London-based insurtech startup Ancep has raised $8.5 million in a funding round led by Creandum, with participation from Kleiner Perkins and Vicus Ventures. The round also attracted angel investors, including former Aon CFO Christa Davies and operators from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind.

Ancep develops AI agents designed to help commercial insurance brokers automate routine tasks involved in placing insurance policies, allowing them to handle more business opportunities without increasing administrative workloads.

Commercial insurance brokers face increasing pressure from declining insurance rates, while smaller policies often require the same administrative effort as larger ones despite generating lower commissions. As a result, brokers may deprioritise or decline these opportunities, potentially missing out on additional revenue.

Ancep aims to address this gap by automating the administrative stages of insurance placement. Its AI agents process client submissions, prepare brokerage documents and contact insurers to obtain terms through email, online portals or APIs. The technology operates within brokers' existing systems, including policy administration platforms, electronic trading portals and customer relationship management tools.

The platform is designed to support brokers rather than replace them. Authorised brokers retain responsibility for binding insurance coverage, while broking teams review the agents' outputs before any action takes effect. Client data is managed in isolated environments and is not shared or used for training across brokerages without explicit consent.

Ancep introduces its technology through individual workflows, focusing on processes where automation can deliver the most immediate benefits. Its pricing model is linked to the value generated for brokers.

According to Gagan Khurana, co-founder and CEO of Ancep, solutions focused primarily on saving brokers time and reducing costs have often struggled to gain traction, resulting in lengthy procurement processes.

What we sell is net new revenue. Plenty of people are betting brokers get disintermediated. We think the opposite: brokers have huge leverage, and no chatbot is going to replace it. So we are not building around them, we are building for them, and we are starting with the twenty largest in the world.

The company's AI agents are already being used by insurance brokers in Austria, the UK and the US, including ACIC Financial Advisory.

The new funding will support Ancep's growth and hiring plans.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is putting $100M worth of AI and cloud technology into health projects for underserved communities around the world. The AWS Health Impact Initiative will run for five years. Rather than cash, organisations receive credits to use AWS’s AI tools, AI agents and cloud computing. Health charities, government bodies, researchers and companies can […]

Efferon, a biotech company developing hemoadsorption devices designed to remove endotoxins and excessive inflammatory mediators from the bloodstream, has raised €4.3 million from existing private investors in the DACH region.

Check out our earlier interview with Efferon CEO Dima Romashin.

Originally developed for critical care settings such as sepsis and septic shock, Efferon’s technology is approved and used across Europe.

More than 30,000 treatments have been performed using the company’s devices, which are distributed in 46 countries.

By targeting systemic inflammation, a core driver of critical conditions, chronic diseases, and aging-related decline, Efferon is expanding beyond intensive care into broader healthcare and healthy aging applications. 

The funding will support the commercial expansion of Efferon’s product portfolio, including Efferon LPS and Efferon NEO, in Europe, India, and Latin America; further development of the company’s network of 21 distributors; continued regulatory work; and the strengthening of its clinical evidence base.

Efferon devices are currently available in 46 countries. According to the company, revenue exceeded €1.1 million in 2025. Efferon expects revenue from its intensive care products to reach approximately €5 million in 2027. Subject to successful registration, outpatient products could contribute up to an additional €3 million.

“The new investment will support R&D, including the development of new devices and research into applications of the technology in adjacent medical fields. It will also help us expand our distributor network, train medical teams, and strengthen our clinical evidence base. These results should lay the foundation for a full Series A round and further progress along the regulatory pathway in the United States,” said Dima Romashin, Co-Founder and CEO of Efferon.

As Efferon enters the Indian market, the company plans to combine commercial distribution with the systematic collection of real-world implementation data. The initiative will examine how the technology is integrated into clinical workflows, how medical teams are trained, and which factors support or hinder adoption.

The findings will help Efferon develop an optimal model for bringing hemoadsorption technology to new healthcare markets.

Efferon’s broader goal is to make hemoadsorption more accessible to hospitals and patients. Developing this infrastructure should support clinicians’ efforts to reduce sepsis mortality alongside timely diagnosis and standard intensive care.

Chinese AI start-up Moonshot AI signed a deal in August to rent servers fitted with Nvidia’s most powerful AI chips. The US does not allow these chips to be sold to China without a licence. The deal was revealed in financing documents seen by Bloomberg. Moonshot, however, disputes that the documents are accurate, and the company […]

Noctua Science Ventures, a specialised pre-seed fund for research-based deeptech spin-offs from Austria, has successfully completed its first closing at €15 million and has begun investing.  First close investors include ERSTE Group, Verbund and Allocator  One. 

Originally founded as a joint venture between Speedinvest and TU Wien, Noctua has now expanded its shareholder base to include further leading technical universities. TU Wien, TU  Graz, Montanuniversität Leoben, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna  (“BOKU”) and Johannes Kepler University Linz are now part of the operating company behind Noctua, anchoring the fund in Austria’s research system.

According to Philipp Stangl, Investment Lead, Noctua Science Ventures:

“Cutting-edge research only realises its full value once it finds its way to market – but private funding for high-risk deep-tech projects is often lacking.

With our first closing, we are  stepping into this gap and supporting the next generation of spin-offs from their very first  financing round.” 

Austria is one of the most research-intensive countries in Europe. Yet a significant share of the intellectual property created at universities and research institutions remains unused, and the number of successful spin-offs is low by EU standards. 

A key reason is the lack of specialised financing instruments at the earliest stage.  Noctua Science Ventures backs promising technologies as early as the pre-seed stage and turns excellent science into scalable companies early on – creating value, innovative strength and highly qualified jobs in Austria. 

The fund is backed by a strong group of capital providers. Alongside institutional investors such as Erste Group Bank AG, AWS (Austria Wirtschaftsservice), VERBUND X Ventures, and the emerging manager fund of funds Allocator One, the consortium includes several deeptech entrepreneurs.  The fund will admit further investors on a selective basis over the coming months. 

Noctua plans to make up to ten investments per year and can commit up to €500,000 per spin-off as lead investor in the very first financing round. 

This allows research grants to be leveraged to best effect and sound structures to be put in place from the outset. Particular emphasis is placed on a well-considered tech transfer and IP strategy from an early stage, on complementing scientist-founders with experienced entrepreneurs, and on a future-proof cap table. 

The fund invests on a technology-agnostic basis at the pre-seed stage in the most promising spin-off teams across Austria – explicitly including spin-offs from institutions outside its shareholder group. Further selection criteria are scalability, market size and defensibility. 

Since the first closing, the fund has already completed several investments, two of which have been made public: Turn-Motion from Vienna and DiLt Analytics from Graz. 

Lead image: Noctua Science Ventures.

Elomia Health has acquired Earkick , an AI companion used by more than 250,000 people to vent, track patterns in mood, sleep, activity, and daily habits.  

Ukrainian entrepreneur Taras Pohrebniak founded Elomia Health in 2019 as an R&D lab exploring how large language models can support wellbeing. 

Elomia's technology has been the subject of several independent studies, including a recent randomised controlled trial conducted with the University of Pennsylvania.

The acquisition marks a step along Elomia Health's strategic path: while the company started with its own consumer app, it is now growing into an API provider for care-focused organisations — with the goal of becoming the leading infrastructure for AI wellbeing support.

Earkick was founded in 2021 by Dr Herbert Bay, co-inventor of the SURF algorithm — one of the most widely used computer vision methods of the past two decades — and Karin Andrea Stephan, whose research on how technology can support everyday emotional wellbeing laid the foundation for the company. 

The Earkick app helps people notice patterns in their daily lives and delivers personalised suggestions and content based on real data.

"The right message at the right time — based on real data and delivered in a way people are most receptive to — can save lives. Bringing Earkick and Elomia together takes us a step closer to making that kind of personalised support available at scale," said Karin Andrea Stephan, COO of Earkick.

The acquisition expands the technology behind Elomia's LLM-powered API, which lets organisations such as healthcare providers launch safe, compliance-ready AI chatbots for wellbeing support.

"From the beginning, our mission has been to make mental wellbeing more measurable, personal, and accessible," said Bay. 

"Taras was among the first to bring LLMs into the wellbeing space, and he has built a company that shares our vision and brings deep expertise in safe, evidence-based support.

Together, we're building something far more powerful than either of us could have created independently."

In addition to the Earkick AI models, the deal gives the company ongoing early access to new versions of Mia21, a memory engine, originally developed by the Earkick team.

"Our focus is on helping organisations launch AI for wellbeing support the right way — safe by design, and something people actually use," said Pohrebniak.

 "The Earkick team spent years building an engine that understands a person's state and context over time. By pairing it with our own models and our safety and overreliance-prevention layer, we're making it a core part of our technology."

Siemens has agreed to buy Lauterbach, a German company that makes tools for finding and fixing bugs in chips and the software that runs on them, but the price was not disclosed. Founded in 1979 by brothers Lothar and Stephan Lauterbach, the company is based in Höhenkirchen, near Munich. It employs about 170 people and […]

Pan-European VC outfit Redalpine has closed a $250m fund, marking its biggest early-stage fund to date, it said. Founded in Zurich in 2006, Redalpine invests in tech and science startups across Europe.

Along with Zurich, the VC, which has backed high-profile European startups including Mistral, N26, Basecamp Research and Proxima Fusion, has offices in Berlin, London and Silicon Valley. The new fund, RAC VIII, is 25 per cent bigger than its predecessor, the $200m RAC VII, which closed in 2024.

The new fund will invest mainly at seed and Series A stage, with investments of between $1m and $15m, the VC said. It will look to lead or co-lead investments, it said. Redalpine, half of whose investment team are scientists, says the fund will invest in between 15 and 20 startups, with a focus on areas including robotics and AI for drug discovery.

It says its startups backed by RAC VII, whose portfolio is nearly 50 per cent UK-based, have since raised over $1.1bn in total funding. 

Sebastian Becker, general partner, Redalpine, said: “AI is levelling the playing field more than ever. The advantage now lies with whoever understands the underlying science and the hardest problems best, and that has always been Europe’s strength.

"We’re seeing a new generation of highly ambitious founders who are determined to build and scale world-leading tech companies from here and establish Europe as a global technology power.”

Australia will set up a regulator for AI safety and force AI companies to report hacks and other serious incidents to the government, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday. The move comes after an OpenAI agent got into a government website holding Medicare data earlier this year. Speaking at a press conference in Canberra, Albanese said […]

Australia’s online safety regulator has rejected warnings from big tech companies that a proposed law would push them to censor too much content. eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant told a Senate inquiry on Tuesday that she had seen no sign of platforms over-censoring, Reuters reported. “I haven’t seen any indication, particularly over the past two […]

Instagram has launched Effect Builder, a free web tool that lets people create their own AI effects for Instagram Stories by describing what they want.   View this post on Instagram   A post shared by Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) For now, it is only available to users in the US who are 18 or older. No […]

President Donald Trump said on Monday in a press conference that the FBI is looking into Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang’s relationship with Alice Huang. US spy agencies reportedly believe the former Megaspeed executive was working for China, as Donald Trump made the comments to reporters. “I know the FBI is looking into it in […]

Valkyrie Dynamics, a Ukrainian-Lithuanian defence hardware company building miniature radars that turn low-cost drones into all-weather precision interceptors, has raised €1M in a pre-seed round from Paris-based venture studio Hexa, with participation from defence tech angel investors. 

Headquartered in Lithuania, Valkyrie established its physical R&D lab in Kyiv to iterate hardware in days rather than months, working directly alongside Ukrainian frontline operators. 

Heading into what the team calls “Shahed season”, October through March, attacks on Ukrainian cities are expected to intensify under longer nights and heavier cloud cover. 

Modern warfare is shifting away from multi-million-dollar defence missiles towards low-cost, mass-produced autonomous interceptors. However, most of these interceptors still rely on optical and thermal cameras, which fail in heavy rain, fog, smoke and snow.

According to recent analysis, bad weather reduces drone visibility by up to 80 per cent beyond a few dozen metres. The threat is also changing. Russia is replacing propeller-driven Shaheds with faster, jet-powered variants that typical interceptors can no longer catch. Countering these drones takes both faster, more agile interceptors and reliable sensors that can track high-speed targets in any weather conditions.

To address this, Valkyrie developed Heimdall, an onboard terminal guidance radar seeker designed specifically for FPV interceptors and autonomous interception platforms, which sits in the interceptor’s nose cone. Once airborne, an interceptor only has an approximate target location. In the final kilometre, the operator has to navigate manually, typically using thermal cameras. This works in good weather but fails once cloud cover sets in. In the last 100 to 500 metres, Heimdall gives the operator a radar view instead, so they can still see the target and engage it. The radar emits radio-frequency waves that penetrate conditions traditional cameras cannot see through.

While competitors build expensive ground radars or heavy civil drone sensors, Valkyrie's hardware is lightweight (around 100 grams) and affordable (target price below €300 per unit at volume). Heimdall supports both piloted FPV navigation and autonomous flight when paired with a partner's guidance module. It moves low-cost FPV interceptors towards greater autonomy, while the final decision to engage still sits with a human pilot or the interceptor manufacturer's own systems.

Looking ahead, Valkyrie plans to bring the same advanced radar technology to ground vehicles and other unmanned platforms.

Marcin Kovalevskij, founder and CEO of Valkyrie Dynamics, said:

"Our mission is to make mass-scale air defence more affordable and expendable. We want to replace $3 million missiles with low-cost drone interceptors guided by more accessible radar technology.

Giving these systems better sensors, and eventually fusing those with other components, is what will push the next stage of drone interception. It will make interceptors more autonomous and able to keep up with faster, jet-powered threats."

Trained as an engineering physicist, Marcin began his career building electronics and embedded flight systems at CNRS and Exotrail.  

Inspired by conversations with Ukrainian combat officers at the European Defence Tech Hackathon (EDTH) in London in 2025, he started developing the Heimdall concept on weekends while based in Lithuania, funding the earliest work himself. 

Check out our earlier interview with EDTH co-founder Benjamin Wolba.

Once Marcin had saved enough, he packed his equipment into two suitcases and moved to Kyiv to set up Valkyrie's R&D lab. For the first five months, he slept on the floor of a factory that had previously taken missile hits.

By October 2026, Valkyrie had a working prototype and joined Hexa Sprint Defense, a specialised acceleration programme for early-stage European defence and dual-use tech startups. 

Guillaume Lerouge, Partner at Hexa VC, said:

"At Hexa Sprint Defense we build companies alongside founders, from the first customer to the first factory. Valkyrie is solving a problem every European army is about to face: drones that hide in the weather.

They're building it from Kyiv, where the feedback loop is measured in days, not years. We're proud to have them as the first Ukrainian team in the programme."

Valkyrie is integrating Heimdall with companies that build guidance modules and interceptors. Recent flight tests were conducted with Korven Systems, a Ukrainian-Estonian developer of autonomy systems for interceptor drones.

Valkyrie's product roadmap includes next-generation seekers with increased detection range and a wider field of view. The company also plans to establish European technical integration hubs in late 2026 to serve NATO procurement programmes.

The funds will go towards manufacturing the first version of its radar seeker, product development and team expansion.

Lead image: Marcin Kovalevskij, founder and CEO of Valkyrie Dynamics.

When a startup's press pitch cites the Draghi report — with a reminder that not a single company with a market value above €100 billion has been built from scratch in the European Union in the past fifty years — you can bet I take notice.

Especially when the company is not only developing software to challenge legacy enterprise technology providers but also to guide other startups to glory.

Berlin-based Agent F, which is building AI agents to automate accounting, financial controlling and planning for high-growth companies, has raised $4 million in pre-seed funding. Los Angeles-based Alpha Edison led the round. Its partners have experience helping build technology companies including Microsoft, Apple, Google and Snap.

I spoke to Agent F CEO Felix Schläger to learn more.

In Europe, the back office grows faster than the business. Every new hire, customer and country adds filings, reports and reconciliations.

For growing companies, keeping track of finances and administrative obligations can soon become a job in itself. As businesses scale, financial information becomes scattered across bank accounts, payroll providers, accounting software and other systems. Bringing it all together can involve hours of manual work each week.

"Imagine you're a founder, managing director or CFO at a fast-growing startup. You might be working across ten different bank accounts, integrations and systems, each providing a different view of the company at a particular point in time," Schläger explains.

"At a certain point, the complexity of the underlying operations and administrative work increases exponentially."

Agent F is developing an AI-native enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform that connects existing financial and operational systems. Its AI agents can consolidate financial information, connect banking data with accounting software such as DATEV, and track KPIs, giving founders and finance teams a clearer picture of the business without having to manually gather data from multiple sources.

The agents carry out tasks across the tools a company already uses, document their actions so entries can be traced and present the results for human approval.

"The idea is to give founders and finance teams a clear overview of the business without having to spend hours manually collecting information from different systems," says Schläger.

Agent F is already seeing administrative tasks that previously took five to six hours a week reduced to around one hour.

Learning workflows rather than imposing them

Schläger acknowledges that the challenge isn't necessarily that a capable managing director doesn't know what needs to be done.

“It's that so much of their time is consumed by operational tasks."

Rather than simply automating existing processes, Agent F draws on best practices observed across fast-growing companies to help standardise workflows and account for the exceptions and inconsistencies that arise as businesses scale. In doing so, the company doesn't expect startups to reorganise their operations completely around its software.

"We first learn how the company already operates and then compare those processes against what we consider best practice," Schläger explains.

This is Agent F’s key distinction from traditional ERP systems, where you're typically given a standardised system and then have to adapt your business to fit it.

"That implementation process can be incredibly painful," admits Schläger.

Instead, Agent F's approach is designed to evolve alongside a company, adding functionality as its operations become more complex.

For example, a startup might initially use the system for bookkeeping before expanding into controlling, financial planning or warehouse management. The platform also supports multiple legal entities, currencies, and countries without requiring a complete reimplementation. It connects with banks, payment providers, and accounting tools, retaining financial records and agent activity for review.

"Agent F learns the company instead. The agents watch how your bookings, approvals and reports actually run, take over the repetitive work, and leave a trail a finance professional can check line by line," says Schläger.

And crucially, nothing goes out without a human signature.

Will AI agents replace finance professionals?

I wondered if a tool like Agent F would eventually make some people redundant? Schläger admits:

“Initially, I also thought there might be a reduction in jobs as a result of this technology. But what we've experienced has been almost the opposite.”

The role of a CFO or finance expert is becoming more complicated and more valuable.

“Everyone we've spoken to is frustrated by repetitive, complicated and stressful administrative processes, particularly when they're responsible for delivering accurate results." ​

When AI makes a financial mistake, who's responsible?

As AI agents take on more financial and administrative responsibilities, accountability questions become increasingly important, especially when mistakes could have legal or financial consequences. Schläger stresses that Agent F's technology is designed to support decision-making, not independently execute consequential financial actions.

"We're clearly a software provider, and our agents can't take definitive actions independently.

There's always a human in the loop for final approval, whether that's a tax adviser, managing director or another responsible professional."

When it comes to situations with legal consequences or where money is being transferred, we don't put those decisions in the hands of AI agents yet.

"I think that will remain the case for the foreseeable future."

Schläger also believes existing legal and regulatory frameworks aren't equipped to handle fully autonomous financial decision-making.

"Governments and regulatory systems aren't really ready for a situation where an autonomous agent takes an action and nobody knows who ultimately signed it off."

Challenging SAP and Oracle et al. in the AI-native ERP race

Agent F is entering an increasingly competitive market, with newer AI-native ERP companies such as Campfire and Rillet challenging established providers including SAP and Oracle.

Schläger asserts:

"I actually think the biggest challenge is facing SAP and Oracle. As we build what I believe is a leading AI ERP platform in Germany, we're seeing SAP's market defensibility deteriorate.

We have a great team, including the former CTO of SAP as an adviser, and I think we can make a real difference. Hopefully, we can also help strengthen the German and European enterprise software market."

Agent F is initially targeting fast-growing German tech companies, particularly startups from Series A onwards, before expanding across continental Europe. Schläger argues that European companies often need sophisticated ERP systems earlier in their development, particularly as they expand across borders and navigate different regulatory and administrative requirements.

"We have urgent problems to solve, in industry, in energy, in society, in defence. And too many of our smartest people spend their days with stupid tasks — correcting spreadsheets, updating databases and chasing reports.

Admin is Europe's growth tax. We want to automate it away so that engineers, managers and founders can build faster again."

While declining to disclose customer numbers or name individual clients, Schläger says Agent F is "working with some very interesting companies, including well-known, fast-growing German startups.”

Agent F’s immediate priority is to become the first company German businesses think of when looking for an AI-native ERP platform. As companies grow, they often expand into other countries. A business with a hardware component, for example, might open a production facility in France, Poland or Romania.

"Suddenly, it has more entities, more operational complexity and a greater need for a sophisticated ERP system," Schläger explains.

"We want to grow alongside those companies as they expand internationally."

A team with experience at Amazon, Snapchat and Interactive Brokers

Founded in Berlin in 2025 by CEO Felix Schläger, Agent F currently has an international team of ten. Schläger brings experience in finance and entrepreneurship, including at Interactive Brokers, one of the largest US brokerage firms, where he expanded database systems for the company and its clients, including major hedge funds.

CTO Paul Ohlhaut spent 12 years at Amazon, including more than a year reporting directly to Jeff Bezos. He later joined Snapchat when it had fewer than 20 employees and remained through its IPO. Ohlhaut also participated in Agent F's funding round.

Agent F's investors see an opportunity to challenge the traditional ERP market with AI-native technology.

"We believe agentic AI will transform how businesses operate, and ERP is integral to the ecosystem," said Nick Grouf, Managing Partner of Alpha Edison.

"Agent F is challenging the rigidity of traditional ERP systems with an AI-native approach that has the potential to redefine the category. The team has the technical expertise and ambition to lead that shift."

United Founders, a pan-European investment firm backed by a community of more than 160 European founders, sees an opportunity for Europe to lead in this emerging software category.

"For a long time, Europe watched big technology categories being born elsewhere. Enterprise software is one of the last places where the rules are being written from scratch again, so we are not chasing anyone here," said Vít Horký, founder and general partner of United Founders.

"I think this category will be won by whoever builds it first and best, and we want that to be someone from Europe. Agent F is a small team with a hunger for big success, and those are exactly the founders we look for."

The round also attracted a who's who of technology founders and executives, including Jan Oberhauser, founder of Berlin-based n8n, and serial entrepreneur Julian Teicke, founder of The Delta and co-founder of insurtech unicorn wefox.

Check out our earlier interview with Julia Teicke.

Former SAP CTO Dr Jürgen Müller also invested and advises Agent F.

Other investors include Maximilian von Düring, Daniel Lauchardt, Paul Ohlhaut, Nicklas Teicke and Timo Gerken. London- and Berlin-based investor Tiny Supercomputer also participated. Founded in 2017, the pre-seed investor has backed more than 450 companies, including Synthesia, Wayve, Payhawk, Sorare and n8n.

Beyond the funding itself, Schläger believes Agent F's investors' experience and connections will play an important role in the company's development.

"Being able to exchange ideas with people who were involved in building companies such as Apple in their early days is incredibly valuable.

I think people in Europe sometimes underestimate what access to that level of experience and those networks can mean for a young company.

It's something we can bring into the business and ultimately share with our customers."

Sumary, a Copenhagen-founded startup that builds AI software for accounting firms, has raised $25M in a seed round led by Singular. Existing investors byFounders, Partech and Tenity also took part. Angel investors include Steve Anavi of Qonto, Tuomas Artman of Linear and Steffen Tjerrild of Synthesia. Sumary said it is the largest seed round for […]

Urban logistics company PORT has raised €14.5 million in a funding round led by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and Balnord, with participation from existing and new investors. The financing combines equity and debt and brings the company's total funding to €29 million, following €14.5 million previously raised through pre-seed and seed rounds.

Founded in 2020 and led by Kamil Suda (CEO), PORT is developing an autonomous urban logistics system that combines physical infrastructure, AI and robotics. The company operates a network of microhubs and charging stations across the UK, providing e-bike subscriptions that allow delivery couriers to access electric vehicles without owning or maintaining them.

PORT's platform serves more than 50,000 couriers and operates a fleet of approximately 3,500 e-bikes. Its infrastructure includes 24 microhubs across London, Manchester and Birmingham, occupying around 52,000 square feet of urban space, including underground car parks, warehouses and railway arches. These locations allow delivery vehicles to be stored, charged and deployed close to areas with high delivery demand.

Building on this infrastructure, PORT is developing its proprietary AI Driver and autonomous delivery vehicles to automate last-mile logistics. The company is using data collected from its existing e-bike fleet to train AI models specifically for urban delivery environments.

Some of PORT's e-bikes are equipped with NVIDIA-powered cameras and lidar sensors that capture real-world delivery conditions on London's streets. The collected data covers everyday situations, such as navigating kerbs, cyclists and delivery locations, as well as less common scenarios. When the bikes return to PORT's hubs, the data is automatically uploaded and processed to train the AI Driver, which is intended to operate the company's autonomous delivery vehicles.

We believe robotised logistics does not start with the robot; it starts with the infrastructure, operations and data required to put robotics to work in the real world. We have spent years building that foundation. Now, with this investment, we are focused on the physical AI and robotics that will run on top of it,

said Kamil Suda, founder and CEO of PORT.

PORT has also expanded its services to include parcel deliveries using cargo bikes, offering a more sustainable alternative to traditional diesel-powered delivery vehicles.

The company is now preparing the next stage of its autonomous logistics development in partnership with Royal Mail. The collaboration will focus on introducing a new robotic delivery system, building on PORT's existing infrastructure and ongoing development of autonomous delivery vehicles.

The new funding will support the further development of PORT's AI Driver and autonomous delivery vehicles, alongside the expansion of its autonomous logistics capabilities. The company also plans to accelerate hiring across its research and development and AI teams.

Copenhagen-founded AI accounting software startup Sumary has raised $25 million in a seed funding round led by Singular, with participation from existing investors byFounders, Partech and Tenity. The round also attracted angel investors, including Steve Anavi (Qonto), Tuomas Artman (Linear), Stanislas Polu (Dust), Steffen Tjerrild (Synthesia), Jannick Malling (Public.com) and Ben Freeman (Omnea).

The investment follows a $4.2 million pre-seed round completed less than a year ago.

Founded by former McKinsey consultants Pascar Sivam (CEO) and Bastian Schneider (Chief Bookkeeper), alongside Lucas Rantzau (CPTO), Frederik Hvilshøj (Chief Scientist) and Frederik Skov Wacher (COO), Sumary develops an AI-powered operating system designed to automate accounting workflows and help firms manage their operations more efficiently.

Accounting firms across Europe continue to rely heavily on manual processes while facing growing talent shortages and pressure to serve more clients without proportionally increasing their teams. The emergence of AI-native accounting firms is also creating new competition for established practices, increasing the need for more automated and scalable operations.

Sumary aims to address these challenges by automating core accounting processes, including monthly financial closes, VAT returns and year-end preparation. Its platform works across clients and their existing accounting systems, preparing tasks for accountants to review and approve while maintaining professional oversight.

According to the company, accounting firms using Sumary report spending 50 per cent less time on monthly closes and 75 per cent less time preparing VAT returns after three months. By reducing repetitive bookkeeping and compliance work, the platform aims to allow accountants to dedicate more time to client advisory services, financial analysis and business decision-making.

The technology is supported by a Copenhagen-based research team that has developed a benchmark for evaluating AI models against real accounting tasks. This enables Sumary to assess model performance, verify outputs and evaluate new AI models before integrating them into client workflows.

Commenting on the growing competition from AI-native accounting firms, Pascar Sivam, co-founder and CEO of Sumary, said:

We want to offer existing accounting firms the chance to deliver customer value that is as good as, if not better than, these new entrants, by adopting AI quickly across their operations. With the right technology, they can lead this transformation rather than be disrupted by it.

Sumary now works with the majority of the Nordics' 20 largest accounting firms and has secured contracts with leading UK firms, with customers including Deloitte, Grant Thornton and Baker Tilly.

With the new funding, Sumary plans to expand across Europe, starting with the Benelux region, while establishing London as its commercial hub and keeping Denmark as the centre of its technology development and AI research.

Paris-based software company triPica has received a €12.4 million investment from TiLT Capital Partners, the energy transition investment platform of the Siparex Group.

Founded in 2016 by Mathieu Horn, Walid Bounar and Christophe Ruzé, triPica develops a cloud-native CRM and billing platform that helps energy suppliers and telecom operators manage customer relationships, subscriptions, billing, payments and customer service.

As the energy transition progresses, energy suppliers are introducing increasingly diverse products and services, including dynamic tariffs, solar self-consumption, electric vehicle charging and demand flexibility programmes. However, many continue to rely on legacy customer management and billing systems designed for simpler pricing structures, making it difficult and time-consuming to introduce new offerings. Telecom operators face similar challenges when developing digital brands, bundled services and usage-based plans.

triPica aims to address these limitations by bringing customer management and billing processes together in a single cloud platform. Its technology enables operators to introduce new products and pricing models in weeks rather than months, reducing the need for extensive IT development and system customisation.

The platform also supports the migration of customer records, contracts and billing histories from existing systems, allowing operators to modernise their infrastructure without disrupting ongoing operations. Drawing on its experience in telecom billing, triPica helps energy suppliers introduce more flexible pricing models, bundled services and new products.

Every new energy offer, a dynamic tariff, a self-consumption contract, an EV charging plan, eventually becomes a billing problem. Suppliers have no shortage of ideas. What slows them down is a customer and billing system built for a market that no longer exists.
We built triPica so that an operator can launch that offer in weeks. With TiLT, we will take it to more operators across Europe and use AI where they lose the most time today,

said Mathieu Horn, co-founder and CEO of triPica.

The new investment will support triPica's expansion in the European energy market, particularly in Germany and Italy, alongside its existing operations in France, with plans to enter additional European countries. The company will also continue developing its telecom business across Europe, the Americas and Asia, while integrating AI into billing and customer service operations to improve efficiency and reliability.

European venture capital firm redalpine announced on Tuesday the final close of its early-stage fund. The fund, redalpine capital VIII (RAC VIII), closed oversubscribed at $250 million. That reflects continued investor appetite for companies building on advances in software and science. RAC VIII is the latest fund in redalpine’s platform built to back European technology […]

A startup with roots in Switzerland which provides banking infrastructure for the wealth industry has raised over $5m in seed funding.

Light Frame has raised $5.1m in a seed funding round led by Fortino Ventures, with participation from Sidekick Partners, Tenity, Chamaeleon, and AltaIR Capital, alongside existing investors including Rogue Venture Partners, New Stack Ventures, and Studio Alpha. It previously raised $1.7m in a pre-seed round in 2024.

Swiss American Light Frame, founded in 2024, is looking to replace what it sees as the “outdated” technology infrastructure used by traditional private banks. The startup provides core banking and portfolio management software for private banks, wealth managers and asset managers. The startup was founded by key personnel who worked at Swiss digital private bank Alpian.

Through its cloud and API-platform, the startup says wealth managers can manage customers’ investment portfolios and assets, process investment and corporate transactions, among other things. Its tech is modular so firms can modernise individual parts of their existing setup or adopt the full platform.

It will use the funding to invest in the platform and grow its commercial team across EMEA, Light Frame said.

Schuyler Weiss, co-founder and CEO of Light Frame, who is the former CEO OF Alpian, said: “Light Frame delivers foundational technology with the sophistication institutions require. AI is redefining what technology can deliver, but the realisation of its potential in the Wealth industry is dependent on the underlying infrastructure. The architecture must be designed around this future, without compromising the security, resilience and trust fundamental to banking. In Fortino and our broader investor group, we have found partners who share our ambition to build that foundation for the next generation of wealth management.”