Ouinex, a Paris-based crypto asset exchange, has raised $3.5 million in a new equity round, bringing its total funding to $9 million, all of it from retail and professional traders using its own platform and with no venture capital participation. Alongside the funding round, Ouinex introduced Ouinex Launchpad, a token sale platform designed to give users access to early-stage token launches based on platform engagement and loyalty metrics. Ouinex is a trading platform combining crypto and traditional financial markets within a single environment. The platform offers access to spot crypto, crypto perpetuals, forex, indices, stocks, and commodities derivatives through one account, using crypto assets as collateral. Founded around a community-funded model, Ouinex positions its users as both traders and shareholders. The company said more than 10,000 retail and professional traders have participated in its funding rounds since launch. Ouinex operates on a proprietary No-CLOB (No Central Limit Order Book) execution model, designed to prevent the platform from acting as a counterparty to user trades. According to the company, the system aims to reduce practices such as stop-hunting and front-running by limiting market maker visibility into retail order flows. Ilies Larbi, CEO of Ouinex, said the company’s community-funded structure allows it to approach regulation as part of the product rather than simply a compliance requirement. Since our shareholders are our users, we aren’t cutting any corners to satisfy distant investors. We’re investing heavily in legal frameworks across five continents to ensure that Ouinex remains a safe, sustainable, and fully licensed platform for the years to come. The new funding will be used to support regulatory expansion, product development, and the rollout of additional trading and risk management features.

Most people think of additive manufacturing — better known as 3D printing — as small plastic prototypes or desktop machines producing objects you can hold in your hand. Since emerging in the 1980s, the technology has steadily evolved from a rapid prototyping tool into a serious industrial process used across aerospace, automotive, healthcare, and defence. But scaling additive manufacturing to produce very large industrial components has remained far more difficult. Industries such as aviation, maritime, and energy still rely heavily on expensive molds, long production cycles, and highly centralised supply chains to produce metre-scale components using methods that are costly, labour-intensive, and generate significant material waste. According to Francesco De Stefano, additive manufacturing largely accepted the physical “box” of the printer as a limitation until around 2015.  There was still a lot of work needed inside that box to industrialise the technology.” But what if you broke the box entirely? De Stefano’s Italian-founded advanced manufacturing company, Caracol, is solving the challenge of producing industrial-scale, large, and mixed-volume parts through Large Format Additive Manufacturing (LFAM), using robotic arms, advanced software, turnkey additive manufacturing systems, materials, and factory integration to reliably manufacture large polymer, composite, and metal components at production scale. Caracol combines robotics, automation, software, and manufacturing engineering into integrated production systems that can create complex lightweight structures and industrial components at scale. Industrial robotic arms were already widely used in automotive manufacturing, welding, and pick-and-place applications. A traditional 3D printer operates on three axes, while industrial robots operate on six, enabling far greater geometric freedom and scalability. “That combination allowed us to move beyond the traditional limitations of additive manufacturing,” he explained.  Prior to founding Caracol, De Stefano studied business in Milan and London and later moved into consulting, working in executive advisory, particularly in aerospace and industrial sectors. At some point, he realised that while PowerPoints and Excel were great, he wanted to work on something with real industrial impact. “I already knew Giovanni and Paolo, two of the other co-founders, from university. Back in 2015, they already believed additive manufacturing was the future, but they felt the technology was still too limited in scale.” Their insight was to combine additive manufacturing with robotics. Between 2015 and 2017, they worked on integrating the two technologies to bring additive manufacturing into large-scale industrial production. With another co-founder, Jacopo, on board by the end of 2017, they realised their technology could have a real impact on industrial manufacturing.  Breaking manufacturing’s entrenched habits Geopolitical tensions, supply chain fragility, and industrial sovereignty have become increasingly important across aerospace, defence, energy, and transportation. After COVID and the ensuing supply chain disruptions, many companies realised the old model of highly centralised manufacturing was no longer resilient. As labour shortages grow, supply chains regionalise, and industries seek more flexible production models, additive manufacturing is increasingly shifting from an experimental technology to a strategic industrial capability. Yet startups and scaleups typically struggle to disrupt traditional industries like manufacturing and supply chains.  When it comes to additive manufacturing, one of the first challenges is certification. Take a boat component as an example.  “Traditional composite manufacturing processes are certified, well understood, and supported by decades of production data. Certification bodies already recognise those manufacturing methods,” explained De Stefano.  The second barrier is mindset. In industries like maritime or composites:  “You build moulds by hand, operators manually place carbon fibre and glass fibre, and finishing work is also largely manual. It works, it’s relatively inexpensive, and people have been doing it that way for decades. So when you introduce a new technology, the first reaction is often: ‘This is never going to work. We’ve always done it this way.’” Caracol addressed the challenges facing additive manufacturing with a scientific approach. For the first five years, it didn’t sell the technology at all. Instead, it operated as a service bureau, qualifying and certifying the process before commercialising it. It worked with aerospace, maritime, and automotive OEMs on testing, prototyping, material characterisation, and certification.  Only once the applications were qualified and the business case was validated, did it start offering the technology commercially in 2022. At the same time, it focused heavily on training customers. De Stefano explained: “Because we operated the systems ourselves for years, we were able to guide customers not just on the machine itself, but on how to redesign and scale their production processes around the technology.” The benefits of robotic additive manufacturing Image: Caracol. Instead of 3D printing small prototype parts, Caracol’s robotic systems manufacture large-scale marine structures, molds, and functional components for boats and yachts.  Rather than relying on traditional tooling or moulds, Caracol’s systems manufacture parts layer by layer directly from digital designs, helping companies reduce waste, lower production costs, and accelerate manufacturing timelines. Its core sectors today are transportation (including dual defence applications across maritime, aerospace, and land mobility), creative industries like architecture, construction, retail environments, and design applications using sustainable materials and customised geometries. The company launched a metal additive manufacturing platform around two years ago, expanding into energy applications, including propulsion systems, industrial components, and nuclear-related applications. The company is also exploring solutions for manufacturing in space. In maritime composite manufacturing, producing a component traditionally involves several months of lead time. It can take three to four months just to create the mould, then several more weeks to laminate and finish the part. Caracol eliminates the mold entirely. De Stefano detailed:  “You go directly into production and then perform the same finishing processes afterwards. In many cases, lead times are reduced by more than half.” This not only saves time but also money. A project with yacht makers Ferretti Group achieved cost savings of more than 30 per cent. The benefits also extend to waste reduction. In conventional aerospace tooling,  traditional manufacturing often wastes 70 to 80 per cent of the material during machining. With Caracol, waste drops to below 5 per cent. Caracol’s process also leads to significant weight reduction. In some cases, tooling components are now one-tenth the weight of traditional alternatives, making them much easier to move and manage in factories. Building a transatlantic manufacturing footprint  The company is currently the only large-format additive manufacturing player operating manufacturing facilities in both Europe and the US. According to De Stefano, Caracol made this decision early in recognition of how important the US market would become, particularly for aerospace, defence, and industrial manufacturing. In the US, manufacturers have historically relied more on very large and expensive gantry systems. Flexible robotic manufacturing is gaining momentum there now as companies increasingly understand the importance of deployable, localised manufacturing. Comparing the two markets, De Stefano said: “Interestingly, Europe is actually more advanced in robotics integration than parts of the US. I think that comes from Europe’s industrial heritage and manufacturing traditions. “One major difference is that US customers are generally faster to adopt new technology. There is less resistance from a mindset perspective and more willingness to take risks. At the same time, expectations around support and responsiveness in the US are much higher: “Customers expect you to be physically close, react quickly, and support them directly throughout implementation.” From supervised machines to autonomous manufacturing Automation within large-scale additive manufacturing has evolved rapidly over the past decade, shifting from highly supervised production environments toward increasingly autonomous and self-optimising systems. De Stefano describes progress in the sector as “dramatic”. In 2017, the company’s systems required constant oversight.  “Operators had to supervise the machines continuously and manually intervene throughout the process.” Today, he explained, “Caracol’s systems can operate lights-out for days at a time. Once the print is launched, the machine can run autonomously with very minimal intervention.” While there is still some manual work involved in setting up prints, loading materials, and post-processing parts, AI and machine learning are increasingly automating those operations as well. The next stage is machines becoming capable of understanding and optimising their own processes in real time. The company already has its Nexus software platform, which monitors large amounts of production data.  “Last year, we also launched our ADOS AI platform, which allows the system not only to monitor the process but to understand deviations from the target outcome and automatically adjust parameters live. That improves productivity, reduces waste, minimises downtime, and even enables predictive maintenance.” To support that vision, Caracol built its own integrated hardware, software, and automation ecosystem designed to centralise manufacturing intelligence across its global network. De Stefano explained: “All our systems connect through the Nexus platform, which allows us to aggregate and analyse production data globally. That means the machines are effectively learning from one another already. For Caracol, what began as an effort to “break the box” of traditional 3D printing has evolved into a broader vision of distributed, software-driven manufacturing systems. Its long-term ambition is not just autonomous machines, but globally connected manufacturing systems capable of collectively learning and improving over time. Rather than robots directly ‘talking’ to each other individually, the learning happens through a centralised data and software layer. The more data we gather across the network, the faster the systems improve collectively. “That’s really the long-term vision: globally connected manufacturing systems continuously learning and optimising together,” shared De Stefano.

When VivaTech first opened its doors in 2016, it gathered 45,000 visitors. This June, the 10th edition is expected to welcome more than 180,000 attendees from 171 countries, a 300% increase that reflects not just the event's growth, but the pace of transformation reshaping the global tech landscape. From 17 to 20 June at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles, VivaTech 2026 promises to be its most ambitious edition yet: 15,000 startups, 4,000 investors, 1,500+ live demos, and a program built around the questions that actually matter right now, AI and productivity, cybersecurity and defense, the energy transition, and the frontier technologies redefining what's scientifically possible. Here's a look at some of the conversations and speakers you won't want to miss. The Energy Transition Gets Real The climate debate at VivaTech 2026 moves past ambition and into execution. The Energy, Greentech & Mobility track tackles the uncomfortable math behind decarbonization: can renewables scale fast enough? Can AI be sustainable when data centers are consuming energy at record rates? Who pays for electrification and who profits? To answer these questions, VivaTech is bringing together some of the sector's most consequential voices. Lei Zhang, CEO of Envision, one of the world's leading renewable energy and smart energy companies, will be at VivaTech alongside Philippe Piron, CEO of Electrification at GE Vernova, the energy technology spin-off now at the center of the global grid modernization effort. François Provost, CEO of Renault, will represent the mobility side of the equation at a moment when the European automotive industry is navigating one of its most complex strategic pivots. Rounding out the track: Siddarth Singh, Co-lead of Energy and AI at the International Energy Agency, and Kate Williams, CEO of 1% for the Planet, bringing both data-driven rigour and accountability frameworks to a conversation that needs both. On the floor, startups like Nyobolt (ultra-fast charging), Bienesis (climate-resilient agriculture), and Tenaka (ocean regeneration, world exclusive) will demonstrate that the energy transition isn't a future story. It's shipping now. Tech Beyond the Obvious If one track captures why VivaTech still surprises after a decade, it's Tech Beyond the Obvious, dedicated to deeptech, radical science, and the innovations that seem implausible until suddenly they aren't. Jerry Chow, IBM Fellow and CTO for Quantum-Centric Supercomputing at IBM, will be at VivaTech to present the "quantum chandelier", a world exclusive demonstration of a system capable of computations that classical computers simply cannot perform, with applications in healthcare, telecommunications, and industrial optimization. On the space side, Helene Huby, Founder and CEO of The Exploration Company, represents a new generation of European private space ventures redefining what independent orbital infrastructure looks like. And Madeline Lawrence, Chief Growth Officer of Aikido, speaks to a parallel frontier: AI-assisted tools that detect and fix code vulnerabilities at the speed the threat landscape now demands. The track also features Adel Haddoud, CEO of Infinite Orbits, working on satellite life-extension technology, and world exclusives including Xpanceo's AI-powered smart contact lens capable of projecting information directly into the field of vision. Where Tech Leadership Gets Tested The Tech Leaders Summit, powered by QuantumBlack AI by McKinsey, Nebius and Orisha, is where the conversation shifts from what's possible to what's actually hard. CTOs, CIOs, CISOs, and CDOs gather to work through the tensions that don't resolve neatly on a slide deck: how do you harden cybersecurity while accelerating deployment? Where does digital sovereignty end and operational paranoia begin? When every layer of the stack is becoming intelligent, who actually controls it? The speaker lineup reflects the stakes. Elizabeth Stone, Chief Technology Officer at Netflix, brings the perspective of an organization that has made infrastructure a competitive advantage, and must now navigate what AI-native product development means at global scale. Jens Holtinger, CTO of Volvo Group, represents an industry in the middle of one of its most complex technological transitions: electrification, software-defined vehicles, and autonomous systems converging simultaneously. Damien Lucas, CEO of Scaleway, speaks from the front line of European cloud sovereignty, a question that has moved from policy debate to operational urgency. And Thomas Dohmke, Founder & CEO of Entire, brings a builder's perspective on what it actually takes to modernize enterprise infrastructure from the inside. At a time when cyberattacks surged 75% in a single year (Accenture, 2024) and AI is simultaneously the most powerful tool available to defenders and attackers alike, this forum is less a conference track and more a pressure test for tech leadership in real conditions. A New Format, A New Audience VivaTech 2026 also marks two firsts in the event's history. On 14 June, three days before the main event, VivaTech will take over the Champs-Élysées for a free, public-facing day of innovation, pedestrianizing one of the world's most iconic avenues and transforming it into an open showcase for AI, robotics, mobility, health, and climate tech. On 20 June, the general public day becomes the VivaTech Festival, opening the event's final day to 18-35-year-olds, with programming focused on AI & Society, the Creator Economy, and career opportunities in tech, including a dedicated Careers Festival and exclusive demos. Join VivaTech from June 17 to 20 at Paris Porte de Versailles. Book now at vivatech.com, before the robots do.

A London-founded payments fintech backed by US investment giant Bank of America has been acquired by Australia’s top business lender, the lender has announced.   Banked, founded in London in 2018, has built technology which allows users to pay online from their bank accounts, as opposed to using a credit or debit card. The payment method is known as account-to-account payments. The fintech has been acquired by National Australia Bank (NAB) for an undisclosed sum, with Banked boss Brad Goodall saying the deal will allow its tech to reach more people.   Banked, which is backed by Bank of America, Insight Partners and Citi, has raised over $50m in funding rounds. NAB is an existing customer of Banked, which has offices in London, Palo Alto and Vilnius, and has also invested in Banked via its venture arm.   Sources told Tech.eu that Banked would now be exiting the UK and US market and focus on Australia. NAB executive Shane Conway said: “Pay by Bank is part of a broader shift in Australia’s payments landscape toward real‑time, account‑to‑account options that sit alongside cards and digital wallets. Customers expect making payments to be fast, easy and reliable, and Banked helps us deliver that.” Goodall, Banked CEO and co-founder, said: “The Banked team have worked hard to build a globally proven payments platform focused on the modern demands of developers and merchants of all sizes and scale.  Having the backing of NAB will allow the platform to reach more customers.” Earlier this year, Tech.eu reported that Banked’s proposed acquisition of UK fintech VibePay did not go through, despite a press release announcing the deal last year.  Sources said the deal failed due to issues arising out of the due diligence process carried out by Banked.

In 2025, European energy tech companies raised €7.5 billion, with funding concentrated in large infrastructure-focused rounds spanning EV charging, battery storage, grid flexibility, home energy systems, and sustainable fuels. Debt financing played a major role, particularly among companies scaling capital-intensive assets such as charging networks and storage systems. Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, France, and Sweden stood out among the most active markets. The largest deals show investor focus on deployment-ready infrastructure, with EV charging companies IONITY, Electra, and Believ ranking highly, while battery and grid storage companies, including Green Flexibility, Zenobē, Lion Storage, Return, and Energy Vault, also attracted significant capital. Overall, 2025 points to a European energy tech market increasingly shaped by scale, infrastructure buildout, and the need to support electrification and renewable energy integration (for more detailed analyses of the European technology ecosystem, check out Tech.eu’s annual report: EuropeanTech 2025 - The Big Picture). Here are ten energy tech companies that raised the most in 2025 Amount raised in 2025: €600M IONITY is a European electric vehicle charging infrastructure company operating a high-power charging network across 24 countries. Founded in 2017 as a joint venture between major automotive manufacturers, the company provides ultra-fast EV charging services designed to support long-distance electric mobility across Europe. In 2025, IONITY secured €600 million in financing backed by nine European commercial banks to expand its network to more than 13,000 charging points by 2030. Amount raised in 2025: €500M Elvy is a Sweden-based energy technology company providing subscription-based home energy systems that combine solar panels, heat pumps, and battery storage with installation, maintenance, and energy management services. The company uses data analysis and AI-driven optimisation to help households reduce energy costs and increase energy self-sufficiency through fixed-price energy plans. Elvy raised €500 million to support the expansion of its home energy solutions platform and increase access to integrated residential energy systems. Amount raised in 2025: €433M Electra is a France-based electric vehicle charging company operating a network of ultra-fast charging stations across Europe. The company develops and manages high-power EV charging infrastructure designed to support long-distance electric mobility through a simplified charging experience, integrated software, and charging capacities of up to 400 kW. Electra secured a €433 million green loan in 2025 to support the expansion of its ultra-fast EV charging infrastructure across Europe, bringing its total funding to more than €1 billion. Amount raised in 2025: €400M Green Flexibility is an energy technology company developing, building, and operating large-scale battery storage systems designed to support grid stability and renewable energy integration across Europe. Founded by battery industry veterans, the company manages the full project lifecycle, from site development and permitting to financing, operation, and commercialisation, with a focus on flexible and grid-supportive energy storage solutions. In 2025, Green Flexibility secured €400 million from Partners Group for large-scale battery storage systems. Amount raised in 2025: €350M Lion Storage, part of Return and specialising in energy storage, focuses on the development and construction of large-scale battery energy storage systems directly connected to the high-voltage grid. The company aims to accelerate the energy transition by delivering reliable, efficient, and long-duration storage solutions that support a more sustainable and resilient power system. In 2025, Lion Storage secured €350 million in financing for ‘Mufasa’, one of Europe’s largest battery storage projects. Amount raised in 2025: £300M Believ is a UK-based electric vehicle charging infrastructure company developing and operating publicly accessible EV charging networks for local authorities, businesses, and landowners. The company provides renewable energy-powered charging solutions across on-street, destination, rapid, and ultra-rapid charging locations to support the expansion of electric mobility across the UK. Believ secured a £300 million investment facility in 2025 to support the installation of at least 30,000 public EV charge points across the UK. Amount raised in 2025: €325M Zenobe is an energy storage and fleet electrification company that develops and operates battery storage systems and electric vehicle infrastructure for public transport, commercial fleets, and power grids. Founded in 2017, the company focuses on supporting the transition to renewable energy and electric mobility through battery optimisation, grid services, and financing solutions. In 2025, London-based Zenobē secured €325 million in debt financing from a syndicate of seven international banks to accelerate electric vehicle fleet expansion across Europe. Amount raised in 2025: $378M Energy Vault is an energy storage technology company that develops and deploys utility-scale solutions designed to support the transition to renewable energy. Its technologies include gravity-based storage systems, battery storage, and hybrid hydrogen solutions, combined with software platforms that help utilities and industrial customers manage and optimise energy assets. Founded in 2017, the company is known for its gravity energy storage technology, which stores electricity by lifting heavy composite blocks using cranes and releasing the stored energy when the blocks are lowered to generate power for the grid. In 2025, Energy Vault secured $378 million across three funding rounds to support the continued development and deployment of its energy storage projects. Amount raised in 2025: €300M Return is an energy infrastructure company specialising in large-scale battery energy storage systems and flexibility services. The company builds, owns, and operates storage assets that help balance electricity supply and demand, integrate renewable energy, and improve grid stability. Return raised €300 million in growth capital in 2025, to scale battery storage capacity. Amount raised in 2025: €250M SkyNRG is a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) company founded in 2009 that focuses on sourcing, supplying, and producing high-integrity SAF to help airlines and corporates reduce the carbon footprint of air travel. SkyNRG works with global partners to scale SAF production, develop dedicated fuel plants, and make sustainable aviation a viable alternative to fossil jet fuel, supporting the aviation sector’s transition toward lower-emission flying. SkyNRG secured €250 million in 2025 to build SAF plants in the Netherlands, Sweden, and the US.

Zerops, a Platform-as-a-Service startup redesigning cloud architecture, has raised a $2 million seed round led by Gi21 Capital.  Zerops removes the separation between development and production environments, a long-standing flaw in cloud architecture that causes deployment failures for developers and AI coding agents alike. It creates a unified environment where applications behave identically from development through to production, enabling reliable deployments from the start. On Zerops, there are no environment tiers; applications run within a single project where code behaves the same way, regardless of scale. This means developers build, test, and deploy in genuinely identical conditions, eliminating an entire category of deployment failures. Because the infrastructure is consistent from the start, deploying a production-ready system requires a single click, not weeks of configuration.Zerops is built on its own bare-metal infrastructure, with data centres across Europe and the United States, enabling cost efficiencies that make it up to four times cheaper than legacy platforms. It runs applications in full Linux containers, not restricted app containers, giving developers the same level of access as on their own machines, including real-time visibility and control over running processes. The platform also includes more than 15 built-in services such as databases, search engines, and messaging systems, reducing the need for external integrations compared to the typical two or three offered by most platforms. As applications grow, they remain within a single environment, removing the need to re-architect infrastructure at scale.Aleš Rechtorík, co-founder and CEO of Zerops, said:  “Most platforms ask you to trust that development and production are close enough. We removed the gap entirely by rethinking how cloud architecture should work from the ground up. That's the same guarantee we now give AI coding agents, and it's why the code they produce is production-ready from the first deployment. What works once continues to work as applications scale. Our goal is to make running software predictable, not something teams have to constantly debug.”The company is also introducing Zerops Control Panel (ZCP), a feature designed for AI-driven development. ZCP connects AI coding agents, like Claude, Codex, or Gemini, directly to real cloud infrastructure inside a Zerops project, allowing them to build, deploy, and debug applications in real conditions rather than isolated environments. Because AI operates in the same environment used for production, the code it produces works from the start. Developers can collaborate with AI within the same workspace, reviewing and modifying outputs using their own preferred tools.According to Damir Špoljarič, founder of Gi21 Capital, the market is reaching an inflection point.: "Rising cloud costs are forcing a shift, while AI is changing not just how software is written, but who is building and running it. We’re moving from millions of developers to millions of developers working alongside AI agents. Most platforms weren’t designed for either of these changes.  Zerops was. Its economics come from owning the full stack, and its architecture works because it never abstracts away the underlying infrastructure." The new funding will be used to expand Zerops’ global infrastructure in the US and Asia, accelerate product development, and grow its team.

DDD Invoices, a Ljubljana-based company building API-driven infrastructure for global e-invoicing compliance, has raised a €1.31 million seed round backed by Fil Rouge Capital, 500 Global, and experienced operators from the ERP and e-invoicing ecosystem. The company is also supported by angel investors and advisors from the e-invoicing and ERP ecosystem, including former executives and founders from IFS, Pagero, Tickstar, Arratech, and Docupath. As governments increasingly mandate real-time e-invoice reporting to local tax portals, businesses and software providers face growing compliance complexity. Different countries apply their own formats, validation rules, and submission requirements, creating costly and fragmented integrations for companies operating across markets. DDD Invoices is building an API-first infrastructure designed to simplify this process. Through a unified API, the company connects ERPs, accounting systems, and SaaS platforms to tax portals, Peppol networks, and real-time reporting systems worldwide. Its platform automates the issuing, receiving, and archiving of tax-compliant e-invoices across jurisdictions while ensuring compliance with local Continuous Transaction Control (CTC), e-invoicing, and fiscalization requirements. The company uses proprietary AI-driven logic to transform standardised invoice data into local formats, validate invoices against current regulations, route them to the relevant tax systems, and return status information to the originating application. For unstructured files such as PDFs, DDD Invoices also applies AI-based document processing to extract and structure invoice data automatically. Denis Vehovec Pondelak, CEO and co-founder of DDD Invoices, said modern software companies are increasingly challenged by local compliance complexity as they scale across markets. Compliance is already not the most exciting part of building a company, but now it is becoming increasingly more complex due to governments tightening the regulations and companies scaling globally from the get-go. We’re building the infrastructure to take that off their plate. Founded by a team with more than 30 years of experience building business software, including ERP systems for public and private institutions, DDD Invoices is already working with companies such as Access Group, Zenoti, Logitude, and WheelSys across multiple global markets. The platform also offers native integrations with systems including Stripe, Bitrix, Shopify, and Chargebee. With the new funding, DDD Invoices plans to expand its country coverage, accelerate deployment and integration capabilities, and grow its product, engineering, and go-to-market teams.

UK company Fractile has today raised a $220M Series B as it continues to build next-generation inference hardware for AI. The round was led by Accel, Factorial Funds, and Founders Fund, with participation from Conviction, Gigascale, O1A, Felicis, Buckley Ventures and 8VC. Founded in 2022, Fractile is building next-generation inference hardware for frontier AI. Its thesis is that the next major limit on AI progress is the time and cost required to produce useful outputs at scale. As advanced AI systems take on harder, longer-running tasks that can require tens of millions of tokens to generate, Fractile is developing chips and systems designed to make faster inference economically viable, spanning AI research, chip microarchitecture, and foundry process innovation. According to a post by Walter Goodwin, CEO and Founder of Fractile, the company was founded on the bet that, eventually, the world’s most capable AI systems would be limited in their impact by the amount of time they take to produce useful outputs.  “We bet everything on the logical conclusion: that the only way to truly unlock this latent value, to make speed viable at scale, was to radically re-invent the hardware that we run our frontier AI models on. Ever since, we have been building chips and systems that tackle this problem.”   He contends that since then, raw AI capability has already reached the point where time from query to output is the key limit to frontier capabilities. As models have improved, so has their ability to be orchestrated over increasingly long output sequences. However, the unit economics of inference have become a brutal constraint. “Inference is both the revenue engine of the AI industry and the rate-limiting factor on expanding it.“ He further contends that today’s LLMs are already producing up to 100 million tokens in pursuit of tackling hard problems.: “At the ~40 tokens per second or so at which these models tend to run on existing chips, a single output of this length takes a month to complete. The technical and economic limits on inference speed, above all from memory bandwidth that has failed to scale on current architectures, are what is constraining progress. This is exactly the problem Fractile has been building from the ground up to tackle”.  Looking ahead, Goodwin sees value in not accelerating today's workloads, but rather in the entirely new workloads that hardware like Fractile will enable. The company is hiring across London, Bristol, San Francisco, and Taipei. 

A London-based AI startup set up just months ago, which believes it’s pursuing the fastest path to surpassing human intelligence, has today come out of stealth, having raised over $650m at a $4.65bn valuation. Called Recursive Superintelligence, the funding round was led by GV, Google’s VC arm, and US VC Greycroft, with participation from chip makers Nvidia and AMD. The disclosure of the funding round, follows previous reports about the expected raise. Recursive Superintelligence’s “bold bet” is that AI systems will improve themselves by analysing their own performance, without human intervention. The startup's co-founders include Richard Socher, its CEO, who was previously chief scientist at Salesforce, and Tim Rocktäschel, a professor of AI at London’s UCL and a former Google DeepMind scientist. Others who work at the startup, which has a team of less than 30, previously worked at Meta and OpenAI. The startup, which was incorporated in London and has offices in London and San Francisco, said a clear trend was emerging in AI. In a blog post on X, it said: "The fastest path to superintelligence will be realised by AI that recursively improves itself, and does so via open-ended algorithms that drive endless innovation. “We will first focus on the science of AI itself (by creating AI that improves AI), but the playbook we create will soon allow us to revolutionise every scientific discipline. The potential benefits for humanity of safely creating such an advance cannot be overstated.” Recursive Superintelligence is one of several new AI startups looking at new ways to make improvements in AI intelligence. These include Yann LeCun’s AMI Labs and David Silver’s Ineffable Intelligence.

Glocalzone, the platform connecting travellers with cross-border delivery requests, has been acquired by MovitOn as part of a deal focused on expanding peer-to-peer logistics infrastructure and integrating decentralised delivery technology. Founded as a marketplace linking travellers with users seeking international deliveries, Glocalzone has built a network of more than 1.3 million registered users. The platform says it has facilitated over 600,000 delivery orders, with users regularly posting travel routes across destinations including Turkey, Brazil, Mexico and the United States. MovitOn said the acquisition gives it access to an established international user base while expanding the reach of its decentralised logistics network. The company is developing a delivery platform that combines AI-powered courier matching with blockchain-enabled payment and verification systems. Following the acquisition, Glocalzone’s platform and user community will be integrated into MovitOn’s decentralised physical infrastructure network (DePIN), which uses smart contracts, escrow systems and token-based transactions to coordinate deliveries and payments. Doğan Turan, co-founder of Glocalzone, said the integration would combine the company’s existing marketplace with MovitOn’s AI-powered delivery infrastructure. The synergy between our trusted marketplace and MovitOn’s AI-powered courier-matching system is nothing short of transformative. We’ve spent years building trust among travellers and senders alike, and now, we integrate our 1.3 million users into a DePIN framework powered by smart contracts to eliminate all the pain points of today’s logistics systems. This is the moment peer-to-peer logistics truly goes mainstream and provides a secure, transparent alternative to models of the past. The integration process will begin immediately, with existing Glocalzone users gradually onboarded into MovitOn’s courier-matching platform, where delivery assignments are determined using factors including route, schedule and user reputation. The platform will continue operating under the name “Glocalzone by MovitOn” as the companies transition users to the updated infrastructure. MovitOn said loyalty programmes and transition tools will be introduced to support the adoption of its MVON token and broader Web3 payment ecosystem.

Gyver, the Italian startup developing workforce infrastructure for Europe’s industrial and energy sectors, has raised €1.4 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Brighteye, with participation from āltitude, Vento Ventures, Zanichelli Venture and existing investor Antler, alongside several business angels. Founded by Francesco Defendi, Leo Acciarri and Mattia Zarrelli, Gyver is focused on addressing the growing shortage of skilled blue-collar workers across Europe, particularly in sectors linked to electrification, energy and industrial infrastructure. As Europe accelerates investment into renewable energy, data centres and grid modernisation, demand for skilled electrical workers continues to increase. While there are currently around 28 million skilled blue-collar workers across the EU, industry estimates suggest an additional 5.8 million workers will be needed by 2030. Gyver has developed an AI-powered conversational hiring platform designed to replicate the referral and word-of-mouth processes commonly used by electricians to find work, while helping employers identify and access skilled workers more efficiently. The company plans to expand the platform beyond recruitment into areas including upskilling, learning and workforce productivity tools for electricians. Gyver says its long-term goal is to provide modern technical tools for tasks such as electrical design and PLC workflows, helping improve productivity across skilled trades. Francesco Defendi, co-founder of Gyver, said: We want the job of an electrician to be as cool as being a VC or a famous entrepreneur. Electricians are the most important yet neglected workers category in the modern economy. They embody the combination of brain and manual craft that cannot be replaced by AI, yet they have been left behind by modern technology. The future of work in the AI age is the future of manual craft. Gyver’s broader aim is to become a workforce platform for electrical employers, supporting hiring, workforce management and worker enablement. The new funding will be used to strengthen Gyver’s technology platform, including its AI agents and workflow systems, and to support growth while improving the experience for both electricians and employers.

Bucharest-based DesignVerse, the enterprise software startup using AI to modernise complex legacy systems, has raised more than $5.5 million in seed funding as demand grows for tools that can safely accelerate software development in mission-critical industries. The round included investment from Begin Capital, Gapminder VC, Underline Ventures, and strategic angel investors from companies including Adobe, LSEG and UiPath. Prior to the seed round, the company raised $850,000 in pre-seed funding to build its core platform and begin working with early enterprise design partners. Founded by former Oracle product design lead Andrei Manolache and software engineer Robert Dragutoiu, DesignVerse develops AI-powered infrastructure for organisations operating complex software environments across sectors, including aviation, finance, cybersecurity and government. The company’s platform generates software using a customer’s existing design systems, component libraries, technical documentation and internal rules, enabling applications to be built in line with current architectures and engineering standards. The approach is intended to reduce the manual translation between design and engineering teams, a process that often creates delays and inconsistencies in large organisations. While general-purpose AI coding tools have made it easier to create prototypes and simple applications, many organisations continue to face challenges integrating AI-generated software into production environments that require reliability, compliance and security. DesignVerse says its platform was built specifically for enterprise and mission-critical environments, where software must integrate safely with existing infrastructure. Andrei Manolache, CEO of DesignVerse, said large organisations still spend significant time translating product design into production-ready software, often leading to inefficiencies between teams. DesignVerse removes that friction by allowing teams to generate functional enterprise applications directly from their design systems, validate behaviour earlier with stakeholders, and streamline the transition from design to production. The new funding will be used to expand DesignVerse’s engineering team and accelerate growth across enterprise markets in Europe and the United States.

This week, Nordic Compass launches, a new pan-Nordic industry alliance for resilience and competitiveness.  The ambition is to move faster than the current European process and turn Nordic industrial strengths into concrete initiatives, aligned between the business community and the Nordic governments.  Initiatives in four critical areas will be presented at the Nordic Compass Summit in Gothenburg on 4-5 November. At the first summit this autumn, the alliance will launch concrete initiatives aimed at the Nordic capital markets, deep tech, defence, and energy that can be implemented and scaled up quickly. Nordic Compass is chaired by former Prime Minister of Finland, Jyrki Katainen. The ambition is to strengthen Nordic and European resilience and competitiveness amid rising geopolitical tensions. The Nordic countries are individually small but are regarded among the best in capacity for innovation. Taken together, the Nordic Region ranks among the world's largest economies, yet industrial cooperation across the region remains underutilised, according to the alliance. Nordic Compass gathers more than 25 leading Nordic companies, foundations and organisations as partners in various capacities, including Aker ASA, Aker Solutions, Alfa Laval, atNorth, Carl Bennet AB, Chr. Augustinus Fabrikker, Danfoss, Embla Medical, EQT, Ericsson, EY, The Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, KONE, Kromann Reumert, McKinsey & Company, Nasdaq Nordic, Nokia, Nordea, Nordic Innovation, Novo Nordisk Foundation, Nscale, Saab, SEB, Vattenfall, Wallenberg Investments, and Ørsted. An advisory board to Nordic Compass will provide national insights through eight representatives from the Nordic countries, including Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Åland, as well as the Secretary General of the Nordic Council of Ministers. Lead image: Markus Esselmark.

Healthtech startup Corti today announced the launch of the Startup Acceleration Program, a no-equity initiative providing healthcare AI builders worldwide with access to the same clinical-grade models that power AI for highly regulated systems across Europe and the US. The grant-funded program aims to help founders ship and scale at a moment when the regulatory bar for healthcare AI has never been higher. Check out our earlier interview with Andreas Cleve, CEO and co-founder of Corti. Copenhagen-headquartered Corti offers healthcare a frontier lab for clinical-grade AI. Symphony, its flagship clinical-grade AI model, powers clinical and administrative applications for EHR vendors, virtual care platforms, practice management systems, and life sciences organisations worldwide. It serves over 100 million patients annually across health systems, including the NHS.  Symphony has outscored OpenAI on HealthBench Professional, the company’s new healthcare benchmark. Healthcare AI builders now face tightening regulation in every major market - from the FDA's expanded AI/ML guidance in the US to new lifecycle accountability requirements in Canada and the UK. But Europe is the most acute case. In the past four weeks, OpenAI rolled out free clinical AI  to every verified American physician. One week later, OpenEvidence — a clinical AI platform used daily by 40 per cent of US physicians and valued at $12 billion — withdrew from the UK and European markets, citing regulatory uncertainty around the EU AI Act.  The high-risk system requirements that drove that decision will come into force for medical AI on August 2, 2026. Europe has emerged as the toughest proving ground for clinical-grade AI - and the asymmetry is sharpening. EU MDR certification alone now costs founders between €200,000 and €600,000 per device and takes 12 to 18 months. Capital is concentrating in larger, later-stage rounds, with investors increasingly favouring companies with proven clinical evidence and workflow integration. The structural difficulty is real enough to deter horizontal players - and the vertical products built on them - from competing in Europe, implying a narrower path for the next wave of healthcare AI builders to succeed there at exactly the moment they are needed most. But the reality is that the conditions making Europe hard for horizontal players are the same conditions that Corti was built for:"The future of healthcare AI won't be built by one company. It will be built by thousands of teams, each with deep knowledge of a specific care setting, workflow, or patient population," said Andreas Cleve, co-founder and CEO of Corti.   "Our job is to give those builders a head start: the leading clinical AI model, the evidence base behind it, and a path to production we've already navigated for regulated health systems. So they can focus on what only they can do - the workflow, the patient population, the problem they actually understand." Among the hundreds of development teams already building on Corti is Aisel Health, a European startup building AI for psychiatry. Check out our earlier interview with Augusta Klingsten Peytz, co-founder of Aisel.According to  Augusta Klingsten Peytz, co-founder and CEO of Aisel Health, Psychiatrists are a scarce and highly specialised resource.  “They should be focused on one thing only: making clinical decisions - everything else needs to go. Yet today, the majority of a psychiatrist’s time is spent not on clinical decision-making, but on the administrative and repetitive workflows surrounding it. By using Corti, we at Aisel can focus on delivering specialised psychiatric workflows that help clinicians regain capacity, rather than rebuilding the clinical-grade foundation underneath.” The Startup Acceleration Program includes: Up to $5,000 in credits across the full Symphony stack - Agents, Medical Coding, Speech-to-Text, and Text Generation - built on over 1.5 million hours of clinical audio. Support from Corti's clinical and regulatory team to navigate EU AI Act, MDR, and data residency requirements. Dedicated time with Corti's AI experts to scope product roadmaps and architect the right system before code is written. Founder-led webinars on industry developments and Corti's own roadmap. Invitations to Corti events in New York, Copenhagen, London, and Berlin Applications open today, reviewed on a rolling basis with a one-week turnaround. No pitching, no committee, no equity. Open to worldwide pre-seed through Series B companies building in healthcare, clinical workflows, or adjacent life sciences.

BioInnovation Institute (BII) is launching AI Lab, a new innovation platform designed to support the commercialisation of artificial intelligence research and accelerate the development of early-stage AI startups in Denmark. The initiative is backed by € 7 million (DKK 60 million) in funding from the Danish Industry Foundation and aims to strengthen collaboration between startups, researchers and industrial companies while helping bring AI-based technologies to market more quickly. AI Lab will be operated by BII, which, since 2018, has supported more than 140 startups across life sciences, quantum technology and biosolutions with funding, infrastructure and commercialisation support. Through the AI Lab, BII will expand its activities into artificial intelligence, focusing on helping startups develop scalable AI solutions and attract external investment. The programme will provide selected startups with non-dilutive financial support, access to datasets from Danish companies and institutions, computing infrastructure, technical guidance and connections to potential customers through BII’s industry network. AI Lab will also include an AI-focused accelerator programme designed to help startups become investment-ready and launch pilot projects more quickly. According to BII, the initiative is intended to address the gap between Denmark’s strong digital infrastructure and the slower adoption and commercialisation of AI technologies within the Danish industry. Jens Nielsen, CEO of BII, said Denmark has strong foundations for AI development due to its digital infrastructure, publicly available data, research environments and industrial base. With AI Lab, we at BII aim to create a hub where the right stakeholders can meet and collaborate to turn advanced AI into solutions that make a tangible difference in industry. The goal is quite simply to shorten the path from a good idea in an academic environment to implementation in the market. At BII, we have proven that we are good at this in other areas, and we hope the same will be true for AI. Thomas Hofman Bang, CEO of the Danish Industry Foundation, said AI is increasingly becoming a core part of how companies operate and compete, making stronger collaboration between academia, startups and industry increasingly important. The new platform forms part of BII’s broader efforts to support science-based innovation and help research-driven startups scale commercially across Denmark and internationally.

Sir Demis Hassabis has hailed a multi-billion-dollar investment in the startup he founded which was spun out of Google DeepMind and focuses on leveraging AI to help drug discovery as a “massive vote of confidence”.  Isomorphic Labs said it has raised $2.1bn in a Series B funding. The funding round was led by existing investor Thrive Capital, the US VC, with participation from existing backers Alphabet, Isomorphic's parent company, and its venture captial unit, GV.   New investors include Singapore's Temasek, Google’s growth fund arm CapitalG, and the UK Sovereign AI Fund. Hassabis, CEO and founder of Isomorphic Labs, who also heads up Google’s AI offering, said: “This funding round is a massive vote of confidence from a diverse group of top-tier international investors in our AI-first approach to drug design and development. "Now that we have shown our approach is fundamentally sound, our focus is on scaling our technology to its full potential. This capital injection allows us to build out our drug design engine at scale, driving us forward in our mission to solve all disease." Isomorphic Labs is built on software that DeepMind developed, including its Nobel Prize-winning AlphaFold, which predicts protein structures. Isomorphic Labs is researching treatments for cancer and immune disorders. Isomorphic Labs said the new funds will be geared towards the development and deployment of Isomorphic Labs' AI drug design engine (IsoDDE), with the aim of speeding up and expanding its pipeline of therapeutic programmes. The funding would also be used to recruit top-tier AI, engineering, drug design, and clinical talent, it said. Isomorphic Labs raised $600m in May last year, marking its first external funding round.

N8n, the Berlin-based startup which helps businesses automate tasks, has more than doubled its valuation to $5.2bn in less than a year following a strategic investment from German software giant SAP, it said today. SAP’s investment in n8n comes courtesy of an n8n secondary share sale, which brings SAP to the n8n cap table for the first time. SAP was the only new investor taking part in the secondary share sale, which has led to a more than doubling of n8n’s valuation, from $2.5bn to $5.2bn in less than a year, n8n said.  N8n did not disclose further details about how much SAP had invested in n8n. N8n calls itself an “AI orchestration platform”. Its tech allows businesses to connect hundreds of different apps and services and automate many business tasks, including integrating large language models, as well as leveraging AI agents to simplify business tasks. Alongside the investment, n8n and SAP have struck a multi-year commercial deal. This will see n8n being available inside SAP’s AI agent offering, called Joule Studio, which allows users to create and manage their own AI agents. This will mean that instead of switching between different apps, developers can build complex AI workflows within SAP using n8n’s canvas. Jan Oberhauser, founder & CEO, n8n, said: "For n8n, securing SAP as a strategic investor marks a pivotal moment. As one of the world's largest enterprise software companies, its decision to back n8n and to embed us inside Joule Studio reflects genuine confidence in our platform and our vision." Christian Klein, CEO, SAP SE, said: "To provide accurate and secure business outcomes at scale, agentic AI must be grounded in deep process knowledge, reliable data, and enterprise-grade governance. By integrating n8n into Joule Studio, we're accelerating SAP's ability to help customers design, connect, and scale agentic AI across their core business processes."

Paymentology, the global issuer-processing platform for banks and fintechs, has secured a $175 million investment co-led by Apis Partners and Aspirity Partners. Founded to help financial institutions modernise payment issuing systems, Paymentology provides real-time card and payment processing technology for fintechs, digital banks and retail banks operating across multiple markets. The company says its platform addresses limitations associated with legacy issuer-processing systems, which continue to slow innovation and agility across parts of the global payments industry. Its multi-cloud platform enables clients to adapt payment programmes across different regulatory and market environments while managing card and digital payment experiences in real time. Jeff Parker, CEO of Paymentology, said legacy financial systems continue to create friction across the industry, adding that the company aims to help clients respond more quickly to changing market demands: We’ve built an issuing platform designed for growth, helping digital banks, fintechs and financial institutions launch, scale and expand their card programmes with confidence. By combining global capability with the flexibility to adapt locally, we enable our clients to compete more effectively with speed, control and efficiency, in an increasingly dynamic landscape. Paymentology has seen continued growth across digital banking, embedded finance, digital asset-linked card programmes and expense management platforms, alongside established financial institutions modernising legacy systems. The company’s customer base is geographically diversified, with significant exposure to growth markets across the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia-Pacific. The investment will support Paymentology’s international expansion, product development and team growth as demand increases for cloud-native issuer processing technology. The company said the funding will also support expansion into areas including credit, stablecoin infrastructure, tokenisation and AI-driven financial services.

The CEO of Sweden-based healthtech startup Tandem Health said it is “very difficult” for US competitors to compete against Tandem Health in Europe, amid a push from European healthcare providers to work with European businesses. Speaking on the Tech.eu podcast, Lukas Saari, Tandem co-founder, said: “We have very much taken the full European focus, we are a full-on European company. “Everyone is based here; we only have European-based investors. I think this has helped us a lot in many of the discussions and that it would be very difficult for the US-based competitors to come into Europe and compete.” Saari’s comments come amid a push from some European tech leaders and politicians to become less reliant on US tech amid fluctuating relations with President Trump. Saari has previously said that in procurement, European governments and public services increasingly prefer working with European businesses. Tandem, which is powered by LLMs, offers clinicians an AI co-pilot that generates medical notes during patient consultations. Tandem’s co-pilot has evolved from solving the niche use case of medical note taking, expanding to a full medical assistant, which now includes referral notes and patient communications before, during and after patient visits. In July last year, Tandem raised $50 million in a Series A round after a $10m seed round in 2024. Its investors include Kinnevik and Northzone. Tandem, which employs around 170 people, is focused on the European market, with the UK, where NHS clinicians use it, being its biggest market in terms of user numbers. Elsewhere in the podcast, Saari discusses Tandem’s use of LLMs, the possible threat from AI giants to its business, as well as Tandem’s future plans.

Ventory, the inventory management platform connecting enterprise ERP systems with field operations, has raised €2.65 million in a funding round led by KBC Securities, with participation from existing investors Finindus, Matterwave and delaware. Founded by Vishal Punamiya, Ventory develops software designed to help organisations manage inventory across field operations, including service vans, depots, consignment stock and customer sites. The platform integrates with enterprise systems, including SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Sage, providing companies with real-time visibility into inventory once it leaves the warehouse. The company says its platform replaces manual and disconnected inventory processes often managed through spreadsheets, paper-based workflows and fragmented tools. “From vans and trunk stock to consignment, field service depots and customer sites, Ventory replaces the Excel spreadsheets, Google Sheets, paper tickets and disconnected tools that have historically governed billions of euros of field inventory,” said Vishal Punamiya. The platform integrates natively with SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Sage, and is newly ISO/IEC 27001 certified. Ventory now supports some of the most operationally complex organisations across multiple industries. Today, Ventory is used by organisations across seven countries, including healthcare providers, medical distributors, energy producers, asset managers, a national railway operator and a medical robotics manufacturer. The new funding will be used to expand Ventory’s AI product roadmap and ERP integrations, support geographic expansion across Western Europe, and grow its enterprise go-to-market team. The investment also forms part of KBC Group’s broader €100 million initiative announced last year to support the Belgian startup ecosystem through early-stage and follow-on funding programmes linked to Start it @KBC and KBC Securities.