Rotterdam-based venture studio Builders has raised an additional €3 million, bringing total funding to €4.5 million. The round was led by a group of entrepreneurs, exit-founders, and family offices, including Wouter Holtslag, Eric Carbijn, and Invint Capital.

Additional participants included family offices Den Breems & Schouten B.V., Vajoinvest, Hedje Invest, Plott Invest, and angel investors Peter Kaas, Edwin de Jonge, Richard Budding, Karol Wojtaszek, Emil Wojtaszek, Joeri van den Bovenkamp-Hofman, Ruud Vodegel, Hector Rodriguez, Wilbert Nederpelt, Steven van Houweling, Roland van Gulik, Herjan Meloen, Tristan Orzero, Patrick Veldhuizen, Eliska Went, Theo Wieckardt, Patrick van de Werken, and Sylvia Dekker.

Builders is a venture studio that partners with entrepreneurs to create enterprise AI companies from initial concept to independent operation. From day one, it provides support across concept development, validation, talent acquisition, network access, funding, execution, and growth.

Following its first funding round, in which €1.5 million was raised, Builders developed Noon, Obeyo, and Influentials. Noon and Obeyo were later discontinued, while Influentials was successfully sold.

With the €3 million raised in the second round, Builders has refined its focus on enterprise AI software and built a new portfolio of ventures (Everday, Avery, and Cortena), all of which are nearing seed-readiness.

Backed by the new capital, Builders will scale operations, support its existing portfolio, and expand across Europe through partnerships with startup studios and venture ecosystems. The studio aims to increase its annual launch rate from at least four to up to ten companies as it progresses toward a self-sustaining model.

To accelerate this growth, Builders is establishing a €25 million fund to invest across its AI ecosystem, providing follow-on capital for current ventures and backing new European collaborations, with a first close planned for summer 2026.

French specialised software provider of logistics management solutions, Shippingbo, has received funding from Main Capital Partners to support the next phase of its growth journey. 

Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Toulouse, France, Shippingbo provides a comprehensive, cloud-based logistics management platform that combines Order Management (OMS), Warehouse Management (WMS), and Transport Management (TMS) functionalities into an integrated platform.

Its solutions enable e-commerce brands, logistics providers, and retailers to automate fulfillment, optimise warehouse operations, and manage transport flows efficiently through a centralised interface. 

Shippingbo’s software platform delivers scalability, flexibility, and seamless integration throughout the supply chain ecosystem. Its solutions enable supply chain players to connect and automate every stage of their operations, facilitating robust omnichannel strategies through unified logistics capabilities. 

The company employs approximately 80 professionals at its Toulouse headquarters and serves around 1,000 direct customers across several verticals — including consumer goods, 3PL logistics, sports & leisure, and food & beverage. 

Key customers include brands such as Venom, Teddy Smith, and Weber Industries, as well as third-party logistics providers (3PLs) such as DHL, Deret, and Stef.  

Marc Heiricher, Founder and CEO of Shippingbo, shared:

“We are very proud of this strategic agreement with Main Capital to support us in this new chapter. 
Main’s experience in the software sector and in supporting scale-ups through their growth journey will allow us to accelerate Shippingbo’s development significantly.

This new partnership validates  our vision and will provide us with new resources to continue innovating internally, strengthen  our partner ecosystem, and roll out a Buy & Build strategy to reinforce our position as an  established unified logistics platform for omnichannel commerce in France and internationally.” 

Although the majority of its revenues are currently generated in France, Shippingbo demonstrates clear international ambitions, with a growing customer base and market presence in Spain,  Belgium, and Switzerland. 

Through its collaboration with Main, Shippingbo aims to accelerate growth via continuous product innovation, international expansion, and a targeted buy-and-build strategy to reinforce its position as a specialised software provider in the logistics value chain.

The partnership will prioritise expanding Shippingbo’s functional coverage (OMS, WMS, TMS), developing complementary modules and a partner network, and strengthening its go-to-market strategy to serve its growing European customer base better.  

The management team - primarily composed of the founding partners with decades of experience in logistics software - will retain a significant stake and continue to lead the next phase of growth alongside Main.  

The transaction represents Main’s third platform investment in France in 2025, following the opening of its  Paris office in February of this year. 

The Shippingbo management team will continue to lead operations and retain a significant ownership stake, underscoring their strong commitment to the shared vision of building an internationally leading unified logistics platform. 

According to Jonas Kruip, Co-Head France & Sr. Investment Manager at Main Capital Partners, as supply chains become more digital, data-driven,  and customer-centric, integrated OMS, WMS, and TMS solutions have become mission-critical for businesses striving to deliver efficiency, transparency, and scalability across the entire supply chain. 

“Shippingbo’s scalable and modern platform is uniquely positioned to address these needs,  and we look forward to working closely with the management team to accelerate innovation and expand the company’s presence internationally both through organic and inorganic growth."

EPFL spin-off MoleSense has received €156,000. (CHF 150,000) from Venture Kick to bring molecular wearables to maternity care. 

These devices will continuously and non-invasively monitor key biochemical markers in high-risk pregnancies, enabling doctors to make data-driven decisions and mothers to receive proactive care.

Preterm birth and pregnancy complications remain among the most pressing challenges in maternal health. When a mother’s water breaks too early, doctors face a difficult dilemma: delay delivery and risk infection or induce birth and risk lifelong complications for the baby. With no reliable way to quantify these risks, mothers often undergo invasive tests while clinicians must make life-or-death decisions with limited data.

MoleSense ias developed a new class of wearables that track inflammatory proteins and steroid hormones in real time through non-invasive sweat monitoring using a “wear and forget” device. 

By combining personalised molecular data with biology-aware machine intelligence, the technology provides real-time, actionable insights for early diagnosis and targeted interventions.

Founded and led by Gian Luca Barbruni and Ata Golparvar, both PhD graduates from EPFL, MoleSense brings together deep expertise in micro- and nano-engineering and wearable technologies. The team is initially focusing on pregnancy management, aiming to impact more than eight million pregnancies annually across Switzerland, Europe, and the United States.

Their approach sets a new standard for proactive, personalised maternity care and targets the USD 110 billion women’s healthcare device market, beginning its rollout with high-risk pregnancy centres such as CHUV.

The CHF 150,000 from Venture Kick will help the Medtech startup complete validation and move forward along the regulatory pathway toward early market entry.

“Venture Kick challenged us to think bigger, move faster, and sharpen our vision,” commented CEO Gian Luca Barbruni. 

Lead image: Gian Luca Barbruni, CEO, MoleSense. Photo: uncredited.

Copenhagen-based Formalize has raised €30 million in a Series B co-led by Acton Capital and Blackfin Tech, with participation from West Hill Capital and CIBC Innovation Banking. The company has raised €50 million to date.

Across Europe, organisations face an increasingly complex, interconnected regulatory landscape, with evolving rules reshaping expectations for information security, resilience, and reporting across industries and regions. 

Formalize, addresses this with a single platform that automates compliance workflows, consolidates requirements, and supports companies in managing ongoing regulatory change.

Founded in 2021, Formalize is a compliance software company whose platform supports NIS2, DORA, ISO 27001, GDPR, SOC 2, and related frameworks. The company began with its Whistleblower Software and has expanded into broader risk, privacy, and data compliance. Today, it serves organisations in over 80 countries and supports more than 12 languages.

Jakob Lilholm, CEO and co-founder of Formalize, said compliance has become a basic requirement for doing business.

At Formalize, we’re building a future where automation and AI simplify GRC for European SMBs without ever compromising on security or the local expertise that defines us. Our ability to scale and deliver value to thousands of companies places us at the forefront of Europe’s regulatory landscape,

Lilholm added.

The new funding will support expansion across Europe, with plans to increase presence in key markets such as the DACH region and France by opening additional offices and growing local teams to support customers and partners.

SpinDrive, a Finland-based provider of active magnetic bearing (AMB) systems, has secured new growth funding led by long-time investors Rhapsody Venture Partners and Innovestor.

Founded in 2015, SpinDrive commercialises magnetic-levitation solutions for high-speed machinery. The company’s vision is to lead in advanced magnetic-bearing systems with IoT-based condition monitoring, improving efficiency and lowering costs and maintenance in industrial applications.

Traditional industrial bearings rely on oil lubrication and physical contact between moving parts, creating friction, energy losses, wear, and frequent maintenance. Because bearings are widely used in rotating machinery (such as compressors, pumps, turbines, and blowers), these inefficiencies add up to substantial energy consumption and reduce electric-motor efficiency.

SpinDrive addresses this with active magnetic bearing technology that levitates the rotor, eliminating physical contact and friction. The result is maintenance-free operation for over 20 years, no need for oil-based lubricants, and meaningful energy-efficiency gains. Compared with traditional ball bearings that often require replacement every 12–18 months in high-speed applications, SpinDrive’s systems include integrated condition monitoring without external sensors and can reduce overall equipment maintenance costs by more than 80 per cent.

SpinDrive reports increasing US traction through both direct customers and European OEM partners with US operations. Its systems are being adopted in industrial cooling, heat pumps, wastewater treatment, and semiconductor manufacturing, where energy efficiency and reliability are critical.

The upcoming Magma X100 extends SpinDrive’s AMB technology to ultra-high-speed machinery under 100 kW, broadening access to AMB benefits in new markets and applications. Developed with support from the European Commission, it is the company’s smallest, most affordable, and most efficient system to date, and has received commercial orders ahead of launch.

Janne Heikkinen, CEO of SpinDrive, said:

Magma X100 brings the benefits of AMBs to applications for which there has been no technical solution to date. Our new product is small in form factor and a fraction of the cost of existing AMB systems. We believe the benefits of AMBs will revolutionise a broad new set of appliances and machinery.

The funding will support SpinDrive’s expanding US customer base, strengthen its market presence in the region, and enable the launch of the new Magma X100 magnetic bearing controller product line.

Entrepreneur, investor and Dragons’ Den star Steven Bartlett has raised an eight-figure funding round for his media and technology company Steven.com, valuing the business at €365 million. The round, led by Slow Ventures and Apeiron Investment Group, is believed to be the largest creator-economy funding round in Europe to date.

Bartlett, who is also the creator and host of The Diary of a CEO, said: “By bringing together creator IP, capital and our infrastructure, Steven.com is positioning itself to lead in the next era of the creator economy.

"My ultimate ambition is to build the Disney of the creator economy – and the strategic partners this funding round has brought on board has enabled me to take a big step in that direction.”

The company, which houses divisions including FlightStory, FlightCast and FlightFund, plans to use the new capital to scale its global media and creator commerce operations while maintaining majority ownership of more than 90 per cent. The business integrates content creation, investment and technology infrastructure to help creators build long-term brands and ventures.

Bartlett compared his vision to that of traditional entertainment companies: “With my team, I think we are building the modern version of model. But in our world, the IP is not a fictional character. The creator is the new franchise.”

Bartlett’s existing ventures collaborate with high-profile figures including Trevor Noah, Davina McCall and Paul C. Brunson, while his Diary of a CEO podcast recently surpassed one billion YouTube views, making it the most popular podcast in Europe and one of the fastest-growing globally.

Sequoia, the US VC firm which has backed Klarna and Stripe, has launched two early-stage funds and given a vote of confidence to European founders. The two new funds are a $750 million early-stage fund targeting Series A startups and a $200 million seed fund.

Sequoia has a long history of investing in high-profile tech firms at an early stage, such as its investments in Apple and YouTube. In a post about the funds on its website, the US VC firm said it would be targeting founders from “any background from around the globe”.

The post goes on to share emerging themes witnessed by Sequoia's early-stage investors. Luciana Lixandru, partner, said: “I am excited to meet founders who use Europe as their product and engineering hub, but who want to take over the world. Europe’s founder pool has never been stronger.

"A new wave of repeat entrepreneurs and alumni from breakout scaleups bring hard-won judgment, world-class product taste, and the muscle memory of going from zero to global.” Sequoia’s European investments include Swedish fintech Klarna, German fintech Trade Republic,and German drone startup Stark.

Sequoia partner Roelof Botha said: “I’m drawn to dynamo founders—polymaths with a voracious appetite for learning, who blend interdisciplinary insights.

"These people don’t follow the conventional path. They’re defiant. They want to chart their own course. With the tools that we have available now in AI, founders like this can address problems that they spot in ways that we could never have done before.”

Podcast personality and entrepreneur Steven Bartlett today announced his company Steven.com has closed a major eight-figure investment, at a €365 million valuation to build what he calls the “Disney of the creator economy” and take his growing media empire to a global stage.

The investment was led by investors Slow Ventures and Apeiron Investment Group. This is believed to be Europe’s biggest ever creator holding company fundraising round.

Bartlett, who is also the creator and host of Diary Of A CEO (DOAC), said: “By bringing together creator IP, capital and our infrastructure, Steven.com is positioning itself to lead in the next era of the creator economy. My ultimate ambition is to build the Disney of the creator economy – and the strategic partners this funding round has brought on board has enabled me to take a big step in that direction.”

The funding round for Steven.com represents an exceptional scale compared with other European creator-economy and media-infrastructure fundings reported by EU-Startups in 2025.

While recent announcements such as Wyrld (Germany) (€1 million pre-Seed for creator-led e-commerce), Assisterr (UK) (€2.4 million for no-code AI-agent creation), Paid (UK) (€10 million to power the AI-agent economy) and Camera Intelligence (UK) (€1.7 million for AI-enabled creator hardware) focus on early-stage innovation, Bartlett’s eight-figure raise at a €365 million valuation signals a move toward consolidation and scale.

In contrast to these smaller rounds, Steven.com’s investment highlights the emergence of more mature, vertically integrated creator-media companies in Europe, particularly in the UK – positioning it as a potential anchor firm in the continent’s evolving creator-economy landscape.

“For the last century, companies like Disney – from its starting point with Walt Disney himself – has demonstrated the power of a single piece of intellectual property. He and his successors built a global empire by taking a character like Mickey Mouse and building a universe around him: films, theme parks, merchandise and more. This created a flywheel of immense, compounding value which resulted in a generational company.

“With my team, I think we are building the modern version of this model. But in our world, the IP is not a fictional character. The creator is the new franchise. Our mission is to build the defining company of the creator economy by constructing an ecosystem that scales a creator’s influence across two core pillars: creator media and creator ventures, while powering this flywheel with our proprietary creator technology,” added Bartlett.

EU-Startups has featured Steven Bartlett and his ventures multiple times over recent years. In January 2023, we reported on the launch of his $100 million Flight Story Fund to support European startups. Later, in March 2023, Bartlett and his fund were referenced as investors in London-based healthtech ZOE. His name appeared again in November 2024 in an article profiling his former business partner’s new marketing startup, cocreatd.

In 2025, Bartlett’s influence in the creator-economy space was acknowledged twice more: first in January 2025, where his Diary of a CEO channel was listed among the “25 must-follow YouTube channels for startups and entrepreneurs,” and later in June 2025, which included him in a roundup of leading business voices on TikTok.

Megan Lightcap, Partner at Slow Ventures said: “At Slow Ventures, we’ve long believed that creators are the next great entrepreneurs – and Steven Bartlett is a first-rate example. He isn’t just one of the fastest-growing and most trusted voices in the world; he’s a meticulously data-driven entrepreneur whose content, deep community, and portfolio of companies create a powerful flywheel that fuels system-wide growth. We couldn’t be more excited to back him through the Slow Creator Fund as he scales Steven.com across media, products, and technology.”

This new funding will accelerate Bartlett’s mission to empower creator media companies and creator ventures to scale globally and develop world-class creator IP and creator commerce eco-systems. The investment also enables Bartlett and his company – incorporating established divisions FlightStory, FlightCast and FlightFund – to maintain full independence, with Bartlett holding majority ownership of more than 90%.

Christian Angermayer – Apeiron Investment Group – said: “I have known Steven for several years now, and he is one of the brightest visionary entrepreneurs I’ve ever worked with – a true and rare asset to British entrepreneurship. Him and his world class management team are building the infrastructure to transform individual creators into institutional-grade businesses through an integrated ecosystem of media, ventures, and technology.

“We are backing the company that will define the creator economy by proving that the individual, properly capitalised and supported, can build empires that rival the entertainment conglomerates of the last century. Europe needs to take the creator economy very seriously and we need more platforms like Steven.com to build their empires right here in Europe.“

With the creator economy projected to reach more than $528 billion by 2030 and more than 207 million active creators worldwide, Steven.com is positioned to harness this momentum by combining investment, media expertise and technology infrastructure under one roof.

Bartlett already works with prominent creator talent through his media division, FlightStory. This includes Trevor Noah, Davina McCall, and Paul C. Brunson. The company acquires, scales and builds commercial infrastructure around top creator media IP, whilst investing in and incubating creator ventures.

Bartlett has also built a suite of public and proprietary tools that use creator audience data to remove guesswork from strategy and growth decisions on creator IP. Earlier this month he announced the public launch of one such tool called FlightCast.com – the world’s first podcast hosting platform built for video, with in-built AI and testing capabilities.

DOAC – which he created and also presents through FlightStory – is now the world’s second biggest interview podcast with more than 13 million YouTube subscribers and 70 million monthly views/downloads. It had achieved more than one billion streams across all platforms by late 2024 and this month (Oct 2025) it surpassed one billion views on YouTube alone. It also remains the No1 Podcast in the UK and Europe and is currently adding 600K new YouTube subscribers each month – making it the fastest growing show in the world – with a 500% compound annual growth rate.

Previous guests include Michelle Obama, MrBeast, Matthew McConaughey, Louis Tomlinson, Simon Cowell, Boris Johnson and, most recently, former Liverpool FC manager Jurgen Klopp.

Bartlett has invested in more than 40 companies, including SpaceX, Whoop, Lovable, Replit, MrBeast, Cadence, Groq, and PerfectTed. This month PerfectTed also became Dragon’s Den’s most successful ever investment with the company now being valued at more than $190 million less than three years since the Founders appeared on the TV series.

The post From Dragons’ Den to Disney ambitions: Steven Bartlett raises eight-figure round for Steven.com appeared first on EU-Startups.

San Sebastián and Barcelona-based biotech Adaptam Therapeutics has raised €3 million in a pre-seed round led by Criteria Bio Ventures to develop first-in-class antibody therapies targeting immunosuppressive myeloid cells in solid tumours.

The funding will allow Adaptam to advance its antibody-based programmes, including antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and bispecific antibodies, into the preclinical stage across multiple oncology indications. As part of the round, Salvatore Cappadona and Pablo Cironi from Criteria Bio Ventures have joined the company’s board of directors.

“Immunosuppressive myeloid cells within tumours present one of the toughest challenges in immunotherapy today. Our goal is to neutralise this obstacle by developing therapies that specifically target these cells, offering patients new hope where traditional approaches have failed,” said Asis Palazon, founder, CEO and CSO of Adaptam.

Adaptam’s approach focuses on disrupting the tumour microenvironment, which often prevents immune cells from effectively attacking cancer. Its therapies target glycoimmune checkpoints selectively expressed in immunosuppressive myeloid cells such as tumour-associated macrophages (TAMs).

“We are thrilled to support Adaptam in its mission to transform cancer treatment by targeting the immunosuppressive cells within the TME. The scientific breakthroughs achieved by Prof. Asis Palazon and his team have laid the groundwork for potentially life-changing therapies,” said Pablo Cironi, chairman of Adaptam’s board.

Adaptam was founded based on research from CIC bioGUNE in Bilbao, with early support from Criteria Bio Ventures and a Caixa Research Health grant awarded to Palazon in 2021. Some of the underlying discoveries have been published in Nature Communications.

“CIC bioGUNE’s long-standing leadership in glycobiology provided the scientific foundation for Adaptam and we have supported the company from its earliest steps through to today’s preclinical maturation,” said Jesús Jiménez-Barbero, scientific director of CIC bioGUNE.

Valence-based Dracula Technologies, a pioneer in enabling battery-free IoT through energy harvesting from ambient indoor light, announced the completion of its Series A extension round, bringing the total Series A funding to €30 million.

The extension round includes participation from existing investor Banque des Territoires, acting on behalf of the French State under the “France 2030” programme, and leading the financial operation, together with MGI Digital Technology Group, an industrial partner in digital printing technologies. The round also welcomes the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund as a new strategic partner.

“I am very proud of this achievement, which wouldn’t have been possible without the commitment and hard work of our team, and the continued support of our long-standing investors – now joined by the EIC Fund,” said Brice Cruchon, CEO and Founder of Dracula Technologies. “With this support, we will strengthen our industrial base in France, lay the groundwork for future manufacturing closer to key markets, and begin discussions with industrial partners to accelerate global deployment.”

Dracula Technologies’ extension situates the French company within a broader European trend of investment in clean and smart-energy solutions.

In 2025, EU-Startups has highlighted related activity in adjacent sectors – such as Germany’s etalytics, which secured €16 million to expand its AI-driven energy-optimisation platform, and Spain’s Clevergy, which raised €3.2 million to scale its smart-energy platform across Europe.

While these firms address efficiency and solar integration, Dracula Technologies’ niche – battery-free IoT powered by ambient indoor light – remains distinct, with no equivalent 2025 funding rounds reported in this space.

“The renewal of our trust reflects our commitment to supporting companies rooted in local regions while pursuing international ambitions. As an early partner, we are proud to see Dracula Technologies expand its industrial base in France, thereby contributing to the energy and digital transition at both the national and European levels,” said François Wohrer, Chief Investment Officer at Banque des Territoires.

Founded in 2012, Dracula Technologies develops sustainable energy solutions with its LAYER technology, innovating power sources for low-power electronics. Its organic photovoltaic (OPV) modules, manufactured using patented digital printing, harvest ambient light, eliminating reliance on traditional batteries.

LAYER Vault complements the company’s existing OPV harvesting product line, transforming it into a 2-in-1 product, combining low-light energy harvesting and storage on a single, flexible film ensuring uninterrupted device functionality, empowering Smart Buildings, Smart Homes, Smart Asset Tracking, and other related applications.

EU-Startups previously featured Dracula Technologies in its GreenTech Report published in October 2022, noting that the startup had raised €5.5 million to develop a sustainable power source that converts ambient light into electricity for low-power connected devices.

This combined support from investors underscores confidence in Dracula Technologies’ ability to capture a share of the rapidly expanding €10 billion battery replacement market, projected to grow five-fold by 2030.

Svetoslava Georgieva, Chair of the EIC Fund Board, said: “As a public investor supporting breakthrough European technologies, the EIC Fund is pleased to join Dracula Technologies in this new phase of industrial scale-up. Their energy harvesting innovation directly addresses the challenge of reducing battery dependency in connected electronics and supports the EU’s ambitions for sustainability, digital resilience, and industrial autonomy.”

The new funding will allow Dracula Technologies to scale up production, explore industrial partnerships to add additional manufacturing capacity closer to key markets, support global deployment to better serve customers worldwide, and solidify its position as a global leader in sustainable power for IoT.

To support growing demand in key sectors such as smart buildings, asset tracking, and IoT sensors, Dracula Technologies is currently fulfilling multi-year, high-volume contracts from global industry leaders to replace batteries in billions of devices using only ambient indoor light.

The capital will accelerate Dracula’s transition from sheet-to-sheet to roll-to-roll Inkjet manufacturing, quadrupling production capacity to 600 million cm² annually at its state-of-the-art Green MicroPower Factory in Valence – the world’s largest dedicated production facility for printed organic photovoltaic (OPV) modules.

With production yields approaching 95%, the company has achieved best-in-class manufacturing efficiency that positions it to serve global markets at scale.

“As a pioneer in digital printing technologies, MGI immediately recognised the unique potential of Dracula Technologies’ industrial approach to the production of OPV modules. From the very beginning, we were convinced of the impact their technology would have on powering connected devices, and we have supported them since their inception both as an investor and as an industrial partner, by providing our printing solutions and the associated consumables developed by the MGI Digital Technology Group,” said Edmond Abergel, COO in charge of the MGI Group Strategy.

He added: “This commitment now enables us, as both a shareholder and supplier, to support Dracula Technologies in a new stage of its development and to contribute to the worldwide deployment of sustainable, battery-free energy solutions.”

The post With Series A extended to €30 million, France’s Dracula Technologies accelerates rollout of ambient-light energy solutions appeared first on EU-Startups.