In this week’s Tech.eu podcast, three founders discuss their "AI roll-up" strategies, a business model gaining traction in the startup and VC world.An "AI roll-up" strategy can be defined as a strategy whereby VC-backed startups buy underperforming companies, with the hope of boosting profits of the acquired companies through AI. It is a new play on the private equity model.The business model has gained traction in the VC world, with General Catalyst, Thrive Capital, Khosla Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners amongst those funding or exploring "roll-ups".In this episode, we talk to three founders deploying the strategy, discussing the advantages and challenges of the business model.  Din Bisevac, founder of property startup Buena; Constantin Schröder, founder of short-term rental startup Arbio; and Dan Lifshits, founder of property management startup Dwelly, discuss the topic. On why "AI roll-ups" lend themselves well to rental management, Schröder said: "It is a fantastic playing field to inject AI into because we have to communicate with property owners, with guests, a lot that have many questions with service providers. And we see ourselves in the middle, orchestrating the three stakeholders.”On the challenges of integrating acquired businesses, Bisevac said: “The first couple of times when we acquired businesses, we faced a lot of integration challenges."These challenges include employee scepticism about new ownership, customers being sceptical about new ownership, and employees being stubborn about learning new AI skills.Bisevac added: “We have learned that essentially all of that goes away if you do one thing. And that one thing is working on a product that provides a better service to the customers.” Photo: Pixabay

Waymo is launching its driverless taxis in London next year, marking its first expansion into Europe.The Alphabet-owned, California-based firm today confirmed that it will test a small fleet of its vehicles with safety drivers behind the wheel in London in the coming months, ahead of a full rollout in 2026. The autonomous taxis, hailed by an app, are currently available in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Austin, Phoenix as well as Tokyo.Waymo is partnering with Uber-backed Moove to oversee and manage the fleet, which will likely be available for hire by the general public and tourists.In a blog post, Waymo said it will “continue to engage with local and national leaders to secure the necessary permissions for our commercial ride-hailing service in London." Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana, said: “We’re thrilled to bring the reliability, safety and magic of Waymo to Londoners.“Waymo is making roads safer and transportation more accessible where we operate. We’ve demonstrated how to responsibly scale fully autonomous ride-hailing, and we can’t wait to expand the benefits of our technology to the United Kingdom."Heidi Alexander, secretary of state for transport, said: “I’m delighted that Waymo intends to bring their services to London next year, under our proposed piloting scheme.“Boosting the AV sector will increase accessible transport options alongside bringing jobs, investment, and opportunities to the UK. Cutting edge investment like this will help us deliver our mission to be world-leaders in new technology and spearhead national renewal that delivers real change in our communities.”Waymo has existing UK hubs in London and Oxford and has a partnership with British vehicle brand Jaguar Land Rover.The introduction of Waymo’s taxis comes as the UK government trials the use of self-driving vehicles next year. These will permit the public to book automated rides using apps. Photo Credit: Waymo

Vienna-based enspired, an optimiser for battery energy storage systems (BESS), has raised over €40 million in Series B funding. The round adds Future Energy Ventures as a new investor alongside renewed commitments from Zouk Capital, EnBW New Ventures, Banpu NEXT, PUSH VC, and 360 Capital. Enspired provides simultaneous commercial optimisation of batteries and other power assets across wholesale, control reserve, and ancillary services. Its fully automated, in-house trading platform, built for Europe’s short-term power markets, aims to reduce time to market and help customers monetise flexibility. As the energy transition accelerates, battery optimisation is becoming critical infrastructure, and the company’s multi-market approach addresses a key bottleneck in integrating renewables. Enspired is expanding faster than expected, adding new countries to its roadmap while continuing to see opportunities in Europe and assessing growth in Asia and the US. Within the last 12 months, we entered six new markets and crossed the 1GW mark of BESS under management. We proved our undisputed leadership in commercial optimisation by publishing our actual, certified revenues. We are at our greatest peak, and we won’t stop here, said CEO and co-founder Jürgen Mayerhofer. The company views AI as a lever to accelerate the energy transition and will use the new investment to expand into additional regions. The first step in its global expansion is a partnership with Banpu NEXT, a Net Zero solutions provider in Asia-Pacific and an emerging BESS player in Japan. With the strategic support of Future  Energy Ventures as our new investor, we're perfectly positioned to accelerate our growth and introduce several innovative use cases very soon. Their expertise in the energy sector and  commitment to our vision make them an ideal partner for our next phase of expansion, Mayerhofer added. The new capital will enable enspired to advance AI-driven flexibility optimisation and set a higher standard for energy management globally.

London-based CybaVerse, an innovator in the cybersecurity sector, has closed its Series A funding round, securing £5 million in investment. The round was co-led by Pembroke VCT and Airbridge Equity Partners, with participation from Haatch. Culbert Ellis provided the legal support. The Series A round follows a £1.1 million raise in 2024 and its acquisition of SecureAck. Founded in 2018, CybaVerse is a UK cybersecurity vendor which focuses on making cybersecurity simpler, more efficient, and more accessible for SMEs and managed service providers. The company’s product, CybaOps, is an all-in-one SaaS platform that unifies detection, compliance, security operations, and testing. Built to be cost-effective, easy to deploy, and partner-friendly, CybaOps offers a white-label model for rapid resale, while automation streamlines complex tasks and strengthens defences against advanced threats, delivering 24/7 protection and clear, actionable insights. The new funding will accelerate sales and marketing, expand the team, advance CybaOps development, and support a shift from founder-led sales to a scalable SaaS growth model.

If you own a small or midsize business (SMB), chances are, you and your team wear a lot of hats. Time and resources are luxuries you don’t always have, making it hard to feel productive some days. Meet Zoom AI Companion, our generative AI assistant that helps you get time back in your work day without adding to your headcount. No matter if you’re a solopreneur, own a small family company, run a thriving agency, or are the IT manager at a large enterprise organization, we believe everyone should experience the benefits of AI. To help with this, AI Companion is available at no extra cost for paid users on eligible plans and can be used by businesses of all sizes, without a minimum number of licenses. Grow your business. Shrink your to-do list Implementing AI tools for your business may sound a little daunting without an IT team to help you out. But the truth is, using AI Companion is as simple as logging in to the tools you already know and love. From summarizing meetings to in-meeting questions to suggesting chat responses and email replies, our AI Companion is natively integrated into the solutions you use for day-to-day business. Still exploring the benefits of generative AI? Want to know how it could work for a team of two or a 300-person firm? Keep reading to learn how an AI assistant can help you maximize productivity no matter the size of your business. Zoom AI Companion for the solopreneur Solopreneurs are no strangers to juggling tasks, but when you’re a party of one, it’s hard to find the time to market your services and still deliver exceptional customer support. If you need another pair of hands but can’t afford to hire extra help, an AI assistant may just be the best friend you never knew you needed. Our AI companion can be your notetaker or help with drafting emails, composing chats, or catching you up on any meetings you may have missed. AI Companion is available with eligible paid Zoom user accounts at no extra cost,* so small and midsize business owners can take advantage of the increased productivity that AI has to offer. We’ve made it easy to minimize the repetitive tasks and focus more on what matters. How AI Companion works for small marketing agencies Small teams do big things, so it’s no wonder we’re constantly impressed by the creativity and impact we see from our customers with as few as 2–10 employees. That’s why we want to help you capture the creative sparks in real-time — without distractions. Imagine a brainstorming session where AI can prompt new ideas on your virtual whiteboard. It’s like a built-in antidote for writer’s block. Need to send an update to a colleague who couldn’t attend that meeting today? Forward a meeting summary generated by AI Companion so they don’t have to watch a meeting recording and you don’t have to summarize. Meeting summaries has saved our team a ton of time. We feel that everyone is in the loop without necessarily having to attend every meeting, which results in better collaboration. Karl Morsgofian, CIO, Gainsight Explore AI Companion for fast-growing start-ups Start-ups move at warp speed and don’t have a minute to waste. When you have distributed employees across multiple locations and time zones, effective communication is paramount. A smart AI assistant can help you generate efficiency when you need it most. Short on time? Write emails faster with the help of suggested content. Late to a meeting? Make a query inside the meeting to catch up without having to interrupt a colleague. As you begin to execute new business strategies like virtual events, AI Companion is your built-in event planner right inside Zoom Events. You can use it to draft your invitation emails, help with attendee registrations, ticketing communications, and more. Why get buried in administrative tasks when you can automate the heavy lifting? What can an AI assistant do for a 100-person law firm? We know SMB leaders need to not only collaborate more effectively but also free up more time to focus on decision-making, creative ideation, and activities that move the needle. With 100 employees or more, keeping teams up to date can be challenging. Lean on AI Companion to summarize large chat threads in seconds, or catch you up if you need to join a meeting late or briefly step away. Zoom’s AI Companion exemplifies our vision for enhanced collaboration and innovation. With automated, detailed meeting summaries, it streamlines information sharing and boosts productivity. This inclusion in our Zoom plan not only improves efficiency but also yields significant cost savings, reflecting our commitment to a smarter, more connected future. John Georgatos, CIO, Mike Morse Law Firm Smart AI assistants help uncover new efficiencies in 200+ person businesses The rise of remote and hybrid work means employees are often distributed across the globe. Communicating with overseas vendors and team members can be challenging in multiple regions, especially as your business grows to 200 employees or more. This makes it more important than ever to have an AI tool that is built for multiple languages and enables communication across geographies. Luckily, AI Companion already supports in-meeting questions for English and an additional 7 foreign languages in preview. It will soon support a total of 33 languages for both meeting summaries and in-meeting questions, so your global team can benefit by getting caught up on that crucial meeting. And with Meeting coach’s speech analytic features coming soon, hosts can get feedback on how well they engaged meeting participants with filters, talk speed, talk-listen ratio, and more. The AI Companion tool that scales as your business grows The evolution from a small- to medium-sized business can bring lots of excitement and revenue but headaches as well. When you’re in a period of rapid growth, you need a solution that scales with your business. AI Companion is built to support growing businesses and large organizations. It can help teams as small as two or large enterprises keep up with revolving chat messages and missed meetings. You’ll love having more freedom to work on what matters most and spend less time catching up. Breeze through your workday Customer loyalty is the backbone of small and medium businesses, as 59% of customers say they’ll switch to a new brand after just one or two bad experiences. We’re here to help your business grow by giving you more time to focus on creating, selling, and marketing your services to better serve your customers. AI Companion isn’t just another tool in your toolbox—it’s a vital part of our all-in-one intelligent collaboration platform. We’re making connecting easier, more immersive, and more dynamic for businesses and individuals. Discover how our smart AI Assistant can help your business grow.

Milan-based fintech Finanz has raised €700,000 in an all-equity pre-seed round, backed by leading business angels and senior executives from the financial industry, including investors from Amazon, Amundi, Rothschild & Co, and Fundsgate. Finanz helps people start investing with a personalised, five-minute-a-day guided journey. Built on the belief that financial education is a right, not a privilege, it began as a mission to make finance understandable, even in high school classrooms, before becoming an app. Research indicates that roughly €10 trillion sits idle in current accounts, and 335 million Europeans aren’t investing due to limited financial knowledge. Finanz aims to turn this gap into an opportunity by combining technology and cultural impact to help people manage savings and invest with confidence. We started by bringing financial education into Italian schools, organising over 100 assemblies for students and teachers. Today, we want to directly address a problem that affects millions of Europeans, not just the younger generations, by helping everyone learn how to save and invest, one step at a time, says Lorenzo Perotta, CEO of Finanz. Launched in November 2024 by founders Lorenzo Perotta (CEO), Andrea Pasini (CTO), Matteo Spreafico (COO), and Matteo Longoni (CMO), Finanz has a young team with an average age of 23 and plans to hire across technology, product, and design as it develops a leading European platform for financial education and management. The new capital will support growth in Italy, expansion beyond 100,000 users, and accelerated product development.

Prague-based energy scaleup Delta Green has secured €2 million in fresh funding from Credo Ventures, Tilia Impact Ventures, and Purple Ventures to accelerate its pan-European expansion.  Delta Green aims to turn ordinary European homes into a powerful force on the energy market. The company's platform connects ordinary homes into a virtual power battery, enabling households to shift consumption, discharge batteries, and export rooftop solar at times of peak demand. Every kilowatt activated at the right moment lowers bills, supports renewables, and reduces fossil fuel reliance. Delta Green is co-owned by four engineers and developers, David Brozik, Prokop Cech, Lukas Benes and Jan Hicl. I spoke to Delta Green co-founder Jan Hicl to learn more. Delta Green was originally called Nano Green and has been around for about 13 years.  Why the energy industry's conservatism is creating opportunity According to Hicl, "We acquired and rebranded it three years ago to focus on what we do now." "Our background is in building software startups, so we've turned Delta Green into a software-first company for the energy sector — which is traditionally quite conservative and slow to change." According to Hicl, a good example of that conservatism is the growing number of negative price hours on the spot market.  "Everyone knows how to fix it — by shifting when electricity is produced and consumed — but very few are acting fast enough.  The fact that those hours are still increasing shows just how rigid the industry remains." Hicl shared that this is why "flexibility' has become such an energy buzzword: everyone recognises it's critical for the transition, but real-world implementation is still limited." We've already seen small blackouts in the Czech Republic, Spain, and Portugal. However, without flexibility to stabilise the network, especially at the low-voltage level — the local networks closest to households.  Hicl contends that most investment goes into high-voltage transmission networks and utility-scale batteries, "but the real fragility is in local distribution systems." "These networks were built decades ago for completely different consumption patterns. If five EVs on one street start charging simultaneously, you can overload the grid.  That's where residential flexibility — our speciality — becomes essential. Our platform can coordinate devices, telling some to wait and others to charge, so the network doesn't collapse." How ending subsidies is actually helping Delta Green grow Greentech is a tough sector for many startups at the whim of European policy priorities, especially in areas like EV-subsidies and ESG. But interestingly, Hicl asserts that the fact that many countries are ending net-metering schemes—where households could feed excess solar power into the grid in summer and draw it back in winter, is helping the company.  He admits, "That was effectively a form of subsidy, and now it's disappearing." However, the end of subsidies is actually prompting both consumers and retailers to consider energy management more seriously.  "As a result, consumers are starting to ask new questions: When should I consume energy? How can I use what I produce more intelligently?  Retailers, too, have lost many of their government incentives, so they're looking for new ways to stay competitive. Our technology gives them that edge. While first movers benefit most from the shift, it's more difficult in markets where there aren't enough EVs, heat pumps, or residential batteries—" assets we can control. But overall, the shift away from subsidies is creating stronger demand for what we do." Further, household flexibility is no longer in a pilot phase — "our business growth proves it works across thousands of households," says Hicl. "We're now accelerating our plans as market demand is clear, with major retailers across Europe approaching us to deploy our solution." From test lab to pan-European platform In the Czech Republic, Delta Green is a small energy supplier, serving about 7,000 customers.  "That's our test lab, where we can develop and refine our technology before scaling it," shared Hicl. "Then we license our platform to large utilities. They use it to manage flexibility across their customer base." Delta Green runs a lean ship, which Hicl admits is partly out of necessity.: "Margins in the energy sector are extremely thin — around 1 per cent. When we entered the industry, we were shocked to find that no one accepted credit card payments. Then we discovered that card processing fees are about 1.5 per cent, which would instantly wipe out profits! We've managed to stay profitable because we utilise our proprietary technology to operate efficiently.  We make money from our customer portfolio and from selling the platform to other suppliers. We're sustainable, even if we're not the fastest-growing company out there — and that's okay. A lot of hyper-growth players in our space have already burned out." Hicl asserts that for decades, we've been accustomed to having electricity available whenever we want it, at a constant price. That era is ending. "In the future, prices will vary hour by hour depending on supply and demand. Sometimes electricity will even be free, or have negative prices. For households, that means comfort will come at a cost. If you insist on consuming energy during peak times, you'll pay more. But if you're flexible — if you shift your consumption, like charging your EV or heating water when solar or wind generation is high — you'll save money and help stabilise the grid." E.ON partnership sparks snowball effect across Europe By the end of this year, Delta Green platform will manage tens of thousands of households, putting it on track to become Europe's largest household-based virtual power plant.  "We just closed first deals in Romania, Italy, Hungary and Slovakia, and we are in advanced discussions with several major international energy suppliers about adopting our technology," shared Hicl.  Since its last funding update in 2024, Delta Green has made significant strides. It has become the first company in CEE to successfully involve households directly in grid balancing.  In the Czech Republic, one of country's top three energy providers E.ON has integrated Delta Green's flexibility service into its operations and plans to scale it to thousands of customers within the next 18 months. Thanks to this collaboration, E.ON customers can earn up to €200 per year by monetising their household energy flexibility.  Hicl admits that the momentum has created a snowball effect — "everyone realised they needed something similar to stay competitive. That's when we knew we were ready to expand internationally." "Now we're active in Austria, Romania, and Hungary, and preparing to launch in other European countries." From here on, Delta Green is expanding the types of assets it can control. "Right now, we mainly manage home batteries, but we're adding heat pumps and EVs to the platform." "We are really happy to see that Delta Green's timing for their flexibility aggregation solution was perfect. Just as the market realised the importance of this kind of solution for energy transformation towards greater sustainability, the company already had a real solution in place that the energy companies can instantly use, because it's been tested on Delta Green's own retail customers," says Tilia Impact Ventures partner, Pavel Petřek.  Delta Green's mission is clear — to place households at the very centre of Europe's energy transition and build the continent's largest network of flexible homes.

London-based Orbiri has raised £320,000 in an oversubscribed angel round with 14 individual investors, following an initial £45,000 in seed funding. The company is preparing to launch a community-wide solution that aligns children, parents, and schools around shared digital limits (shifting peer pressure from a barrier to a support) instead of relying on parents to police screen time individually or enforce blanket smartphone bans. Orbiri provides a community-powered platform with preset, considered screen-time boundaries for children. Its collective-action approach aligns children, parents, and schools around shared boundaries to eliminate daily device battles and protect the conditions necessary for healthy childhood development. Rather than leaving schools and families to act alone, it enables coordinated limits within a single framework, aiming to make healthy digital habits the norm. Amid growing concern about children’s unrestricted smartphone use, with schools in England adopting phone bans and ministers considering Australia-style limits on under-16s’ social media, Orbiri contends that durable progress depends on bottom-up community coordination rather than top-down restrictions. Set to roll out next year, Orbiri will complete product development, secure compliance certifications, and run trials with early-adopter schools while expanding its core and product teams. The goal is to demonstrate that shared community boundaries can replace daily device conflicts with a more natural shift toward healthier technology use, addressing shortcomings of school bans and individual parental controls. The funding will support upcoming trial phases ahead of a broader launch, aligning with a growing view that approaches such as school phone bans and individual parental controls are insufficient and difficult to implement at scale.

SLNG.ai, the speech infrastructure startup building the first radically global platform for voice AI, today announced it has raised €3.3 million in Pre-Seed funding to challenge the US-centric voice technology ecosystem that has left billions of users worldwide in digital silence. The round, led by Earlybird VC, will accelerate SLNG's mission to restore the universal power of voice by providing developers, startups, and enterprises with a unified platform that integrates multiple speech models, supports true global deployment with regional compliance, and eliminates the barriers that have kept voice technology concentrated in a handful of languages and markets. Spain-based SLNG was founded by Ismael Ordaz and Luke Miller after spotting the same pattern globally: companies struggling with 1) lack of regional compute, 2) missing industry-specific models, 3) compliance barriers, and 4) latency issues. SLNG solves all four.  According to Luke Miller, CEO and co-founder of SLNG: “We're not just building another voice AI platform, we are rethinking the entire ecosystem to be developer first, truly global and compliant." SLNG aims to solve fundamental limitations of the current voice AI infrastructure. Most platforms optimise primarily for premium languages like English, Spanish, and French, leaving other languages/dialects as afterthoughts. High latency and data residency issues entangle deployment in many non-US-centric regions. Developers are forced into single-provider ecosystems with limited flexibility in terms of cost and model testing. Lastly, regulated industries can't deploy voice AI products due to data sovereignty requirements that existing platforms simply can't meet. Unlike traditional speech AI providers, SLNG offers a model-agnostic platform where developers integrate any speech-to-text, text-to-speech, or voice cloning model through a single API. This fuels a truly global deployment through regional infrastructure and ensures low latency and compliance worldwide. The company's open ecosystem approach lets developers combine open-source and proprietary models without vendor lock-in, while developer-first design delivers SDKs and APIs built for rapid integration. This avoids months-long implementations, giving developers unprecedented flexibility in building voice-enabled applications. The platform already supports deployment across over 20 regions, enabling companies in regulated industries, like healthcare, finance, and government, to finally deploy voice AI while meeting strict data residency requirements. “What excites us about SLNG is the audacity of their mission: to make voice AI universal, compliant, and developer-first from day one. Luke and the team are not just building a product - they’re building the missing infrastructure for a truly global voice ecosystem. We believe SLNG can define the next era of speech technology, “ added Akash Bajwa, Principal at Earlybird VC.

Christopher Savoie, one of the original inventors behind the AI system that led to Apple’s Siri, has raised over €2M for SiC Systems, a startup combining agentic AI and quantum sensing technologies for use in critical industrial and defence applications. The full amount raised has not been disclosed. The company is a spinout from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). The round was led by Dutch quantum investment fund QDNL Participations, with additional backing from Propagator Ventures, Plug and Play, and Wavepeak Ventures. SiC Systems aims to develop intelligent, adaptive AI agents capable of orchestrating complex physical systems in real time. Its proprietary platform integrates classical and quantum sensors with agent-based AI and generative models to support decision-making in high-stakes sectors such as biomanufacturing, industrial automation, and defence. Savoie, who co-founded the company with DTU professor Seyed Soheil Monsouri, said: "From the early multiagent natural language interfaces that brought Siri to life to today's agentic AI for the physical worlds of industrial and defense applications, my personal AI journey has always been about making intelligence actionable." QDNL Participations Investment Director Kris Kaczmarek said: "SiC's fusion of agentic AI and quantum innovation represents a leap forward for mission-critical applications." Founded across Copenhagen and Nashville, SiC Systems builds on DTU research in model-based tools for dynamic, multi-scale systems. The company’s quantum-inspired virtual sensors aim to reduce reliance on costly hardware by predicting physical states with high precision, even in harsh conditions. The startup plans to use the funding to scale its platform, form strategic partnerships, and pilot deployments across the chemical, biological manufacturing, energy, and defence sectors.

Oura, the Finnish health tech startup known for its popular smart rings, has raised over $900m in a new funding round, valuing the startup at “approximately $11bn”, it said. The funding round was led by Fidelity Management & Research Company with participation from new investor ICONIQ and investment from Whale Rock and Atreides. Oura's valuation has now more than doubled since its $200m last funding round in December last year, valuing it at $5.2bn.Oura says it will funnel the new funding to speed up AI and product innovation, expand global distribution and invest in the development of new health features.Oura says it has sold more than 5.5 million Oura rings since they were launched in 2015, with more than half of those sales in the past year.The startup says it recorded revenues of more than $500m in 2024, and says it’s on track to top $1bn in sales for 2025.“This new funding is a testament to the strength of Oura’s business and the trust millions of members place in us every day,” said Tom Hale, chief executive officer, Oura.“We’re proud to be building not just a product, but a global movement toward proactive health—helping people understand their bodies, make better lifestyle decisions, and connect more effectively with their healthcare providers. "Today, our technology supports consumers, employers, insurers, and clinicians working together to advance preventive health at scale. With this investment, we will accelerate innovation, expand our global reach, and set a new standard for what wearables can achieve in advancing preventive health.”David Shuman, Oura board chair, said: "Oura’s growth and impact over the past year have been truly remarkable.“The company has doubled revenue, expanded its global reach, and delivered transformative solutions that are reshaping the wearables industry."

Strawberry, an agentic browser with built-in, personalised AI companions, has raised $6 million led by General Catalyst and EQT Ventures, with participation from founders of Lovable, Supabase, and Hugging Face. While enterprises often deploy AI via large budgets and multi-year programs, freelancers, startups, and small businesses need tools that work immediately. Many existing solutions require technical expertise, disrupt workflows, or sit in standalone interfaces outside the browser. Strawberry embeds AI directly into browsing to create a no-code, adaptive workspace that automates routine digital work so people can focus on higher-value tasks. Founded in Stockholm by a technical team focused on bringing AI beyond developers, Strawberry streamlines tab switching, data movement across tools, spreadsheet population, and message drafting, while adapting to each user’s context and workflows. Early users have built custom assistants for competitive intelligence and sales prospecting, earning Product Hunt “Product of the Day” and “Product of the Week.” The platform signals a shift from generic enterprise AI toward personalised companions that make everyday work more collaborative and usable. Charles Maddock, CEO and co-founder of Strawberry, commented:  The browser is a tool most people use daily and know intimately. By giving Strawberry powerful AI features out of the box, we're making AI automation accessible to everyone. This funding helps us continue our mission to help modern workers love what they do and skip their busywork. The financing will fuel Strawberry's expansion across engineering and design to support rapid iteration with its growing beta community. Alongside the financing, the company is rolling out an upgraded version with new features, offering early access to select customers and expanding onboarding monthly.

Stockholm-based Epiminds, which develops multi-agent AI systems to run marketing end-to-end, emerged from stealth with $6.6 million in funding. The funding was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners with participation from EWOR, Entourage, and high-profile angels, including the former CMO of Booking.com. Agencies face pressure from both clients and operations as clients expect greater transparency, faster reporting, and measurable ROI on tighter budgets, while internally, fragmented data slows decisions, and AI adoption is uncertain. Traditional responses like hiring more specialists, adding dashboards, or reacting after problems arise raise costs and complexity without fixing core inefficiencies or preparing for the future. Epiminds addresses these issues. Founded in 2025 by Google and Spotify alums, Elias Malm and Mo Elkhidir, respectively, the company builds multi-agent AI systems that agencies can train and evolve. Its core product is Lucy, an AI marketing manager coordinating over 20 specialised agents across reporting, optimisation, budget pacing, bidding, and creative. Agencies can onboard a client in under 30 seconds and immediately deploy an AI team to run campaigns end-to-end. Lucy and team not only surface insights but execute them, learn each agency’s playbooks, and proactively monitor accounts to flag risks before performance declines. According to Mo Elkhidir, marketers are increasingly expected to achieve more with fewer resources: Lucy and her team take on the busywork so that marketing talent can do their best work. This is not about replacing creativity; it’s about giving it room to flourish. Agencies using Epiminds report faster onboarding, improved performance, reduced wasted spend, and more time for creative and strategic work. The multi-agent system manages routine tasks such as reporting and pacing, as well as audits, creative analysis, competitive insights, and strategic planning. By linking insights to execution across platforms, Lucy can increase output without additional headcount. The product targets a gap in the market. Legacy dashboards and optimisers are siloed and manual, while point AI tools address narrow problems without coordination. Epiminds’ multi-agent approach provides an integrated, adaptive system that learns and improves over time. Elias Malm added: Our vision is simple. We're building Epiminds because we see where marketing is headed. The future is about dynamic, agentic teams that analyse, plan, execute, and improve in real time. Every marketer should have access to a 24/7 AI workforce that frees up their time for creativity and strategy. Our goal is to give them that future, today. Looking ahead, Epiminds plans to expand Lucy’s capabilities across more integrations, increase the level of autonomy, and self-improving capabilities. Each new feature strengthens the entire system, creating a network effect where every agency benefits from smarter, more capable AI.

London-based Clove, a new challenger in personal finance and wealth management, has emerged from stealth with a $14 million pre-seed round led by Accel. The round also saw participation from Kindred Capital, Air Street Capital, and angels, including Barney Hussey-Yeo (Cleo), Patrick Pichette (via Inovia Capital), Erez Mathan (GoCardless), and Gideon Valkin (ex-Monzo, ClearScore). The FCA estimates that people who receive financial advice may be up to 10 per cent wealthier in subsequent years than those who do not. To narrow the advice gap and support market growth, it has introduced regulatory changes to encourage investment and innovation. In the UK, 13 million mass-affluent individuals hold £3.8 trillion in investable assets, including more than 3.7 million open to professional advice with over £50,000 to invest; a further 7 million adults with £10,000+ in cash savings may be missing out on long-term investing benefits. Clove is building a financial institution for how people live and work today, aiming to make money management and advice accessible, affordable, and personal. The company combines human advisers with AI to scale high-quality, personalised guidance and automate administrative work, helping to close the advice gap. Co-founder and CPO Alex Loizou said everyone should have access to high-quality financial advice. He added that Clove aims to reshape the economics of advice by combining human expertise with AI to make planning more accessible, affordable, and effective for young professionals, entrepreneurs, growing families, and those beginning to plan for retirement. Clove will use the pre-seed funding to expand its team and platform ahead of a planned full launch in 2026, subject to FCA authorisation. 

Sometimes the most compelling startup ideas are born from simple, everyday problems that demand a tech-first fix. Take two UK founders who bootstrapped through COVID and are now the global leader in the highly competitive space of luggage storage. UK startup Stasher. During COVID, they built systems that now onboard hundreds of locations monthly without meetings.  They've expanded from 1,000 to over 8,000 locations across more than 1,000 cities and 80 countries, and hit profitability during the summer and 100 per cent YoY growth, while their US competitors (like Bounce, backed by a16z) burn through much more cash. I I spoke with founders Jacob Wedderburn-Day and Anthony Collias to learn how they did it, and ultimately how UK founders can still build category leaders without following the Silicon Valley playbook.  From student flat to global platform The business started when students kept knocking on the co-founder's King's Cross door, asking to store bags for the summer holidays.  According to Collias, after uni, he was living between Euston and King’s Cross, and Wedderburn-Day was still at UCL, which had a startup programme.  They’d both realised they didn’t really want to go into corporate graduate schemes — Wedderburn-Day had done a stint with the government and had a job offer from the Bank of England.  Collias recalled:  “I’d done an investment-banking internship and hated it — long hours, smart people doing boring work. At the time, I was living with my brother, who was at City University.  Between us and our friends, people were always asking, ‘Can I leave my stuff at yours for a couple of weeks?’ You know, getting kicked out of student halls, going travelling, that sort of thing. Jake would often leave his bag with me, too.”  The duo decided to put the idea in the UCL’s Hatchery startup incubator program.  Refining the model: from homes to hotels The duo took some time refining their idea. Wedderburn-Day shared: “At the beginning, it was kind of 'Airbnb for storage.’ You could store your stuff in someone’s house for a day, a week, or a month. But we soon realised that was a bad idea — too much friction for what you could charge. We also realised everyone was using it as left luggage, not self-storage. They just wanted to leave their bags for a few hours or a day, not months. We didn’t know how to price one day versus one month — they were completely different things.” So they narrowed it down to same-day storage, and saw it made more sense to work with local businesses.  According to Wedderburn-Day, “they were already open, had spare space, and liked having people come in.  “That’s how the business model evolved — from 'store anything anywhere' to a clear left-luggage service run through shops and hotels.” Image: Stasher storage location. Photo: uncredited. Scaling through marketing and digital infrastructure Left-luggage offerings are nothing new - walk through any tourist precinct and you’ll see stores offering left luggage services. But according to Collias, “a lot of those standalone locker stores — especially in places like Barcelona or Madrid — are becoming oversaturated." "Ten or twenty years ago, if you opened the first few, you made a killing. But now, in some cities, there are 40 or 50 of them, and the economics don’t add up. Most of those operators aren’t experts in online marketing, and it’s not worth running ads for just one or two locations." Stasher has developed a platform that connects travellers with trusted storage spots — including hotels, shops, and lockers — across cities worldwide, allowing them to drop off their luggage for a few hours or several days. One thing they discovered is that 90 per cent of luggage storage is booked on the same day, making it on-demand urban logistics rather than planned infrastructure. With Stasher, users can easily search, book, and pay online for a convenient storage location for specific dates and times through the website. Once booked, travellers simply “stash” their bags at the chosen location and collect them later.  In addition to short-term storage, Stasher also offers a luggage shipping service, enabling users to send their bags directly to their next destination. Collias contendst: “We can solve a lot of the problems those small storage shops face. They have the physical presence; we have the digital infrastructure. Combine the two and you get real synergy.” Further, he asserts that platforms like Slasher have the advantage because we can spread the marketing costs across hundreds of sites. For customers, that means more choice — they can compare all the nearby options instead of relying on chance.” Winning in a crowded market Wedderburn-Day shared that to win in a crowded market, “You have to nail three things: product, price, and distribution.” “Product is tricky because you’re working with fragmented partners — shops, hotels, different setups — but smart lockers are helping with consistency. We also like hotels because they’re used to handling guests’ belongings professionally. Our pricing strategy aims to be the best-value option. Lockers have to maximise revenue per square metre, but we can offer lower prices and still profit thanks to scale.” Data-driven expansion Stasher is now active in about a thousand towns across cities globally. Early on, it picked places based on search volumes, tourism, and common sense — “like, obviously, downtown New York will have demand.” But another metric is Airbnb density. According to Wedderburn-Day, numerous short-term rentals result in a large number of bags. With its own data, the team can now base expansion on where people are searching. He shared: “We get thousands of bookings and tens of thousands of search queries a day, so we can see demand patterns in real time. If a location has lots of searches but few conversions, we know we need more or better supply there. It gives us a really rich picture of global demand, and helps us grow intelligently rather than guessing.” In terms of customer acquisition, Stasher’s biggest channels are partnerships and search. According to Collias, partnerships make perfect sense because travel is time-specific. “Think Airbnb hosts whose guests need storage before or after check-in. They already have the customers who need us.” Search – a mix of organic and paid — is the other big one. And when people search “luggage storage,” It’s a location-based query, so Maps is crucial too. In terms of revenue, hosts charge a fixed fee per bag per day. It varies by geography and partnership type, but for most major partners, it’s roughly a 50/50 revenue share. Wedderburn-Day  asserts that the economics are solid:  “We’ve been profitable for the last few months. We do have seasonal fluctuations — summer is strong, winter is slower — but the team's global reach means it's always summer somewhere, and overall, the business is safe and cash-flow positive. The unit economics are very healthy. Growth just depends on how aggressively we choose to reinvest.” Flywheel style growth In terms of growth, Wedderburn-Day muses that “People assume you just pour money into ads, but that’s not how it works." Our growth is more like a flywheel: A bit more demand lets us add more supply; more supply attracts more demand. Hosts generate visibility — more pins on Google Maps, more signage, more reviews — which boosts traffic. That improves our economics, so we can invest more in marketing. It’s a conventional marketplace loop: demand → supply → demand. The bigger you get, the better your product and conversion, so you can scale without burning cash.” From startup to scaleup Now Stasher is at a turning point — shifting from startup to established company.  Collias asserts, “When we talk about raising money now, it’s not about survival; it’s about how we can use capital to grow intelligently. There’s still huge room for expansion.” Once you know where it makes sense to invest, you can shift from a variable-cost to a fixed-cost model in key areas, which is a powerful way to scale a marketplace sustainably. Significantly, Stasher achieved its goals with less than £5 million in funding — partly by learning how to do "more with less". The duo cold-emailed their way from there to their first investor (Big Yellow Storage CEO), securing their first game-changing partnership with Premier Inn shortly after. “Too many founders build to exit” Ultimately, Collias believes that Europe needs to stop selling itself short.  “Too many founders build to exit. We need bigger swings and the patience to stick around.” Wedderburn-Day asserts that US companies have easier access to capital and higher valuations, this makes it easier for them to acquire European startups. “Take Airbnb. One of the teams they acquired in Europe had incredibly capable founders. One of them stayed on as Head of Growth for years. Clearly, he could’ve built something great independently. But the ecosystem didn’t make it worthwhile to stay independent.” Collias believes: “We need to make it make sense for founders to build long-term European champions, not sell early because of the system." In many ways, Stasher’s journey offers an example to many startups. With just £2.5 million in total funding, the company built a profitable, global business in a fiercely competitive market — not by outspending rivals, but by outthinking them. It’s proof that capital efficiency can outperform capital abundance, and make it possible to turn a simple student idea into a worldwide category leader. Lead image: Stasher co-founders Anthony Collias and Jacob Wedderburn-Day. Photo: uncredited.

Under the motto “Connecting Europe”, Bits & Pretzels once again underscored its ambition to be the central platform for founders, investors, and decision-makers in Europe. Coinciding with Oktoberfest, Munich became a hotspot for innovation, networking, and entrepreneurial spirit – with over 7,500 participants from more than 70 countries, top-tier speakers from around the world, and a clear message: Europe must come closer together, become bolder, and harness its innovative power with greater determination. Europe needs more ambition, risk culture, and open markets International voices shaped the debate on the future of the European startup ecosystem. “Connecting Europe was more than a motto for us – it was a promise. This year’s Bits & Pretzels has shown what’s possible when Europe’s founders work together on a shared vision,” explained Andy Bruckschlögl, co-founder of Bits & Pretzels. Skype founder and Atomico CEO Niklas Zennström called the founders the gamechangers of Europe and urged for more courage, independence, and assertiveness. Raycho Raychev, founder and CEO of space startup EnduroSat, advocated strengthening democracy through bold technologies rather than angry tweets. He also called for open market structure: “We still do not operate in a truly open market in Europe. Instead of focusing on transparent competition, many players remain stuck in outdated management structures that slow down innovation and progress.” The time for founders and bold technologies is now Despite ongoing economic uncertainties and global tensions, one thing was evident this year: Europe is growing closer together. Germany’s Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, Katherina Reiche, emphasized that crises offer great opportunities for startups, as the pressure for change on established companies increases and innovation becomes the key to sustainable success. “Bits & Pretzels is, more than ever, the platform for European innovation. The feedback from the community confirms it: Europe wants to – and, even more importantly – Europe can! And we will do everything we can as a platform to create even more space for collective progress,” said Bernd Storm van’s Gravesande, co-founder of Bits & Pretzels. Matchmaking with impact: How Bits & Pretzels connects founders and investors Formats such as the Startup Expo, CIO AI Summit and Investor Summit made European collaboration tangible at Bits & Pretzels. At the Startup Expo, more than 200 startups from across Europe showcased their innovative ideas and solutions. In the Matchmaking Area, founders and investors met in curated one-on-one sessions, supported by experienced networkers who acted as personal guides and fostered valuable connections. “Our mission is to build bridges – between countries, between capital and ideas, between startups, investors, and corporates,” said Felix Haas, co-founder of Bits & Pretzels. “These bridges were visible everywhere at Bits & Pretzels 2025.” European Pitch Contest: Sitegeist wins with a smart construction platform A major highlight was the final round of the European Pitch Contest. The first prize went to Munich-based robotics startup Sitegeist, which has developed an intelligent platform that automates repetitive construction site tasks – improving safety and efficiency. Founder Lena Pätzmann celebrated the win: “Our mission is clear: we want to save infrastructure. Now we have the attention, and we’re ready to get things done.” For more information, visit the official website: www.bitsandpretzels.com

The Serbia-born CEO of Nvidia-backed UK AI voice startup PolyAI has a nice way with words. The US is the “new Rome” which “demands loyalty”, says Nikola Mrkšić; meeting his wife during a spell interning at Credit Suisse generated “very high ROI activity”; while PolyAI’s client base is “heterogeneous”. Mrkšić is talking to Tech.eu in PolyAI’s commodious and new-looking basement offices (albeit sparsely occupied as it’s Friday and WFH Friday mania persists in the UK) in London. PolyAI, which was founded in 2017 and valued at nearly $500m, is often cited in top ten lists of UK AI startups, a triumph which was given a boost last month when Nvidia’s man of the moment CEO Jensen Huang named it as one of its eight star startups (along with the likes of Wayve and Revolut), it would be investing in. Serbian heritage A namecheck by arguably the most famous businessman on the planet might have given the 30-something co-founder and CEO a moment to reflect on how his life had changed since his 1990s childhood growing up in troubled Serbia, in the aftermath of the breakup of Yugoslavia, its parent nation. Mrkšić, who is slight in stature and softly spoken, says: “Serbia has had to find its own way after stumbling for quite a long time, which meant for my parents’ generation, it was a very like jaded feeling. “And I think there was a reflex to push your kids into hardcore education so that they can rely on themselves and maybe be less dependent on the system, which had crumbled in front of their eyes.” Growing up in Serbia, Mrkšić attended a Serbian maths high school (the equivalent of a UK grammar school) and was one of seven out of eight applicants who received a full scholarship to Cambridge University. “We’re not designed to crack Cambridge interviews the way that many elite schools in Britain are”, he wryly points out. His links with Serbia, where PolyAI has an office, are still strong, returning three or four times a year to visit friends. Cambridge University Serbia might be his home country, but London is where PolyAI was founded, seven years after Mrkšić came to the UK to study computer science and maths at Cambridge University. He could have quite easily pursued a banking career, interning at Credit Suisse, where he met his wife during his undergraduate years. But an encounter with Blaise Thomson, the founder of speech-related AI startup VocalIQ, a Cambridge University spinout, convinced him to join the startup as its first employee. His time at VocalIQ, which went on to be acquired by Apple 18 months later, also lit the fuse for him wanting to launch his own startup, at a time when deep learning was gathering momentum. During this time, Mrkšić also met his Taiwanese co-founders: Tsung-Hsien Wen (ex-Google), PolyAI’s CTO, and Pei-Hao Su (ex-Facebook), PolyAI’s SVP, engineering, at a Cambridge University group focused on spoken dialogue systems. He says: “We were in high demand by the research labs. What frustrated us is that we didn’t really see automated voice improving.” What PolyAI does? PolyAI has developed AI voice assistants for call centres which guide customers through enquiries, handling millions of calls, which can, some say, sound indistinguishable from human voices. PolyAI has worked with linguists to build voice assistants that reflect human speech patterns and the voices can be tailored by accent, tone and vocabulary. The tech can complete many tasks a customer service rep can, including taking payment information as well as names, addresses and account numbers. PolyAI uses its own proprietary large language models as well as frontier model companies like OpenAI and DeepSeek. The early years of PolyAI, pre ChatGPT, were tough, says Mrkšić, given they were three researchers-cum-callow-entrepreneurs trying to commercialise a product that few in the business world knew about. Back then, the scrappy startup, looking for commercial traction, speculatively approached London pub owners to experiment with its tech. Competition and challenges While PolyAI is making headway, automated call handling remains a turn-off for some people, partially due to historic bad experiences with rudimentary voice tech. Furthermore, complex requests often require empathy and judgment that only humans can provide, experts say. A McKinsey survey found that 71 per cent of Gen Z respondents (rising to 94 per cent for baby boomers) believe live, human calls are the quickest and easiest way to reach customer care and explain their issues. Mrkšić has previously spoken about these challenges in the Tech.eu podcast. Meanwhile, earlier this year Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said its AI voice approach led to “lower quality” and Klarna flipped from its AI-first policy to ensure customers always had a human to talk to. Despite these challenges, it is easy to see why tech giants such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft have tried to crack automated call handling, as the call centre software market is estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars. Current startup competitors include the likes of Germany’s Parloa and US startup Rasa. ChatGPT moment The ChatGPT moment was a big boon for PolyAI, says Mrkšić, quadrupling inbound leads. Now, PolyAI works with major businesses, amid growing enterprise 24/7 demand for call centre support, which suffers from high attrition rates. These include Las Vegas casinos, Hilton and Marriott hotel chains, US delivery service FedEx, and the financial institution Unicredit. Given the co-founders' stellar CVs, funding has not been a problem, says Mrkšić. Last year, PolyAI raised £50m in funding, valuing it at close to $500m. The Series C was led by investors Hedesophia and NVentures, the VC arm of Nvidia, with participation from existing investors including Khosla Ventures and Point72 Ventures. It has previously raised $66m from investors. It is understood that PolyAI will announce a fresh funding round later this year, likely to include fresh funds from Hedesophia and NVentures. Relationship with co-founders “I am the talker”, says Mrkšić, when asked how the founders divvied up the roles. He says he loves all the key functions of being CEO: fundraising, hiring and selling. That said, he admits his management skills are a work in progress. The three co-founders, he says, are still happily professionally married. “We are really close,” he says, but points out that there are clear demarcation lines. For example, he says it was decided from day one that Mrkšić, a tech aficionado, would not write a line of code or voice any strong technical opinions. He says: “I am deeply technical. I still very much enjoy the moments where I have time with product and tech teams to talk about things.” In between running PolyAI, he also hosts an AI-infused podcast, discussing news and AI breakthroughs. US footprint Mrkšić has adopted a kind of second identity, as an American, as PolyAI’s revenues have grown in the US, which now accounts for roughly 80 per cent of its revenues, compared to 20 per cent in Europe. He calls the US the “new Rome” which “demands loyalty”. He says: “If you want to be successful in the US, you are going to use American spelling and work American hours.” For example, when in London, he says he works from 10am to 1am UK time to fit in with the US. He now spends a big chunk of his time in the US, where PolyAI has New York and San Francisco offices, meeting existing and new clients, meeting investors, and attending conferences. The future As AI becomes more commonplace and the frontier model becomes more effective, the tech, in theory, should improve. PolyAI, which employs around 270 people, reported revenues of £11.9m in the year ending January 31 2025, up 75 per cent on the year, according to Companies House figures. Revenues were boosted by snapping up new customers and expanding existing contracts. And what about PolyAI’s plans for the rest of the year? Mrkšić says: “We have been growing the team like mad. So everything from accelerating on that and platform changes and announcements which are going to come towards the end of the year, opening up the ecosystem a bit more.”

Italy-based GEVI, a company specialising in vertical micro-wind turbines, has closed a €2.7 million seed round led by 360 Capital and CDP Venture Capital (through the Acceleratori Fund, MiSE Co-Investment Fund, and ToscanaNext Fund), with participation from NextSTEP One. GEVI develops a modular, distributed, low-noise micro wind turbine with a smart vertical axis that adapts to wind conditions in real time via AI-driven blade control. Designed to overcome limitations of conventional systems, the blades adjust every hundredth of a second as an AI system analyses wind data, solves fluid-dynamics models, and optimises output. The architecture targets higher efficiency (reported up to +60 per cent annual energy versus leading VAWTs), improved reliability and safety (active blade control reducing loads by up to 80 per cent in strong winds), and broad applicability thanks to a compact form factor (rotor height 3m, diameter 5.4m). Intended for household use and local micro-grids, it operates from wind speeds as low as 2.5 m/s with a nominal output of 5 kW, and is designed to work alongside solar in urban, industrial, and rural settings. According to Emanuele Luzzati, founder, CEO, and head of engineering, the funding enables GEVI to bring a distributed, modular wind solution to locations where photovoltaics and conventional wind are less effective, accelerating the transition from prototype to scalable industrial product. The support we have received allows us to transform our technology into a scalable, industrial product, accelerating GEVI’s contribution to the energy transition. Thanks to the trust of our investors, we will be able to give strength to a radical idea: turbines that learn from the wind and interact with nature, transforming into energy what was previously dispersed. Founded in 2022 by Emanuele Luzzati (CEO & Head of Engineering), Edoardo Simonelli (Head of Products), and Soufiane Essakhi (Head of Operations), GEVI operates a ten-person team across an R&D office in Pisa and a commercial/operations office in Rome. Alongside the round’s close, Giuseppe Imburgia was appointed General Manager to lead the scale-up with the founders, driving industrialisation and international growth. The funding will be used to industrialise the product, including starting serial turbine production, and to advance technology by enhancing the AI control system and introducing new turbine versions.

Retail iPaaS provider Patchworks has closed a £5 million round to support its next phase of growth. The round was led by Gresham House Ventures, with growth lending from Palatine Growth Credit. Retailers often operate fragmented systems that don’t communicate, leading to overselling, delayed or lost orders, peak-period bottlenecks, and heavy manual data entry across e-commerce, warehouses, and finance. These issues waste staff time and frustrate customers. Patchworks addresses this by connecting e-commerce, ERP, POS, PIM, CRM, CDP, and fulfilment, so stock, orders, and customer data stay in sync. Prebuilt connectors and real-time flows help retailers adapt to market shifts, reduce peak failures, and resolve issues faster. Teams can pinpoint bottlenecks (e.g., where an order is stuck) and trigger actions without code, while a broad partner network across ERPs, warehouses, and couriers supports reliable delivery. Growth is powered by a partner-first model, often described as its “flywheel”, that incentivises technology and agency partners to refer and deliver at scale, providing global coverage and ensuring the product evolves with current retail tech needs. As enterprises move off rigid legacy systems, Patchworks is becoming a preferred option for connecting commerce and supporting composable, MACH-based stacks. The new funding will advance the platform to help retailers respond more quickly to changing consumer behaviour and market conditions. Ongoing AI investment will enable smarter automation and allow LLMs to query Patchworks data, reducing manual work and freeing teams to focus on growth. Patchworks also plans a North American expansion, which will strengthen support for global brands operating across regions. 

French quantum hardware startup Isentroniq closed a €7.5 million funding round led by Heartcore with participation from OVNI Capital, Kima Ventures, iXcore, Better Angle, Epsilon VC, as well as the support from Bpifrance and the French National Research Agency (ANR) under the France 2030 program. Quantum computing could transform sectors such as medicine, energy, and logistics, but meaningful progress requires millions of qubits due to error-correction overhead. Superconducting qubits are promising, yet scaling is constrained by cryogenic wiring that adds heat and bulk; beyond roughly 100 qubits, systems hit thermal and spatial limits. Building to 1 million qubits with current approaches would demand massive facilities and tens of billions of euros. Isentroniq targets heat, cost, and space bottlenecks to enable up to 1,000× more qubits in existing dilution refrigerators, with a long-term goal of reducing the cost of a 1 million-qubit system to about €50 million. The company operates a fabless model—designing its architecture and outsourcing fabrication to specialised partners—to accelerate time to market, limit capex, and ensure industrial-grade quality. Today, wiring is the #1 bottleneck to scale superconducting quantum computers. Our mission is to turn it into an accelerator, said Paul Magnard, co-founder and CEO. Isentroniq was co-founded by Magnard, a superconducting-qubits expert with a PhD from ETH Zurich and former lead architect at Alice & Bob, and ThéodoreAmar, a second-time founder with prior roles at Bain & Company and Hilti. The announcement comes as major players, including Google, IBM, Amazon, IQM, Alice & Bob, and Rigetti, pursue roadmaps toward 100,000 to 1 million qubits. The new funding will support the development of Isentroniq’s wiring technology, team build-out, and partnerships to deliver a plug-and-play solution for scaling quantum systems.