Company establishes dominant position on world’s largest retail platform while building multi-channel distribution strategy Innovative Eyewear, Inc. (NASDAQ: LUCY) has emerged as the clear category leader in the rapidly growing smart safety glasses segment, capturing approximately 44% market share on Amazon.com according to recent market analysis. This dominant position on the world’s most popular retail […]

Meta disclosed in SEC filings on Tuesday that it had granted stock options to six of its most senior executives, the first such awards since the company’s 2012 IPO. Hours later, it laid off approximately 700 employees across Reality Labs, recruiting, sales, and Facebook. The options are worthless unless Meta’s market capitalisation reaches $9 trillion […]

This week, we tracked more than 55 tech funding deals worth over €850 million and over 15 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.

Alongside the week’s top funding rounds, we’ve highlighted key industry developments, as well as notable trends in European venture activity, investor moves and emerging sectors shaping the current funding landscape.

If email is more your thing, you can always subscribe to our newsletter and receive a more robust version of this round-up delivered to your inbox.

Either way, let's get you up to speed.

? Notable and big funding rounds

?? Kandou AI closes $225M Series A round to break memory bottlenecks in AI

?? Granola raises $125M at $1.5B valuation

??. Vuelo secures €64M in seed funding to build an AI-native travel booking experience

??‍?? Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers

?? Swedish-founded Kobalt is sold for €1.3B

?? Bioniq cashes in on personalised health boom with $150 million Herbalife acquisition

??. Unifly buys EuroUSC-Benelux to bridge drone tech and regulation at scale

? Interesting moves from investors

?.Nathan Benaich's Air Street raises $232M Fund III, becoming Europe’s largest solo GP venture firm

?. 360 Capital announces €85M close for Poli360 2, targeting €100M

?. Credo Ventures raises $88M Fund 5 to double down on pre-seed in CEE and its global diaspora

?. Team Scaleup launches to close Europe’s post-Seed funding gap

? futurepresent emerges from stealth with $300M Fund I to back AI across infrastructure and industry

?️ In other (important) news

??  Europe builds Microsoft-compatible ‘Euro-Office’ to reclaim digital sovereignty

?. Aleph Alpha’s former CEO lures Apple engineer from US to join European startup

??. tozero opens Europe’s first industrial-scale battery recycling plant to power Europe’s material independence

??. Most UK startups aren’t in London. But most funding still is

<!--td {border: 1px solid #cccccc;}br {mso-data-placement:same-cell;}--egora and Tandem Health CEOs reject Anthropic and OpenAI threat

? Recommended reads and listens

?. Why top banking executives are choosing startups — and what it takes to get them there

?. From a 15,000-step walk to a global movement: How Walk15 is turning steps into currency

??  From early-stage depth to global scale-ups: the Finnish tech ecosystem

? Building the path to 3D-printed organs, Cellbricks raises €10M for biofabricated tissue implants

? European tech startups to watch 

??  Galtea lands $3.2M to cut costly AI testing delays

??  Newly secures $2M+ in funding to advance native app creation platform

??. Klarna veterans launch Galdera with €1.5M for AI financial modeling

??: Allday Goods raises £765,000 to scale its cult, recycled-plastic knife brand

?? NanoZymeX secures €160,000 to advance lipid nanoparticle enzyme therapies for rare diseases

The Swedish deeptech company has signed a Grant Agreement with the European Commission under the EU Innovation Fund, unlocking €40.3M of a €83M project to expand its Tibro plant to 23,000 tonnes per year capacity by 2030. The material is already NATO-approved and shipping to customers in construction, defence, electronics and transport. PaperShell makes a […]

Today, a coalition of European enterprises and community organisations has launched Euro-Office, a solution for editing documents, spreadsheets and presentations, developed as a true sovereign community collaboration of over a dozen different organisations. A tech preview is available immediately. 

The effort, backed by major European tech firms including IONOS, Nextcloud, Eurostack, XWiki, OpenProject, Soverin, Abilian and BTactic is planning a first stable release by summer.

Need for a sovereign office

Across Europe, public administrations, enterprises and educational institutions are reassessing their dependence on non-European productivity platforms. While office software remains mission-critical infrastructure, there is currently no solution that combines full Microsoft format compatibility, a familiar user experience and genuine digital sovereignty under European stewardship.

The announcement comes at a time when many organisations are reassessing their reliance on existing office solutions, not only from a cost or functionality perspective, but increasingly from a control and long-term risk standpoint. Just this week, it became public that ONLYOFFICE has shut down its cloud offering, forcing many organisations to reassess their current setup.

"With the geo-political developments we have seen in the last year, there is a clear need for a reliable, fully Microsoft-compatible and easy-to-use sovereign office solution in Europe," states Achim Weiss, CEO of IONOS.

"Our joint initiative delivers a suite with an extremely familiar interface and capable of working with documents, presentations and spreadsheets.“

Existing alternatives often require trade-offs between compatibility and usability, are encumbered by legal risks around licensing and trademarks, or are developed without transparent, open governance, lacking an independent, sustainable contributor community. For organisations handling sensitive information and public data, this creates structural risk.

Euro-Office addresses this gap directly. It is designed to provide seamless handling of widely used document, spreadsheet and presentation formats, while offering an interface that minimises retraining and migration friction. 

The entire code base is released under fully open source licensing, free from trademark constraints, and developed in a transparent process open to public scrutiny and contribution. The result is an office suite built not only for functionality, but for strategic resilience.

“Europe has had the technical building blocks for years. What was missing until now was an initiative to bring them together into a meaningful, comprehensive solution,” says Frank Karlitschek, CEO of Nextcloud. 

“With Euro-Office, we’re not starting from scratch; instead, we’re taking responsibility for a vital piece of digital infrastructure. This finally gives organisations tools they can trust: transparent, durable, and managed in Europe.”

A public tech preview of Euro-Office is available immediately on GitHub.The preview enables organisations and individuals to evaluate core functionality, test compatibility, and contribute feedback ahead of the first stable release planned for summer.

The unsecured facility, arranged with JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Mizuho, SMBC and MUFG, matures in March 2027. Once SoftBank’s $30B follow-on investment in OpenAI closes, its cumulative stake will total approximately $64.6B, representing roughly 13% of the company. Masayoshi Son has never been accused of thinking small, but the pace and scale of his bet […]

Most marketing platforms promise automation. In practice, what they deliver is a glorified email scheduler with a few if-then rules bolted on. ActiveCampaign is one of the few tools where the automation actually lives up to the branding, and right now you can test the full platform free for 14 days with no credit card […]

Andy Shovel and Pete Sharman, who built THIS into a market-leading plant-based food brand, are pivoting hard. Keith is an AI-native regulated law firm targeting conveyancing first, with a 24/7 AI client agent and a target of reducing transaction times by 70%. Launch is Q3 2026. Andy Shovel’s previous company sold plant-based bacon and chicken. […]

Isara, a San Francisco startup that is building software to coordinate thousands of AI agents on complex analytical tasks, has raised $94 million at a $650 million valuation, with OpenAI among the investors. The company was founded nine months ago by two 23-year-olds. It has no product in market. The round was first reported by […]

Spain’s largest life sciences VC is moving upstream with InceptionBio, its first fund dedicated to the riskiest stage of biotech: company creation from university and research centre spinouts. CDTI is an anchor LP. The target is at least three new companies in 2026. The hardest part of turning academic science into a biotech company is […]

The co-founder and former CEO of high-profile German AI startup Aleph Alpha has today revealed fresh details about his new AI startup, which launched last month and is backed by a multi-million-dollar investment from the German consultancy Roland Berger.

The new startup founded by Jonas Andrulis, who left Aleph Alpha last year after six years leading it, is developing what it calls “collaborative AI systems", which are designed to address the challenge in industrial AI applications of a lack of human integration into complex, AI-driven processes.

It says in industrial environments, automated AI systems alone are not sufficient and human judgement remains critical.

Its tech means that AI agents can ask humans clarifying questions, helping negate hallucinations, it says.  

Today the startup revealed its name, CNTR (the name refers to the so-called “centaur chess” where teams of humans and computers play together) and said that Apple engineer Alejandro Molina was relocating from the US West Coast to join the startup as its CTO in Germany.

Molina has also previously worked for Amazon and Aleph Alpha.  

Andrulis said: “Most AI systems today are built to replace human labour. Humans are reduced to temporary gap-fillers. That’s a dead end—for the technology itself as well as for the companies that are putting their most valuable assets at risk: their teams and their culture.   

“We’ve founded CNTR so that humans and machines can learn, make decisions, and solve problems together—not competing, but collaborating with each other.”  

Aleph Alpha was originally one of the few European LLM startups but subsequently pivoted from building LLMs to helping businesses and governments use AI.

The Dutch biotech’s SureTACs platform targets membrane proteins that have long eluded conventional drug discovery by engineering them out of existence rather than blocking them. Biovance Capital joins as new co-lead alongside Kurma Partners in a final close that brings the oversubscribed seed round to €17 million. Most drugs work by blocking proteins. They attach […]

Today data storage and cloud infrastructure company Qumulo announced the official launch of its European Software R&D hub in Cork. 

Through this strategic expansion, Qumulo will create 50 highly skilled R&D positions in the coming three years to solve the major challenges for data management at enormous scale and scope for global business.

Information, derived from data, is now the core asset driving the modern global economy. The success of autonomous AI systems integrated into business operations depends on their ability to make real-time decisions with instant, trustworthy access to colossal datasets. 

This new R&D and Customer Success hub in Cork is a recognition of the challenges and opportunities presented by this new global, digital landscape.

This team will research and develop solutions to enable the secure, frictionless, and instantaneous transfer of exabyte-scale workloads across the globe, delivering the trusted, AI-ready data requirement to power next-generation enterprise applications.

For Qumulo's global customers, this new site in Cork will also see an expansion of its Customer Success team in the region. 

This project is supported by the Irish Government through IDA Ireland.

Minister for Enterprise, Tourism & Employment, Peter Burke TD, said:

“Qumulo’s decision to establish a new European software R&D hub in Cork is a strong endorsement of Cork as a location where cutting-edge engineering and global ambition meet.

It highlights the depth of talent emerging from our universities, the strength of the region’s technology ecosystem, and Ireland’s ability to support companies delivering pioneering innovation on a global scale.

“After actively reviewing a wide variety of options for our second R&D centre, we found that the stellar third-level institutions in the South-West were the basis for a deep talent pool in Cork,” said Qumulo Chief Technology Officer Kiran Bhageshpur.

“Additionally, the excellent support infrastructure for companies like Qumulo provided by IDA Ireland made Cork the obvious choice for us to build a team focused on leveraging AI to help businesses manage global-scale data infrastructure.” 

AI is everywhere right now; startups are playing with generative models, governments are debating new rules and the whole industry feels like it’s in a state of constant motion. But not all innovation is loud or flashy.

Behind closed doors, companies across the continent are pouring resources into tools that make everyday work less painful. Legal teams might not be the first place people look for tech upgrades, but they’re right in the thick of it. These teams have always been the compliance gatekeepers, especially important in Europe with its maze of regulations. The problem? Legal workflows can get bogged down fast; think endless email chains, clunky spreadsheets and manual approvals that slow everything to a crawl.

That’s starting to change. More and more tech companies are turning to automation to modernise their legal processes. The aim is simple: Cut out the friction, boost compliance and free legal professionals from tedious admin so they can actually focus on the bigger picture.

Automation is becoming the backbone of Europe’s tech industry

In major tech hubs like London, Berlin and Paris, companies aren’t just adding AI to their products, they’re weaving it right into their operations.

There’s a big reason for this: Regulation. Europe has set itself up as a leader in responsible AI, with regulations like the EU’s AI Act setting the tone. Sure, tighter rules can add some extra hoops to jump through, but a lot of companies see this as a chance to build more trustworthy tech. But stricter rules also mean more headaches for legal teams.

They’re juggling vendor agreements, procurement sign-offs, data governance and compliance paperwork, usually across multiple countries. For any business with a presence in several European markets, things get complicated fast. Trying to manage all this by hand just doesn’t work anymore. That’s why we’re seeing more companies invest in systems that automate these internal legal processes while keeping everything transparent and compliant.

Legal workflow automation platforms are taking off

Legal teams aren’t just sticking with old-school case management or basic document storage. Now, many organisations are adopting platforms built specifically to handle internal requests and processes.

Take Tonkean legal works, for example. It’s part of a bigger platform focused on automating enterprise intake and orchestrating workflows. Instead of drowning in email requests, legal teams can manage everything through structured forms and automated routing. The system takes care of assigning tasks, tracking progress and making sure the right people are involved at every step.

This shift is bigger than any one tool. Across Europe’s tech industry, companies are moving away from isolated AI projects and embedding automation directly into everyday work. In practise, employees don’t have to send messy, unstructured emails to legal anymore. They fill out guided forms and the platform handles the rest; routing requests, assigning tasks and tracking everything along the way.

For businesses dealing with mountains of procurement contracts, vendor reviews or compliance checks, this kind of software isn’t just helpful, it’s a game changer.

How automation is changing legal work

For a lot of people in the legal world, the biggest win from workflow automation is just being able to see what’s going on. Forget endless email threads, lost files and wondering who’s supposed to approve what. Automation platforms bring order to the chaos, laying out each step from start to finish so nothing gets lost in the shuffle.

Modern legal workflow tools now come packed with features that are quickly becoming must-haves.

Structured intake systems

No more chasing down missing info or trying to decode vague requests. With automation, employees fill out forms that ask the right questions up front, so legal teams get all the details they need right away. That alone cuts down on a ton of back-and-forth emails.

Intelligent routing

AI steps in here, figuring out what kind of request it is and sending it straight to the right person or team. Complicated, high-stakes contracts go to senior lawyers, while more routine stuff gets picked up by junior staff or even handled automatically.

Automated task coordination

Once a request lands in the system, it gets assigned out automatically. The software tracks deadlines and sends reminders, so there’s no need to chase down colleagues for updates.

Clear compliance oversight

Every step in the workflow gets logged, which means companies have a solid audit trail. That kind of visibility matters, especially now, with regulators in Europe paying closer attention than ever.

In the end, legal teams get to spend less time wrangling processes and more time doing real legal work; analysing, negotiating and managing risk.

Why European companies are adopting these tools

Legal workflow automation isn’t just a trend in Europe, it’s becoming the new normal and there are a few reasons for that:

• Rising regulatory pressure.
• Hybrid work is here to stay.
• Legal talent is hard to find.
• Data-driven operations.

So, the future of AI in Europe’s tech world? It’s not just about smarter products. It’s about building smarter ways to work, helping companies move quickly, stay sharp and always play by the rules.

The boss of the VC firm that hit the headlines when it snapped up Yann LeCun and Nick Clegg says it invested around €50m in a co-leading investment in LeCun’s much-hyped world model startup AMI Labs, as part of the startup’s $1bn plus raise announced earlier this year.

Hiro Capital's investment- co-led with Cathay Innovation, Greycroft, HV Capital and Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions-marks the first deployment out of Hiro Capital’s Hiro lll fund, a €500m-plus fund investing in spatial AI, robotics, games, space and defence, which Hiro is still out raising for.

New fund

On raising funds for the fund, Luke Alvarez, Hiro Capital co-founder and managing general partner, says: “We are in process. We have really good demand from institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds.” 

However, Alvarez did not share any names of the investors in Hiro lll, citing client confidentiality. 

The fund is investing at a multi-stage level, deploying cheques of between €5m and €50m, targeting the so-called scale-up capital gap in Europe.

Clegg, Meta’s former president of global affairs and former UK deputy prime minister, joined Hiro as a general partner, while LeCun, Meta’s former chief AI scientist, joined its advisory board.

Hiro’s strategy is to lead or co-lead an investment round but it’s “not religious about it”, Alvarez said.

Would Hiro, based in London and Luxembourg, invest in a Large Language Model company, like France's Mistral, or another world model company like AMI Labs?

Alvarez said: “We have done one investment in world models. We probably won’t do more of those. We are really interested in applications of those world models, in things like autonomy and robotics. We certainly don’t think there is much opportunity to invest at this point in competitors to Anthropic and OpenAI for language and code foundation models.”

Appointment of LeCun

Hiro’s appointment of LeCun in December last year to its advisory board appears to be an act of foresight, given Hiro’s investment in AMI Labs just months later.

Alvarez said: “With our relationship with Yann, we did get an early heads up that he was leaving Meta and was going to set up this amazing thing. And we thought that is so perfect within our strategy, we absolutely would like an opportunity to invest in that and maybe lead it. And that is what happened.”

Hiro has a core investing team of around 10 investors, mostly based in London, with a couple in Europe, which is complemented by Hiro’s advisory board, which also includes former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and British astronaut Tim Peake.

The advisors are partly employed to help unearth the most promising companies of tomorrow in their specialist areas.

“We get amazing AI entrepreneurs who want to work with us because of Yann,” says Alvarez.

Appointment of Clegg

Hiro is Clegg’s main gig, says Alvarez, with the former deputy prime minister also sitting on the boards of UK AI startup Nscale and edtech firm Efekta.

Alvarez says: “It’s his relationship with Yann, who is an old friend of his, who brought Yann into our orbit and our advisory board. He has been great on intros, great on deal flows, lots of people reach out to him because of his time at Silicon Valley. In due course, he will sit on the board of Hiro Capital’s portfolio firms."

Last year, Clegg caused a bit of an uproar when he said a multibillion-dollar tech agreement announced to coincide with Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK represented “sloppy seconds from Silicon Valley”.

Clegg said the deals, heralded with great fanfare by the UK government, were “mutton dressed as lamb” and would make the country ever more reliant on US tech.

Alvarez says: “I think Nick and the rest of our team are strong believers that Europe needs to build its own globally significant companies.”

Investing in founders

So what does Hiro look for in today’s founders?

He says: “Our fund is predicated on the thesis that we are in the early years of a platform shift in tech. These platform shifts come along every 15 or 20 years. The next big shift is where computing moves off the 2D screen in your pocket or on your desktop and into the world around us.

"And where AI moves off of language and into atoms and manufacturing and logistics and movement of people. So we want entrepreneurs who are swimming in the tools of the technology that makes that possible. And want to build really big generational ambitious things that make the world better.”

Why should founders choose Hiro?

Why should Hiro, founded in 2018, win, given the best startups have many suitors?

Alvarez points to the dearth of big funds, like Hiro, in Europe, compared to the US.

Allied to that, he says: “Part of the difference with Hiro is we are all founders and entrepreneurs. In a European venture, that kind of founder-led background to funds is quite unusual.”

Alvarez, who previously founded and was CEO of Inspired Entertainment, says he has four IPOs under his belt while his co-founder Ian Livingstone, an entrepreneur who helped bring to life Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft and the Warhammer fantasy games, has five unicorn exits to his name.

The third co-founder is LoveCrafts co-founder Cherry Freeman.

Hiro to date

Hiro, founded in 2018, started out backing development studios, esports and other gaming innovations across the UK and Europe.

It also has a focus on the metaverse and takes its name from the character Hiro Protagonist in Neil Stephenson’s 1992 novel Snow Crash, which came up with the name metaverse. Hiro lll is its third main fund to date.

Alvarez says: “Our first two funds are performing in the top quartile to top decile of venture funds of their equivalent vintages.”

Europe is racing to secure the critical raw materials needed for its energy transition, yet remains heavily dependent on imports — particularly from China.

At the same time, a growing volume of end-of-life batteries is creating a domestic source of lithium, graphite, and other materials that has, until now, been difficult to recover at scale. Battery recycling startup tozero has launched its first industrial demonstration plant in Germany, marking a step toward turning end-of-life batteries into a domestic supply of critical raw materials at scale.

The plant will deliver recycled lithium and graphite to companies across sectors, including construction, ceramics, and lubricants, with further materials and industries to follow.

Located in Bavaria at Chemical Park Gendorf, the plant can process more than 1.500t of battery waste every year. From this waste, tozero can produce high-purity lithium carbonate – the equivalent of saving 6,000 electric vehicles' worth of batteries from landfill – and recover graphite and nickel-cobalt mix.

Founded in 2022 by Sarah Fleischer, a serial entrepreneur and mechanical engineer, and Dr Ksenija Milicevic Neumann, a leading metallurgy expert, tozero has scaled at pace.

In April 2024, nine months after opening its pilot facility, it became the first company in Europe to deliver recycled lithium to commercial customers. 

I spoke to Sarah Fleischer, Co-founder and CEO of tozero, to learn more about how the company is not only scaling its own operations, but effectively creating a playbook for an emerging industry. 

Europe’s critical materials paradox: reliant on imports, rich in waste

Global demand for lithium is set to quadruple by 2030, while in the EU alone, graphite demand is expected to rise by up to 25 times by 2040, driven by EVs, grid-scale storage and industrial electrification. 

Yet Europe remains almost entirely reliant on imports – China controls global graphite supplies, and 99% of Europe's lithium comes from abroad.  Ironically, Europe is sitting on a stockpile of the very materials it's scrambling to source from the growing number of end-of-life batteries, largely due to Europe’s growth in EVs 

With demand expected to exceed supply by over 33% from 2035, battery recycling is becoming essential — and tozero is aiming to help bridge the gap.

“Yes, it works”: how tozero validated its recycling tech with OEMs

tozero’s approach to battery recycling is fundamentally different from conventional methods. By deploying a proprietary acid-free, hydrometallurgy process, it focuses on low-temperature, water-based chemical processing rather than burning batteries.

Building on this, the company aims to close the battery materials loop and support Europe’s ambition to achieve greater independence in critical raw materials. This aligns with the EU Critical Raw Materials Act, which calls for 25 per cent of supply to come from recycling sources. 

tozero's recycling takes place in a single cycle, and the recovered materials are pure enough to feed directly back into manufacturing.  tozero has already demonstrated successful qualification of its recycled lithium and graphite for lithium-ion batteries with leading cathode and anode manufacturers. 

Through pilots with OEMs, including BMW, tozero has been able to validate both the flexibility of its recycling process and its ability to meet future regulatory requirements. Fleischer notes that the inbound interest itself was an early signal of market demand:

“First of all, they approached us for the pilots, which I think is already a strong statement about the demand for verifying whether this type of recycling actually works.”

She explains that tozero’s approach differs fundamentally from conventional recycling methods:

“What we’re doing is very novel — it has not been done before. 

Conventional battery recycling is based on burning batteries at very high temperatures, around 1,400 degrees. It’s called pyrometallurgy. You can extract nickel and cobalt that way, but lithium and graphite are essentially lost in the process. That’s where we come in.”

Working with multiple OEMs — including partners that remain undisclosed due to NDAs — the pilots were designed to answer two core questions:

“First: is our process agnostic? Can we handle different battery chemistries? Every OEM has a different battery.

 Second: can we recover critical materials like lithium, and can we meet regulatory requirements — for example, the 2031 European Battery Directive, which requires over 80 per cent recovery of critical raw materials?”

The results, she says, came earlier than expected:

“That’s what we were able to demonstrate. From a very early stage, we could already show recovery rates that meet those future requirements.”

Ultimately, the pilots confirmed both the technical robustness and regulatory readiness of the process:

“So the key learning is: yes, our process is chemistry-agnostic, and yes, we already comply with future EU recovery regulations — even though they only come into force in 2031.”

Turning material science into real-world supply

Tozero has achieved significant growth by embracing a lean, agile mindset with a team of just over 30. 

“In just under four years, tozero has gone from lab-scale experiments to industrial operations, and we’re consistently proving that recycling isn't just a pilot project – it can be delivered at a level capable of giving Europe a homegrown, circular supply of critical materials its future runs on." 

Fleischer sees the team’s ability to move fast and focus on execution as critical:

“We don’t just talk — we deliver. We shipped our first lithium carbonate to customers in 2024, starting with hundreds of kilos. Now we’re moving to tonnes with the demonstration plant. That early delivery is critical.

This is material science — if you don’t work directly with customers, you can’t improve the product. So our approach is simple: we do it, we learn from customer feedback, and we iterate quickly.”

From chemistry to geopolitics: why lithium and graphite recovery matters now

As a deep tech company, tozero has focused heavily on understanding the behaviour of lithium and graphite at a chemical level — what they respond to, and what they don’t — as the foundation of its process.

“That allows us to extract them efficiently.”

Fleischer points in particular to the growing importance of graphite, driven by shifting supply chain dynamics and increasing geopolitical pressure. She argues that while the European Union is still defining what a comprehensive critical raw materials strategy looks like in practice, other regions have long treated this as a strategic priority:

“If you look at the US, they defined this decades ago — already in the 1930s — to secure materials essential for industrial growth.”

Europe, by contrast, remains heavily dependent on imports for materials tied to energy independence — particularly from China. More than 90 per cent of refined lithium is imported, while graphite supply is even more concentrated, with close to 99 per cent sourced from China. This imbalance is already translating into rising demand across industries:

“That’s why we’re seeing a lot of inbound interest from customers. It’s not just the battery industry — you also have glass, ceramics, lubricants, and cement industries that depend on these materials. They can’t substitute them, and their margins are tight.”

Ultimately, Fleischer argues, graphite is becoming increasingly strategic not just because of its applications, but because of how concentrated its supply is:

“So graphite matters because it’s both critical and highly concentrated in terms of supply.”

Beyond sustainability: winning on price

Fleischer says this required a fundamental rethink of how to position the business: “

We see ourselves as the miner of tomorrow.”

Early on, the company explored charging a premium for its lower-emissions approach, but quickly abandoned the idea:

“At the beginning, we thought about charging a green premium — because recycling reduces emissions. But very quickly we realised that no one is willing to pay extra for that. It’s an ideology, but it doesn’t hold in real markets, especially where margins are tight.”

Instead, tozero reframed its model around cost advantage:

“So we shifted to the idea of a green discount.”

She argues that, at a fundamental level, recycling should outperform mining on efficiency:

“From a physics perspective, recycling should be cheaper. When you mine, you might extract 0.2 per cent usable material from the earth. In batteries, you have around 4 per cent concentration of materials like lithium. So it’s much more efficient.”

This underpins the company’s long-term benchmark: “Our goal is to have a cash cost that is about half that of a Chinese miner. That’s the benchmark.”

Competing on global markets means aligning closely with price dynamics set by dominant producers:

“If Chinese producers go cheap, we need to be cheaper. If they lose money, we need to remain sustainable. That’s how we position ourselves — as a competitive, alternative source of raw materials.”

At the same time, Fleischer emphasises that recycling is not a replacement for mining, but part of a broader supply mix:

“We don’t believe recycling will replace mining entirely — demand is growing too fast — but it will become a key complementary source.”

Tozero’s approach not only enables the industry to re-use both current and future materials from this stockpile, while reducing the reliance on virgin materials, but it also creates a circular, domestic supply chain that strengthens Europe's competitiveness in the global race for next-generation energy technologies.

Building the blueprint for Europe’s battery recycling plants

Following its success, the industrial demo plant will now form the blueprint for a full-scale commercial operation planned for 2030, capable of producing thousands of tonnes of lithium carbonate and graphite. 

It also lays a foundation for Europe’s ability to secure a sustainable and independent supply of the critical raw materials its growing battery industry needs. 

While tozero wants to operate its own plants for now, because it provides more control over optimisation and improvement, tozero is working with partners. In 2025, it signed an MOU with JGC Corporation, one of the largest engineering companies globally. 

According to  Fleischer, they’ve built thousands of industrial plants, including for companies like Aramco, so they bring strong expertise. 

“There are multiple ways for us to scale — both independently and through partnerships.”

"Europe must take more risks.”

Building a truly circular battery ecosystem in Europe will require not just technology, but a shift in how risk and capital are deployed, Fleischer argues. She points to a more conservative approach compared to other regions, particularly when it comes to backing emerging players: 

"Europe needs to take more risks.

In other regions, you see multiple companies being supported at the same time, creating competition and increasing the chances of success. In Europe, we tend to back one company — and if it fails, we stop investing in that area.”

Access to capital — especially for industrial-scale projects — remains another key bottleneck:

“We also need to improve access to capital, especially for industrial projects. That includes debt financing for CapEx at earlier stages.”

There’s also still a tendency for institutions to prioritise large, established companies over smaller, innovative ones. Ultimately, she argues, the issue is not a lack of capital, but how it is deployed:

“It’s not that Europe lacks money — it’s that the money is not always deployed in a way that supports breakthrough innovation.”

And from here on in, she asserts,  “We’re just getting started — oh, and we’re hiring.”

The Munich startup’s demo plant at Chemical Park Gendorf in Bavaria processes 1,500 tonnes of battery waste a year and produces 100 tonnes of high-purity lithium carbonate, at costs the company says are twice as competitive as conventional miners. A full-scale facility capable of 45,000 tonnes per year is planned for 2030. Europe has a […]

OpenAI has shelved its plans to add an erotic “adult mode” to ChatGPT indefinitely, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, capping a five-month saga in which the feature was announced with confidence, delayed twice, and ultimately abandoned after pushback from staff, advisors, and investors. The retreat is the third major product reversal for OpenAI in […]

Blossom Health, a New York-based telepsychiatry startup founded in 2024, has raised $20 million in combined seed and Series A funding to scale an AI-powered platform that pairs psychiatrists with clinical copilots and automated administrative support. The round was led by Headline, whose co-founder and managing partner Mathias Schilling is joining the company’s board. Village […]