Despite a decline in deal activity, May saw a significant increase in capital invested across European tech compared to April. A total of 258 funding deals were announced in May, down from 290 in April, representing an 11 per cent decline in deal activity. Despite the lower number of transactions, European startups raised €10.5 billion, more than double the €5.1 billion recorded in April, pointing to a month driven by larger funding rounds. Companies Out of 258 deals in May, 15 companies raised more than €100 million each. The value of 31 deals remains undisclosed. The month's biggest deal came from UK-based data centre operator Pure Data Centres (Pure DC), which secured more than €2.3 billion in debt financing. Together with Nscale's €675 million debt raise, the deals highlight strong investor confidence in the infrastructure needed to support growing demand for AI and cloud computing. Industries Cloud was the leading sector by investment volume in European tech startups in May 2026, capturing 28.6 per cent of the month’s total funding, at €3 billion. Countries The UK emerged as the top fundraising market in May, securing €7.9 billion over 70 transactions. Exits Europe recorded 39 exit activities in May, with M&A activity characterised by strong cross-border consolidation across the region. Germany emerged as the largest source of acquisition targets, while France, the UK, and Germany were among the most active acquirors, highlighting the increasingly interconnected nature of Europe's tech ecosystem. Grab the PDF version of this report with a foreword by Ben Gibson, Partner, Ashgrove Capital, for even more critical insights.

Enera, an AI-powered driver experience platform for electric vehicle charging, has raised $2 million in funding. The round was led by Lakehouse Ventures, marking the firm's first investment outside the US, with participation from Divergent Capital, Masia and a group of angel investors, including several founders from across the mobility and technology ecosystem. As electric vehicle adoption continues to grow, charging reliability remains a key challenge for both drivers and operators. While charge point operators often report high charger uptime, a significant proportion of charging sessions still fail, creating a disconnect between network performance metrics and the real-world experience of drivers. According to the company, one of the reasons for this gap is the industry's limited visibility into the causes of failed charging sessions. Customer support is frequently handled through outsourced call centres, making it difficult for operators to capture and analyse the information needed to identify recurring issues and improve service quality. To address this, Enera has developed a platform that combines driver support interactions, telemetry data and backend system logs into a single operational view. Its AI-powered Control Room helps operators understand why charging sessions fail and identify where the customer experience is breaking down. The platform also enables operators to deploy AI support agents that can assist drivers, troubleshoot issues, monitor charging networks and proactively intervene before problems escalate. Operators can't see where their experience is breaking down, and users carry the cost. We are building the AI recovery layer for that entire category of infrastructure, says Nicholas Marquardt, co-founder and CEO of Enera. The company believes that improving the visibility of charging failures and automating support workflows can help operators increase charging success rates while providing drivers with faster and more effective assistance. Enera will use the funding to accelerate pilots already underway with leading UK charge point operators and support its expansion across Europe. The company also plans to further develop its AI platform and expand its capabilities across driver support, network monitoring and operational insights.

Dutch healthtech startup OurMind has raised €2.1 million in funding to expand its AI platform for healthcare providers as demand from hospitals continues to grow. The round was led by 4impact capital, with additional participation from a group of general practitioners and medical specialists. The investment comes at a time when healthcare systems are facing mounting pressure. Waiting lists continue to grow, administrative workloads are increasing, and healthcare professionals are working longer hours, contributing to declining job satisfaction across the sector. Founded by former orthopaedic surgeon Paul Koning and backed by healthcare professionals, OurMind develops AI solutions designed to reduce administrative burdens and support clinicians before, during, and after patient consultations. The company works closely with hospitals and healthcare providers to ensure the safe and practical implementation of generative AI in clinical settings. Healthcare professionals involved in the funding round believe wider adoption of supportive technologies is needed to help address growing pressure on the healthcare system and reduce burnout among medical staff. By automating time-consuming administrative tasks, the company aims to give healthcare providers more time to focus on patient care while helping preserve job satisfaction across the profession. OurMind initially launched Notes, an AI-powered tool that converts consultation conversations into medical documentation. Today, the platform is used by more than 300 general practices and 14 hospitals. The company is now expanding its offering with additional tools for consultation preparation, administrative support, and patient communication, while continuing to develop a broader AI platform that adapts to the needs of individual healthcare professionals. The new funding will enable the company to scale its platform and meet increasing demand from healthcare organisations. Beyond supporting the adoption of AI, the company says its broader goal is to help ensure high-quality healthcare remains accessible despite growing workforce constraints.

Funding activity among European cloud companies in 2025 was characterised by a small number of large transactions alongside a broader range of early- and growth-stage rounds. The largest deals accounted for a significant share of the total capital raised, reflecting the substantial funding requirements of cloud and AI infrastructure businesses. Geographically, funding activity was spread across Europe, with the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Spain and the UK emerging as the most active markets. While Western Europe continued to dominate in terms of deal volume and capital raised, companies from Central and Eastern Europe also secured notable investments, highlighting the growing maturity of the region's cloud ecosystem. Funding activity was concentrated in growth-stage companies, with Series A, Series B and Series C rounds accounting for the largest share of capital raised. At the same time, seed, pre-seed, convertible and other funding rounds indicate continued investment across earlier stages of company development. The range of financing structures, including equity rounds and convertible notes, reflects the diversity of the sector, spanning both capital-intensive infrastructure businesses and software companies focused on cloud management, optimisation and automation. Overall, the data highlights the diversity of Europe's cloud ecosystem, spanning AI infrastructure, sovereign cloud, cloud optimisation, developer platforms and data management technologies (for more detailed analyses of the European technology ecosystem, check out Tech.eu’s annual report: European Tech 2025 - The Big Picture). Amount raised in 2025: $1.53B Nscale is an AI infrastructure company that provides a full-stack AI cloud platform, combining GPU cloud services, AI software tools and data centre infrastructure. Its platform enables enterprises, developers and governments to train, fine-tune and deploy AI models at scale, with a focus on performance, resilience and efficiency. In 2025, Nscale raised approximately $1.53 billion across two funding rounds ($1.1 billion in September and $433 million in October) to expand data centre capacity and support the growth of its global AI infrastructure. The company has continued its rapid expansion in 2026, securing approximately $4.19 billion in equity, debt financing and infrastructure funding commitments to accelerate the development of AI infrastructure worldwide. Amount raised in 2025: $1B Nebius is an AI infrastructure company that provides cloud computing services designed for AI development and deployment. The company offers access to high-performance GPU clusters, cloud platforms and managed infrastructure that enable businesses, researchers and AI startups to train, fine-tune and run machine learning models at scale. Nebius combines purpose-built AI infrastructure with software tools and services aimed at supporting the full AI lifecycle, from model development to production deployment. In 2025, Nebius secured $1 billion for AI cloud platform development. Amount raised in 2025: $108M Cast AI is a cloud optimisation and automation platform that helps organisations reduce cloud infrastructure costs and improve the performance of Kubernetes workloads. Using automation and machine learning, the platform continuously analyses cloud environments to optimise resource allocation, automate scaling and increase infrastructure efficiency across major cloud providers. Cast AI serves enterprises and software teams looking to simplify cloud operations while improving reliability and cost control. In 2025, Cast AI raised $108 million to help businesses run AI and Kubernetes workloads more efficiently. Cast AI became Lithuania's fifth unicorn in 2026, surpassing a $1 billion valuation following a strategic investment and expanding its cloud and AI infrastructure. Amount raised in 2025: $45M NexGen Cloud is an AI infrastructure company that provides sovereign AI cloud services, GPU computing and large-scale AI infrastructure for enterprises, developers and AI startups. Through its Hyperstack platform, the company offers on-demand access to high-performance NVIDIA GPUs, enabling customers to train, fine-tune and deploy AI models at scale. Founded in 2020, NexGen Cloud focuses on delivering secure, scalable and sustainable AI infrastructure powered by renewable energy across Europe and North America. NexGen Cloud raised $45 million in 2025 to expand its hyperscale infrastructure globally, with a particular focus on building sovereign AI infrastructure across Europe. Amount raised in 2025: €28.8M Impossible Cloud Network (ICN) is a decentralised cloud infrastructure platform that connects enterprise-grade hardware providers into a distributed network for cloud computing, storage and networking services. The company aims to offer a scalable alternative to traditional hyperscale cloud providers by leveraging underutilised infrastructure, enabling businesses and developers to access cloud resources with greater transparency, resilience and cost efficiency. In 2025, Impossible Cloud Network secured €28.8 million to become an alternative to “monopolistic hyperscalers”. Amount raised in 2025: $21M E2B is a cloud infrastructure platform designed for AI applications and AI agents. The company provides secure, isolated cloud environments where developers can run code, execute tasks and build AI-powered workflows, enabling AI systems to interact with tools and external data safely. Its platform is designed to simplify the deployment of AI agents while providing the scalability and reliability required for production environments. E2B raised a $21 million Series A round in 2025 to expand its secure, scalable infrastructure platform for deploying AI agents in enterprise environments. Amount raised in 2025: $10M Akamas is an AI-powered cloud optimisation platform that helps organisations improve application performance while reducing infrastructure costs. The platform continuously analyses application and cloud environments, automatically identifying and implementing resource configuration changes to optimise performance, efficiency and sustainability. Akamas is designed for enterprises running complex workloads across cloud-native and Kubernetes environments. In 2025, Akamas raised $10 million to fuel international growth, invest in product development and scale its cloud optimisation technology for enterprise environments. Amount raised in 2025: $10M StackGuardian is a cloud infrastructure automation platform that helps organisations manage, provision and govern cloud resources across multiple environments. The platform combines infrastructure-as-code, policy controls and workflow automation to streamline cloud operations, improve compliance and reduce manual effort. Designed for DevOps, platform engineering and cloud teams, StackGuardian enables organisations to deploy and manage cloud infrastructure more efficiently at scale. StackGuardian raised $10 million in Series A funding in 2025 to accelerate its expansion across Europe and the US and further develop the AI capabilities of its infrastructure automation and orchestration platform. Amount raised in 2025: €7.5M PoliCloud is a French sovereign cloud infrastructure company that develops and operates a network of modular micro-data centres for AI, high-performance computing and secure data storage. Its distributed cloud platform enables public institutions, enterprises and local organisations to run workloads on locally governed infrastructure designed to provide greater data sovereignty, energy efficiency and resilience than traditional hyperscale cloud models. PoliCloud raised €7.5 million in seed funding in 2025 to expand its sovereign cloud infrastructure platform, grow its operating team and support international expansion, with a particular focus on serving public sector organisations across Europe. Amount raised in 2025: €3.3M Internxt is a cloud storage company that provides privacy-focused file storage, backup and file-sharing services. The company uses end-to-end encryption and a zero-knowledge architecture to ensure that users retain control over their data, while offering a secure alternative to traditional cloud storage providers. Its platform is designed for both individuals and businesses seeking greater privacy, security and data ownership in the cloud. Internxt raised €3.3 million in 2025 to expand internationally and further develop its privacy-focused cloud and digital services platform.

TurnUp, the Ghent-based startup helping dental and medical practices reduce no-shows and last-minute cancellations, has raised €2 million in a seed funding round led by Newion, with participation from RDY Ventures. Missed appointments remain a costly challenge for healthcare providers. No-shows are estimated to cost the healthcare sector hundreds of billions of euros annually, while reception teams often rely on manual processes such as phone calls, waiting lists and appointment reminders to fill vacant slots at short notice. TurnUp was founded in 2022 by Nicolas De Bruyne and Jona Decubber, with Koen Lepez joining as CEO in 2024 after initially investing in the company. The startup has developed an AI platform that integrates with existing practice management systems to predict no-shows and automate follow-up actions. By analysing historical patient data, scheduling patterns and external factors, the platform identifies appointments at risk of being missed and proactively engages patients through targeted communications. In addition to its predictive capabilities, the platform automates tasks such as appointment confirmations, cancellations, rescheduling and waiting list management. Its AI receptionist, Elissa, can contact patients across multiple languages and outside regular office hours, helping practices reduce administrative workloads and make better use of available appointment capacity. Today, TurnUp serves more than 250 practices across Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK, covering more than 2,500 dentists. According to the company, the platform has helped prevent more than 500,000 no-shows while saving receptionists and practice managers tens of thousands of hours of administrative work. We always start from the same question: how do we make sure every chair in a practice is filled? No-shows are the biggest obstacle to occupancy. In Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK, we've shown we can solve that problem. Now we want to do the same for every care practice in Europe and then the US. The scale is there, says Koen Lepez, CEO of TurnUp. The company will use the funding to expand its commercial operations, strengthen its technical team and accelerate growth in the UK, where it is already running a pilot programme with a group of 400 healthcare practices.

Warsaw-based sunbay.io, a platform helping finance teams recover overdue invoices faster, has raised €550,000 in funding from Kogito Ventures, with participation from s20 and a group of angel investors, including Jostein Håvaldsrud, CTO of Kahoot. The company already works with more than 20 businesses across five countries, collecting payments from customers in 30 markets. For growing companies, collecting overdue payments is often a manual and time-consuming process. Finance teams must track outstanding invoices, send follow-ups, manage exceptions and decide when to escalate cases, often relying on spreadsheets, email threads and basic accounting-system reminders. While ERP and accounting platforms can send standard payment reminders, they are not designed to manage collections according to each company's workflows and customer relationships. As a result, a process that directly affects cash flow still requires significant manual effort. sunbay.io was founded by Filip Szczeciński, Dawid Dzierzyński and Nikodem Cabała after conversations with finance leaders revealed how much time teams spent managing receivables. The founders set out to automate the process while keeping finance professionals involved where judgement is needed. In our conversations with CFOs and CEOs, one sentence kept coming back: 'I hate working with invoices.' It wasn't that companies didn't know how to collect their receivables. The problem was that a process that directly affects their liquidity still depends on manual work. We built sunbay.io so that companies can automate this process on their own terms and bring the team in only where human judgement is actually needed, says Filip Szczeciński, co-founder of sunbay.io. The platform connects directly to invoice data and automates collections according to each company's rules. It follows up on overdue payments via email, SMS and AI voice calls, manages escalations, provides a branded payment portal and involves finance teams only when decisions require human input. sunbay.io is now expanding the platform with predictive insights and additional automation. The product already surfaces credit-scoring and payment-behaviour signals to help teams identify at-risk accounts before they become seriously overdue. Future AI agents will automate further tasks, analyse payment data and support faster decision-making. Built for European finance teams, the platform keeps customer and receivables data within the EEA, avoids transatlantic data transfers and is designed with GDPR compliance at its core.

Mendo, the French startup helping enterprises adopt generative and agentic AI, has raised €12 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Ventech and Educapital, with participation from Tomcat and OVNI. The funding will support the company’s continued product development, team growth and expansion across Europe. Despite rapid advances in AI technology, many organisations still struggle to move beyond experimentation. While businesses are investing heavily in AI initiatives, turning them into widely adopted and impactful solutions often requires more than the technology itself. Successful deployment depends on integrating AI into everyday workflows and ensuring employees are equipped to use it effectively. Founded in 2021, Mendo was built to address this gap. Its platform acts as a bridge between AI tools and the people expected to use them, helping organisations turn AI investments into measurable business outcomes. Through its platform, Mendo helps organisations identify practical AI use cases, encourage adoption across teams and maximise the value of their AI initiatives while supporting employees throughout the transformation process. The emergence of agentic AI is changing how organisations deploy AI. As AI becomes embedded across business functions, the challenge shifts from implementing technology to transforming how people and processes work. Mendo helps companies identify where AI can create the most value, determine where agents should be deployed and support adoption across teams. With agentics, AI changes status: it is no longer a tool that saves you a few hours a week, it becomes the layer that orchestrates and governs all of a company’s operations. No company will pull off this transition without bringing its people along and changing the way it is organised. Our role is to make that adoption possible at scale, without leaving anyone behind, explains Quentin Amaudry, CEO and co-founder of Mendo. With this new funding, Mendo will focus on three priorities: strengthening its analytics capabilities to help organisations identify high-impact AI use cases and measure adoption, which early results show can be up to six times higher than with traditional approaches, doubling its workforce from 50 to 100 employees, primarily across product, engineering and sales, and accelerating its expansion across key European markets to meet growing demand for AI adoption support. The funding marks an important milestone for Mendo as it seeks to help more organisations translate AI investments into measurable business value and sustainable adoption at scale.

NEURA Robotics has announced up to $1.4 billion in Series C funding to accelerate the development of its physical AI platform. Investors include Tether, Qualcomm Technologies, Amazon, NVIDIA, imec.xpand, Bosch, Schaeffler, the European Investment Bank, Lingotto Horizon, InterAlpen Partners. According to the company, this is the largest funding round ever for a full-stack robotics company. NEURA is creating a new category of AI infrastructure where cognitive robots continuously learn, collaborate, and operate in real-world environments on a shared, intelligent platform (Neuraverse).  Unlike traditional robotics companies that rely on isolated machines or limited industrial automation, NEURA combines robotics, AI, sensors, edge computing, and large-scale learning infrastructure into a unified platform architecture that can be deployed globally. With this capital, NEURA will scale mass production to millions of robots by 2030 and accelerate the global rollout of NEURA Gyms – the world's first real-world training environments for cognitive robots and physical AI. “The future of AI won’t simply take place on screens,” says David Reger, founder and CEO of NEURA Robotics. “It will move, interact, learn, and work alongside us in the real world. We are convinced that physical AI and cognitive robotics will lead to one of the biggest technological leaps of the coming decades. They will fundamentally transform entire industries, from manufacturing and logistics to healthcare, services, and household robotics.” NEURA's strategic partnerships include leading industrial and AI companies, such as Bosch, Schaeffler, Kawasaki, Qualcomm Technologies, Amazon, and NVIDIA, positioning the company at the intersection of robotics, industrial automation, and artificial intelligence. The company's current order backlog and strategic deployment pipeline exceed $1 billion. With AI moving into the physical world, NEURA sees its next decisive competitive advantage in combining intelligence with real-world interaction, sensing, and scalable infrastructure.  "In the future, people won’t just ask what AI can tell them,” says Reger. “They’ll ask what AI can physically accomplish.”

CapsaAI, the startup building an AI operating system for private capital, has raised $18 million in a Series A round co-led by TX Ventures and Pivot Investment Partners, with significant participation from Bek Ventures. Existing investors, including Antler, Outward VC and Cornerstone VC, also participated in the round alongside a group of industry angel investors, including Indeed co-founder Paul Forster. To date, Capsa AI has raised $20 million. Private capital firms manage more than $15 trillion in assets, yet much of the industry's information remains spread across emails, PDFs and spreadsheets. As data volumes continue to grow, investment professionals often spend significant time searching for and analysing information, creating operational challenges across sourcing, due diligence, portfolio monitoring and back-office functions. Founded by Danyal Oezduezenciler and Callum Downie, Capsa AI was built to address this challenge by creating a unified knowledge layer across a firm's existing systems, including CRM platforms, Outlook, SharePoint and proprietary data sources. The platform captures how a fund operates and makes institutional knowledge searchable and accessible through AI-powered workflows. According to Danyal Oezduezenciler, CEO and co-founder of Capsa AI, private capital is among the world's most data-intensive industries, yet it has historically lacked technology tailored to its needs. We set out to build the platform that changes that - one that encodes how a fund thinks and operates and then executes on it. The technology is already used by several large private capital firms and indexes millions of internal documents, conversations and records, enabling investment teams to access information more efficiently while meeting enterprise security and compliance requirements. Capsa AI plans to use the new funding to accelerate its expansion in the US market, grow its engineering and go-to-market teams, and further develop the platform's agentic AI and indexing capabilities.

A new AI roll-up fund is launching in Germany, as investor appetite for trying to yield returns by buying a group of established companies and revamping them with AI continues apace. Generation Tech Partners has raised more than €50 million, with the funds used to acquire German SME service providers, then overhaul them with AI. An AI roll-up strategy can be described as a company acquiring several companies in a sector, such as accounting, IT or insurance, and then leveraging AI to make the acquired companies more efficient.  Major US VC firms like General Catalyst, Lightspeed and Thrive Capital are making AI roll-up plays. Earlier this year, Berlin-based investment firm Tenet emerged out of stealth with an €80m target for its debut AI roll-up fund. Hamburg-based Generation Tech Partners will use an AI roll-up strategy to acquire German owner-managed service companies during succession planning and merge them into larger companies. It said many owner-managed service companies face closure and struggle with a skilled-labour shortage. The plan is to acquire around 30 companies, which will be restructured using AI. The plan is then to sell the companies on after five to seven years, according to Germany's Manager Magazin title. The focus is on acquiring firms with between €0.5 and €5m EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation). Generation Tech Partners said it will “bring them into the digital future with a proprietary AI transformation playbook. No cost-cutting, no job losses — on the contrary: the existing team stays on board, grows along, and delivers noticeably better service to customers”. The founders behind Generation Tech Partners are Elias Bitzer, an M&A expert previously with Deutsche Bank, Sebastian Herfurth, a former lawyer and entrepreneur, and Daniel Szabo, an experienced operator for digital transformation. The investment firm has raised the funds from funds of funds, Access Capital Partners and Qualitas Funds, as well as a European pension fund, and entrepreneurial private investors and family offices. IMAGE: PIXABAY

Estonian medtech company Nanordica Medical has raised €1.6 million to launch wound dressing for fast healing of chronic wounds. The round was led by Estonian fund 2C Ventures, with participation from existing investors, Specialist VC, Superangel, Amalfi, the Health Founders syndicate led by Erki Mölder, and the EstBAN syndicate led by Heidi Kakko and Martin Goroško. Around 100 million people worldwide have chronic wounds that fail to heal. More than half of these wounds become infected, often leading to severe complications such as sepsis, amputation and death. Diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) are the leading cause of infections and leg amputations among chronic wounds.  Every 20 seconds, someone with diabetes loses a leg due to amputation. Often called a “silent killer,” DFUs have five-year mortality rates and treatment costs comparable to cancer. Systemic antibiotics are currently the only treatment recommended for infected wounds by DFU treatment guidelines. However, they often fail to reach wound sites at sufficient concentrations. Their use is also increasingly restricted due to the rise of antimicrobial resistance. Existing antibacterial dressings are not recommended by wound care guidelines largely because most lack clinical evidence. In addition, to effectively treat infection, many antibacterial dressings typically contain high concentrations of antibacterial agents that can delay healing by damaging healthy skin cells. Nanordica Medical is addressing this challenge through its patent-protected Premotiv technology, which prevents infection and promotes wound healing simultaneously.  By overcoming the longstanding trade-off between antimicrobial activity and skin-cell safety, Premotiv enables faster wound healing and is suitable for both infected wounds and wounds at risk of infection. Nanordica's Premotiv dressing has demonstrated a 43 per cent reduction in wound area after just one week of treatment, compared to 13 per cent with standard silver dressings, in a randomised controlled trial involving 30 patients with diabetic foot ulcers. The study was recently published in the scientific Journal of Wound Care. In addition to the already published pilot study with 30 patients, Nanordica Medical is currently conducting a multicentered, double-blind, randomised clinical trial in patients with diabetic foot ulcers.  With more than 120 patients already enrolled, it is one of the largest studies of its kind. It is expected to generate strong clinical evidence supporting reimbursement, future treatment guideline recommendations and broader clinical adoption of Nanordica's technology.  “Antimicrobial resistance is one of the defining healthcare challenges of this decade and most wound care products are making it worse. Nanordica has built a clinically proven alternative that doesn't rely on antibiotics, doesn't compromise healing, and leaves a significantly smaller environmental footprint. We backed the team because they had both the science and the conviction to see this through”, says Martin Koppel, the Founder Partner of 2C Ventures. Nanordica Medical launched its first veterinary wound care product, Ravimus Vet, in 2023. The product has received positive market acceptance and is currently distributed in six countries. The human product will be launched following CE marking. The company has also recently been granted a European patent, strengthening its market defensibility and supporting the expansion of its product portfolio. These activities, including the ongoing multicentre clinical trial, were supported by a €2.4 million European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator grant. “This financing round will enable us to complete a large randomised clinical study, strengthening the economic case for Premotiv and finalise CE marking for commercial launch in Europe. Our clinical data suggest that Premotiv® helps wounds heal faster by managing infection without compromising the natural healing process. Faster healing has the potential to reduce complications, lower treatment costs and improve outcomes for patients with chronic wounds”, said Olesja Bondarenko, CEO and co-founder of Nanordica Medical.

RAISE Summit 2026 is one of Europe’s most influential and fastest-growing AI events, bringing together CEOs, senior leaders, innovators, developers, investors, corporates, and policymakers from around the world. The two-day summit attracts more than 9,000 attendees, with over 80% at C-level, founder, or senior decision-maker level, and features 350 speakers, making it a uniquely high-level forum for shaping the future of AI. What sets RAISE apart from many other AI conferences is its strategic focus on B2B enterprise adoption and high-value networking, prioritising measurable deal-making over general discussion. The 2026 agenda reflects this directly, with sessions spanning AI infrastructure and compute economics, sovereign AI strategy, enterprise ROI, agentic AI deployment, and frontier research. Including panels such as Infrastructure as Destiny: The Compute-Capital-Cloud Trinity, Cracking the ROI Code: Is Intelligence Meeting the Income Statement?, and Sovereign AI: Piece by Piece. The 2026 speaker lineup brings together some of the most consequential voices in global AI: Yann LeCun — AMI Chairman, former Meta Chief AI Scientist Mark Cuban — Entrepreneur & Dallas Mavericks Owner Amin Vahdat — Chief Technologist & SVP, AI & Infrastructure, Google Pat Gelsinger — Playground Global, formerly Intel CEO Charlie Kawwas — President, Broadcom Lin Qiao — Co-founder & CEO, Fireworks AI Marco Argenti — CIO, Goldman Sachs Mark Papermaster — CTO & EVP, AMD Nelson Griggs — President, Nasdaq Olivier Pomel — CEO & Co-Founder, Datadog Scott Wu — CEO & Co-Founder, Cognition AI …alongside representatives from OpenAI, Anthropic, NVIDIA, Oracle, BlackRock, McKinsey, and many more (see the full agenda here). A standout feature is the invitation-only CxO Summit, an annual programme designed for Fortune 1000 executives and senior leaders to benchmark AI strategies, address complex policy and governance challenges, and forge high-value partnerships. Sessions include From Chatbots to Co-Workers: Deploying Agentic AI at Scale and Engineering ROI into Enterprise AI, featuring executives from Mercedes, Capgemini, AXA, Adecco, and Sodexo. This curated experience provides an intimate forum for key decision-makers to share firsthand insights and discuss frontier issues in international AI within a private setting. RAISE also hosts the world's largest AI-focused hackathon, where thousands of the global top 1% of AI development talent collaborate on practical solutions to real industry challenges, alongside the world's largest AI startup competition, featuring a €10M+ prize pool and 1,500 applicants. The summit experience is further elevated by premium gatherings across the city as part of RAISE Week: a series of AI-centric events spanning all industry verticals. These include an AI Gala held at the Chateau de Versailles in the evening prior to the main event, as well as MACHINA Summit, Europe's leading Physical AI and robotics event. MACHINA Summit is focused on artificial intelligence that operates in the real world, through humanoid robots, industrial automation systems, and advanced human–machine interfaces. Debuting its first edition in Paris on July 7, 2026, the event brings together founders, engineers, industrial leaders, investors, researchers, and policymakers building and deploying intelligent physical systems. Sessions span humanoid robotics, industrial automation, robot training through simulation and real-world data, and the AI architectures powering next-generation machine intelligence, with headline speakers including Carolina Parada (Head of Robotics, Google DeepMind), Bernt Børnich (Founder & CEO, 1X), and Jonathan Hurst (Co-founder, Agility Robotics). For anyone operating in the Physical AI space, MACHINA is an unmissable addition to the week, and the perfect primer before RAISE Summit takes center stage. Recognised globally for its scale and momentum, RAISE was described at its 2025 edition by Eric Schmidt, former CEO & Chairman of Google, as "the fastest-growing AI tech conference in Europe, and maybe in history. " Ultimately, RAISE Summit has become a mandatory governance and tangible growth milestone for anyone operating seriously in the AI ecosystem. To learn more about RAISE Summit 2026 and view the full agenda, please visit the official website.

Uncovr, a surgical AI startup focused on clinical documentation and workflow intelligence, has raised $7 million in seed funding. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from Seedcamp, Frst, No Label Ventures, Entrepreneurs First, and a group of healthcare and technology operators, including Digital Surgery founder Jean Nehme, Color Health CEO Othman Laraki, and Meta board member Charlie Songhurst. Founded in 2025 by Ines Iraki, Johann Diep, and Professor Eric Vibert, Uncovr develops AI technology that analyses surgical procedures and automatically generates operative reports and procedural coding recommendations from surgical video and intraoperative workflow data. The company is addressing a longstanding challenge in healthcare documentation. Although an increasing number of surgical procedures are captured through video, particularly in robotic and minimally invasive surgery, operative reports are still largely written manually after procedures have taken place. These reports form the official clinical and legal record of a surgery and play a critical role in patient care, hospital reimbursement, compliance, and future treatment decisions. Uncovr's platform analyses surgical and endoscopic video recordings in real time to create structured procedural records and draft documentation before surgeons leave the operating room. All outputs are reviewed and approved prior to submission. According to the company, grounding documentation in procedural data rather than recollection can improve clinical accuracy, coding quality, reimbursement integrity, and continuity of care. The platform also creates searchable procedural records that can be used across quality assurance, compliance, research, and operational workflows. The company says early deployments have also highlighted documentation-related reimbursement gaps that often go undetected through conventional review processes, underscoring the operational and financial impact of incomplete surgical reporting. Beyond documentation and coding, Uncovr aims to transform surgical procedures into structured clinical datasets that can support future healthcare systems, research initiatives, and AI-enabled surgical technologies. Uncovr is already working with hospitals in the United States and Europe and says its deployment pipeline includes more than 400 operating rooms. Thousands of hours of surgical procedures have been analysed through the platform to date. The new funding will support continued product development, expansion of hospital deployments, and further development of the company's AI models for surgical documentation and workflow analysis.

Legora is opening offices in Paris, Milan and Madrid and aims to more than double its workforce to 700 across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) over the next 12 months, it said today. The Swedish AI legaltech is upping its footprint across Europe, as it looks to have offices in key markets to be close to its customers, it said. Legora currently employs around 650 employees globally with European offices in London, Stockholm and Munich. Just over half of the 650 are based in EMEA, with Legora saying it aims to grow its EMEA headcount to over 700 in the next six to 12 months. Its offices in Paris, Milan and Madrid will open in Q3 this year, it said. Max Junestrand, CEO and co-founder of Legora, said: “Our customers in these countries have built Legora into the way they work. Opening offices in Madrid, Milan and Paris means we can be genuinely close to them as we build the future of the platform together." Legora, valued $5.6bn earlier this year, is backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, Iconiq, General Catalyst and Nvidia. The Stockholm-based startup, which competes against US rival Harvey, also said it is opening an engineering hub in London, which will be based in Legora's existing London office. Junestrand added: "Engineers who understand how AI applies in professional contexts are disproportionately concentrated in London.” It will complement Legora's existing engineering hubs in Stockholm and New York. Legora, which has made several small acquisitions this year, says it now serves over 1,200 law firms and in-house legal teams across more than 50 markets.

Finnish industrial AI startup Rotomate has raised €2.1 million in pre-seed funding, led by Kvanted, with participation from Robin Capital, Angel Invest, Accel through its scout programme, and Business Finland through an AI development grant. Additional backing came from angel investors, including Moaffak Ahmed. Founded in 2024 by Mikko Kuusisto and Dr Jesse Miettinen, Rotomate develops AI software designed to help industrial companies improve equipment reliability and reduce unplanned downtime. The company is addressing a challenge facing many industrial plants: while organisations have invested heavily in sensors and condition monitoring systems, the availability of specialists capable of interpreting the resulting data has not kept pace. As a result, maintenance teams often struggle to determine which alerts require immediate attention and which can be safely deprioritised. According to Mikko Kuusisto, co-founder and CEO of Rotomate, improving industrial reliability is often constrained not by a lack of data but by the limited capacity of experts to continuously analyse and act on it. We built Rotomate to scale that expertise, so that every plant can act on the most up-to-date data around the clock. Rotomate's platform acts as an AI-powered reliability assistant, continuously analysing machine and operational data alongside maintenance records and historical context. Rather than simply generating alerts, the system provides recommendations, root-cause analysis, and suggested actions intended to support maintenance and reliability teams in decision-making. Dr Jesse Miettinen, co-founder and CTO of Rotomate, said the company is focused on moving beyond traditional monitoring systems that generate alerts by providing automated analysis and recommendations that replicate expert decision-making at scale. According to the company, the platform can significantly reduce the time spent on manual monitoring activities while making expert-level analysis available across a larger number of assets within industrial facilities. The new funding will support further product development and international expansion, while enabling the company to grow its engineering, product, and commercial teams as demand for industrial AI solutions continues to increase.

UK healthtech company 01Health has raised $15 million in Series A funding to support the rollout of its healthcare platform across the UK and expand its operations in the United States. The round was led by Gresham House Ventures, with follow-on participation from existing investors Balderton Capital, Eka Ventures, and Wavemaker360, alongside angel investors including Blockchain.com co-founder Nicolas Cary. Founded in 2022 by former NHS doctor Dr Sonia Szamocki, 01Health develops technology that enables local clinics to provide specialist healthcare services that have traditionally been concentrated in hospitals and larger urban centres. The company was established to address barriers to accessing specialist care, including workforce shortages, geographic constraints, and infrastructure limitations. To support this approach, the 01Health platform combines specialist oversight, clinical protocols, patient communication tools, operational workflows, and AI-powered patient acquisition into a single system that enables specialist services to be delivered through local clinics. The technology has so far been used primarily within 01Health's own healthcare services, including the orthodontics platform 32Co and dental sleep medicine provider Aerox Health. Through 32Co, the company has built a nationwide network of providers offering specialist orthodontic treatment across the UK, serving as an early application of the platform. While 01Health initially focused on dentistry, the platform has been developed to support a broader range of healthcare specialities, with trials already underway in additional clinical areas beyond dental care. The new funding will support the commercial launch of the 01Health platform as a standalone offering, allowing practices, clinic groups, and dental service organisations to license and deploy the technology directly. As part of this rollout, the company is introducing the platform publicly for the first time as infrastructure that supports the delivery of specialist care while maintaining clinical oversight and operational consistency. The funding will also be used to support the company's expansion into the United States.

Aavuus, a Finnish building infrastructure for orbital safety, has raised Pre-Seed funding from Maki.vc.  Aavuus is building a global network of ground-based laser stations designed to push object tracking in Low Earth Orbit well beyond the limits of today’s commercial systems, unlocking a level of precision and detection capability the market has not had access to before. The result is faster, far more precise orbital data that gives operators a stronger basis for space situational awareness and collision avoidance.  Aavuus is addressing a growing operational challenge as space becomes harder to use safely.  ESA estimates that more than 1.2 million debris objects over 1 cm are already in orbit, while only a fraction are regularly tracked.  The 1–10 cm debris population is a critical blind spot for operators — too small and numerous to be routinely tracked by existing systems, yet large enough to disable or destroy a satellite on impact. In the busiest low-Earth orbits, collision avoidance is already routine, and the gap between what operators need and what current systems provide is widening. Aavuus is built to close it.  Aavuus is a spinout from the Finnish Geospatial Research Institute, bringing rare institutional expertise in satellite laser ranging and space geodesy to a problem that has so far outpaced commercial tracking capabilities.   The team has been further strengthened with the appointment of former US Army Aerospace Defence Officer Brian Dunne as Chief Commercial Officer,  whose hands-on experience combating aerospace threats positions the company to address growing demand from the defence sector.  According to Joonas Jokela, CEO, Aavuus: "This funding allows us to move from development work into execution. Our focus now is building the MVP, proving performance, and starting to work with customers who need better debris tracking data in real operations." Wilson Tukiainen, Maki.vc, shared:  "The space economy is adding satellites faster than existing systems can keep up, and the gap between current tracking capabilities and what operators actually need is widening. The Aavuus team brings deep expertise in laser ranging and space geodesy to a problem that is becoming impossible to ignore. We believe they are building infrastructure that orbital safety will  increasingly depend on."  Aavuus’ immediate focus is building its first MVP and getting that capability into the hands of early customers. 

Deeptech energy startup Granarium Technologies, spun out from VTT, has raised over €1 million Pre-Seed funding. BSV Ventures and Beamline led the round, with participation from FiBAN (Finnish Business Angels Network), EstBAN and LatBAN.  VTT has transferred the underlying technology and IP to the newly established company. Grid volatility is increasing across Europe, while EU requirements, including grid codes and resilience frameworks, are tightening. The transition to renewable energy and electrification is creating structural demand for fast-response power storage, with UBS forecasting global energy storage demand to grow by approximately 40 per cent year over year in 2026. Granarium’s renewable energy storage technology is built on a nanocellulose-based material platform that binds biocarbon structures for power storage, enabling up to 80 per cent lower production capital expenditure in safe, scalable, and locally producible systems.  “A key structural shift is that storage is no longer just ‘backup power’ – it is becoming core grid infrastructure. Granarium is the perfect addition to our portfolio because the company is solving a massive global challenge in a safe and scalable way. We were also impressed with the company’s technology and experience, as well as the capacity to use local raw materials to make the production process sustainable and inexpensive,” says Jana Budkovskaja, Partner at BSV Ventures.  The company has secured pilot customers and key value chain partners and is preparing to launch its first pilots within six months of funding, focusing on process industries and continuously running production operations. Initial commercial production will begin at a small industrial scale, with capacity to deliver up to 50 units per year, forming the basis for rapid scale-up through industrial partnerships and international market expansion.  “Our approach supports Europe’s strategic goals of reducing dependency on critical raw materials and building local, resilient energy infrastructure. The new technology offers an easily scalable, self-sufficient solution that removes complex logistics chains and enables simple production using locally sourced materials. Deployment is as simple as installing a battery,” says Granarium CEO Paula Viinamäki.  Granarium’s first-of-its-kind technology can upcycle waste materials to create 100 per cent renewable supercapacitors that store electricity. The system acts as a fast-response layer within energy systems, complementing batteries and addressing short-duration power needs such as grid balancing, frequency response, and industrial power quality. The devices help manage peak loads, improve power quality, and manage distributed power generation.  “Granarium demonstrates how successful technology transfer can turn advanced bio-based materials into real industrial solutions for secure and resilient energy storage,” says Atte Virtanen, Vice President, Advanced bio-based materials at VTT.   Granarium will use the funding to industrialise its patented renewable supercapacitor technology for grid stabilisation and industrial applications, both increasingly challenged by electrification, renewable integration, and power quality demands.  Lead image: Granarium team members: Vesa Kunnari, Paula Viinamaki and Otto Ville-Kaukoniemi. Photo: uncredited. 

Finnish spacetech company ICEYE has raised €450 million in a primary Series F funding round led by General Atlantic, at a valuation of over €10 billion. Together with a secondary placement, the total Series F funding round exceeds €1 billion.  ICEYE delivers persistent monitoring capabilities to detect and respond to changes anywhere on Earth and owns the world's largest and most advanced SAR (synthetic aperture radar) satellite constellation. Its constellations serve customers in defence and intelligence, environmental monitoring, insurance and emergency management. We enable fast decisions that contribute to a safer future. Seven governments to date across Europe have procured sovereign satellite systems from ICEYE. The company recently delivered a fully operational sovereign space system to the Polish Armed Forces, from contract signing to operational capability in 12 months, among the fastest sovereign space deployments in history. The model is now being replicated across Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and the pace is accelerating. Additional investors include Solidium, Tesi, Varma, Ilmarinen, Lifeline Ventures, as well as Nokia from Finland, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and TCV.  According to Rafal Modrzewski, Co-Founder & CEO of ICEYE, sovereign intelligence from space is entering a new era and the window to build it is now. "ICEYE has built the world's most advanced, proven capability to meet that demand. This funding enables us to accelerate the delivery of new capabilities to governments and customers faster than ever before."  Sascha Günther, Managing Director, Head of DACH, and Co-Head of EMEA Technology at General Atlantic, said: “ICEYE has fundamentally redefined Earth observation. The company pioneered the shift to next-generation, agile satellite fleets that deliver greater strategic capability with far greater cost efficiency – and today operates the world’s largest and most advanced SAR constellation on a vertically integrated platform. Rafal and the team are taking breakthrough technology from innovation to commercial and operational success at scale, and we believe global structural demand for ICEYE’s intelligence will continue to accelerate." Nokia joins the funding round as a new strategic investor.  Justin Hotard, President and CEO of Nokia, said: “Modern defence increasingly depends on combining trusted connectivity with real-time visibility. Nokia and ICEYE bring complementary strengths that can help advance Europe’s defence, resilience and technological sovereignty. This combination will become increasingly important as governments and industries look to build more secure, aware and adaptable critical systems.” This Series F follows a period of significant momentum for ICEYE. In 2025, ICEYE scaled growth, profitability, and cash generation simultaneously - crossing over €250 million in revenue, and over €100 million in EBITDA, while building a contracted backlog of over €1.5 billion. Production is now doubling, from 50 satellites per year today to a target of 100 annually by 2028 and beyond, supported by a matching launch cadence. Proceeds from the funding round will drive the expansion of ICEYE’s global footprint and deepen its intelligence capabilities, positioning the company to meet growing demand and deliver sovereign intelligence systems and data to governments and customers at a new scale. 

Munich EVTOL company ERC System today announces the launch of “Victor”, a dual-use heavy-lift cargo UAS (Uncrewed Aircraft System) designed for critical missions in fields such as defence, commercial logistics, and disaster response.  Presented publicly at ILA Berlin 2026, Victor aims to close a military capability gap through a scalable, deployable solution for infrastructure-independent, uncrewed aerial logistics capable of carrying payloads over 200 kg. I spoke to Maximilian Oligschläger, ERC’s Chief Commercial Officer, to learn more. From medical air mobility to military logistics Founded in 2020, ERC System develops electrified aviation solutions for critical missions. The company’s hybrid-electric aircraft take off vertically like helicopters, but fly forward wing-borne, like aeroplanes. They provide high speeds, long ranges, and cost-efficient operations for cargo,  patient, and passenger transport as well as uncrewed utility applications.   Victor builds on ERC’s experience designing, building, and flying some of the European Union’s largest electrified aircraft, positioning the company for commercial entry in 2028.  ERC’s product portfolio includes Victor, an uncrewed hybrid-electric lift-and-cruise eVTOL aircraft designed for logistics missions, and Charlie, a crewed eVTOL developed for patient and passenger transport. Victor is scheduled to enter service in 2028, with Charlie expected to follow in 2030. Check out our earlier interview with ERC System CEO Dr David Löbl.  Through its Charlie programme, ERC has already developed and tested multiple full-scale, full-mass prototypes. Before Victor, there was the full-size, full-mass prototype Romeo, in which the company began flight testing its full-size Romeo prototype in November 2025.  Operated remotely in an uncrewed configuration, Romeo has a take-off weight of approximately 2.7 tonnes and is believed to be the heaviest uncrewed eVTOL currently flying in the EU, based on publicly available information. It follows the earlier Echo demonstrator, which validated core capabilities such as controlled lift-off and stable hover while providing valuable system-level data for subsequent aircraft development. According to Oligschläger: “When we first came out of stealth, and people saw what we were building, we were approached by various defence stakeholders. They found the technology interesting because, just like in the civilian market, an eVTOL aircraft can operate at low cost." He explained that for military users, low maintenance requirements and the ability to fit into containers are also very important. “At the same time, with everything happening politically, we started asking ourselves how we could contribute using the technology we were already developing.  We realised we were in a strong position to build such an aircraft. Development costs are significantly lower than for a crewed aircraft, which meant Victor could reach the market around three years earlier.” Targeting Europe's missing logistics capability Victor is designed to address a critical gap in defence logistics recognised across Europe. While small drones can carry payloads below 50 kg and crewed aircraft can transport larger loads, there is currently no widely available, cost-effective uncrewed platform capable of delivering payloads exceeding 200 kg over long distances at high speed. This leaves military operators with few options when ground transport is blocked, and crewed flights are considered too risky. Designed for infrastructure-independent operations, Victor can transport up to 250 kg of payload over distances of up to 300 kilometres at a cruise speed of 250 km/h. Its hybrid-electric lift-and-cruise architecture combines vertical take-off and landing with efficient wing-borne flight, enabling access to austere locations while delivering greater speed, range and cargo throughput than conventional multicopter systems. The aircraft can carry up to two pallets and perform cargo-drop deliveries, eliminating the need to land in hostile or otherwise unsuitable environments. Oligschläger explained that “Victor also benefits from everything we've already built. And so will Charlie as the next step. We use the same suppliers, the same production approach and, in many cases, the same customer relationships.” Further, because Victor is fully uncrewed, its development costs are substantially lower than those of a crewed aircraft, enabling the company to bring the platform to market around three years earlier. Victor’s operating costs are also approximately 70 per cent lower than those of a small helicopter, according to Oligschläger. “When customers buy an aircraft, they look at lifetime operating costs rather than purchase price alone. We can’t disclose exact figures, but both acquisition and operating costs are significantly lower than those of comparable helicopters,” he said. Dual-use logistics, civilian certification ERC has set 2028 as the target for first deliveries, a challenging goal only few European companies would be able to achieve.  “We are confident about our timeline, given our 6-year experience building some of the  heaviest electrified aircraft in the EU,”  Oligschläger explained.  “Combined with strategic partnerships, particularly focused on industrialisation, we believe we have the capabilities to help close the gap quickly.”   With Victor, ERC System is pursuing a civil certification pathway that can also be recognised by military operators. The platform is initially focused on logistics missions, including transporting spare parts, equipment and supplies to remote or hard-to-access locations. In the longer term, it could also support casualty evacuation missions — without the cost and risk of a crewed aircraft. Beyond defence logistics, ERC sees early demand across offshore and coastal logistics, critical infrastructure maintenance, remote industrial operations, and emergency response.  Many of the organisations already working with ERC System on its Charlie platform could also become Victor customers. In terms of defence, most missions are expected to take place behind the front line rather than directly in combat zones, but operating in contested environments still raises challenges, particularly around GPS jamming, spoofing and other forms of electronic warfare that can disrupt navigation and communications. The company has therefore had to consider how the aircraft can maintain reliable operations in environments where satellite navigation cannot be assumed. According to Oligschläger, Victor already has some characteristics that help. It's capable of flying at around 250 kilometres per hour which allows it to reduce exposure to certain threats. “At the same time, Victor needs to remain affordable. It's a logistics asset. We don't want it to be as expensive as a helicopter. In a worst-case scenario, operators must be willing to lose the aircraft without losing a massively expensive platform.” “The European eVTOL industry is not dead” The 2010s saw a wave of enthusiasm around eVTOLs, which were widely touted as the future of urban mobility, regional air travel, and cargo transport. However, the demise of German eVTOL pioneers like air-taxi companies Volocopter and Lilium highlighted just how difficult it is to develop, certify, manufacture and finance an entirely new class of aircraft. Oligschläger argues, however, that the setbacks faced by some high-profile air taxi ventures should not be mistaken for a broader failure of the technology. Instead, he believes the market is maturing, with demand increasingly concentrated around practical, mission-driven applications. “The most important thing is that the European eVTOL industry is not dead. Victor is the first product where I've genuinely felt strong product-market fit. Customers are approaching us asking when it will be available rather than needing to be convinced why they need it. That changes the dynamic completely. It doesn't feel like we're pushing technology onto the market. Instead, we're responding to a capability gap that customers have already identified for themselves.” Oligschläger attributes ERC Systems’ success to a number of factors: “First, we started later. Companies such as Lilium and Volocopter had to prove the technology itself. Today, customers already understand the potential. Second, we brought in strategic investors early. IABG contributes expertise as well as capital. Third, we've focused on critical missions that already exist today, such as patient transport and military logistics. These are services that society already depends on.” Further, Victor is a stepping stone towards Charlie. Rather than jumping immediately to a large crewed aircraft, its building experience, production capability and customer relationships gradually. Oligschläger acknowledges that the industry has learned some hard lessons. “There have been a lot of lessons learned. We initially wanted to build a fully electric aircraft, but we shifted to a hybrid-electric approach because we realised range and speed still matter. An aircraft with limited endurance and lengthy charging times simply isn't practical for many of the use cases we're targeting,” he said. “The uncrewed eVTOL sector is still a relatively new market that has only really emerged in the last few years. Before that, most companies were focused on crewed eVTOLs.” Meanwhile, smaller uncrewed VTOL aircraft are demonstrating strong commercial and operational momentum in mission-critical applications. Companies such as Wingcopter, which specialises in medical and cargo deliveries, and Quantum Systems , whose aircraft are used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, have shown that there is significant demand for VTOL platforms where they solve clear operational problems. Building Europe's eVTOL ecosystem More broadly, though, Europe has lacked the same level of government support that we've seen in the United States. Oligschläger asserts: “Policymakers didn't fully appreciate the importance of building this industry early enough. I've spent a lot of time talking with both German and European politicians. I ask them a simple question: do we want this industry in Europe? Because if we don't actively support it, we risk losing it to the United States and China.” ERC Systems wants the government to help foster an ecosystem of innovation and successful commercialisation: “This isn't just about funding companies. Building an industry means creating regulations, training pilots and operators, establishing maintenance networks and creating an ecosystem around the technology. The US has been much more proactive in saying, "We want this industry, and we're prepared to support it." The positive thing is that this is starting to change. Over the last few months, we've seen growing political recognition of the opportunity. Competition is healthy. We need multiple successful companies if we're going to build a sustainable industry.” From here, ERC System’s goal is to enter service by 2028. It’s currently focused on manufacturing, suppliers, and potential construction sites, and, together with its investor, IABG, is evaluating where and how it should build the aircraft. “We're not vertically integrated. We won't manufacture every component ourselves. We source major systems and focus on assembly, which makes scaling more manageable,” shared Oligschläger. Whether ERC System can deliver on its ambitious 2028 timeline remains to be seen. But as Europe looks to strengthen both its industrial base and defence capabilities, the market for autonomous heavy-lift aircraft appears far more tangible today than the air-taxi dreams that once dominated the conversation.