability, which makes the economics fall apart.  REPS had to reinvent the energy converter itself to unlock a system that can operate under heavy traffic conditions for more than 20 years and amortise within years. The first commercial REPS system has been operating at the Port of Hamburg since November 2025. Since then, more than 115,000 trucks have crossed the system, generating over 6,700 kWh of electricity from real traffic conditions.  The Hamburg deployment has translated into strong international demand.  Following the launch, the company is engaged with over 90 parties from the port industry alone, spanning Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and North America, and it says interest has now expanded beyond ports to logistics hubs and cities. A rollout of around 230 systems across the Port of Hamburg’s public roads, excluding terminals, could generate approximately 10 GWh of electricity per year, enough to power around 2,800 households, and offset roughly 9.81 per cent of the CO₂ emissions caused by port traffic. The return on investment in that scenario would be below four years. On a city scale, the company estimates that deploying around 64,000 systems in a city the size of Dubai could recover approximately 3.2 TWh of electricity annually, equivalent to about 10.8% of the city’s total energy consumption today.    Justin Karnbach, CEO of Hamburger Container Service GmbH, said: "The installation at our facility demonstrates the potential of REPS: where vehicles have to brake anyway, clean energy is recovered and can be used directly where we need it. Without any interference with traffic and without additional space."       “We spent six years developing the technology. Now the scaling phase begins. The strong demand from ports and logistics operators worldwide confirms the need for our solution, and with this financing round we can now scale at the speed required by the energy transition,” added Alfons Huber. Longer term, REPS sees roads as the first proof point for a broader energy-harvesting platform. The ambition is to turn high-traffic infrastructure into decentralised power assets, capturing energy that’s already being wasted and making it economically meaningful at scale wherever large masses move frequently.    

Biotech company Efferon has raised €2.5 million in a seed funding round led by private investors from the DACH region to support the European commercial expansion of Efferon LPS, its hemoadsorption device approved for the treatment of sepsis and septic shock. Efferon develops multimodal hemoadsorption therapeutic devices designed to remove endotoxins and inflammatory mediators directly from the bloodstream. The company’s product portfolio includes Efferon LPS, a hemoadsorption cartridge combining endotoxin and cytokine adsorption, and Efferon NEO, a version developed for pediatric use. Use of Efferon devices can help reduce ICU treatment costs by supporting faster stabilisation of septic shock and reducing time spent on mechanical ventilation and intensive care treatment, according to the company. Systemic inflammation plays a role not only in acute critical illness, but also across a range of chronic and age-related diseases. Efferon says its hemoadsorption platform is designed to support future applications beyond intensive care and sepsis treatment. According to Dima Romashin, CEO and co-founder of Efferon, sepsis causes more than 11 million deaths annually worldwide, yet continues to receive significantly less research attention and funding than other major diseases such as cancer. We're not just bringing a product to market - we're fighting to put sepsis where it belongs: at the top of the world's medical agenda. Efferon recently received CE MDR certification for Efferon NEO, making it the first hemoadsorption device in Europe approved for neonatal and pediatric patients with sepsis and septic shock. The approval was supported by results from the multicentre LASSO NEO study, which evaluated targeted endotoxin and cytokine removal in patients aged between one month and 18 years. The company says its technology has already been used in more than 25,000 treatments across over 40 countries, including Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia and Saudi Arabia. The new funding will support the construction of a new EU production facility for Efferon LPS and the expansion of the company’s manufacturing capacity to meet growing demand for its blood purification therapy for sepsis and septic shock.

Manchester techbio Imperagen has closed a £5 million seed funding round led by PXN Ventures with participation from Imperagen’s existing investors IQ Capital and Northern Gritstone. Established in 2021 by researchers from the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, Imperagen is focused on accelerating the process of enzyme engineering. Serving diverse markets, from pharmaceutical manufacturing and life sciences to sustainable fine chemical production and industrial applications, we work hand-in-hand with our customers to de-risk and streamline their product development and fast-track their path to market.   Enzymes are biological catalysts used to reduce waste, lower energy usage and decrease overall production costs in everything from pharmaceutical manufacturing and personal care to sustainable chemical production.  However, engineering an enzyme for practical application is a challenging and complex process. Traditional approaches rely on manual screening, a slow and expensive process with a low hit rate.  More recently, zero-shot methods have promised smart designs but often fall short when deployed in real world conditions.  Imperagen's proprietary platform combines three stages into a single closed-loop system: Quantum physics simulates millions of mutation combinations in silico, generating a rich dataset of predicted properties. Those outputs are used to train problem-specific AI models, not general-purpose ones, calibrated to the precise engineering challenge at hand.  Automated robotics then test the highest-performing predictions in the physical lab, producing high-quality experimental data that feeds directly back into the AI model,  so that it continuously evolves. That feedback loop is what sets the approach apart, with each round of experiments making the next round more targeted. The system learns from the wet lab as it goes, narrowing in on the highest-performing variants with each iteration. The result is a platform that gets smarter round by round. This is the future of biocatalysis, a recursive, self-improving AI platform to help rewrite chemical reactions. Imperagen’s AI-guided closed-loop system improved the productivity of two enzymes by 677x and 572x, respectively, in just five rounds.  Coinciding with the round Guy Levy-Yurista, PhD joins as CEO. An experienced technology and life sciences executive with two successful exits across the US and Europe, he brings a track record of scaling deep tech businesses from early stage to market leadership.  The company has already worked on a number of significant projects, including with a Fortune 500 personal care company looking to launch a new product line.  According to Dr Levy-Yurista:  "What I see right now is that the companies that will make a radical difference in this emerging AI-driven future are all AI-native, lean on real world data, have genuine impact, and are fundamentally deep tech. Imperagen has each of those characteristics, combining them with outstanding people, phenomenal technology and the undeniable swagger you only get from Manchester. It was a no-brainer to join the team and lead this next stage in its growth." The funds will be used to accelerate the core R&D platform, scale the wet lab operation, and grow the in-house AI team, both human and agentic. Imperagen will also invest in its go-to-market function to convert growing commercial interest into contracted revenue across its target sectors: pharmaceuticals, life sciences, personal care, sustainable fine chemicals, and industrial biotech.

Starling Bank has reported a drop in profits and revenues, but said revenues at its SaaS subsidiary surged, according to its latest set of financial results. The UK challenger bank, which has over six million customers, reported that pre-tax profits fell three per cent to £217m while revenues fell from £940m to £887m in the year ending March 2026. The fall in profits was attributed to a fall in interest income, which fell from £882m to £759m, on lower interest rates. The challenger bank said that transaction volume increased to £216.7bn from £197.1bn while average deposit balance per customer rose 7.9 per cent to £4,241. The number of customer accounts across the banking group grew from 5.3m to 6.2m in the year, it said. It said that 56 per cent of Starling’s SME customers and 32.5 per cent of its retail customers were using Starling as their main bank. Starling said Engine, its SaaS platform launched as a Starling subsidiary in 2022 and which employs around 300 people, had doubled its client base to four and its revenue grew 25 per cent on the year to £10.9m. During the year, Engine signed a new 10-year agreement with Tangerine, a subsidiary of Canada’s Scotiabank, marking Engine’s first client in North America. Raman Bhatia, CEO, said: “We have delivered a fifth consecutive year of profitability while continuing to invest in the business – from deepening UK customer relationships to scaling our technology platform globally.”

European AI companies raised over €5.3 billion during 2025, with capital heavily concentrated among a small group of companies led by Mistral AI, Helsing, Black Forest Labs, Synthesia, ElevenLabs and n8n. While foundation models, defence AI and generative media attracted some of the year’s largest rounds, the broader market also showed strong momentum across applied AI, with startups building sector-specific products for healthcare, manufacturing, aviation, legal services, logistics, customer support and enterprise automation. The UK, Germany and France emerged as Europe’s most active AI hubs by both company count and capital raised. France was driven largely by Mistral AI’s record financing rounds, Germany saw strong activity in defence, enterprise and automation AI, while the UK produced a broad mix of AI infrastructure, voice, biotech and industrial AI companies. Another notable trend was the number of startups raising multiple rounds within the same year, reflecting continued investor appetite for companies showing early commercial traction and growing demand for AI products across industries. The funding activity highlighted Europe’s growing ambition to build globally competitive AI companies across both foundational models and specialised industrial applications (for more detailed analyses of the European technology ecosystem, check out Tech.eu’s annual report: European Tech 2025 -The Big Picture). Here are ten AI companies that raised the most in 2025. Amount raised in 2025: €1.7B Mistral AI develops generative AI models and infrastructure designed to help organisations build and deploy AI assistants, automation tools and large language model applications across enterprise workflows. In 2025, the company raised €1.7 billion to expand its research capabilities, strengthen computing infrastructure and scale its AI platform internationally, reaching a valuation of approximately €11.7 billion. Mistral AI secured an additional $830 million in March 2026, in debt financing to support the development of AI infrastructure and data centres in Europe. Amount raised in 2025: €600M Helsing develops AI-powered software and operational intelligence systems for defence and security applications, focused on improving situational awareness, decision-making and mission planning. The company raised €600 million in a Series D funding round, bringing its valuation to approximately €12 billion. Amount raised in 2025: €350M Synthesia develops an AI-powered video creation platform that enables businesses to produce professional videos using digital avatars, AI voiceovers and text-based editing tools. The platform is used for corporate training, internal communications, customer support, marketing and localisation, allowing organisations to create multilingual video content without traditional filming or production workflows. In 2025, Synthesia raised approximately €350 million across two funding rounds, further strengthening its position within the UK AI sector. Amount raised in 2025: $300M Black Forest Labs develops generative AI models and visual intelligence technology focused on image generation, editing and multimodal AI applications. The company is best known for its FLUX model family, which is used by creators, developers and enterprises to generate and manipulate high-quality visual content through text and image prompts. In 2025, Black Forest Labs raised $300 million in a Series B funding round at a valuation of approximately $3.25 billion to support the expansion of its FLUX model family, team growth and the scaling of commercial partnerships globally. Amount raised in 2025: $180M ElevenLabs develops AI-powered voice generation and audio technology for speech synthesis, voice cloning, dubbing and conversational AI applications. The platform enables businesses, developers and creators to generate realistic multilingual voices, build voice agents and integrate AI audio tools into customer service, media, publishing and enterprise workflows. In 2025, ElevenLabs raised $180 million and later confirmed an additional undisclosed investment from Nvidia. ElevenLabs raised an additional

Spacetech company ICEYE today announces it has originated a €300 million 3-year committed revolving credit facility (RCF). ICEYE delivers persistent monitoring capabilities to detect and respond to changes in any location on Earth and owns the world's largest and most advanced SAR (synthetic aperture radar) satellite constellation.Its constellations serve customers in defence and intelligence, environmental monitoring, insurance and emergency management. We enable fast decisions that contribute to a safer future.Founded and headquartered in Finland, ICEYE operates globally with over 1,000 employees across Poland, Spain, the UK, Australia, Japan, the UAE, Greece, and the US. The company has previously raised over $760 The RCF will support the issuance of guarantees for customer contracts, enable continued business growth, and serve as a liquidity backstop. The seven-bank syndicate comprises Nordic, regional, and global relationship banking partners. “2025 was a defining year for ICEYE as we scaled revenue, profitability, and cash generation simultaneously,” said John Lauria, Global Head of Treasury, ICEYE. “The RCF origination reflects continued confidence in ICEYE’s business and demonstrates our ability to access diverse sources of capital to support rapid global growth. It also enhances our financial flexibility as demand for sovereign intelligence capabilities continues to grow exponentially.”

Norwegian imaging technology company Muybridge has closed an oversubscribed $16 million Series A funding round led by Investinor, Fairpoint, Idekapital and RunwayFBU, with participation from several Nordic technology founders and operators. The company develops a software-defined imaging platform designed to replace traditional broadcast camera infrastructure with compact arrays of 4K sensors and GPU-powered systems. Rather than relying on physical cameras, cabling and large production setups, Muybridge creates virtual camera perspectives digitally, enabling broadcasters to capture and generate new viewing angles in real time. The platform is designed to reduce the operational complexity and physical limitations associated with conventional broadcast production while allowing deployment in environments where traditional camera systems are difficult to install. During the past year, the company completed deployments across a range of global sports properties, including European football leagues, the US Open and ATP Tour tennis, the NBA, NHL, PGA Tour golf, rugby and Premier Padel. Beyond sports broadcasting, Muybridge sees potential applications across areas including live entertainment, security infrastructure, physical AI and autonomous systems, where real-time spatial sensing and flexible imaging capabilities are becoming increasingly important. The company’s commercial strategy is focused on partnerships with technology providers, managed service providers and system integrators. The new funding will be used to support international expansion across Europe and the United States, scale the company’s commercial organisation and further develop its imaging technology platform.

Paris-based Pivot, an AI-powered procurement and finance operations platform, has raised $40 million in an oversubscribed Series B funding round led by Forestay Capital and Notion Capital, with participation from Greyhound, procurement industry executives and existing investors including Hedosophia, Visionaries Club and Emblem. The latest financing brings the company’s total funding raised since its founding in 2023 to $70 million. Pivot develops an AI operating system designed to help enterprises manage procurement and financial workflows across sourcing, approvals, purchasing, invoicing, payments, budgets, expenses and reporting. The company aims to address inefficiencies in enterprise procurement, where spending commitments are often managed across fragmented systems, spreadsheets, email chains and manual approval processes. Pivot positions its platform as an enterprise-grade system designed to give procurement and finance teams real-time visibility into committed spending before it creates reconciliation and reporting challenges during financial close processes. The platform integrates with enterprise resource planning (ERP) and financial systems while supporting complex multi-entity environments. The company says its AI-driven workflow automation and real-time integrations are designed to improve operational efficiency while maintaining financial controls and reporting accuracy. According to Marc-Antoine Lacroix, co-founder of Pivot, finance and procurement teams are increasingly looking for greater visibility into company spending commitments earlier in the procurement process. Pivot gives enterprises that visibility, reinforced by agentic AI that shifts the manual grind from a human burden to a machine burden, said Lacroix. Since launching, Pivot has expanded operations to more than 25 countries and currently processes approximately $3 billion in invoices annually. Customers include DoorDash, Lemonade and Flix. The new funding will be used to accelerate development of Pivot’s agentic AI capabilities, expand into additional enterprise markets and deepen integrations with ERP and financial systems across complex enterprise environments.

European businesses are shifting from pilot to deep integration of OpenAI’s technology, but there is a “little bit of a capability overhang” between the utility of AI models and what businesses can successfully deploy, according to OpenAI’s revenue lead. Ashley Kramer, OpenAI’s vice president, enterprise, said the biggest challenge European enterprises- typically defined as businesses with more than 1,000 employees-face when deploying OpenAI's technology was “extracting the value” out of AI models, given the speed at which AI models were advancing. ChatGPT developer OpenAI is competing with other AI labs like Anthropic and US tech firms like Google, with its own AI models, to attract enterprise customers. Enterprise customers currently make up more than 40 per cent of OpenAI’s revenues. OpenAI’s European enterprise customers include travel company Virgin Atlantic, Spanish bank BBVA and Danish pharma giant Novo Nordisk.  OpenAI says that businesses in Germany, France and the UK are amongst the top global adopters of its tools. Kramer said: “The biggest challenge is extracting the value of the fast-growing model capabilities, so there is a little bit of a capability overhang.” To help offset this overhang, OpenAI recently announced the launch of a new business unit which includes the acquisition of applied AI consulting firm Tomoro.  The OpenAI Deployment Company is a partnership with 19 investment and consultancy firms, including Bain, Goldman Sachs and SoftBank.  Tomoro employs around 150 forward-deployed engineers who will now be embedded inside businesses to help OpenAI’s models be more productive for them, Kramer said. Kramer said: “Where we’re really helping companies close the gap is the capability of models to the value that they can extract.” Kramer, who works across growth, product and go-to-market at OpenAI, said that, broadly speaking, European businesses were moving beyond the pilot stage. She said: “Mostly, companies in the UK and Europe have definitely moved beyond the pilot phase with AI into full AI transformation.  “Seeing it as more of the operating system of the future and deeply embedding intelligence into the future of the core of their business." On which European industries were most embracing OpenAI’s products like coding agent Codex and ChatGPT, Kramer said: “Digital native focused companies grokked onto AI the earliest. We see a lot of strength in  healthcare life sciences, finserve, retail, manufacturing, and automotive are seeing a lot of adoption.”

Quantum Bridge Technologies has closed a $8 million Series A funding round led by Primo Capital SGR to accelerate the global transition to quantum-safe cybersecurity infrastructure.  Founded in 2019 by Mattia Montagna and Hoi-Kwong Lo, Quantum Bridge emerged from one of the world’s leading quantum security research groups to deliver quantum-safe security solutions.  Quantum Bridge addresses the systemic threat posed by quantum computing to current cryptographic infrastructure. The company’s patented Distributed Symmetric Key Establishment (DSKE) protocol enables organisations to generate, distribute, and manage symmetric keys through a decentralised architecture, removing single points of failure, improving scalability, and strengthening long-term cryptographic resilience. Quantum Bridge brings advanced cryptographic security into practical deployment, grounded in well-established principles that have stood the test of time. Designed to work across existing infrastructure, vendors, and security layers, the company’s platform allows organisations to add quantum-safe protection from optical encryptors to application-level systems without disrupting existing operations. By making defence-grade security practical for commercial environments, Quantum Bridge helps customers advance their quantum-safe migration with greater scalability, flexibility, and confidence. “National security can’t wait for perfect conditions,” said Mattia Montagna, co-founder and CEO of Quantum Bridge Technologies.  “We build quantum-safe systems that work inside real networks today — systems designed to keep protecting sovereign communications as the threat landscape evolves. This funding means we can meet more organisations where they are, and get them protected faster.” The funding round was supported by a global syndicate of investors, including Wayra (Telefónica), Cadenza VC, Club degli Investitori angels, HPE, and Bacchus Venture Capital. Together with prior financing, the round brings Quantum Bridge’s total capital raised to $16 million.  “Leading this round represents a defining milestone for Primo Capital as we establish our footprint in the quantum technology landscape — a sector we view as the cornerstone of digital resilience for the coming decade,” said Mara Attardi, an investment professional at Primo Capital. “Quantum Bridge immediately stood out for the versatility of its architecture, but it was the team that clinched our conviction. The CEO possesses that rare, dual-threat leadership: the deep academic rigour required to build cutting-edge tech and the commercial acumen to navigate the complexities of global institutional markets. This is a team that doesn’t just understand the quantum future; they have built the bridge to reach it today.” Lead image: Mattia Montagna, co-founder and CEO of Quantum Bridge Technologies.

QuberTech, a UK biotechnology company developing sustainable natural rubber from specially engineered dandelions, has raised £3.4 million in combined grant funding and equity investment to accelerate development of its engineering biology platform and scale commercial operations. Natural rubber is one of the world’s most strategically important industrial materials, used across sectors ranging from automotive and healthcare to manufacturing and defence. Global supply chains are heavily reliant on imported rubber sourced from a narrow tropical growing belt that is increasingly exposed to climate pressures, disease, geopolitical disruption, and tightening environmental regulation. QuberTech has developed an alternative approach using advanced biotechnology to cultivate high-yield dandelions that produce high-quality natural rubber and other valuable bio-based compounds in controlled growing environments. Unlike traditional rubber trees, which can take years to mature and are limited to tropical regions, dandelions can be cultivated rapidly in scalable, localised systems closer to industrial demand centres. Alongside natural rubber production, QuberTech’s platform can also generate additional high-value bio-based materials, including compounds with applications across food, cosmetics, sustainable packaging and advanced biomaterials.The company has also received support through Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme, delivered in partnership with Innovate UK, recognising the potential for advanced biotechnology and precision breeding approaches to support more resilient and sustainable industrial supply chains. Dr Ofir Meir, Chief Executive Officer of QuberTech, commented:  “At QuberTech, we’re developing a new generation of sustainable biomaterials using engineering biology to create resilient, locally produced alternatives to imported natural rubber. This critical funding enables us to accelerate R&D, expand our team, and validate our platform at a small pilot scale as we move towards commercial deployment.” Oliver Sexton, Investment Director at UKI2S (managed by Future Planet Capital), added: “Natural rubber keeps the world moving, yet global supply chains remain reliant on imported sources that are vulnerable to disruption. QuberTech offers a compelling sustainable alternative. By applying engineering biology to cultivate high-yield dandelions in controlled conditions, the company is developing a more resilient, localised and scalable approach to natural rubber production.”

Zurich-based industrial AI company building 24/7 thermal monitoring for the world’s most fire-prone facilities, AVIAN, has raised a $2.6M pre-seed round, led by Founderful.  Insurance markets are tightening, and more sites are being treated as high risk as equipment ages and failure rates climb. The old approach to thermal safety still looks like periodic thermography, a technician walking the floor with a handheld camera once a quarter. That method misses the window that matters: the hours when a component starts running hot before it fails. Most thermal vendors also stop at the hardware, selling a camera and leaving operators to figure out setup, monitoring, and escalation on their own.  AVIAN takes a different approach: the sensor is one component of solving the problem, not the product. Customers are typically up and running in minutes, not months. AVIAN is built to run like an always-on reliability layer. Its thermal cameras continuously watch the critical components that most often become ignition points, motors, bearings, conveyors, presses, and electrical cabinets, and learn what “normal” looks like in that specific plant.   From there, the system focuses on drift, the early heat patterns that show up before failure. Smart alarms filter out routine heat sources so teams aren’t chasing noise, and alerts go to the right people with enough lead time to intervene before a hot component turns into downtime or fire.   AVIAN also generates automated predictive maintenance reports and backs the platform with 24/7 human support. Every alarm event is reviewed and fed back into the models, so detection keeps improving across the fleet and each new site benefits from what AVIAN has already learned in the field.  In several cases, the system has caught incidents at the point where they still looked small. A pellet press fire was detected early for a customer in Switzerland, avoiding millions in damage. In Germany, AVIAN flagged a small electrical fire next to a machine worth millions. Containing it early protected both the asset and the next 6 to 18 months of production that could have been lost waiting for a replacement. AVIAN is a 10-person team based in Zurich. The company was founded after one of Switzerland’s largest sawmills saw Hanover’s robotics and AI research in the Swiss media and reached out about escalating fires, downtime, and rising insurance pressure.  "Most operators don't need another camera. At 3 a.m., they need to know that a bearing is running hot before it ignites the dust around it," said Drew Hanover, Co-Founder and CTO of AVIAN.  "We bootstrapped the business for two years because we wanted to build something operators actually trusted. We raised with Founderful for one reason: to keep doing that, in more markets, faster, without changing what we are.  We spent zero minutes on a deck." Significantly, AVIAN was profitable and entirely bootstrapped for two years before raising. The company says it raised this round to go faster, expand engineering and deployment capacity, and scale beyond its stronghold in wood products into recycling, chemical processing, oil and gas, and maritime.  AVIAN is on track to surpass $1M in ARR in 2026.   Over the last two years, AVIAN has prevented $50M+ in damages from fires and equipment failures and is deployed in approximately 50 sites across 9 countries.         According to Alex Stöckl, Partner at Founderful. "Within a year of incorporation, the team at AVIAN already served dozens of manufacturing businesses in the US and Europe, preventing real fire incidents on a daily basis. With their thermal-vision technology, there's an immediate ROI and a new industrial intelligence layer that unlocks further use cases and value for customers over time - backing them to accelerate their go-to-market and product roadmap was a no-brainer."