We are collecting the most relevant tech news and provide you with a handy archive. Use the search to find mentions of your city, accelerator or favorite startup in the last 1,000 news items. If you’d like to do a more thorough search, please contact us for help.
Search for any keyword to filter the database with >10,000 news articles
Elon Musk is apparently turning his attention away from Washington and back to Tesla. On this episode of Uncanny Valley, the hosts unpack what Musk’s pivot means for the future of DOGE.
17/05/2025 11:10 AM
4
47,634
16/05/2025 07:57 PM
AI startup Cohere acquires Ottogrid, a platform for conducting market research
Many of the crypto investors preparing to attend an exclusive gala dinner with US president Donald Trump have offloaded the coins that won them their seats.
16/05/2025 05:10 PM
4
47,628
16/05/2025 04:00 PM
TechCrunch and VivaTech Partner for the VivaTech Innovation of the Year
This article is visible for CLUB members only. If you are already a member but don’t see the content of this article, please login here. If you’re not a CLUB member yet, but you’d like to read members-only content like this one, have unrestricted access to the site and benefit from many additional perks, you can sign up here.
This week we tracked more than 75 tech funding deals worth over €909 million, and over 15 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.
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.
Berlin-based Ecosia, the green search engine which invests 100% of its profits into climate action initiatives, is launching a new climate impact experience for its 20 million users – moving their primary focus away from planting trees.
They can now log in to a new profile page and start collecting a seed for each day they use Ecosia in their ‘impact counter’, which will then show them how they are contributing to real world initiatives which range from tackling deforestation, to investing in renewable energy and ClimateTech.
Christian Kroll, CEO at Ecosia, commented: “We started out as a tree planting search engine but we’ve expanded far beyond that and are now invested in a range of climate impact initiatives, from renewable energy and climate tech, to protecting biodiversity. We wanted to give our users access to the very real impact they’re having, so we’re adding new ways for them to track, share and shape that.
“As governments are rolling back climate protections all over the world, we’re doing the opposite, putting the power to tackle the climate crisis right in our users’ hands and making it easier than ever to make a real difference.”
Ecosia was founded in 2009 and has since dedicated upwards of €92 million to climate action. While the majority of profits have been channeled towards reforestation efforts — planting and protecting over 225 million trees around the world — the company has a growing focus on climate impact initiatives.
These range from investments in renewable energy and ClimateTech, to supporting regenerative agriculture, and the enforcement of climate and biodiversity protection.
Historically, Ecosia had been known as the tree-planting search engine – having planted over 230 million trees globally since launch in 2009.
Now, Ecosia’s leadership team has made the decision to shift from trees to more broader climate investment. This includes investing in regenerative agriculture, renewable energy, and other biodiversity protection schemes. Ecosia will still plant trees where appropriate, this is however no longer their primary climate impact focus.
This is perhaps the biggest change to Ecosia’s business model since launch – alongside founder Christian Kroll’s decision to give away his shares in 2018, and the decision to build their own search engine back-end tech (to end dependence on Google) last year.
With the impact counter and new profile view, users can see how their seeds are having a tangible positive impact on people, ecosystems, and wildlife, giving visual proof of how much they have helped replenish the planet. Their profile will display estimated figures for the number of seedlings planted, amount of renewable energy generated, hours of tree care, and area restored.
In time, Ecosia will be building out functionality so users can personalise their Ecosia experience even further and engage in their real world impact in new ways, for example through personalised tips on how to be more climate active, accessing exclusive content and planet-friendly rewards, and teaming up with others to rally behind shared goals.
Kroll added: “Tackling the climate crisis can feel like heavy work and it can be hard to know what to do and where to start. By creating and building this experience, with personal elements like our new counter, we’re hoping to engage and grow our community, which means we can then grow our climate impact in turn.
“We see a future where the climate impact experience becomes a platform for social change — providing an easy way to connect with others passionate about the planet and to promote climate action.”
In 2021 Ecosia became the first investor in the World Fund — Europe’s largest Climate VC Fund. Ecosia also has extensive investments in solar initiatives, including building roof-top commercial-scale solar systems and operating a ground-mounted solar system in Germany, enabling solar home systems with energy innovator Zolar, and developing commercial-scale solar systems in the Global South with Ecoligo.
Other investments include agroforestry projects in Germany, such as helping local biodiversity steward and juice producer Ostmost, and supporting the world’s biggest transformation to Bioland organic farming. Ecosia is also an early investor in Wildfarming in the UK.
Further reading
If you’re interested in finding out more about Ecosia’s journey, why not check out our previous coverage and the EU-Startups Podcast episode featuring Christian Kroll, CEO at Ecosia.
Goldfinch Holdings, a London-based film financier, has partnered with Luxembourg’s Digital Genesis Fund to co-finance a new €17.8 million fund aimed at backing the next generation of media ventures.
The fund will focus on projects leveraging tokenisation, artificial intelligence (AI), the metaverse, and telecom, media, and technology infrastructure. It aims to supercharge entertainment ecosystems powered by blockchain technology.
The fund was officially announced during the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and will be unveiled at the upcoming TechCannes Industry event.
The fund will match Digital Genesis’s initial €17.8 million investment on a deal-by-deal basis with Goldfinch International, creating a co-investment framework for studios and companies looking to capitalise on blockchain and tokenised assets in media production.
Hendrik Hey, Managing Director & Co-founder of Digital Genesis Fund, described the moment as a turning point in the evolution of the entertainment industry:
“This must be what it felt like when the first Hollywood pioneers built their studios and set a new era of storytelling in motion. Today, we find ourselves at a similar turning point — but this time, the canvas is infinite: a three-dimensional, transparent, and interactive metaverse. Visual media is no longer locked inside a screen — it breathes, it responds, it surrounds us. We are no longer just creating content; we are building worlds. And in these worlds, everyone becomes part of the story.”
The new fund’s first major acquisition is Lumiere, a tokenised crowdfunding platform designed to reshape content financing. Led by Patrice Poujol, Lumiere has already attracted high-profile backers including Animoca Brands, Brinc, Rolling Stone, and RS Productions. The platform’s inclusion in the fund provides an immediate foundation for the new ecosystem, allowing for experimentation with blockchain-based content models.
Projects include The Squad, a Web3-native production studio following the emerging Film3 business model, which integrates blockchain technologies and decentralised finance into the production and distribution process. Another initiative is MILC (Media Industry Licensing Content), a metaverse-based production and content licensing hub.
The partnership has secured key infrastructure partnerships, including a high-fidelity pixel streaming backbone from ARCWARE in Germany, to support its vision for immersive media. Additionally, AI-powered production pipelines and intelligent licensing systems will be incorporated into the ecosystem, streamlining the production lifecycle from ideation to distribution.
London-based healthtech unicorn Huma is accelerating its growth by acquiring US respiratory health startup Aluna, and a new strategic partnership with Eckuity Capital to support a broader M&A strategy.
This aims to bolster both its product capabilities and geographic reach. The announcements come as healthcare systems worldwide continue to shift toward remote patient monitoring and AI-powered clinical tools, spurred by post-pandemic infrastructure needs and increased patient demand for decentralised care.
“Today’s announcements mark a new chapter for Huma as we strive to build the most impactful healthcare company in the world,” said Dan Vahdat, Founder and CEO of Huma. “By integrating Aluna’s leading respiratory monitoring solutions into our platform and working to secure growth capital for further acquisitions, we are creating a complete ecosystem to deliver even greater value to health systems, life sciences, and - most importantly - patients around the world.”
Aluna specialises in AI-powered remote monitoring of respiratory diseases, including asthma and COPD. Its platform combines FDA-cleared spirometry devices with a mobile app and provider portal, allowing clinicians to track lung function and patient adherence in real time.
By integrating Aluna’s tools into the Huma Cloud Platform, the company will expand its offerings for chronic respiratory care across more than 150 U.S. health systems, serving over 500,000 contracted lives. The move reinforces Huma’s presence in a market where asthma and COPD affect over 40 million people in the U.S. alone.
“Joining forces with Huma offers a remarkable opportunity to amplify our impact and extend the reach of our AI-driven respiratory management platform to a wider patient base worldwide,” said Charvi Shetty, CEO of Aluna. “We are excited about the prospect of integrating our technology into the Huma Cloud Platform, creating a truly holistic digital health solution that empowers both patients and healthcare professionals in the effective management of respiratory conditions.”
The relaunch of Aluna’s technology on Huma’s platform will also elevate its regulatory status to FDA Class II, enabling broader clinical application.
Alongside the acquisition, Huma unveiled a new partnership with Eckuity Capital, a healthcare growth equity firm based in New York and London. The collaboration is aimed at scaling Huma’s mergers and acquisitions strategy, with a focus on companies that complement its digital health ecosystem.
“We help Huma acquire companies that, on their own, may not fully realize their potential—but when integrated into Huma’s cloud platform, become highly complementary and transformative,” said Youssef Sebban, Managing Partner at Eckuity Capital. “This synergy not only amplifies their impact on the healthcare ecosystem but also drives outsized value creation for investors and shareholders.”
“We believe Dan and Huma’s leadership team brings the much-needed bold vision to develop one of the most meaningful healthcare companies of the 21st century,” added Vishal Jain, Managing Partner at Eckuity Capital. “The AI-led transformation of care that we will witness over the next two decades needs a reliable, real-time, and responsive infrastructure that very few companies can offer globally, and Huma is one of the most capable companies that can deliver on this promise.”
The company has become a partner to national health initiatives in the UK, U.S., Germany, Saudi Arabia, and Greece.
16/05/2025 12:10 PM
1
47,620
16/05/2025 11:05 AM
UK unveils PISCES private stockmarket to boost startups, employee share options, and IPO pipeline
This week, the UK government announced legislation for Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System Sandbox (PISCES) – an innovative new type of stock market for private companies that will boost the growth companies of the future and support the UK’s IPO pipeline.
With many companies choosing to stay private for longer, there is increasing demand for investors, including angel investors and employees, to be able to trade shares in private companies more easily.
It aims to give investors the chance to get in on the ground floor of some of the most exciting companies around, further supporting those businesses to grow.
Further, the government will legislate to ensure that employees who have share options will be able to exercise them on PISCES and retain tax advantages, making the platform more attractive for companies and investors looking to use PISCES.
To ensure employees can continue to benefit from the tax advantages on their shares, the law will be changed to extend to the existing Enterprise Management Incentives (EMI) and Company Share Option Plan (CSOP) contracts to also include PISCES.
This is in addition to the announcement in the Autumn Budget making PISCES transactions exempt from Stamp Taxes on Shares.
The announcement means that stock markets can launch their PISCES platforms in the coming months with shares likely to be traded in the Autumn.
Emma Reynolds, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, said:
"Getting PISCES up and running will support UK growth companies. This will boost our capital markets and help to grow our economy, putting more money in working people’s pockets as part of our Plan for Change.
We are also ensuring that employees will retain the tax advantages of shares traded on PISCES to boost the attractiveness of the product to high growth companies looking to expand."
Simon Walls, Executive Director of Markets at the FCA, said:
“We are laying the groundwork for a new private stock market that will give investors more opportunities to invest in growing companies.
Today’s legislation is a big step forward and we will set out the final rules for PISCES soon. Together, this will support an organised marketplace to buy and sell private shares.”
The platform will act as a stepping stone for companies eyeing a listing in future preparing and easing the journey to an IPO.
The Financial Conduct Authority will publish their rules underpinning PISCES shortly after the legislation comes into force. Thereafter, those wishing to operate PISCES trading events can apply to the FCA. We expect to see the first PISCES trading events take place later this year.
Dutch medtech Hy2Care has raised €4.5 million in new funding to prepare for a clinical trial in the United States and to support early steps toward commercialisation in Europe and other global markets.
Half of the new funding comes from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, awarded in 2022 through the EIC Accelerator programme. The remaining capital was provided by Hy2Care’s existing shareholders, led by Brightlands Venture Partners, with new participation from LIOF, the regional development agency for the Limburg province.
Cartilage damage - often caused by injury, wear, or degenerative joint disease - is a leading cause of joint pain and immobility, with limited options for effective long-term treatment. As the global population ages and demand for less invasive, regenerative solutions increases, orthopaedic innovation has become a strategic investment area.
CartRevive is a proprietary hydrogel implant designed to repair damaged cartilage in a minimally invasive way, offering a potential alternative to more invasive surgical treatments. The need for scalable, regenerative solutions in orthopaedics continues to grow globally.
Hy2Care’s platform stands out in a medtech landscape where regenerative orthopaedics is forecast to grow significantly over the next decade. In the US alone, the cartilage repair market is projected to reach over $1.6 billion by 2030, driven by advances in biomaterials, sports medicine, and personalised orthopaedic solutions.
The funding comes shortly after the company received FDA Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) approval to begin clinical evaluation of its cartilage repair solution, CartRevive, in the U.S.
“This round gives us the momentum we need to take the next big step,” said Leo Smit, CEO of Hy2Care. “We’re entering a transformative phase - launching a US clinical trial while laying the foundation for commercialisation in EMEA. We are incredibly proud of the support from our investors, both existing and new.”
The EIC Fund is the equity investment component of the European Innovation Council’s Accelerator programme, which supports breakthrough technologies from early-stage innovators across the EU. The fund backs high-risk, high-impact ventures with global ambitions.
16/05/2025 10:10 AM
1
47,617
16/05/2025 09:01 AM
Swedish MedTech startup MedVasc raises €917k to improve anaesthetic procedure when treating varicose veins
Lund-based MedVasc AB, a Swedish MedTech company, announced today the successful closing of a €917k financing round to support the final product development phase for their catheter device and preparation for FDA regulatory approval in the United States.
The financing round attracted both existing owners and new investors.
“We are very pleased with the continued confidence from our investors,” says Cathrin Johansson, CEO of MedVasc AB. “This investment gives us the opportunity to take decisive steps towards reaching the US market, which is an important milestone in our growth journey.”
MedVasc AB was founded in 2013 by Michael Åkesson and has during the last years, developed a final prototype, been granted patents and trademarks in all prioritised markets, and performed a first-in-man clinical study.
Åkesson is a senior consultant of interventional radiology and has an experience of over twenty years with catheter based treatments and diagnosis. Previously he was the Head of the Division of Endovascular Surgery at the Vascular Department, University Hospital SUS Malmö. He now works as a senior consultant at the Scandinavian Venous Centre, Malmö.
He is the main owner of MedVASC AB and the inventor behind Solutio.
MedVasc has developed and patented the medical device Solutio, designed to improve the anaesthetic procedure when treating varicose veins. For investigational use only. The Solutio catheter has not been evaluated by the FDA and is not yet available for sale in the USA.
Solutio is designed to enable safe and precise local anesthesia during minimally invasive vascular procedures, e.g. varicose veins, (compatible with thermal ablation treatment fibers), offering a new level of control and patient comfort for clinicians treating chronic venous disorders.
The primary focus of the investment will be to fund the production and testing of the final design of Solutio, required for FDA clearance. Regulatory submission is planned for the first half of 2026.
In addition, MedVasc will raise an additional round during 2025 for investments in clinical and preclinical activities required for FDA clearance.
MedVasc is also participating in SmiLe’s incubator programme – also based in Lund. SmiLe is a leading venture hub that specialises in advancing life science and FoodTech startups from concept to commercialisation. To date, their flagship incubator programme has supported over 110 startups, facilitating their collective acquisition of more than €1.05 billion in venture capital and contributing to 21 successful IPOs.
German wildfire intelligence and risk assessment company OroraTech has raised €12 million, extending its Series B financing round to €37 million and its total funding to over €60 million.
BNP Paribas Solar Impulse Venture Fund led the round, with participation from Rabo Ventures, and long-standing investors Bayern Kapital, Edaphon, and the European Circular Bioeconomy Fund (ECBF).
Founded in 2018, OroraTech is a global intelligence-as-a-service company leveraging thermal data for a sustainable Earth. Its Wildfire Solution platform is powered by high-resolution thermal data from its proprietary and public satellite system, which delivers real-time situational awareness and prompts risk alerts to revolutionize wildfire intelligence worldwide.
The cutting-edge system detects fires of any scale, day or night, ensuring timely action and simulates future fire behaviour with unprecedented accuracy.
Founded in 2018, OroraTech is headquartered in Munich, Germany, with a team of over 140 experts and operations in the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada and Greece.
According to Martin Langer, CEO and CTO of OroraTech:
“We are executing on a rare window of opportunity, where our scalable space infrastructure meets breakthrough AI.
The backing of two of Europe’s leading banks is a testimony to OroraTech’s position at the forefront of the market, and will further drive our growth as the foundational thermal intelligence provider for many industries and governments worldwide.”
Lucas Guillet, Investment Director at BNP Paribas Solar Impulse Venture Fund, stated:
"We are pleased to support OroraTech, which has established a strong reputation in the space industry and wildfire management ecosystem.
Their ability to design and operate nano-satellites, as well as interpret complex data, has contributed to the commercial success of their Wildfire Intelligence solution."
Shishir Sinha, Executive Director of Rabo Ventures, commented:
"The increasing intensity and frequency of wildfires poses a significant threat to our planet, emitting billions of tons of C02 annually, driving biodiversity loss, and diminishing the overall resilience of our ecosystems.
As a bank with exposure to forestry and rural sectors, we recognise the urgent need to address these risks.”
In the past year, OroraTech has signed close to €100 million in commercial contracts and venture capital.
Lead image: OroraTech. Photo: uncredited.
16/05/2025 09:10 AM
1
47,618
16/05/2025 08:33 AM
Czech investment fund Rockaway Ventures targets game-changing tech with new €55 million raise
Prague-based Rockaway Ventures, the investment fund of Rockaway Capital, has announced the final close of its second fund Rockaway Ventures II, raising €55 million to support early-stage startups in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and other emerging markets.
The fund will focus on early-stage investments, specifically late-Seed and Series A funding rounds, focusing on sectors such as energy, defense, and dual-use technologies. In the future, the fund hopes to back startups throughout their entire growth journey, from pre-Seed to later-stage funding.
“We’re not just capital. We’re entrepreneurs ourselves – we’ve built companies, and we understand what’s around the corner. Founders working with us receive hands-on support in areas like international expansion and scaling,” shared Petr Šmíd, General Partner at Rockaway Ventures.
Founded in 2014, Rockaway Ventures has been investing in areas where the Rockaway Capital group has expertise, primarily in retail and e-commerce, travel & hospitality, digital logistics, digital media, cybersecurity, defence, CleanTech, and PropTech.
They notably backed Czech success stories Productboard and Storyous.
Launched in 2022, the current fund draws around 25% of its capital from Rockaway Capital (its parent company), and the remainder channeled through private investors – most of which are based in Czechia.
The fund has backed 11 companies to date, and over the next three years they plan to significantly expand their portfolio by dedicating 60% of their investments to companies in CEE – with the remaining 40% targeting Western Europe and diaspora-led startups from Czechia.
“We are currently seeing numerous investment opportunities in sectors significantly shaped by global trends and geopolitical developments. We are particularly interested in founders across Europe and the United States who are committed to driving growth and advancing their businesses through transformative technologies,” added Dušan Zábrodský, General Partner at Rockaway Ventures.
Notable investments include Apaleo, a German cloud-native hotel management platform used by clients like CitizenM and Limehome in over 15 countries; CulturePulse, a US-Slovak startup applying AI for behavioural modelling and risk prediction; and Gjirafa, an Albanian e-commerce and media platform that has secured €7.7 million from Rockaway Ventures across two funding rounds.
According to Rockaway, the past few years have been difficult for venture capital, but there appears to be a renewed sense of optimism in the tech sector specifically.
“The recovery began in 2024 and is continuing this year. One key driver is transformative technology, particularly AI. A few years ago, many investors didn’t fully grasp its potential. Today, we can clearly demonstrate its sector-specific impact – and that’s changing the game,” said Šmíd.
A decade ago, Picnic set out to reinvent grocery shopping with a tech-first, customer-centric approach. What began as a bold experiment quickly grew into a high-scale operation, powered by continuous innovation and a willingness to challenge conventions.
Along the way, we’ve learnt invaluable lessons about scaling technology, fostering culture, and driving innovation. Some were expected, others were hard-earned, and a few completely reshaped our thinking.
Here are 10 key lessons we’ve learnt—along with how the industry is tackling similar challenges.
1. Building a culture of innovation
Early on, we identified that culture and organisation are key enablers for innovation. Hence, we emphasised autonomy by forming small teams that take end-to-end ownership. We were inspired by Amazon’s two-pizza teams, where small, self-sufficient teams are encouraged to innovate without bureaucracy.
However, we took it a step further and built an “Everybody is an Innovator” culture and combined it with our existing “Everybody is an Engineer” culture. Business operators outside of the tech organisation can now actively contribute to the feature design, specification, development and configuration. For instance, we developed frameworks like Define, Extract, Transform, Present (DETP), where analysts can use SQL to build personalised recommendations without the involvement of engineering teams. Furthermore, we developed the Picnic Page Platform that allows business operators and analysts to ship app features independently from the software development cycle.
The key metrics we optimise for are the idea-to-impact lead time and the time share of innovating and building vs maintaining and operating. We haven’t reached our goal yet, but we are on a good path towards everybody spending at least 80% of their time on innovation and development.
2. Developer experience as a growth catalyst
In the early days, developer experience was a shared responsibility across the entire tech team. However, shared responsibility led over time to declining accountability, unclear ownership, and inefficiency in decision-making. Additionally, while we grew as an organisation, expectations rose and complexity increased. Thus, we rethought our approach and made Developer Experience a first-class citizen.
To address this, we developed a suite of tools and processes and formed a culture that empowers developers to work efficiently, creatively, and happily. For instance, we built self-service tools for all our engineers that allow them to handle tasks like environment setup, database management, or feature deployment effectively.
Next, we embraced a feedback-driven culture, gathering regular input from developers to identify pain points in their workflows and proactively address them. One key insight from these retrospectives was that slow build times were a major blocker, so we optimised our platform environment, reducing build times from 13 minutes to just 1 minute.
Beyond that, we track DevEx metrics like developer satisfaction, cycle times, and deployment frequency to measure the impact of DevEx initiatives and celebrate milestones to reinforce the importance of DevEx.
Similar initiatives have been undertaken by other large tech organisations, e.g. Google’s Bazel build tool that ensures high-efficiency builds and testing at scale, Netflix’s Paved Road Philosophy, Meta’s Glean, and Stripe’s Developer-First Culture and Operating Principles. Going forward, we will monitor closely how AI-assisted coding tools reshape the developer experience and bring us closer to the ultimate engineering experience with high-quality code suggestions, real-time issue resolutions, and automated code refactoring.
3. The power of platforms
In the first few years, we focused on building core functionality to cover a baseline of features across our products. However, by 2020, we began noticing commonalities between products and duplication within them. This led us to factor out these redundancies, define reusable patterns, and package them into the Page Platform and Picnic Support Modules.
This platform approach promotes consistency, reduces code duplication, simplifies maintenance, and lowers complexity, ultimately improving the overall quality of our codebase. Additionally, we integrated tools like Error Prone (which we also open-sourced) to catch programming mistakes early.
Beyond improving code quality, these support modules play a crucial role in major framework migrations, such as our transition to Spring 5 (by now we are using even Spring 6), ensuring smooth upgrades and long-term compatibility. By providing a solid foundation, these modules accelerate development, enforce best practices, and maintain a unified tech stack.
Additionally, our platform teams have been instrumental in standardising provisioning and deployments through Terraform, Helm and Spacelift, and accelerating our transition towards CI/CD through Spinnaker, Argo CD and TeamCity.
Looking beyond Picnic, similar platform approaches have driven efficiency at Facebook (React) and Stripe (Payments), offering powerful abstractions for complex flows and simplified integrations at scale.
But this is just the beginning. Platform thinking at Picnic will continue evolving, with advanced ML functionality not only powering the platform but also becoming a core building block for the next generation of our technology.
4. Scaling infrastructure for innovation
Infrastructure is a key enabler and accelerator of innovation, driving developer autonomy, automation, and scalability. By applying Infrastructure as Code and Continuous Integration across our stack, we automate and standardise service configuration, ensuring fast, reliable, secure, and cost-efficient deployments while maintaining agility.
Integrating continuous integration into infrastructure management has simplified the provisioning and modification of resources, reducing manual effort and increasing efficiency. To take this a step further, we are now decentralising infrastructure ownership across product teams using Spacelift. This enables developers to independently manage infrastructure needs while ensuring compliance with organisational standards.
This combination of IaC, automation, and developer empowerment allows us to scale infrastructure seamlessly, fostering continuous innovation and operational flexibility, as demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Similar strategies have been adopted by Netflix, which has gone even further with chaos engineering practices to stress-test resilience.
Looking ahead, we aim to further enhance our infrastructure by working towards predictive infrastructure management, proactively anticipating and dynamically allocating resources to improve performance and efficiency.
5. Data-driven decision making
Data is for us the strategic asset to innovate, decide and operate. In the early days, data was the foundation to support basic operations and learn how to achieve operational excellence. Over time, data became the driver for strategic decision-making and innovation.
Hence, we built a lakeless Data Warehouse integrating data from over 300+ microservices and running thousands of ETL/ELT jobs and ingesting millions of events daily for efficient analysis. This enabled us not only to analyse data, build reports, and get insights, but also to unlock our journey to build powerful machine learning products, without spending weeks on data cleaning. For instance, we built a suite of demand forecasting tools leveraging Temporal Fusion Transformers (TFTS), a suite of customer service agent support tools to enable service excellence, efficient route planning, smart shopping lists, and so much more.
All of that is only possible by leveraging our own ML Data Platform that enables not only ML engineers but everybody in Picnic to build, train and deploy models in production. Effective learning requires feedback and experimentation, so we built a scalable experimentation framework to run many A/B tests concurrently to learn what works and what doesn’t. By combining democratised access to data with scalable ML infrastructure and a data-first approach to software development, we built a strong and sustainable culture of organisational data-driven learning.
Similar examples in the industry include Netflix’s use of data analytics, enabling data-driven content creation and personalised recommendations, and Uber’s analysis of trip data, demonstrating how to optimise both customer experience and operational efficiency.
Going forward, we will see many more AI-native product features (e.g. advanced guidance and automation of key flows) and AI-native business units (running business operations that natively depend on AI technology).
6. People-centric tech
Our people approach is deeply rooted in our conviction that “Tech is a people business.” This means that we prioritise talent development, collaboration, and continuous learning over rigid structures and traditional hierarchies. Engineers are encouraged to grow, connect, and contribute from day one, creating an environment where innovation is driven by a shared mission rather than top-down directives.
We strive to hire high-calibre talent (who doesn’t? ;)) but additionally, we also look carefully into alignment with our vision. Hence, we prioritise cultural fit over just experience and have a strong bias towards missionaries instead of mercenaries. Learning and growth are a continuous process; for that, we have built the Tech Academy that provides tailored training for every experience level. Our onboarding is designed as a transformative journey rather than just getting started on the job.
Not only do we nurture engineering skills, but we also provide extensive leadership training. We have put extensive thought into the right approach. Our formula: leadership enables rather than controls. Leaders act as mentors, coaches and enablers, rather than micromanagers. They foster bottom-up innovation, where ideas can emerge from any level, and cultivate a transparent, trust-based culture that ensures employees feel valued. It’s the reason why many of our tech leads are engineers who’ve naturally grown into this role!
At the same time, we prioritise well-being initiatives that support a healthy and balanced work environment, recognising that sustained performance stems from both professional growth and personal well-being.
Our approach combines insights from leading companies: Valve’s flat org structure, allowing employees to choose projects and form teams organically; Canva’s focus on purpose over perks, aligning work with employees’ values; and NVIDIA’s culture of intellectual honesty, promoting continuous learning and transparency.
Going forward, we will work towards a highly adaptive organisational structure with fluid teams that continuously (re-)align with strategic goals, business objectives, and tech priorities.
7. Continuous improvement through feedback
Feedback is the ultimate superpower for learning and growth. From day one, we embedded this philosophy into our product and tech culture, ensuring that feedback drives innovation, quality, and continuous improvement.
On the product side, customer feedback plays a central role. We actively gather insights through in-depth interviews, app reviews, customer service retrospectives, and social media interactions, addressing both explicitly expressed and inferred needs.
Internally, we foster a blameless incident management culture, where accountability is encouraged without fear. This approach turns failures into opportunities for process refinement and systematic improvements. However, what makes our approach truly special is the close relationship between our tech teams and their internal customers. Engineers, analysts, and business teams work hand in hand, ensuring direct and immediate feedback, which creates an unparalleled sense of ownership and alignment.
In software engineering, we rely on structured feedback loops, including peer code reviews and tools like Error Prone, to maintain code quality. Beyond formal processes, we encourage team learning and knowledge sharing through Lunch & Learn sessions and our Tech Safari programme, which gives new joiners a 360° view of business and tech. Their growth continues through our Tech Academy, offering structured learning paths tailored to each experience level.
We love speed, but even more, we value feedback-driven decision-making. Hence, we foster a culture in which developers and business work together to achieve speed not by cutting corners, but by delivering high-quality MVPS and using future-proof architecture.
Looking ahead, feedback loops will become even more autonomous and predictive. AI will monitor user interactions, detect inefficiencies, and dynamically optimise products in real time, blurring the line between iteration and innovation.
8. Balancing agility and stability
Over time, we evolved from a fast-moving startup (don’t judge, but yes, there was even a time when we ran our development process without PR reviews ;)) to an effective scale-up where we found a new sweet spot between agility and stability to reliably serve our more than 1 million customers. The early years were characterised by a simple development process, lightweight infrastructure, and high autonomy with ultra-short decision lines (in other words: exciting, but also chaotic and unsustainable). Retrospectively, there is a temptation to romanticise this time (pure innovation, endless startup energy, David vs Goliath narrative, false memory of total freedom), but in reality, it is a phase that can’t – and shouldn’t – be maintained. Instead, it should be considered a stepping stone towards the scaling and maturity phase.
This is the phase we are now in, with formalised development processes, effective governance models for data and infrastructure, and platforms that enable and empower rapid development of next-generation ideas. Our main learnings are that agility must be structured to scale, culture evolves (and that’s OK!), technical debt can’t be ignored, hiring shifts from generalists to specialists, autonomy needs guardrails, and scaling a team also requires scaling the leadership. The best companies never lose their ability to move fast—they just get better at scaling responsibly.
A key realisation in this journey has been the importance of “shift left” thinking—embedding quality, security, and reliability earlier in the development process rather than addressing them reactively. By frontloading critical checks and automating governance, we’ve significantly reduced friction down the line, allowing us to maintain speed without sacrificing stability. Similarly, we’ve embraced the principle of “slow down to speed up”, recognising that investing time in structured foundations—be it well-designed architecture, robust CI/CD, or clear decision-making frameworks—pays off in execution speed and long-term agility.
Great examples from other tech companies include Spotify’s model of autonomous squads to foster innovation and agility, Facebook‘s evolution from “Move fast and break things” to “Move fast with stable infrastructure”, and Netflix’s migration towards microservices. Going forward, we will move from simply balancing agility and stability to scaling innovation intelligently, ensuring that autonomy, efficiency, and impact grow in tandem. Another interesting direction is Autonomous Innovation Networks, where fluid, mission-driven teams dynamically form around high-impact problems, ensuring agility and engagement.
9. Embracing AI-driven automation
Everybody in tech loves automation, but the reality is that automation is the final step in a long journey. Our journey began by building a strong Master Data Foundation, which laid the groundwork for our first generation of systems. These systems followed simple rule-based decision logic, either as hard-coded Java business logic or decision tree logic encoded in configuration. While this approach worked well for the first few thousand customers, we quickly realised it wouldn’t scale effectively.
The missing piece was a real-time performance feedback loop that could analyse system performance, identify improvement opportunities, and trigger changes in real time. To address this, we built a near real-time Data Vault alongside our Lakeless Data Warehouse to provide a unified, fine-grained view of business performance across all systems. Additionally, we ensured that all systems had API endpoints to configure and control their logic, allowing us to develop tools that continuously monitor and improve performance.
For example, we now have edge tools that optimise inbound, fulfilment, and last-mile operations—from dynamically slotting products in warehouses to demand forecasting and route planning. The first generation of these tools was built using Google Scripts, enabling ultra-fast development but also leading to a shadow IT ecosystem that was difficult to maintain.
To solve this, we built a Platform for Edge Systems, where this logic could be implemented in Python, the lingua franca of all analysts at Picnic. This shift allows not only tech teams but everyone at Picnic to contribute actively to the system landscape.
The latest evolution in our automation journey is the transition from rule-based business logic to AI-based decision logic. Our goal is to move every data-driven decision into ML models while keeping all remaining rule-based logic in Java, Python, or TypeScript. For example, in route planning, the stop time calculation is AI-based, whereas the shortest path calculation uses a heuristic algorithm in Java.
In summary, automation isn’t just about robots—it’s about intelligent, data-driven decision-making. The key to success is scalability, enabling a self-learning, real-time adaptive ecosystem.
10. Prioritising long-term vision
We have built both our business and technology with a built-to-last mindset, aligning strategy with culture and operational decision-making with sustainable long-term goals.
From the start, we embraced data-first thinking, customer-centric reasoning, and scalable infrastructure tailored for agility. This approach allows us to connect short-term needs with long-term vision, ensuring that our solutions remain adaptable as we grow.
On the tech side, we focused on modular and scalable architecture, developer autonomy, and close collaboration between tech and business teams. This ensures that our products not only meet today’s requirements but can also be extended and modified with ease.
One of our core principles is to optimise not for the fastest build to the first release but for the most effective path to the 100th iteration. We know that true excellence comes from continuous improvement, so we optimise for long-term outcomes rather than short-term speed.
Of course, our journey hasn’t been without challenges. We had to learn the hard way that over-indexing on speed leads to significant technical debt, scaling without clear business priorities leads to expensive overgeneralisation, and rapid hiring while ignoring culture leads to misalignment and requires painful correction.
Looking ahead, we are exploring promising approaches such as AI-driven operational efficiency (e.g., predictive scaling and AI for engineering), hyper-personalised talent retention and culture scaling, and further decentralisation, where engineers collaborate with AI agents as the norm.
That said, we are fully aware that AI is not a silver bullet. It comes with limitations, risks, and ethical challenges. Not every breakthrough needs to be AI-driven—there are many other paths to innovation, and we believe AI should be used where it adds truly distinct value.
The lessons learnt over the past decade are not just milestones—they’re the foundation for what comes next. And one thing is clear: the journey was, is, and will never be linear. From embracing uncertainty to scaling with agility, the past ten years have reinforced our strong belief that customer obsession, relentless innovation, and adaptive leadership are key to long-term success. As we look ahead, the next wave of grocery tech innovation will demand even greater speed, resilience, and collaboration, reminding us that the greatest breakthroughs are still to come.
Rockaway Ventures, a European investment fund under the Rockaway Capital group, has closed its second fund, Rockaway Ventures II, at nearly €55 million.
The fund targets late-Seed and Series A tech startups with the potential to drive innovation in traditional industries. Known for its early investments in e-commerce and travel tech, the fund is now focusing on sectors such as energy, defense, and dual-use technologies.
According to Dušan Zábrodský, General Partner at Rockaway Ventures, the firm is currently seeing numerous investment opportunities in sectors significantly shaped by global trends and geopolitical developments.
“We are particularly interested in founders across Europe and the United States who are committed to driving growth and advancing their businesses through transformative technologies.”
Rockaway Ventures traces its origins to 2014 when the team began investing without a formal structure, backing early Czech success stories like Productboard and Storyous.
The current fund was launched in 2022. About 25 percent of the capital comes from Rockaway Capital, the parent company of Rockaway Ventures, with the remainder provided by private investors, primarily from Czechia.
The fund currently counts 11 portfolio companies, each demonstrating strong early momentum. Over the next three years, it plans to expand this portfolio with a focus on Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), which will receive 60 per cent of the investments, while the remaining 40 per cent will go to Western Europe and diaspora-founded startups from Czechia and neighboring countries now operating in the US.
In the long run, Rockaway Ventures aims to support startups across the entire company lifecycle, from pre-seed to growth-stage rounds.
Notable investments include German cloud-native hotel management platform Apaleo; CulturePulse, a US-Slovak startup utilising AI for behavioral modeling and risk prediction; and Albanian e-commerce and media platform Gjirafa.
Petr Šmíd, General Partner at Rockaway Ventures, sees a venture capital comeback:
“The recovery began in 2024 and is continuing this year. One key driver is transformative technology, particularly AI.
A few years ago, many investors didn’t fully grasp its potential. Today, we can clearly demonstrate its sector-specific impact – and that’s changing the game.”
Rockaway Ventures relies on a combination of entrepreneurial experience, strategic focus, and active involvement with founders.
“We’re not just capital. We’re entrepreneurs ourselves – we’ve built companies, and we understand what’s around the corner. Founders working with us receive hands-on support in areas like international expansion and scaling,” Šmíd added.
Lead image: Max Palko, Eva Faltusova, and Petr Šmíd, Rockaway Ventures. Photo: uncredited.
16/05/2025 08:10 AM
1
47,611
16/05/2025 07:00 AM
Exclusive: Swiss startup picks Rotterdam for green aviation fuel plant
Swiss tech startup Metafuels has unveiled plans to open its first commercial-scale sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) plant in the Port of Rotterdam. Metafuels’ CEO Saurabh Kapoor told TNW that Turbe represents a “major step forward” toward ramping up SAF production. The startup also announced plans to build a similar facility in Denmark last year. “Europe has ambitious decarbonisation targets, but without scalable and affordable SAF production, aviation will struggle to keep up,” said Kapoor. The facility, dubbed Turbe, will be built in collaboration with liquid energy storage provider Evos. Turbe will be integrated into Evos’ existing Rotterdam terminal, which offers…
A Russian-born gaming mogul has been named the UK’s richest person under 40 — in a ranking dominated by tech entrepreneurs. Dmitry Bukhman, 39, built his fortune after founding mobile gaming giant Playrix. His estimated wealth of £12.54bn tops The Sunday Times 40 Under 40 Rich List — and makes up over a third of its £36.2bn combined total. His net worth has nearly doubled since last year. As a child in post-Soviet Russia, Bukman taught himself to code. Alongside his older brother Igor, he built his first game with an old Pentium PC given to them by their grandfather.…
