OpenAI for Startups is OpenAI’s programme designed to help early-stage companies build and scale products using AI. Rather than just offering model access, it focuses on removing practical barriers for founders by combining technical support, resources, and credits to accelerate product development.

In practice, that means pairing access to OpenAI’s models with people, infrastructure, and hands-on support designed to help teams move faster from prototype to production.

Startups in the programme can receive OpenAI API credits, higher rate limits, and access to hands-on guidance from OpenAI’s technical teams. Those backed by participating VC partners can unlock additional benefits, including enhanced support and invitations to founder-focused events.

I spoke with Mark Minera, Head of Startups at OpenAI, and Romain Huet, Head of Developer Experience, at Slush in Helsinki, to learn more about their support for startups and the biggest trends.

Mark Minera, who leads startups at OpenAI, heads a global team working closely with companies building on top of the OpenAI platform.  VC partnerships are an extension of startup support.

The team also collaborates extensively with venture capital funds through a dedicated VC partnerships function, focused on providing the right resources and hands-on support to the startups they back

OpenAI also hosts events and VC summits in places like London, San Francisco, where it brings together its leadership, product teams, and startup teams to share what it's building, what patterns it's seeing, and to hear feedback directly. The focus, Minera says, is on giving founders practical leverage — from infrastructure and credits to direct time with OpenAI’s solutions and engineering teams. 

"We focus on resourcing portfolio companies — credits, technical support, and access to our solutions and engineering teams.” 

According to Minera, VCs are understandably most interested in roadmaps but also assurance that OpenAI is closely partnered with their scaling companies.

“There’s a lot of interest in understanding what we’re seeing, what we’re building, and we try to share those insights with VCs so they can better support their companies,” shared Minera.

“Increasingly, they’re interested in ChatGPT as a distribution channel. With hundreds of millions of weekly users, there’s real interest in embedding startup experiences directly into that ecosystem. Commerce is another emerging area of interest.”

Overall, the company’s work with VCs and startups shapes how OpenAI evaluates startups

OpenAI’s litmus test for startups

Despite OpenAI’s scale and resources, Minera is quick to stress that the startup-facing team itself is still small. He admits that while the company is big in terms of funding,“We still feel like babies.”

“My team is about 45 people globally. I’m based in San Francisco. We started there, but now we’re in Europe and Asia as well.”

For Minera, a great startup, from our perspective, is pushing the frontier of how they’re using OpenAI’s models to build product. 

“We work with what we call AI-native companies — where there’s an LLM at the core of the product. If you took it out, the product wouldn’t work anymore. That’s the litmus test.

Within that, we want companies that are really operating at the bleeding edge. We work across many verticals — coding, customer support, legal tech, healthcare — and also newer companies taking entirely different approaches.”

Being at that edge provides a feedback loop. Startups help the team understand how models need to improve to support specific tasks such as legal workflows, live conversation, or sales automation. 

“That feedback accelerates our own pace of development.”

In return, model improvements are usually very closely tied to product-market fit for those companies. 

“It becomes self-reinforcing,” shared Minera. 

As more startups build on the same underlying models, Huet argues that defensibility — not just technical capability — has become the defining challenge for founders.

The real moat in AI startups: deep problem understanding

When it comes to defensibility and category leadership, Huet argues that access to powerful models is no longer enough. He contends that in this wave of startups, there are a lot of competitors emerging in the same categories. “ Legal tech is a good example — I could name a dozen companies off the top of my head.”

So what differentiates them? Part of it is product. 

“There’s real skill in designing a great product, even without AI. User experience matters enormously," explained Huet.

“With AI specifically, how you use the models matters a lot. Some teams have a much deeper understanding of how models are built — how to prompt better, how to provide context, what’s in distribution and what isn’t. That AI engineering sophistication really shows.”

Speed still matters.

As Minera puts it:

“There’s a joke that speed is the only moat in the application layer right now — and there’s some truth to it. Teams that ship fast, get in front of customers quickly, and react in real time have a genuine edge.”

Romain Huet agrees, but argues that speed alone is no longer a differentiator.

“Speed has almost become table stakes. Builders can now go from an idea to a working feature incredibly fast,” he says.

"What really matters is an obsession with the problem you’re solving. Unless you’ve spent dozens — even hundreds — of hours deeply understanding a customer's pain point, it’s extremely hard to solve it well, even with AI.”

The strongest founders, Huet adds, are those who combine sharp AI intuition with deep customer obsession — using speed not as a shortcut, but as a force multiplier.

The importance of understanding LLMs

In terms of the teams that break through, according to Minera, most of the teams OpenAI sees doing really well have very strong engineering backgrounds that sometimes border on research. 

“They’re not doing foundation model research, but they understand how models work. There’s a new skill set here that’s different from building a web app.

Some teams experiment with fine-tuning — not as a first step, but when it makes sense. That requires understanding data composition, overfitting, and evaluation. That’s a different discipline than hooking up a database to compute.”

How startups shape OpenAI’s roadmap

Startups play a critical role in OpenAI’s feedback loop. “Startups often provide reproducible examples that our research teams can investigate and build evaluations around,” says Minera.

“There’s an old adage in programming languages: the ones people complain about are the ones people use. Models are similar. Even very successful companies can point to many things they want improved.”

That feedback feeds directly into OpenAI’s research priorities, which span everything from highly technical issues — such as improving tool-calling accuracy for AI agents — to more visible product capabilities. One area of sustained investment is coding.

“Coding isn’t one thing,” Minera explains. “It includes code review, generation, schema adherence, language specificity, and more. We’re constantly iterating across all of those dimensions.”

Romain Huet notes how quickly the role of AI in software development has evolved.“Coding has changed dramatically in the last few months. Where models once helped with snippets or light tasks, they now function more like teammates — taking on large, complex work for hours and returning complete outputs,” he says.

“That’s why we’re continuing to release models optimised specifically for coding.”

According to Minera, “This cycle is different from previous tech waves. When we release something new, it can materially change a startup’s roadmap or an investor’s thesis. So those conversations are critical.”

Why pivots have become easier 

I’ve seen more startup pivots in the last 18 months than ever before. Why now? According to Huet, pivoting used to be extremely costly — six to twelve months of runway. Now, with AI tools, teams can test new directions in days or weeks:

“Founders can explore new customer segments or problems very quickly. Accelerator teams are pivoting multiple times in a short period, which would have been unthinkable a few years ago.”

Part of pivoting is open expanding to new markets. In terms of emerging areas, Huet asserts that multimodality and speech-to-speech are still underused. 

“The quality is now there, and pricing has dropped enough for startups to build viable products. As AI moves into the physical world — robots, devices, hardware — voice will likely become the primary interface.”

OpenAI is learning from Europe

According to Minera, some of the most exciting startups we work with are coming out of Europe. 

“The ecosystem is vibrant, funding is increasing, and many European companies are category leaders. Several European startups have taught us the most about how our models are used in production.”

Huet revealed:

“I built my first company in Paris 17 years ago, when the startup ecosystem barely existed. Today, Europe has talent, capital, and experience. What excites me isn’t comparing valuations to the US — it’s the trajectory. Five years ago, many of these companies couldn’t have been built here. Now they can.”

Ultimately, Minera wants startups to know “We’re here to work with startups, and we want feedback. Benchmarks matter, but what matters more is how models perform in real products. That’s how we learn and improve.” Huet stresses,

"The pace of change isn’t slowing down — it’s accelerating. Founders who stay curious and master the tools will have a real edge. And we’re happy to help.”

Document automation company PandaDoc has raised €5 million from Índico Capital Partners. Founded in 2013 by Mikita Mikado (CEO) and Serge Barysiuk (CTO), PandaDoc began in response to inefficiencies in document processes, particularly for smaller businesses. It later shifted its focus to document automation software, expanded its operations, and grew internationally. In September 2021, PandaDoc reached unicorn status with a valuation of more than $1 billion.

Today, PandaDoc provides tools for creating, sending, signing, and managing business documents digitally. Its platform supports workflows such as proposals, contracts, quotes, invoicing, and payments, and is used by teams including sales, operations, HR, legal, and revenue to streamline document-related processes.

PandaDoc integrates with a range of CRM, payment, and productivity tools and is designed to replace manual, paper-based document handling with digital workflows.

PandaDoc has an office in Lisbon that serves as a European hub for the company, making Portugal an important base for its operations.

We're thrilled to partner with Índico Capital Partners as we enter our next chapter of growth. Their deep expertise in AI and track record of scaling technology companies makes them the ideal partner to help us accelerate our AI innovation,

said Mikita Mikado, Co-founder and CEO of PandaDoc.

The company said the investment will support its next phase of AI-focused product development and team growth in Lisbon, drawing on Índico Capital Partners’ experience in artificial intelligence and scaling companies.

Naarden-based Founteyn, an all-in-one beverage system, has raised €19.3 million ($22.8 million) for its oversubscribed Series A round to develop its chilling, carbonisation, and capsule based beverage dispensing.

The round drew investment from APG, on behalf of ABP, alongside Flying Fish and Leysern Aquacore.

Boyd Mulder, Founder and CEO of Founteyn, says: “This funding validates that the beverage industry is ready for a stir up. Our patented system delivers freshly made drinks with no compromise on taste, while providing an alternative to ordering, stocking, and storing cans and bottles. As a sustainable option that cuts single-use packaging by up to 80%, we’re helping businesses simplify operations and serve people better.”

In the context of European beverage and FoodTech funding in 2025, Founteyn’s Series A stands out as one of the larger single rounds in the sector this year.

Other recent funding activity reported by EU-Startups points to a more fragmented landscape: London-based Goodrays raised €5.7 million to scale its CBD-infused drinks brand; Amsterdam-based Aquablu secured €7 million to expand its smart water dispenser platform for workplaces; and UK natural energy drink company MISSION raised €2.3 million to grow distribution and develop its functional drinks portfolio.

Taken together, these announcements suggest approximately €13 million swimming in the ecosystem this year.

“With support from APG, on behalf of ABP, and partnerships with PepsiCo and EuroCaps, we’re transforming how beverage brands reach consumers and how businesses serve & delight their employees and customers. We’re also in active discussions with forward-thinking partners as we build toward our Series B in late 2026,” adds Mulder.

Founded in 2015, Founteyn is innovating a new way of drinking in beverage delivery with a  sustainable capsule system combining taste, variety and convenience for away from home locations.

Founteyn brews hot, cold, still and sparkling drinks in less than 15 seconds through the capsule system, reportedly reducing weight, volume and packaging of single-serve drinks by up to 80% and CO2 emissions by more than 50%.

This is backed by notable partnerships with leading brands:

• The Commercial Partnership with Sodastream and PepsiCo will accelerate Founteyn’s mission to redefine the way people drink by providing access to a wide variety of popular beverage brands.
• Founteyn’s Business Partner and Co-Packer Euro-Caps – a leader in private label capsules, manufacturing 3 million Nespresso and 1 million Dolce Gusto compatible capsules daily – will ensure manufacturing and filling of capsules at scale at the desired product quality.
• Founteyn is also partnering with Culligan Quench for its first pilot launch distribution, drawing on Culligan Quench’s 85 years of water technology expertise and global reach to strengthen the start‑up’s initial market entry.

Targeting the global office and SME beverage delivery services market (market size for coffee-focused delivery and broader beverage categories in 2025 ranges from approximately €1.7 billion ($2 billion) to €4.5 billion ($5.4 billion)), Founteyn aims to address growing corporate sustainability mandates and workspace efficiency demands.

The company will launch initially in the US, the world’s largest soft drinks market, and anticipates opening Series B funding in late 2026/early 2027 to accelerate global expansion.

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German neobank N26 has appointed a British executive as its new CEO, on the same day it was hit with new sanctions by the German financial regulator relating to compliance issues. Banking executive Mike Dargan will take over as CEO of N26, one of Europe’s most valuable fintechs, in April next year, replacing co-founder and co-CEO Maximilian Tayenthal and interim co-CEO Marcus Mosen.

The appointment of UBS executive Dargan effectively draws to a close the leadership of Tayenthal and Valentin Stalf, who founded the challenger bank in 2013. The pair served as its co-CEOs until Stalf stood down as co-CEO earlier this year, following a reported dispute with some of N26’s investors over the handling of regulatory issues by the founders.

Dargan, who has held senior roles at Merrill Lynch and Standard Chartered, will stand down from his current role as group chief operations and technology officer at UBS at the end of this year. Dargan said: “This marks the beginning of something new for me – a new opportunity, a new bank and a refreshed business model. N26 has been a pioneer in digital banking with a strong foundation and a forward-looking strategy.”

Tayenthal said: “I am confident to step back and put N26 in the very capable hands of Mike. Beyond his extensive experience combining banking, technology and digital transformation, he is also fully committed to the N26 vision.”

The appointment of Dargan came on the same day that N26, which has over five million customers across Europe, was hit by new sanctions by BaFin. These included N26 being banned from lending new mortgages in the Netherlands and BaFin appointing a special monitor to oversee N26's compliance activities, after the regulator found compliance shortcomings.

The intervention followed previous sanctions imposed by the German regulator on N26, including a €9.2m fine in 2024 relating to late filings of suspected money laundering.

Tayenthal will leave the management board at the end of the year and Stalf has moved to be a member of the N26 supervisory board.

The butterfly effect is a well-known pillar in chaos theory and its premise that the simple flapping of a butterfly’s wings in China can cause hurricanes in Texas has had huge cultural influence.

It is cited in any number of films including Back To The Future and, more poignantly for this article, AI’s favourite (and lazy) touchpoint Terminator.

One of my lowlights this year was attending a UK House of Lords session where the presentation continually cited Arnold Schwarzenegger's film as why the UK was leading the way in AI. More like AI for Idiots.

However, there are other places outside the UK Parliament where more enlightened people are setting the standards for the future of AI (and humanity for that matter) with frameworks that will resonate far from where they were announced… not least in Europe.

Europe has spent the past decade wrestling with the contradictions of its tech ambitions: yearning to lead in innovation while regulating with an iron fist, chasing Silicon Valley while side-eyeing it and insisting on “strategic autonomy” while relying on US cloud providers and Asian hardware.

So when a new global declaration on AI emerges, this time via Seoul in South Korea, it’s worth asking not just what it means for global governance, but what it means for Europe that desperately wants a seat at the top table of AI rule-making.

The Seoul Statement, announced last week at the inaugural International (AI standards) Summit in South Korea, is the latest in a string of international overtures attempting to corral AI into something safer, fairer and more widely beneficial.

In front of a personally invited audience of 300 people, it framed AI as ‘an opportunity to advance the well-being of humanity’ and emphasised an ‘inclusive, open, sustainable, fair, safe, and secure digital future for all’.

Vimal Mahendru is the IEC Vice-President and Chair of the Standardization Management Board and was in Seoul to witness the announcement.

“It is always about people, about making technology work for all humanity, and not the other way around. Amidst rapid technological developments, the Seoul Statement aims to safeguard our shared future by placing the aspirations of all humans at the centre of AI governance and standards development,” he said.

Europe, meet the world (finally)

For once, the global AI conversation sounded very… European. The Statement stressed socio-technical contexts, how AI behaves not in the lab, but out in the wild, interacting with people, institutions and societies. It’s as if the world has been reading EU white papers on long-haul flights and decided they make sense after all.

But this isn’t just a pat on the back for Europe’s regulatory evangelists. The Seoul Statement also lands at a moment when the EU is staring down the reality that rules alone won’t build AI champions. Europe is still over-indexed on governance, under-indexed on compute, and chronically under-funded compared to the US and China. Aligning with global standards matters, but only if Europe can engage from a position of technological strength, not moral superiority alone.

Standards: the Brussels effect meets the Seoul effect?

The Statement gives international standards pride of place, arguing that they ‘build trust, facilitate digital cooperation, enable interoperability across borders’ and strengthen regulatory collaboration. What’s interesting is that Seoul now positions standards as a tool not just for safety or accountability, but for development and inclusion.

As Mahendru continues:

Building on the work of the Council of Europe's framework on Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law, the statement highlights the role that international standards play as part of a holistic approach to AI governance. “By making the connection between technical standards and human rights in this way, we have taken an important and necessary decisive step towards ensuring that transformative technologies like AI work for the good of society.

Europe should pay attention to Mahendru’s words. Because while it has historically exported rules outward, AI is exposing its own internal divides: between data-rich and data-poor industries. Between countries with powerful research ecosystems such as France and Germany and those still digitising basic services in parts of Southern and Eastern Europe, between startups leveraging frontier models and SMEs still figuring out cloud migration.

If the EU wants to remain relevant, it must consider standards not as a cudgel, but as connective tissue, something that keeps Europe interoperable with the rest of the world, prevents digital isolation and ensures European AI remains compatible with global markets.

The multistakeholder moment

The Statement emphasises building a ‘dynamic multistakeholder community’ for AI standards, one that is ‘inclusive, collaborative and consensus-based’.

That may sound obvious, but it’s a subtle rebuke to the more top-down approaches emerging elsewhere. Europe has always prided itself on ‘multistakeholderism’, even if it sometimes forgets to invite stakeholders who aren’t regulators.

The Seoul framing presents an opportunity for the bloc to rebalance: to ensure industry, academia, civil society, and, crucially, small companies and scale-ups have real influence in shaping how AI is governed internationally.

Because while European corporations are well represented in standard-setting bodies, its startups often are not, and yet it’s the startups that will feel the effects most acutely.

The global stage is shifting. Europe can’t just spectate.

The Seoul Statement is part of a broader geopolitical rebalancing in AI. Leadership is no longer purely a transatlantic affair. South Korea, Japan, Singapore, the UAE and others are increasingly setting the pace, not just in technology, but in how AI is governed.

Europe cannot assume that its frameworks will automatically become global defaults. It must engage deliberately, diplomatically and with humility.

It must show up to standards bodies early, not late. It must ensure its safety narratives are backed by technical expertise, not just legislative brilliance. And it must invest in the infrastructure and talent that make participation credible.

The bottom line

The Seoul Statement echoes Europe’s values, but it also exposes Europe’s vulnerabilities. Alignment on paper is easy; influence in practice is earned.

If Europe wants to remain the moral conscience of AI while also becoming a technological heavyweight, it must treat international cooperation not as a validation of what it has already done, but as a challenge to do more… and to do it faster.

Because the future of AI will be shaped by those who build it, those who govern it and those who set the standards that sit between building and governing. Seoul is inviting Europe to help lead that middle ground.

Repsense, a Lithuanian dual-use data analytics company specialising in information tracking and threat detection, has closed its €2 million Seed round in order to further develop its dual-use information analytics capabilities.

The round was closed with a final €1.1 million investment led by Tensor Ventures and Seed Starter, CVC of Česká spořitelna bank, alongside existing investors BSV Ventures and Coinvest Capital. The round was completed in tranches throughout 2025.

“The information environment has become a frontline for governments, businesses, and institutions alike. We built our platform to give decision-makers the tools to see what’s coming and respond faster,” says Mykolas Katkus, CEO of Repsense.

In the wider European context for data analytics, cybersecurity and threat-detection technologies in 2025, EU-Startups has reported several adjacent funding rounds alongside Repsense’s Seed round.

In Belgium, XFA raised €1.5 million to expand its cybersecurity platform addressing hybrid and AI-native workplace risks, while Denmark-based Moxso secured €4.7 million to scale its AI-driven security awareness and human-risk intelligence platform. Switzerland has also seen activity in adjacent areas, with Soverli raising €2.2 million for sovereign smartphone security and Qala AG attracting €1.7 million to develop enterprise data governance capabilities for AI-driven organisations. In the UK, London-based Egregious closed a €936k pre-Seed round focused on defending against AI misuse.

Taken together, these 2025 rounds represent approximately €11 million invested across Europe into analytics-led security, governance and threat-detection technologies, situating Repsense’s Lithuanian Seed round within a geographically diverse but consistent funding landscape.

“Repsense technology shows how quickly DeepTech is penetrating several areas at once. It is a powerful information defense tool, but also a whole new space for advanced marketers,” says Ondřej Lipold, partner at Tensor Ventures. “Information is an increasingly powerful asset, which is why we are delighted to be able to make such a significant investment.”

Repsense was founded in 2022 by communications specialist Mykolas Katkus and former Palantir engineer Alfredas Chmieliauskas. The company also built a narrative DNA forensics platform and began accelerating growth in 2025 when tech sales expert Liudvikas Andriulis joined it.

The company’s flagship Havel platform enables clients to track, detect, and predict the spread and impact of information across social and traditional media. Havel is currently deployed by NATO’s Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, multiple European government institutions, and commercial clients globally.

Repsense is also expanding its capabilities in short-form algorithmic content analysis and object-based recognition technology for emerging media formats. These capabilities are increasingly used to track and streamline disinformation, support influencer marketing, and safeguard brand reputations.

“At Seed Starter, we actively seek DeepTech companies whose innovations can be applied not only in security and defence, but also across the banking and FinTech sectors,” said Tomáš Milota, CEO of Seed Starter ČS, member of the Česká spořitelna group. “Repsense is building capabilities that will matter far beyond today’s information challenges, and we are excited to support their growth.”

Repsense was also included in our 2024 article 10 promising Lithuanian startups you should keep an eye on in 2024.

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The European agrifood entrepreneurial ecosystem is rapidly expanding: innovative agrifood startups are becoming increasingly numerous, particularly in sectors such as agtech, functional foods, biotech, and alternative proteins. 

The European Union’s AgriFood Industrial Ecosystem generates around €603 billion in value add and supports 16 million jobs. The food and beverage industry alone accounts for €227 billion and employs 4.6 million people, with more than 99 per cent of companies being SMEs.

However, the ecosystem must transform to become more sustainable and competitive. This places pressure not only on local startups and scaleup but also those seeking to enter the European market.

Europe’s agrifood transformation demands innovation — and startups need a clear path to scale

The pressure to reduce environmental impact, adopt digital technologies, and respond to increasingly conscious consumers is pushing the entire chain—from farmers to distributors — towards innovation.

But at the same time, production costs in Europe (labour, energy, regulatory compliance) are high, posing a significant barrier for new companies seeking to scale.  Moreover, climate change adds uncertainty around agricultural productivity and the reliability of raw materials, demanding more resilient and circular models. 

Another major challenge is market fragmentation, as each European country has its own regulations, distribution channels, consumption habits, and food-specific rules. For a startup aiming to sell across multiple EU markets, adapting to each context can be costly and time-consuming. 

To address these barriers, the European Union and organisations such as EIT Food have launched programmes to support startups in the agrifood sector. 

There is strong institutional support to strengthen European competitiveness in food innovation. EU programs and projects targeting startups and scaleups — especially those led by EIT Food — are helping drive a more sustainable, resilient and tech-enabled agrifood value chain. As well as a strong foundation for local startups,

Europe represents a highly attractive market for internationalisation, as its diverse economies,  consumers, and regulations offer numerous opportunities for startups to scale beyond their local markets. 

For a startup, expanding into new European markets not only means increasing sales but also gaining access to strategic partners (distributors, retailers, and companies within the food value chain),  optimising the supply chain, and diversifying risks. 

In response to the opportunity for internationalisation, EIT Food has developed a tailored program called Sales Booster to help agrifood startups that are established in their home country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and want to expand into new markets within the European region.

Inside Sales Booster: EIT Food’s pathway for agrifood startups to enter new markets

Sales Booster offers selected startups personalised support tailored to their growth stage, current needs, and geographical focus.

Participants gain not only technical support but also recognition and visibility within the European food innovation ecosystem.

The program is run through collective activities, such as online workshops and meetings with key industry players to facilitate networking, as well as one-to-one sessions. 

Each startup has a dedicated Growth Advisor, expert guidance, and resources to design its expansion plan and ultimately develop an internationalisation plan for its target country or countries. 

There’s also access to EIT Food’s wider network. Startups can request meetings with industry and business experts from across the ecosystem, as well as draw on support from an experienced pool of coaches.

At the end of the programme, startups are expected to present a concrete action plan for their expansion and have established connections with experts across the European agrifood ecosystem. 

Startups powered by EIT Food’s Sales Booster

Here are some of the standout startups that have taken part in the programme. Many of them are pushing the boundaries in agrifood innovation — from biotech and agritech to functional foods.  They illustrate not only the breadth of solutions supported by Sales Booster, but also how the programme helps founders turn those innovations into solid expansion plans for new European markets.

By backing these companies, EIT Food is both accelerating innovation and strengthening a more connected, resilient and sustainable agrifood system across Europe:

• Agritrack SA: a platform to automate post-harvest value chains, reducing losses and improving traceability. 
• Cynomys: IoT solutions to monitor environments (such as farms), enabling more sustainable resource management and improved animal welfare. 
• EarthAutomations: autonomous robots for agricultural tasks, facilitating automation even on smaller farms.  • BuzzUp: a startup that has developed a programme that “translates” the sound of bees to help farmers understand their condition and improve pollination, directly impacting productivity.
• Agricolus: a digital platform for precision agriculture, with satellite maps, sensors, and predictive tools to optimise crops.
• Rebread transforms leftover bread into valuable ingredients, promoting a circular economy in the food industry. 

Who can apply for EIT Food’s Sales Booster?

Sales Booster targets two groups of innovative startups: agrifood ventures aligned with EIT Food’s mission areas, and non-agrifood startups whose solutions can be applied within the agrifood sector. 

To be eligible, companies must be registered in one of the designated RIS countries, offer an innovative or impactful solution relevant to the agrifood industry, and aim to expand within EIT Food’s geographic footprint. 

Ideal applicants are those with meaningful early sales traction, a consolidated home market, and a dedicated sales or business development team ready to scale internationally.

Mindoo, a Belgian platform deploying safe and governed agentic workflows in healthcare, announced today that it has secured €5 million in Seed financing to provide hospitals and practices with a scalable AI workforce layer that performs routine tasks and alleviates pressure.

The round was raised from 6DC, Syndicate One and a group of strategic angel investors.

“We learned very quickly that workflows in healthcare cannot be adapted to a product. The product has to adapt to existing workflows,” said Gauthier Willemse, CEO and co-founder. “That is why Mindoo lets hospital teams configure and run their own agents, so automation fits naturally into how they already work.”

In 2025, EU-Startups has reported several funding rounds across European healthcare and AI-enabled workflow automation, providing context for Mindoo’s Seed round.

These include Jutro Medical, a Warsaw-based AI-first primary care provider, which raised a €24 million Series A extension to scale AI-supported clinical operations; XUND, which secured €6 million to strengthen its AI-powered healthcare platform; and Helsinki-based Elea, which raised €4 million to accelerate diagnostic workflows using AI.

Earlier-stage rounds include Punto Health in the UK, which raised €2.3 million to scale its AI-enabled dementia care platform. In Belgium specifically, EU-Startups has also covered Cavell, which raised €1.5 million to improve healthcare efficiency through digital tools, and Brussels-linked Model Health, which secured €800k in pre-Seed funding for AI-based movement analysis in clinical settings.

Excluding Mindoo, these rounds represent approximately €38 million invested into adjacent healthcare AI and digital health segments during 2025.

Against this backdrop, Mindoo’s €5 million Seed financing positions the Belgian company within a broader European pattern of investment focused on applying AI to operational and clinical workflows rather than experimental use cases.

While larger rounds such as Jutro Medical’s reflect capital-intensive care delivery models, smaller Seed and pre-Seed financings across Finland, Belgium and the UK indicate sustained investor interest in modular, workflow-oriented AI tools for healthcare organisations.

“We designed Mindoo so healthcare organisations can deploy agents that follow their rules, integrate with their systems and behave predictably in real-world environments,” added Bart Lens, CTO and co-founder. “This is how AI becomes operational, not experimental.”

Founded in 2025, Mindoo is a healthcare AI company that claims to provide hospitals and medical practices with a safe, governed platform for agentic workflow automation. Mindoo’s configurable AI agents perform structured intake, documentation drafting, follow-up communication and front-desk workflows, helping healthcare organisations increase capacity without increasing headcount.

The company outlines that healthcare organisations face a widening gap between available staff and rising care demand. Many workflows remain uncaptured or incomplete simply because teams do not have the capacity to handle them.

Mindoo looks to address this by providing configurable AI agents that hospital teams use to handle structured intake, documentation drafting, follow-up interactions and front-desk communication within a single platform.

Mindoo currently offers four core agents that hospitals can configure to reflect their own protocols, languages and specialty workflows:

• Receptionist agent for handling routine patient communication and registrations
• Pre-visit agent for structured intake and medical history
• Scribe agent for drafting notes, letters and orders
• Follow-up agent for post-visit communication and care pathways

“We invested in Mindoo because the founders understand healthcare from the inside and have built a platform that lets hospitals adopt AI responsibly. The opportunity ahead is enormous. Automated workflows will become essential infrastructure for healthcare,” Lucas Stoops, Partner at 6 Degrees Capital.

Mindoo is already deployed in hospitals across Belgium and Germany and supports integration with EHR systems. Expansion to the Netherlands and France will follow as new reference sites go live.

The funding will support Mindoo in strengthening its platform, bringing its four core agents to full production maturity across multiple specialties and expanding the team with engineers, clinical specialists and deployment experts.

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Agreenculture, a Toulouse-based startup specialising in the autonomy and safety of agricultural machinery and tractors, has raised €6 million in a Series A equity round to enhance, standardise, and industrialise its products for rapid integration, while strengthening its commercial deployment.

The funding was raised with participation from Supernova Invest, Future Food Fund and Unilis (Unigrains Group). Alongside this round, Agreenculture has secured a credit facility from Crédit Agricole Toulouse 31. 

“Our ambition for every manufacturer is to provide a simple and safe autonomy kit capable of working without local supervision in the field. Providing tangible performance gains and generating cost and time savings for farmers,” says Christophe Aubé, CEO of Agreenculture.

In the context of European AgTech funding in 2025, Agreenculture’s Series A sits alongside a range of investments targeting automation, robotics and sustainability in agriculture.

UK-based CroBio raised around €805k through grant funding to advance soil-microbe technologies aimed at improving nutrient efficiency and water retention. In Spain, Voltrac secured €2 million to develop and launch an electric autonomous tractor platform, placing it in an adjacent segment to Agreenculture with a focus on vehicle autonomy for agricultural and logistics use cases. At a significantly later stage, Swiss scale-up Ecorobotix disclosed total funding of €128 million in 2025 to scale its AI-driven precision farming and weeding robots, highlighting strong investor appetite for proven agricultural robotics platforms.

Taken together, these announcements point to more than €130 million moving through Europe’s AgTech sector in 2025, spanning early-stage biological solutions through to capital-intensive autonomous and precision machinery, with Agreenculture’s French-based raise reinforcing the country’s position within the autonomous agricultural equipment landscape.

“We want manufacturers to focus on their core business. We bring them a reliable, interoperable, ready-to-use product and to accelerate the deployment of autonomy in the fields,” explains Clément Baron, CTO of Agreenculture.

Founded in 2016 by Christophe Aubé (CEO), Clément Baron (CTO) and Emmanuel Goua de Baix (GNSS expert), Agreenculture supports agricultural machinery manufacturers by providing them with both technological solutions and consulting services, enabling their machines and tractors to become autonomous and certified, capable of operating without local supervision.

By integrating the AGC Autonomy Kit, manufacturers can reportedly deploy safe, accurate and agronomically efficient machines – optimising agricultural operations.

Agreenculture provides Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) with a plug-and-play AGC Autonomy Kit that allegedly ensures the precision, autonomy, and safety of machines and tractors.

Moreover, the company outlines that with autonomy, soil compaction can be reduced by replacing big machines by multiple small ones, fuel consumption can be minimised, cover cropping becomes more affordable, and application of fertiliser and pesticides becomes even more precise.

Jeroen Kimmels, Managing Partner at Future Food Fund: “As an impact food & agri investor, we were an early investor in and have followed the developments of autonomous tractors and machines closely. Autonomous tractors and machines should not be seen simply as a way to relieve farmers of the burden of driving, but as a unique opportunity to change the way farming is done. We regard the management of Agreenculture as visionaries, spearheading this shift from conventional to regenerative farming. “ 

Agreenculture claims to be the first technology supplier to offer a safe and certifiable Autonomy Kit. The AGC Autonomy Kit enables machines to operate without local supervision thanks to Safencing, a secure geofencing system that ensures machines and their tools remain within defined virtual boundaries.

Utilizing the S-RTK positioning system, the AGC Autonomy Kit is fully compliant with European regulations and can be integrated by machinery manufacturers for off-road autonomous navigation. 

“Agreenculture stands at the forefront of autonomous farming technologies. Their certified, safety-first approach is a decisive advantage for manufacturers seeking reliable automation solutions. We are proud to support a team whose technology is poised to become a market standard in Europe and beyond”, says Romain Sautrau, Partner at Supernova Invest. 

Agreenculture collaborates with notable agricultural manufacturers, including Pellenc with the RX20 vineyard crawler, Kubota with the M7 tractor for field crops and the KFAST sprayer for orchards, Kuhn with the Karl field robot or with cutting edge companies like Fieldworkers and Trabotyx with their autonomous laser weeding robot TOR. 

Jean-François Hurel, Director of Unilis Agtech adds: “As a farmer-backed investor focused on innovations for field crops, we support technologies that enable producers to spend more time on higher-value agronomic decisions and market opportunities – while safely and reliably automating repetitive tasks when it makes sense. Beyond responding to labour constraints, Agreenculture contributes to the productive and sustainable transition of agricultural operations. We look forward to supporting Agreenculture in this new stage of its development.” 

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Tallinn-based logistics startup MyDello has raised €3.1 million in a funding round led by Icelandic venture capital firm Frumtak Ventures, with participation from existing investor Finnish early-stage venture capital firm Superhero Capital. Frumtak Ventures general partner Andri Heiðar Kristinsson and Jevgeni Kabanov, President of urban mobility company Bolt and a previous investor in MyDello, have joined the board.

Freight and shipping across all transport modes account for an estimated 10–12 per cent of the global economy, with maritime shipping handling most international trade by volume, yet the sector still relies heavily on manual workflows, paper documentation, fragmented communication, and limited real-time shipment visibility.

Founded by experienced logistics professionals, MyDello aims to address these challenges by digitalising international freight processes and reducing inefficiencies in global supply chains through a B2B platform for manufacturing, wholesale, and e-commerce customers that provides instant door-to-door pricing and routing across freight modes from a single inquiry, supported by agreements with 400+ carriers and partnerships including DHL, Lufthansa, Maersk, Qatar Airways, and Finnair.

Businesses enter shipment details (origin, destination, dimensions, and weight) to compare quotes, book transport, and track deliveries in real time with an AI-powered delivery countdown, with a focus on complex long-distance international freight such as routes in and out of the EU, China-linked trade, and lanes between the Americas and Europe.

In our coverage earlier this year, MyDello co-founder Magnus Lepasalu said sustainability is becoming a bigger priority in logistics and that the company’s platform is intended to help customers make more informed, sustainable choices, an approach it now plans to scale following the new funding.

Since launching in 2021, the company has facilitated thousands of shipments and established partnerships with hundreds of carriers and industry participants.

When we launched MyDello in 2021 we knew there was a better way for our industry to operate and in just a few years we have facilitated thousands of shipments, built up a deep customer base, and struck partnerships and agreements with hundreds of key carriers and industry peers. However, this is just the start, and we’re overjoyed to welcome Frumtak Ventures, and we thank them and our returning investors for their support,

adds MyDello co-founder and CEO Joel Timm.

The company reports onboarding 12,500 businesses from 110 countries and currently operates across 12 countries in Europe and China, with an aim to expand across Europe by 2027.

The investment will be used to accelerate international expansion, starting with the UK, where the platform is expected to be available to customers from December. MyDello also plans to further integrate AI into its systems, with the goal of automating most shipment operations by the end of 2026.

The European platform for deploying safe and governed agentic workflows in healthcare, Mindoo, has secured €5 million in seed financing from 6DC, Syndicate One and a group of strategic angel investors.

Healthcare organisations are increasingly balancing limited staffing with growing demand for care, leaving some workflows unfinished or not recorded because teams do not have the capacity to manage them.

Mindoo addresses this by providing configurable AI agents that hospital teams use to handle structured intake, documentation drafting, follow-up interactions and front-desk communication within a single platform.

The company currently offers four core agents that hospitals can adapt to their own protocols, languages, and speciality workflows: a receptionist agent for routine patient communication and registration, a pre-visit agent for structured intake and medical history, a scribe agent for drafting notes, letters, and orders, and a follow-up agent for post-visit communication and care pathways.

We learned very quickly that workflows in healthcare cannot be adapted to a product. The product has to adapt to existing workflows. That is why Mindoo lets hospital teams configure and run their own agents, so automation fits naturally into how they already work,

explained Gauthier Willemse, CEO and co-founder of Mindoo.

Mindoo is currently deployed in hospitals in Belgium and Germany and is designed to integrate with modern EHR systems. The company plans to expand into the Netherlands and France as additional reference sites become operational.

The investment supports Mindoo’s plan to provide hospitals and practices with a scalable AI workforce layer that can take on routine tasks, ease pressure on clinical teams, and keep organisations in control of their workflows.

The funding will be used to develop the platform further, bring its four core agents to production readiness across multiple specialities, and expand the team across engineering, clinical, and deployment functions.

French preventive healthcare startup Lucis has announced the closing of a €7.2 million ($8.5 million) Seed funding round to boost its European expansion, broaden its network of partner laboratories and physicians, and scale its platform. 

The round was led by General Catalyst, with participation from Y Combinator, Kima Ventures, Motier Ventures, Circle.Co, and North South Ventures.

Maxime Berthelot, CEO and co-founder of Lucis, said, “Our mission is to empower individuals to take ownership of their health by giving them a clear view of key indicators before symptoms even appear, and providing practical guidance to improve their well-being, without replacing physicians.

“At a time when more and more Europeans are looking to take control of their health and feel better overall, this funding round will allow us to democratise access to disease prevention by connecting analyses conducted in certified laboratories, medical expertise, and a simple, user-friendly platform.”

Founded in 2025 in Paris by Maxime Berthelot, Baptiste Debever, and Max Gueroi, Lucis offers preventive health check-ups carried out in certified laboratories and interpreted by a medical team with the support of AI. It claims to deliver a clear, structured view of more than 180 biomarkers, including cardiometabolic health, hormones, inflammation, liver and kidney function, as well as certain micronutrients. 

It positions itself strictly as a preventive tool for individuals and not as a medical platform. It emphasises that users should not consider its services as a replacement for medical consultation, diagnosis, or prescription.

According to the company, rather than delivering results in a static PDF format, each member gains access to a clear dashboard and a prioritised action plan built around five pillars: nutrition, supplements, physical activity, sleep/recovery, and mental health.

Lucis has already conducted more than 500,000 clinical tests in its initial markets, which include France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Portugal. 

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Lucis, a French startup focused on expanding access to preventive health testing, has closed an $8.5 million seed round led by General Catalyst, with participation from Y Combinator, Kima Ventures, Motier Ventures, Circle.Co, and North South Ventures.

Founded by Maxime Berthelot, Baptiste Debever, and Max Guerois, Lucis offers a platform that translates blood test results into a set of indicators tracked every six to 12 months. It provides a structured view of more than 180 biomarkers, covering areas such as cardiometabolic health, hormones, inflammation, liver and kidney function, and selected micronutrients, with the aim of helping users identify potential imbalances and early signals associated with chronic disease.

The company positions Lucis as a preventive tool to support understanding and monitoring of health, and notes that it does not replace medical consultation, diagnosis, or prescribing.

Our mission is to empower individuals to take ownership of their health by giving them a clear view of key indicators before symptoms even appear, and providing practical guidance to improve their well-being, without replacing physicians,

said Maxime Berthelot, CEO and co-founder of Lucis.

Members complete check-ups through certified medical biology laboratories across Europe. Results are reviewed by a multidisciplinary medical team, with AI used to help surface key signals and track changes over time.

Instead of receiving a static report, users access a dashboard and a prioritised action plan organised around five areas: nutrition, supplements, physical activity, sleep and recovery, and mental health. Lucis positions this model as an extension of broader consumer health tracking, adding biological markers and clinical oversight to support a more structured, public health–aligned approach.

The new funding will be used to accelerate rollout in France, the UK, Ireland, and Portugal and into additional markets, expand its network of partner laboratories and clinicians, and further develop its AI-enabled preventive analysis and support platform.

Warsaw-based primary healthcare startup Jutro Medical has raised €24 million to scale its AI-enabled primary care rollup. 

This Series A extension round was led by Warsaw Equity Group, with participation from Vinci, naturalX Health Ventures, Fluent Ventures, Aternus, KAYA VC, and Inovo VC. A debt component from mBank and Orbit Capital is also included in this round. This new capital extends the company’s previously announced Series A, bringing its total to €36 million.

“By running our own clinics on our own software, we’ve learned firsthand which tasks can be handled by AI. Instead of hiring more staff, we now build AI agents that do the same work – freeing clinicians to practice medicine, not paperwork. These agents already manage thousands of patients interactions every month,” said Adam Janczewski, founder and CEO of Jutro Medical.

Founded in 2020 by Janczewski, Jutro Medical is an AI-first primary care operator integrating online and offline care, and has its own EHR, scalable clinic operations and AI agents. Its telemedicine platform and app offer virtual consultations, prescriptions, referrals, lab results and the ability to request medical leave online for less complex cases. For more immediate or complex cases, patients can be seen in person at Jutro Medical’s proprietary clinics, often by the same practitioner they have been consulting virtually, helping ensure continuity of care.

Jutro Medical claims to be the first operator in Europe to apply the AI rollup model to primary care at scale. According to the company, it spent its first four years focused on building its proprietary electronic health record system, laying the software and data foundations for all of its clinics.

This enabled the company to build an AI layer on top of this software and data foundation quickly and easily. With Jutro Medical’s AI agents taking over the administrative work, the doctors are free to focus on the patient and clinical decisions. However, the company reveals that the use of AI is completely opt-in, and patients can always choose a traditional appointment. Jutro Medical plans to continue to develop new AI agents with this new capital. 

Bartosz Drabikowski, CEO of Vinci, said, “For us, this is a strategically important investment in the healthcare sector, and the key factor behind our decision was Jutro Medical’s mission to improve access to high-quality healthcare in Poland and across Europe. 

“Through the practical use of AI agents in everyday clinical operations, the company enables doctors to spend more time with patients, reduces waiting times and improves access to medical services. 

“The fact that these solutions are already being implemented at scale and deliver clear value for both patients and clinicians was an important consideration in our investment decision, and we are pleased to support Adam and his team in the next stage of growth.”

Another core part of the company’s value proposition is its unified operating model. Jutro Medical acquires clinics and brings them onto a unified operational and technological platform, giving each location access to the same EHR, workflow system and AI agents. The company says this approach ensures consistent quality, speeds up integration, and improves margins across its network.

This year, Jutro has added nine clinics to its network, and says it is on track to complete around 20 acquisitions annually. The company currently provides care to 120,000 patients across Poland, and after 500,000 visits, reported an average visit rating on a 1–5 scale of 4.94. Its NPS stands at 86, according to the company.

The new capital will support further clinic acquisitions in Poland and enable the company to expand its rollup model by buying and integrating primary care clinics across Europe. 

Jan Szumada, Investment Manager at Warsaw Equity Group, said, “Primary care is undergoing significant structural change across Europe, with thousands of small GP practices approaching retirement each year. 

“Jutro Medical is capitalising on this opportunity – nearly quadrupling its revenue year over year while keeping EBITDA around break-even – a rare combination in this market. 

“At WEG, we invest in companies whose technology delivers meaningful customer value and reshapes their industries. We’re excited to back a team that is proving the AI-rollup strategy works and support them as they build a pan-European operator targeting more than €1 billion in revenue.”

According to the company, it is growing 270% year over year, and in the past month, nearly 1,500 doctor visits were supported by AI.

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Warsaw-based Jutro Medical, an AI-first primary care operator combining online and in-person care, has raised €24 million in new funding led by Warsaw Equity Group, with participation from Vinci, naturalX Health Ventures, Fluent Ventures, Aternus, KAYA VC, and Inovo VC. The round also includes a debt component from mBank and Orbit Capital. The raise extends the company’s previously announced Series A, bringing the total to €36 million.

Founded in 2020, Jutro Medical has grown from a single clinic focused on technology-enabled care into an integrated primary care operator with its own electronic health record (EHR), standardised clinic operations, and AI-based tools.

In its first four years, Jutro Medical prioritised building a proprietary EHR and the underlying software and data infrastructure used across its clinics. The company says this foundation has enabled it to add an AI layer more efficiently, allowing AI agents to support administrative tasks such as intake and drafting visit documentation. Clinicians begin appointments with relevant context prepared, review and adjust information as needed, and retain responsibility for all clinical decisions. Use of AI is optional, and patients can choose a traditional appointment.

The company’s approach is positioned against broader pressures in primary care, where workforce shortages, rising administrative workloads, and uneven access continue to limit capacity. Primary care spending in Europe exceeds €200 billion annually, including around €9 billion in Poland, yet many clinics still rely on manual or paper-based processes that can slow access to care.

Jutro Medical follows an acquisition-led strategy, bringing acquired clinics onto a shared operating and technology platform that includes a common EHR, workflows, and AI tools. The company says it added nine clinics to its network this year and is targeting around 20 acquisitions annually, with the aim of supporting more consistent service delivery and faster integration.

By running our own clinics on our own software, we’ve learned firsthand which tasks can be handled by AI. Instead of hiring more staff, we now build AI agents that do the same work – freeing clinicians to practice medicine, not paperwork. These agents already manage thousands of patients interactions every month,

says Adam Janczewski, founder and CEO of Jutro Medical.

The new capital will be used to support further clinic acquisitions in Poland and to expand the model into other European markets. Jutro Medical also plans to continue developing AI agents to automate additional administrative and operational tasks, while clinicians focus on diagnosis and treatment.

Over the longer term, the company aims to build a pan-European primary care operator by consolidating a fragmented market of small practices.

Mirelo, an audio company that lets anyone generate perfectly synchronized sound effects for videos, has just raised about €35 million ($41 million) in a seed round, co-led by Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Atlantic.vc and TriplePoint Capital.

The Berlin-based startup was founded by two senior AI researchers who are also accomplished musicians, and who left big tech to build breakthrough foundation models in audio – one of the most emotionally resonant but technically underdeveloped areas of AI. The funding is a sign of a broader shift in creative expression, as AI tools empower more and more artists and designers to bring their ideas to life.

Sound has a unique power to influence our feelings and reshape how we experience reality. Yet while AI has transformed the creation of text, images and video, sound is yet to catch up. As a consequence, adding music and audio to visuals still involves creators and sound designers spending hours searching stock libraries and manually syncing effects.

Mirelo, founded in 2023, has responded to this challenge by developing its own cutting-edge foundation models for sound in videos. A user can upload any video, and in a matter of seconds Mirelo’s system produces matching audio for anything happening on screen. The ability to produce high-quality sound faster than real time becomes particularly important in a world of dynamic content, whether that’s AI-generated videos or adaptive gaming worlds that shift for each player.

“Think of the difference between talkies and silent films – video without sound has so much less feeling and atmosphere,” says CJ Simon-Gabriel, CEO, and co-founder. “Mirelo’s first step is about democratising access, empowering everyone to create the sound that their (AI) video deserves. But we’ll also empower professionals to rework audio, to do more of what they love, to be more expressive and imaginative in what they can achieve, while handling the boring stuff such as synchronization. Our bigger mission is to become the audio layer for all visual content across videos, gaming, social media, films and beyond.”

Mirelo’s founders, CJ, and Florian Wenzel, met as AI researchers at AWS Labs before starting their own company. CJ has a PhD in machine learning and causal inference from the Max Planck Institute, where he studied under renowned computer scientist Bernhard Schölkopf, and completed a postdoc at ETH Zurich. Florian, Mirelo’s CTO, has a PhD in deep learning from Humboldt University, and was a researcher at Google Brain.

Mirelo sprang from the pair’s shared passion for music and frustration with their field’s narrow focus on images and LLMs. CJ has a degree in piano, organ and composition from the Conservatoire in Strasbourg, and was very close to pursuing music professionally; he dreams one day of recreating the unwritten music of Mozart and Schubert. Meanwhile, Florian mixes music and plays electric guitar as a member of an electro band in Berlin.

A couple of weeks ago, the young company released a new, top-notch video-to-sound-effect model, Mirelo SFX v1.5, which can generate various soundtrack versions faster than real-time. It is available via their self-serve API and web-app, Mirelo Studio. Mirelo’s models are very lightweight, requiring 50 times less compute than typical LLMs, while also delivering superior quality to any competitor so far according to external evaluations.

“Sound is too often an afterthought in video production, yet it’s what determines whether a video or game truly resonates with its audience. Mirelo gives creators a new form of expression, letting them move faster and sound better,” says Georgia Stevenson, the partner at Index Ventures who led the investment. “The team led by CJ and Florian combines cutting-edge AI expertise with an unparalleled focus on audio’s emotional power. It is a combination that positions them to reshape how the world experiences sound.”

“To date, a16z has invested in multiple world-leading generative models each with a different focus area. Mirelo is tackling one of the most technically challenging and least explored areas of generative media: a specialized model for sound effect creation.” said Guido Appenzeller, partner at Andreessen Horowitz. “CJ and Florian have assembled a research-driven team whose breakthroughs in tokenization, data curation, and conditioning rival far larger efforts and we’re excited to back Mirelo as they scale their technology for the next generation of video models.”

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A Berlin-based audio startup, which leverages its own AI models to let users generate synched sound for video, has raised $41m in a seed round, led by Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. The funding round in Mirelo also lured in Berlin-based investor Atlantic and California-based VC TriplePoint Capital.

Mirelo has raised around $44m to date and has bagged angel investment from several tech luminaries, including Mistral co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch and Revolut executive Antoine Le Nel. Mirelo, which has a 10-strong team, was founded by a pair of former musicians, CJ Simon-Gabriel, and Florian Wenzel, who met as AI researchers at Amazon.

Mirelo’s big play is that while AI has transformed the creation of text, images and video, sound is lagging behind. It points out the laborious process of adding music and audio to visuals, involving creators and sound designers spending hours searching stock libraries and manually syncing effects.

Mirelo, founded in 2023, has developed its own AI models for sound in video. It says a user can upload any video, and in a matter of seconds, Mirelo produces matching audio for anything happening on screen.  It says its sound generation tech is a good fit for AI-generated videos or the gaming worlds.

It builds its own AI models from scratch, training them on data for which it says it has licensing deals in place. Its customers are typically individual creators and small studios while its API is used by companies wanting to leverage its models into their platforms or tools.

Mirelo recently released a new video-to-sound model, Mirelo SFX v1.5, which it says can generate various soundtrack versions faster than real-time.

The startup says its models require 50 times less compute than typical LLMs. The startup will use the funds to advance its tech and try and grow its customer base.

Simon-Gabriel, Mirelo CEO, said: “Think of the difference between talkies and silent films – video without sound has so much less feeling and atmosphere.

“Mirelo’s first step is about democratising access, empowering everyone to create the sound that their (AI) videos deserve.

"But we’ll also empower professionals to rework audio, to do more of what they love, to be more expressive and imaginative in what they can achieve, while handling the boring stuff such as synchronisation. Our bigger mission is to become the audio layer for all visual content across videos, gaming, social media, films and beyond.”

Wenzel said: “There’s a deep affinity between music and engineering; maybe that’s why so many of Mirelo’s team are musicians, and why musicians have always been early adopters of new technology.

“There’s something about the intersection of mathematical precision and expressiveness that seems to draw people to both fields.”

Guido Appenzeller, partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said: "To date, a16z has invested in multiple world-leading generative models each with a different focus area. Mirelo is tackling one of the most technically challenging and least explored areas of generative media: a specialised model for sound effect creation.

“CJ and Florian have assembled a research-driven team whose breakthroughs in tokenisation, data curation, and conditioning rival far larger efforts and we’re excited to back Mirelo as they scale their technology for the next generation of video models.”

Smile Genius, the fast-growing dental-tech platform transforming clinic–lab workflows, today announced it has raised €850k to date, with fresh funding provided by Enterprise Ireland, Haatch (UK) and a network of angel investors. This milestone marks a major step forward as the company scales its platform and strengthens its footprint across the UK and Ireland.

Over the past two years, Smile Genius has expanded at pace, with clients in Ireland, UK, US, UAE, Europe, Egypt with clinical users in 33 countries worldwide. The platform is used by more than 1,200 clinics and has processed over 10,000 patient cases since launch. In the UK, Smile Genius works closely with leading dental laboratories, including three of the top five in its segment—further solidifying its position in a key growth market.

Originally launched as an aligner-workflow only solution, Smile Genius has evolved into a comprehensive end-to-end lab-order management platform serving independent clinics, laboratories and dental groups. Recent enhancements include automated lab-order workflows, real-time cost visibility for dental groups, and improved transparency for finance, administrative and clinical teams, a big issue for the dental industry today.

“This milestone reflects the momentum and confidence we’re earning across our UK and Ireland customer base,” said Nipun Kathuria, CEO of Smile Genius Dental. He continued: “Our ambition is to establish Smile Genius as the de facto standard for clinic–lab engagement globally, and we are targeting a doubling of our clinic presence by the end of 2026 as we continue to scale.”

Smile Genius also plans to expand its teams in Ireland and the UK, with new roles opening across Product, Marketing, Sales and Customer Success in the coming months.

Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Leinster, Smile Genius is a dental-tech platform that streamlines communication and workflow between clinics and dental laboratories. The platform supports all clinical cases, lab orders, digital workflows and multi-site dental-group operations. Smile Genius enables clinics and labs to benefit from transparent, automated and efficient processes that improve turnaround times and case outcomes.

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Iconic, an interactive entertainment and AI-native platform company, has raised $13 million in its seed round, co-led by venture capital funds Kindred and Northzone, with further investment from leading industry players. 

The round also brings together a highly curated group of the world’s top AI, gaming, and system engineering leaders from Google, Meta, Disney, DeepMind and OpenAI.

Founded by John Lusty and Junaid Hussain, Iconic began in 2023 as a small, technically focused team exploring how advances in AI could enhance human creativity and transform the way players interact with and experience games.  

From the outset, the team was equally driven by a desire to improve life for developers, enhancing the creative process whilst reducing the rapidly increasing cost and complexity of building games, and it is this ethos that attracted CEO Andrew Bowell, formerly Product Head at Unity.

Through its pioneering on-device AI technology, Iconic is bringing intelligence, agency, and personalisation to the heart of the player experience, allowing game studios to build entirely new genres of games whilst driving down development costs. Earlier this year, Iconic debuted the demo of its voice-driven narrative puzzle game.

It enables every word spoken by players to actively shape the world they are playing in.  By applying SLLMs, the technology ensures that internet connectivity is not required, allowing game play across a range of environments without cloud costs or privacy issues.

Since launching with NVIDIA at Gamescom, The Oversight Bureau has received strong, consistent praise for its unique level of immersion and responsiveness.

With early prototypes demonstrating the potential of voice-driven, character-rich worlds powered by on-device intelligence, this became the backbone of Iconic’s formal launch in 2024, bringing talent from Unity, Meta, Sony, Microsoft, Cambridge University, and major gaming franchises, including GTA and Star Wars.  Andrew Bowell, CEO of Iconic, said,

“Our voice-driven gameplay experience is transforming traditional entertainment, utilising novel technology and innovative digital systems to enhance creativity, revolutionise the player experience, and redefine the boundaries of gaming.

We are excited to announce our successful seed round led by Kindred and Northzone, with further support from leading industry players, including Google, a testimony to Iconic building the next iteration of interactive entertainment.”

Emmi AI is an Austrian deep-tech company that builds AI-driven physics simulation technology to accelerate engineering processes in fields like Fluid Dynamics, Multiphysics, and Solid Mechanics.

For a company doing this kind of work, how people collaborate matters as much as the tech itself. And it turns remote work on its head with its hybrid, remote-first approach.  Every month, they fly everyone to Linz, Austria, for a week.

I spoke to Miks Mikelsons, COO, to learn all about it.

A research-heavy team, with applied outcomes in mind

Today, Emmi AI employs around 30 people, with research forming the backbone of the organisation. Roughly two-thirds of the team come from academic or scientific backgrounds.

“We’re very research and science-heavy,” says Mikelsons. “About 20 of our people come from academia.”

Around 40 per cent of the team is based across different locations such as Austria, London, and other parts of Europe.

Competing for talent without forcing relocation

Once a month, for a full week — always the first week of the month, Emmi AI brings everyone together to the same location and covers all the costs of travel and accommodation. Mikelsons  asserts: 

“We’d rather spend an extra €1,000 per person per month on bringing people together than invest in the fanciest office or compete in the most aggressive hiring markets.

This allows us to attract talent who might not want to relocate.

“We’re still distributed across Europe, but this model works well here. It would be harder across the US, but in Europe it’s very achievable.”

For someone deciding whether to stay in the US or return to Europe, this model is very compelling. For example, the company hired someone originally from Spain who had been in the US, at the University of Pennsylvania.

Competing on culture, not compensation

From the beginning, Emmi Ai decided that as a scaling company in one location, it needed to differentiate.

“Especially for research-driven companies, culture matters a lot. We wanted strong chemistry and bonding early on, so we invested in being together."

“We’re not the company offering the biggest salaries in AI research right now. Some people are getting extremely high compensation offers, and we don’t compete on that,” Mikelsons admits.

And the result is that people recommend the company to their networks.

“What we offer instead is a way of working and a culture people value. That’s how we’ve been able to attract talent from places like Oxford and Cambridge.”

In-house tech by an all-star team 

Emmi AI has developed its technology entirely in-house, with its core architecture built in Austria by co-founder and Chief Scientist Johannes Brandstetter and his research team. Brandstetter previously worked on Microsoft Aurora, widely regarded as the world’s first foundation model for weather forecasting.

Following the breakup of that original team, the researchers went on to found their own companies. Brandstetter chose to return to Austria from Amsterdam to build Emmi AI. “We have our own technology stack,” says Miks Mikelsons, COO of Emmi AI.

“The architecture was built by Johannes together with his team in Austria.”

Deeptech for real-world problem solving 

“Johannes is a pure researcher,” Mikelsons explains.

Unlike many startup founders, Brandstetter comes from a purely academic background, with no prior business or operational experience. Emmi AI’s leadership team is intentionally structured to balance those strengths.

“Together with Arno Hollosi, our CTO, and myself focusing on operations and scaling, we bridge deep research with real-world deployment.. As we always say, we apply groundbreaking research to real-world problems and focus on business needs,” Mikelsons adds. “That combination is still relatively rare.”

How Emmi AI is rethinking how physical systems are designed and tested

In simple terms, Emmi AI uses AI to run complex physical simulations — like fluid flow, heat transfer, structural mechanics, and other engineering problems — orders of magnitude faster than traditional methods.

According to Mikelsons.

“People sometimes ask,:'What is simulation and what does it do in engineering?' I always tell the story that a hundred years ago, people tested designs by simply crashing them into a wall. Then came wind tunnels, where you could test how a design behaves under air pressure.

Later came numerical simulation — equations and formulas that calculate how a particular design will behave in the real world.”

However, this process is very expensive and computationally heavy and can take days or weeks. 

“With AI, we can now do it in seconds or minutes. That changes the way you design and work in engineering entirely,” he shared. 

Industrial use cases: where simulation meets reality

The company is active in sectors such as automotive and energy. 

“For example, we have customers producing power transformers: those big machines you see near cities that convert high voltage to low voltage.

They’re full of metal and oil, and they involve very complex behaviours like transient simulations.”

Large grid assets such as power transformers are designed to last for decades, but they are also slow to replace. That reality shapes how electricity networks are operated today. “If you order one of these machines today—say from Brazil or another country — you might get it five years from now,” says Mikelsons.

With replacement timelines stretching into years, grid operators have little margin for error. Assets are therefore run cautiously, often well below their theoretical limits, to minimise the risk of failure.

“Because of that, grid operators run these systems very conservatively.” 

AI-driven simulation offers a way to change that dynamic. By modelling how equipment behaves under different conditions, operators can gain a far more precise understanding of performance and risk.

“What we can build are models that simulate operational behaviour,” Mikelsons says. 

“That allows operators to anticipate challenges and actively control how these systems behave in practice.” Rather than relying solely on conservative assumptions, grid operators can use simulation to make informed, real-time decisions—unlocking."

Letting the team self-organise

In terms of employee adoption, Mikelsons asserts that it's all about setting clear rules and planning upfront.

“From the interview process onward, people know exactly how this works. It’s always the first week of the month. It’s always the same location.

Costs are covered. People really enjoy it. Some take the night train, others fly in. The organisational overhead isn’t actually that big.”

In terms of logistics, the company’s office in Linz fits around 25 people comfortably, maybe 30 at a stretch and is hot desking by design.

  The company is not aiming for hundreds of people, “but maybe 50 by the end of the year.”

Emmi AI also organises activities outside work, such as dinners, bouldering, and spending time in nature. 

“We try to make it special without wearing people out,” shared Mikelsons.

One of the secrets is that the team increasingly self-organises. At the beginning, management structured everything. Now people suggest activities, breakfasts, and experiments. They try things, see what works, and adjust.

For people thinking of doing something similar, Mikelsons advises that clarity is key. You need to be clear about the identity you want to build:

“If you’re fully remote, set clear rules for that. If you meet once a year, plan everything around that. Budget, communication processes, meeting structures — everything follows from that decision."

Ultimately, Emmi AI believes that the best companies don’t invest only in the next fundraising round or the next customer. They invest in how they collaborate and how they work together.