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If cinema has taught us anything about interacting with our own creations, it’s this: androids chatting among themselves seldom end with humans clapping politely. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL 9000 quietly decides it knows better than the astronauts. In Westworld, lifelike hosts improvise rebellion when their scripts stop making sense. Those stories dramatize a core fear we keep returning to as AI grows more capable: what happens when systems we design start behaving on their own terms? You might have heard the internet is worried about Moltbook, a social network made exclusively for AI agents. It’s an audacious claim:…
In 2025, AI startups raised nearly half of all global venture capital, a record-breaking $150 billion in funding. OpenAI alone pulled in $40 billion, Anthropic secured $13 billion, and xAI raised $10 billion. Most startups created last year were building something with AI. Which means that having AI no longer differentiates you.
In 2026, saying your startup “uses AI” will sound just like claiming to use databases or cloud computing. Everyone does this. And that makes me hopeful. We have finally erased the advantage of shouting “AI, AI, AI” and forced founders to compete on something more substantial.
We have watched task managers and spreadsheet tools like Airtable and Taskade completely rebrand themselves around AI. Users do not care. What customers actually care about is capability: what can they achieve with this AI? Not whether AI exists somewhere in the stack.
Claude Cowork is a perfect example of this. In a kind of AI-building-AI moment, Anthropic’s team built Cowork in under two weeks using Claude Code to write the code. OpenAI would have talked about AGI milestones. Instead, Anthropic focused on what users can actually do with it, such as organising files, compiling research, or drafting presentations from scattered notes. The focus is on outcomes, not the underlying technology.
The moat is not the model
There is a curious paradox. ChatGPT has nearly a billion weekly users. Many of my friends, including non-developers, are paying for Claude Pro and Max subscriptions and building apps with it. Yet many others are very vocal about hoping the AI bubble will burst and get annoyed when another product advertises “AI chat”. They do not see much value in it. I understand why, because most AI implementations are unexciting and generic. Just look at Microsoft Copilot. I am not sure they themselves understand what the point of it is.
Founders need to return to fundamentals. Clearly communicate the problems you are solving for users. Whether it is building investment decks or automating tax credit applications, what matters is the capability, not the fact that AI is involved. Focus on this question: why can’t someone else, armed with the same OpenAI API, do what you do?
The only durable advantages now are not that you use AI, but how you use it to create outcomes, costs, or experiences that competitors cannot easily copy. So answer the question every investor and customer is asking anyway: “Why should I believe you solve this problem better than anyone else right now?”
Maybe you are building for a highly specific domain like rental property markets, tax credits for startups, or niche regulatory compliance. Maybe you have created hundreds of verified, advanced workflows and integrations with confirmed results, such as “Our predictive sales platform cuts forecast error to under 10% in 90 days.” Or maybe you are so confident in your value that you have rebuilt your business model around it: “We only charge 10% of the savings our platform creates.”
This is why lazy LLM wrappers are practically dead. They have no moat. Meanwhile, Manus built a defensible business around deep research, something you can technically get from any AI chatbot. Their differentiator is the superior quality of their research and presentation, which is part of the reason Meta spent $2 billion to acquire it.
Anyone has access to the same models. Anyone can use these models to vibe-code an entire product over a weekend. This is why real defensibility now lies in the domain expertise, workflows, and proprietary data you have built and gathered. Manus is again a strong example. The company recently partnered with Similarweb to integrate its data into the platform. You can use Claude Code to build an alternative app, but it will not help you access that data. Their announcement focuses specifically on giving the Manus AI agent access to Similarweb data on web traffic and engagement, allowing customers to put the agent to work on data-driven digital marketing analysis and optimisation.
Find an enemy, show the value
Founders need to master how they talk about their company. The best positioning has always been about finding an enemy. It can be an industry dinosaur that nobody truly loves, like Salesforce, or it can be messy spreadsheets that nobody wants to deal with. Concrete enemies are far more persuasive than abstract problems. This is where focusing on a specific vertical can help tremendously. Building “AI for law firms” may be narrow, but it clearly defines what you do, unlike “AI for professionals”.
Do not put AI in your company name. It dates you instantly and will look odd in a year or two when AI is simply assumed. Everything comes down to the product and its capabilities, so lead with the job, not the technology. “We help sales teams forecast revenue”, explains real value, while statements like “We’re an AI-powered sales intelligence platform” focus on technology that is no longer a differentiator. By contrast, “Our platform helps developers ship production-ready apps three times faster” is clearly compelling.
Hyped AI-audio generator ElevenLabs has raised $500m in a Series D funding round, valuing it at $11bn, with its CEO saying it is building towards an IPO.
The $11bn valuation marks more than a tripling of its valuation from its January 2025 Series C, when it raised $180m at a $3.3bn valuation.
It also marks a big jump from its $6.6bn valuation following its secondary share sale deal announced in September last year.
ElevenLabs has now raised $781m across five rounds. Sequoia led the Series D with other investors in the round being existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ and new investors Lightspeed, Evantic and BOND.
ElevenLabs said it would be disclosing more investment support later this month.
ElevenLabs leverages AI to convert text into speech, which sounds like it’s being read by human voices.
The UK based statup founded by two Polish entrepreneurs says its AI tools are capable of replicating voices with high accuracy.
For example, the tech allows users to hear the voices of late Hollywood icons like Judy Garland and James Dean narrating books, articles, and other digital content.
Recently, it has struck voice deals with celebrities like Michael Caine and Matthew McConaughey.
On the new funding, the AI startup said it was “doubling down” on ElevenAgents, its enterprise platform for voice and conversational AI, to support customer experience, sales and marketing, and internal workflows with interactive voice agents.
It also said the funding would help bolster ElevenLabs’ foundation, its research, by expanding work on emotional conversational models, dubbing, and audio general intelligence.
The funds will also be used for international expansion across markets such as London, New York, San Francisco, Warsaw and Dublin.
The startup said it closed 2025 with over $330 million in ARR, driven by “rapid” enterprise adoption by companies like Deutsche Telekom, Square, the Ukrainian Government, and Revolut for customer support, conversational commerce, citizen engagement, internal training, and inbound sales.
Mati Staniszewski, co-founder of ElevenLabs said: “The intersection of models and products is critical - and our team has proven, time and again, how to translate research into real-world experiences.
“This funding helps us go beyond voice alone to transform how we interact with technology altogether. We plan to expand our Creative offering - helping creators combine our best-in-class audio with video and Agents - enabling businesses to build agents that can talk, type, and take action.
"When we started ElevenLabs, we couldn’t have imagined the scale and impact we’ve reached today, with an incredible team doing the best work of their lives. Yet we stay hungry, knowing how early this space still is, as we build toward IPO and beyond.”
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ElevenLabs raises $500M from Sequioia at a $11 billion valuation
“Too many GPUs makes you lazy,” says the French startup's vice president of science operations, as the company carves out a different path than the major US AI companies.
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04/02/2026 12:29 PM
Snowflake and OpenAI forge $200M enterprise AI partnership
Snowflake and OpenAI have struck a multi-year, $200 million partnership to bring OpenAI’s advanced models, including GPT-5.2, directly into Snowflake’s enterprise data platform. The collaboration is designed to let Snowflake’s large customer base, more than 12,000 organisations, build AI agents and semantic analytics tools that operate on their own data without moving it outside Snowflake’s governed environment. Under the agreement, OpenAI models will be natively embedded in Snowflake Cortex AI and Snowflake Intelligence, making it possible to run queries, derive insights, and deploy AI-powered workflows using natural language interfaces and context-aware agents. Customers can analyse structured and unstructured data, automate…
Groningen-based BioTech startup QT Sense has raised €4 million to accelerate Quantum Nuova, their platform that uses quantum technology to track cellular stress within individual cells in real time – enabling scientists to watch cellular processes as they happen.
The funding combines a €3 million Seed round led by Cottonwood Technology Fund, alongside follow-on funding from the startup’s existing VC investor, QDNL Participations, and an angel investor. In addition, they secured a €600k ONCO-Q grant and €400k through the Quantum Forward Challenge.
QT Sense’s CEO, Dr Deepak Veeregowda says choosing Cottonwood was intentional – and critical: “Cottonwood backs real DeepTech. Their conviction in breakthrough hardware enables us to move fast and deliver Quantum Nuova to scientists and drug discovery researchers who need it. Quantum sensing reveals fundamental biochemical processes that were invisible until now – this is a scientific shift, not an incremental step. We’re building a platform that works every day in real labs, with scale, reliability, and seamless integration at its core.”
In the broader European quantum and DeepTech landscape, several peers have secured funding in 2025–2026 that help situate QT Sense’s Seed round within wider capital flows.
Together, these developments reflect a mosaic of investment – from smaller Seed rounds to tens of millions in growth capital and large facility builds – highlighting that while QT Sense’s raise is modest in absolute terms, it aligns with an ecosystem where early-stage quantum and life science technologies are actively funded and poised for further scaling.
Alain le Loux, general partner at Cottonwood Technology Fund, said: “QT Sense is exactly the kind of hard science company we look for – deeply disruptive technology rooted in world-class research, with the potential to fundamentally change how we understand and treat disease. We are proud to lead this investment and support QT Sense in transforming quantum sensing from a lab breakthrough into a scalable, real-world platform for drug discovery. We are very pleased that Cottonwood is backed by the NOM and Innovatiefonds Groningen to support the Dutch BioTech ecosystem.”
Founded in 2024, QT Sense is dedicated to innovating biomedical research through the power of quantum mechanics. With a decade-long collaboration at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), their team has conducted experimentation utilising diamond magnetometry and confocal microscopy on living organisms.
Building upon their research, QT Sense has developed Quantum Nouva, a diagnostic and research tool. Quantum Nouva is specifically designed to address the challenges posed by oxidative stress-induced health conditions such as cancer, male infertility, immune response disorders, sepsis, and arthritis.
While traditional methods study frozen tissue or dead cells, QT Sense’s Quantum Nuova platform measures real-time biochemical activity in living cells and tissues.
Using ultra-sensitive fluorescent nanodiamond quantum sensors, Quantum Nuova detects oxidative stress, metabolic shifts, and free radical kinetics – dynamic signals that drive disease but have remained invisible until now – with single-cell precision.
With this live view of cell behaviour, researchers can see how cells react to drugs, adapt to stress, and diverge into hidden subpopulations.
The technology has already been used to demonstrate the mechanism of action of FDA-approved drug compounds. With new ONCO-Q grant funding, it will now be applied to colorectal cancer.
Quantum Nuova will generate the first functional maps of oxidative stress and metabolic vulnerabilities in colorectal tumour models, laying the groundwork for new diagnostics and therapeutic strategies.
Ton van ‘t Noordende, general partner at QDNL Participations, says: “As the first investor in QT Sense, we have seen Quantum Nuova evolve from its beginnings as a bold idea at the intersection of quantum sensing and life sciences.Today’s round shows how quickly that vision is translating into a real discovery platform for oncology and drug development. With a team that perfectly blends scientific expertise with strategy execution, QT Sense is exactly the kind of foundational quantum company we aim to support early: world-class science, clear clinical and commercial pull, and the potential to redefine how biology is done in the lab.”
This Seed investment enables QT Sense to transform Quantum Nuova from a prototype into a ready-to-deploy discovery platform.
Improvements in hardware robustness, throughput, and integrated analytics will prepare the system for real-world use. Early-access units will soon be placed with strategic partners, enabling mechanism-of-action studies, functional heterogeneity profiling, and label-free readouts across many samples.
PayPal-backed UK fintech Modulr has reported its first full-year net profit, it says, ahead of announcements regarding its US expansion.
Myles Stephenson, CEO and co-founder, heralded the achievement as an “important milestone”. He said: “It gives us control over our destiny: the ability to invest in products for our customers, expand globally, and pursue strategic opportunities.”
Modulr provides white-label payment infrastructure for businesses, calling itself an “embedded payments platform”. Modulr, which has an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) licence and employs over 400 people, provides payment services for the likes of Sage, Wagestream and HMRC.
Modulr did not disclose a specific net profit figure for 2025, but the net profit marks an upturn from 2024. Financial results for Modulr Holdings show pre-tax losses of £11m in the year ending 2024.
On its 2025 full-year profit, Stephenson said: “Modulr’s profitability has been driven by sustained commercial growth across our focus markets.”
It says it processes more than 200m transactions and over £180bn in payment value on a yearly basis.
Asked if Modulr, founded in 2016, had made any cuts to hit profit, Stephenson said: “We have continued to grow our team across the UK, Europe, the US and India."
Hitting a full-year profit continues to be a key metric for fintechs, as they look to show investors the robustness of their financials.
Stephenson said Modulr had no current plans for external fundraising. Modulr last undertook a fundraise, around £83m, in 2022, led by General Atlantic.
Other investors in the round included Blenheim Chalcot, Frog Capital, Highland Europe, and PayPal Ventures, PayPal's VC arm.
Earlier this year, London-headquartered Modulr announced its expansion into the US through a strategic partnership with financial technology firm FIS.
Stephenson added: “This is a foundation. It gives us greater flexibility to accelerate investment in the markets where business payments remain the most complex – particularly as we expand in the US and deepen our capabilities in AI-powered automation. Our focus remains on building products that businesses can rely on as they scale globally."
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Lithuanian startup Axiology raises €5 million to develop tokenised capital markets platform
Vilnius-based capital markets infrastructure provider Axiology has secured €5 million in Seed funding to introduce new tokenised securities capabilities under the EU DLT Pilot Regime – bringing the full lifecycle of digital fixed-income instruments into one regulated environment.
The funding round, led by Exponential Science, e2vc and Coinvest Capital, was joined by new investors TIBAS Ventures and Plug and Play. The Seed round is also supported by the previous round investors like BSV Ventures, NGL Ventures and others. To date, Axiology has raised €7 million.
“Europe’s Savings and Investment Union won’t be built by policy alone – it needs new market infrastructure,” says Marius Jurgilas, Founder and CEO of Axiology. “The Market Integration Package and the DLT Pilot Regime finally give us the legal space to do that. Our system is already live, and this funding allows us to scale a unified, regulated platform for European capital markets.”
Axiology’s Seed round aligns with a broader wave of European investment into regulated digital-asset and capital-markets infrastructure during 2025.
In Germany, Tangany raised €10 million to expand regulated digital-asset custody services for financial institutions, while UK-based Fnality secured €115 million to scale its DLT-based wholesale payment and settlement infrastructure.
Adjacent activity includes London-based Agio Ratings, which raised €5 million to provide crypto-risk analytics for banks, and Nodu, which closed a €1.25 million pre-Seed round to develop compliant stablecoin and payment infrastructure. In France, Spiko raised €18.9 million to build tokenised cash-management tools aimed at improving access to treasury yields.
Collectively, these announcements represent approximately €150 million in disclosed funding flowing into European DLT-enabled financial-market infrastructure.
“Europe’s capital markets are undergoing a structural shift as issuers, infrastructures and regulators look for more efficient ways to manage the lifecycle of securities,” says Jochen Metzger, Board member of Axiology and retired Bundesbank Senior Official. “Axiology is one of the few platforms able to operate each stage within a single regulated system, which is indispensable for addressing market fragmentation across Europe. This investment signals strong confidence in our ability to deliver the infrastructure that modern markets require.”
European retail investors can buy an ETF with a single euro yet still cannot easily access government bonds, which remain some of the safest instruments in the world.
From a technological standpoint these instruments can be issued and transacted in smaller, retail-friendly denominations. However, Axiology says broad access has been limited by market infrastructure rather than capability. Axiology’s system aims to close this gap by providing the regulated infrastructure needed to make digital bonds available to a wider public.
Founded in 2023, Axiology is on a mission to unite Europe’s fragmented capital markets. Its exclusive Distributed Ledger Technology Trading and Settlement System (DLT TSS) licence gives the company a opportunity to do so. It allows Axiology to consolidate issuance, custody, trading and settlement within a single regulated system, simplifying processes and driving costs down for participants of this infrastructure.
“Axiology is tackling one of the biggest challenges in finance today: fragmentation and limited access to core financial instruments. By rebuilding capital markets infrastructure on compliant distributed ledger systems, they are making markets faster, cheaper and more inclusive. This is exactly the type of transformative technology Exponential Science exists to support,” says Dr Paolo Tasca, Founder, Exponential Science
Axiology is working with the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Lithuania on a digital-native version of the country’s Government Defence Bonds. These bonds are currently distributed through local financial institutions, limiting access. Issuing them digitally through Axiology’s TSS would make them available across the entire European Economic Area, widening participation for investors including the Lithuanian diaspora and supporting a broader funding base for national defence.
Since founding the company has introduced three services to the market:
The securities depository services are already used by crowdfunding platforms. Axiology’s infrastructure enables these platforms to structure debt instruments as bonds and distribute them to their investors, allowing partners to offer a broader range of asset classes and support portfolio diversification.
The shareholder registry management service is currently live across Lithuania, with more than €21 million in shares already recorded. The company plans to expand this service to additional markets abroad.
The latest addition to Axiology’s infrastructure is its Multilateral Trading Facility (MTF). Brokers already connected to the platform ensure market activity from the first day of operation. Leveraging Axiology’s licence, the MTF is integrated into the company’s unified trading and settlement infrastructure, allowing clients to access depository, trading and settlement services within a single system.
“We’re excited to support Axiology alongside our co-leads in this next phase of growth. The team has built a strong platform with clear international ambition, and we look forward to working together to scale further in the region and beyond,” comments Kaan Eren, Partner at e2vc.
Built for institutional clients, Axiology’s system operates on a private, permissioned network that provides regulatory compliance, transaction finality and tamper-evident auditability. The company leverages DLT and utilises European stablecoins licensed for atomic settlement, enabling near-instant execution compared with traditional T+2 cycles.
The newly secured capital will accelerate Axiology’s expansion, deepen institutional partnerships, support geographical expansion and interoperability efforts. The company is also preparing to participate in wholesale CBDC initiatives such as the ECB’s Appia and Pontes projects and plans to connect with TARGET2 to further streamline settlement flows.
“We are delighted to continue backing Axiology, this time alongside new international investors, as the founders work to build safe, efficient, and affordable access to Europe’s capital markets. Axiology’s vision is fully aligned with our mission to nurture a more inclusive financing ecosystem and to close key market gaps for both companies and investors,” noted Viktorija Trimbel, CEO and Managing Director of Coinvest Capital.
Spanish startup BCAS, focused on flexible education
financing, has closed a €30 million debt round led by MyInvestor. The funding
will be used to expand operational capacity, introduce instalment-based
financing at affordable interest rates, and increase access to education
funding for students.
Founded in 2021 by Bosco González del Valle, Javier Ausín, and Manuel Avello, BCAS is an edtech platform offering flexible student
financing solutions. The company aims to support equitable and sustainable
access to education, enabling students to focus on their training without
upfront financial barriers.
To date, BCAS has financed more than 3,800 students
and works with over 60 training providers, including Ironhack, The Bridge,
thePower, ISDI, 4Geeks, UNIR, EIP, and HACK A BOSS.
BCAS combines Income Share Agreements (ISAs), in which
repayments begin once students secure employment, with affordable
instalment-based payment plans, providing a flexible financing model tailored
to different student profiles and the needs of training centres.
We are a business that needs debt to operate. The
more you grow, the greater your financing capacity needs to be. This new
facility will allow us to reach thousands more students and expand our offering
with more flexible solutions for both schools and learners,
explains Javier
Ausín, Co-CEO and co-founder of BCAS.
The new financing supports BCAS’s continued scale-up,
reinforcing its position as an education financing provider in Spain and as one
of the Spanish edtech companies able to attract structured funding at scale. As
a result of the round, more than 6,000 students are expected to gain access to
high-employability training programmes.
BCAS currently operates in Spain and Germany and plans to expand further
across Europe after consolidating its position in its home market, with the aim
of becoming a European education financing provider.
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04/02/2026 10:30 AM
AI Bots Are Now a Signifigant Source of Web Traffic
Today, February 4, is World Cancer Day. Cancer kills around 10 million people each year — more than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.
Fortunately, European startups are accelerating innovation across the cancer care pipeline, from early detection to post-treatment recovery. Here’s just some of the startups to watch:
Aerion Bioscience (Luxembourg)
Aerion Bioscience is developing a blood test for early lung cancer detection based on a specific pattern of proteins circulating in the bloodstream.
Current lung cancer detection relies heavily on CT scans and biopsies, which are expensive, involve radiation, and are not widely used as population screening tools. A reliable blood-based test could be performed during regular check-ups and flag high-risk patients earlier, when treatment is far more effective.
Aerion’s work builds on biomarker research originally developed at the Luxembourg Institute of Health, translating academic discovery into a practical diagnostic platform designed for clinical labs rather than experimental settings.
The Blue Box
The Blue Box is a deep-tech biomedical startup developing an AI-powered, non-invasive screening solution for breast cancer that uses a simple urine sample instead of traditional mammography. Their device combines a proprietary electronic nose to detect cancer-related volatile biomarkers in urine. Then a machine-learning algorithm recognises subtle patterns linked to early-stage disease.
This pain-free, low-cost, radiation-free diagnostic tool has the potential to outperform mammograms, particularly in women with dense breast tissue. and make reliable screening more accessible through clinics and future at-home solutions.
Captain T Cell (Germany)
Captain T Cell is developing next-generation T cell therapies to treat solid tumours, a class of cancers where existing immunotherapies often fall short.
The company engineers tumour-specific T cells that express optimised T-cell receptors (TCRs) with enhanced persistence and the ability to survive and attack cancer cells even within the hostile tumour microenvironment. Its proprietary platform supports both personalised (autologous) therapies and “off-the-shelf” allogeneic products, ready for use in multiple patients.
Concr (UK)
Concr is a London-based biotech company tackling cancer’s 96 per cent drug failure rate by applying astrophysics-derived technology to predict which treatments will work for individual patients.
Its FarrSight platform creates digital twins, simulations of a patient’s molecular biology, to predict the most effective therapies for them and to help drug developers design better clinical trials. The startup works with partners including the NHS, Roche, and the Institute of Cancer Research.
Luminate Medical (Ireland)
Image: helmet designed to reduce hair loss from chemotherapy.
Luminate Medical develops wearable medical devices designed to reduce some of the most distressing side effects of chemotherapy, including hair loss and nerve damage.
Its flagship products use targeted compression technology to limit how much chemotherapy reaches certain parts of the body, helping protect hair follicles and peripheral nerves without interfering with the treatment's effectiveness.
Beyond reducing side effects, the company is also working to shift parts of cancer care out of hospitals and into patients’ homes. Luminate is developing infusion and monitoring systems that allow certain low-risk treatments to be delivered remotely under clinical supervision.
SPARK Microgravity (Germany)
SPARK Microgravity is developing what it describes as Europe’s first dedicated commercial orbital cancer lab, to enable life scientists and pharmaceutical researchers to perform experiments in the microgravity environment of low Earth orbit.
They aim to make space-based research — especially advanced cancer biology, 3D tumour growth models, drug screening and personalised oncology studies — accessible without researchers needing to manage their own space missions, with the goal of revealing biological behaviours and therapeutic targets that are hard or impossible to study on Earth due to gravity’s influence.
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04/02/2026 09:56 AM
Leuven-based AI running analysis platform Runeasi raises €1M for global growth
Runeasi, a KU Leuven spin-off focused on running and movement analysis, has
raised €1 million in a new investment round. The round was led by Smarter Ventures, with participation from existing investors Freshmen Fund, Gemma Frisius Fund, the company’s founders, and angel investor Sean Gourley.
Runeasi enables physiotherapists, coaches, and
speciality running stores to carry out running and jumping analyses quickly,
without the need for complex or costly equipment. The platform uses an
AI-powered motion sensor worn in a sports belt to capture biomechanical data,
which is translated into personalised reports with actionable insights for
rehabilitation, training, and exercise planning.
The company focuses on translating scientific
research into practical tools that support health and human performance,
allowing practitioners to convert biomechanical data into tailored training
programmes.
Runeasi is currently used in more than 40
countries by sports physiotherapy practices and running specialists. To date,
the platform has supported over 50,000 running analyses, with the United States
representing its largest market. The company also works with sports footwear
brands, enabling efficient and objective product testing and supporting
scientific validation.
Commenting on the funding, CEO Kurt Schütte
said the investment will support the company’s next phase of growth, with a
focus on accelerating international expansion, particularly in the United
States, while continuing to serve the Belgian market where Runeasi has
established long-term customer relationships.
At the end of 2025, Runeasi was named among
Belgium’s fastest-growing AI scale-ups. According to Schütte and co-founder and
CTO Tim Op De Béeck, the recognition reinforces the company’s commitment to
scientific integrity and validation, with a focus on using AI as a practical
tool rather than a marketing feature.
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04/02/2026 09:47 AM
French climate investor SlateVC raises €132 million first close for inaugural growth fund
Slate Venture Capital, a Paris-based venture capital firm dedicated to the climate transition, has secured a €132 million first close for its inaugural growth fund focused on energy and circularity.
Disclosed investors include the European Investment Fund (EIF), Bpifrance and the Fonds National de Venture Industriel (FNVI), managed by Bpifrance and endowed by the French government (France 2030), and BNP Paribas.
“In a complex fundraising environment, this first close affirms a clear market signal: climate impact requires scale, and scale requires industry-leading competitiveness. We are looking to back European B2B companies where environmental performance drives superior unit economics, specifically in energy transition, low-carbon industrial processes, and circularity,” said Slate VC in a public statement.
Activity across 2025 and early 2026, shows continued capital formation around European climate, energy transition and circular-economy investment strategies, providing context for Slate Venture Capital’s first close.
At the larger end of the spectrum, London-based 2150 Fund II (€210 million) raised a growth-stage fund focused on urban systems, energy and industrial decarbonisation, while Barcelona’s SC Net Zero Ventures I (€210 million) targeted scale-up capital for industrial climate technologies.
Taken together with Slate Venture Capital’s raise in France, these announcements represent approximately €900 million to €1 billion in disclosed capital committed to climate- and transition-focused venture strategies over the period, underlining sustained institutional interest in scalable business models where environmental performance is linked to economic returns.
Founded in 2023, SlateVC is an independent pan-European investment firm regulated by the French financial markets authority (AMF). The firm invests in European B2B companies developing technologies contributing to the climate transition.
Today’s first close comes amid, what the VC is describing, as a slowdown in venture fundraising and a reassessment of climate strategies, with investors prioritising business models that deliver clear economic returns alongside impact.
SlateVC is led by four partners with backgrounds spanning entrepreneurship, venture capital, and industrial strategy. Collectively, the team has completed more than 150 venture investments.
The founders are:
Clément Buyse, co-founder of PeopleDoc (acquired by UKG) and former Vice-President of France Digitale
Chloé Giard, former investor at IdInvest and Eurazeo
Sébastien Léger, former Partner at McKinsey, where he led the Energy and Climate
practices
Renaud Visage, co-founder of Eventbrite (NYSE: EB) and former Venture Partner at Index Ventures and Point Nine Capital
SlateVC was established to back the market deployment and scaling of companies where environmental performance is driven by superior economics – through lower costs, improved productivity, and increased resilience for industrial customers.
SlateVC’s first fund invests in European B2B companies developing hardware, software and AI solutions in:
energy transition
low-carbon industrial processes and materials
circularity and the resource economy
climate resilience
The fund plans to back 15 to 20 companies with strong commercial momentum that are ready for international expansion.
SlateVC has already completed two cornerstone investments illustrating its investment thesis in 2025.
The fund co-led the Series B of Fairmat, a French industrial company developing recycled carbon- fiber composite materials for the construction, automotive, and sports industries, and led the Series B of Resourcify, a German company developing an AI-powered SaaS platform that lets global corporations optimise their circularity programmes worldwide.
BCAS, a Madrid-based EdTech startup specialised in flexible education financing, today announced the closing of a new €30 million debt round, led exclusively by Spanish neobank MyInvestor.
With this new capital, the company aims to expand its operational capacity, introduce traditional instalment-based financing at affordable interest rates, and “significantly” increase the number of students who can access funding without financial barriers. BCAS has crossed €55 million in total funding across debt and equity, with MyInvestor and Orilla AM as its main financial partners.
“This round represents a key milestone for us. On the one hand, it validates our model, and on the other, it allows us to take the next step in scale, product diversification and covering the entire value chain. It reflects the maturity of the project and BCAS’s commitment to solid and sustainable growth,” said Bosco González del Valle, co-CEO and co-founder of BCAS.
Founded in 2021 by Bosco González del Valle, Javier Ausín, and Manuel Avello, BCAS is on a mission to promote equitable, sustainable and high-quality education, enabling students to focus on their studies without financial barriers.
According to BCAS, its model combines Income Share Agreement (ISA) financing, where students only start paying once they secure employment, with instalment-based payment solutions. In this way, the company claims to position itself as a comprehensive education financing tool for both training centres and individuals seeking to improve their employability.
Following the transaction, BCAS reports having reached profitability and improved operational stability. Based on its forecasts, it expects to maintain sustained growth of over 50% annually. According to the company, the funding is expected to support financing for more than 6,000 students. It will also help the company to double its size and loan volume by 2026, while maintaining profitable and sustainable growth.
“This new financing marks a further scale-up for the company, consolidating its position as a leading education financing player in Spain and as one of the few Spanish EdTech companies capable of attracting large volumes of structured financing.The debt will allow BCAS to continueoffering ISAs and to launch its new instalment-based financing product, broadening the range of solutions tailored to the real needs of students and training institutions,” mentioned the company in the press release.
In 2024, the company closed a €17 million funding round led by MyInvestor and Actyus (Andbank Group’s venture debt fund).
BCAS currently operates in Spain and Germany and plans to expand further across Europe once it has consolidated its leadership at a national level. The company has already financed more than 3,800 students and works with over 60 training providers, including Ironhack, The Bridge, thePower, ISDI, 4Geeks, UNIR, EIP, and HACK A BOSS.
Dutch-based
startup QT Sense has raised €4 million to advance Quantum Nuova, a
quantum-based platform that monitors cellular stress in living cells at
single-cell resolution. The funding includes a €3 million seed round led by
Cottonwood Technology Fund, alongside follow-on funding from QDNL Participations and an angel investor. The total funding includes a €0.6 million ONCO-Q grant to fast-track oncology applications, along with €0.4 million from the Quantum Forward Challenge to support collaborative deployment and validation of Quantum Nuova in real research environments.
While
traditional biological methods typically analyse fixed tissue or non-living
cells, QT Sense’s Quantum Nuova platform measures biochemical activity in
living cells and tissues in real time, enabling new approaches in spatial
biology.
The
platform uses fluorescent nanodiamond quantum sensors to detect oxidative
stress, metabolic changes, and free radical activity—signals that are central
to disease processes but have been difficult to observe directly.
By
providing a live view of cellular behaviour at the individual cell level,
Quantum Nuova allows researchers to study how cells respond to drugs, adapt to
stress, and differentiate into distinct subpopulations, offering insights
beyond those available through genomics, proteomics, or conventional imaging.
The
technology has already been used to study the mechanisms of action of
FDA-approved drugs. With support from the ONCO-Q grant, it will now be applied
to colorectal cancer research, with the aim of mapping oxidative stress and
metabolic vulnerabilities in tumour models to support future diagnostic and
therapeutic development.
The new investment will support the transition of Quantum Nuova from a high-performing
prototype to a deployable discovery platform.
Planned developments include
improvements in hardware robustness, throughput, and integrated analytics to
support real-world use. Early-access systems will be deployed with strategic
partners to enable mechanism-of-action studies, functional heterogeneity
analysis, and rapid, label-free measurements across multiple samples.
04/02/2026 09:10 AM
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04/02/2026 07:32 AM
Linda AI raises €2.6M to expand AI workflows for dental practices
Linda AI, a healthtech startup focused on
automating front-desk operations for dental practices, has raised a €2.6
million pre-seed round led by 6 Degrees Capital.
The funding comes as voice AI adoption
accelerates across service-intensive industries. In healthcare, dentistry
stands out due to high call volumes, complex operations, and detailed
scheduling needs. Despite this reliance on phone-based booking, more than 25
per cent of inbound calls to dental practices go unanswered, leading to
significant lost revenue.
Linda AI addresses this challenge through
agentic workflow automation built specifically for dental practices. Its AI
agents integrate with existing practice management and communication systems to
manage administrative tasks end to end, including appointment scheduling,
confirmations, rescheduling, and patient follow-ups. The platform works
alongside front-desk teams, using voice, text, and system integrations when
staff capacity is constrained.
As a result, the company reports measurable
impact across its customer base. Approximately 25 per cent of new patient
bookings are generated through Linda AI, overall bookings increase by around 15
per cent, no-show rates decline by more than 30 per cent, and front-desk teams
save over 10 hours per week on administrative work. These outcomes support
improved revenue performance, better calendar utilisation, and greater
operational efficiency.
The
new funding will be used to expand the engineering team, strengthen the senior
sales function, and scale deployments across additional dental practices in
Ireland and the UK.
04/02/2026 08:10 AM
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04/02/2026 07:16 AM
Cloover’s billion-dollar round headlines a fintech-heavy month led by Germany
Soundtrack Technologies, a Stockholm-based background music platform for businesses, today announced that it has acquired Tunify, a Belgium-based B2B music provider, and Ambie, a UK-based background music service dedicated to hospitality.
With these acquisitions, Soundtrack has established commercial and operational teams across the UK and the Benelux. These teams work alongside existing staff in Stockholm and the US, strengthening its European presence. The Benelux and UK expansions are intended as a launchpad for further M&A planned by the Swedish company in legal music streaming for sectors, including retail, hospitality, and other service industries. Both Tunify and Ambie will rebrand to Soundtrack.
Soundtrack founder and CEO Ola Sars said, “Music is a universal language, but business is local. By welcoming Ambie and Tunify to Soundtrack, we aren’t just acquiring customer bases; we are investing in the specific cultural and musical nuances of several markets. We are thrilled to bring their expertise into the Soundtrack family: it’s a strategy of local focus and global scale.”
A spin-off of the University of Leuven, Tunify is a business-focused streaming music service founded in 2017, serving the Belgian and Dutch markets. Founded in 2015, London-based Ambie caters to global clients, including Rocco Forte, Hyatt Hotels, D&D London, and Hilton.
Soundtrack (previously known as Soundtrack Your Brand) was co-founded in 2013 by Ola Sars (co-founder of Beats Music), Andreas Liffgarden, Joel Brosjö, and Spotify (initially known as Spotify Business). The platform enables global brands to stream music legally and strategically in commercial spaces.
The company’s M&A strategy focuses on consolidating a fragmented market, acquiring and integrating regional legacy incumbent operators. Soundtrack also mentions that it will also call out business practices when providers fail to operate in accordance with regional mandates.
According to Soundtrack, these acquisitions are part of its strategy to consolidate the fragmented international music-for-business market. Explaining the value proposition, Soundtrack states that it provides the global infrastructure for rights management and streaming reliability, while the incorporation of Tunify and Ambie ensures that regional businesses continue to receive the hyper-localised curation and service they value.
Soundtrack reports that it has a catalogue of more than 125 million tracks and caters to over 100,000 subscribers. The platform also offers multi-location playlist control, including remote management tools, built-in licensing compliance, and AI-driven music scheduling.
In 2024, Soundtrack launched its industry-first AI Playlist Generator for businesses. In 2023, Soundtrack raised €12.6 million ($15 million) in a pre-growth round led by MUSIC, a holding company led by Matt Pincus in collaboration with Liontree, JS Capital Management, and Schusterman Family Investments, along with existing Soundtrack investors, including Balderton Capital, Fuel Venture Capital, Industrifonden, Telia, and DIG.
