Copenhagen-based Nordic Salt Cycle has raised €3.5 million in pre-seed funding to commercialise its molten salt technology for the cost-effective, scalable recovery of critical minerals from sources such as electric vehicles, wind turbines and consumer products. The round includes investment from EIFO, Denmark’s state-owned green transition investment fund, existing investor The Footprint Firm, and German fund AnandaImpact Ventures. Founded in 2024, Nordic Salt Cycle is developing molten salt processes for recovering critical and strategic minerals from end-of-life products such as electric vehicle batteries, wind turbines and electronics. Its patented technology is designed to provide a scalable, lower-cost route to high-purity materials, supporting the transition to a more circular and economically sustainable mineral economy. The company’s modular approach aims to change how critical materials are recovered by providing a faster and more sustainable option compared to conventional recycling methods. According to Stefan Vilner, CEO and co-founder of Nordic Salt Cycle, the company’s technology platform has the potential to significantly improve the recovery of critical materials such as lithium and rare earth elements: Working with our business partners, we can now recover critical minerals from electric vehicle batteries to start with and have the potential to expand our platform into other areas, thereby closing the circular loop at low cost and with high scalability. Nordic Salt Cycle plans to use its technology to turn end-of-life products, including batteries and permanent magnets, into a viable supply of critical minerals.  The company’s prototype is already operational, and tests show that its molten salt technology can separate and extract materials far more efficiently than existing methods while using minimal energy and significantly fewer chemicals, leading to strong unit economics. 

For years, expense management sat in the administrative shadows - a necessary, vital but rather unremarkable process centred on receipts, reimbursements, and end-of-month corrections and scrambling. That model no longer fits the way modern companies operate. As European businesses scale faster, adopt cloud-heavy tech stacks, and expand across borders, spending has evolved from a back-office routine into a real-time operational layer that touches almost every department. Legacy banking tools weren’t built for this pace, and traditional accounting systems were never meant to manage dozens of SaaS subscriptions, usage-based billing, global marketing spend, and distributed team purchases. The result is a growing disconnect between how companies spend and how they’re equipped to control that spending. Increasingly, businesses are discovering they don’t just need better oversight - they need proper expense infrastructure. A structural shift is unfolding: expense management is moving into the core technology stack, becoming as fundamental as CRM, data pipelines, or cloud orchestration. The old model has reached its limits The classic spend workflow - employee pays from a personal or shared card, finance reconciles later - was designed for a world where spending happened slowly, rarely, and locally. But the modern spending environment is the opposite: fast, frequent, global, and often automated. Three pressure points are forcing the shift: 1. Subscription-heavy operations Companies run on a complex mix of SaaS platforms, cloud credits, and usage-based services. Costs fluctuate daily. Tools get added or abandoned without visibility. Finance teams routinely discover waste weeks or months after the money is already gone. 2. Distributed workforces With teams spread across countries, departments, and time zones, discretionary spending points have multiplied. Reimbursements are slow. Policy enforcement becomes inconsistent. “Shadow spend” quietly builds. 3. Cross-border complexity Multi-country operations mean FX fluctuations, issuer restrictions, and payment failures. Traditional corporate cards simply aren’t architected for this level of complexity or frequency. In short: the gap between financial policy and operational reality has become a technical problem - not just an accounting one. And technical issues need technical solutions. The rise of expense infrastructure A new category of systems is emerging: infrastructure-level tools that allow companies to encode financial policies directly into their operational workflows. These systems do more than just track and report on expenses; they actively shape how companies spend their money. Three capabilities define this shift. a. Programmable financial controls Modern card and payment systems can enforce rules automatically: merchant categories per-vendor limits subscription-specific cards time-based budgets department-based restrictions Instead of relying on scattered policies and human interpretation, companies can make financial governance deterministic. This is the same logic that transformed software from manual processes into automated pipelines. b. Real-time visibility Finance teams no longer want a spreadsheet after the fact. They want live dashboards that surface spend as it happens, enabling budget adjustments, fraud prevention, and waste reduction in real time. This moves financial control from a retrospective exercise into an operational function. c. Integration-first architecture Expense data can’t live in a silo. It needs to flow into ERP systems, accounting platforms, HR tools, payroll modules, and BI dashboards. API-native systems are now becoming the connective layer that ties expenses to the rest of the business. Collectively, these capabilities amount to something bigger than “expense management.” They form part of a company’s core operating system. How companies are operationalising this shift Across Europe, businesses of all types are adopting expense infrastructure for various reasons - but the underlying logic is the same: control, clarity, and scale. SaaS companies They use vendor-specific virtual cards to cap cloud costs, prevent subscription sprawl, and pinpoint where money leaks. Marketing and growth teams Platform-linked cards help manage campaign budgets across Google, Meta, TikTok, and affiliate channels - without risking overspend or blocked cards at mission-critical moments. Distributed and remote-first companies Employee-issued cards with predefined limits eliminate slow, painful reimbursement processes and ensure consistent policy enforcement. Agencies and project-based businesses Teams assign spend flows to specific clients or projects, enabling precise cost allocation and preventing overrun on deliverables. Cross-border SMEs Unified expense rails reduce payment failures, FX exposure, and the headache of managing multiple bank relationships. In the background, infrastructure providers are enabling this shift - giving companies the ability to issue virtual and physical cards instantly, apply real-time rules, and integrate spend seamlessly into existing systems. It’s not about selling cards; it’s about providing financial architecture. Europe’s strategic moment Europe is uniquely positioned to lead this movement. Several factors make the region a proving ground for expense infrastructure: Regulatory clarity and pressure: PSD3 and DORA are pushing companies to achieve higher levels of financial control, auditability, and operational resilience. Fragmented markets: Operating across borders forces businesses to think about spend in structured, data-rich ways. A mature embedded-finance ecosystem: The region already has strong infrastructure providers powering advanced issuing, reporting, and compliance layers. In a market as complex and regulated as Europe, reactive financial processes simply don’t work. Modern businesses need systems that enforce governance automatically and deliver real-time data - not thirty days later. Expense infrastructure as a competitive advantage The companies embracing expense infrastructure aren’t just improving cost control; they’re gaining operational leverage. Real-time financial visibility accelerates decision-making. Programmable controls reduce risk before it materialises.
 Seamless integrations remove manual work from every department. For fast-growing companies, this represents a non-negotiable strategic lever. Expense infrastructure becomes part of the resilience toolkit, alongside cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, and data governance. The bigger picture is clear: in the next phase of digital operations, companies won’t bolt expense tools onto the side of their workflow. They’ll build their financial logic into the systems they already run. The winners will be those who treat expense infrastructure not as admin, but as core tech. Where does Wallester Business fit in? Companies aren’t merely adopting better expense workflows - they’re replacing outdated financial structures altogether. Wallester Business gives them the infrastructure to do it: instant issuance of unlimited Visa virtual or physical cards, per-vendor controls that eliminate overspend, real-time transaction visibility, and a fully integrated platform that connects directly into accounting and ERP systems. For fast-scaling companies with distributed teams, subscription-heavy cost structures, and multi-market operations, these aren’t “nice to haves.” They’re the difference between controlling spend and constantly cleaning up after it. Wallester Business turns financial policy into something enforceable, predictable, and automated - without forcing finance teams to become engineers or navigate bank-led constraints. In other words, if expense infrastructure is becoming core tech, Wallester Business is the stack that makes it real.

A Paris-headquartered startup which develops AI agents for businesses to use in customer support has raised $26m and says it's working with big-name brands such as Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom. The Series A funding round in GetVocal was led by Creandum, the Nordic VC firm, with participation from Austrian VC Speedinvest and Elaia, the French deeptech VC. It means that GetVocal has raised a total of $30m to date and follows its pre-seed investment earlier this year. AI agents are viewed as the next big thing in AI, carrying out human jobs in areas such as customer service or IT help desk. The 60-strong, remote-first startup with a Paris HQ says it will use the funding for product innovation, market expansion, and company hires. GetVocal says it serves 23 markets, but its stronghold is in France and Portugal.GetVocal is one of many startups in this competitive field, but claims one distinction is it only deploys AI agents where they work best, ensuring humans are in the loop when crucial decisions are made.It leverages LLMs along with its own proprietary tech, with its agents specialising in various stages of a customer journey, be it onboarding or retention. It is working with big-name brands, such as Vodafone and Glovo while it is also working on a pilot project with Deutsche Telekom.GetVocal CEO and Co-founder Roy Moussa, said: “Research by the MIT Media Lab shows that 95 per cent of companies fail to get financial value from AI pilots because they lack the skills, processes, and governance to effectively integrate AI. Our customers are proudly in the five per cent.“We look forward to restoring confidence in AI agents and offering Europe’s thriving enterprises a pragmatic solution to embed them in their customer experience operations. "This funding will directly support the continued development of our hybrid workforce management capabilities and enable us to grow our international team and expand our commercial reach across Europe.”Bruno Machado, senior operations manager, Glovo, said: “Deploying GetVocal has transformed how we serve our community. “From reactivating users to streamlining management, the results speak for themselves: a five-fold increase in uptime and a 35 per cent increase in deflection, in just weeks. GetVocal is accelerating our growth and ensuring that we remain a platform users can always count on.”

London-based Condukt, a next-generation compliance platform for financial services, has raised $10 million in seed funding and emerged from stealth. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and MMC Ventures, with participation from Cocoa Ventures. Founded in May 2023, Condukt is designed as an agentic, real-time compliance solution that is always-on and policy-aware, giving financial institutions and fintechs actionable insights into business verification to support growth, efficiency, and stronger compliance. Rising regulatory scrutiny and advances in artificial intelligence are creating an opportunity to rethink how compliance is managed. A recent Forrester report estimates that businesses spend $206 billion annually on financial crime compliance (FCC), with 98 per cent of institutions reporting rising FCC costs and labour identified as the main driver. At the same time, 2025 has seen record-breaking AML penalties, with more than $6 billion in fines issued globally by July, signalling a stricter enforcement environment for banks. According to Bhasker Rao, co-founder at Condukt, automated monitoring and live insights from open-source data are fast becoming essential. Our infrastructure delivers exactly this - allowing regulated businesses to stay continuously compliant, without slowing down their operations or suffering from burgeoning costs. Condukt’s platform introduces a proprietary real-time data layer that continuously synchronises with clients’ operations. Its agentic solution automates manual compliance workflows, replaces legacy datasets, and monitors business changes as they occur, enabling ongoing oversight instead of static, periodic checks. The company already supports compliance operations for fintech companies, including Wise, Tide, Mollie, Rakuten, Shift4, Flatpay, and myPOS. With the new funding, Condukt plans to deepen partnerships with major financial institutions, accelerate its go-to-market efforts, and continue hiring engineering talent. The investment will also support Condukt’s goal of redefining know-your-business (KYB) processes and positioning compliance as a driver of growth, operational efficiency, and trust rather than solely a cost centre.

The iGaming industry is undergoing a major shift — moving beyond bonuses and basic gameplay into a new era of meta-gaming, hyper-personalisation, and entertainment-driven user experiences. Yoel Zuckerberg is the Chief Product Officer at Soft2Bet, a company which has been reshaping the iGaming landscape with Gamification-as-a-Service, AI-driven personalisation, and a UX philosophy that treats interfaces as art. In a recent podcast with Tech.eu, We explored everything from meta-gaming features (like MEGA Round and MEGA Clawee) to how the company balances “fun” with responsible play in highly regulated markets. Take a listen/watch to learn how Soft2Bet uses AI to personalise gameplay at every touchpoint, how the team has built a culture where product, design, engineering, compliance, and marketing truly innovate together — plus insights into Soft2Bet’s investment fund and what’s next for the industry.

Modernising enterprise middleware is no longer optional; it is the essential foundation for cost efficiency and AI-readiness. Organisations run hybrid estates of IBM MQ, Kafka, and other brokers, creating fragmentation that masks deep operational inefficiency and financial loss. Traditional reliability conceals waste, with manual reconciliation and oversized platforms eroding profitability. This contradiction demands a new operating model based on Assurance and Optimisation. Assurance provides the verifiable lineage necessary to prove transaction continuity across all platforms, transforming modernisation from a risk to a measurable process. Optimisation applies FinOps principles by rebalancing workloads, consolidating idle capacity, and aligning the right broker with the right workload. Crucially, this assured middleware layer acts as the control plane for autonomous operations. AI Agents and Machine Learning models are reliant on unified, high-fidelity data to function reliably and avoid generating fixes based on incomplete information (hallucination). Middleware assurance supplies this clean data, enabling safe autonomy and acceleration. Together, assurance and optimisation create the "Confidence Economy," providing the strategic agility, financial discipline, and demonstrable trust required to compete in the next era of digital business. The Modernisation Contradiction And the Cost of Fragmentation True modernisation isn’t just migration; it’s transformation with proof. Across industries, enterprises are re-engineering middleware, streaming, and B2B systems to meet new demands for speed, resilience, and compliance. Yet as platforms expand, visibility often disappears. Dashboards show uptime, but not completion. Transactions fail silently between systems, while teams spend hours reconciling what should already be clear. This lack of assurance has become one of the biggest barriers to modernisation. Every missed acknowledgment, delayed order, or failed integration adds operational cost and risk. Across industries, the hidden toll of fragmentation quietly drains between one and five percent of EBITDA each year. A new discipline is emerging to address this: assurance and optimisation. By validating transactions across hybrid estates and dynamically managing resources, enterprises can prove continuity, prevent outages, and modernise safely. Assurance provides trust; optimisation delivers efficiency. Together, they create measurable, auditable progress, the foundation of sustainable modernisation. When modern systems lose sight of themselves A payments queue freezes. Orders stall. The dashboards stay green, but something isn’t right. For one global bank, that silence delayed millions in transactions. Nothing had crashed; visibility had. Moments like this happen every day. Middleware and B2B systems are reliable, but the spaces between them are not. It is in those gaps that uncertainty and risk grow. That is why assurance has become the new foundation of modernisation. You cannot transform what you cannot prove. The invisible cost of hybrid middleware Every enterprise runs on a web of integration: IBM MQ for critical workloads, Kafka for real-time streaming, ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ for enterprise messaging, and EDI for partner transactions. MFT secures file transfers, while APIs and partner portals connect digital ecosystems across boundaries. It is a marvel of engineering, a living network of moving parts, and a minefield of complexity when even one link is blind. Each platform tells its own story, yet none see the full narrative. Operations teams chase missing acknowledgements across consoles. Skilled engineers act as detectives, piecing together data just to confirm what should have been self-evident: did the transaction finish? This work is invisible but expensive. Across industries, hidden reconciliation and compliance tasks consume thousands of hours and erode one to five percent of EBITDA. The price is not just financial; it is psychological. When people cannot trust their systems, every decision takes longer. Assurance changes that. It replaces guesswork with evidence and stress with calm predictability. Why monitoring is not enough Monitoring answers “Is it running?” Assurance answers “Did it complete?” A system can show perfect uptime while transactions quietly fail downstream. Monitoring tells you the engine is on; assurance tells you the car actually reached its destination. Assurance reconstructs every transaction across platforms, verifying that no messages were lost or duplicated. For regulators and auditors, it is proof of continuity. For operations, it is peace of mind. When visibility becomes verifiable, confidence replaces caution. Modernisation accelerates because teams can change without fear. This is the essence of sustainable modernisation, progress built on proof rather than assumption. From firefighting to foresight Every operations team knows the rhythm: an alert, an escalation, a late-night fix. Optimisation breaks that cycle. By analysing live flow data, enterprises can rebalance workloads automatically, consolidate idle queues, and make better use of existing licences. It is like turning middleware into an air-traffic-control system, every flight visible, every path adjusted before congestion forms. Through governed self-service, teams can act instantly but safely. A developer can replay or scale a queue inside policy boundaries. Automation handles the rest. Equally important, assurance and optimisation introduce governed self-service for developers and platform teams, empowerment with guardrails. They can provision, validate, and gain insights directly without routing every request through central service desks or ticketing queues. Role-based controls and compliance policies ensure every action remains auditable and within enterprise standards. That autonomy shortens response times, preserves specialist capacity, and keeps innovation flowing without compromising governance. At one multinational retailer, this approach reduced manual reconciliation by 70 percent and consolidated enough idle capacity to avoid more than €1 million in additional licence costs. The engineers did not just save money; they regained control. Once reconciliation was automated, engineers turned their attention to improving delivery. They built scripts to automate regression testing and refined deployment workflows that had previously required manual intervention. Routine queue-management requests that once took days to approve were completed instantly through self-service. The result was faster release cycles, fewer deployment errors, and more time spent enhancing products rather than maintaining processes. Optimisation transforms assurance from a mirror into a motor, always learning, always improving. Modernising without disruption Fear of disruption still holds many enterprises back. Every CIO imagines the same nightmare: a flawless migration that quietly drops a handful of critical transactions, discovered days later. Dual-rail validation removes that fear. It allows old and new systems to run side by side, comparing every outcome until results align. When both rails match, the switch is safe. Banks have used it to complete ISO 20022 migrations on schedule. Manufacturers use it to modernise ERP systems without breaking supply chains. Retailers use it to harmonise EDI and API ecosystems in the cloud. Modernisation does not have to mean risk. With assurance, transformation becomes a measurable process, one that proves itself in real time. Seeing the system as a story When assurance and optimisation come together, data turns into narrative. Every transaction becomes a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Orders, shipments, and payments connect in one verifiable thread. Operations can see where the plot slows, finance can see where value appears, and compliance can trace every step in the storyline. This flow intelligence gives enterprises something they have lacked for years: coherence. It transforms disconnected events into a single version of truth. Exceptions surface early. Patterns emerge. Predictive analytics turns hindsight into foresight. It is no longer about observing systems; it is about understanding them. Stories from the field Banking. A European bank used dual-rail validation to reconcile SWIFT MT and ISO 20022 messages automatically. The migration completed on time, with zero data loss and no regulatory findings. Retail. A global retailer unified its EDI and API flows under a single assurance layer. Chargebacks dropped 30 percent, and peak-season performance became predictable. Pharma. A life-sciences company implemented immutable lineage across its serialisation chain. Audit preparation fell from three weeks to three days, and inspections became a formality. Logistics. A transport provider linked proof-of-delivery events to invoicing. Dispute cycles shrank from 10 days to two, improving cash flow and customer satisfaction. Different sectors, one pattern: fewer errors, faster recovery, stronger trust. The confidence economy Every leader wants three things: control, proof, and peace of mind. Assurance and optimisation deliver all three. They reduce waste, prevent outages, and protect margin. Most enterprises see a return within nine months through reduced manual effort and smarter licence use. But the deeper value is cultural. Assurance creates psychological safety, the sense that systems will behave as expected. When teams feel safe, they innovate. When executives trust data, they decide faster. When regulators see evidence, they relax. Confidence is contagious. It spreads from systems to people. A growing movement Assurance and optimisation are now becoming mainstream priorities across digital operations. Vendors are extending platforms to combine observability, correlation, and analytics-driven automation, often with humans in the loop for critical decisions. One example is meshIQ, which provides cross-system visibility and assurance across hybrid middleware, streaming, and B2B environments. Its approach reflects a broader movement within modernisation, a shift from replacement to reinforcement, from migration to measurable confidence. Within meshIQ’s value framework, Modernisation represents a core pillar: enabling enterprises to evolve safely through visibility, analytics, and governance. By embedding assurance and optimisation into the modernisation journey, organisations can transform faster, reduce cost, and retain trust. Different technologies may take different routes, but the goal is the same, to make the invisible flows of digital business visible, reliable, and provable. About the author Andrew Mallaband is an enterprise technology strategist and contributor to research on middleware, operational intelligence, and modernisation assurance. He helps organisations and vendors develop strategies for visibility, automation, and governance in complex integration environments.

Zurich-based AI company Albatross has raised €10.5 million in new funding to develop a real-time product and content discovery platform that learns, reasons, and adapts as users interact. The round was led by MMC Ventures with participation from Redalpine, Daphni, and strategic angels. This brings Albatross’s total funding to €13.5 million, following a €3 million foundation round in September 2024 led by Redalpine. Founded in 2024 by former Amazon AI leaders Dr Kevin Kahn and Dr Matteo Ruffini, together with serial entrepreneur Johan Boissard, Albatross focuses on what the team views as a key missing piece in the AI landscape. While much of the industry is centred on large language models that generate content, Albatross is developing a complementary pillar: understanding how users perceive and interact with content in real time. The platform is built on transformer-based architecture with sequential embedding models trained directly on live events. Traditional recommendation systems are typically batch-trained and rely on factors such as popularity, similarity, or historical user behaviour, making it difficult to fully capture real-time intent. Albatross replaces these systems with AI that learns continuously from live behaviour, updating in milliseconds as users browse, search, and explore, without manual intervention or retraining. The platform is designed to adapt instantly to changes in user behaviour, enabling more responsive and context-aware recommendations. The platform is already serving billions of live events and tens of millions of predictions each month across marketplaces, retail, and travel platforms worldwide, processing around one hundred million products and tens of millions of users. “Our system perceives and adapts instantly, so every search and feed reflects the user’s intent at that very moment,” said Dr Kevin Kahn, Co-founder and CEO of Albatross. From our conversations with a broad range of CEOs, we know they all want to adopt AI, but most efforts fail because they treat it as an add-on. The real opportunity is to rethink how experiences are shaped - to make every interaction intelligent, adaptive, and alive. That’s what Albatross does: it learns and reasons in real time, understanding intent the moment it happens. Albatross’s two flagship products, the Real-Time Discovery Feed and Multimodal Search, are designed to give companies of all sizes access to recommendation technology previously available mainly to large global platforms. The Discovery Feed curates products and content dynamically, while the Multimodal Search engine refines results based on changing user intent and can connect in-store and online journeys using contextual and image-based inputs. The platform is built for enterprise environments and is designed to operate with very low latency. Early pilots have reported triple-digit increases in engagement in engagement and product discovery. Integration typically takes less than seven weeks from contract to deployment, and the system is built to handle billions of data points. As content and commerce expand rapidly, discovery is becoming a central challenge in the digital economy. Albatross aims to make digital experiences more adaptive by enabling people to find relevant products and content in the moment.

French accounting software platform Pennylane has launched in Germany, its first overseas market, and is targeting 100 hires in the country next year.Founded in 2020, unicorn Pennylane is a financial management and accounting platform for startups, SMEs, and their accountants across Europe. It sells itself as an “all-in-one” accounting and financial management platform that centralises the financial function of businesses and their accountants in one shared workspace, enabling them to work closer together.It centralises accounting, expense management, invoice and financial reporting into one shared workspace. By doing so, it says it frees up accountants from data chasing. It is also leveraging GenAI while its API ecosystem, featuring integrations with the likes of Shopify and HubSpot, helps its clients work flexibly across different systems, it says.Pennlylane employs more than 900 people and works with over 6,000 accounting firms and over 600,000 SMEs in France, it says.In Germany, it will go up against German powerhouse DATEV, which dominates the accounting software landscape. Pennylane is locating its German HQ in Munich and also has an office in Berlin, as well as sales executives dotted in cities like Düsseldorf, Stuttgart and Cologne.Tobias Janiesch, who is heading up Pennylane’s German operations,  said one of the reasons for choosing Munich as its German HQ was being close to lead investor Sequoia.He said: “Sequoia is in Munich, one of our lead investors, so it made sense to be closer. And the Munich ecosystem in tech with OpenAI there is also growing."On why Germany is a potentially ripe market for Pennylane, he said: “It’s a big market, with 80,000 accountants. Germany is one of the most complex accounting markets in the world - yet also one of the slowest in terms of digitalisation." Future possible international launches include Poland, Spain and Belgium but unlikely the UK, where Sage and QuickBooks dominate, Janiesch said. Earlier this year, Pennylane raised €75m in a funding round co-led by Sequoia Capital, Alphabet’s CapitalG, and Meritech Capital Partners, with DST Global also participating.

German e-mobility technology startup Pionix has raised over €8 million to scale its open-source-based products for the global e-mobility industry. The late seed round was led by Ascend Capital Partners, with participation from Start-up BW Seed Fonds (managed by MBG Baden-Württemberg), Pale Blue Dot, Vireo Ventures, Axeleo Ventures, and additional investors. Despite rapid development across e-mobility in recent years, EV charging remains fragmented. A growing ecosystem of hardware and software providers relies on proprietary, closed systems that often do not communicate smoothly with one another. This lack of interoperability has contributed to reliability issues, inefficient infrastructure maintenance, and charging session error rates of up to 25 per cent. Founded in 2021, Pionix provides products that offer a shared software foundation for EV charging technologies, with the aim of improving reliability, interoperability, and long-term compatibility of charging infrastructure. In response to industry-wide challenges, Pionix initiated and has been a key contributor to EVerest, an open-source software platform that serves as a common base for charger manufacturers, charging operators, automakers, and fleets. EVerest is designed to reduce compatibility issues and support faster innovation across the EV charging ecosystem. EVerest has evolved into a major open-source initiative in cleantech, with support from around 600 contributors across more than 70 organisations, and is used to power hundreds of thousands of chargers worldwide. Pionix founder and CEO Marco Möller noted that reliability is essential for the e-mobility transition and that the current landscape of incompatible systems and high error rates has hindered progress. He added that open-source technology provides a sustainable way to address these challenges. With EVerest at the core and our Pionix Cloud services and ChargeBridge hardware on top, we make it radically simpler to build, integrate and operate chargers that just work - every time. That’s what the industry needs to deliver a transition that sticks. Pionix will use the new investment to address fragmentation in the EV charging sector by delivering open, modular enterprise products for both software and hardware. The company also plans to accelerate the growth of the EVerest open-source ecosystem, working with its global community to deepen collaboration and support future initiatives that will shape the development of EV charging.

London-based Planet Smart has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding to launch its first product. The round was led by General Inception and Vertical Venture Partners, with additional support from Innovate UK and the Undaunted Accelerator, and marks the company’s official launch after two years of scientific development. Planet Smart is a deep tech startup developing biomaterials to reduce environmental impact. Its flagship product, PlanetSorb, is a naturally biodegradable, high-performance superabsorbent polymer (SAP) designed to replace fossil-based plastics used in nappies, sanitary products and other applications such as agriculture, packaging, and mining waste management. The material is reported to biodegrade within six months without leaving microplastics, while absorbing more than 1 litre of liquid per gram (up to twice as much as conventional SAPs) at a comparable cost. This higher performance means manufacturers can use less material to achieve the same result, enabling thinner and more comfortable products. The company’s technology is based on poly-amino acids that naturally degrade in soil or landfill, positioning PlanetSorb as a potential solution for an industry facing growing regulatory and market pressure. The global hygiene sector is estimated to discard around half a million disposable nappies and pads every minute, and measures such as the EU ban on intentionally added microplastics and upcoming deforestation regulations are prompting large manufacturers to seek scalable, biodegradable alternatives. Planet Smart has signed three letters of intent with leading hygiene manufacturers and secured two purchase orders from European brands. Independent lab-scale testing indicates that PlanetSorb is non-toxic, dermatologist-approved, and achieves high absorbency and liquid retention compared with industry benchmarks. Beyond hygiene, the company sees potential for its biodegradable absorbents in agriculture, wound care, food packaging, and mining waste management, any area where materials are required to absorb, hold, or manage liquids. With the new funding, Planet Smart plans to scale up from its current lab operations and run pilot trials. Looking ahead, the company aims to reach a production capacity of one kilotonne of PlanetSorb, equivalent to around 45 million nappies, by the end of 2028 and intends to raise additional funding in 2026 to expand manufacturing and establish licensing partnerships with global brands. 

Berlin-based Peec AI, a marketing platform built for the era of AI search, has raised a $21 million Series A round led by European VC firm Singular, with participation from Antler, Combination VC, identity.vc, and S20. The round follows Peec AI’s seed financing led by 20VC in July 2025 and brings the company’s total funding to $29 million. As AI search becomes a key discovery layer for both consumers and B2B buyers, many marketing teams still lack visibility into how their brands are represented across different platforms (such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini), which sources drive that representation, and how they can influence it. Peec AI is designed to address this gap. Although AI search may appear simple on the surface, delivering accurate, contextual, and reliable results at scale is technically complex. Peec AI’s platform is built on a proprietary data pipeline that tracks source influence, visibility, and sentiment across major AI engines in real time. This infrastructure supports a user-friendly interface while relying on advanced engineering and data systems. Co-founders Daniel Drabo, Tobias Siwonia, and Marius Meiners have focused on combining data depth, quality, and product design to provide marketing teams with clearer insight into their performance in an AI-driven landscape. The platform enables marketing teams to see how their brand appears in AI-generated answers, understand which sources contribute to those results, and identify which actions can affect visibility, sentiment, and reach, all within a single environment. Since launching in February 2025, Peec AI has onboarded more than 1,300 brands and agencies across different sectors and markets. As adoption grows, one of the main challenges in this emerging category is balancing analytical depth with ease of use. Peec AI is designed to keep complex data accessible, helping teams move from insight to action with minimal friction. By emphasizing product design and data accuracy, the company aims to help marketing teams work more efficiently, make informed decisions, and remain visible as AI search reshapes how brands are discovered. We are obsessed with precision. Clean data, clear workflows, and a UI that teams actually love to use. Our job is to help marketers win where AI is shaping the narrative, without adding complexity, said Marius Meiners, Co-founder and CEO of Peec AI.   With the new funding, Peec AI plans to open offices in New York, hire more than 40 additional team members over the next six months, and expand its offering beyond analytics to build a broader marketing software stack for the AI era.

Newcastle-based biotech InvenireX has secured £2 million in Seed funding to accelerate commercialisation of its DNA nanotechnology platform that can detect disease at the earliest biological stages.The round is led by DSW Ventures, with participation from XTX Ventures, Cambridge Technology Capital and angel investors with biotech experience, and includes grant funding from Innovate UK. Founded in 2023 through Conception X, InvenireX builds on Dr Dan Todd's PhD research at Newcastle University, and was born to address a fundamental limitation in modern science: molecular detection has barely advanced in the past 40 years. Check out our earlier interview with Dr Riam Kanso, CEO and founder of Conception X  Current methods, such as PCR, were designed for different purposes and repurposed for disease detection, but require extensive sample preparation that can lose up to 50 per cent of the molecular markers being sought, making early signals effectively invisible. InvenireX's platform uses programmable DNA nanostructures, or "Nanites", to capture specific genetic markers inside custom microfluidic chips. A proprietary AI-powered reader then identifies and quantifies targets in real time, enabling the detection of disease markers at concentrations existing methods cannot capture.  In pilot testing, InvenireX has demonstrated 200-fold greater sensitivity than qPCR and 60-fold improvement over digital PCR, while reducing both time and cost per test each by half, with quantitative results available in minutes rather than hours or days.   The implications are wide-ranging: tumours as small as one millimetre could be detected up to a decade earlier than currently possible, vaccine manufacturers could verify the presence and concentration of active ingredients for the first time at production scale, and researchers could discover biological markers previously impossible to detect. "Our machine could pick up cancer, HIV or sepsis earlier – any disease with a nucleic acid trace," InvenireX CEO and founder Dan Todd says. "We're made of DNA – that's the source code. If you can pick up traces of faults and errors in that code, you can detect problems across the board before symptoms appear. We've built the ultimate needle-in-a-haystack detector – a tool that we can put in the hands of scientists to enable the discoveries of tomorrow.” Jonathan O’Halloran, founder of molecular diagnostics PCR company QuantuMDx and angel investor in InvenireX, said: “There are moments in your life that make you tingle. The first one for me was watching Craig Venter announce the first draft of the human genome, then next was hearing about Solexa, then Oxford Nanopore’s DNA sequencing technologies. Most recently, it was listening to Dan Todd describe InvenireX’s technology. I believe it’s the UK’s next big technology.” InvenireX has completed a successful pilot with a diagnostics company that has committed to purchasing the first instrument, with further pilots underway in vaccine manufacturing and infectious disease diagnostics. The funding will support team growth and expanded pilot programmes.

Biotech company Artios today announced the successful close of an oversubscribed $115 million Series D financing.  Artios is pioneering next-generation approaches in the DNA damage response (DDR) field through its comprehensive anti-cancer approach and the deep experience of its team of DDR drug developers.  Artios’ mission is to develop new classes of medicines that exploit DDR pathways with the aim of improving outcomes for patients with hard-to-treat cancers. The company’s clinical-stage candidates, ATR inhibitor alnodesertib and DNA Polymerase theta (Polθ) inhibitor ART6043, as well as its pre-clinical programs, including DDRi-ADCs, are designed with differentiated pharmaceutical properties and novel biological approaches to precisely eliminate a cancer cell’s remaining survival mechanisms. There are currently no approved therapies specifically for patients whose tumours harbour ATM-deficiency, a population where alnodesertib has demonstrated durable responses across eight different solid tumours. The round was co-led by founding investor SV Health Investors and new investor RA Capital Management, with participation from new investor Janus Henderson Investors and broad support from Artios’ existing investors.  Other investors who supported the Series D round include Andera Partners, Avidity Partners, EQT Life Sciences, Invus, IP Group plc, M Ventures, Novartis Venture Fund, Omega Funds, Pfizer Ventures, Piper Heartland, RA Capital Management, Sofinnova Partners, and Schroders Capital. The Series D proceeds will expand the clinical evaluation of Artios’ lead program, alnodesertib, to enroll additional ATM-negative patients in each of second-line pancreatic cancer and third-line colorectal cancer, for which the program was recently granted US FDA Fast Track Designation.  The proceeds from the financing will also be used to initiate a Phase 2 randomised clinical trial for Artios’ second potential first-in-class candidate, ART6043, in patients with BRCA-mutant HER2-negative breast cancer who are eligible to receive a PARP inhibitor. “This Series D accelerates our potential path to registration for both alnodesertib and ART6043, broadening development for the next generation of DNA damage response (DDR) therapeutics to indications among the highest of unmet need across pancreatic, colorectal, and breast cancers, where median survival is often measured in months,” said Mike Andriole, Chief Executive Officer of Artios.  “As we address these indications and prepare for others, I would like to thank our existing investors, led by SV Health, for their ongoing support, and also our new investors, RA Capital Management and Janus Henderson Investors, for joining our mission to bring these potential medicines to patients as quickly as possible.” Nikola Trbovic, Managing Partner, SV Health Investors, added: “We are thrilled to have supported Artios’ evolution, from an early-stage DDR pioneer when we founded the company to the established company it has become, distinguished by a promising and differentiated pipeline. We look forward to continuing to do so as it deploys the Series D proceeds to drive late-stage development of alnodesertib as well as its pipeline. This financing, and the recent appointment of Mike Andriole as CEO, are exciting steps in Artios’ continued growth and its transition toward becoming a commercially oriented organisation.” Jake Simson, Partner, RA Capital Management, commented: “We are excited to co-lead this financing round to advance the next generation of DNA damage response therapeutics. Artios’ differentiated clinical programs, alnodesertib and ART6043, together have the potential to meaningfully expand the impact of DDR-targeted therapies. The rate and durability of responses observed to date for alnodesertib across a range of solid tumours and the early clinical results with ART6043 underscore the strength of Artios’ approach and ability to deliver novel, potentially first-in-class treatments for patients while building significant long-term value.”   Lead image: Freepik

Nursing care company voize  has raised $50 million in Series A funding led by Balderton Capital, with participation from existing investors HV Capital, Redalpine and Y Combinator.  The global nursing shortage has reached crisis point. The WHO predicts a global deficit of 4.5 million nurses by 2030 Nursing, as ageing populations and rising care demands stretch teams thin. Europe alone is short 1.2 million healthcare workers, whilst the US has an expected deficit of up to 450,000 nurses a year. Nurses lose 30 per cent of their time to admin work, costing $246 billion in labour across the US and Europe — the result: burnout, high turnover, and less time for patients – the heart of care. While many companies have built AI scribes for physicians, nurses — the backbone of healthcare — have been left behind. Their workflows are fundamentally different and too often overlooked, leaving them jotting vital notes on scraps of paper mid-shift. voize is changing that. Founded in 2020 by twin brothers Fabio (CEO) and Marcel Schmidberger (COO), alongside Erik Ziegler (CTO), voize was inspired by the brothers’ experience when their grandfather entered a nursing home. Seeing firsthand how much time nurses lost to admin sparked a mission to return time to frontline care. Developed hand-in-hand with nurses over tens of thousands of hours in care homes, voize’s AI companion doesn’t just document, it assists. voize listens as nurses speak during care, understands their notes, and handles admin like documentation and scheduling in real time. Seamlessly integrated with Electronic Health Records, voize fits naturally into nursing workflows, keeping nurses focused on patients, not paperwork. Image: voize. voize’s proprietary AI models are purpose-built for nursing, developed entirely in-house. They accurately capture complex medical language, understand regional dialects, and support non-native speakers, empowering every nurse to document with confidence. As well, unlike most AI models, voize’s system is so efficient that it runs locally on smartphones, with no constant internet connection required. This ensures high data protection and continuous, reliable care, even when wifi connectivity fails — a first in healthcare AI. Today, 1,100 care facilities in Germany and Austria, and more than 75,000 nurses save up to 30 per cent of their time each shift thanks to the AI. The impact is so profound that care homes now feature voize in job ads — making voize not just a tool, but a reason nurses choose where to work. Fabio Schmidberger, co-founder and CEO of voize, said: “Nurses enter the profession to care for people, and leave it because of all the admin work. For too long, they’ve had little technology designed to truly support them. At voize, we’re building AI that redefines what it means to care, where technology works in the background, and people come first. Seeing this come to life already across care homes and hospitals and hearing how nurses rediscover the joy in their jobs has been incredible." Daniel Waterhouse, General Partner at Balderton, said: “Nurses are the backbone of every healthcare system — yet too often, they’re overwhelmed by administrative tasks that pull them away from patients. voize recognised this disconnect and built a solution born from listening and understanding. Their AI companion doesn’t replace human care; it restores it, removing friction from documentation and empowering nurses to spend more time where they’re needed most.” The investment will accelerate voize’s expansion in Europe and entry into the US, and advance its mission to eliminate administrative burden in healthcare, giving nurses more time for what matters most: care. Lead image: voize founders: Erik Ziegler, Fabio Schmidberger, and Marcel Schmidberger. Photo: uncredited. 

Danish fintech Flatpay has become the country’s latest unicorn, after securing $170 million in funding. Flatpay co-founder Rasmus Hellmund Carlsen said Flatpay has become the fastest firm in Denmark to reach unicorn status, reaching the milestone in three years. Flatpay is now valued at $1.7bn following the funding round, it said, with the latest round led by AVP, the European and North American investor and Smash Capital, the backer of consumer internet and software firms. Other investors in the round were existing investors Hedosophia, Seed Capital, and Dawn Capital. The Danish fintech, which provides payment software for SMBs, last raised funds in 2024, when it secured a €45m ($52m) Series B round two years after its founding in 2022. Flatpay offers businesses a point of sale and payment solution. It says its no setup fees for terminals, no subscription fees, flat rate for all card types, alongside its data dashboards, sets it apart from rivals. Flatpay, which says it has more than 60,000 customers and employs more than 1,500 staff, says it is on track to hit $500m in ARR by the end of next year. Carlsen added: “Three years ago, Flatpay was an idea shaped by a clear ambition: build a payments company that puts small businesses first — with simple pricing, great service, and a product experience that removes friction rather than adds it. “Since then, the momentum has been extraordinary. From our early days in Denmark to fast growth in Finland, Germany, Italy, the UK, and France, more than 60,000 merchants now rely on Flatpay every day.” The funds will be used to expand its presence in European markets, as well as to target new markets.

Milan-based Guidoio, the first fully digital driving school in Italy, has closed a €3.5 million seed round. The round was led by European venture capital fund 360 Capital, alongside Azimut Libera Impresa SGR S.p.A. Founded in 2023 by Lorenzo Mannari and Giuseppe Cavallaro, Guidoio is developing a fully digital model for obtaining a driving license. The company’s platform is designed for digital-native learners and digitalises the entire process, from enrollment to exams. Guidoio’s service is built around accessibility, transparency, and flexibility. Through the app, candidates can manage each step of the process via smartphone: enrollment, documentation, medical appointment scheduling, practical lessons with certified instructors, and personalised theoretical study supported by AI. Two features are central to the experience: Tutor AI, which creates adaptive, personalised study paths based on individual learning progress, and Smart lesson booking, which allows students to schedule driving lessons near their home, simplifies logistics and bringing instructors closer to learners. This model gives candidates greater control over their learning journey while providing support when needed. A driving license today represents independence, employment, and freedom. Our ambition is to transform this journey into a simple, transparent, and accessible experience, aligned with the expectations of a generation that no longer tolerates bureaucracy and opacity. It’s this mix of experience, capital, and shared vision that will allow us to accelerate toward our goal of bringing Guidoio across Italy and building a new standard for digital mobility — more accessible, smarter, and closer to people, explains Lorenzo Mannari, Co-founder and CEO of Guidoio. The new funding will be allocated across three main areas: commercial expansion, product development, and team growth. The company aims to bring its driving school model to more than 30 Italian cities by the end of 2026 and plans to hire new team members in key roles to support this expansion. On the product side, investments will focus on strengthening the e-learning platform to improve preparation for theory and practical exams, developing new digital tools for instructors, and further advancing the AI-based features already integrated into the platform.

Paris-based deeptech Hummink has raised €15 million to expand the deployment of its patented High-Precision Capillary Printing (HPCaP) technology, which enables manufacturers to print metals and functional materials with high accuracy and address microscopic defects in real time. The round was co-led by KBC Focus Fund, Cap Horn, and Bpifrance, with follow-on support from Elaia Partners, Sensinnovat, and Beeyond, and additional participation from the French Tech Seed fund managed by Bpifrance as part of France 2030 and the European Innovation Council Fund. As microelectronics support the growth of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, small manufacturing defects have become increasingly costly. Imperfections at the sub-micron scale can compromise entire batches of chips or displays. Founded in 2020 as a spin-off from École Normale Supérieure - PSL and CNRS, Paris-based deeptech company Hummink focuses on this challenge. Co-founded by materials scientist Amin M’Barki and hardware startup operator Pascal Boncenne, the company has developed a technology that operates like a miniature fountain pen, depositing material at the nanoscale in a controlled manner. This process enables manufacturers to create and adjust circuitry directly at the sub-micron level, with applications in semiconductor packaging, next-generation memory, and advanced displays. While traditional lithography remains central to electronics manufacturing, it still produces defects that contribute to yield loss and material waste. Hummink’s printing tools are designed to complement lithography by detecting and correcting such defects at the micronic level, with the aim of increasing output, reducing scrap, and lowering environmental impact. Hummink’s initial integration focus is on next-generation OLED displays for smartphones and laptops, where up to 30 per cent of annual production is reportedly discarded due to microscopic defects, equating to an estimated €16 billion in losses and significant material waste. The company’s technology is designed to correct many of these defects, enabling manufacturers to recover output that would otherwise be scrapped. Our mission is to bring precision where it has never been possible before. Microelectronics is at the heart of the AI revolution, and every micron matters, said Amin M’Barki, Co-founder and CEO of Hummink. Hummink currently generates revenue by selling its NAZCA demonstrator, a first-generation high-precision printing system for R&D labs, along with custom conductive inks. NAZCA is already installed in labs and research centres across Europe, Asia, and the United States, including Duke University, where it was used to create fully recyclable, sub-micrometre printed electronics published in Nature Electronics. The new funding will be used to further develop Hummink’s industrial printing module and prepare its technology for integration into semiconductor and display fabrication lines.

Last week, we tracked more than 60 tech funding deals worth over €736 million, and over 10 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.Click to read the rest of the news.

Life sciences venture capital firm Sofinnova Partners today announced the close of its latest flagship fund, Sofinnova Capital XI, at €650 million ($750 million), greatly exceeding its initial target. Based in Paris, London, and Milan, Sofinnova Capital XI will back a new generation of pioneering biopharmaceutical and medical technology companies addressing urgent unmet clinical needs. Sofinnova Capital XI is actively deploying capital, with investments already made in a few portfolio companies, including Latent Labs, BioCorteX, and  Amolyt. In keeping with Sofinnova’s multi-strategy platform model, Capital XI draws on the strength of its experienced team, including Partners Maina Bhaman, Anta Gkelou, Karl Naegler, Antoine Papiernik, Henrijette Richter, and Graziano Seghezzi. Sofinnova Capital XI attracted strong support from a global base of blue-chip institutional investors—among them sovereign wealth funds, leading pharmaceutical companies and other corporates, as well as insurance companies, foundations, and family offices. Commitments came from across Europe, North America, Asia, and the Middle East, with a majority of returning LPs and a significant number of new top-tier investors. This reflects enduring confidence in Sofinnova’s disciplined strategy and long-standing track record. Antoine Papiernik, Managing Partner and Chairman of Sofinnova Partners, said: “This fundraising marks a pivotal moment for Sofinnova. It gives us the firepower to double down on early-stage opportunities and reinforces our uniquely collaborative, science-driven investment approach. We’re excited to continue backing visionary entrepreneurs and advancing the next wave of breakthroughs in science and medicine to bring them to patients worldwide." The fund will continue to support early-stage biotech and medtech ventures across Europe and North America, participating in both initial and follow-on rounds.

This week, we tracked more than 60 tech funding deals worth over €736 million and over 10 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe. In addition to this week's top financials, we've also indexed the most important/industry-related news items you need to know about. If email is more your thing, you can always subscribe to our newsletter and receive a more robust version of this round-up delivered to your inbox. Either way, let's get you up to speed. ?  Notable and. big funding rounds ?? Zilch nets $175M as eyes "strategic" M&A ?? FMC raises €100M as it unveils new class of memory chips for the AI era ?? Aily Labs grabs $80 million in one of 2025’s biggest Series B rounds for female-led AI startups ??  Uber competitor Grab invests up to $60M in Vay ??‍?? Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers  ?? Purple announces merger with Splash Access ?? DataCamp acquires Optima to power the next-gen AI learning engine ?? Barcelona’s EU-Startups acquired by MeOut Group ?? Reekom acquires Paris-based textile repair company Tilli ? Interesting moves from investors ?Backed VC closes $100M Fund III and marks 100th investment milestone ? Oyster Bay closes €100M Fund II for next-gen food startups ? Vendep Capital raises €80M to back the next wave of AI-era SaaS founders ? Ada Ventures unveils Deck Genius to give founders VC-level feedback powered by AI ?Erin Hallock joins NATO Innovation Fund to advance alliance-critical frontier tech ?️ In other (important) news ? Healthtech dominates European VC in a €8.3B October ? Locai Labs launches the UK’s first foundational LLM to rival GPT-5 and Claude ?? Founders and investors slam UK “exit tax" ?? "Exit tax" on founders axed, according to reports ?? Lithuania’s Sentante achieves transatlantic first in remote robotic stroke intervention ?? Finland’s first EV virtual power plant goes live ? Recommended reads and listens ?? Missiles hit Kyiv startup hub LIFT99 — it only made Ukraine's tech community more determined ?? Japan’s €33B bet on Europe: deeptech & AI lead as cross-border investment surges ? Epidemic Sound launches Studio, an AI tool that auto-soundtracks creator videos in seconds ?? Europe’s biggest landlords team up to build a proptech scaling machine ? European tech startups to watch  ?? Edtech company Nuela closes a €620,000 investment round ?? Spiich Labs gets €600,000 backing from Tandem Health and Creandum founders ?? Enteral Access Technologies secures £500,000 to scale DoubleCHEK ?? Quantum receives €161,000 to build scalable next-gen quantum hardware ?? Journalist to founder: Monty Munford’s HomeTruth emerges from stealth to solve a £60B problem