A former British Army intelligence operator who has developed a platform that identifies security risks in countries worldwide using reports from local people has secured a £1million investment.

Michael McCabe’s platform, Crowd Threat uses crowdsourcing to gather threat data on a global scale. Crowd Threat provides up-to-date reports on incidents ranging from armed conflicts and terrorist attacks to social unrest and criminality.

It comes as increased geopolitical risk is driving demand for threat intelligence - not only from governments and security providers but also from corporates looking to safeguard their overseas operations and their supply chains.

Crowd Threat offers an alternative to the traditional intelligence model, which relies on teams of desk-based analysts who monitor media, social media and data feeds remotely. Instead, it uses a network of local contributors within each country –- typically security or intelligence professionals — who are paid for each incident they report.
Reports are initially assigned a rating based on the contributor’s trust level, then verified with the help of AI and human reviewers.

The model not only reduces costs but is also designed to capture threats closer to the source and identify emerging risks at an earlier stage.

McCabe, who spent over two decades working in intelligence with the British military and private security companies in Iraq, is also the founder of Intelligence Fusion, a software-enabled intelligence provider that was acquired by Sigma7 in 2022.

He set up Crowd Threat in 2025 and worked with Newcastle tech company Wubbleyou to develop the platform, which went live in June this year. Its 200-plus contributors are based in 17 countries across six continents and report on incidents worldwide.

McCabe aims to expand its coverage, particularly in Africa, South America and Asia, and ultimately have up to 10,000 contributors.

The funding will also enable him to create seven new jobs and work on a second product that could identify community tensions and provide early warning of riots and outbreaks of violence.

According to Michael McCabe, CEO, while working in Iraq, the security professionals would share information in an online forum.

“If an explosive device went off in the morning, by the end of the day we would know all the background. I came away thinking, why can’t we tap into local networks around the world? 

Technology now allows us to threats on a global scale. Using local people who understand the language and culture means we can report incidents more quickly and identify threats Western analysts may miss.” 

Laurence Tan, Senior Investment Associate, PXN Ventures, said:

“In today’s rapidly changing world, we’re seeing more businesses developing technology to help combat or raise awareness of growing geopolitical risks.

Crowd Threat is doing exactly this, bringing new thinking to the threat intelligence conversation and aligning with the government’s Modern Industrial Strategy, which highlights defence as a key area. We’re proud to be backing Michael and the team with NPIF II funding to help scale this very timely innovation.”

The Newcastle-based company has secured funding from the North East Accelerate Fund, managed by Mercia Ventures, and NPIF II – PXN Equity Finance, managed by PXN Ventures as part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II (NPIF II).

The Accelerate Fund was established by The North East Fund with the support of North East Mayor Kim McGuinness and The North East Mayoral Strategic Authority.

The investment will support further product development and expansion of its global coverage.

Lead image: Michael McCabe and Sara Azari McCabe of Crowd Threat, Owen Conquest of Mercia Ventures and Sophia Birks of Crowd Threat.

Dave Wehner has spent 14 years at Meta, more than eight of them as chief financial officer. On Friday, he announced that he is leaving his role as chief strategy officer to become CFO of Fireworks, an AI inference start-up. The Information first reported the move on Friday evening. Wehner joined Facebook in 2012 as […]

French computing company Bull has opened a new production building at its historic Angers site in France following an €80 million redevelopment.

Bull specialises in high-performance computing, AI and quantum technologies, developing hardware, software and related services for businesses, research institutions and governments.

The company generates approximately €720 million in annual revenue, employs 3,000 people across 32 countries and holds around 1,600 patents. Its technologies support scientific research, AI development and data-intensive applications, including those requiring greater control over computing infrastructure and sensitive data.

I visited Bull's newly expanded manufacturing facility to learn how the company is increasing European supercomputing production, reducing its reliance on overseas suppliers and opening its industrial infrastructure and engineering expertise to startups.

Inside Bull's new Angers manufacturing facility

Nearly 300 people work at the site, with another 50 to 100 expected to join as part of a wider recruitment plan targeting 500 hires. The factory can now assemble 12 computing racks a week, up from six, and Emmanuel Le Roux, Bull's CEO, said production could eventually increase to 24.

Walking through the factory, I was struck by how spacious and quiet it was. The production floor is divided into three areas: high-performance computing (HPC), AI infrastructure, and a central testing and validation section.

Rather than the traditional assembly lines I'd imagined, with workers and perhaps cobots standing shoulder to shoulder, technicians sat at individual workstations carrying out precision tasks.

Some used intelligent screwdrivers that automatically adjust torque settings and guide the assembly process, reducing the risk of loose, over-tightened or damaged screws.

The workforce brought together people with different academic and technical backgrounds, with some roles requiring dexterity and fine motor skills rather than formal qualifications.

Overall, the atmosphere reminded me more of a fashion house's bespoke atelier than a conventional line of shoulder-to-shoulder industrial assembly lines.

The modular layout also lets production lines adapt to different equipment in about ten minutes, while an entire line can be relocated in about three days.

According to a presentation by the Bull team, the expansion allows the company to assemble multiple large-scale supercomputers simultaneously, something that was previously impossible.

This includes France's 94-rack Alice Recoque supercomputer and Finland's €388 million LUMI-AI system, Bull's largest contract to date.

The redevelopment also includes more than 3,500 photovoltaic panels with 1,500 kWp of peak capacity and a heat-recovery system that Bull says could eventually capture enough energy to meet the equivalent needs of 600 households. Bull also plans to plant around 1,500 trees near the site. The project received €1.2 million from France's Green Fund, €213,000 from ADEME's Heat Fund and €1.5 million from the Pays de la Loire Regional Council.

One of Bull's key technologies is its patented Direct Liquid Cooling system, which circulates water through cooling plates attached to heat-generating components inside its supercomputers.

Unlike conventional air cooling, the system can use water at temperatures of up to 40°C, reducing the need for energy-intensive refrigeration and cooling fans. Bull's latest generation is entirely fanless, allowing more computing power in the same space while making it easier to capture waste heat for reuse in nearby buildings.

Building European sovereignty

Emmanuel Le Roux linked the investment to Europe's need for greater control over its computing infrastructure:

"Europe must have the industrial capabilities required to produce tomorrow's strategic digital infrastructures on its own territory."

Bull is also working to reduce its dependence on overseas suppliers. It has developed its own BXI high-performance interconnect technology, holds a stake in European chip designer SiPearl and now sources electronic boards manufactured in France.

According to Le Roux, those boards were made entirely outside Europe a decade ago. He also pointed to the Angers factory's continued operation during the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of the value of retaining local manufacturing capabilities.

Le Roux said European-made components now account for around 70 per cent of systems produced at Angers, up from 20–30 per cent five years ago.

He also claimed that the forthcoming LUMI-AI supercomputer will be 70 per cent European-made, compared with 40 per cent for its predecessor and approximately 5 per cent for competing systems. These figures have not been independently verified.

For Le Roux, technological autonomy is about having alternatives rather than eliminating international suppliers.

He gave the example of a shortage of a US-sourced electronic component costing less than €2 that threatened to halt supercomputer production. Bull's engineers redesigned the circuit board to accommodate an Infineon component, allowing manufacturing to resume.

The investment comes as European institutions seek to expand computing capacity.

The EU has committed approximately €7 billion to the European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) over 2021–2027.

According to Le Roux, Bull has won 15 of 18 EuroHPC tenders.

An Open Factory for European startups

Alongside the inauguration, Bull announced an Open Factory initiative intended to make its industrial capabilities available to other technology businesses.

The programme aims to support European technology development and help companies move from laboratory research and prototypes to industrial-scale production.

I spoke to Petr Bednařík, founder of Czech AI company DataSentics and now Bull's AI Strategy Director, about what this could mean for startups.

For smaller companies developing AI hardware or high-performance computing technologies, Bednařík sees the Angers facility as a potential way around the substantial cost of building their own manufacturing infrastructure.

"The factory is a unique asset," he said.

But Bull's value to startups could extend beyond physical infrastructure. A specialist startup might build on Bull's software platforms or integrate its technology into an existing project for a large enterprise customer, gaining access to relationships that would otherwise be difficult to establish independently. Bednařík is also exploring ways to provide engineering resources as a form of investment.

"For example, we might assign three engineers to work with a company for two years, with that contribution forming part of our investment."

He stressed that Bull does not intend to become a conventional venture capital fund. For early-stage deeptech companies, technical expertise and engineering capacity can be as important as financial backing.

"Providing money isn't necessarily the most distinctive thing we can offer."

The investment model and factory-access arrangements are still being developed. Bednařík said Bull was working through business planning and board discussions, with the concept potentially defined by the end of 2026 and outreach to startups beginning in early 2027.

However, software startups interested in building applications on Bull's existing platforms can already approach the company.

Why DataSentics turned Bull away five times

Bednařík's approach to working with startups is informed by his own experience of building and selling DataSentics.

Founded in Prague in 2016, DataSentics develops AI and machine learning solutions for enterprise customers. French IT group Atos acquired the company in 2021, and it subsequently operated under the Eviden brand before becoming part of Bull in 2026.

Before founding DataSentics, Bednařík spent a decade at Deloitte. He wanted to build a more agile company, but scaling as a relatively small Czech technology supplier proved difficult, particularly when selling to major banks. Bull and Atos approached the company several times about an acquisition

. "To be honest, we turned them away five times," he recalled.

Eventually, Bednařík concluded that joining a larger organisation could give DataSentics access to customers it struggled to reach independently. However, he was concerned about losing the company's culture and independence.

"As a startup founder, you hear all the horror stories about acquisitions. A company gets bought, and within a year or two, the original team has disappeared, and much of the value has been lost."

According to Bednařík, Bull largely left DataSentics' team and working practices intact, focusing integration on sales, enterprise relationships and aligning technology roadmaps.

He acknowledged that operating with relative independence can complicate financial reporting and administration, but believes it helped the company retain its people and entrepreneurial culture.

"Even today, my team operates much as it did when we were an independent startup."

The experience convinced him that startups could benefit from access to corporate resources without necessarily being acquired. He points to the startup programmes of hyperscalers and Databricks as examples of companies supporting businesses that build on their technologies, and sees an opportunity to develop a similar model around European industrial infrastructure.

Why Europe's AI factories need more than GPUs

At the factory inauguration, Sebastian von Alfthan, Director of CSC – IT Centre for Science, discussed the shortage of computing capacity available to European researchers and businesses, and the importance of making advanced infrastructure accessible beyond large technology companies. CSC operates Finland's research computing infrastructure and hosts LUMI, the EuroHPC supercomputer inaugurated in 2022.

"What we lack is sufficient computing capacity to support their ambitions," he said of Europe's researchers, startups and technology companies.

LUMI ranked third globally when it launched. Although originally developed primarily for high-performance computing, its GPU resources have also been used for AI workloads. Its successor, LUMI-AI, is among the systems planned for production at Angers.

Von Alfthan explained that an AI factory is more than a data centre filled with GPUs. It brings together computing resources, datasets, storage, technical assistance, regulatory guidance and business development support. This is particularly important for smaller companies that may lack the staff or expertise to use advanced computing systems effectively.

He also discussed the potential to combine conventional simulation with AI in scientific research and, in the longer term, quantum computing. Examples included using AI to analyse agricultural data and assess wood quality in industrial production, demonstrating how advanced computing can support established industries as well as emerging technologies.

From French state ownership to new European contracts

The French government completed its acquisition of Bull from Atos in March 2026, giving the company a long-term public shareholder as France seeks to strengthen its domestic computing industry.

Bull has since announced several commercial agreements in Europe. In November, it signed a memorandum of understanding with Schwarz Digits, the digital division of Schwarz Group, to explore developing European AI and cloud infrastructure. The proposed collaboration includes Bull-manufactured servers, direct liquid cooling and making the Bull Sequana AI platform available through the STACKIT Marketplace.

In October, Germany's Climate Computing Centre (DKRZ) awarded Bull a €40 million contract, including five years of support, for its next-generation HLRE-5 climate supercomputer.

Scheduled to enter service in early 2028, the BullSequana XH3500-based system is designed to run two global climate simulations simultaneously at 5 km resolution while reducing energy consumption per simulated year by approximately 75 per cent compared with DKRZ's current Levante system. The supercomputer will use Bull's direct liquid cooling technology.

DKRZ already supplies some recovered heat to the University of Hamburg's neighbouring chemistry department, and plans to make more waste heat available to university buildings when HLRE-5 is installed.

Bull's expanded Angers factory and proposed Open Factory programme could open up valuable opportunities for European deeptech startups, particularly those facing the high costs of moving from prototype to production. The next step is turning those ambitions into practical support that startups can actually use.

The European Union has sued IBM, French IT group Atos and Italian defence company Leonardo over years of delays in developing its new biometric border system, the Financial Times reported on Monday. The case was brought by eu-LISA, the EU agency responsible for large-scale IT systems used in border management and security. According to its […]

Tesla will have to refund deposits to many Cybertruck customers because orders far exceed what it can build, chief executive Elon Musk said on Monday, in a post on X. The Cybertruck order rate far exceeds our production rate. We will try to make as many as possible before shutting down the line in about […]

The founder of the Sweden-founded VC firm which has backed high-profile European tech companies, including Spotify, Lovable and Black Forest Labs, says the VC needs to be in San Francisco to win in Europe. Creandum founder Staffan Helgesson made the comments as US VC firm Sequoia said it was shutting its London office.

Last week, Creandum said it had closed its largest ever fund, a $750m fund, as well as opening its first office in San Francisco. The new $750m fund, Fund VIII, is up in size from Creandum’s previous fund, Fund VII, which was a €500m ($560m) fund.

The VC, which has also backed Klarna and UK chip startup Olix, has had a presence in San Francisco since 2012, and has now opened its first office in the city. Speaking on the Tech.eu podcast, Helgesson said: “We need to be in San Francisco to win in Europe. It’s because we can be helpful to our portfolio. 

“We are more attractive to founders. We’re a better investor in Europe because we see what is happening here. We can do due diligence on both sides of the pond. And sometimes when founders fundraise, we can have touchpoints with them on both sides of the Atlantic.” 

Helgesson said Creandum’s distributed set up, with offices in Stockholm, Berlin, London and San Francisco, did present some challenges.

But he said: “I don’t think it’s the model that is most important; it is how you execute on the model. And we have learnt how to execute a multi-hub strategy."

Helgesson also talked about the new fund, including the relative ease in raising money for the fund, and how cheques are likely to be dispensed. Additionally, he talked about Creandum's investment thesis. He said: “We will never lower the bar on entrepreneur quality simply to invest in an area that we think is exciting.”

Creandum says that one in six of its early-stage investments is valued at $1bn or more. Asked whether Creandum could maintain this level with the new fund, Helgesson said venture was a “very hard” industry.

He said: “I think as a venture franchise you are just a bad fund away from not being relevant anymore. And you have to remain super focused and paranoid not to miss that.”

For two decades, the SIEM was the Security Operations Center (SOC). One platform ingested the data, parsed it, stored it, normalized it, enriched it, ran the detections and supported the investigations. If you had a SIEM, you had a SOC. That model is coming apart. Gal Shafir, Co-Founder and CEO of Fig Security, spent years on […]

SoftBank Group will report quarterly results on Tuesday, as investors look for signs that its AI strategy is still on track. A sharp fall in AI stocks and a blocked robotics deal have added to the pressure, Reuters reported. SoftBank shares fell more than 11% in Tokyo on Friday. On the same day, the cost of […]

Digital learning has made educational resources more widely available, but access remains a challenge for many students, particularly those with disabilities or limited budgets.

London-based edtech company Perlego is tackling these barriers through a subscription-based digital library with access to more than 1.5 million books, alongside accessibility features, such as text-to-speech, adjustable fonts and reading tools. The company has raised over €70 million in funding.

I spoke to Gauthier Van Malderen, founder and CEO of Perlego, to learn more.

From expensive textbooks to digital subscriptions

I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers university textbooks being heinously expensive. When I studied in Australia, textbooks — including those written by my lecturers — were compulsory, and I remember spending around €400 per semester at a minimum.

Worse, books were frequently updated, making it difficult to buy second-hand copies.

Van Malderen had a similar experience studying in Italy and the UK. At the same time, he noticed publishers were losing revenue through piracy and the second-hand book market.

“Students were sharing books or turning to illegal websites because they couldn't afford to buy them.

I started thinking about how people were already subscribing to music and films, and wondered why the same model couldn't exist for educational books.

That's where Perlego came from.”

Making digital books genuinely accessible

Accessibility is often treated as an additional feature rather than something fundamental to learning. Digital technology, however, offers opportunities to improve the reading experience, particularly for people who struggle with printed materials.

Perlego allows users to adjust fonts, text sizes and colour settings. It also offers a dyslexia-friendly reading mode and BeeLine Reader, which uses colour gradients to guide readers through text.

According to Van Malderen, one of Perlego's most important features is Read Aloud, its text-to-speech tool, which uses AI-generated voices with adjustable reading speeds. Traditional audiobooks cover only a small proportion of the publishing market, largely bestselling fiction and some nonfiction.

“For academic textbooks, research papers and other specialist materials, producing conventional audiobooks often doesn't make economic sense.

With text-to-speech, we can make that content available in audio format without needing to produce a separate audiobook.”

The feature is now available across more than 95 per cent of Perlego's catalogue.

Perlego pays publishers royalties based on consumption, treating listening and reading equally. It also shares usage data, helping publishers identify opportunities for audio versions of content that might otherwise be commercially unviable.

AI that supports learning rather than replacing it

Perlego has also introduced AI-powered research tools that draw on its catalogue of licensed educational content to help students and academics find relevant sources. Van Malderen explained:

“Our research tool uses semantic search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), which means it draws on content from our catalogue rather than simply generating an answer.

For example, you might ask about the impact of interest rates on debt markets. The system generates an answer with the relevant source information and takes you directly to the book.”

Unlike general-purpose generative AI tools, which can produce fabricated references, Perlego's approach is designed to connect users with identifiable source material they can examine themselves. However, there's considerable debate about AI in education, particularly around students relying on generated answers rather than developing their own understanding.

Van Malderen says Perlego must balance the interests of three groups: publishers concerned about how copyrighted material is used in AI systems, academics worried about the impact on learning, and students who want to find information quickly.

“One of the biggest concerns we hear from professors is that students are increasingly using generative AI to produce essays without necessarily learning the underlying material.”

Perlego has developed AI principles intended to ensure its tools support learning rather than replace it. Rather than generating complete essays for students to submit, the company focuses on helping users discover sources and engage with the underlying material.

Van Malderen believes universities need to work with AI technologies rather than ignore them, particularly as students already have access to tools that may lack educational safeguards.

Beyond the reading list: How Perlego is improving access at Leeds

The University of Leeds, one of the UK's largest universities, began using Perlego around two years ago. According to Isabel Archer, Access & Acquisitions Manager (Acquisitions & Reading Lists) at the University of Leeds, the platform helped address longstanding gaps in access to reading-list materials.

“One of the things that initially drew us to Perlego was the coverage of reading list titles that we couldn't provide electronically through other providers, and in some cases couldn't obtain in print either.”

Further, the university previously couldn't provide electronic access to 60 per cent of reading-list citations.

Since the partnership began, students have used Perlego's Read Aloud feature 40,871 times, activated dyslexia-friendly font settings 2,532 times and adjusted text sizes 11,391 times.

The partnership has also eliminated licensing-related “turnaways” during peak exam periods — instances where students are denied access to a text because the maximum number of permitted users has been reached.

Students have opened an average of more than 18 books each from Perlego's catalogue.

Van Malderen says the data also reveals that students are exploring material beyond their prescribed reading lists.

“For us, that's an important part of accessibility too. It's not simply about changing the way someone reads a book, but giving them access to a much broader range of resources.”

The economics of a subscription-based library

Textbook demand is seasonal, peaking at the start of semesters and during exams. I asked Van Malderen how Perlego manages subscriber churn during quieter periods.

“We have both direct-to-consumer and institutional businesses. Universities often sign multi-year contracts, which helps offset seasonality, while consumer demand peaks around the start of the academic year and exam periods.”

Perlego also targets markets where academic calendars differ, and has expanded beyond textbooks into fiction, nonfiction and travel guides.

“Imagine you're a student travelling over the summer. You might want access to Lonely Planet guides. You've already got your highlights and annotations saved in Perlego, so there's an incentive to stay.”

A global library for a changing generation of learners

International expansion remains a major priority for Perlego, which is active in more than 180 countries. North America accounts for more than 55 per cent of its revenue, with Europe its second-largest market. South Africa has also been growing particularly quickly. In parts of Africa and Southeast Asia, distributing physical books can be expensive or logistically difficult, creating opportunities for digital platforms.

Perlego is also benefiting from growing interest in lifelong learning, with its audience extending beyond traditional university students to professionals looking to retrain or develop new skills.

“People often assume our typical users are university students aged 18 to 24. But in the US, we're seeing an older audience, with an average age somewhere around the mid-30s.

These are people who might be retraining, developing new skills or studying alongside work and family responsibilities.”

The company also plans to develop more interactive learning experiences, including elements of gamification, while expanding its relationships with academic and trade publishers.

Academic journals could be another area of expansion. Ithaka, the nonprofit organisation behind JSTOR, participated in Perlego's last funding round, and Van Malderen sees potential for collaboration to make academic books and journals easier to discover together.

He has also noticed how closely people's reading interests follow what's happening in the news.

“When there's a major geopolitical event, conflict or economic development, we can see changes in what people search for.

They might suddenly become interested in the history of a particular country or want to understand an economic issue in more detail.

People are continually looking for ways to understand the world around them, and our role is to make that knowledge easier to access.”

Google has warned that a proposed Australian online safety law could force it to block under-18s from Gmail. A company policy chief raised the concern at a Senate hearing on Monday, Reuters reported. The Digital Duty of Care bill would require online companies to show they are taking steps to remove harmful content. Firms that fail […]

Biotech startup Vale Biolabs has received €164,000 (CHF 150,000) from Venture Kick to advance its platform for studying brain diseases and evaluating potential treatments.

Founded by Ilaria Incaviglia, Angeliki Damilou, Daniel Medina Cano and Theodoulos Rodosthenous, Vale Biolabs combines lab-grown human brain tissue, automation and predictive AI to help researchers better understand how the brain responds to drugs and support the development of new therapies. The founding team brings together expertise in organoid neurobiology, automation, data science engineering and early-stage venture development.

Developing treatments for neurological disorders remains challenging, particularly because preclinical research relies heavily on animal testing. Differences between animal and human biology can make it difficult to predict how drugs will perform in patients, contributing to failures during clinical trials, increasing development costs and delaying new therapies.

Vale Biolabs aims to address these challenges by developing standardised human brain organoids, miniature tissue models that reproduce certain characteristics of the human brain. Using automation, the company monitors changes in these models over time, analysing their structure, activity and molecular responses before and after exposure to potential treatments.

The collected data is used to develop predictive AI models that support research into brain development, neurodegenerative diseases and healthy brain ageing. By allowing drug developers to test treatments on human brain tissue earlier in the development process, the platform aims to identify promising therapies and potential failures before they reach clinical trials.

The technology could support research into a range of neurological conditions, including rare brain disorders and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, while potentially reducing development costs and accelerating the introduction of new treatments.

The funding from Venture Kick will support the further development of Vale Biolabs' automated platform, the expansion of its human brain organoid models and the generation of datasets to train and validate its predictive AI models. It will also help the company advance collaborations with research and industry partners.

Onodrim Industries, a defence group based in Amsterdam, has raised $300M in a round led by Lux Capital. The deal values the firm at $1.3bn, Onodrim said in a statement on Monday. Other backers include General Catalyst, Lakestar, Altimeter, Strike Capital, 137 Ventures, 8090 and Expeditions. The capital comes nine months after Onodrim’s €40M seed […]

Nvidia’s board has opened an independent investigation after chief executive Jensen Huang admitted on Sunday to a relationship with Alice Huang, a former executive at Nvidia customer Megaspeed. US spy agencies reportedly believe she was working for China. The admission is the latest turn in a story that began less than two weeks ago. Since […]

Last week, we tracked more than 55 tech funding deals worth over €2.7 billion and over 5 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.

? The top three industries that raised the most were content (€1.2 billion), energy (€857.5 million), and fintech (€291.7 million). At the country level, ?? Türkiye took first place (€1.2 billion), followed by ?? the Netherlands (€900 million) and ?? the UK (€242.4 million).

❗ Be sure to check out the Tech.eu Funding Explorer, free and open to everyone, for deeper insights into funding data, investor activity, company profiles, and market trends. Now, let's get you up to speed on everything that happened last week.

Have a great week!

Funding deals by amount

• TÜRKİYE: Fal doubles valuation to $16B after $1.3B Series F
• NETHERLANDS: Return secures €835M financing to expand battery storage capacity in Germany
• UK: Hoxton Wealth receives $135M minority investment from Aspirity Partners
• SPAIN: EOS-X Space raises $120M at $1.2B valuation ahead of its first commercial balloon flight
• GERMANY: Defence startup Hypersonica raises €100M
• GERMANY: Pliant raises $80M Series C for AI agent payments
• NETHERLANDS: Fourthline receives up to €65M in funding
• SPAIN: Smart TV operating system developer Titan OS raises $46 million
• GERMANY: Aerospace startup Vaeridion raises €30M for zero-emission regional flights
• UK: FluoRok raises €26.64M to scale fluorochemical production
• UK: Supa raises £21M in seed funding to transform UK residential block management
• UK: Human cell programming company bit.bio closes $25M Series D
• DENMARK: Biograil raises €20M for oral drug delivery device
• SWEDEN: Green Voltis raises €13.5M to operate and trade battery storage
• GERMANY: Quint Computing raises €9.1M to scale quantum computing technology
• UK: LO:TECH lands $12M Series A led by MMC
• SPAIN: Kabilio raises €10M to expand AI accounting platform and introduce AI agents
• FINLAND: Vensum Power raises €9M to cut power losses in AI data centres, EV charging and energy storage
• UK: OSSTEC raises $8M in funding
• FRANCE: Gallium Defense raises €7.1M to make drone detection cheaper and scalable
• AUSTRIA: Tumbleweed raises record €6.9M seed round to bring microgravity research to the masses
• GERMANY: Conlio secures €6.4M to expand AI-powered financial tools
• NORWAY: Vitroscope raises $7M to turn living human tissue into a new source of drug discovery data
• UK: Sporta receives £5M investment from Lazaroo-Hood Group
• DENMARK: Claimlane bags €5.6M to turn product claims into business value
• UK: Symbe raises $5.7M in funding
• UK: Tallia raises €4M to bring AI-powered research and review tools
• GERMANY: Marble raises $3.75M to build AI coworkers that learn by watching
• UK: Memory magicians raise $3.3M for Mindmax to put human learning first in the AI age
• UK: Bioliberty raises additional $3.3M in Series A funding
• ESTONIA: Veriff co-founders’ Roleo raises €2.9M to expand AI career agent across Europe
• ITALY: CyberKord raises €2.7M to automate IT and cybersecurity operations with AI
• UK: Turning pollution into everyday products: Viridi raises €2.6M to transform waste
• UK: 1nhaler secures £2.2M to replace bulky plastic inhalers with cardboard
• UK: Crediflow AI secures €1.8M to automate commercial loan processes
• PORTUGAL: AI startup Granter bags €1.6M to expand across Europe
• GERMANY: Smycles secures €1.5M investment
• SWEDEN: Juritas raises €1.4M in pre-seed funding
• UK: Kinewell raises over £1M in funding
• POLAND: SuppMatch.AI raises $1.3M pre-seed round to help consumers choose supplements
• FRANCE: Seamoretech secures €1.1M to turn desalination brine into freshwater
• GERMANY: JawBuddy raises €818,000 to help people reduce jaw pain and bruxism
• SWEDEN: Sortrace lands $800,000 to improve waste sorting with AI-powered analysis
• SWITZERLAND: Avaisor secured €531,000 to scale surgical expertise
• UK: BrowsAble raises £300,000 in funding
• TÜRKİYE: For Physician raises $267,000 in funding
• ITALY: Promethence receives €200,000 investment
• SWEDEN: Proofbacked comes out of stealth with €182,000 angel round and a mission to fix compliance’s proof problem
• SWITZERLAND: Venture Kick backs Apolarion with €164,000 to advance plasma-based seed treatment
• LATVIA: Unitoq raises €155,000 in pre-seed to make real estate investment more accessible
• SWEDEN: MucoLife Therapeutics secures €91K from Vinnova to scale manufacturing of COPD treatment
• UK: Ticketing giant Skiddle secures first external investment
• UK: UK sovereign AI fund and Stripe CEO back Potential Sciences in multi-million-dollar raise
• UK: SFC Capital backs Nayara’s AI platform for patient care
• GERMANY: Lazzaro One lands pre-seed funding to advance maritime intelligence technology
• NETHERLANDS: Hardt Hyperloop secures multi-million-euro funding
• GERMANY: Enginsight closes funding
• FINLAND: Saidot raises undisclosed funding
• SWITZERLAND: Klett Group is investing an undisclosed sum in Epalero

Exits and M&A activity

• SWEDEN: Nordtech Group acquires SaaS company Leasify
• SLOVAKIA: TrollWall AI buys rival Elv.ai to dominate Europe's comment moderation market
• FRANCE: Mistral acquires SkipLabs in its fifth acquisition since the start of the year
• SWITZERLAND: Technis strengthens its position with the acquisition of Konstl
• GERMANY: The Conrad Electronic Group is acquiring the Berlin-based procurement startup Hivebuy
• GERMANY: Upwork is acquiring the Berlin-based HR startup WorkMotion
• NORWAY: CO3 is acquiring the Norwegian startup Kinver

European defence and industrial scale-up platform Onodrim Industries has raised $300 million in a Series A funding round led by Lux Capital, with participation from new and existing investors, including General Catalyst, Lakestar, Altimeter, Strike Capital, 137 Ventures, 8090 and Expeditions.

The financing values Onodrim at $1.3 billion and follows a $45 million seed round announced earlier this year.

Onodrim focuses on strengthening Europe's defence and industrial capabilities by acquiring controlling stakes in businesses operating across critical supply chains, services and products, particularly those addressing bottlenecks in the European defence industry.

The company uses permanent capital to support the long-term development of its portfolio businesses, combining financial resources with technology, operational expertise and business development support to help them expand their capabilities, take on larger programmes and serve customers across Europe.

According to Aistis Šimaitis, co-founder and CEO of Onodrim, Europe has many strong companies, but their growth has often been constrained by limited access to the resources needed to scale at the pace required by current conditions.

We are bringing permanent capital, technology and world-class operators to Europe's best companies, giving them the resources to expand, compete and strengthen the continent's defence industrial base.

Onodrim has assembled a team with experience across private equity, aerospace and defence, technology and government. Its approach involves working with acquired businesses to modernise manufacturing processes, improve operations and develop new products through access to engineering teams and shared resources.

Our approach at Onodrim is rooted in long-term partnership and collaboration. We believe Europe's industrial champions are built by investing in great businesses, empowering the people behind them and giving them the resources to grow for the long term,

said Alex Blessing, co-founder and CTO of Onodrim.

The new funding will support Onodrim's plans to acquire established businesses across the aerospace, defence and industrial manufacturing sectors. The company expects to announce its first acquisitions in the coming months.

Alongside its acquisition strategy, Onodrim is expanding its European presence with new offices in Munich and Turin, adding to its existing locations in Amsterdam, London and Vilnius.

Image credits: Getty Images for Onodrim

Scottish biotech PhaSER Biomedical has won a $2.7M (£2m) grant from the Gates Foundation to help find new drugs for diseases such as TB and malaria. The company announced the award in a statement this morning. The two-year grant renews PhaSER’s place in the foundation’s Global Health Discovery Collaboratory, a programme that gives Gates-funded teams access […]

Rillet, a US start-up that makes accounting software with built-in AI agents, has opened an office in central London. It is the company’s first major move into Europe, Rillet said on Monday. Customers in the UK and the rest of Europe already account for 15% of Rillet’s new annual recurring revenue, the company said. They […]

Marble Imaging, founded to fill a critical capability gap in Europe's intelligence infrastructure, has raised an additional €6 million led by Cherry Ventures. This extends the initial €5.3 million seed round led by High-Tech Gründerfonds.

Marble Imaging is a big-data EO company founded in August 2023 in Bremen, Germany, building its constellation of very-high-resolution (VHR) satellites to provide up to hourly EO data and analytics for time-critical insights of our planet.

Marble is setting up Germany's first commercial constellation of (VHR) satellites. VHR imagery is a core input for security and commercial intelligence, yet Europe and many of its partners depend on non-European providers. This makes them vulnerable to being cut off from coverage over key areas of interest, as seen in Ukraine or the Strait of Hormuz, creating major economic and security knowledge gaps.

The data and derived EO-based analytics will be vital in supporting rapid decision-making with regard to defence, climate security, crises and disaster management, green and sustainable energy transitions, infrastructure and mobility and much more.

Marble already offers advanced data analysis services, including object detection for situational intelligence, terrain analysis and trafficability assessment, coastal asset monitoring and land cover classification.

Alongside the space infrastructure backbone, Marble is building an AI-powered analytics platform where multi-source data is converted into insights.

As Marble's constellation scales, the interplay of these segments will create a uniquely well-trained AI solution delivering actionable decision-support for users in the defence, civil security, and critical infrastructure sectors as well as beyond.

"To make better decisions, data access must be immediate and actionable," says Robert Hook, co-founder and CEO of Marble Imaging.

"Europe and many of its global partners lack this capability today. We at Marble are determined to close this gap, and Cherry's trust helps us achieve this faster."

Marble's first satellite, Marble Sat-1, is fully funded, completed pre-flight testing and scheduled to launch in early 2027. It is designed to capture imagery at up to 0.7 m spatial resolution in the visible and near-infrared spectrum and will also gather data in the short wave infrared spectrum.

The new funding accelerates the scaling of our constellation, with a goal of 30 satellites by 2030.

"Europe needs its own eyes in space, and Marble Imaging is building them. They are using AI to turn pixels into answers, exactly what government and defence customers need. This team has spent their careers in the industry and knows what it takes to build something very big. The product Marble will deliver doesn't exist in Europe yet, but we're convinced it has to," says Filip Dames, Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures.

Lead image: The founding team of Marble Imaging: Dr Raul Scarlat (Lead instrument scientist), Robert Hook (CEO), Dr Gopika Suresh (CSO), Alexander Epp (CCO). Credit: Marble Imaging