London-based Mozart AI, a next-gen Music AI startup on a mission to “10x every artist“, has raised  €616k in pre-Seed funding and unveiled its first product – an AI-powered Digital Audio Workstation (DAW).

The company is backed by EWOR (led by unicorn Founders), New Renaissance Ventures, Founder of last.fm Stefan Glaenzer, Atlantis Ventures, and serial entrepreneur Felix Jahn.

“We are building the next era of music creation software, where the role of the musician is creative insight and direction, while the AI Co-Producer handles all technical details,” said Sundar Arvind, CEO and Co-founder. “Mozart AI was created to unlock creativity at the speed of inspiration, where every idea becomes a professional grade song in minutes.”

Founded in 2025, Mozart AI is an intelligent DAW that reportedly understands natural language through text and voice, and converts user instructions to high quality musical output.

Sundar Arvind, a former child tennis athlete, turned his focus to music after injuries sidelined his athletic career. He Co-founded Mozart AI alongside his King’s College London batchmates Arjun Khanna, Pascual Merita Torres, and Immanuel Rajadurai.

Previously, Arvind and Khanna Co-founded Blitzo, an agentic AI Last-Mile Delivery platform, and ran it to €1.5 million ARR.

It’s estimated as much as 85% of music goes unfinished. Mozart AI aims to change that – empowering artists, producers, and engineers to bring more music into the world, “faster and with more joy.“

Mozart, the AI Co-Producer within the DAW, uses the artist’s authentic style and voice to provide suggestions, iterations, and extensions for melodies, chords, drums, vocals, mixing and more.

A simple user query, like “Hey Mozart, can you create a euphoric, 8 bar chord pattern and EQ the lows out?”, will allegedly produce inspiring melodic output that is engineered to precision, in seconds – something that takes years for a producer to learn.

Unlike other generative music tools, Mozart AI doesn’t look to replace the artist – it co-creates with them. Users retain full control over note-level precision and can guide the AI to help complete the technical parts of production, allowing them to focus on creative expression.

Currently in private beta, Mozart AI launches publicly on July 16, 2025.

Arthos, the parent company of Mozart AI, is focused on building AI tools that enhance human creativity by embedding the artist’s style, identity, and intention into every AI action.

The company is committed to ethical AI use, never training on artist data, and never generating complete songs.

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Dublin femtech startup Joii today launched its life-changing tech for how menstrual health is understood, monitored, and discussed in Ireland and beyond.  

A world-first, Joii’s menstrual pad and mobile app measure period blood volume and clot sizes, offering users unprecedented insights into menstrual health through AI-powered image analysis. Backed by clinical research and real-world validation, Joii offers a data-driven way to monitor menstrual health, finally giving people with periods the tools to see what’s really going on.

I spoke to CEO, and founder, Justyna Strzeszynska, to learn more. Like billions of women around the world, Strzeszynska struggled with menstrual health issues — and finding the cause or treatment depends on truly understanding what’s happening in the body.

She recounts: 

“Doctors would ask me about my menstrual flow, but I had no benchmark much less a real way to reliably and accurately measure it.”

Heavy menstrual bleeding affects 1 in 3 women, yet diagnosis and treatment are frequently delayed due to vague language like “heavy” or “normal”, without any tangible or qualifying details. 

Further, while femtech tool cycle tracking apps like Clue and Flo track symptoms, cycle patterns, moods, and predictive fertility windows, they don’t measure flow volume directly.

Motivated by her personal journey, Justyna established Joii, with a vision to create a solution that transformed menstrual health management. 

Joii has created a first in women’s health — pad‑scanning volume analytics. 

“For too long, women have been told to just ‘track their period’ without any real tools to measure what’s actually happening. With Joii, we’re changing that,” said Strzeszynska. 

“We’re helping people see their periods clearly, for the first time.”

Joii offers a simple yet powerful solution for menstrual health tracking, combining AI-powered analysis with eco-friendly design. 

Users can scan Joii evaluation pads using the free app to accurately measure menstrual blood volume, detect clot sizes, and receive immediate results. 

According to Strzeszynska, the startup uses computer vision to track flow, clot size, and composition. 

“Our AI model was trained largely on synthetic data – unsurprisingly, there’s a lack of photographs of period-tracking images — and we undertook extensive real-world testing to ensure the app performs reliably across different lighting environments and pad usage scenarios.” 

“Users get an instant report detailing blood volume in millilitres, average flow, clot size, and symptom trends.” 

How Joii works

• Wear Joii Pads – Specially designed for comfort and clear visibility.
• Scan with the Joii App – The user scans the used pad using the Joii app.
• Get Insights – The app provides instant insights, including menstrual volume (in millilitres), clot detection, and cycle trends.

Over time, the app builds personalised insights into cycle patterns and flow trends, helping users better understand their bodies. With visual data that can be shared with healthcare providers, Joii supports more informed diagnoses and treatment decisions.

This technology is particularly beneficial for individuals experiencing heavy bleeding, those on long diagnostic journeys, such as endometriosis, which currently can take up to 10 years, as well as those seeking a better understanding and control over their menstrual health. 

Astonishingly, this is the only product of its kind on the market. While some people who menstruate have attempted to track their flow manually using menstrual cups as part of a gynaecological research project, there has been zero consistency in how periods are tracked, much less a scalable or widely accessible solution for tracking — until now.

Joii’s technology is protected under multiple patents and is a Class I Medical Device, certified in the UK and protected under multiple patents.  

Statistically, women’s health has been under researched and underfunded. Just 2 per cent of UK medical research funding goes toward pregnancy, childbirth, and female reproductive health — even though around one in three people who menstruate experience a reproductive or gynaecological health issue.

Joii is partnering with leading research institutions to explore the untapped potential of menstrual blood as a non-invasive diagnostic tool. By developing predictive AI models, the company aims to support earlier detection of conditions such as endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), and anaemia, transforming menstrual blood into a powerful source of clinical insight.

Further, Joii empowers users to advocate for themselves and also provides healthcare professionals with objective data that can improve diagnosis and treatment.

Strzeszynska asserts that the research also “helps build a crucial bridge between data and the healthcare system, offering credibility to patient healthcare monitoring apps.”

“It generates clinically relevant insights that can support more meaningful, evidence-based conversations with healthcare providers.”

Supported by two clinical and real-world studies including research funded by the NIHR (National Institute for Health and Care Research), Joii users report: 

Research into the use of Joii has revealed: 

• 62 per cent improved communication with their GP.
• 288 per cent increase in symptom screening efficacy.
• 134 per cent increase in menstrual health literacy.
  
  

Further Joii feasibility study showed patient’s experienced a:

• 33 per cent improvement in abnormal symptom screening.
  52 per cent increase in period health literacy.
  36 per cent improvement in discussing symptoms with GPs.

88.6 per cent of GPs in the studies say Joii improves conversations about periods and, critically, 87.6 per cent found it easier to spot heavy bleeding and abnormal symptoms.  Furthermore, 93 per cent of GP participants say Joii supports the diagnosis of Heavy Menstrual Bleeding. 88.6 per cent would integrate it into their practice if NHS-approved.

Dr Fatema Mustansir Dawoodbhoy (NHS), Clinical Advisor to Joii, said, 

"This app will definitely offer me better insights into how the patient is feeling as I will be able to understand their symptoms variation throughout the month.”

Dr Kushal Chummun, Consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the Rotunda and Connolly Hospital, agrees,  “I think the app is really, really good”, underpinning the clinical confidence in Joii’s innovation. 

To date, Joii has raised €2.4 million and is backed by EIT Digital as part of its equity portfolio. 

With the EIT Digital Open Innovation Factory, which brings together partners from different European countries to collaborate on a deep tech solution or product, Joii worked with Finnish creative software studio Ikune. Ikune mapped users’ needs and designed gaming mechanisms and technical requirements for Joii’s software to improve users' engagement and retention, increase user data, lead to better clinical outcomes, and enhance Joii app accuracy.

Joii’s AI-enabled app is free to download on iOS and Android devices, and Joii Evaluation Pads RRP €6.95 are available now from selected health stores and pharmacies nationwide as well as online from www.joiicare.com. 

British startup Vera (formerly known as Privasee) has raised €1.2 million in funding to rebrand and automate RFPs and security questionnaires.

The funding was raised by Pitchdrive, SFC Capital, and Plug and Play.

“We realised that trust can’t stop at compliance,” said Manuel Martinez Chamorro, Co-founder of Vera. “Our customers were bottlenecked by the growing number of security questionnaires, legal reviews and Request for Proposals (RFPs). It wasn’t enough to have invested in GDPR, SOC II, HIPPA etc – you had to prove it over and over, in every deal. Vera is our answer to that.“

Founded in 2025, Vera was born from the realisation that while privacy compliance was critical, businesses were facing an even bigger challenge – the constant pressure to prove trustworthiness across security, legal, and compliance reviews.

Vera is an AI-powered platform designed to streamline the process of responding to Requests for Proposals (RFPs), security questionnaires, and due diligence documents.

Despite continued growth, the team believe that businesses today need more than certification – they need tools that help them earn and maintain trust at scale. This is what led to the rebranding from Privasee to Vera.

Vera – derived from the Latin word for “truth” – is an AI-powered platform that helps businesses manage the flood of trust-related documents that slow down deals and strain internal teams.

Vera automates the process of extracting questions from these documents and matching them with verified, pre-approved answers from a centralised internal knowledge base. This allows cross-functional teams – from sales and legal to security and compliance – to reprotedly respond more quickly, more accurately, and without duplication.

Designed to slot into existing workflows, Vera integrates with tools like Slack, Teams or Google Drive. It also offers real-time collaboration, answer suggestions, and version tracking to reduce friction during complex deals and reviews.

With the rebrand, Vera is looks to position itself as not just a tool, but an “OS for customer trust“. With different AI Agents that remove bottlenecks and create a single source of truth for compliance and security responses, Vera allegedly helps companies close deals faster while meeting rising buyer expectations for transparency and trustworthiness.

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Germany-based Leapter has secured €2 million in pre-seed funding to transform how enterprises build software.

AI promises to speed up software development, but in business, speed without trust can be risky. The common belief is that AI will eventually get better at writing perfect code, but this misses the fundamental challenge: raw code itself is a black box, understood only by a technical few.

Leapter solves this trust gap by changing the medium entirely. Leapter turns business needs into clear, visual blueprints instead of complex code. These structured, visual diagrams serve as the single source of truth for the whole project.

Unlike source code, which needs developers to explain it, these visual blueprints can be easily understood, checked, and improved by the people who know the business best, like product leaders, analysts, compliance teams, and legal experts. That way it creates a shared language that bridges the gap between business intent and technical implementation, ensuring what gets built is aligned, secure, and correct by design.

Why Leapter is different

While other AI tools focus on helping individual developers write code faster, Leapter's platform is designed for true cross-functional collaboration.

It empowers business experts and key stakeholders to describe requirements in plain language, then visually review and refine the system's logic alongside their technical colleagues. This process allows organisations to move from initial idea to production-ready system with unprecedented speed and alignment, eliminating the costly risks of traditional project handoffs.

Robert Werner, Co-founder and CTO of Leapter, shared:

We saw teams getting stuck between the promise of AI and the reality of enterprise software development. You can't just throw AI-generated code over the wall and hope for the best. That's why we built Leapter around 'executable blueprints' - to empower the entire team to build systems that are correct by design.

Leapter's funding round was led bm|t beteiligungsmanagement thüringen GmbH, with support from SIVentures and angel investors including Frank Stummer and Roman Dudenhausen.

Stephan Beier, Senior Investment Manager at bm|t shared that the market for AI development tools is exploding, but Leapter stood out immediately:

Oliver and Robert possess a rare combination of deep enterprise experience and a compelling vision for a new, more trustworthy development paradigm. Their focus on auditable, human-verifiable AI is not just a feature-it's the key to unlocking the massive enterprise market. We are convinced that Leapter has the right team and technology to become a category leader."

Leapter’s angel investors share that view, seeing the company as uniquely positioned to transform the way software is developed.

Leapter is different. It doesn't just help the developer; it helps the entire organization. By making business logic visible and verifiable, Leapter eliminates ambiguity and allows teams to ship complex features with unprecedented velocity and confidence,

said Frank Stummer, angel investor.

The company is currently in private beta, working closely with a group of exceptional early design partners. With the support of new funding, the team plans to grow its engineering capacity, further develop its visual language, and roll out additional enterprise integrations. 

Lead image: Leapter team | Photo: Uncredited

French startup KERYS Software has secured €6.2 million in pre-seed funding to accelerate its mission of transforming how enterprises manage IT infrastructure.

KERYS Software was founded in 2024 by Thomas Brethomé, Sébastien Domergue, Sylvain Cassier, and joined in early 2025 by Thomas Girard. These four long-standing industry experts bring deep expertise in cybersecurity and infrastructure, honed in high-stakes sectors such as defence. 

The startup sprang from a simple, yet worrying observation: most businesses are weighed down by underused IT equipment, a recipe for runaway costs and high energy bills. By virtualising workloads, KERYS allows several work environments to share a single workstation or server without sacrificing performance or security.

Delivered through the YS::Cloud and YS::Desktop platforms, this shared infrastructure model cuts costs and emissions by reducing the number of physical devices and using servers more efficiently. 

Thomas Girard, CEO and co-founder of KERYS Software, shared:

In just one year, we have managed to establish ourselves as one of the emerging key players in InfraTech. We are tackling several key priorities for companies across all sectors, with an all-in-one approach: reducing costs, strengthening cybersecurity and managing carbon footprints. 

This represents a paradigm shift in IT infrastructure optimisation and associated resource management, and the strong demand we are seeing – particularly from large corporations – strengthens our ambition.

Since its launch, KERYS Software has formed several strategic and commercial partnerships to expand the use of its technology. With this new funding, the company aims to grow its team, improve its product, and speed up international expansion.

Investment funds Daphni, Seedcamp, and Backtrace took part in the round. They were joined by Kima Ventures and business angels Amirhossein Malekzadeh, Sébastien Pahl, and Nicolas Steegmann, who are backing KERYS Software as it scales its go-to-market efforts and attracts top talent to support its growth.

Shabir Vasram, Partner, Daphni, commented:

KERYS Software is a rare combination of an extraordinary team and perfect timing, with the reorganisation of component architecture, the implementation of new regulations (NIS2 in particular), and established players losing momentum.

Carlos Eduardo Espinal MBE, Managing Partner at Seedcamp, said they are excited to back KERYS from day one in their mission to redefine virtualisation across critical industries and beyond, adding:

With a stellar team of industry experts and a solid value proposition, KERYS is well-positioned to become a leader in InfraTech. 

Dominik Tobschall, Founder and Partner at Backtrace, believes that Workstations and servers spend much of their lifetime idling. He said:

With Kerys, customers can run multiple CPU or GPU workloads on a single machine. Its lightweight, highly secure microkernel delivers near-native performance and safely virtualises workloads that previously required dedicated hardware. That’s smart engineering solving a real pain for customers: less idle time, lower total cost of ownership, and a smaller carbon footprint.

KERYS Software is already recognised in France as an emerging force in the deep tech and cybersecurity ecosystem and is supported by several financial institutions and public bodies.

KERYS Software is also a partner of the CEA LIST for the formalisation of security certifications for its new technology, which will enable very high levels of security to be achieved by the company in the near future, such as the EAL5+ common criteria level.

Lead image: Kerys Software team | Photo: Uncredited

British startup Zango, a FinTech platform helping enterprise customers navigating complex regulatory environments, has emerged from stealth and raised €4 million in a new funding round to expand their international team and into other verticals of financial services.

The round was led by Nexus Venture Partners, a global VC firm with over €2.2 billion capital under management. Other participants include South Park Commons; Richard Davies, CEO of Allica Bank; Alan Morgan, former head of Financial Services at McKinsey (EMEA); Mark Ransford; Notion Capital; No Label Ventures and Start Ventures.

Ritesh Singhania, Co-founder of Zango says, “Traditional SaaS stops at KYC and AML, leaving the rest of compliance buried in spreadsheets and manual reviews. Zango changes that. Our regulation-aware AI agents continuously track regulatory updates (horizon scanning), identify compliance gaps in real time, and keep firms audit-ready – no operational drag, no surprises.”

Founded in 2024 by Ritesh Singhania and Shashank Agarwal, Zango is a regulatory compliance solution that leverages AI alongside trusted subject-matter experts to automate horizon scanning, gap analysis, and controls testing for global financial institutions.

Singhania previously founded ClearGlass, a pension compliance platform, and served as Head of Technology at Simplitium (acquired by NASDAQ). Agarwal Co-founded Third Watch, an AI-powered fraud detection startup (acquired by Razorpay), and led trust and compliance engineering at PhonePe, which is gearing up for India’s largest IPO.

The company operates globally with offices in London, San Francisco and Bengaluru.

“The global regulatory landscape is ripe for disruption,” added Anand Datta, Partner at Nexus Venture Partners. “Ritesh and Shashank, with their firsthand, proven expertise, developed Zango’s first-principles approach: uniquely marrying cutting-edge AI with human compliance expertise. Their AI-led solution is already augmenting the compliance team and increasing their efficiency at global financial institutions. We’re incredibly excited to be part of their journey.”

Zango is actively used by established banks such as Novobanco, the fourth-largest bank in Portugal, and is gaining traction with leading neo banks in the EU and UK, including Monzo and Juni.

“We don’t sell a platform – we sell a solution,” said Singhania. “Our AI agents are paired with humans-in-the-loop to ensure 100% accuracy. Peace of mind doesn’t come from a tool; it comes from a result. That’s why we win against consultants – because they don’t just sell software, and neither do we.”

Today, financial services regulations stretch across tens of thousands of pages, creating slow, manual workflows and significant costs for businesses striving to stay compliant.

Zango looks to address this challenge by transforming regulatory complexity into a clear list of requirements. Its solution is training regulation-specific LLMs to make compliance as intuitive as a simple query, enabling businesses to launch new products and expand into new markets with speed and confidence.

“We are thrilled with how Zango AI has transformed our compliance processes, saving us hundreds of hours of manual repetitive work and allowing our team to focus on strategic initiatives,” said Lara Reis, Head of regulatory affairs, Novobanco.

With Zango.ai, compliance reportedly becomes as simple as a Google query: “I want to launch a lending product in [Y] market – what do I need to do?”

Zango’s AI agents read and interpret regulations, intergrating into a company’s day-to-day operations.

In one example, a workflow with one of the banks involving the regulator was reduced from 48 hours to under 4 hours.

“We are thrilled with how Zango AI has transformed our compliance processes, saving us hundreds of hours of manual repetitive work and allowing our team to focus on strategic initiatives,” said Lara Reis, Head of regulatory affairs, Novobanco.

The funds raised will be used to expand teams in London & Bengaluru along with building out the other product modules for an AI-native GRC. Zango will expand into other verticals of financial services as well outside of banking to insurance and asset management.

“For Horizon scanning, Zango is a game-changer. The platform’s current and future modules are set to revolutionise the second line of defense work in regulated industries like ours,” added Sabina Ausfelt, Head of compliance, Juni.

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This week, my laundry machine broke. Bummer. Like any normal person, I dove into research mode, scrolling through endless product pages, feature lists, and discounts. After a while, one machine caught my attention. It was a Samsung model labelled “AI-enhanced”. (Not going to lie, it came with a solid discount, making it one of the cheapest among the top-rated options, but I was really excited about the AI feature)

In full honesty (this is not a sponsored post), it works great. From what I could observe, when you throw the clothes inside the machine, it weighs the clothes, and based on that, it selects the most suitable wash setting: water level, soap, temperature, and timing. Yes, it’s clever, efficient, and genuinely helpful. But it got me thinking: is that really AI, or just a well-designed automation?

We love “washing” and much more than just clothes

In business, as in life, those who tell the most compelling story tend to succeed. We love to use fancy words, set expectations high, and hold attention long enough to turn curiosity into conversion. Labels matter. Language sells. That is where the “washing” comes in.

Suddenly, the customer changes. With so many options available, they are no longer just buying products; they are buying into a story, a value, a promise. We saw it clearly with greenwashing. Everything became “eco-friendly”, “sustainable”, and “recyclable.” Some of it was real progress, but much of it was just clever marketing with little substance behind it.

The same thing is now happening with AI. Buzzwords like “AI-powered” or “intelligent assistant” are being applied to products that, while often smart and useful, are not truly driven by artificial intelligence. Just as greenwashing exaggerates a product’s environmental credentials, AI-washing misleads consumers about what the technology is actually doing. The line between automation and artificial intelligence is not always 100% clear. On that note, let’s review 5 cases where the buzzword was blurred into the product to fit the market

AI or not AI? That is the question 

1. Samsung AI-enhanced washing machines

This product sparked the idea of the whole article, so it clearly had to go first. Samsung has marketed several washing machine models as “AI-enhanced”, highlighting features that supposedly adjust wash settings based on load type and user habits. On the surface, it sounds like the machine is learning from behaviour and optimising accordingly, in line with what consumers might expect from AI.

What actually happens is simpler. When the laundry is loaded, the machine weighs the clothes and then selects the appropriate settings for water level, detergent, temperature, and cycle length. It is a smart use of sensors and automation, no doubt, but is it actually learning anything new, or simply taking note of what program you use the most?  I would personally not call this AI rather a well-executed piece of engineering.

2. Builder.ai

The most obvious and famous case this year. Builder.ai was widely promoted as an AI-powered software development platform that could build custom apps without the need for developers. The promise was clear: type in your app idea, and their so-called “AI” would generate a working product quickly and affordably. It sounded like a revolution in software development, and investors bought into the story. The company raised over €440 million from major backers, reaching the billion-dollar valuation, positioning itself as a leader in AI-driven app creation.

The reality was far less futuristic. Investigations revealed that the platform relied heavily on a workforce of over 700 human developers based in India who manually executed most of the work. The AI component was minimal, mostly limited to interface suggestions and templates. While the human support may still deliver good results, the branding misled customers and investors into thinking they were witnessing automation at its peak, when it was mostly outsourced labour hidden behind a tech buzzword.

3. Logitech’s AI Edition M750 mouse

A few months ago, Logitech introduced the Signature AI Edition M750 wireless mouse. Curious buyers expecting next-gen input technology might be surprised to find that the “AI” upgrade is, quite literally, just an extra button. This button is preprogrammed to launch the ChatGPT prompt builder from Logitech’s Options+ app. That’s the standout feature. The rest of the mouse remains largely unchanged from the M650 model, which launched back in 2022.

Technically, the AI functionality does not reside in the mouse itself, but in the software layer. The M750 simply makes a shortcut default. It is a sleek mouse, but calling this product AI-enhanced when it is a clear case of trend alignment rather than a transformative capability.

4. Oral-B iO Series “AI” toothbrush

Oral-B’s iO Series toothbrushes are marketed as “AI-powered,” promising real-time feedback to improve brushing technique. According to the brand, the AI tracks your brushing style and helps you cover all areas of your mouth evenly. It sounds impressive, a smart toothbrush that understands your habits and coaches you to better dental hygiene.

In practice, the toothbrush uses motion sensors and pressure detection, then compares that data to a predefined ideal brushing path. (Note on predefined ideal brushing path). It gives feedback via a companion app, but there is no machine learning, no adaptation to individual patterns, and certainly no evolution over time. And let’s be honest, you’ll probably pay attention to the app during the first week or maybe the first month, but would you really check it every single time you use your toothbrush? Helpful, maybe. AI-powered? That is debatable.

5. LG DUALCOOL AI Air Conditioner

The last one today is the LG’s DUALCOOL AI Air that has been marketed as a next-generation appliance, using AI Core-Tech to deliver personalised cooling based on user preferences. The product description includes terms like “AI DUAL Inverter”, “Human Detecting Sensor”, and “spatial analysis” through the ThinQ app. It promises to optimise airflow by tracking your location, learning your usage patterns, and adjusting the temperature and fan speed automatically. Add in features like Sleep Timer+, Auto Clean+, and energy-saving modes, and it sounds like the air conditioner of the future.

But strip away the marketing language, and you are left with a series of high-end sensors, pre-set routines, and app integrations that respond to motion, room temperature (a thermometer), and inactivity. Does that count as AI? Or is it simply a movement sensor connected to a smart control system? There is no clear evidence of true learning, prediction, or dynamic model training. It is smart, sure. But whether it is truly intelligent remains open to question, especially when every modern appliance wants to ride the AI wave.

The AI label is here to stay, even when the intelligence is not

These five cases are just a sample. The list could easily go on with smart fridges that suggest recipes based on scanned ingredients, AI fitness apps that follow static routines, or robot vacuums that use simple sensors to map your living room and call it machine learning. As AI continues to dominate the tech narrative, we can expect more devices to advertise questionable features related to the technology.

This is not necessarily harmful. Some of these tools are genuinely useful. But we should stay alert to what is actually being offered. Not every product that carries an “AI” label is smarter, and not every smart feature needs to be framed as artificial intelligence. If that is the case, maybe Excel should start branding its formulas as AI, too. They have been around for decades, but they can follow logic, adapt to inputs, and even simulate decision-making.

The label may help increase sales, attract investors, or drive media attention, but as consumers and professionals, we should learn to look past the branding and ask a basic question: Is it really AI, or just well-packaged automation?

The post AI-washing: Are we fooling ourselves with artificial intelligence? appeared first on EU-Startups.

UK VC firm Growth Capital Partners (GCP) today announced the first and final close of Fund VI  at £411 million. 

Launched in late March, the oversubscribed fund reached final close in just three months, following strong demand from existing and new investors. 

The close represents a 58 per cent increase in size from Fund V and includes support from prestigious new LPs across Europe and the US, alongside strong re-ups from GCP’s existing investor base.

Fund VI will continue GCP’s established strategy of partnering with ambitious Founder-led teams in high-margin, high-growth businesses underpinned by distinctive intellectual capital. It will build on the firm’s track record of successfully working with exceptional companies within technology and specialist services, providing strategic support, tools and extensive experience to accelerate and de-risk growth. 

So far in 2025, Fund V has achieved two major realisations: cybersecurity specialist Bridewell (generating 9.3x return), and digital services and data consultancy Hippo. 

“This fundraise is a clear reflection of the strength of our team, track record and distinct strategy alongside a compelling market opportunity,” said Kirsty McDonald, Partner at GCP. 

Prague-based TopK, a query-engine helping developers and AI agents search data, announced today they have secured €4.6 million in Seed funding to expand the team and build out TopK’s enterprise offering to support web-scale search use cases.

The round saw participation from Earlybird, KAYA, Irregular Expressions, and several angel investors.

“The database market is undergoing a fundamental transformation. The boom in AI-native products is pushing the limits of traditional search systems which no longer meet current demands. Our platform addresses this shift in the market and provides a solution for developers and AI agents to unify structured and unstructured retrieval at scale,” says Marek Galovič, CEO and co-founder of TopK.

TopK was founded in 2024 by Marek Galovič and Jerguš Lejko, who have known each other since high school. After years of working on large-scale systems and AI tools, they reunited again to reimagine search from the ground up. Their goal was to provide teams with a unified platform for relevant and intelligent search across all their data – without the need to connect multiple databases, APIs, or ranking systems.

TopK’s purpose-built query engine aims to give teams deep control over retrieval and ranking – enabling fast and high-quality search in large-scale production environments.

The cloud-native platform combines vector search, keyword matching, filtering, and flexible ranking in a single system. This allows teams to fine-tune results for their specific domain and use case, for example, in e-commerce, finance, healthcare, or law.

“We are changing the way data is searched and building a platform tailored for development  teams that work with large volumes of data and demand high performance, flexibility, and cost efficiency. Our goal is to become the unified query layer that powers search for the world’s most advanced apps. That’s why we welcome design partnerships that challenge us with technically demanding problems and help us push the product even further,” adds Jerguš Lejko, CTO and Co-founder of TopK.

In the future, TopK plans to expand its platform’s capabilities with natural language understanding and support for unstructured and multi-modal data. This will allow the startup to move beyond a traditional search database and reportedly deliver truly intelligent search.

“Companies are facing the limitations of current search systems. TopK brings a fundamental shift in how infrastructure is built, along with a deep understanding of the problems that development teams face every day. That’s why we support their vision to create a search system for the AI era,” says Andre Retterath, General Partner at Earlybird.

With the emergence of ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs), the demand for vector databases has skyrocketed. However, TopK says that most companies still rely on fragmented infrastructure and legacy tools that aren’t built to handle AI-native search workloads. TopK looks to solve this problem with a “true hybrid retrieval” approach that combines vector search, keyword matching, and filtering in an unified engine.

“TopK has built the core of their database to deliver the fastest and most cost-effective hybrid search solution on the market – all with a small but exceptionally capable team. The investment will allow them to accelerate the development, deliver the enterprise-grade features, and succeed on a global scale,” adds Karel Zheng from KAYA.

Even though TopK has headquarters in San Francisco, the development is carried out primarily in Europe, due to the “high quality of technical talent“.

According to the Founders, Europe is home to a strong community of people with experience in building databases, distributed systems, and cloud infrastructure. In addition, local developers have a strong knowledge of the key technologies, such as Rust or Kubernetes.

“We are currently building a team in Prague and looking for more developers and platform engineers who aren’t afraid of complex systems, understand the broader context, and are eager to help build the new generation of search from the ground up. We’re looking not only for domain experts, but also for technical leaders who can take ownership of one of our key verticals and drive its development across the entire platform,” concludes Lejko.

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Search engine for AI TopK has raised $5.5 million Seed funding to build an AI-native search engine for enterprises.

With the emergence of LLMs, the demand for vector databases has skyrocketed. However, most companies still rely on fragmented infrastructure and legacy tools that aren’t built to handle AI-native search workloads. 

TopK has developed a “true hybrid retrieval” approach that combines vector search, keyword matching, and filtering in a unified engine. The purpose-built query engine gives teams deep control over retrieval and ranking, enabling fast and high-quality search in large-scale production environments. This allows teams to fine-tune results for their specific domain and use case, such as e-commerce, finance, healthcare, or law. 

TopK was founded in 2024 by Marek Galovič and Jerguš Lejko, who have known each other since high school. 

After years of working on large-scale systems and AI tools, they reunited again to reimagine search from the ground up. Their goal was to provide teams with a unified platform for relevant and intelligent search across all their data, without the need to connect multiple databases, APIs, or ranking systems.

According to Marek Galovič, CEO and co-founder of TopK:

“The database market is undergoing a fundamental transformation. The boom in AI-native products is pushing the limits of traditional search systems, which no longer meet current demands.

Our platform addresses this shift in the market and provides a solution for developers and AI agents to unify structured and unstructured retrieval at scale.” 

The funding is raised from Earlybird, KAYA, Irregular Expressions, and several angel investors. 

“Companies are facing the limitations of current search systems. TopK brings a fundamental shift in how infrastructure is built, along with a deep understanding of the problems that development teams face every day. That’s why we support their vision to create a search system for the AI era,” says Andre Retterath, General Partner at Earlybird. 

“TopK has built the core of their database to deliver the fastest and most cost-effective hybrid search solution on the market – all with a small but exceptionally capable team. The investment will allow them to accelerate the development, deliver the enterprise-grade features, and succeed on a global scale,” says Karel Zheng from KAYA. 

In the future, TopK plans to expand its platform’s capabilities to include natural language understanding and support for unstructured and multimodal data. This will allow the startup to move beyond a traditional search database and deliver truly intelligent search.

Lead image: TopK. Photo: uncredited. 

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Defencetech unicorn TEKEVER has acquired Lisbon design company Cocoon Experience, building on several years of successful user-centric collaboration.

This user-centric approach has long been part of TEKEVER’s DNA and has proven critical in some of its most demanding operations — including frontline missions in Ukraine. In these high-stakes scenarios, placing the user at the centre of the design process has directly improved operational effectiveness, enabling faster decision-making and greater adaptability in complex, real-time environments.

Having already worked closely on groundbreaking civilian and defence projects, the Cocoon team — comprising behavioural scientists, design strategists, and UX specialists — will now operate exclusively within the TEKEVER ecosystem. Their role will be to help scale and accelerate the development of TEKEVER’s rapidly growing product and customer base.

Ricardo Mendes, CEO of TEKEVER, stated: 

“Cocoon Experience's entry into the TEKEVER universe confirms our commitment not only to create the most innovative products and technologies, but also to ensure our users remain at the centre of the development process.”

The integration of Cocoon Experience reinforces TEKEVER’s strategic belief that the most powerful technology must also be intuitive, adaptable, and designed around real operational needs. Working directly with TEKEVER’s R&D, Product and Delivery teams, Cocoon’s specialists will continue to play a key role in designing more responsive, transparent, and user-friendly digital ecosystems.

Anabela Fernandes, Managing Partner at Cocoon Experience, commented: 

“For years, we've collaborated closely with TEKEVER, sharing a vision for how design can elevate complex technology.

This union presents an incredible opportunity to apply our human-centric approach to truly impactful, mission-critical applications, contributing to solutions that enhance safety, security, and operational effectiveness at a global scale.”

 As autonomous technologies and AI continue to reshape defence policy across Europe, TEKEVER’s growth is closely aligned with this strategic shift. Recent reviews — including the UK’s most recent Strategic Defence Review and NATO’s Rapid Adoption Action Plan — reinforce the importance of investing in autonomous and uncrewed systems as essential components of future operational capability. 

These perspectives are echoed globally, where there is a growing consensus on the need to strengthen technological sovereignty through scalable, AI-driven solutions that enhance situational awareness, resilience, and decision-making in complex environments.

Barcelona-founded legal intelligence platform vLex has been acquired by Canadian LegalTech heavyweight Clio in a cash-and-stock transaction valued at €848 million, marking Clio’s most significant acquisition to date, as the Burnaby-based company continues its expansion across the trillion-euro global legal services market.

vLex’s backers include London-based private equity firm Oakley Capital through its Origin Fund. Oakley, alongside the Faus brothers, will partially reinvest in the combined entity to capture long-term growth potential.

“This signals the onset of a transformative era in the legal industry, unlike anything we’ve seen before,” said Lluís Faus, CEO and Co-founder of vLex. “Together with Clio, we have a bold vision for the future that empowers legal professionals to go beyond traditional research and operational silos, harnessing deeper intelligence and broader impact. With the most comprehensive global legal library and firm insights, Clio and vLex are uniquely positioned to reshape the mechanics of legal work and redefine the trajectory of the profession.”

Founded in 2000 by brothers Lluís and Angel Faus, vLex has built one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive legal libraries. The platform, known for its AI-powered assistant Vincent, enables legal professionals to research and draft legal content with high precision, using a proprietary database of over one billion legal documents.

Originally focused outside of the US, vLex gained access to over one million American lawyers through its 2023 merger with Washington-based Fastcase.

Clio, established in 2008 and officially operating as Themis Solutions Inc., has grown into a leader in cloud-based legal practice management. Its platform is used by over 200,000 lawyers globally to manage scheduling, billing, document handling, and more.

This acquisition accelerates Clio’s mission to integrate both the business and practice of law under one AI-enhanced platform. It also signals the company’s growing ambition following its €763 million Series F round in July 2024, the largest software funding round in Canadian history.

“This is a watershed moment for Clio and the broader legal profession,” said Jack Newton, CEO and Founder of Clio. “For 17 years, we’ve built the foundational platform that enables law firms to operate at their highest potential. With vLex, we’re building on that foundation with technology that understands the substance of the law. By bringing together the business and practice of law in a unified platform, we’re revolutionising every aspect of legal work. This sets the stage for a future powered by agentic AI, and marks the establishment of a new industry category – one that will empower legal professionals to serve clients with unprecedented insight and precision.”

The acquisition brings together Clio’s operating system for law firms with vLex’s research and AI capabilities, including its generative AI assistant Vincent. Known for grounding citations in case law, Vincent aims to eliminate the risk of hallucinated AI responses in legal workflows – a pressing concern in the industry.

The transaction is expected to close later in 2025, pending regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. Financial advisors on the deal included Goldman Sachs for Clio and J.P. Morgan for vLex.

The full implications of this acquisition could reshape the LegalTech competitive landscape, setting Clio on a path to challenge legacy players like Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis – two notable industry figures that are also investing in AI and creating similar tools.

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London-based Zango, a regulatory compliance solution, has raised $4.8 million to grow its teams and expand its AI-native GRC platform.
Financial services regulations stretch across tens of thousands of pages, creating slow, manual workflows and significant costs for businesses striving to stay compliant.

Zango addresses this challenge by transforming regulatory complexity into a clear list of requirements. Its innovative solution is training regulation-specific Large Language Models (LLMs) to make compliance as intuitive as a simple query.

This simplifies how businesses interact with complex regulations. As a result, companies can launch new products and enter new markets with greater speed and confidence. Compliance shifts from being just a cost centre to becoming a driver of growth.

Ritesh Singhania, Co-founder of Zango, says:

Traditional SaaS stops at KYC and AML, leaving the rest of compliance buried in spreadsheets and manual reviews. Zango changes that. Our regulation-aware AI agents continuously track regulatory updates (horizon scanning), identify compliance gaps in real time, and keep firms audit-ready — no operational drag, no surprises.

Zango’s AI agents not only read and interpret regulations with high accuracy, but they also integrate directly into a company’s daily operations. This turns compliance into a continuous, always-on process, rather than a one-time checklist.

Singhania added:

We don’t sell a platform — we sell a solution. Our AI agents are paired with humans-in-the-loop to ensure 100% accuracy. Peace of mind doesn’t come from a tool; it comes from a result. That’s why we win against consultants — because they don’t just sell software, and neither do we.

The round was led by Nexus Venture Partners. Other participants in the latest round include South Park Commons, Richard Davies, CEO of Allica Bank, Alan Morgan, former head of Financial Services at McKinsey (EMEA), Mark Ransford, Notion Capital, No Label Ventures and Start Ventures.

Anand Datta, Partner at Nexus Venture Partners, thinks that the global regulatory landscape is ripe for disruption, adding: 

Ritesh and Shashank, with their firsthand, proven expertise, developed Zango's first-principles approach: uniquely marrying cutting-edge AI with human compliance expertise. Their AI-led solution is already augmenting the compliance team and increasing their efficiency at global financial institutions. We're incredibly excited to be part of their journey.

Zango is actively used by established banks such as Novobanco, the fourth-largest bank in Portugal, and is gaining traction with leading neobanks in the EU and UK, including Monzo and Juni.

Lara Reis, Head of regulatory affairs, Novobanco, said:

We are thrilled with how Zango AI has transformed our compliance processes, saving us hundreds of hours of manual repetitive work and allowing our team to focus on strategic initiatives.

Sabina Ausfelt, Head of Compliance at Juni, said that for horizon scanning, Zango is a game-changer:

The platform’s current and future modules are set to revolutionise the second line of defence work in regulated industries like ours.

The funds raised will be used to expand teams in London and Bengaluru, along with building out the other product modules for an AI-native GRC. Zango will expand into other verticals of financial services as well, outside of banking, to insurance and asset management.

Lead image: Zango co-founders | Photo: Uncredited