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Zparq, a DeepTech company developing next-generation electric drivetrains out of Stockholm, has been awarded €5.5 million in EU funding to complete the development and scaling of its Z10 platform and to drive the marine industry’s transition towards sustainable, zero-emission propulsion.
This funding is a combination of an EIC grant and an equity investment through Zparq’s existing investors InnoEnergy, Santander Climate Fund and Almi Invest Greentech.
“This milestone underscores both the technological strength of our platform and the momentum for change across the marine industry,” says Jonas Genchel, CEO and Co-founder of Zparq. “With increasing regulatory pressure and clear customer demand for sustainable propulsion, the time for electrification is now. Our Z10 platform proves that electric propulsion can be clean, safe, and fully competitive, not only in performance, but also in cost and reliability.”
The funding awarded to Zparq for its Z10 marine drivetrain platform fits within a broader 2025 trend of European startups advancing electrified propulsion and clean mobility technologies.
This includes Finland’s Donut Lab, which raised €25 million to develop a modular EV platform for land, sea and air vehicles, and the Netherlands’ Deftpower, which secured €12.5 million to expand its AI-driven EV charging network across Europe.
While Zparq is the only Swedish company in this group, the activity across the Nordic region – particularly Donut Lab’s Finnish raise – illustrates the region’s strong momentum in sustainable propulsion and deep-tech innovation.
Zparq’s combination of grant and equity financing under the EIC Accelerator also reflects how public instruments continue to play a pivotal role in scaling European clean-transport technologies.
“Zparq is a prime example of how European DeepTech innovation can transform entire industries,” says Lowina Lundström, CEO of InnoEnergy Scandinavia. “Their drivetrain platform addresses one of the most challenging sectors to decarbonise – marine propulsion – by combining technical excellence with industrial scalability. At InnoEnergy, we are proud to support Zparq in bringing this breakthrough to market, thereby accelerating Europe’s leadership in clean and competitive marine technology.”
Founded in 2020, Zparq looks to provide the most compact and scalable direct-drive system for propeller-driven watercrafts on the market. Zparq offers electric motors and complete powertrains for the full range of leisure boats as well as commercial vessels, enabling an environmentally friendly, efficient, and quiet propulsion with minimal maintenance.
Zparq is one of only 40 European start-ups to be selected for the EIC Accelerator programme, chosen from over 1,000 applicants. In this round, nearly €230 million was allocated to only 40 selected companies, with the majority provided as blended finance.
“We are incredibly happy and proud to have been selected for the EIC Accelerator in such tough competition. It is a strong validation that our technology comes at the right time and has the potential to make a real difference,” adds Genchel. “This recognition and funding will allow us to scale faster, build new partnerships, and drive the systemic change needed to decarbonize waterways.”
According to the company, the marine sector has long relied on internal combustion engines, but their environmental impact, higher maintenance costs, and regulatory hurdles are accelerating the shift toward electrification. Zparq aims to address these challenges head-on with its ultra-compact, scalable, and fully integrated electric drivetrains.
Its Z10 platform is designed not only for leisure boats but also for demanding commercial and rescue applications, with integrated safety systems, advanced battery management, and theft-prevention technology redefining the standards for marine mobility.
With this financing, Zparq will be able to:
Complete the development of the entire Z10 platform, the company’s core technology for electric drivetrains.
Scale up the technology for wider market adoption and industrial production.
Continue attracting international partners and customers in the transport sector
smartbax, a Munich-based BioTech company developing next-generation antibiotics against multi-drug resistant bacteria, today announced the successful first closing of its €4.7 million pre-Series A financing round.
The round was led by new investors Anobis Asset and Bayern Kapital, with participation from UnternehmerTUM Funding for Innovators as well as existing investors HTGF – High-Tech Gründerfonds and Boehringer Ingelheim Venture Fund (BIVF). A second closing of the round remains open to investors.
“Small-molecule antibiotics remain one of the most effective tools in combating the rapidly growing threat of antimicrobial resistance. smartbax is currently the only German BioTech dedicated exclusively to developing these crucial tools, and we are proud to advance complementary approaches with both a classical inhibitor against a novel target and enzyme activators with a truly novel mode of action in the antibiotic realm,” said DrRobert Macsics, CEO of smartbax.
This pre-Series A positions smartbax among a growing group of European companies tackling antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
In 2025, EU-Startups has reported several notable rounds in the field, including SNIPR Biome in Denmark, which secured €35 million in Series B funding to advance CRISPR-based anti-infection therapies, and Phagos in France, which raised €25 million in Series A to develop bacteriophage-based treatments.
These examples illustrate sustained investor interest in diverse AMR approaches across Europe. While many peers focus on gene or phage therapies, smartbax’s work on small-molecule antibiotics offers a complementary route within this innovation landscape.
“Our programs focus on WHO priority pathogens and aim to provide new treatment options for critically ill patients who currently have limited alternatives. We are delighted to have assembled such a strong consortium of investors who share our commitment to addressing this urgent public health threat,” added Dr Macsics.
Founded in 2021 as a spin-off of the Technical University Munich (TUM), smartbax is developing a new generation of antibiotics to address the increasing spread of multi-drug resistant bacteria.
Their team is advancing a complementary pipeline of small molecules against novel bacterial targets and with innovative modes of action to prevent resistance.
Their lead programme is a new inhibitor of lipopolysaccharide synthesis in Gram-negative bacteria. Moreover, the company specialises in the tailored activation of enzymatic pathways that trigger bacterial self-digestion, as this approach is particularly promising in the context of difficult-to-treat biofilms.
Two activators are in development, targeting both Gram-positive bacteria and Gram-negative bacteria individually.
Martin Falk, managing director at Anobis Asset, said: “Antibiotic resistance is one of the most urgent medical challenges of our time, and there is a clear need for new therapeutic approaches. In Germany alone, nearly 10,000 people die each year as a direct consequence of infections with multi-drug resistant bacteria; many more are hospitalized and often face lengthy recovery times.
“We are proud to support a team focused on developing solutions that could help patients and protect public health worldwide.”
smartbax will use the funds to progress its proprietary pipeline of small-molecule antibiotics designed to overcome bacterial resistance with innovative approaches and novel mechanisms of action.
The lead candidate is an inhibitor that blocks a previously unexplored step in the synthesis of lipopolysaccharides (LPS), key structural components of the outer membrane in Gram-negative bacteria. This new inhibitor has already demonstrated in vivo proof of concept, including activity against multi-drug resistant strains, shows potential as an orally available drug, and will now be advanced through preclinical development.
Monika Steger, Managing Partner at Bayern Kapital, commented: “Rising bacterial resistance to antibiotics poses an enormous burden on global healthcare. smartbax is tackling this problem with two novel drug approaches that are already showing great potential at their current stage. At the same time, the market for new antibiotics is opening up a highly attractive growth area with great economic opportunities. Our investment in smartbax is therefore a promising investment in the local BioTech ecosystem and the resilience of our healthcare system.”
In parallel, smartbax is advancing its platform of small-molecule activators of bacterial hydrolases. Rather than inhibiting bacterial functions like traditional antibiotics, these compounds stimulate hydrolase activity, causing bacteria to digest themselves from within.
According to the company, this innovative mode of action has not been exploited in commercial antibiotics to date and offers a promising strategy to overcome established resistance mechanisms.
smartbax has identified two activator classes effective against different targets in Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, both of which display encouraging drug-like properties, are able to eliminate biofilms and show no development of resistance.
The company will further develop these candidates toward lead selection and in vivo proof of concept using the current funds.
IngavomHoltz, Director Investments at UnternehmerTUM Funding for Innovators, added: “smartbax has grown from academic research into a BioTech company with a clear focus on antibiotic innovation. We are pleased to join this financing round and to support a team that is advancing both classical inhibitors and entirely new antibacterial mechanisms with enzyme activators, and we are proud that such innovation has its origins at the Technical University Munich.”
The cost of creating convincing synthetic media has collapsed – and so has society’s ability to distinguish between real and fabricated information. So what are Europe’s rising startups doing about it?
According to the latest study by Dutch cybersecurity startup Surfshark, reported losses linked to deepfakes have now surpassed €1.3 billion, with €860 million stolen in 2025 alone, up €500 million year-on-year.
As Oliver Quie, CEO of British cybersecurity startup Innerworks commented: “We’re facing AI-powered deception that can mimic legitimate users with frightening accuracy. Existing security companies have become obsolete because they assume threats will behave differently than legitimate users.”
Only a few years ago, producing a one-minute deepfake video could cost anywhere between €257 and €17k, depending on quality. With the arrival of widely accessible AI video tools such as Veo 3 and Sora 2, that same minute can now be generated for just a few euros.
This dramatic price collapse has made deception cheaper to run and far easier to scale.
Scalable deception and “lost pet” scams
As costs fall, new categories of fraud have emerged. One striking example is the lost pet scam – fraudsters now generate AI-made images of supposedly found pets, tricking anxious owners into paying small ‘recovery fees’, often around €43, in the hope of reuniting with their animals.
“As the cost of fabricating lifelike images and videos approaches zero, scammers are industrialising deception,” said Miguel Fornes, Information Security Manager at Surfshark. “The lost-pet scam is a clear example: it exploits emotion for small sums, making victims less suspicious and far less likely to pursue legal action. For criminals, that’s an ideal model for mass-scale fraud.” (Translated)
Fornes adds that such small-ticket scams are only part of the picture. The larger threat comes from deepfake-enabled investment schemes and identity spoofing.
The surge in AI-driven deception has triggered a corresponding wave of innovation – and investment – across Europe. So far this year, EU-Startups has reported on several funding rounds targeting the detection and prevention of deepfake-enabled fraud.
Acoru (Madrid, Spain) – Just today they raised €10 million (Series A) to help banks predict and prevent AI-powered fraud and money laundering before transactions occur. Its platform monitors pre-fraud intent signals and uses consortium-based intelligence sharing to stop scams at the source.
IdentifAI (Cesena, Italy) – secured €5 million in July 2025 to expand its deepfake detection platform, which analyses images, video and voice to authenticate content and flag AI-generated material. The startup reports an increase in demand from newsrooms and law-enforcement clients since early 2024.
Trustfull (Milan, Italy) – raised €6 million in July 2025 to broaden its fraud-prevention suite to cover “deepfake scams and large-scale phishing campaigns.” The company said this is a pivotal moment for the global fraud detection and prevention market, which is projected to nearly triple from €28.4 billion in 2024 to €77.4 billion by 2030.
Innerworks (London, UK) – raised €3.7 million in August 2025 to expand its AI-powered platform for stopping synthetic-identity and deepfake-driven fraud. The company reported that fraud attempts using deepfakes rose by over 2,000% since 2022.
Keyless (London, UK) – closed a €1.9 million round in January 2025 to strengthen its privacy-preserving biometric technology, designed to thwart injection attacks and deepfake-based identity spoofing. It reports its clients have seen a 73% reduction in Account Takeover (ATO) fraud and 81% reduction in help desk costs.
Together, these startups reflect a continental effort to counteract a new layer of cyber-risk. Italy in particular stands out, with two active ventures in the space, suggesting a developing national cluster around biometric and deepfake-detection innovation.
Regulatory backdrop: EU policies tighten in 2025
The rising economic impact of AI-enabled deception has coincided with new EU-level measures aimed at increasing accountability and transparency in artificial intelligence and digital services.
In February 2025, the EU Artificial Intelligence Act began applying key provisions. It requires clear labelling of AI-generated content and transparency when individuals interact with AI systems. These rules directly target the misuse of generative tools for manipulation or fraud, including deepfakes and voice cloning.
AI systems that deceive or exploit vulnerable users can now be classified as posing an “unacceptable risk,” making them illegal within the EU market.
Meanwhile, under the Digital Services Act (DSA), large online platforms are now obliged to assess and mitigate systemic risks arising from manipulative or fraudulent content – a framework that extends to deepfake media used in phishing and impersonation scams.
The financial sector has also been addressed. In July 2025, the European Banking Authority (EBA) issued an opinion highlighting how AI is being exploited for money laundering and fraud, including through fabricated identities and deepfake documents. It urged financial institutions to adapt anti-money-laundering (AML) systems to account for AI-enabled risks – a move that aligns closely with the missions of startups such as Acoru and Trustfull.
Together, these policy developments show that 2025 is shaping up as the year Europe tightened its legal net around AI misuse – introducing a compliance-driven incentive for startups combating fraud and synthetic deception.
What can you do?
“AI has changed the face of fraud and money laundering. You simply cannot expect technology built in 2010 to combat fraud happening in 2025,” – Pablo de la Riva Ferrezuelo, Co‑founder and CEO of Acoru.
His words reflect a wider sentiment among Europe’s cybersecurity Founders: that a new generation of technology – built for an era of synthetic media and AI‑powered deception – is urgently needed.
This perspective is echoed across the sector. Founders and investors alike describe 2025 as a turning point, with the convergence of regulation, awareness, and financial backing fuelling an arms race between scammers and defenders.
While fraudsters exploit generative AI to manipulate voices, identities and video, Europe’s new breed of startups are deploying AI to expose, verify and block malicious activity before it reaches victims.
At the user level, industry experts still stress the importance of vigilance and education as the first line of defence:
Use strong cybersecurity and identity-verification tools and ensure regular staff training.
Verify unexpected requests – especially those involving money or sensitive data – through trusted channels before acting.
Scrutinise media for subtle inconsistencies: overly clean audio, slight lip-sync errors, or unnatural hand movement.
Resist urgency or emotional hooks – common tactics in scams.
Implement multifactor checks and require out-of-band confirmations for payments or account changes.
Equip high-risk teams (finance, HR, customer support) with in-person verification protocols.
Treat contacts with new domains or virtual numbers as potential red flags.
The Surfshark study used data from the AI Incident Database and Resemble.AI to create a combined dataset of deepfake-related incidents from 2017 to September 2025. Only cases involving falsified video, image or audio content reported in the media were included. Fraud-related incidents with a clearly quantified financial loss were further classified into 12 specific sub-categories.
Sizable Energy is building gigawatt-scale storage using an offshore
pumped-hydro approach. Founded by engineers across nuclear, mechanical, energy,
and maritime disciplines, the company aims to deliver long-duration energy
storage (LDES) for a more reliable and cost-effective grid. Its patented system
applies proven pumped-hydro principles to a marine architecture designed for
modularity and scale, storing energy by pumping saturated sea-salt brine from
the seabed to a surface reservoir and leveraging ocean depth for efficiency.
With the International Energy Agency estimating a need for up to 120 TWh
of LDES by 2040, about ten times today’s capacity, Sizable targets and constraints are facing onshore pumped hydro (slow builds, geographic limits, environmental
concerns) with an offshore solution that is modular, cost-effective, and
designed for rapid deployment.
Invisible from shore, the system targets a low levelized cost of storage,
scales from single-digit to hundreds of GWh, and uses readily available
materials that can be manufactured and installed at depths of 500+ meters using
existing maritime infrastructure.
The company has validated its core technology in wave-basin laboratories
and open-ocean trials. Recent testing
at MARIN indicated reliable operation in harsh ocean conditions, a key
milestone ahead of a megawatt-scale pilot. A new sea trial off Reggio Calabria,
Italy, will validate major floating components and the full assembly and
deployment process, paving the way for a multi-MWh demonstration plant in the
Mediterranean.
The new funding will accelerate the development and
deployment of Sizable Energy’s offshore pumped-hydro system to deliver economical, reliable LDES.
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Y Combinator–backed Saturn raises $15M to make financial advice affordable for all
Fintech advice company Saturn has raised a $15 million Series A funding round led by European VC Singular, with participation from Shapers, Y Combinator, and Zeno Ventures.
The advice gap is one of today’s biggest societal challenges. Fewer than 1 in 10 people in the UK received financial advice last year, according to the Financial Conduct Authority. That leaves millions of families without the help and expertise they need to secure their futures.
The problem? Delivering advice is too expensive. Advise professionals, whether they are financial advisers, paraplanners, or administrators, spend too much time bogged down in admin and compliance tasks.
The result: it costs on average £2,000 / year to serve just one client, making financial advice a privilege for the wealthy.
Founded in 2023 by Amal Jolly, Michael Ettlinger, and Rohit Vaish, Saturn’s mission is to make human-led advice accessible to one billion people.
After uncovering the scale of the issue by reading an industry report, the founding trio saw how AI could transform the economics of advice and open access for everyone. “Behind every financial plan is a human story,” said Amal Jolly, Saturn CEO.
“Advisers and their teams quietly change lives, giving families confidence and peace of mind. Our job is to empower humans in the financial advice process.
By doing the heavy-admin-lifting and making compliance much more reliable and less painful, we can help financial advice professionals offer their life-changing services to more people at a significantly lower cost.”
Saturn’s compliance-focused AI tackles the root of the problem by automating the most time-consuming administrative and regulatory work.
Tasks that once took four hours of paraplanner time now take just 20 minutes of review - including client suitability reports, meeting documentation, onboarding, and pension transfer processing.
This frees advisers and their teams to focus on what they do best: delivering expert, human-led advice at scale. By giving firms full control of their data and reducing manual processes, Saturn eliminates inefficiencies, cuts risk, and helps strengthen client relationships.
Built to be Compliant by Design, Saturn adapts to each firm’s internal policies and local regulatory requirements, ensuring every process, document, and workflow aligns with the regulations e.g., FCA and Consumer Duty standards, from the start. Its AI is purpose-built for UK financial advice compliance - not a generic CRM or automation tool - and is continually refined in collaboration with Saturn’s in-house team of compliance experts and paraplanners.
All AI-generated documentation remains subject to mandatory adviser review before distribution, ensuring firms retain full oversight and regulatory accountability while benefiting from automated efficiency.
Saturn’s technology is trusted by over 600 leading advisory firms, consolidators, national firms, and advice networks, including Progeny, Hoxton Wealth, Perspective Financial Group, and Insight Financial Associates.
Jeremy Uzan, Co-Founder and GP at Singular, commented:
“We have rarely seen such an ambitious, high-velocity founding team that combines deep technical expertise with real industry insight.
They have built an exceptional group around them that moves fast, executes with focus and attracts top talent - and their early traction already reflects their ambition.”
The new funding will accelerate the development of next-generation AI and tech that enable faster, more scalable and more compliant advice delivery. Saturn will also expand its AI, engineering, research, customer delivery, and partnerships teams to strengthen industry collaboration.
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People Who Say They’re Experiencing AI Psychosis Beg the FTC for Help
The Federal Trade Commission received 200 complaints mentioning ChatGPT between November 2022 and August 2025. Several attributed delusions, paranoia, and spiritual crises to the chatbot.
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Scaleup Finance raises £3M to launch Nume, an AI CFO for startups and SMEs
Copenhagen-based CFO-services company, Scaleup Finance, has secured £3 million to launch Nume, an AI CFO positioned to address the financial leadership gap faced by 50 million SMEs globally.
While CFOs are standard in larger businesses, nearly 50 million SMEs globally lack a proper finance function, relying heavily on manual processes, spreadsheets, and limited access to financial expertise.
Scaleup Finance aims to address this gap with Nume. which acts as a CFO for small and mid-sized businesses, answering complex financial questions, preparing reports, and proactively guiding founders on the health of their business through their familiar communication channels like Email, Slack etc.
I spoke to CEO Alexander Sonne Wulff to learn all about it.
Sonne Wulff has been a founder throughout his whole career. He started back in 2010 with a deep tech company developing a new type of concrete material.
Of all things, they decided to reinvent concrete, and he recalled "everyone told us we would fail because I’m not an engineer. I studied at Copenhagen Business School. But the product turned out to be both greener and cheaper."
"We used to joke that if we could sell a contractor a product that emitted 5 per cent more CO₂ but saved 20 per cent in cost, they would always choose it.
The incentive structure was very much like that back then — and, honestly, it still is to a degree. Anyway, the company ended up doing really well. I was there for 11 years, scaling it into the US and across Europe."
“I’m building the product I always wished I’d had as a founder”
When he exited in 2021, he wanted to solve one of the biggest and hardest problems he’d faced personally — financial management. He teamed up with my two co-founders to start Scaleup Finance. Sonne Wulff recounts:
“Every time I met other founders at events, the same topic came up — managing finances was a recurring pain point.
For many, the CEO or founder is effectively the CFO, even though that’s not their area of expertise. That’s the problem we set out to solve when we started Scaleup Finance in 2021."
“We’re six in total — three of us entrepreneurs and the others with finance and tech backgrounds. We’d all experienced the same challenge: managing our own company finances without the right tools."
Inside the financial black box
The most common financial challenges faced by startups and SMEs are cash management and visibility — questions like “When will we run out of cash?” or “How accurate is our forecast?”
Sonne Wulff admits, “I’ve probably had hundreds, maybe even close to a thousand meetings with founders, and so many have said, “I have no idea how we’re performing.”
"When I ask, “Do you get a monthly report to see how you did last month?” they often say no. Their process is literally logging into their bank account to check the balance."
He sees this as the biggest warning sign.
“A lot of founders call finance a “black box.”They know they need to handle it but have no idea what to look for. If you map out how most early-stage companies operate, you’ll usually see one person — the founder or CEO — doing everything.
Then they hire an outsourced bookkeeping provider or accountant to handle two things: bookkeeping and payroll, because they legally have to. Everything else is left to the founder.”
Building investor trust starts with the numbers
Significantly, for startups with external funding — grants, angels, or VCs — there’s another layer of reporting and accountability.
Sonne Wulff often tells founders that “finance is like your internal steering wheel — you need a good grip on it to make decisions.
"But it’s also what builds trust with investors. The external reporting component is huge. Investors need confidence that you’re managing their capital responsibly.
Even if you’re not actively fundraising, maintaining that transparency with your current investors lays the groundwork for your next round.”
Open banking created more complexity
Scaleup Finance is a combination of service and technology. According to Sonne Wulff, when the team started in 2021, they saw that there were plenty of startups focusing on bookkeeping, payroll, expense management, and payments — all important but very operational.
According to Sonne Wulff, “Nobody was tackling the strategic side: budgeting, forecasting, and decision-making.” “When I started my previous company, my financial tools were very fragmented. I had a cloud accounting system, a payroll system, but also stacks of paper invoices because some clients still wanted them sent by mail. This was only about 10 years ago!”
The rise of open banking in 2015 saw an explosion of fintech — expense management tools, corporate cards, payroll platforms. Everything moved to the cloud.
But according to Sonne Wulff, “what happened was that I now had all my transactional data spread across multiple cloud tools, all with APIs, and I was exporting CSV files every month to rebuild a master spreadsheet just to understand performance."
"It was ridiculous. I’d spend hours every month reconciling data manually in Excel — making mistakes, updating forecasts — and every founder I spoke to said the same. Everyone had “the spreadsheet.” So we decided to focus on that top layer: the strategic financial management part.
It’s harder to build than a basic accounting tool because it requires deep accuracy and context.”
Scaleup Finance was inspired by Palantir’s model — embedding domain experts deeply within the product.
“We realised that to succeed, we’d need financial professionals in-house to help build the technology. So we started as a tech-enabled CFO service, offering an end-to-end solution where human CFOs are supported by automation,” shared Sonne Wulff.
Nume is built on four years of Scaleup Finance’s CFO-as-a-Service experience, including 40 CFOs working with more than 500 high-growth startups across Europe. The team has condensed thousands of hours of learning and knowledge into a tool for every SME to use. It connects directly to banking and accounting systems to deliver CFO-level insights in minutes - from liquidity forecasts to board-ready reports, and proactively surfaces risks and opportunities in real time.
Over the past year, Nume has been tested in private beta with a select group of companies, refining its capabilities in real-world conditions.
Already, more than 2,500 companies from 80 countries have signed up for the launch.
According to Sonne Wulff, “For larger companies or those with very complex audits, you still need a person involved. But for the long tail of SMEs, Nume delivers professional-grade financial management without the cost of hiring a CFO.” How
Scaleup Finance hit €1M ARR without a single euro in marketing
Scaleup Finance’s biggest source of growth has always been word of mouth. In our first year, it went from zero to €1 million in ARR without doing any marketing at all.
“I remember coming back from summer vacation just a few months after we launched,” recounts Sonne Wulff.
“We had automated the monthly reporting process, producing beautiful reports that clients could export as PDFs. These reports said “Powered by Scaleup Finance” at the bottom and looked like something out of a Fortune 500 board deck.”
Clients started sharing them with their boards and investors — and then those investors started calling, saying, “I just received this report from one of my portfolio companies. It’s the best monthly report I’ve ever seen. Tell me more about what you’re doing.” That created a powerful organic flywheel for growth.
Helping founders sleep better at night
According to Sonne Wulff, “What we hear most is: “I finally feel on top of my finances.”
“It sounds simple, but for many founders it’s transformative. Finance goes from being a source of anxiety to something under control. A lot of our clients talk about finally sleeping better at night because the “black box” has been opened.
Even personally, when I was a founder, I took a master’s in finance and accounting — not because I loved it, but because I thought it would help me make better strategic decisions.
Even then, I was never 100 per cent sure I was doing things correctly. That constant uncertainty is stressful. So when our clients tell us they finally feel confident about their numbers, it’s exactly why we started the company.”
Global accessibility for SMEs and startups
Nume brings the cost of professional financial management down tenfold, making it accessible to thousands of smaller companies. And it’s global from day one with a logical UX: onboarding takes about five minutes. You connect your bank and accounting systems, answer a few simple questions, and Nume immediately starts working.
"The first thing it says is something like, “Hi, I’m your AI CFO. I’ve analysed your data and created a tailored financial plan and a list of tasks I’ll handle for you.” Then users can choose to communicate via Slack or email," shared Sonne Wulff.
Nume proactively monitors finances, sends monthly reports, flags issues like growing receivables, and keeps everything running smoothly.
“We’ve spent more than a year building what I call the most sophisticated financial brain for SMEs. The hardest challenge was accuracy — large language models are great with text, but when it comes to numbers, they tend to hallucinate,” shared Sonne Wulff.
“We solved that by creating a multi-agent setup: splitting complex tasks across specialised AI agents, each with the right tools and validation processes. That’s how we achieved 100 per cent accuracy. Most AI adoption so far has been in text-based use cases — sales, customer support, legal — but not in numerical, data-driven work like finance. Our architecture finally makes that possible.”
For Sonne Wulff, Nume's proactiveness stands out. "Most tools wait for users to ask questions, but most founders don’t even know what to ask. Nume behaves like a real CFO,” shared Sonne Wulff.
After onboarding, Nume immediately creates a plan and starts sending tailored updates — “Here’s your monthly report,” or “Hey, your receivables are climbing.” It’s an active financial partner, not just a reactive tool.
Sonne Wulff asserts, “We’ve basically tried to mimic an entire CFO job description — and automate it. That proactivity is the key difference between a chatbot and an actual AI CFO.”
The round was led by a syndicate of European investors, including Mainset (UK), Circlerock (Ireland), North Ventures (Denmark), Crowberry (Iceland), Inveready (Spain), and SeedX (Liechtenstein), alongside angels such as former Google UK Managing Director Dan Cobley.
With the funding, Scaleup Finance is now bringing Nume to the global market making CFO-level support accessible to millions of SMEs for the first time.
“SMEs are the backbone of the global economy, yet most still lack access to the financial leadership they need. With Nume, Scaleup Finance is opening up CFO-level capabilities to millions of businesses worldwide. With a proven founding team, we believe Nume can set a new standard for how SMEs worldwide run their businesses,” says Mikkel Rørvig, Partner at North Ventures.
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With the UK in its sights, Austrian recommerce marketplace refurbed raises €50 million
refurbed, a Vienna-based marketplace for refurbished electronics, household, and sports products, has closed its latest funding round with a €50 million raise in order to accelerate its European expansion – particularly into the UK market – and further develop its platform for sustainable, AI-driven recommerce.
The round was led by Alex Zubillaga, together with Orilla, investment platform of the Riberas family, with strong participation from existing shareholders Evli Growth Partners, Bonsai, Almaz, C4 Ventures, and Speedinvest.
“This was another exceptional year,” said Peter Windischhofer, Co-founder & CEO of refurbed. “Profitability in March, 40% year-on-year sales growth, and leveraging AI across our revenue-generation machine. All of this fueled our funding round and accelerated our expansion plans. We proved that doing good and doing well aren’t opposites: they’re the same playbook. Now is the time to make refurbished mainstream.”
This raise by refurbed sits within a broader, though relatively limited, 2025 funding landscape for refurbished-goods and recommerce platforms in Europe.
Investor interest in circular-economy marketplaces remains visible – for example, Amsterdam-based DFF Ventures launched a €50 million fund targeting vertical AI, recommerce, and marketplace businesses. Italy’s Fleequid raised €3 million in Seed funding to grow its marketplace for used vehicles.
Despite this activity, EU-Startups has not reported other major 2025 funding rounds for refurbished-electronics marketplaces, making refurbed’s raise notable within the sector – particularly given its profitability milestones and plans to enter the UK market.
Additionally, refurbed has engaged with the wider startup ecosystem through its participation in the EU-Startups Summit, where its leadership has shared insights on scaling circular-economy ventures.
Co-founder Kilian Kaminski has contributed multiple guest articles to the platform, further underlining refurbed’s ongoing relationship with EU-Startups and its role in Europe’s green-tech and recommerce dialogue.
“We are excited to back refurbed as they continue to lead the refurbished category in Europe,” said Paco Riberas from Orilla. “Our investment in refurbed aligns with our values of promoting more responsible consumption, and their combination of rapid growth, profitability, and strong brand partnerships uniquely positions them for long-term success.”
Founded in 2017 by Peter Windischhofer, Kilian Kaminski and Jürgen Riedl, refurbed is a leading online marketplace for refurbished products and the fastest-growing in Europe. refurbed now employs almost 300 people.
The company offers professionally refurbished and more sustainable products with a minimum twelve-month warranty. The marketplace’s range includes more than 45,000 products up to 40% cheaper than buying new – from smartphones, laptops and tablets to household appliances, e-bikes and sports accessories.
refurbed is currently active in twelve countries: Austria, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Portugal.
As it enters its next phase of growth, refurbed is setting its sights on the UK – one of Europe’s largest and most digitally advanced markets, representing a major milestone in its European expansion strategy.
In the UK, growing demand for sustainable technology meets a clear gap in supply. Despite contributing over £7 billion annually to the economy, the company outlines that the re-commerce sector still lacks reliable, high-quality refurbished tech options. With over 100 million unused phones sitting in drawers across the country, of which 33 million could be restored for reuse, refurbed sees a significant opportunity to bring more devices back into the circular economy.
In 2025, refurbed hit several major financial milestones. The company delivered double-digit EBITDA profitability and has been cash-flow positive since March 2025. For FY2025 the company aims to get close to £860 million in gross merchandise value.
Through its platform, refurbed have processed 9 million devices, serving 4 million customers across 12 European markets. A market leader in Germany and Austria, the company’s growth has simultaneously delivered significant environmental results, reportedly saving 350,000 tons of CO₂, 1,136 tons of electronic waste, and 116 billion liters of water.
As the UK pushes forward on its Net Zero goals, Right to Repair legislation, and e-waste reduction targets, refurbed aims to support these national priorities while helping consumers make smarter, more sustainable choices – as it prepares to enter the market.
The healthcare sector is experiencing a surge of proactive health startups, ranging from wellness apps and wearables to digital coaching platforms. Business is booming, and according to Oliver Wyman, 50% of people track their health digitally; it is expected to grow up to 70% in the next decade. At the same time, it has become easier to complement the data from wearables with insights from blood tests and MRIs, as accessibility of blood tests is improving and the prices of MRI scans are expected to decrease in the future.
The premise is simple: knowledge is power. Real-time access to biometric data enables individuals to make better lifestyle choices and optimise their health on a daily basis.
Most proactive care startups today focus on “wellbeing optimisation”, improving sleep, nutrition, or exercise for already healthy consumers. These solutions are valuable, but they mainly support those who are already doing relatively well. However, as an investor in this space, I see the biggest opportunity not in incremental prevention for already healthy people, but in chronic proactive care, supporting those living with long-term illness.
Chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and respiratory illness, are responsible for 75% of global deaths, yet only 2% of health funding is directed toward prevention. Among these, chronic endocrine disorders are particularly devastating, driving increased cancer risk, disrupting the immune and nervous systems, and significantly reducing quality of life. The scale is striking: polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) alone affects an estimated 6 to 13% of women of reproductive age worldwide, yet up to 70% remain undiagnosed. As the leading cause of infertility, PCOS illustrates the enormous personal and societal cost of unmonitored endocrine disruption.
These conditions not only shorten lives but also sideline millions from the workforce. Even when patients seek care, access is often delayed or inadequate, compounding both human and economic losses. That is why I believe the most impactful proactive health startups are those focusing on chronic care. The need is enormous, patient demand is endless, and outcomes are measurable. If we want proactive actions to matter at scale, this is the place to start.
Healthtech for ill-health
As health care investors, we aim to back companies that deliver meaningful impact and build sustainable businesses, ensuring their products continue to help users over the long term. We think that these patients are found among those who are the most underserved today: chronic disease patients
Startups tackling chronic conditions will be the real breakthrough. By helping patients through continuous monitoring, connected hardware, or actionable insights into disease progression, they move far beyond sleek software and branding. What they build instead is a moat based on clinical relevance and patient trust.
An effective solution that improves patients’ experience of illness has the potential for long-term adoption. And unlike lifestyle apps, chronic proactive care solutions often open the door to reimbursement via private or public health insurance, making the business model more sustainable.
Healthtech is not without hurdles and therefore it is not surprising that we have not seen more startups being built in this space. Hardware is expensive, clinical trials are slow and unpredictable, and timelines can deter inexperienced investors. But here, technology, particularly AI, can play a role in speeding up trials and reducing development costs.
Companies leading the way
There are already several players collecting data from existing devices as well as developing their own. For example, Sava Health is developing patches for diabetes which not only track blood glucose, but also hormones in the blood. This means that they not only can target patients with diabetes, but potentially also to other chronic diseases related to hormonal imbalances.
Some companies focus specifically on women’s health by helping women track their hormones. For instance, Mira and Hormona have developed at-home urine tests that allow women to monitor their hormone levels over time, supporting the management of hormonal imbalances and conditions such as PCOS. Similarly, Samphire Neurosciences are helping women with their medical headband device, designed to reduce pain and mood-related symptoms during the luteal phase.
Together, these companies illustrate how today’s technology can help us better understand our bodies while also enabling new ways to reduce the burden of chronic diseases.
Impact = Opportunity
The potential impact is massive: improving quality of life, supporting workforce participation, and reducing the burden on strained healthcare systems. Preventive healthtech startups that prioritise chronic care are uniquely positioned in a market where trust is higher, need is constant, and results are measurable.
If health care is to become more proactive, this is where it must begin.
Pharmaceutical company Ipsen has acquired ImCheck Therapeutics, a private French biotechnology company pioneering next-generation immuno-oncology therapies.
ImCheck was founded in 2015 based on the research of Professor Daniel Olive, Director of the Immunity and Cancer Laboratory at the Marseille Cancer Research Centre (CRCM). The company has previously raised over €193 milion in funding.
The anticipated acquisition is focused on the lead Phase I/II program ICT01 in first-line acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), for patients who are ineligible for intensive chemotherapy.
ICT01 is a first-in-class monoclonal antibody targeting BTN3A, a key immune-regulatory molecule broadly expressed across cancer, and received Orphan Drug Designations from the US Food and Drug Administration and European Medicines Agency in July 2025.
Many AML patients are unable to tolerate intensive chemotherapy and must rely on lower-intensity options, which often deliver limited and short-lived benefit.2 This high-risk, unfit population continues to face a significant unmet medical need, highlighting the urgency for new therapies that can improve survival and quality of life.
“At completion, the acquisition of ImCheck Therapeutics presents an opportunity for us to expand our pipeline in oncology and reinforces our commitment to deliver transformative therapies to the people who need them most,” said David Loew, CEO, Ipsen.
“We feel confident that with the ICT01 promising data combined with Ipsen’s global development and commercialisation expertise, we are well positioned to start a Phase IIb/III trial in 2026.”
“We are thrilled to become part of Ipsen, a company whose ambition for transformative care matches our commitment to bringing innovative treatments to patients. This transaction recognises groundbreaking science originating from French academia,” said Pierre d’Epenoux, CEO, ImCheck Therapeutics.
“It also highlights the exceptional work the ImCheck team and our partners have achieved to advance the understanding of butyrophilns and gamma delta T cells.
Joining Ipsen will help us accelerate ICT01 toward registrational studies and commercialisation. I remain grateful to the patients and investors for their contributions to furthering ImCheck’s pioneering science.”
Under the terms of the agreement, through a wholly owned affiliate of Ipsen SAS, shareholders of ImCheck Therapeutics will receive a €350 million payment on a cash-free and debt-free basis at closing of the transaction, and deferred payments contingent upon the achievement of specified regulatory approvals and sales-based milestones, for a total potential consideration up to €1 billion.
The transaction is expected to close by the end of Q1 2026, subject to the fulfilment of customary closing conditions, including the expiration or termination of any required regulatory and governmental approvals under French and US regulations.
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“Imperative” UK fintech supported in budget, says fintech boss, amid ranking fall
The CEO of UK fintech industry trade body Innovate Finance has called on the UK fintech sector to be “properly supported” in the next budget, highlighting data showing UK fintech had dropped down the investment rankings.
Janine Hirt, CEO of Innovate Finance, whose members include Revolut and Monzo, said: “Fintech is still a tremendous force for good, it is a story of growth, it is a story of inclusion and it is a story of democracy.
“We need government and we need regulators to get behind us as well and support this sector. It is imperative that we see fintech properly supported in the budget.
“This is how we are going to drive growth, it is how we are going to cement our leadership in financial services.”
Hirt, speaking at an Innovate Finance conference, pointed to statistics such as fintech lenders providing more than 60 per cent of SME lending and fintechs “driving job creation” as indicators of its health.
But Hirt also pointed to Innovate Finance figures showing the UK had been relegated from second to third place in the global fintech investment landscape, replaced by the UAE, in the first half of 2025.
She added: “We have to grasp the opportunity that lies before us, because other countries around the world, they see that opportunity too and they are moving forward and they are moving forward at pace.”
Innovate Finance is calling for several reforms in the Autumn budget to help incentivise fintech founders to build in the UK.
She said: “We need to make sure the UK remains the place for entrepreneurs and founders to choose to build their business here both for the long term and the short term.”
She called for a “rethink” of the tax environment, to better incentivise founders, and corporation tax holidays for companies that list in the UK, to reinvigorate the IPO market.
She added: “In addition, we need to make sure that our highest growth companies are actually able to access the growth capital that they need.”
Innovate Finance is backing the Mansion House Accord, which could see billions of pounds of pension funds invested in UK assets.
Innovate Finance has also expressed concern about how the existing regulatory regime constrains the growth of challenger banks.
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22/10/2025 09:10 AM
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Refurbed closes £44 million round as it targets UK expansion
Vienna-founded refurbed, a marketplace for refurbished electronics, home,
and sports goods, has secured £44 million in its latest funding round. The
round was led by Alex Zubillaga (an investor in Spotify, Fever, and Wallapop)
alongside Orilla, the Riberas family’s investment platform known for backing
Vinted, Playtomic, and Cabify, with strong follow-on participation from
existing shareholders Evli Growth Partners, Bonsai, Almaz, C4 Ventures, and
Speedinvest.
refurbed is an online marketplace for
professionally refurbished products. Founded in 2017 by Peter Windischhofer,
Kilian Kaminski, and Jürgen Riedl, its mission is to make consumption more
sustainable by extending the life cycle of existing products, encouraging
customers to “Rethink New.”
To date, refurbed has processed 9 million
devices and served 4 million customers across 12 European markets. A market
leader in Germany and Austria, the company reports environmental outcomes of
350,000 tons of CO₂ avoided, 1,136 tons of electronic waste averted, and 116
billion litres of water saved.
As it enters its next phase of growth,
refurbed is focusing on the UK, one of Europe’s largest and more digitally
mature markets, as a key step in its European expansion.
In the UK, demand for
sustainable technology is rising amid a limited supply of reliable,
high-quality refurbished options. The re-commerce sector contributes over £7
billion annually. Yet, more than 100 million phones remain unused in drawers,
with an estimated 33 million suitable for refurbishment, an opportunity that refurbed aims to address by returning more devices to the circular economy.
With
the UK advancing Net Zero objectives, Right to Repair measures, and e-waste
reduction targets, refurbed plans to align with these priorities and support
consumers in making more sustainable purchasing decisions as it prepares to
enter the market.
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22/10/2025 08:41 AM
Predicting scams and halting fraud – Spanish cybersecurity platform Acoru raises €10 million
Acoru, a Madrid-based startup that stops AI-enabled fraud and money laundering, has raised a €10 million Series A round to help banks predict and prevent AI-powered scams before any transaction is initiated.
The round was led by 33N Ventures with existing investors Adara Ventures and Athos Capital also joining the round.
Pablo de la Riva Ferrezuelo, CEO and Co-founder of Acoru, said: “AI has changed the face of fraud and money laundering. You simply cannot expect technology built in 2010 to combat fraud happening in 2025. The Acoru team has spent years within the cybersecurity and fraud prevention industries and realised we are failing to keep up with the changing fraud landscape.”
The Series A raised by Acoru fits into a broader 2025 European trend of AI-driven fraud and financial-crime prevention funding.
In April, Hawk (Germany) secured €51.8 million to scale its explainable-AI platform for AML and fraud detection. In July, Trustfull (Italy) raised €6 million to expand its fraud-prevention platform across Europe, while in August, Innerworks (UK) collected €3.7 million to grow its AI-powered fraud-intelligence solution.
Most recently, Resistant AI (Czechia) secured €21 million in Series B funding to advance document-fraud and transaction-monitoring tools.
Against this backdrop, Acoru’s mid-range Series A highlights Spain’s growing participation in Europe’s FinTech and RegTech investment landscape. Its focus on pre-fraud detection and intent-based risk scoring distinguishes it from transaction-centric incumbents, positioning it within a cohort of companies building proactive defenses against AI-enabled financial crime across the continent.
“Scammers today have more powerful tools at their disposal than ever before. Our approach predicts future victims, money mules and accounts at risk of being laundered by detecting the earliest warning signals others can’t see. With our innovative consortium model, banks can finally exchange account classifications through a centralised network that creates a truly collective defence. This is a paradigm shift in how fraud is fought,” added de la Riva Ferrezuelo.
Founded in 2023, Acoru is the second venture for Founders Pablo de la Riva Ferrezuelo and David Morán, both cybersecurity and fraud prevention experts. Within the last two years Acoru has built a global team of more than 30 people while posting revenue growth by working with banking and financial institutions of all sizes.
The Acoru Account Monitoring Platform classifies every first-party and counterparty account so that banks can predict authorised push payments, prevent fraud, stop scams, and protect customers in compliance with banking regulations that demand shared scam reimbursements to victims, reporting of fraud losses (PS23/4, PSD3), and encourage money mule reporting and collaboration amongst financial institutions.
Carlos Moreira da Silva, Partner, 33N, added: “Voluntary fraud has become one of the most damaging and underestimated challenges in today’s financial system. It hurts individuals, families, and institutions alike. These scams are notoriously difficult to detect and stop, and with the rise of AI they will only become more frequent, more sophisticated, and more impactful.
“What impressed us about Acoru is not just their vision, but the rare combination of deep domain expertise and execution excellence of the founding team. Only an exceptional team could design a platform this comprehensive, easy to deploy, and intelligent. At 33N Ventures, we are proud to back Acoru as they redefine how financial fraud is identified and prevented.”
Generative AI-driven scams – deepfakes, voice cloning and social engineering – are fueling fraud losses. According to Acoru, fraud scams and bank fraud schemes amount to losses of nearly $500 billion globally every year. Existing solutions are not designed to detect Authorised Push Payment Fraud (where a victim is tricked into willingly sending money from their own bank account to a fraudster’s account) or identify fraud intent signals; instead, they focus primarily on transactions, events, and sessions.
Acoru helps banks detect criminal intent earlier and prevent users from becoming unwitting or complicit money mules. By continuously monitoring bank accounts, Acoru evaluates every event across all channels, not only from the target’s bank account, but also any account it interacts with.
Its platform scores, classifies and predicts future risk through pre-fraud detection to build an intelligent model of each account. Signals, such as multiple micro-transactions or unusual interaction patterns that suggest fraudulent AI automation, are monitored and then flagged to banks to prevent activity before a money transfer can be initiated.
This has become increasingly important as new financial regulations come into force mandating that victims of authorized push payments and unauthorized fraud are reimbursed by sharing the cost 50:50 between the sending and receiving bank.
Built by successful veteran fraud fighters tracking criminal intent and criminal networks, Acoru connects pre-fraud signals with context across channels within a bank and across banks in the Acoru Consortium.
This enables fraud and financial crime teams to selectively block fraudulent transactions in victim and unwitting mule accounts while freezing complicit mule and money laundering criminal accounts before money is moved.
roclub, the teleoperation platform for medical technology out of Berlin, today announces it has raised €10 million in Series A funding in order to accelerate the global rollout of its AI-powered remote operations platform, expand support for additional MedTech equipment, and strengthen its international commercial teams.
The round was led by Smedvig Ventures and YZR Capital, with participation from existing investor Speedinvest and angel investors.
André Glardon, Co-Founder and Managing Director of roclub said, “From our own experience running an international chain of diagnostics centres, Matthias and I saw firsthand how technologist shortages are impacting access to care for patients. roclub is changing that by helping healthcare providers across the world maximise the value of their MedTech equipment through AI-driven remote operations.”
This Series A funding for roclub builds on the company’s earlier €4 million Seed round in 2024. This new investment underlines continued investor interest in AI-driven healthcare operations and technologies that tackle workforce shortages and equipment utilisation challenges.
With no comparable MedTech teleoperation funding announced from Germany in 2025 so far, roclub remains a distinctive example of how European innovators are applying automation and connectivity to improve access to diagnostic care.
Glardon added: “This new funding will help us expand our support to include more medtech machinery, supercharge our international expansion and, ultimately, deliver upon our mission to transform healthcare for better patient outcomes.”
Founded in 2022, roclub is a teleoperation platform designed to transform the way MedTech equipment is operated. By enabling remote access and control and seamless integration with scanners of all vendors, roclub allegedly enhances efficiency, optimises workflows, and helps healthcare providers overcome staffing shortages and geographic barriers.
Co-founders, Dr Matthias Issing and André Glardon launched roclub after running a large chain of diagnostic centres in Europe, where they directly suffered from the shortage of technologists with MedTech equipment lying idle, in turn, resulting in lost revenue. Since its founding, roclub has grown to span 11 countries.
Its cloud- and AI-based platform claims to enable teleoperation of any MedTech equipment from any vendor, allowing technologists from remote locations to manage multiple machines simultaneously. This secures business continuity for any examination at any time, maximises medical device utilisation, and prevents costly equipment downtime.
The smartphone-sized roclub connector can connect to any MedTech device with a monitor as a front-end, enabling remote access and control from anywhere and supporting direct video and audio communication between on-site teams, remote operators and patients.
Matthias Issing, Co-Founder and Managing Director of roclub said, “We want to become the global standard for teleoperation in MedTech – enabling seamless, safe, and intelligent remote access and control of medical devices anywhere in the world. By unifying MedTech, robotics, AI, and ultra-low-latency connectivity, roclub aims to empower technologists and clinicians to perform complex procedures with precision and collaboration across borders, transforming access to expert care into a truly global capability.”
The company is building on this momentum with its launch into the U.S., doubling its headcount in 2026. To capitalise on the large market opportunity, it will focus on building more established sales and customer success functions.
Joshua Seyler, President, roclub Americas said, “Amid rising labour costs and critical skills shortages, U.S. healthcare providers are embracing innovative MedTech solutions to optimize operations and meet the rising demand for radiology procedures. roclub, the world’s only dedicated remote, vendor-agnostic platform company, is proud to bring our transformative solution to the U.S. market.
“Through our user friendly platform and exclusive remote staffing marketplace, roclub empowers providers to access top expertise and deliver exceptional, high-quality care to every patient, every time.”
The funding will also fuel the AI-based development of roclub’s teleoperation platform and marketplace, which will connect healthcare organisations with remote technologists to operate connected MedTech devices.
Set to launch in late 2025, it is expected to have a transformational impact for hospitals and clinics that often suffer from a lack of access to qualified technologists.
Joe Knowles, Partner at Smedvig Ventures added, “André and Matthias have identified a transformational solution to a truly global problem; the skilled technologists needed to operate MedTech equipment are not keeping pace with demand. Building on their success in Europe, we look forward to supporting their launch in the US and, in turn, their mission to ensure more equitable access to healthcare.”
Volta, a French–Italian startup, has raised €5
million in a round led by RTP Global. Pascal Houillon, former CEO of Cegid and
Sage, joined the round alongside existing investors Emblem, Robin Capital, and
Founders Future. Coming less than a year after an initial €6 million raise,
Volta’s total funding now stands at €11 million.
Over the past 15+ years, B2C commerce has
moved to digital platforms that replaced paper catalogues and automated
ordering, logistics, and payments, a shift accelerated during the pandemic. By
contrast, B2B adoption has lagged: many firms still rely on manual processes
(Excel/PDF orders, scattered emails or faxes, fragmented software), reducing
efficiency and increasing errors, delays, and blind spots. As AI and automation
reshape competitiveness, adoption remains limited, with only 10 per cent of
companies, with more than 10 employees, reporting AI use.
Volta aims to close this gap for SMEs and
mid-market companies with an AI-powered platform that brings B2C-style
simplicity to B2B. The software unifies catalogue, ordering, and customer
relationship management in a single tool and integrates with existing ERP, CRM,
PIM, and WMS systems.
Built around three pillars, it unifies
operations by centralising data and order channels in one stream, automates
workflows to remove up to 90 per cent of manual tasks (from order entry to
price updates), and amplifies outcomes with data-driven recommendations,
opportunity detection, and AI-guided decisions.
We're building a new standard for B2B
distribution players with Volta. Our AI platform integrates with existing
systems (ERP, PIM, etc.), automates up to 90% of manual tasks, and gives sales
teams back what really matters: time for their customers and growth for their
business.
The new funding will
accelerate the commercial launch, advance Volta’s AI platform, and support team
growth.
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Allica Bank snaps up UK embedded finance startup Kriya
Allica Bank, the UK challenger lender for SMEs, has acquired UK business lender and embedded payments startup Kriya, as the challenger lender moves into offering payment services to non-financial services businesses.
Allica, which offers lending, business banking and savings services to SMEs with over 10 employees, said the all-share deal for Kriya strengthens its lending offering and represented a “strong strategic fit”.
Since it started lending in 2020, Allica has lent around £3.5bn to SMEs, and said it was now targeting £1bn in working capital finance to SMEs over the next three years, bolstered by the Kriya acquisition.
Kriya offers its customers, which include retailer Halfords, embedded payments, which can be described as the integration of payments into non-financial services businesses, as well as business lending.
Since launching in 2011, Kriya (formerly known as MarketInvoice and MarketFinance) has processed over £4 billion in invoice finance, SME loans and embedded finance.
Financial details of the deal have not been disclosed. The acquisition marks Allica’s third to date, following the purchase of Allied Irish Bank's SME lending customers in 2021 and bridging finance specialist Tuscan Capital in 2024.
Kriya will continue to operate under its own brand with CEO and co-founder Anil Stocker leading the business, with Kriya's 30 employees joining Allica's 680 employees.
Allica last undertook a funding round in 2022, raising a £100m Series C led by TCV, with participation from investors Warwick Capital Partners and Atalaya Capital Management.
Kriya is backed by investors including Northzone, Barclays, Santander, and Cogito Capital Partners.
Richard Davies, CEO of Allica Bank, said: "Kriya has built an impressive business over more than a decade, and Anil and his team share our belief that SME finance needs reinventing, and that together we can offer something the market desperately needs.
"Our ambition is clear. We plan to lend £1 billion of working capital finance to SMEs over the next three years. This is our third acquisition but our first in the embedded payments space and it aligns well with our future potential international expansion.”
Anil Stocker, CEO of Kriya, said: “Combining forces with Allica gives us the right platform to scale what we've built. We share the same DNA – a genuine commitment to reinventing SME finance and competing with the big banks who've walked away from the SME market.”