Barespace, a software company focused on the beauty industry, has raised €2.9 million in seed funding, bringing its total external investment to €4.68 million. 

The round was led by Elkstone Ventures, with participation from Dogpatch Labs, Enterprise Ireland, and notable angel investors including Barry Napier (CEO of Cubic Telecom), Rick Kelley (former MD of Meta Ireland), Patrick Walsh (CEO of Dogpatch Labs), and Tom Kennedy (co-founder of Hostelworld).

Founded in 2022, Barespace provides a unified software platform that replaces fragmented apps and manual processes for salons and barbershops. Since launch, it has been adopted by over 260 businesses across hair, barbering, spa, and medical aesthetics, helping teams streamline operations and support growth.

Building on that foundation, Barespace brings scheduling, payments, resource planning, marketing, and analytics together in a single, easy-to-use platform. AI-powered automations save salon owners roughly 10 hours of manual work each week, while integrated card payments and POS streamline cash flow and reduce third-party fees.

Unlike marketplace models, Barespace ensures salons retain full ownership of their data, with direct access to client, transaction, and inventory information, providing transparency with no hidden fees.

Conor Moules, Co-founder and CEO of Barespace, noted that salons today are burdened by fragmented tools, hidden costs, and technology that takes focus away from creativity and client relationships. He added:

At Barespace, we have reimagined the salon experience with one seamless, AI-driven system for bookings, payments, marketing and more. No clutter. No surprises. Just a platform that works in harmony with the passion and skill behind every salon chair. Salons deserve better and that’s exactly what we’re here to deliver.

Barespace announced the appointment of Brian Caulfield, formerly of Molten Ventures, as Chair of the Board, bringing experience in fintech and scaling technology companies.

The investment will support UK expansion and entry into two additional European markets by 2026. The company also plans to expand its team across key functions and continue advancing its AI-driven operating system, designed to integrate core business tools and streamline operations for the hair and beauty sector.

Outlast Fund, a Baltic-Nordic VC fund, has closed its first fund at €21M to invest in Pre-Seed and Seed-stage startups from the region.  The fund is based in Riga and Stockholm, and aims to be the first cheque in backing founders building solutions that are built to last, with initial pre-seed tickets of up to €250,000 and €1.5M Seed rounds.

The fund looks to scour the edges to uncover the most promising founders in the Baltics and Nordics, and is prepared to invest in them at the earliest stages to help them build enduring companies. The fund is particularly keen to keep an eye out for serial entrepreneurs with a proven track record, ready to back them as early as the idea stage. 

Outlast Fund also invests in first-time founders who possess unique and specific insights within their chosen verticals.

However, a trait that they look for in all cases is an obsessive drive to solve their customers’ most pressing problems. Regardless of whether the founders are better suited for building lean teams with the help of angels, microfunds, and syndicates, or if they are eyeing large rounds from the get-go, Outlast Fund is ready to support from the first cheque, rather than jumping in at the middle.

“At Outlast Fund, we believe that the real breakthroughs happen at the edges. This fund is built for the outliers. Rather than competing in the crowded middle, the focus is on being the very first cheque – either assembling a syndicate around an overlooked gem or partnering early with founders chasing global scale,” said Marija Rucevska,

Outlast Fund co-founding GP With Stockholm as home of some of Europe’s most exciting startups at the moment, the decision to bridge the Baltic countries, one of the world’s fastest-growing startup hubs and a veritable treasure trove for future success stories, makes sense to infuse the up-and-coming region with the experience and ambition of Sweden.

"Having spent a decade as an investor collaborating with founders and startups in Stockholm's venture ecosystem, I recognise a remarkable resemblance between Riga's current landscape and the early days of the Stockholm scene,” shared Kristaps Prūsis, Outlast Fund co-founding GP.

Outlast Fund is founded by four GPs with extensive founder, operator, and investor experience. The team is made up of Egita Polanska, operator leveraging investor experience at leading accelerators TechStars (Seattle, USA), and Startup Wise Guys, Marija Rucevska, founder at Helve and TechChill, Mikaela Pedersen, an experienced operator and a founder with an exit under her belt, and Kristaps Prusis, founder with exits and investor who previously founded VNTRS (50 investments, 5 exits). 

While the fund is generalist and industry agnostic, the GPs’ networks and expertise can act as multipliers in some sectors in particular, which they are keen to place a focus on. Those include B2B SaaS, digital health, and fintech, supporting founders who are obsessed with solving real-life problems for their customers, often by leveraging the latest technologies.

The fund has kickstarted its activity by investing in 5 startups even before the fund was closed. Those include:

Handwave (Latvia), a biometric authentication platform,

Convershake (Latvia), an AI-powered SaaS for contact centres,

MIA Health (Norway), a data-driven digital health companion turning heart-rate data into lifelong cardiovascular fitness,

Aggregate Markets (Estonia), a next-generation marketplace for construction aggregates, and

Vitala (Sweden), reimbursable exercise prescriptions for chronic care management.

Outlast Fund is backed by anchor LP ALTUM, the Latvian Development Finance Institution, the European Union’s European Regional Development Fund (ERAF), and various high-net-worth individuals and family funds, including the likes of such operators as Davis Siksnans (CEO of the first Latvian unicorn, Printful), Andrius Biceika (who scaled and built Revolut, member of the Supervisory Council at Revolut Europe Holdings), and Gravity Team (one of the top algorithmic market makers and liquidity providers in the crypto space globally).

Seapoint, a financial platform for European startups, has raised $3 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Frontline Ventures with participation from Tapestry VC and former COOs of Stripe, Revolut, Tide, and Tines.

Seapoint is building a unified financial platform for growing European companies, combining business accounts, corporate cards, payments, and treasury management in one place. Its AI automates time-consuming finance tasks, processing invoices from email, managing payroll, categorising expenses, and generating reports, so work that once took hours happens in the background.

This approach addresses a gap in the market, as mid-market firms with 10 to 250 employees are often too large for consumer-focused neobanks yet not large enough for traditional corporate banking.

In interviews with more than 50 VC-backed founders, Seapoint found that financial stacks are fragmented, manual, and costly, with companies typically using four to six tools, managing multiple bank accounts, relying heavily on accountants, and earning little or no interest on deposits. By bringing these tools together and automating workflows, Seapoint seeks to lower costs, provide greater clarity, and turn savings and interest into additional months of runway.

Seapoint Founder and CEO Sean Mullaney was previously European CIO at Stripe, CTO at AI unicorn Algolia, and has advised the ECB and the Bank of England. He’s joined by former colleagues from Stripe's European payments team and executives from Tide. Many on the team, including Mullaney, are ex-founders who’ve experienced the problem first-hand.

AI can transform finances for scaling companies. Within minutes, Seapoint connects to a company's bank accounts, its accounting software and email. At which point we can give them a real-time view of their business, automate bookkeeping, pay invoices and manage payroll. 
Seapoint is broader and more powerful than traditional banking. And it puts founders back in control of their finances,

commented Mulllaney.

After nine months in development, the company has rolled out a private beta already in use by dozens of VC-backed startups. The startups across the UK and Europe can sign up for the beta program at seapoint.co.

Today, fintech investment firm Shapers announces the successful launch of $75 million fund I.  

The news coincides with a milestone for one of its portfolio companies, Finary, which has just closed a €25 million Series B. I have to say it’s rare that an investor shares the limelight in this way, and it says a lot about the founders of Shapers and the community focus they have in the startup ecosystem. 

Philippe Teixeira da Mota is the co-founder of Shapers and an investor focused on fintech, insurtech, and high-growth technology companies across Europe and beyond. I spoke to him to learn more. 

From the growth grind to independence

da Mota began his career in investment banking at J.P. Morgan before moving into venture capital, building a track record of backing category-defining companies. He was previously the first employee at Hedosophia where he spent 9 years investing in fintech, opening offices around the world and experiencing heavy success.

However, da Mota admits that the more the company grew,  the less fun he was having. He explained:

“My role became more managerial than pure investing, which is what I really like. At one point, I was on the board of 21 companies — which, looking back, was way too much. That’s one of the problems in this industry.”

This was a big motivation for da Mota to start his own firm: 

“I’d learned the craft, enjoyed it, but I wanted something smaller, nimbler, and more focused rather than a bigger, fast-scaling firm. I felt I had the experience, the network, and that it was the right time, both for me and for the ecosystem,” he shared. 

The other motivation was personal — his co-founder is his brother Thomas, who spent the majority of his career at Bain. They’ve already worked together on different companies and investments, but both felt it was the right time in their lives to work side by side. 

“So that’s how it came together — we wanted to build a startup, except in this case, the “startup” is a fund where we get to work with other incredible entrepreneurs on a daily basis.”

Finary’s founder thought like a media operator

But back to Finary. Da Mota revealed that he first backed Mounir Laggoune — CEO of Finary — as an angel investor in 2020, when all he had was an MVP, “and today I’m doubling down again as he raises a €25 million Series B.”

Da Mota was immediately drawn to Finary “because of his energy and vision to democratise access to a private-banking-like experience.”

“Mounir also understood better than anyone that to succeed, he needed not only to build a fintech company, but also a media company and a differentiated, scalable customer acquisition strategy.  

I wrote an angel cheque after that first meeting and later led the Series A while at Hedosophia.”

According to da Mota, he remains a huge believer in Mounir’s vision, and AI now “makes it clearer than ever that the Finary team will succeed. 

“And the results speak for themselves: Finary is now one of Europe’s fastest growing fintechs with 600k users, 3x YoY revenue growth and a unique media-led growth playbook.”

Shapers: do one thing, do it well 

Shapers is a hyper-focused and concentrated fund. 

“We do one thing only, and we hope to do it really well: early-stage fintech investing in Europe, shared da Mota.“That’s my bread and butter. It’s where I have the strongest network and where we see a huge opportunity."

"We’re relatively more bullish on B2B than B2C — a lot of B2C has already been built in Europe. But our definition of FinTech is broad, so we can look at both, and we don’t shy away from less trendy sectors. 

We can invest from pre-seed through Series B, but our sweet spot is seed and Series A.”

Shapers’ check sizes typically range from $500,000 up to $4–5 million. da Mota admits, “with a $75 million fund, we’re relatively small compared to many of our peers, so we’re very collaborative — we like to co-invest and bring something additional to the table.”

In terms of sourcing, Shapers has two main approaches. One is thematic, in-house work:

“We’re a team of three, and one of us, who joined from a consulting background, leads a lot of that. We look at exciting spaces, then within those, identify promising teams and actively pursue them."

The other is more opportunistic — following great founders via personal connections. 

The “Shapers Club” advantage

da Mota sees its LP base as one of the unique things about Shapers — over 60 fintech founders and operators are investors in the fund, including from the likes of Qonto, Wise, N26, Bitpanda or Affirm, some large global banks and “GPs of some of the VC funds we respect the most,” like Creandum, Hedosophia, Local Globe, Motive Partners or Valar Ventures, alongside more traditional and institutional limited partners.

Da Mota likes to call his network the Shapers Club.

“It's one of the things we invest the most in, as it brings so much value to our portfolio. Out of the eight deals we’ve closed so far, three came directly from them. So, we work extremely closely with that network, as well as with other VCs.”

So far, the UK and France have been Shapers' most active market, but the firm has also completed deals in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. And, because Shapers is a specialised fund, it often partners with generalist or US funds that tap into local knowledge.

Funding the next decade’s giants

According to da Mota, Shapers is looking for “the best founders who can build the giants of the next decade.” In the last 18 months Shapers has made 8 investments:

Deblock, Diligent, Chift, Ember (already acquired by Starling), Ferovinum, Finary, and Klearly – plus one still unannounced. The firm is always on the lookout for exceptional talent across the fintech ecosystem and is particularly interested in: 

• Wealth management,
• Payments,
• Regtech — “particularly with the rise of AI,”
• Crypto and stablecoins.
  

— The firm has already invested in all three of the first categories, and is actively spending time in crypto and stablecoins. When it comes to stablecoins, da Mota asserts that few people saw how fast it would move:

“With regulatory shifts in the US and big moves like Stripe’s acquisition of Bridge, the space has been validated in a big way, drawing in lots of great talent and capital.”

While he concedes that some dismiss it as regulatory arbitrage, “there’s real value in the speed and cost savings, especially if you stay on-chain."

"On-ramps and off-ramps are still expensive, but companies in this space are growing phenomenally quickly. At Shapers, we backed Deblock in the crypto space, and stablecoins are a big part of the thesis there.”

Beyond equal strength in teams

But ultimately, when it comes to portfolio companies, according to da Mota, it’s about backing phenomenal talent. In larger founding teams of three or four, there’s usually one or two exceptional individuals. 

“We don’t stress if not everyone is equally strong. What matters is whether the CEO or key founder has what it takes. We spend a lot of time trying to understand what drives them — is it vision, a chip on the shoulder, money, fame, power? That’s critical.”

Further, the industry they’re tackling needs to be “directionally correct — big enough to create one giant, or so large it can support multiple large winners, and the team must be capable of attracting the right talent, because these companies succeed or fail based on who they can bring in."

Shapers’ launch comes at a moment when Europe’s fintech ecosystem is maturing, but still hungry for specialist backers who combine deep networks with founder-first conviction.

da Mota’s journey — from helping scale Hedosophia to starting a leaner, more focused fund with his brother — mirrors the kind of founder story he now looks to invest in: driven, nimble, and ambitious.

Lead image: Shapers, together with its portfolio companies, LPs, and extended network.

Oslo-based Sonair, a sensing technology company, has raised $6 million from a group of existing and new international investors, including Copenhagen-based Scale Capital and Norway’s state-backed Investinor, with continued support from RunwayFBU (part of the Aker group), SINTEF, and ProVenture.

Sonair is a sensing technology company focused on making autonomous machines safer, smarter, and more cost-effective. Its patented ADAR (acoustic detection and ranging) sensor, the first safe 3D ultrasonic sensor for robots, delivers precise, real-time 3D spatial awareness to support safe operation in shared human–machine environments. The technology originates from SINTEF, a leading Norwegian research institute.

For robots to operate alongside humans, safety has to be built in from the start. ADAR gives manufacturers a straightforward and more affordable way to achieve that,

said Knut Sandven, CEO and co-founder of Sonair.

Sonair’s patented ultrasound technology is designed to provide precise 3D perception at a lower cost than LiDAR. Following pilots with more than 30 companies, the initial focus is on autonomous mobile robots in logistics and manufacturing, a segment projected to reach $15.6 billion by 2030.

Growing warehouse automation, labour constraints, and evolving safety requirements are increasing demand for systems that enable people and robots to operate in close proximity. ADAR combines safe 3D object detection, full vertical field of view, and low computational needs to support safer robot navigation without adding significant complexity or cost.

Sandven added:

If a robot can’t operate safely around people, it won’t be widely adopted. We’re giving manufacturers a tool they can trust, one that helps them meet the highest safety standards without slowing down innovation.

One of Sonair’s customers, Fuji Corporation in Japan, is developing autonomous robots for use in retail settings. In Europe, another customer is building cleaning robots for commercial buildings. In both applications, safety is a key requirement since the robots are designed to operate in close proximity to people.

Following its launch earlier this year, ADAR is now shipping to manufacturers across Asia, Europe, and North America. The new funding will support expansion into global target markets and efforts to establish a new category in robotic perception.

For decades, legal teams have been under-resourced and over-relied upon. Stuck reviewing the same clauses, answering the same questions, and redlining the same contracts again and again. It worked, until it didn’t. Businesses move too fast now. Risk environments shift too quickly. And legal teams are still too small. AI is finally breaking the deadlock. We are entering the age of autonomous legal operations where contracts are no longer slow, manual blockers, but self-executing workflows powered by intelligent agents.

From legal gatekeepers to trust managers

In this new model, lawyers stop being gatekeepers and become architects. The job isn’t to touch every contract. It’s to define the system that governs how contracts move. Think playbooks, clause libraries, risk thresholds, escalation triggers, and fallback positions. All pre-set. All auditable. The lawyer becomes a Trust Manager. They design the protocols. The AI does the heavy lifting. Business teams can move fast without breaking things.

Contract agents are already here. Imagine a sales team starts a deal. They answer a few smart prompts, and the system drafts the contract, checks it against internal policies, recommends changes, and flags risk. All before legal even gets involved. Unless there’s an edge case or red flag, no human review is needed. That doesn’t just save time. It creates consistency, lowers spend, and scales compliance without scaling headcount.

What does it mean for business?

For startups and scaleups, the benefits are massive:

• Faster deal cycles: Commercial teams can create, edit, and agree on contracts in minutes, not days.
• Lower legal spend: Reduce reliance on external counsel for routine work.
• Scalable compliance: Every document is governed by the same rules, automatically.
• Empowered teams: Non-lawyers can confidently self-serve.

Even large companies are rethinking their legal departments around this model.

Suddenly, having a lean legal team isn’t a problem. It’s a strategic advantage. We’re already seeing forward-thinking companies operate with just one in-house lawyer because that one lawyer is empowered by an army of AI agents and a rules-based system they control.

So what’s next? We’re heading toward systems that learn with every contract they touch. AI agents that remember how your company negotiates and evolve your legal playbook in real time. Legal operations that benchmark themselves continuously against laws, market standards, and internal policy without needing to be told. This is not just automation. It’s compounding intelligence. The result is a trust layer that becomes safer and smarter over time, creating a legal infrastructure that improves without manual intervention.

The “One Lawyer Company”

This vision leads to what we call the One Lawyer Company. Not because it sounds futuristic, but because it is the most efficient way to operate. That lawyer is not drowning in admin or buried in markup. They are orchestrating the system. They are guiding strategy, refining guardrails, and stepping in only when the business truly needs judgment. The AI handles the rest. It’s not about having fewer lawyers. It’s about unlocking the full potential of the ones you already have.

This isn’t about replacing lawyers. It’s about putting them in the role they were always meant to play. High-trust decision-makers focused on strategy, governance, and judgment. Not copy-pasting clauses. As one GC told us, “I don’t want to review every contract. I want to empower the business to do that safely without me.” Thanks to AI, that’s no longer a vision for the future. It’s what’s happening now.

The post The future of legal work isn’t legal work appeared first on EU-Startups.

One of the leading voices in the UK tech scene today hailed a flurry of US AI investment commitments to the UK, calling it a “much-needed step change” in UK and US relations but warned the UK was in danger of becoming AI "users, not makers".

Brent Hoberman, the co-founder of lastminute.com and executive chairman of Founders Forum Group, made the comments as Nvidia and Microsoft become the latest US tech giants to pledge significant AI investments into the UK.

Posting on LinkedIn, Hoberman said: “Make no mistake, we need these kinds of deals with our biggest tech giants. This is a significant investment, and the impact will be felt.

“But here’s the next challenge...how we make sure UK startups and scaleups actually benefit from these deals?”

He said in AI, the UK was at risk of becoming “users, not makers", saying the UK should take lessons from Europe, pointing to France backing Mistral and Germany backing Helsing. He said the UK procurement system still favoured the same global platforms.

Hoberman was echoing comments made in a FT comment piece by Mike Bracken, the UK government's former chief digital and data officer.

Hoberman urged UK private and public partnerships to prioritise talent and deploy capital at scale.

He added: “The real opportunity is in what we build next. Data centres yes, but also new national champions."

Meanwhile, hailing Nvidia's investment into the UK, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said: “The United Kingdom is building the infrastructure for the AI industrial revolution."

His comments came as Nvidia and Microsoft became the latest US tech giants to pledge major AI investments into the UK.

US chip giant Nvidia said that, along with its partners NScale, CoreWeave and others, it was investing up to £11bn in UK AI factories, deploying 120,000 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs, which Nvidia said represented the largest infrastructure rollout in the UK’s history. 

The infrastructure will be behind initiatives like OpenAI’s Stargate UK.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is investing up to $30bn in the UK’s AI infrastructure from 2025 to 2028.

This includes $15 billion in capital expenditures to build out the UK’s cloud and AI infrastructure and will be used to help build the UK’s biggest supercomputer, in partnership with Nscale.

Billions of AI investment in the UK have been pledged by US tech firms, coinciding with the visit of President Trump.
Investments include OpenAI, Nscale and Nvidia announcing a UK version of Stargate, a sovereign AI infrastructure version of OpenAI’s mammoth Stargate project.

The UK and US have also inked a “tech prosperity deal” focused on developing the fastest-growing technologies like AI, quantum and nuclear.

Professor Sebastian Weidt, CEO and co-founder, Universal Quantum, said: “It is encouraging to see quantum computing recognised at the highest levels of government. International collaboration will be vital in accelerating progress on one of the defining technologies of our age, yet Britain must not allow itself to become dependent on foreign partners for access to it.

“History reminds us that alliances cannot substitute for sovereign capability. The UK has already established itself as a global leader in quantum computing, a field that will underpin the resilience of our economy and the security of our critical infrastructure.

"Government now has a clear opportunity to safeguard sovereignty by ensuring that homegrown companies receive the long-term support required to remain both independent and globally competitive.”

Kreios Space, a Spanish SpaceTech startup headquartered in Vigo, has secured €8 million in what marks the largest European investment to date in very low Earth orbit (VLEO) satellite technology.

The Seed round was led by the NATO Innovation Fund and Berlin-based JOIN Capital, with participation from Grow Venture Partners, Xesgalicia, and Tasivia Global. The funding will enable the Spanish startup to advance its proprietary air-breathing plasma propulsion system and launch its first two satellites into VLEO.

“We are not just building satellites, we are opening up an orbit that was long considered impossible,” said Adrián Senar, CEO and Co-founder of Kreios Space. “Very low Earth orbit offers more accurate vision, faster connectivity and greater independence in space. With this funding, we are going to demonstrate our technology in orbit and place both Europe and Spain at the forefront of this emerging domain.” (Translated)

Founded in 2021 by Adrián Senar, Jan Mataró, Francisco Boira, Adrià Barceló, Max Amer and Francisco Bosch, Kreios Space is innovating a new propulsion system known as Air-Breathing Electric Propulsion (ABEP). The system draws in atmospheric air and converts it into plasma fuel, allowing satellites to maintain low orbits for extended periods without carrying onboard propellant – a key limitation of existing low-altitude systems.

This investment builds on a previous €2.3 million raised in 2024 and sets the company on course to test its ABEP engine in orbit for the first time. The demonstration will be followed by commercial deployments focused on both Earth observation and broadband connectivity constellations.

These capabilities are seen as increasingly critical for defence, climate monitoring, and disaster response.

Operating satellites at altitudes between 150 and 400 kilometres – closer than any commercial satellite systems currently in use – offers the promise of three times higher image resolution and the potential for direct-to-device broadband connectivity without bulky antennas.

“Kreios’ technology represents a decisive leap toward unlocking the next frontier of very low Earth orbit,” noted David Ordoñez, Senior Associate at the NATO Innovation Fund. “By bringing satellites closer to Earth, they enable high-resolution imaging and direct-to-device broadband at an entirely new level – capabilities vital for European security.” (Translated)

The move comes at a time when Europe is intensifying efforts to reduce its dependence on non-European space infrastructure.

With ABEP-powered satellites positioned mere hundreds of kilometres above the surface, applications ranging from wildfire detection to infrastructure monitoring become more accurate and cost-effective. Meanwhile, the potential for resilient, sovereign broadband communications could transform connectivity for remote regions, emergency response, and military operations.

“Europe cannot afford to be left out of the next orbital economy,” stated Tobias Schirmer, Founding Partner at JOIN Capital. “What excites us about Kreios is the strategic significance it holds for Europe combined with the readiness of the technology. VLEO has long been a research focus; now it’s ready for real-world deployment.” (Translated)

From its origins as a lab concept in 2021, Kreios Space has grown into a 17-person team attracting talent from organisations including Thales, JAXA, and the European Space Agency (ESA). The firm has also received support from the Spanish CDTI and the Spanish Space Agency (AEE) under the National Space Technology Programme, reinforcing the Spain’s commitment to advancing its orbital economy.

The post Spain’s Kreios Space secures €8 million to bring satellites closer to Earth and strengthen European strategic autonomy appeared first on EU-Startups.

Decentralised AI is no longer just the preserve of Web3 dreamers. It has become one of Europe’s most significant bets in shaping a future that balances technological progress with privacy, sovereignty and democratic accountability.

Rather than entrusting centralised servers owned by US or Chinese giants, decentralised AI distributes intelligence across a mesh of nodes, letting data remain local and under the control of its rightful owners.

In Europe, this approach resonates deeply. GDPR has set a global benchmark for data rights and regulators are doubling down on platform accountability. Against this backdrop, decentralised AI is not a curiosity; it is a necessity. The question is who will lead the charge.

A field of rising contenders

Across the continent, a growing constellation of startups are experimenting with different aspects of decentralised AI.

SingularityNET, with roots in the Netherlands, is building a decentralised marketplace where developers publish AI services on-chain. Its tokenised economy lowers entry barriers for smaller providers and challenges the centralised control of Big Tech, making it a key player in Europe’s effort to democratise AI.

Flower Labs in Germany leads in federated learning, enabling model training across distributed data without sharing it. This helps European organisations innovate while staying compliant with GDPR and other privacy regulations, making Flower a cornerstone for privacy-preserving AI.

Bitfount, from the UK, focuses on healthcare and life sciences, letting researchers analyse sensitive data without moving it. This accelerates clinical research while protecting patient privacy, showing how decentralised AI can unlock value in highly regulated sectors.

Neuron, also UK-based, builds infrastructure for machine-to-machine communication using blockchain and AI. Its technology underpins secure, decentralised networks for IoT and automation, supporting Europe’s goal of open and sovereign digital infrastructure.

Europe's reference point

Gaia has become one of several reference points for decentralised AI in Europe. While its rivals focus on discrete verticals such as factories, marketplaces, chatbots and mesh infrastructure - Gaia offers a comprehensive and modular platform that unites these approaches into a coherent system.

While the previously mentioned companies are important, each moves the field forward in their own unique way. But none as yet offers the breadth and cohesion that Gaia has begun to deliver. It provides the orchestration layer that turns fragmented innovation into a functional ecosystem.

Recently profiled in Forbes, Gaia is delivering building blocks across compute, identity, data rights and payments. These modules allow developers to assemble AI agents with precision and flexibility, a critical differentiator in a landscape often constrained by siloed tools.

From pilot projects to market traction

What sets Gaia apart is its movement from concept to deployment. Its technology is already being piloted by European telcos to run predictive maintenance and edge-based personalisation across tower clusters. These real-world implementations demonstrate that decentralised AI is not just possible, but scalable.

“At Gaia, we’re building Europe’s decentralised AI backbone - scalable, modular and sovereign. Our mission is simple: prove that AI can be powerful and accountable, uniting innovation with trust so Europe leads not by copying Silicon Valley, but by setting its own standard,” said Shashank Sripada, Co-Founder, Gaia.

Addressing the hard problems

Decentralised AI is difficult. Latency, adversarial attacks and governance incentives are not abstract risks, they are daily realities. Gaia’s statistical consensus and validation system addresses synchronisation across thousands of nodes. Its secure multiparty computation reduces the risk of poisoned models. And its token-credit system provides transparent incentives that scale better than ad hoc reputation systems.

Rivals are grappling with these issues individually, often with elegant but partial solutions. Gaia’s achievement is that it brings these answers into a unified, production-ready stack.

Why it matters for Europe

Europe’s competitive advantage will not be built by cloning Silicon Valley. It will be defined by technologies that enshrine transparency, privacy, and collaboration. This coherence matters. Without it, Europe risks a splintered patchwork of promising projects that never scale beyond their niches. Gaia offers a focal point for Europe’s ambitions: a decentralised AI ecosystem that is usable, compliant and capable of achieving critical mass.

A constellation with a centre

The story of decentralised AI in Europe is not a zero-sum contest. But the centre of gravity is Gaia, which is betting on a decentralised future. In reality, it is more than a gamble. With modular infrastructure, regulatory foresight and real-world traction, Gaia is a conductor in a symphony of decentralised innovation.

And in that orchestra, the rivals may play their instruments with virtuosity, but for now Gaia is holding the baton. Let the band play on.

Nosh.bio, a Berlin-based startup developing clean-label protein from non-GMO fungi, is launching Koji-based hybrid mince in collaboration with Speisemanufaktur Adlershof in Berlin to mark the first public showcase of its hybrid mince product.

This week, the hybrid mince is featured in the cafeteria's menu in a variety of familiar dishes — including burgers, meatballs, and lasagna, showing both its adaptability in different culinary formats and its suitability for large-scale food production, with meals available to the public.

There's no shortage of startups trying to reinvent meat – from Project Eaden to Umiami, Enough, and Mycorena to various cell-cultivated (lab-grown) meats. But it's an industry where startups often struggle to bring their products to market successfully.  

From reBuy to rethinking meat: Why Tim Fronzek co-founded Nosh.bio

I visited Nosh.bio to try their ingredients firsthand and speak with co-founder and CEO Tim Fronzek. In the process, I not only sampled some impressive food but also came away with valuable insights — almost a playbook — on what it takes to succeed in the alt-protein space.

Fronzek brings over 15 years of management experience, having served in various C-Suite roles, notably co-founding reBuy.com, which achieved €200 million in net sales with a team of 600 employees.

He admits that while the work was rewarding, he decided to move on after realising he was more of an entrepreneur than a manager.  During a year off to spend time with his family, he reflected on what to do next, asking himself, "Where can I have the biggest impact?"

After screening different industries by footprint and scalability, food emerged as the most urgent and impactful, inspired by a friend in the alternative protein space who highlighted the profound impact of food choices on the environment.

In collaboration with Brazilian microbiologist Felipe Lino, Fronzek co-founded Nosh.bio in early 2022. 

The company aims to deliver a scalable ingredient solution that enables manufacturers to create affordable, nutritious and delicious food in an environmentally friendly way. 

And here's how it's setting itself up for commercial success, with some great insights for others in the foodtech space:

Do extensive market research from the get-go 

Before founding Nosh.bio, Fronzek and Lino spent nearly a year speaking with over 100 experts — scientists, corporates, startups, investors, and consumers.  Most households won't pay a premium or sacrifice taste, so the challenge was clear: create affordable, mass-market-ready, sustainable alternatives.

Think commercially, not just social and environmental impact

While most alt-protein startups focus on plant substitutes as their end product, such as veggie nuggets or patties, Nosh.bio opted for a different approach, creating hybrid products that combine meat and alternative proteins to allow flexitarians and omnivores to reduce their meat consumption without eliminating it entirely.  

While a vegetarian himself, Fronzek shared, "Flexitarians and omnivores are a much larger market than strict vegans, so blending allows us to maximise impact quickly."

According to Fronzek:

"Our goal isn't to eliminate meat but to reduce its quantity and improve quality. That's the change Nosh.bio is working to enable.

Nosh. bio's hybrid mince has been developed from the outset to match and surpass pure beef in key areas: cheaper than beef, it retains the flavour and mouthfeel with improved juiciness and delivers 30 per cent less cholesterol, increased dietary fibre, and high levels of protein. "

A Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of Nosh. bio's protein found that it uses 99 per cent less land and water than beef protein and produces 90 per cent less CO2. 

In Europe, nine major supermarket chains have pledged to achieve a 50:50 plant-animal protein ratio by 2030. With many consumers reluctant to adopt a 100% plant-based diet, blended formats like Nosh are gaining popularity and offer a realistic path to achieving these goals.

Strategic ingredient decisions leads to speed

Nosh.bio made a strategic decision to work with a microorganism that isn't classified as a novel food in Europe, allowing it to be used without going through the lengthy regulatory approval process that can otherwise take years.

Specifically, Nosh.bio uses the microorganism Koji, known in Japan for sake, miso, and soy sauce. It creates a high-protein ingredient for blended meat products. 

The protein itself is derived from the fermentation of the mycelium of non-GMO Koji fungi, grown using only water and natural inputs. It's highly versatile with applications ranging from meat and seafood to confectionery, dairy and bakery products, meaning there are endless opportunities. 

The fermentation process uses agricultural side-streams as feedstock. It can be carried out in existing fermentation facilities (such as a former brewery in Dresden) to enable rapid scaling while keeping downstream prices low. Its use meant the company could commercialise quickly without waiting years for regulatory approvals.

But, Fronzek admits, it also meant no patents on the strain itself, which put off some investors: 

"Fortunately, in the end, we found the right backers who valued speed to market."

Disrupt the supply chain 

While many in the alt-protein space focus on B2C products, such as patties that you can purchase at the supermarket, Nosh.bio took a different approach: B2B.

Nosh.bio partners with food manufacturers to overcome the taste, texture, and price challenges, especially in hybrid and plant-based applications. With a focus on industrial readiness and cost-effective scale-up, the team is helping accelerate the shift toward more sustainable, consumer-ready products.

According to Fronzek:

"We wanted focus. Building a consumer brand requires total attention and cash, and so does developing deep tech. Trying to do both risks failure.

By being B2B, we let established producers with existing production, retail networks, and brands use our ingredient. That way, we can concentrate on technology and impact while leveraging their reach."

Make change happen from within   

Nosh.bio joins companies such as Enough, Mosa Meat, and the Vegetarian Butcher, who have all received investment from the meat industry.  According to Fronzek, the company has received minor criticism for this, contending that while sustainability opens doors, "the real selling points are taste, texture, health benefits, and better margins." 

"The reality is food startups can't disrupt without working with established players. They control distribution, regulation, and consumer trust.

If we want real impact, we must collaborate with them. The biggest meat producer in Europe is already both a customer and an investor. We're preparing retail launches in Germany with their support."

A dual approach to scale

Nosh.bio has developed a dual approach to scaling production. Its contract manufacturing partner can already produce up to 10 tons per week, with the capacity to scale further.

At the same time, Nosh.bio is retrofitting a decommissioned brewery in Germany for its own production. This strategy spreads risk, lowers capital expenditure, and provides greater flexibility. Further, both the CMO and the company's largest customer are also shareholders, ensuring aligned interests.

Create a great-tasting product

I like fermented food, hailing from the land of Vegemite — a sandwich spread created from beer sidestreams — so I was curious to see what Nosh-bio tastes like, when combined with beef mince.

Honestly, it's as you might expect, a nice umami addition, tasty and hearty enough that the reduced meat isn't missed, and interesting enough that people would want to eat it again. 

Great science isn’t enough in alt-protein

In conclusion, I asked Fronzek what advice he would give to startups in the alt-protein space.  He contends, 

"Fundraising is unavoidable, and in food tech, investors want to see a clear path to commercialisation," he said. "Great science isn't enough.

Many promising startups fail because they can't bring products to market.

Our products were ready in terms of taste and texture two years ago, but scaling from the lab to industrial production and navigating slow B2B adoption cycles took far longer than I expected.

My advice: focus on building superior products, not just incremental improvements."

From here, Nosh.bio aims to expand into retail with co-branded products and scaling food service partnerships.  Fronzek asserts: 

"While chefs appreciate how easily our ingredient fits into their menus, reaching retail shelves is key to making a broader impact."

Barcelona-based investment firm Suma Capital has closed its ClimateTech-focused fund, SC Net Zero Ventures I, securing €210 million to back scale-ups advancing industrial decarbonisation across Europe.

This final amount exceeds the fund’s original €150 million target by 40% and aims to bridge the notorious ‘scale-up gap’ for climate technologies – particularly those tackling high-emission sectors.

Alongside Repsol, the European Investment Fund (EIF) has committed capital, as have several Spanish public institutions including ICO, CDTI, ICF, IVF and Seed Bizkaia.

“With this final close, we reinforce our role as a reference partner for companies leading industrial decarbonisation in Europe. Through SC Venture, we support climate scale-ups with validated technology and commercial traction, driving their expansion and their long-term environmental and competitive impact,” said Natalia Ruiz, Partner at Suma Capital.

Founded in 2007, Suma Capital has built a track record of investing in sustainability and infrastructure. With a team spread across Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, and Milan, the firm is steadily positioning itself as a pan-European reference in sustainable investment.

Through SC Net Zero Ventures I, the firm is doubling down on its capital-with-purpose model – pursuing both financial returns and tangible, traceable climate impact.

The fund’s alignment with the EU’s 2050 climate neutrality targets further underlines its relevance, as governments and corporates across Europe race to decarbonise the continent’s industrial base.

“At Repsol we believe alliances are essential to accelerate the energy transition. Our participation as anchor investor in SC Net Zero Ventures I reinforces the ambition to promote technologies with real industrial application, capable of generating measurable environmental impact and delivering long-term competitiveness. Collaboration with Suma Capital is an example of how capital and industry can move forward together towards the 2035 goals,” added Gema García, Director of Repsol Corporate Venturing.

Managed under the firm’s SC Venture strategy, SC Net Zero Ventures I will focus on startups with validated technology and commercial traction operating in key industrial and B2B verticals. These include low-carbon mobility, electrification of industrial processes, renewable energy storage, carbon utilisation, and hydrogen innovation.

Notably, the fund has already begun deploying capital into a quartet of European ClimateTech ventures:

• HESSTEC (energy storage)
• Corinex (energy grid digitalisation)
• H2SITE (green hydrogen)
• V2C (smart EV charging).

With capital now in hand, SC Net Zero Ventures I looks to become a vital lever in accelerating Europe’s transition to a greener, more competitive economy – one scale-up at a time.

The post Suma Capital’s €210 million ClimateTech fund turns up the heat on industrial decarbonisation and tackles the “scale-up gap” appeared first on EU-Startups.

EvoluteIQ, Stockholm’s native AI platform, today announced the completion of a €44 million minority growth capital round to accelerate its global expansion and cement its leadership in enterprise-grade Agentic AI led automation space.

The round was led by Baird Capital.

“We are privileged to partner with Baird Capital for EvoluteIQ’s next phase as a company,” said Sameet Gupte, Co-founder and Chief Executive at EvoluteIQ. “The Agentic AI market represents a fundamental shift from reactive automation to proactive, intelligent orchestration. Baird Capital’s expertise in scaling technology companies, network, and global resources will help us accelerate our journey as we focus on driving transformative growth through outcome driven agentic models.”

Founded in 2019, EvoluteIQ aims to transform the automation of complex business process through its platform (EIQ), underpinned by its proprietary Agentic Mesh Architecture {aMa}, and the AI Workbench.

The platform reportedly delivers measurable outcomes across mission-critical operations in banking and financial services, insurance, healthcare, telecommunications, and manufacturing by orchestrating complete end-to-end business workflows instead of the traditional point-solution approach.

Their platform unifies process orchestration, data integration, and GenAI-driven decision-making into one Low-Code/No Code/Pro Code environment to enable end-to-end automation of processes. Designed for complex, regulated enterprises, EIQ reportedly eliminates fragmented toolchains by enabling organisations to design, deploy, and scale AI-enabled, end-to-end business processes at speed, security, and cost efficiency.

EvoluteIQ says their differentiated approach addresses the enterprise market’s most pressing need: moving beyond fragmented AI tools to comprehensive, autonomous business process management.

Supported by Baird Capital’s global platform, EvoluteIQ plans to scale its established business globally, bolstered by new additions to the Board of Directors: Baird Capital’s Daina Spedding and Mark Donnelly.

“The investment demonstrates our excitement for AI and reshaping automation,” said Daina Spedding, Director in Baird Capital’s Global Private Equity team. “EvoluteIQ has earned its place alongside other automation trailblazers, bringing deep expertise and addressing a critical AI need across the enterprises they serve. We are delighted to welcome EvoluteIQ into Baird Capital’s portfolio, and we look forward to working with the team to grow the business.”

The post Swedish AI platform EvoluteIQ raises €44 million round for the global expansion of its Agentic AI appeared first on EU-Startups.

Workday, Inc., the American enterprise AI platform for managing people, money, and agents, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Stockholm’s Sana, an AI company building the next generation of enterprise knowledge tools, for approximately €928 million.

According to the companies, Sana will power a new Workday experience – where knowledge, data, action, and learning come together as one and create the new front door for work.

“Our focus has always been on creating intuitive AI tools that improve how people learn and work,” said Joel Hellermark, Founder and CEO of Sana. “I’m excited to bring these tools to 75 million Workday users and partner with Workday’s iconic team to launch a new era of superintelligence for work.”

Since its founding in 2016, Sana has been innovating AI for work, developing intuitive tools that “elevate humans with AI“. Sana’s core products, Sana Learn and Sana Agents, have already served over one million users across hundreds of enterprises.

In addition to powering a new Workday experience, Sana will continue to develop Sana Learn and Sana Agents. As part of Workday, Sana will be able to accelerate its growth and deliver even more innovation to its customers at scale.

“Sana’s team, AI-native approach, and beautiful design perfectly align with our vision to reimagine the future of work,” said Gerrit Kazmaier, president, Product & Technology, Workday. “This will make Workday the new front door for work, delivering a proactive, personalized, and intelligent experience that unlocks unmatched AI capabilities for the workplace.”

With Sana, Workday says they will create the work experience of the future – helping people get their work done and empower employees with AI agents that can:

• Find answers, information and files by instantly searching across a company’s data sources, including Workday, Google Drive, SharePoint, and Office365.
• Act proactively by anticipating needs, summarising insights, and assisting with projects.
• Create presentations, documents, and dashboards, even full learning courses, based on company knowledge.
• Automate repetitive tasks and routine work by executing workflows end-to-end.

For example, hiring managers will be able to generate tailored dashboards to monitor their live recruitment pipeline, automate the end-to-end performance review process, and receive proactive suggestions on onboarding new hires based on real-time performance data.

With Sana’s no-code agent builder, Sana Agents, users can create AI agents to automate repetitive tasks and act proactively on their behalf. These agents streamline workflows while helping ensure that every action remains secure and compliant with company policies through the Workday Agent System of Record. For instance, a leading American manufacturer achieved up to 95% time savings with Sana Agents; a multinational industrial tech company achieved 90% productivity gains; and a global law firm saw over 60% time savings and 200% increased efficiency.

Sana’s AI-native learning platform, Sana Learn, combines learning management, content creation, course generation, and personalised tutoring through specialised learning agents.  For example, a global electric vehicle manufacturer boosted learning engagement by 275%; a leading European installation distributor with 7,500 employees cut course creation time from four months to four days; and a global fintech company went from three weeks to three hours for content creation.

Sana Learn will complement Workday Learning with hyper-personalised skill building capabilities and AI-native content creation at scale. Enhanced by AI-driven internal mobility with Workday Talent Optimisation and HiredScore, this learning suite will aim to help employees build skills faster and help enable organizations to scale personalised learning experiences, supporting employee reskilling and upskilling initiatives.

“Sana pioneered the world of intelligent agents and AI-native learning at scale,” said Josh Bersin, global industry analyst and CEO of The Josh Bersin Company and a Sana customer. “I think Sana’s AI agent and learning system gives Workday customers the opportunity to completely transform the way their employees learn, grow, and operate as superworkers in this new age of AI.”

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Workday’s fiscal year 2026, ending January 31, 2026, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

The post Workday acquires Swedish startup Sana in a €928 million AI deal appeared first on EU-Startups.

EvoluteIQ, a native AI platform, secured $53 million in minority growth capital from Baird Capital to accelerate global expansion and strengthen its leadership in enterprise-grade agentic AI automation. Baird Capital’s Daina Spedding and Mark Donnelly will join the EvoluteIQ Board of Directors.

Founded in 2019, EvoluteIQ develops the EIQ platform for automating complex business processes. Built on its Agentic Mesh Architecture (aMa) and an AI Workbench, EIQ orchestrates end-to-end workflows across sectors such as banking and financial services, insurance, healthcare, telecommunications, and manufacturing.

The AI-native platform unifies process orchestration, data integration, and generative-AI–assisted decisioning in a single Low-Code/No-Code/Pro-Code environment, replacing fragmented toolchains.

Designed for complex, regulated organisations, EIQ enables teams to design, deploy, and scale AI-enabled business processes with greater speed, security, and cost efficiency. The platform is used by some Fortune 500 enterprises to automate workflows and improve operational resilience.

Sameet Gupte, Co-founder and Chief Executive at EvoluteIQ, commented:

The Agentic AI market represents a fundamental shift from reactive automation to proactive, intelligent orchestration.
Baird Capital’s expertise in scaling technology companies, network, and global resources will help us accelerate our journey as we focus on driving transformative growth through outcome driven agentic models.

This funding will enable the company to accelerate its global expansion and strengthen its leadership in enterprise-grade agentic AI–driven automation.

Terra One, a German developer of grid-scale battery storage systems, has secured up to €150 million in mezzanine financing from Aviva Investors. Alongside equity and project financing, these funds will enable Terra One to invest up to €750 million in new storage assets.

This will enable the company to build up a total capacity of around 3 GWh – which is enough to meet the electricity needs of approximately 20% of all German households for one hour. Germany has approximately 41 million households (as of 2024/2025).

“This financing is a milestone for Terra One and for the energy transition in Europe,” said Tony Schumacher, Founder and CEO of Terra One. “With Aviva Investors at our side, we can accelerate the expansion of large-scale battery storage significantly. In doing so, we are making a decisive contribution to security of supply and making Europe’s energy system more independent and resilient. At the same time, the hybrid financing structure gives us the flexibility and scalability we need to establish Terra One as one of the leading independent storage developers in Europe.”

Founded in 2022, Terra One develops, finances, and operates grid-scale battery storage projects that provide flexibility to power systems increasingly reliant on renewable energy. Its proprietary machine-learning trading platform optimises asset performance across wholesale and ancillary markets, enabling secure, affordable, and sustainable power for Europe.

Their algorithmic power trading platform uses a machine-learning architecture to operate their batteries autonomously.

“Energy storage is the backbone of a carbon-neutral future,” added Adam Irwin, Director  Infrastructure Equity at Aviva Investors. “We are investing in Terra One because the company has proven its ability to deliver projects quickly, reliably, and to the highest standards. Together, we aim to take the European storage market to the next level and accelerate the transformation of Europe’s energy systems.”

As the energy transition progresses, market volatility and the strain on electricity grids are increasing. Battery storage systems are crucial for integrating renewable energies, stabilising grids and strengthening European energy independence.

Terra One combines project expertise, innovative financing structures and an AI-based trading platform. This makes the company a leading partner for grid operators, banks and investors in the dynamically growing storage market.

The post Berlin’s Terra One raises €150 million to lead energy transition in Europe with battery storage portfolio appeared first on EU-Startups.