Orbital, an AI platform for real estate law, has raised $60 million in a Series B funding round to support continued growth in the US and UK. The round was led by Brighton Park Capital and included participation from investors across the legal and real estate sectors, including REV, The LegalTech Fund, Moderne Ventures, and Grosvenor Group. Existing investors JLL Spark, Outward, and Seedcamp also participated.

Orbital develops AI technology tailored to the specific requirements of real estate legal work, an area that has seen relatively limited coverage from broader legal technology platforms. By combining AI designed for real estate law with spatial visualisation, mapping, and property data, the platform automates document-intensive legal processes and supports more efficient transaction workflows.

The company was co-founded in 2018 by Will Pearce and Ed Boulle. Its platform supports hundreds of thousands of residential and commercial real estate transactions each year for thousands of property professionals, including law firms, in-house legal teams, developers, title companies, and real estate investment trusts. Orbital’s customer base includes large international law firms and multinational companies across the real estate sector.

Will Pearce, Orbital's CEO and co-founder, noted that although real estate is the world’s largest asset class, the legal processes that support it are still largely manual, fragmented, and opaque, with many practices having changed little for more than a century.

Orbital is changing that with AI purpose-built for real estate, making transactions more transparent and reliable for all parties.

With the new funding, the company plans to expand across the wider real estate ecosystem and increase investment in product development, with the goal of creating a single, secure workspace for real estate legal work across the full asset lifecycle.

Following the opening of its New York office in 2025, Orbital plans to grow its team and establish additional US hubs to better support customers.

Venture firm 2150 today announced the final close of its €210 million second fund, bringing total assets under management to €500 million. 

The fund remains focused on backing technology companies seeking to reshape our cities and the industries that power them. 

I spoke to partner and co-founder Christian Hernandez to learn more. 

Building a climate Fund around cities and industry

2150 is built on the belief that cities drive the majority of global prosperity and represent the greatest opportunity for sustainable progress. 2150 backs founders developing transformative solutions across energy, industrial decarbonisation, advanced manufacturing, mobility, and urban systems. 

Why LPs re-committed in a tough climate fundraising market

When asked what convinced limited partners to commit such a large amount in a difficult fundraising environment for climate funds, Hernandez points first to continuity. “Raising money for Fund I happened in a very different market,” he said.

“We were lucky to have large institutional anchors back then, and the important part this time was getting those anchors to recommit.”

The second fund from 2150 garnered a broad international participation from financial institutions and family offices. Investors include Viessmann Generations Group, Chr. Augustinus Fabrikker, Novo Holdings, the Danish sovereign fund EIFO, Security Trading Oy,  Islandbridge Capital, Fund of Funds Carbon Equity, and the US-based Church Pension Group. Proving the investment model with a transatlantic portfolio

Beyond repeat investors, a second group of LPs came in only after the firm could demonstrate a real operating track record. “In a first fund, you’re selling a vision and a team,” Hernandez explained.

“People wanted to see that we could actually find deals, win deals, and that those deals could progress — with follow-on rounds of real scale. That validation matters.”

Since Fund I, the firm has built a transatlantic portfolio despite having no permanent US presence, with companies now operating at meaningful scale.

“We’ve proved that we can win deals in both Europe and the US. The portfolio has an aggregate run rate of around a billion dollars and about 4,500 employees. Some of these companies are already very significant businesses.”

Demonstrating a deep, repeatable pipeline was also critical. By the time Fund II launched, the team had already completed seven investments.

“That helped convince new groups that this wasn’t just one good vintage, but a sustainable platform,” shared Hernandez. 

Those new backers include Germany’s B. Braun Generation Group, a large, mission-aligned family office; a Finnish family office; specialist climate investors such as Carbon Equity; and, for the first time, a major US institutional LP.

“Our first US institutional investor is Church Pension Group, a $17.5 billion pension fund for the Episcopalian Church,” Hernandez noted.

“They evaluated us first as a venture fund, and then on impact. They’ve been in venture for a long time and invest in many of the marquee names, but there’s also a strong moral compass behind how they deploy capital.”

With just 34 limited partners in a €210 million fund, ticket sizes are unusually large for the sector. “We only have about 34 LPs,” he said.

“So if you divide 210 by 34, the median cheque is pretty high.”

The importance of backing scalable climate solutions

2150 backs founders scaling economically competitive climate solutions. Fund I portfolio companies include 1Komma5º, Vammo, and Blue Frontier. 

Secondly, 2150 has always focused on the industrial side. According to Hernandez:

“The first thing that never existed is going to be expensive. It’s literally cobbled together by hand. My partner Hernandez  Yolk was in industry before, building stuff in factories. I worked in electronics.

We always asked: at what point does this become price-competitive with what it’s replacing? Is it unit one? It might not be unit 20. Is it unit 100 or 1,000? How do they get there, and how much is it going to cost? Do they need to build their own factory or can they outsource manufacturing?”

A third factor, Hernandez added, was demonstrating that the portfolio’s growth was not driven by equity alone.

For every euro of venture capital raised, the companies have attracted an additional €0.75 in debt or other forms of non-dilutive financing.

“That’s working capital, that’s factory build-out, that’s financing products for customers,” he said.

Unlike pure software startups, capital-intensive climate and industrial technologies must be designed from day one to access these alternative funding sources.

“If you’re doing hard tech, you have to think about this other type of capital from the start,” Hernandez explained. “It can’t just be venture equity.”

That discipline also shaped how the firm positioned itself to investors. Rather than relying on the idea of a “green premium,”

2150 focused on backing technologies that win on fundamental economics. “There was no green premium in 2021,” Hernandez said.

“Nobody was going to pay three times more for something just because it was better for the planet. It had to be cheaper, faster, better, or cheaper to own over time. That’s always been the core focus of the solutions we back.”

Over the last year, Hernandez has seen software for commercial and industrial energy management as the fastest way to scale, noting, “We’ve probably seen two dozen companies in that space, many in Germany.”  

These startups focus on optimising energy use across factories, logistics centres, and cold-storage facilities, often applying AI to fine-tune complex industrial processes.

“It’s about how you use algorithms to make industrial systems run better, or to control robots and machinery more efficiently,” Hernandez explained.

“That’s less the case for areas like cement, cooling hardware, or other deep industrial technologies,” he said.. 2150 often co-invests with firms like Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Energy Impact Partners, who are willing to go down the hard-tech path. 2150 is intentionally a Series A investor. 

Hernandez explained:

“It doesn’t have to be revenue, but it has to be a product we can touch, pilots deployed, maybe some ARR, and most importantly, the team: the PhD, the commercial lead, and often someone who can talk to banks for debt.

Two brilliant minds spinning out of Imperial with something that might commercialise in five years is probably not for us. Our bias is to have an impact today with solutions that can scale today.”

Investing for impact now

2150’s second fund is structured as an Article 9 fund under the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) — meaning every investment must qualify as environmentally sustainable under that strict regulatory regime.  Hernandez explained that it's an EU regulation to avoid greenwashing.

“Article 8 is light green, Article 9 is dark green. Everything you invest in has to have a positive planetary or societal impact.

You have to report annually. There are exclusions: no extractives, no weapons, no significant harm. It limits dual-use technologies. We were one of the first VC funds to choose Article 9, and it matched our mission.”

In terms of sustainability priorities, cooling stands out as one of 2150’s biggest focus areas. By 2035, global energy demand for cooling is expected to exceed that of data centres, making it a critical and fast-growing source of emissions and infrastructure strain.

Water is another major theme, spanning challenges from floods and droughts to contamination by PFAS and microplastics. 

Further, “demand drivers like sustainable aviation fuel mandates, data centre energy costs, carbon pricing, and industrial partnerships are becoming very important,” shared Fernandez. 

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The post Weekly funding round-up! All of the European startup funding rounds we tracked this week (Jan. 19-23) appeared first on EU-Startups.

Norwegian AI hospitality startup Altek AI has raised €423k ($500k) in a pre-Seed round in order to deepen integrations with hotel systems (including PMS and booking engines), expand its autonomous workflows across more channels, and accelerate growth across Scandinavia and Europe.

The round was led by StartupLab; an incubator, accelerator, and early stage investor for Norwegian technology startups.

Altek AI was among the startups selected to take part in the FutureTravel Summit 2025 (a former sister brand to EU-Startups), an industry event that brings together early-stage travel and hospitality technology companies to pitch their solutions to investors and corporate stakeholders.

“We’re not building another tool that just helps staff write replies faster,” said co-founder Jon-Fredrik ‘Joffen’ Hopland. “We’re building AI agents that can handle a large part of guest communication end-to-end and, where possible, act inside hotel systems. We’re building digital employees.”

Recent EU-Startups coverage shows that Altek AI’s pre-Seed round sits within a wider but highly stratified flow of capital into European hospitality and AI-driven hotel operations in 2025–2026.

At the large-cap end, Amsterdam-based Mews raised €255 million in a Series D this month to expand automation, payments and AI-enabled workflows across hotel operations, while Barcelona-based Amenitiz secured €38.9 million in Series B funding to accelerate AI-led product development for independent hotels.

Earlier-stage rounds point to more focused investments in guest communication and operational automation: Vienna-based chatlyn raised €8 million to build an AI-driven guest communication hub, London-based Inntelo AI closed a pre-Seed round of more than €576k for its AI concierge platform, and Amsterdam-based Toppi secured close to €1 million to scale AI solutions for hospitality businesses.

In parallel, broader tech-enabled hospitality models have also attracted substantial capital, such as Madrid-based Room00 Group, which announced up to €400 million to expand its urban hospitality platform across Europe.

Against this backdrop, Altek AI’s pre-Seed round is in line with other sub-€1 million raises focused on automating guest communication through deeper system integrations, while the overall funding disclosed across these deals exceeds approximately €700 million.

“Hospitality has become extremely complex, and guest communication is still largely manual,” said co-founder Kristoffer S. Pedersen. “Guests don’t care whether they contact a hotel via email, web chat or Instagram – they expect fast, accurate answers and that the hotel knows who they are.”

Founded in 2024, Altek AI is building what it describes as an AI operating layer for hotels: autonomous AI agents that handle guest communication across email, web chat, messaging, social channels and phone.

The company began with direct operator research. Before incorporating, the founders interviewed multiple hotels to map where guest communication breaks down in day-to-day operations.

That led to a pilot project in early 2024 with a spa resort outside Oslo, where the team built and tested four different AI solutions in live operations. The pilot validated that hotels adopt automation quickly when it removes repetitive work – especially if it doesn’t add another system staff have to manage.

The company says it now has 37 hotels live across Norway, Sweden and Denmark. As of January 2026, the company is reporting around €119k ($140k) ARR and ~26% month-over-month growth.

Among its users is The Well, a large spa resort in Norway. Altek AI says its agents have handled 23,000+ messages and 16,000+ conversations over the past year, helping reduce response times on routine guest inquiries and speed up handling of more complex requests.

“Altek AI is tackling a global operational challenge with the ambition to build a new infrastructure layer for hotels,” said Jørgen Veiby, Investment Manager at StartupLab. “The team has shown strong execution and an ability to win paying customers early.”

Hotels are facing a perfect storm: more communication channels, higher guest expectations, and staffing constraints. Altek AI argues that guest communication has become an overlooked operational cost centre.

Based on figures from one customer, a mid-sized hotel can handle about 87,000 guest inquiries per year through email and phone alone. At an average of roughly six minutes per inquiry, that equates to more than 8,700 hours annually – before factoring in lost upsell opportunities and service issues caused by slow responses.

Unlike single-channel chatbots or ‘assistive’ AI tools, Altek AI outlines that their approach focuses on autonomous execution through deep integrations – so agents can resolve requests with context, reduce handoffs, and improve personalisation over time.

Altek AI plans to use the funds to deepen integrations with hotel systems, expand automation across the guest journey, and accelerate growth beyond the Nordics.​

The post Oslo-based Altek AI secures €423k to expand autonomous guest communication for hotels across the Nordics appeared first on EU-Startups.

This week, we tracked more than 70 tech funding deals worth over €2.7 billion, and over 10 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.

Alongside the week’s top funding rounds, we’ve also curated the most important industry stories you need to know.

This week saw the launch of EU Inc at the World Economic Forum in Davos in response to months of lobbying and a policy movement backed by over 22,000 signatories, including Europe's leading founders, investors, and the broader startup community.

Its co-initiator, Andreas Klinger, also launched his third investment fund at PROTOTYPE to back startups in robotics, automation, and physical or frontier AI.

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

?? Cloover secures over $1.2B to develop an AI operating system for energy independence

?? Accounting software platform Pennylane raises $200M

??  Language learning edtech Preply hits $1.2B valuation with $150M Series D

??‍?? Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers

?? Tourmanagement BV acquires Beatswitch in live music software deal

??. AB Tasty merges with its Indian rival VWO

??  The American company ClickHouse is acquiring the Berlin-based startup Langfuse

??. IN4 Group makes swoop for Midlands apprenticeship provider

? Interesting moves from investors

? Vanagon Ventures closes €20M Fund I to back deeptech startups

? PROTOTYPE Capital launches Fund III and hits 5.6x returns by backing "crazy ideas"

?  Ananda Impact Ventures secures €73M first close for fifth Core Impact Fund

? Vi Partners marks 25 years with first close of €161M new venture fund

??. Metavallon VC launches €5m “Brain Gain” fund to reverse Greece’s tech talent exodus

?️ In other (important) news

??  The European Commission launches EU Inc., the long-awaited ‘28th regime’ for startups

??. Tech “trailblazers” to get visa reimbursement fees, as government says Britain is "haven of stability" for startups

??. The Estonian Startup Awards mark a milestone night for Estonia’s startup ecosystem

? Recommended reads and listens

??. Profile: The Danish fintech boss who says “no” a lot

??. Building a European digital stack: The alternatives to US big tech you should know

⚡.Soldera’s 10x growth story: building the Stripe for renewable energy

? European tech startups to watch 

?? Medtech Cancilico closes €2.5M round to advance AI in oncology

??  Anzen Industries raises $2.2M for chemical production innovation

??  Allocation Strategy secured £1.6M to advance asset allocation technology

??  Lovinn receives €300,000 investment

Artificial intelligence is increasingly moving beyond single-task tools towards systems that can operate with a higher degree of autonomy. One of the most significant developments in this evolution is agentic AI, a new generation of AI systems designed to pursue goals, make decisions and carry out sequences of actions across multiple tools and data sources with limited human intervention.

This article explores what agentic AI is, why it matters for organisations and policymakers, and how well Europe is positioned to adopt it at scale. Drawing on a new report by the StepUp StartUps Initiative, it examines Europe’s strengths, the structural challenges slowing deployment, and the policy and investment measures needed to support safe, large-scale adoption.

The report shows that while Europe benefits from strong AI talent, a growing investment base and a regulatory framework focused on trust and accountability, significant gaps remain that could limit competitiveness if left unaddressed.

From isolated automation to autonomous systems

Agentic AI represents a step change in how AI systems operate. Unlike traditional models that generate outputs based on predefined inputs, agentic AI can perform sequences of actions across interconnected tools and data sources. These systems are able to break down a goal, identify the required steps, execute them autonomously and refine their behaviour through feedback.

This capability is beginning to reshape sectors where efficiency, accuracy and responsiveness are critical. Early applications can already be seen across public administration, financial services and healthcare, where complex workflows and decision-making processes stand to benefit most from autonomous systems.

Investment momentum and Europe’s AI strengths

Investment trends reflect the growing momentum behind agentic AI. Europe now allocates a higher share of venture capital to agentic AI than the United States, with France and Germany emerging as leading hubs. A broader network of innovation cities, including Amsterdam, Stockholm, Munich and Barcelona, is further strengthening Europe’s role in this space.

Public funders play an important catalytic role within this ecosystem. Organisations such as the European Innovation Council and EIT Health help attract global investors while supporting experimentation and early-stage deployment of agentic AI technologies across Europe.

Structural challenges slowing adoption

Despite these strong foundations, the report highlights three systemic barriers that continue to slow Europe’s ability to scale agentic AI.

First, new regulatory and operational risks are emerging. Multi-step, autonomous actions can blur responsibility across systems and tools, challenging existing compliance frameworks and increasing the need for continuous traceability and meaningful human oversight.

Second, fragmented data and technological dependence remain significant constraints. Only a small share of Europe’s industrial and public-sector data is currently reused, while reliance on non-European cloud providers and hardware limits technological sovereignty.

Third, adoption capacity varies widely across Member States. Differences in digital readiness and supervisory resources, combined with risk-averse implementation cultures, often lead organisations to delay agentic AI pilots due to compliance concerns, reputational risk and the lack of established reference cases.

Recommendations for scaling agentic AI in Europe

Drawing on its analysis, the report puts forward recommendations in three key areas. These include building clear and auditable control points to support safe deployment, accelerating the development of sovereign data and infrastructure foundations, and scaling adoption through flagship use cases in high-value sectors.

The report also emphasises the importance of increasing European participation in agentic AI open-source initiatives and making greater use of public procurement instruments to support adoption.

Policy context and next steps

In October, the European Commission adopted the Apply AI Strategy, aimed at accelerating AI adoption across key industries, particularly among small and medium-sized enterprises. The strategy promotes an AI-first approach, encouraging organisations to consider AI solutions when making strategic and policy decisions.

The Apply AI Strategy forms part of the wider AI Continent Action Plan, which sets Europe’s ambition to become a global leader in trustworthy AI.

The full Agentic AI report is available to download and provides a detailed overview of the findings and policy recommendations for deploying agentic AI safely and at scale across Europe.

The post Agentic AI: Is Europe ready to scale it safely? appeared first on EU-Startups.

On May 7-8, Malta will once again transform into the heart of European innovation as it hosts the 2026 edition of the EU-Startups Summit. Bringing together around 2,500 founders, startup enthusiasts, investors, and corporates, this year’s edition is set to be one of the most ambitious and engaging in the event’s history.

Alongside two stages, strong networking opportunities, and a buzzing exhibition hall, the EU-Startups Summit will also be the place where the finals of our big annual Pitch Competition take place. Fifteen of Europe’s most promising seed and pre-seed startups will be selected out of more than 1,600 applications to pitch on the main stage in front of a high-profile investor jury, and in front of our large audience. Applications are now open!

The Prize Package

The stakes are high! Valued at over €610k! Packed with funding opportunities and credits for great tools and services to supercharge your startup’s growth, this prize could truly transform your entrepreneurial journey. Let’s see what is in it:

• €250k Funding Opportunity with Look AI Ventures. The winner will get fast-tracked and invited to pitch directly in front of Look AI Ventures‘ investment committee, and after the due diligence process, there will be a funding opportunity of up to €250k.
• $220k Funding Opportunity with Techstars. The winner will be fast-tracked for a priority interview to join Techstars. This ensures that the startups’ business plan will be reviewed by the Techstars investment team and the most relevant program managing director. Following a positive due diligence process, the startup will have the opportunity to join a Techstars accelerator programme, including a $220k investment.
• Up to €100k in Cloud Credits from IONOS to support your startups’ hosting and scaling needs with a trusted European cloud provider.
• $24k in credits from Cyscale. The winning startup will receive cloud security credits to monitor and secure its cloud environment, helping to detect misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and potential threats.
• $12k in credits from LUA AI to build an AI agent that helps automate tasks and interactions.
• Gain €12k in value at Make, including €6k in credits(Make Teams, 3.6m credits) and €6k in consultation services, to build no-code automated workflows using Make’s visual automation platform.
• Up to $12k in credits from Notion (6 months free Business Plan with unlimited AI), access to Notion Perks (exclusive discounts on other software) and to Notion Champions Community.
• €9,900 D-ID Video Maker Enterprise plan, 5-user package with one year of free use.
• $8k in Remote credits to support international hiring and help teams access global talent.
• €5k in value for an exhibition table at the EU-Startups Summit 2027, including 3 event tickets, and a 3-year CLUB membership

Who can apply?

• Startups in pre-seed or seed stage
• Less than 3 years old, with no or less than €750K venture capital raised
• Based in Europe (EU or UK, Norway, Switzerland, etc.)

How to Participate

You can apply via this link. After that, we will carefully sift through all of the applications and hand-pick the finalists who will join us on the main stage at this year’s EU-Startups Summit on May 7-8 in Malta, where they will pitch for 3 minutes in front of our jury and a huge audience of investors, media, and startup enthusiasts.

OUR EVENT SPONSORS

Malta Enterprise is Malta’s economic development agency, facilitating economic growth, investment, and innovation by offering a range of support services for local and foreign enterprises setting up a productive presence in Malta. As a key player in Malta’s economic landscape, it contributes to the nation’s prosperity by attracting investments, supporting businesses, and driving innovation, thereby reinforcing Malta’s position as an attractive destination for entrepreneurs and investors alike. Malta Enterprise actively cultivates a vibrant startup ecosystem, playing a pivotal role in fostering a conducive environment for startups and offering tailored support and incentives to empower emerging businesses.

M. Demajo Group is a leading business player in Malta, with a successful history spanning 115 years. The Group’s growth and diversification have resulted in a wide coverage of business sectors through a commitment to long-term results. M. Demajo Group’s workforce is 500 strong, and their various activities have been developed through organic growth, acquisitions, partnerships, and startups. Its strong financial situation and ethical standards, its business reputation, and its renowned track record as a business partner are all key factors in its continued expansion.

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This week saw the  official launch of Cyber Alloy, an independent connecting network organisation designed to bring together companies, governments, knowledge institutions, venture capitalists, and security specialists in a unified effort to build a cyber-resilient ecosystem.

It aims to transform the cybersecurity landscape by harnessing collective intelligence, shared insights, and collaborative innovation. In a world where digital threats evolve at an unprecedented pace, CyberAlloy exists to make organisations stronger together against digital threats by connecting knowledge, people, and technology within a trusted ecosystem. 

It aims to relieve CISOs and their teams by bringing together insight, expertise, and solutions, enabling them to act faster, better, and with greater confidence. By enabling collaboration where it currently stalls, fragmented efforts are transformed into collective defence. “

Cybersecurity is no longer an individual battle; it is a shared mission,” said Aernout Reijmer, CEO of CyberAlloy.

“We envision a connected, secure world where trust and collaboration drive cybersecurity innovation. By building bridges between all levels and sectors, we make cyber resilience accessible and achievable for everyone.”

A defining feature of CyberAlloy is its role as a neutral, independent platform for trusted collaboration.

“Data plays a crucial role in understanding and anticipating cyber threats,” says Lizzy Klijs, Trusted Data Advisor and Chief Data Officer at CyberAlloy.

“When organisations collaborate and responsibly share insights, they gain a clearer, more complete view of risks. 

CyberAlloy creates the governance, trust, and structure needed to turn data and collective intelligence into faster decisions and real-world impact, in which the risk is mitigated faster.”

By enabling organisations to share real-time threat intelligence and align people, processes and technology, CyberAlloy brings together the “good” network—making defence as fast, smart and scalable as attack. 

Taxation is one of the key factors investors consider when deciding where to establish a business. In this context, Europe stands out for offering a range of jurisdictions with competitive corporate tax rates.

At the same time, tax rates are only part of the equation. Investors also look closely at regulatory stability, compliance requirements, transparency, and access to international markets. Many European countries combine these elements with the advantages of the EU single market, creating an attractive environment for both entrepreneurs and established companies. Below, we share a list of some of the most attractive European jurisdictions from a fiscal point of view

Cyprus has a new 15% tax rate

Without a doubt, corporate taxation is one of the main reasons investors from all over the world are attracted to Cyprus, as the 15% rate is one of the lowest on the continent. The rate was recently increased from the previous 12.5% to align the country’s financial policy with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Pillar Two requirements. The legislative changes are broader and include other modifications; however, it is worth noting that Cyprus remains quite appealing from a tax perspective.

Another reason foreign investors choose Cyprus is that it is an English-speaking country. As a result, the conditions on how to incorporate a company in Cyprus are easy to understand. Furthermore, there are plenty of English-speaking specialised service providers, such as BridgeWest Cyprus, which help make communication more effective.

Ireland, which has one of the lowest corporate taxes in Europe

Another appealing country from a taxation point of view is Ireland. The government imposes a 12.5% corporate levy on domestic companies, while offering excellent infrastructure for large enterprises, especially considering that many tech giants have their European headquarters in Ireland.

The favourable tax system is complemented by a simple and fast business setup process. To find more details on forming an Irish company, investors can consult BridgeWest Ireland, an agency specialising in company registration services.

Bulgaria, the champion of low corporate taxes in Europe

Bulgaria stands out as one of the most competitive jurisdictions in Europe from a corporate tax perspective. Businesses operating in the country are subject to a flat 10% tax on profits, making it one of the lowest rates within the EU and particularly attractive for cost-conscious entrepreneurs.

The country also offers relatively low operational costs and access to the EU single market. From 2026 onwards, Bulgaria is set to adopt the euro as its official currency, a move expected to facilitate cross-border trade further and reduce transaction-related complexities for international businesses.

Malta, unique through its taxation system for companies

At first glance, Malta’s standard corporate tax rate of 35% appears high compared to other European jurisdictions. However, this figure does not reflect the country’s effective tax burden for many businesses due to its shareholder refund system.

Under this system, shareholders may claim a refund of up to 6/7 of the tax paid by the company upon dividend distribution, reducing the effective tax rate to approximately 5%. Combined with Malta’s EU membership, robust regulatory framework, and extensive network of double taxation treaties, the incorporation procedure in Malta is more appealing than in some countries with lower nominal corporate tax rates.

Hungary, another country with a tax rate below 10%

Hungary offers one of the lowest corporate tax rates in Europe, applying a flat 9% levy on company profits. This straightforward tax structure has positioned the country as an attractive destination for businesses seeking fiscal efficiency within the EU.

In addition to taxation, Hungary’s central European location provides strong logistical advantages. Companies based in Hungary benefit from proximity to key EU markets, particularly Germany, as well as a well-developed transport infrastructure and a skilled labour force.

Romania, one of the EU countries with low corporate taxes

Romania applies a 16% corporate tax rate on business profits, placing it among the more competitive EU jurisdictions from a fiscal standpoint. The country also offers specific tax regimes and incentives for certain sectors, including IT and research-driven activities.

Beyond taxation, Romania is attractive due to its large and well-educated workforce, particularly in technology and engineering fields. Competitive labour costs and growing digital infrastructure have further strengthened its position as a destination for international companies and outsourcing operations.

Non-EU countries with low taxes for businesses

Several non-EU European countries also offer highly competitive corporate tax rates, making them worth considering despite not being members of the Union. Bosnia and Herzegovina applies a 10% corporate tax rate, while Albania and Montenegro both impose a 15% levy on company profits. North Macedonia also offers a 10% corporate tax rate.

These jurisdictions often appeal to investors seeking low taxation combined with emerging market opportunities. Notably, North Macedonia and Montenegro hold EU candidate status, which may increase their long-term attractiveness for businesses looking to establish an early presence ahead of potential EU accession.

Europe remains a strong option for business incorporation from a taxation perspective. While corporate tax rates play a crucial role, factors such as regulatory stability, market access, and workforce availability also significantly influence the overall attractiveness of each jurisdiction.

The post A closer look at Europe’s low corporate tax jurisdictions (Sponsored) appeared first on EU-Startups.

For more than a decade, Europe has relied on US Big Tech for the core layers of its digital economy — from cloud infrastructure and productivity software to search, social platforms, and, more recently, foundation models. 

But as regulation tightens, geopolitics hardens, trade tensions and tariffs reshape global supply chains, and AI becomes strategic infrastructure, that dependence is no longer seen as just a commercial issue.  

Last week, the European Commission launched a fresh consultation on open source, signalling its ambition for Europe’s developer communities to move beyond simply reinforcing US platforms and instead help build and maintain the core digital infrastructure on which Europe’s long-term technological independence will depend.

Solutions built by Europeans for Europe are not just about innovation but also about representing local values around privacy, sovereignty, resilience, and industrial capability. 

And when it comes to replacing Big Tech, many layers of the stack, Europe already has new and established credible players, ready to deliver efficient, responsible, and privacy-respecting digital services to European users.

I’ve written this as a living guide that will be regularly updated. Many of the companies naturally span more than one category. Feel free to message me to add your company. 

Core internet infrastructure and cloud (alternatives to AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, etc.)

• Crypt.ee (Estonia)
• DNS4EU (Czechia) a privacy-compliant DNS resolver alternative to Google Public DNS and Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 — keeping internet name resolution inside the EU.
• Evroc (Sweden) hyperscale cloud
• Exoscale (Switzerland)
• Hetzner (Germany) 
• IONOS Cloud (Germany) – enterprise + public sector
• Open Telekom Cloud (Germany) Public cloud computing service provided by Deutsche Telekom AG
• OVHcloud  (France) 
• Scaleway (France) 
• UpCloud (Finland)
  

AI & Foundation Models (alternatives to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind and more)

• Aleph Alpha (Germany) – enterprise + government-grade AI
• Dataiku (France)
• DeepL (Germany) – AI language models & translation
• eTranslation (European Union)
• Internxt AI (Spain) conversational AI
• LightOn (France)  enterprise GenAI
• Mistral AI (France) frontier LLMs, open and sovereign
• Noxtua (Germany) Europe's first sovereign Legal AI
• Silo AI (Finland, now part of AMD)
• Tilde (Latvia) an open-source foundational LLM with over 30 billion parameters designed for Baltic and Eastern European languages

Developer and work platforms 

• Capacities (Germany) digital information management 
• Firebase (Armenia/US)
• GitLab (Ukraine-founded, now global)
• Lovable (France) Vibe coding  
• Infobip (Croatia)  CPaaS, messaging, voice, APIs, etc
• Krock.io  (Estonia) A cloud-based media review, creative collaboration, and project management platform for video production teams, agencies, and content creators.
  

Collaboration and Chat (alternatives to Slack, Teams, Zoom etc.)

• Element (UK) decentralised secure messaging
• Jitsi (France) video conferencing
• Nextcloud Talk (Germany)
• Olvid (France) private text messaging)
• Wire (Switzerland) enterprise secure comms

Email & Productivity (alternatives to Gmail, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365)

• Infomaniak (Switzerland) Full productivity and cloud
• Nextcloud (Germany) Self-hosted Workspace alternative
• OnlyOffice (Latvia)
• Proton (Switzerland) Mail, Calendar, Drive, VPN
• Tutanota (Germany) encrypted email

Search & Browsing (alternatives to Google, Chrome etc)

• Brave (EU-founded, now global, privacy browser)
• Ecosia (Germany) – climate-focused search  
• Mojeek (UK)
• Qwant (France)
• Startpage (Netherlands) 
• Vivaldi (Norway)

VPN

• Nym (Switzerland)

Maps and Location (alternatives to Google and Apple Maps)

• OpenStreetMap (EU-led open infrastructure) 
• Organic Maps (Estonia)
  
  

Consumer marketplaces (alternatives to Amazon, Ebay etc. 

• BackMarket preloved consumer electronics 
• Bought (Finland) pre-loved clothing
• BuyCycle (Germany)  e-bikes
• Codressing (Germany) buy, sell, and rent clothing
• Faircado (Germany) A browser extension that automatically suggests better second-hand alternatives when you shop online
• Liki24 (Ukraine) pharmaceutical, health and wellness products
• NOLD (UK) pre-loved clothing 
• OnBuy (UK)  retail marketplace 
• Swappie (Finland) refurbishes and resells iPhones and iPads. 
• Uphavin formerly El Green Mall) Germany ecofriendly marketplace
• Valyuu (The Netherlands) preloved consumer electronics
• Vinted (Lithuania) preloved clothing, goods and more
  
  

Social & Content Platforms (altneratives to X, Meta, YouTube etc)

• Daily motion (France) YouTube alternative 
• Lemmy  Reddit alternative
• Mastodon (Germany)
• Open Vibe (Czechia) 
• PeerTube (France) YouTube alternative  

Consumer hardware

• Nothing (UK) Smartphones, headphones, earbuds and more
• Murena (France) 
• Fairphone (The Netherlands)  Repairable smartphones and accessories

  
  

Speaking of sovereign tech, I also want to do a call out to the open-source world’s most successful government interventions: the German Sovereign Tech Agency. 

Through its Sovereign Tech Fund, a public-sector investment initiative launched in October 2022 and managed by the Agency as a subsidiary of SPRIND under the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, Germany has created a blueprint for how states can strategically support digital sovereignty at the infrastructure layer. 

Financed by the federal government and operating under public procurement law, the fund targets foundational open-source base technologies: the low-level libraries, tools, protocols, and frameworks that underpin most of today’s digital systems. 

In its first two years alone, it invested €23 million across more than 60 projects worldwide, treating open digital infrastructure not as a by-product of innovation, but as a critical public good.

ClearScore, the London-based fintech that provides credit score services, has acquired UK mortgage platform Acre Platforms, as it looks to diversify its offering. The move marks ClearScore’s first move into mortgages and follows its move last year into secured loans with its acquisition of Aro Finance.

London-based ClearScore also acquired Edinburgh-based online personal budgeting service Money Dashboard in 2022. Acre bills itself as an end-to-end mortgage platform for brokers.

ClearScore says the purchase of London-based Acre, which has 47 staff, for an undisclosed amount, will mean it can route mortgage demand from its millions of users into Acre’s mortgage broker ecosystem. ClearScore says it will leverage Acre's tech across its businesses in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Justin Basini, co-founder and CEO of the ClearScore Group, said: "The acquisition allows us to accelerate our mortgage strategy with Acre technology powering our home lending business and helping us deliver compelling new experiences for our users.”

Justus Brown, CEO, Acre, said: "Our data-driven approach has led us to building a platform that’s transformed brokers' businesses in the UK. Joining the ClearScore Group is an exciting next step in our evolution that allows us to accelerate our drive to become the leading tech platform for the mortgage industry."

Comper, a Dutch software intelligence platform helping teams understand, navigate, and collaborate inside complex code landscapes, today announced the close of its pre-Seed round led by Productfirst.

While the round remains undisclosed, co-founder Juan Uijtewaal shared with EU-Startups that “It’s still early for Comper, so we chose not to disclose the amount or set a valuation yet. Together with our investors, we agreed to stay flexible and focus on further developing the product and growing the team, with plans to formalise this in a Seed round at a later stage.”

This recent funding will be put towards expanding Comper’s early access programme and continue working with product-led teams navigating fast-growing codebases.

“I started building Comper for myself as a CTO cockpit, but it turned out to be useful for a lot of people, even non-technical ones. Now, with the acceleration of AI coding, software teams are scaling faster than their ability to understand their own systems. Staying on top of your code landscape is more relevant than ever; our timing couldn’t be better,” says Jouke Waleson, technical co-founder of Comper. “We’re building Comper to remove that black box and give teams shared clarity across their codebases.”

Recent sector rounds point to sustained funding activity across developer tooling, AI-enabled software platforms and internal tools, providing useful context for Comper’s newly announced pre-Seed round.

In 2026, Milan-based Bricks.sh raised €1.6 million at pre-Seed to automate internal admin panels, while Spain’s Fracttal secured €29.8 million to expand its AI-powered maintenance software across Europe and Latin America.

In 2025, Stockholm-based Lovable closed a €281 million Series B to scale its AI-native application-building platform globally, while fellow Swedish startup Ivy Interactive raised €917k at pre-Seed to accelerate internal tool development using AI.

Elsewhere, London-based Ankar secured €17 million to grow its AI-driven IP software, and Prague-based Bandits raised €400k to streamline AI integrations for business workflows.

Taken together, these disclosed rounds represent well over €330 million invested into software, AI and developer-focused platforms across Europe in 2025 and 2026, situating Comper’s undisclosed pre-Seed round within a broader pattern of capital flowing into tools designed to help teams better build, understand and scale complex software systems.

Perry Oostdam, Investor at Productfirst, adds: “After meeting the team and seeing the product, I called Pawel immediately. We didn’t want to miss this opportunity. Comper brings immediate clarity to something every scaling company struggles with; understanding their codebase as a living system. The speed at which this came together reflects the strength of both the product and the founders behind it.”

Founded in 2025 after a year in stealth, Comper is a software intelligence platform that helps teams understand and work inside their codebases with clarity. By turning a company’s codebase into a shared, explorable system, Comper looks to enable better collaboration, faster onboarding, and more confident decision-making.

Comper was founded by Jouke Waleson, ex-Mendix, software engineer, CTO, then fractional CTO; and Juan Uijtewaal, ex-Miro, and experienced COO. Each have previously worked across high-growth companies where codebase complexity directly impacted velocity, quality, and team health.

According to the company, they are rethinking how engineering, product and leadership teams collaborate by making codebases visible, explorable, and shareable across entire organisations. Described as “Figma for codebases,” Comper enables faster onboarding, clearer decision-making, and more resilient software development at scale.

Pawel Smoczyk, former CTO turned investor, shares: “After years of leading engineering teams, I’ve learned that most risk doesn’t come from bad code, but from a lack of shared understanding across the team. What convinced me about Comper is that it addresses this at the root – not with more documentation, but with a clear, shared view of how the software actually works and how teams are structured around it.“

The post Utrecht’s Comper raises pre-Seed round to improve visibility across large codebases – described as “Figma for codebases” appeared first on EU-Startups.