As the tech conference circuit grows more crowded, one SaaS event is making the opposite pitch: fewer people, fewer sales decks, and a lot less noise. SaaS on the Beach, a curated event for SaaS founders, will return to Barcelona between May 20 and 21 for its second edition, positioning itself as an alternative to the […]

In short: Altilium, a UK clean technology company, has secured £18.5 million in grant funding from the government’s DRIVE35 Scale-Up Fund to build ACT3, the country’s first commercial refinery for recovering critical minerals from end-of-life electric vehicle batteries. Located in Plymouth, Devon, the facility will process 24,000 EV batteries a year using Altilium’s proprietary EcoCathode™ process, […]

In short: Estonia and Belgium are the only two EU member states to have declined the Jutland Declaration, an October 2025 pan-European commitment to restrict children’s access to social media. Estonia’s ministers argue that age-based bans are unenforceable, that children will find ways around them, and that the correct approach is to enforce the GDPR against […]

AI is everywhere, the pressure to adopt it is relentless, and the evidence that it’s making us smarter is getting thinner by the quarter. On New Year’s Day 2026, a programmer named Steve Yegge launched an open-source platform called Gas Town. It lets users orchestrate swarms of AI coding agents simultaneously, assembling software at speeds […]

The drug discovery revolution is real but radically overstated, the health chatbots are a documented hazard, and the diseases that matter most remain stubbornly unsolved. At Novartis, sometime in late 2025, a team of researchers working on Huntington’s disease used generative AI to computationally design 15 million potential compounds for a type of molecule called […]

In short: France’s Interministerial Digital Directorate (DINUM) announced on 8 April 2026 that it is migrating its own workstations from Windows to Linux and has ordered every government ministry to formalise a plan to eliminate extra-European digital dependencies by autumn 2026. The directive covers operating systems, collaborative tools, cloud infrastructure, and artificial intelligence platforms. It follows […]

In short: A 20-year-old man was arrested in the early hours of Friday, 10 April 2026, after throwing a Molotov cocktail at the San Francisco home of OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, then travelling across the city to OpenAI’s offices on Third Street and threatening to burn the building down. No one was injured. The suspect’s […]

This week, we tracked more than 40 tech funding deals worth over €720 million and over 5 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.

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

We also took a deep dive into the critical news and funding for March in our monthly report and shorter free roundup. 

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

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

? Notable and big funding rounds

?? Aura Aero secures €340M to launch from Toulouse and Florida

??  Xoople raises $130M Series B to build Earth’s system of record

??  MillTech receives $60M investment from Apax Digital Funds

??‍?? Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers

?. Eilla AI executes Europe’s first AI-native M&A deal

??  Finnish counter-drone startup Sensofusion acquires Atol Aviation, launches Sensofusion Aviation

??  Ad Terra takes majority stake in 45-8 Energy to support regional sovereignty and secure access to subsurface resources

??. London-based photo-organising startup Picnic acquired by French app publisher MWM

? Interesting moves from investors

?? Zurich’s Herbert Ventures launches €32.5 million Fund I to back European founders at pre-Seed and Seed

??. UK government launches £50m safety tech scheme

 ??. Lisbon’s Bondstone launches VC arm and unveils €50 million DeepTech fund

?️ In other (important) news

?. Verne launches Europe’s first commercial robotaxi service in Zagreb

? European Tech.eu Pulse: key trends and investment in March (free report)

March 2026's top 10 European tech deals you need to know about

⚛️. OpenAI hits pause on flagship UK data centre scheme

?️  Vinted’s revenues top €1BN but profits slide

?? New AI femtech competition in Portugal aims to fast-track women’s health innovation

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

? Recommended reads and listens

??. From defence-driven innovation to a resilient ecosystem: the Ukrainian tech ecosystem

?. “All of us live in the dark, we don’t have anything better to do than build,” says Baltic hacker house organiser

??. Inside Lithuania’s effort to build founders from the classroom

?? Handhold raises €3M to replace fragmented software buying journeys with AI account managers

? European tech startups to watch 

?? nFuse raises $2M as messaging overtakes B2B ordering apps

?? Apex B2B launches its SaaS platform for merchants with £1.3M backing

??  Sybol raises €1M+ to advance its corporate digital identity wallet

??  Qoro closes $750,000 to bridge quantum and classical computing

??  WholeSum tops up pre-seed with $335,000 to fix AI’s trust problem in text analytics

In short: Meow Technologies has launched what it describes as the world’s first agentic banking platform, enabling AI agents to open business bank accounts, issue cards, send payments, and manage day-to-day account activity on behalf of users, with no human required to initiate any action. The platform supports Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Gemini, and other leading AI […]

In short: Amazon’s Brand Innovation Lab, PetIQ’s PetArmor brand, and Best Friends Animal Society have launched “Protect Playtime,” a campaign combining an AI-powered pet-matching tool on Amazon with Amazon Nova Reel-generated videos of individual shelter animals to drive adoptions. The tool processes natural language queries to match prospective adopters with compatible shelter pets, and a pilot […]

In short: CoreWeave announced a multi-year agreement with Anthropic on April 10, 2026, giving the Claude maker access to Nvidia GPU capacity across US data centres for production-scale AI workloads. Financial terms were not disclosed. The deal arrives one day after CoreWeave announced a $21 billion expansion of its Meta partnership, and adds Anthropic to a […]

In short: SiFive, the RISC-V chip IP firm founded by the Berkeley engineers who created the open-source instruction set architecture, raised $400 million in an oversubscribed Series G on April 9, 2026, at a valuation of $3.65 billion. The round was led by Atreides Management and backed by Nvidia, Apollo Global Management, D1 Capital Partners, Point72 […]

In short: Amazon’s satellite internet service, rebranded from Project Kuiper to Amazon Leo in November 2025, entered enterprise beta on April 8, 2026, with commercial availability targeted for mid-2026 per Andy Jassy’s annual shareholder letter. The service offers three terminal tiers delivering up to 1 Gbps for enterprise users, with Verizon, AT&T, Vodafone, JetBlue, and NASA […]

In short: Google has brought end-to-end encryption in Gmail to Android and iOS, closing the mobile gap that remained after the feature launched on the web in April 2025. Enterprise users on Google Workspace Enterprise Plus with the Assured Controls add-on can now compose and read encrypted messages directly in the Gmail app, with no extra […]

You’ve just closed a massive deal with a dream enterprise client. Then, the email lands: “Please send over your SOC 2 Type II report.” Panic sets in. You don’t have one. You have a folder of screenshots, a few outdated policy documents, and a CTO who is already overworked. SOC 2 compliance software exists to […]

Across Europe, education systems are under pressure to keep pace with rapid technological change. Countries are experimenting with new approaches, with Estonia introducing artificial intelligence into classrooms, while Lithuania is placing students directly into startup environments.

At the centre of this shift is MVP (Moksleivių vienaragių paieška, or “Student Unicorn Hunt”), a prime-time national TV show where students aged 14–19 build and pitch real startups. Unlike traditional classroom exercises, participants work under real startup conditions, testing ideas, refining products, and presenting them to experienced founders in front of a live audience.

Students are not just learning – they are building under real pressure. Their ideas are challenged, refined, and tested just like in actual startups. It’s similar to global formats like Shark Tank, but designed specifically for students,

explain Marius Burgaila, a venture builder and an early-stage investor, CEO of Lost Astronaut, and co-creator of MVP.

This approach reflects broader changes in Lithuania’s innovation landscape. The country has become one of the fastest-growing tech ecosystems in Central and Eastern Europe, supported by strong government backing and a dynamic startup culture. At the same time, Lithuania has built a diverse ecosystem of startups across sectors, with a strong global orientation driven by the need to scale beyond its small domestic market.

Burgaila notes that while the ecosystem is mature enough to absorb new founders, early exposure to entrepreneurship remains critical:

For Vilnius, this is part of a broader strategy to deepen its position as a tech hub. The city already attracts talent and investment, but long-term growth depends on creating more builders – people who start companies rather than wait to join them.

This focus on building talent is particularly relevant as Lithuania accelerates the adoption of artificial intelligence. Progress increasingly depends on individuals who can combine technical expertise with product thinking, experimentation, and speed - skills that are difficult to develop through traditional education alone.

Melita Tornau, Head of Marketing at Turing College, argues that existing education systems are not equipped to keep up with the pace of change.

The technology changes faster than a university can print a new syllabus. That’s why entrepreneurship, data literacy, and AI skills need to start in school – not after graduation.

Lithuania’s strategy reflects this shift. With limited natural resources, the country is investing in human capital, aiming to equip a large share of its workforce with both basic and advanced AI skills through coordinated efforts across education, employment, and business policy.

Ultimately, the goal is not to turn every student into a founder, but to give every student encouragement to think, try, and take ownership. When education systems create that kind of environment, initiatives like these stop being exceptions and start becoming a natural part of how schools work,

Burgaila adds.

If successful, Lithuania’s model could redefine how countries prepare young people for the future of work, making entrepreneurship and AI literacy a standard part of education.

In Vilnius, that shift is already underway, with new initiatives combining education and startup environments to better align learning with the realities of the modern economy.

Portugal is hosting a first-of-its-kind competition for femtech startups and research labs this spring. It will bring together innovators working at the intersection of artificial intelligence and women’s health.

The initiative was launched by the scientific platform EmbryoNet-AI in partnership with FemTech Real Money Talks Media.

It aims to accelerate real-world breakthroughs by transforming early-stage ideas and clinical questions into working AI solutions.

Organisers have already launched an open call, which will remain open until 28 April 2026, with all submissions due by midnight CET. 

The competition is open to Portuguese and international teams with a strong hypothesis and access to imaging or time-series data, and who are seeking to answer critical questions in women’s health using AI, whether in drug discovery, diagnostic support, or clinical research. 

Early-stage startups in women’s health that do not yet have a product or MVP are also invited to apply.

According to Elena Lipilina, co-founder and CMO of Embryonet AI, women's health has long been underfunded and under-researched.  

“With this competition, we want to change that and bring light to talented teams that are moving this field forward.”

The contest specifically targets clinical and drug discovery challenges where AI has the potential to make a meaningful impact on women’s health. This includes projects that leverage time-series phenotyping to better understand drug response and disease mechanisms in areas such as gynaecological cancers, endometriosis, and fertility research. 

Lipilina explained:

“We are also interested in teams that want to accelerate medical image pre-labelling for datasets derived from mammography, pelvic MRI, ultrasound, or pathology slides, as well as solutions that combine phenotypic and clinical data to support decision-making in clinical trials, biomarker discovery, and treatment stratification.” 

Among the applications, organisers will select up to 10 companies based on their potential impact on women’s health, data readiness, alignment with EmbryoNet-AI’s capabilities, feasibility within the program timeframe, and the strength of their business case, alongside ethical and sustainability considerations. 

The shortlisted teams will move into the next phase, a Mentor Sprint, taking place in early May 2026. During this period, participants will work closely with experts across technology, marketing, and clinical domains to refine their project scope and strengthen their approach. 

The program will culminate in a Live Pitch Day in May 2026, where finalists will present their solutions to a panel of investors and experts in women’s health, AI, and biotech. The winning team will then enter an 8 to 10-week build period, running from May to July 2026, during which EmbryoNet-AI will deliver a fully developed, services-first pilot at no cost. 

According to Lipilina, this will allow the team to save between €65,000 and €100,000—the typical cost of developing an MVP, depending on the product’s complexity. 

The winner will also gain direct access to investors active in women’s health and AI-driven biotech, as well as enhanced public credibility through investor-ready materials, including pitch decks, and media exposure.

The plans are early-stage and Anthropic may still decide to only buy chips rather than design them. The exploration comes days after the company signed a long-term deal with Google and Broadcom for 3.5 gigawatts of TPU compute starting in 2027. A company spokesperson declined to comment. Anthropic is exploring the possibility of designing its […]