Chemnitz-based in.hub, a provider of plug-and-play IIoT solutions for industrial production, has successfully completed a seven-figure add-on financing round.

In addition to existing investor TGFS Technologiegründerfonds Sachsen, SBG – Sächsische Beteiligungsgesellschaft is also participating for the first time as part of the Sachsen (RIG) programme.

“Our vision is to radically simplify digitalisation for all relevant players in the industry,” explain Founders Christian Groß and Marco Neubert. “Our target groups are not only manufacturing companies, but also machine builders, automation specialists, sensor manufacturers, and software providers. They can enhance their products with our technology – for example by delivering machines that are already digitised or by turning sensor technologies into a complete solution for their customers with our plug-and-play modules and the siineos platform.”

The latest financing for in.hub comes amid a steady flow of investment into Europe’s industrial IoT and manufacturing digitalisation sector in 2025.

In Austria, MAVOCO raised €11 million to accelerate the global rollout of its connectivity management software for IoT. From Saxony, Packwise secured a seven-figure growth round to scale its industrial container monitoring platform – also backed by regional investors such as TGFS and SBG under the RIG programme. Meanwhile, in Spain, HaloTech Digital Services collected €10 million to expand its AI-driven industrial safety IoT solutions.

Against this backdrop, in.hub’s own add-on financing reinforces the DACH region’s momentum in developing plug-and-play hardware-plus-software ecosystems for smarter, more connected production environments.

SBG Managing Director Frank Tappert adds: “Thanks to its in – depth application knowledge, the team knows exactly where companies encounter limitations in digitalisation. This expertise makes all the difference – because the solutions developed are as intuitive as a smartphone, but at the same time suitable for industrial use, secure, and scalable. It was precisely this combination of practical experience and technological excellence that was one of the key reasons for our involvement.”

in.hub GmbH was founded in 2017. The company develops a flexible, expandable, and manufacturer-independent solution that includes both hardware and software components. The target group is small and medium-sized enterprises, which gain deeper insights into their machines thanks to the solution.

Compared to traditional products, the company says their product is more cost-effective and easier to implement.

The team, which currently consists of 16 employees, is managed operationally by the Founders. The two engineers have years of experience in development and sales with the same target customer structure in previous positions, enabling them to lead the company to stable sales growth in a short period of time.

With the new funds, in.hub is consistently expanding its business model. The focus is on three strategic pillars:

• in.hub Academy – a practice-oriented training platform that guides customers and partners step by step through the entire digitisation process – from initialisation and commissioning to scalable rollout.
• in.hub Services – modular support and consulting services that enable companies to get started with Industrial IoT.
• in.hub Marketplace – an open platform where apps, modules, and digital services can be offered. Machine builders, automation specialists, and software providers can integrate their products there, thereby expanding their own solutions or developing new digital business models.

The key difference to traditional providers: in.hub combines hardware expertise and software competence. While many competitors rely exclusively on cloud platforms, in.hub supplies Io T modules for the shop floor that can be installed in just a few minutes.

The siineos platform processes machine, process, and energy data directly locally in the factory – without the need for the cloud or external data centers.

Sören Schuster, Managing Director of TGFS, adds: “With this add-on investment, we are enabling in.hub to take the next big step – from a hardware and software provider to a complete ecosystem for industrial digitalisation. The team has shown that it can inspire small and medium-sized businesses as well as large manufacturers and system providers alike.”

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Infrastructure, observability, developer-tools, and AI-native data platforms have seen a steady uptick of funding in this past year.

For instance, Rerun (€15.6 million Seed) is tackling data and telemetry challenges, while Cloudsmith (€21.9 million Series B) and Qovery (11.3 Series A) focus on developer productivity and infrastructure reliability.

This cluster of activity highlights growing investor interest in AI-driven infrastructure optimisation across Europe. Notably, none of these firms are based in Ireland – positioning Bronto as one of the few Irish startups in 2025 to attract significant funding within the observability and infrastructure domain.

Founded in 2024, Bronto is an AI-native log data platform company reinventing logging infrastructure for the modern era. Founded by serial entrepreneurs Noel Ruane (Co-founder Voysis, acquired by Apple in 2020) and Trevor Parsons (Co-founder LogEntries, acquired by Rapid7 in 2015), Bronto enables mid-market and enterprise customers to eliminate costly tradeoffs between data volume and retention while unlocking new AI-powered use cases.

The company’s proprietary platform addresses critical infrastructure bottlenecks as organisations deploy AI at scale, allowing them to maintain and leverage all log data without discriminating between hot and historic information.

Bronto’s AI native logging platform removes the toil experienced by users of existing platforms and opens up valuable new use cases combining AI and logging domain specific expertise.

It means companies do not have to discriminate between hot and historic log data and get real value from all of their logs rather than tradeoffs between data volume and cost.

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German deeptech etalytics has closed a €8 million Series A extension, bringing its total Series A funding to €16 million. The extension is led by M12, Microsoft’s Venture Fund, and includes continued support from existing investors Alstin Capital (Carsten Maschmeyer), ebm-papst, and BMH. 

Built on research from TU Darmstadt, etalytics takes a software-first approach to industrial energy optimisation. Its platform, etaONE®, applies AI, digital twins, and predictive analytics to lower energy costs and emissions while maintaining system reliability and compliance in regulated, energy-intensive environments.

Customers across sectors, including Volkswagen, Equinix, NTT, Digital Realty, and Merck, report up to 50 per cent reductions in energy use for cooling, heating, and ventilation, resulting in measurable carbon reductions and operating cost improvements.

This latest funding round will fuel etalytics’ strategic expansion into North America and scale delivery capabilities across Europe and Asia. It will also enhance its flagship platform, etaONE®, which provides real-time, AI-driven energy optimisation for critical infrastructure in data centers, chemical and pharmaceutical production facilities, and automotive manufacturing sectors where increasing complexity and stricter energy regulations have surpassed the limits of traditional energy management systems.

Hydryx, the Amsterdam-based ClimateTech startup tackling methane emissions from landfills, has closed a €2.5 million Seed round to accelerate its expansion into Europe – turning a global waste challenge into a powerful source of green energy.

The round was led by impact investor Marcel Smits and venture capital fund Graduate Entrepreneur, joined by a consortium of mission-driven entrepreneurial angel investors.

“This investment enables us to drastically reduce methane emissions across Europe; right now, when it matters most,” added CEO Anthonie Jacobson.

Hydryx’s Seed round fits within a wider 2025 trend of ClimateTech and WasteTech startups securing funding to tackle methane and waste emissions.

In February, Sweden’s Agteria Biotech raised €6 million to develop methane-reducing products for livestock, while Italy’s Resilco secured €5 million to convert industrial waste and ash into raw materials while storing CO₂.

Although these companies address different points of the emissions challenge, all reflect a movement toward turning waste and greenhouse gases into economic value. Hydryx’s focus on landfill methane conversion situates it within this data-driven transition, marking one of the few Netherlands-based efforts in a growing European ecosystem.

“Hydryx has the biggest ‘bang for your buck’ climate solution that I have seen,” said lead investor Marcel Smits.

Founded in 2023, Hydryx is a ClimateTech startup focused on landfill gas management, using automation and data to reduce methane emissions and increase landfill gas recovery.

Founders Anthonie Jacobson (CEO) and Joren Tangelder (COO) applied their expertise on climate and energy to landfills and developed a methane management system. It installs easily on existing infrastructure and captures methane before it leaks into the air, enabling landfill owners to turn it into green energy.

The result is less emissions, additional revenue for landfill operators, and proof that the most sustainable option can also be the smartest investment.

According to data provided by the company, landfills produce large quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas 86 times as potent as CO2, and have more impact on the climate than the aviation and shipping sectors combined.

In the Netherlands alone, there are over 6,000 closed landfills, with around 50 still actively producing landfill gas (LFG).

Globally, approximately 70% of waste is still dumped or landfilled, and total waste generation is expected to rise from 2.01 billion tonnes today to 3.4 billion tonnes by 2050. Landfills are responsible for roughly 6% of global climate change – more than the aviation and shipping sectors combined – and methane emissions can continue for up to a century after a site’s closure due to the slow, anaerobic decomposition of organic materials.

While methane emissions are declining within the EU, they are still increasing worldwide, meaning methane’s share of total climate impact continues to rise. Open dumps can release between 1 and 4 million tonnes of methane per site each year, and even modern sanitary landfills in Europe and the US leak between 100,000 and 250,000 tonnes annually.

On average, about 60% of the gas produced in a landfill escapes into the atmosphere, with only the remaining 40% typically captured for flaring, power generation, or upgrading. Given that methane is 220 times more potent than CO₂ over a 10-year period, reducing emissions from landfills presents one of the most immediate and impactful opportunities for climate mitigation.

Hydrix believes that if it is harnessed properly, landfill methane could become a major source of green electricity, heat, or renewable natural gas.

Together with Dutch waste management company Renewi, Hydryx is proving its approach: the system generates 40% more green energy from the landfill.

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In construction, even the smallest design error can have significant consequences — a ramp that’s too steep, a doorway that's too narrow, or a misplaced sensor that costs weeks to fix. Most of these are preventable mistakes, and now, Swedish startup AI-BOB is tackling that inefficiency head-on.

I spoke to Elin Mårtensson, co-founder and CEO of AI-BOB to learn more.

Mårtensson has a near 15-year background in the construction industry, initially as a property developer on large-scale projects like Mall of Scandinavia in Stockholm and also Fisketorvet here in Copenhagen, where she was responsible for the extension project.

Accessibility errors are everywhere — and almost always avoidable

Over time, she became an expert in accessibility and usability in buildings, as a result of working part-time as a student, helping a blind girl with navigation:

“It was such an eye-opener. It made me realise how many unnecessary barriers we put in the built environment.”

And when she worked as a property developer. She saw that accessibility and compliance issues were a recurring problem in every project — and they caused a lot of avoidable errors that had to be fixed later.

She shared:

“Many errors are so unnecessary. For example, ramps that are too steep, doors that need two hands to open — small things that make a building inaccessible for someone in a wheelchair or with low vision.

I see these issues everywhere — and they’re almost always avoidable.”

Mårtensson eventually started my own company reviewing projects for compliance with accessibility and usability regulations. She shared:

“I worked closely with architects, reviewed hundreds of blueprints, and did final on-site inspections. After a while, I got so tired of seeing the same errors appear again and again. Most of these issues could have been avoided much earlier in the process."

70% of construction errors start in the blueprints

Studies show that over 70 per cent of all construction errors actually originate in the blueprints — meaning it’s not the builders’ fault. They’re just working from wrong or incomplete information.

Prior to AI-BOB there was no real tool to help architects or property developers properly check their blueprints. Most of the process still happens in Microsoft Word, Excel, or endless email threads — nothing automated.

According to Mårtensson in one project alone, you can have tens of thousands of requirements — “BIM standards, environmental targets, national codes, accessibility, and EU-level regulations, plus all the project-specific ones. No tool helps coordinate all that. In a way, construction performs amazingly well given how much complexity they have to manage manually.”

A 2018 Swedish government study found that around 25 per cent of all construction budgets in Sweden are spent on fixing errors. It's not only a waste of money but also materials, CO₂ emissions, and labour.

“Every time you fix something, you need people who are delayed from another project,” shared Mårtensson. It's a waste on every level.

Mårtensson started AI-BOB about a year and a half ago — right after I’d been on maternity leave with my second child. 

“I finally had some time to think, and this was also when the big AI boom started. I read everything I could about AI and thought: maybe now we actually have the tech that can help this industry. So that’s when I started AI-BOB with my co-founders.”

Pre-deployment testing for construction

Construction is a €13-14 trillion industry globally — and 25 per cent of that goes to fixing mistakes. Mårtensson admits,

“When I told our CTO — who had worked at Spotify setting up their transaction engine (every song stream is a transaction) — he said, ‘You’re kidding me, there are no automated checks before you start building?’ In tech, you’d never deploy software without automated checks. That’s exactly what we’re trying to bring into construction: automated pre-deployment testing for buildings."

AI-BOB uses AI to automate compliance checks on blueprints directly in the BIM model. 

“We can check if designs comply with building regulations and produce reports — even suggest corrections on how to fix detected issues,” explained Mårtensson.

 Built to fit existing workflows

The platform integrates directly into the CAD software.  “That was really important for me — in construction, everything is about mitigating risk,” admits Mårtensson.

"You can’t just drop in some new standalone product and expect people to adopt it. Construction projects run for five to ten years. You need to fit into their existing workflow.”

For architects, AI-BOB works like a spell-checker inside their CAD tools — they don’t need to change behaviour.  “For property developers — the company’s main customers — it integrates with their project platforms, giving them a dashboard view: do we have the most relevant requirements, do we meet them, who’s responsible, and when were decisions made? It’s about giving them data-driven control for the first time.”

“Dream customers” and early traction

From the start, AI-BOB has had what Mårtenssonwe calls “our dream customers" — White Arkitekter and CF Møller — on board as early collaborators.

"They’ve given us continuous feedback: are we solving the right problems, does this actually make their work easier, is this something they’ll use? And now we’re also starting pilots with property developers.”

Mårtensson contends that this sector represents one of the biggest opportunities in the built environment. Beyond efficiency, AI-BOB is very purpose-driven as a company. 

“We want to reduce the number of errors, cut CO₂ emissions, and make high-quality, affordable buildings possible — schools, hospitals, housing. There should be no excuse not to build the best you can. If we can deliver buildings on time, on budget, and with less waste, we can really move the needle on sustainability and affordability,” shared Mårtensson.

AI-BOB is currently active in Sweden but is looking to expand to new markets.

Lead image: AI-BOB. Photo: uncredited.

Paris-based Exeliom Biosciences, a clinical-stage BioTech company developing new therapies in immuno-oncology and immuno-inflammation, today announced the completion of a €2.85 million extension to its Series A round, bringing the total Series A funding to €11.85 million.

This extension, led by existing investors Biocodex with participation by Crescent Ventures, UI Investissement and Forepont Capital Partners, builds on the company’s legacy of nearly €30 million in dilutive and non-dilutive funding since its founding in 2016.

“Exeliom is deeply grateful for the unwavering support of our investors, which has enabled us to transform EXL01 from a microbiome therapy into a precision NOD2-targeting immunomodulator, using a live bacterial strain as its delivery mode,” said Benjamin Hadida, CEO of Exeliom.

This funding fits within a wider pattern of investment in European immuno-oncology and immuno-inflammation ventures during 2025.

In Finland, TILT Biotherapeutics raised €22.6 million in a Series B round to progress intravenously delivered cancer immunotherapies. In the UK and Ireland, LIfT BioSciences secured €12 million to advance neutrophil-based immunotherapies for solid tumours. Denmark’s SNIPR Biome obtained €35 million in Series B funding for microbial and CRISPR-based therapeutics addressing oncology and infectious diseases.

Meanwhile, Spain’s Highlight Therapeutics raised €15 million to accelerate clinical development of its skin-tumour immunotherapies, and Austria’s Graph Therapeutics completed a €3 million pre-Seed round for AI-driven discovery in inflammation and immunology.

Exeliom’s Series A extension therefore reflects continued investor confidence in precision-based immunotherapies, positioning France alongside a diverse set of European peers advancing immune-modulating platforms.

EU-Startups previously covered Exeliom Biosciences in July 2023, when we reported on the company’s €24 million Series A close to advance its microbiome-based immunotherapy pipeline.

“The evolution of this small-molecule-like approach unlocks new indications, not only expanding our therapeutic potential but also positioning us for international growth, including a new cancer study underway in the US,” added Hadida.

Founded in 2016, Exeliom Biosciences is a clinical-stage BioTech company developing a new generation of innate immune modulators to restore and enhance patients’ immune responsiveness in cancer, inflammatory diseases and chronic infections.

The new funding will support the continued clinical development and international expansion of Exeliom’s lead programme, EXL01, with a focus on advancing proof-of-concept Phase 2 studies and preparing for a new cancer indication in the US.

Their lead candidate, EXL01, is a bacterial-derived, NOD2-targeting immunomodulator that activates macrophages and reprograms the immune microenvironment. By doing so, EXL01 has the potential to overcome resistance to existing therapies and significantly enhance the efficacy of immunotherapies.

EXL01 is currently being evaluated in three Phase 2 oncology trials in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitors, including the largest randomized Phase 2 study worldwide evaluating a bacterial approach in gastric cancer. In addition, EXL01 has completed a Phase 1 study in Crohn’s disease and is now being investigated in a randomised, placebo-controlled Phase 2 trial in the same disease.

The programme also includes a Phase 2 randomised, placebo-controlled trial for the prevention of recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection.

“Supporting Exeliom Biosciences perfectly embodies a partnership rooted in scientific excellence, guided by long-term vision and driven by our shared conviction that microbiota-based innovation can transform the management of complex immune-mediated diseases. Together, we aim to turn pioneering science into sustainable health solutions for patients worldwide,” said Jean-Marie Lefevre, chairman of Biocodex.

Over the past two years, Exeliom has made significant strides in demonstrating the mechanism of action of EXL01, identifying NOD2 as its key target.

The NOD2 pathway is a central component of the body’s innate immune system and a well-validated target in the pharmaceutical industry, with two approved products already on the market. EXL01 exhibits superior NOD2-agonist properties and activates a distinct NOD2 signaling profile compared to existing approaches, positioning it as a potentially first-in-class therapy in this emerging field.

“Forepont Capital are excited at the scientific and clinical advancements made by Exeliom, particularly that Faecalibacterium prausnitzii modulates the immune system via the NOD2 pathway, which is important for regulating innate immunity and is therefore an important target for therapeutics,” said Ismail Kola, senior partner at Forepont.

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Vilnius-based nexos.ai has raised €30 million in a Series A round to help enterprises adopt AI securely and at scale. The financing was co-led by Evantic Capital and existing investor Index Ventures, with participation from Creandum, Dig Ventures, and angel backers.

The raise comes six months after the company’s January launch and amid growing concerns over “shadow AI,” where employees upload confidential materials to consumer tools, risking exposure to third parties.

nexos.ai’s platform combines an AI Workspace for employees and an AI Gateway for developers, providing a unified control layer across 200+ models. This enables task routing to the most suitable model while centralising security, cost management, and compliance.

The AI Workspace enables teams to interact with multiple LLMs within a single interface, featuring configurable guardrails and role-based access. Users can compare models side by side, work across file formats, and collaborate with built-in web search, while detailed logging and trace visibility help prevent data leakage.

The AI Gateway offers a single endpoint for plug-and-play orchestration of models, intelligent caching to cut costs and latency, RAG grounded in company documents, smart fallbacks and load balancing for resilience, and private hosting options for sensitive workloads.

The funding will scale the platform and tackle core barriers to enterprise AI adoption, security, observability, governance, and cost control. It will also accelerate advanced routing and private model deployment, support expansion across Europe and North America, and fund educational partnerships to help close AI skills gaps.

Tallinn-based Yaga, a fast-growing online marketplace for secondhand fashion, has raised €4 million in a pre-Series A funding round to explore opportunities in the Middle East and North Africa – bringing total funding to €7.2 million.

The round was led by Specialist VC, with participation from H&M Group, Trind Ventures, StartupWiseguys, and a group of angel investors.

“Secondhand fashion is no longer a niche – it’s becoming the first choice for millions of people who want both affordability and sustainability,” said Aune Aunapuu, CEO and Founder of Yaga.

The pre-Series A round for Yaga takes place amid a small but notable upswing in investment across Europe’s second-hand and circular fashion sectors.

In France, Faume secured €8 million in April 2025 to expand its brand-partner resale platform and introduce AI-driven dynamic pricing tools. Meanwhile, Austria-based Minimist raised €350k in January 2025 to develop machine-learning software that helps second-hand sellers digitise and manage their inventories more efficiently.

Since no other Estonian resale startups have been reported this year, Yaga’s new funding highlights its regional leadership and reflects a wider European pattern: investor attention is spreading from luxury-focused recommerce platforms to tools and marketplaces supporting mainstream second-hand adoption.

EU-Startups previously featured Yaga in its November 2022 article, which detailed the company’s €2.2 million raise to expand its social e-commerce model into emerging markets, highlighting its strong traction in South Africa and its focus on sustainable resale growth.

“Our growth in South Africa proves that this is a global movement, not limited to Europe or the US. With this funding, we will explore new expansion opportunities as we continue to build the sustainable fashion marketplace of the future,” added Aunapuu.

Founded in 2017, Yaga is a social e-commerce company that makes it easy for people to buy and sell second-hand fashion. Founded in Estonia, Yaga has grown the market-leading resale platform in South Africa and is expanding across new markets, with over 12 million visits each month.

According to the company, resale platforms are no longer niche – they’re becoming mainstream shopping destinations. The global second-hand apparel market grew by about 15% in 2024, reaching $227 billion, and is forecast to reach $367 billion by 2029.

Over recent years, Yaga has doubled in size annually, reaching a €50 million+ GMV run rate. The company is now profitable and has achieved this scale with a 25-person team and €3.2 million raised prior to this round, showing the efficiency of its model alongside strong market demand.

Yaga has built a particularly strong presence in South Africa, where it has become the leading online fashion resale platform. Globally, sellers have earned more than €80 million to date, and more than 6 million items have found new owners, extending their life and reducing textile waste.

“We strongly believe in the team behind Yaga, which has clearly shown capabilities to scale its marketplace for preloved fashion – one of the fastest-growing business sectors within the fashion industry,” said Nanna Andersen, Managing Director of H&M Group’s business area New Growth & Ventures. “Their presence on the African continent is also a strong complement to H&M Group’s existing secondhand initiatives in other parts of the world.”

Yaga’s platform is designed to be safe and user-friendly, offering an escrow-based payment system and localised logistics to protect buyers and sellers. Items are typically 50-80% cheaper than new, making fashion more accessible while helping reduce the industry’s environmental footprint.

With the new funding, Yaga is exploring expansion opportunities primarily in the Middle East and North Africa region. The funding will also support further team growth and the development of existing markets.

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Yesterday was frustrating for many of us due to trouble accessing websites like Canva, Grammarly, Disney+, Duolingo, Reddit, Microsoft 365, Fortnite, Facebook, Zoom, Slack, Snapchat, Signal and Perplexity, as well as multiple UK national banks, and key public services.

The problem has been attributed to Amazon’s AWS service, and triggered by a DNS resolution failure tied to the DynamoDB API endpoint in AWS’s US-East-1 (Northern Virginia) region, s with a flow on to thousands of services, including Amazon’s own services, such as Alexa, Ring and Prime Video, were experiencing problems, as well as big names from around the web.

One thing is clear: when so much of Europe’s digital infrastructure runs on a handful of American cloud providers, resilience becomes as much a geopolitical issue as a technical one. It exposes the fragility of global digital supply chains and the UK’s growing challenge in ensuring digital sovereignty and resilience.

Recent outages and policy debates have underscored just how dependent governments, businesses, and users have become on the “big three” cloud giants — AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure — and the urgent need for multi-region, multi-provider strategies to mitigate systemic risk.

In the UK, criticism was raised that HMRC (His Majesty's Revenue and Customs) is a critical UK national infrastructure, but it's dependent on operational competence in another continent.

Mark Boost, CEO of UK cloud provider Civo and an outspoken advocate for sovereign cloud, says this latest disruption highlights how dangerously exposed the UK is when it comes to digital resilience. He’s calling on government and regulators to rethink procurement, fund sovereign alternatives, and make resilience a baseline requirement.

“We should be asking the obvious question: why are so many critical UK institutions, from HMRC to major banks, dependent on a data centre on the east coast of the US?

Sovereignty means having control when incidents like this happen - but too much of ours is currently outsourced to foreign cloud providers.

The AWS outage is yet another reminder that when you put all your eggs in one basket, you're gambling with critical infrastructure. When a single point of failure can take down HMRC, it becomes clear that our reliance on a handful of US tech giants has left core public services dangerously exposed."

Scott Dew, Head of Technology at Loqbox, expressed his surprise on LinkedIn upon discovering that parts of the UK tax authority’s infrastructure run outside the country.

“I’d assumed a British tax authority would run in British data centres,” he wrote.

“Deploying to eu-west-2 (London) is no harder than deploying to us-east-1 (Virginia). Same API calls, same infrastructure-as-code.”

He went on to note that while taxpayers have little say over government IT decisions — “roughly the same influence… as we do over road maintenance” — businesses don’t have that excuse. Dew argued that companies have a clear responsibility to care about where their data is stored and processed: “Data sovereignty isn’t just a compliance checkbox. It’s about control, resilience, and trust.”

John Hankinson, Head of IT at Utility Aid, voiced his alarm on LinkedIn over what he described as a “lack of discussion” about the implications for local UK governance.

“I highly doubt these organisations operate complex multi-region VPC architectures with cross-continent replication,” he wrote.

“So I’m left to assume that some workloads were simply deployed with AWS’s default region — US-EAST-1.”

Hankinson warned that hosting UK-facing services in the US not only raises concerns about performance and latency, but also about the location of sensitive government data.

“Yes, GDPR and data-transfer frameworks technically allow this — so it’s unlikely to be illegal — but it does seem architecturally and strategically poor, especially for critical national or financial systems.”

Chris Dimitriadis, Chief Global Strategy Officer at ISACA — an international association focused on IT governance — drew parallels between the latest cloud disruptions and the global IT outage caused by CrowdStrike in July 2024, which affected airlines, broadcasters, the London Stock Exchange, and businesses worldwide.

“When CrowdStrike went down, I coined the term ‘digital pandemic’ — a situation where a single point of failure in the technology ecosystem triggers ripple effects across multiple industries,” he said.

“More than a year later, we are witnessing a widespread outage through today’s Amazon Web Services disruption, which has already impacted critical sectors including communications, retail, and workplace productivity tools worldwide.

It’s another stark warning of how interconnected and fragile our digital world has become."

He predicts that fixing this one incident will not prevent the next and calls for investment in education, training, and “building a larger, better-equipped army of cybersecurity professionals who can envelope our supply chains in resilience.”

He also connected the outage with the need for strong cyber legislation,  such as the UK Government’s forthcoming Cyber Security and Resilience Bill.

“Whilst the root cause of today’s outage remains unclear, data centres like those affected today would fall under its scope, adding another layer of protection. It’s imperative that the legislation is implemented swiftly and applied broadly to cover the full digital ecosystem and the supply chains behind it. 

Without stronger safeguards, there should be no doubt, these ‘digital pandemics’ will continue to threaten productivity, trust, and economic stability”.

That said, Chris Street, DevOps Technical Lead at the UK Civil Service and an AWS Community Builder, pushes back against what he sees as misplaced panic around data sovereignty.

“All the top-level CISSPs and security consultants shouting so loudly about data sovereignty clearly don’t understand how AWS actually works at the nuts-and-bolts level,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

He criticised what he called “outrage over outages”, arguing that some commentators were more interested in fuelling fear than understanding infrastructure reality:

“They don’t report the outage; they report the outrage — because fear sells. But AWS going down, while a monumental pain, has little to do with data sovereignty. That’s the least of the worries, to be honest.”

Street asserts that AWS’s global architecture inherently depends on centralised control points — such as S3 bucket naming or Route 53 DNS — that must exist in a single region to ensure worldwide consistency.

“If one of these central services suffers an outage — like S3 naming or Route 53 — it can affect services elsewhere,” he said.

“But that doesn’t mean your data is stored where the problem occurred. Your data might still live entirely in the UK.”

Tallinn-based Yaga, an online marketplace for second-hand fashion, has raised €4 million in a pre-Series A round led by Specialist VC, with participation from H&M Group, Trind Ventures, Startup Wise Guys, and several angel investors.

Resale platforms have moved beyond niche and are now mainstream shopping destinations. The global second-hand apparel market is projected to grow from $227 billion in 2024 to $367 billion by 2029, placing Yaga at the centre of this expanding sector.

Founded in Estonia in 2017, Yaga operates the market-leading resale platform in South Africa and is expanding into new markets, attracting over 12 million monthly visits.

Yaga’s platform offers a secure, user-friendly experience with escrow-based payments and localised logistics to protect buyers and sellers. Items are generally priced 50–80 per cent below new retail, improving accessibility and supporting more sustainable consumption.

The company plans to strengthen its presence in Africa and the Middle East, creating economic opportunities for sellers while promoting more sustainable consumption.

Aune Aunapuu, CEO and founder of Yaga, said that second-hand fashion is increasingly becoming the preferred choice for millions of consumers seeking both affordability and sustainability.

Our growth in South Africa proves that this is a global movement, not limited to Europe or the US. With this funding, we will explore new expansion opportunities as we continue to build the sustainable fashion marketplace of the future,

The new funding will support expansion opportunities in the Middle East and North Africa, team growth, and the development of existing markets.

nexos.ai, an all-in-one AI platform out of Lithuania, has closed a €30 million Series A to scale its platform’s abilities to remove blockers to enterprise AI adoption like security, observability, governance and cost control, allowing companies to more quickly benefit from the use of AI models in their business.

The funding round was co-led by former Sequoia Capital partner Matt Miller’s debut fund Evantic Capital and existing investor Index Ventures. Previous investors Creandum, Dig Ventures, and notable angels also participated.

“While security teams focus on traditional cyber threats like ransomware, their own employees are carrying out the biggest data leak in corporate history right under their noses,” said nexos.ai CEO and Co-founder Tomas Okmanas.

Across the region, startups such as the UK-based Synthesized (€17 million Series A for AI-driven test-data management), Denmark’s Light (€25 million Series A for AI-native financial platforms), Sweden’s EvoluteIQ (€44 million growth round for agentic-AI process automation), and the UK’s Conduct (€11.2 million Seed round for modernising enterprise IT systems) have each attracted investor attention.

While none are Lithuanian, Sweden’s EvoluteIQ stands out as a Nordic neighbour pursuing similar enterprise-AI goals.

Together, these fundings illustrate growing investor confidence in platforms that underpin secure, compliant, and scalable AI adoption across large organisations – an ecosystem into which nexos.ai fits squarely.

Matt Miller, whose new fund Evantic Capital led the round, said: “Tomas Okmanas is a force of nature in the European tech scene having built several successful companies including Nord Security. It is a thrill for us to partner with him and his team on their latest endeavor to provide compliance and secure access to AI services to the enterprise and mid-market.”

EU-Startups reported on Evantic Capital’s debut back in September, in which nexos.ai was identified in the fund’s early investments as part of its B2B-AI portfolio.

Miller, who previously helped scale Confluent and dbt Labs at Sequoia Capital, added: “nexos.ai addresses the fundamental infrastructure gap preventing enterprises from capturing AI’s value while maintaining security control.”

Founded in 2024 by the creators of cybersecurity unicorn Nord Security, Nexos.ai is an all-in-one AI platform to drive secure, organisation-wide AI adoption. Okmanas, who, together with Co-founder Eimantas Sabaliauskas bootstrapped Nord Security to global market leadership over 12 years, identified the governance gap developing into a pattern while overseeing their own portfolio companies at Tesonet.

EU-Startups profiled Nord Security in a 2022 article, “Nord Security raises first-ever outside capital and becomes Lithuania’s latest unicorn”, which detailed its €91.6 million funding round that pushed its valuation beyond €1.4 billion.

Okmanas believes enterprise AI adoption faces four critical barriers: fragmented and insecure deployments, uncontrolled costs, zero visibility, and failed governance blocking scaling.

Through a secure, web-based AI Workspace for employees and an AI Gateway for developers, nexos.ai enables companies to replace scattered AI tools with a unified interface that provides built-in guardrails, full visibility, and flexible access controls across all leading AI models – allowing teams to move fast while maintaining security and compliance.

“Companies follow the same journey: initial AI excitement, then they buy everything, nothing works together, costs explode, and they end up throwing most of it away. Enterprises have between 12-24 months to architect proper AI infrastructure or face existential competitive disadvantage,” Okmanas said.

nexos.ai’s platform combines an AI Workspace interface for employees with an AI Gateway for developers, providing a unified control layer for over 200 AI models, enabling enterprises to route tasks to optimal models while maintaining centralised security, cost management, and compliance oversight.

The AI Workspace enables teams to chat with multiple LLMs in one interface while maintaining security through customisable guardrails and role-based access controls. Teams can compare models side-by-side, work with any file format, and collaborate on AI projects with built-in web search capabilities – all while reportedly preventing data leaks through detailed logging and trace visibility.

The AI Gateway provides developers with plug-and-play API access to orchestrate all models through one endpoint, intelligent caching to reduce costs and improve latency, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) capabilities to ground responses in company documents.

Smart fallbacks and load balancing ensure uninterrupted workflows even during model outages, while private model hosting options serve teams working with sensitive data.

Hannah Seal, Partner at Index Ventures, said: “nexos.ai has rapidly evolved from concept to enterprise-ready platform, driven by urgent market demand to deploy AI securely and remove barriers to adoption. As enterprises move from running pilot projects to full-scale deployment, many are turning to nexos.ai to help them deliver clear ROI – and with a team experienced in building best-in-class software, the company is exceptionally well positioned to capture this demand.”

The funding will accelerate platform development, including advanced routing algorithms, private model deployment capabilities, and expansion across Europe and North America, helping nexos.ai partner with more enterprises to overcome the barriers they face when integrating AI tools.

The company also plans to launch educational partnerships to address enterprise AI skills gaps.

The post With €30 million in funding, Vilnius-based nexos.ai sets its sights on AI adoption and the ‘Shadow AI’ challenge appeared first on EU-Startups.

German energy unicorn 1KOMMA5° has officially filed a complaint with the European Commission against the German government's planned power plant strategy. 

The reason: the plans to expand fossil gas power plants by at least 20 GW by 2030 distort competition and unnecessarily drive up the costs of the energy transition. The complaint targets the proposed subsidies, which the EU must approve under state aid law.

The German government has repeatedly commented on its plans over the past months. According to the government's plan, gas-fired power plants will be subsidised in two stages: first, during construction via tenders and second, during operation via a central capacity market – even when not in use.

According to the government, this is justified by concerns over the security of supply.  However, under state aid law, subsidising new gas-fired power plants would only be allowed if there are no distortions to competition and the measures are technology-neutral, necessary and proportionate, i.e. if no better, subsidy-free instrument exists.

 1KOMMA5° considers the power plant strategy not to meet the conditions of the state aid framework and has explained this to the Commission.

With its complaint, the company officially intervenes in the ongoing state aid proceedings and positions itself as an ‘interested party’, according to EU law. Philipp Schröder, CEO and Co-Founder of 1KOMMA5°, says:  

"The planned gas-fired power plants are intended to operate when solar and wind power are insufficient.

Decentralised systems, like virtual power plants, can do precisely this. In the event of supply shortages, they reduce the electricity consumption by shifting it to different moments  or by providing additional  electricity from private batteries and electric cars when needed." 

1KOMMA5° currently aggregates more than 600 MW of flexibility capacity, making it one of Europe's largest virtual power plants for residential customers. By 2030, the company aims to control a total of 20 GW of capacity, thereby bundling a capacity equivalent to that of the newly planned gas-fired power plants.

The company considers the planned subsidies a market intervention that distorts competition in the energy market. Schröder adds:

 "We need technology-neutral competition between centralised and decentralised power plants in which generators and flexibility solutions are treated equally and promoted on the same terms. 

The goal should be to ensure the best solutions for the lowest electricity prices and the most secure electricity system through more competition."

Discrimination against dynamic alternatives and virtual power plants

Both the tenders and the capacity market discussed would systematically and disproportionately discriminate against more cost-effective alternatives. Under these proposals, producers would not be remunerated based on their generated electricity, but simply based on the capacity they provide.

Decentralised flexibility, which exhibits a more dynamic capacity, would thus be further pushed out of the market, and the price of electricity will continue to rise for consumers through additional levies.

According to 1KOMMA5°, the Federal Government's plans are one-sided and unnecessarily harmful to virtual power plants, jeopardising jobs and “the innovative strength of numerous energy service providers, cleantech companies and startups.”

Mandatory hedging offers a way forward

1KOMMA5° calls for fair competition and technology neutrality to ensure equal treatment of all market participants. It contends that security of supply can rather be maintained through alternative mechanisms such as a mandatory hedging obligation — requiring energy market actors to secure their anticipated demand ahead of time and thereby guarantee a certain level of availability of supply. Under this option, EU state aid approval is not required, and the solution could be introduced immediately.

Philipp Schröder comments:  

"The power plant strategy should not unilaterally reinforce old structures, but should prioritise the most economical and climate-friendly solutions. 

A fair market will directly benefit consumers by reducing electricity prices. The planned combination of subsidies for new gas-fired power plants on the one hand and payments through the capacity market on the other is, in our view, an unacceptable intervention that will burden consumers with much higher costs.

It also threatens billions of euros in investments from Europe's leading energy service providers and cleantech companies, as well as installers and startups."

Lead image:  Philipp Schröder, CEO and Co-Founder of 1KOMMA5°. Photo: uncredited. 

Zurich-based Chipmind has raised $2.5 million in a pre-seed round led by Founderful, with participation from angel investors in the semiconductor industry. The company is also introducing Chipmind Agents, AI tools designed to help engineering teams at semiconductor firms streamline workflows from specification to manufacturing.

With demand for higher-performance chips rising and design complexity growing, traditional methods are under strain while a new generation of engineers expects AI-enabled workflows, conditions that favour collaborative, AI-driven tools.

Chipmind develops AI agents that integrate with existing chip design tools to automate complex design and verification tasks, helping semiconductor companies accelerate development, reduce errors, and drive innovation.

Built on each customer’s proprietary, design-specific data, Chipmind Agents adapt to project context, work with proprietary EDA flows, and understand full design hierarchies, executing multi-step tasks while keeping engineers in control. An underlying agent-building platform readies current designs and environments for agentic automation without replacing legacy systems.

Harald Kröll, co-founder and CEO of Chipmind, explained that while customisation and data protection are essential in the semiconductor industry, the real differentiator lies in design awareness. This means a system’s ability to understand each chip’s unique hierarchy, constraints, and proprietary tool environment, turning it from a generic tool into an intelligent partner.

Our 'design-aware' agents are engineered to holistically understand the entire chip context, not just the surrounding tools. We’ve found this deep awareness is the key that unlocks productivity, translating directly into significant time savings on the most complex tasks, all while integrating seamlessly into existing workflows,

Kröll added.

Chipmind will use pre-seed funding to grow the engineering team, accelerate product development, and expand collaborations with industry partners.

etalytics, a Darmstadt-based DeepTech company specialising in AI-powered energy intelligence, today announced the successful closing of a €8 million Series A extension, bringing its total Series A funding to €16 million.

The extension is led by M12, Microsoft’s Venture Fund, and includes continued support from existing investors Alstin Capital (Carsten Maschmeyer), ebm-papst, and BMH.

“We’re proud to welcome M12 as a strategic partner,” said Dr Niklas Panten, CEO and Co-founder of etalytics. “Their investment marks a major milestone in our mission to make industrial energy systems more intelligent, resilient, and sustainable.”

etalytics’ Series A extension aligns with a broader 2025 surge in funding for German startups advancing energy efficiency and optimisation technologies.

Berlin-based Enter secured €20 million in June 2025 to expand its platform for building-energy efficiency, while Munich’s Reshape Energy raised €5 million in March 2025 to scale digital optimisation services for commercial properties. In July 2025, ALVA Energie obtained over €5 million to grow its decentralised, landlord-to-tenant energy model.

Against this backdrop, etalytics’ AI-driven approach to industrial energy intelligence positions it within an active national ecosystem, where German innovators are attracting significant investment to improve how energy is managed across industrial, commercial, and built environments.

“With Microsoft’s reach and technology ecosystem, we’re accelerating the digital transformation of energy-intensive industries worldwide. Together, we aim to redefine how data centres, manufacturing, and process industries manage energy – efficiently, transparently, and resilient with AI operators can trust,” added Dr Panten.

Founded in 2020 as a spin-off from the “ETA | Energy Technologies and Applications in Production” research group at TU Darmstadt, etalytics develops AI-powered software for industrial energy optimisation.

Its flagship platform, etaONE , enables real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, and autonomous optimisation of HVAC and cooling systems – helping organisations reduce energy costs, emissions, and operational complexity. etaONE is deployed in sectors such as data centres, automotive manufacturing, and pharmaceutical and chemical production – sectors where growing complexity and stricter energy regulations have outpaced the capabilities of traditional energy management systems.

Customers across sectors, including Volkswagen, Equinix, NTT, Digital Realty and Merck have reportedly achieved up to 50% reductions in energy consumption for cooling, heating, and ventilation. These savings translate into measurable carbon reductions and significant operating cost improvements.

The new funding will be used to:

• Launch North American operations, including a dedicated team in the Bay Area,
  California
• Roll out new installations in the U.S., Europe, and Singapore to meet rising
  international demand
• Support team growth to more than 120 employees over the next two years
• Advance AI capabilities for industrial energy systems across data centres, pharma,
  automotive, and manufacturing

This expansion establishes etalytics’ dedicated U.S. presence and supports its mission to deliver scalable, software-driven energy optimisation for global industrial clients.

“etalytics is transforming how some of the world’s most energy-intensive industries operate,” said Michael Stewart, Managing Partner at M12. “Their AI-driven platform addresses a critical global challenge: optimising industrial energy use at scale while driving measurable sustainability impact.

“We’re excited to support etalytics as they expand internationally and bring next-generation energy intelligence to data centres, manufacturing, and beyond. This partnership reflects our belief in the power of AI and systems infrastructure to solve complex, real-world problems.”

The funding extension follows strong momentum from the initial Series A in 2024, led by Alstin Capital (Carsten Maschmeyer), and joined by ebm-papst and BMH, as reported by EU-Startups.

The post German energy startup etalytics extends Series A to €16 million to scale AI energy optimisation globally appeared first on EU-Startups.

As artificial intelligence becomes an ever louder voice in how we consume and analyse information, we wondered: how well do AI chatbots understand Europe’s startup landscape?

To find out, we asked three of the most talked-about tools – ChatGPT (US), Mistral AI (Europe), and DeepSeek (China) – the same five questions about the future of European innovation.

All responses were generated on the free/basic versions of the tools and conducted on the date of publication, ensuring a fair comparison of how these AI models view Europe’s entrepreneurial horizon.

Which European country will lead the startup scene by 2030?

ChatGPT bets on Germany, citing Berlin’s maturity as a hub for FinTech, HealthTech, and AI, backed by a strong industrial base and deep manufacturing roots evolving into Industry 4.0. It also gives a nod to France and the UK, calling them close contenders.

Mistral AI, by contrast, sees France taking the lead by 2030, highlighting state support through France 2030, generous tax incentives, and a thriving Paris tech scene attracting talent from across Europe. It ranks Germany as a close second and gives honourable mentions to Sweden, the Netherlands, and Estonia.

DeepSeek goes all in for France. It points to Macron’s “100 unicorns by 2030” target, the La French Tech initiative, elite engineering schools, and Paris’s growing venture capital magnetism. In DeepSeek’s view, France’s mix of government vision, local reinvestment, and DeepTech focus gives it the edge.

Our take: All three tools clearly see France and Germany as the twin engines of Europe’s startup future. What’s interesting is how both Mistral and DeepSeek – European-built models – display a stronger emphasis on policy and sovereignty, while ChatGPT stays more balanced and data-driven.

What is currently the biggest challenge facing European Founders trying to scale across the continent?

Here, the consensus is unified: fragmentation.

ChatGPT and Mistral both frame Europe as a market still divided by regulatory, cultural, and funding gaps. DeepSeek expands on this in more detail, describing 27 different markets, tax codes, and consumer realities that make “continental scale” exponentially harder than in the US.

All three agree that while Europe has the brains and the capital, it still lacks the unified simplicity that American startups enjoy.

Our take: It’s telling that even the machines find Europe’s complexity troubling. The message from these bots is clear – solving cross-border scaling is a competitive necessity as much as it is a policy priority.

Which sectors will define Europe’s innovation landscape over the next decade?

Despite different tones, the three models converge around five key sectors: ClimateTech, HealthTech, FinTech, AI, and industrial innovation.

• ChatGPT underscores Europe’s leadership in GreenTech and sustainability, pointing to the EU Green Deal and circular economy efforts.

• DeepSeek goes into granular detail, calling the green transition “Europe’s moonshot” and adding quantum computing, robotics, and AgriTech to the mix.

• Mistral AI aligns with both but adds a “wildcard”: DefenceTech, driven by Europe’s push for strategic autonomy.

Our take: The overlap suggests AI models are well attuned to the policy signals and funding priorities shaping Europe. The inclusion of DefenceTech is an interesting new frontier – one that’s gaining traction across the continent as the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to loom large.

What makes Europe’s startup ecosystem unique compared to the US or Asia?

Here, the differences are subtle but still indicative of different priorities.

ChatGPT focuses on ethics, collaboration, and cultural diversity. It praises Europe’s commitment to regulation and “human-centred innovation” (ironic, no?).

DeepSeek positions Europe as mission-driven and pragmatic, contrasting its capital-efficient approach to Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” culture. It highlights Europe’s strength in DeepTech and B2B and its partnership between state and private sectors.

Mistral AI captures the same spirit with simpler phrasing: purpose-driven innovation, DeepTech excellence, and diversity as both a challenge and a creative strength.

Our take: All three AIs see Europe as a region defined by balance – values over velocity, diversity over scale. It’s a flattering and, in our opinion, largely accurate portrayal of how Europe’s entrepreneurial DNA differs from that of the US or Asia.

If you could advise the European Commission on strengthening Europe’s startup ecosystem, what would you recommend?

ChatGPT calls for harmonising regulations, simplifying bureaucracy, and increasing early-stage funding.

Mistral AI echoes the same themes, with an emphasis on late-stage capital, startup visas, and public procurement reform.

DeepSeek goes furthest, proposing a “Common Startup Code,” pension fund reform to unlock venture capital, and even “Airbus-style” models for tech sovereignty. This reminds us of the current efforts to establish a 28th Regime, as discussed here.

Our take: The three responses converge on a common point: Europe’s next leap forward depends on integration, investment, and ambition. If only policymaking could be automated at this speed.

Final thoughts

AI chatbots may differ in tone – ChatGPT remains the generalist analyst, DeepSeek the technocratic strategist, and Mistral the pragmatic optimist – but their collective message is surprisingly unified: Europe’s startup future will be green, collaborative, and innovative – if it can overcome its own complexity.

And if these free-tier AIs can already pinpoint Europe’s biggest startup challenges with such ease, it’s exciting to imagine what their successors will be capable of in just a few years.

To wrap up the experiment, we asked each chatbot to sum up its views in a single sentence – here’s what they said:

The post We asked 3 chatbots about Europe’s startup future – here’s what they said appeared first on EU-Startups.

There’s a lot you can learn from how venture firms evolve — not just in what they invest in, but in how they run themselves. Take HV Capital. Late last year the firm completed a full handover from its four founding partners to a new generation of general partners, myself included — a process that many firms struggle with, but which, in HV’s case, was smooth, deliberate, and built for the long term.

I spoke to Partner, Barbod Namini to learn more about the Firm and his approach to investment.

A multi-generational Fund built to last

According to Namini, HV Capital’s generational transition “shows that we’re serious about being a multi-generational fund — one that can thrive for decades, not just the lifespan of its founders.”

“The founders built an incredible foundation over 25 years, but to keep growing for the next 50, you need new energy and perspectives.

It takes humility for founders to let go of something that’s their life’s work, but they understood that the only way to preserve HV’s success was to pass the torch.”

“It’s an honour to continue what they built and to help take it to the next level.”

Two decades of backing European innovation

Founded in 2000, HV Capital has a long track record of spotting Europe’s future winners at the Seed stage, backing the first generation of German billion-dollar businesses.

With over €2.8 billion under management and investments in around 250 disruptors across industries, HV Capital is one of the most active venture firms in Europe.

From early stage to growth, the Firm leads early-stage rounds from €500k to €10 million, makes growth investments of up to €60 million, and follows on with as much as €100 million per company.  Its typical partnership spans a decade or more, providing continuous support at every stage of a company’s journey.

In 2022, the firm launched a continuation fund — a first of its kind in Germany — to extend that commitment even further.

Further, over the years, HV Capital’s portfolio companies have collectively created more than 100,000 jobs — a testament to the enduring impact of long-term partnership and shared ambition. Investments include feld.energy, LAP Coffee, and Tzafon.

From coder to global investor 

Barbod Namini’s fascination with technology began early, when he taught himself programming and web design as a teenager.

After earning a Master’s in Software Engineering from Imperial College London and an MBA from Columbia Business School, he moved into investing roles spanning public markets, private equity, and venture building. Before joining HV, he worked on the first privately funded submarine cable on Africa’s east coast (Seacom) and later helped expand Rocket Internet’s investment portfolio as VP of Investment Management.

Namini recounts, “I did my MBA in New York, and Rocket was what brought me back to Germany — even though I was born here, I didn’t grow up here. “

“It really gave me the opportunity to see Berlin’s startup ecosystem up close, just as it was starting to take off. Sometimes you just need to be in the right place at the right time.”

That one year turbocharged his German network. Namini learned who was active in the ecosystem, what the key topics were, and how the scene worked. 

Joining HV afterward allowed him to combine that local insight with his international investing experience from London and New York. Namini joined during the beginning of Fund V, which was the Firm’s first fund as a fully independent VC with a diverse base of LPs. 

He recounts, “Our earlier generations were backed by a single LP, but we later restructured the firm. “It’s been a great journey — from Fund V onwards, we’ve grown into a broader platform, added co-investment funds, and built one of the most established track records in Europe.”

At HV Capital, he combines his background in finance with a deep understanding of emerging technologies to lead investments across fintech, insurtech, and B2B SaaS and has led early investments in companies including BUX, Penta, Yapily, and Solaris. 

Why raising €500 million no longer feels impossible

According to Namini, when he started, the German ecosystem was still very young. 

“If you go back to the dot-com bubble and its aftermath, there were only a handful of VCs in the country. Rounds were often in the hundreds of thousands of euros — mega-rounds were unheard of.

Berlin wasn’t what it is today. But over time, the ecosystem matured dramatically. The investor community evolved, and the willingness to take risk expanded.”

However, when the pool of capital is small, you’re forced to back business models that become profitable quickly — you simply can’t fund the journey to a multibillion-euro outcome. But that’s changed, and now according to Namini,

“Germany and Europe can absolutely support companies with global ambitions. You also start seeing the flywheel of success: serial entrepreneurs, experienced operators, angel investors — all recycling their knowledge and capital.

Successful exits create new networks of founders and investors. Just look at Sweden — Spotify and Klarna alone have spawned over 200 companies.

Once people see what’s possible and have worked inside hyper-scaling companies, their mindset changes. Raising €500 million doesn’t feel impossible anymore once you’ve seen it done.”

There’s often talk about German risk aversion, but Namini believes it’s changing quickly.

Noting, “it’s important to remember that risk appetite isn’t just about founders — it’s also about investors."

"You can only take as much risk as the capital available to you allows. If follow-on capital is scarce, startups have no choice but to reach profitability quickly.

Real innovation, though, requires investment into the future — which means burn. As capital markets deepen, so does the collective willingness to take those risks. The two things go hand in hand.”

Why investors are prioritising runway over uplifts

The last few years have been turbulent for the startup ecosystem, with some investors and many startups struggling to raise.  Namini explained that when public markets shut down, the impact rippled through every stage of venture investing. “Initially, people assumed the early stages would remain immune,” he said.

“But if exit windows stay closed for long enough, that changes investor behaviour all the way down the stack.”

He noted a recent tendency to “overfund strong teams” — giving startups more runway because investors are reluctant to play the old game of raising every 12 months at an uplift.

“In today’s market, to justify a higher valuation, companies need to hit much tougher milestones than four years ago,” he added. “You want to make sure they’re funded long enough to reach a real inflection point before coming back to market.”

For Namini, success in venture capital still comes down to returns — exits and capital back to LPs — but timelines inevitably stretch. “Venture capital is cyclical, and when exits slow, LPs naturally double down on established firms with strong track records,” he said.

“We’ve benefited from that. Our last fund was the largest we’ve ever raised, and with two and a half decades of proven returns, LPs have confidence to keep backing us even through tougher cycles.”

How HV Capital keeps evolving with the market

According to Namini, HV today is a very different firm than it was ten years ago. 

It now operates a dual-fund model — HV Early and HV Growth. That means we can invest from pre-seed all the way through Series C and beyond.

“We call ourselves a generalist fund, but that doesn’t mean we’re shallow. It means the fund invests across sectors, but within it, you’ll find partners who are genuine specialists in their verticals.

Founders who work with us also benefit from our large platform team, which supports them operationally from the earliest stages — we combine early-stage flexibility with the infrastructure of a large, mature fund.”

Further, he asserts that HV has always evolved with the market. 

Historically, HV was known for B2C, then we shifted early into B2B, SaaS, and fintech.

"Each shift aligned with where we saw the next opportunity emerging. But in recent times HV has seen a greater appetite for deep tech — “companies with more IP risk or longer paths to commercialisation, where value lies in invention rather than distribution,” shared Namini, detailing that the Firm is comfortable with technically challenging areas like robotics, advanced materials, and other deep-engineering companies that need patient capital.

He asserts that “when governments start announcing half a trillion euros in defence and security investments, you have to pay attention."

“Even if most of that goes to legacy players, the portion that goes to new innovation is still enormous — potentially larger than the entire European VC market in some years.

The question then becomes: where do we feel comfortable investing, and where do our LPs draw the line?

For us, the focus is on dual-use technologies — systems that enable data collection, monitoring, or logistics rather than weapons."

HV has invested in companies like Quantum Systems and ARX Robotics, which build critical capabilities but not armaments.

To Namini, it’s about technological sovereignty — ensuring Europe can develop and maintain strategic capabilities in a responsible way.

From Berlin to London

HV Capital’s recent expansion into London was, according to Namini, “a function of scale and ambition.” “When you’re a smaller fund, it’s fine to be based in one city and fly around for deals,” he explained.

“But once you reach a certain size — in both capital and team — being pan-European becomes essential.”

With the UK still Europe’s largest startup ecosystem, having a physical presence there was a natural next step. “Feet on the ground make all the difference in deal flow and perception,” Namini said.

“It shows founders and co-investors that we’re not just a German fund that visits occasionally — we’re a European fund with real local presence.”

HV has already built a strong team in London, including hires from other top funds. “We’re seeing the results of that investment already,” he added.