Today, Finch Capital released the tenth edition of its State of European Fintech Report, offering a detailed snapshot of funding flows, deal activity, and emerging trends shaping the sector in the first half of 2025. 

Some of its key findings: 

London is king for fintech venture funding

While a greater concentration of funding is prevalent across European regions amid an overall drop in total funding, this lack of diversification, however, highlights the UK’s dominance, netting 56 per cent of total funding, 79 per cent of which is concentrated in London.

At a national level, the UK maintains greater scale and diversity than its European counterparts, being the only region whose top two deals constitute less than 50 per cent (45 per cent compared to 56 per cent and 84 per cent) of total funding. This is despite its top two deals as a percentage of total funding having increased the most (2.8x compared to the second most, 1.4x). 

The UK’s drop in total fintech funding is also the least in the region (47 per cent compared to the second least, 64 per cent). London’s standout success can be attributed to homegrown fintech stars such as Monzo and Revolut, and its rich payments ecosystem.

France is a fintech challenger to London

Germany, France and other markets are driven largely by one or two significantly sized deals in AI-driven compliance, wealthtech, and capital markets data analytics. While Germany’s median deal value is up 189 per cent YOY, its volume count is 27, lagging behind France’s 38. 

The data makes France Europe’s strongest challenger market to London, albeit attracting only half the investment of Germany. And bigger deals loom on the horizon during the remainder of H2 2025. 

In the Netherlands, the top two 2025 deals to date represented 90 per cent of its overall funding, with FINOM Payments SME services attracting €115m. A groundswell of opportunity, however, lies in Crypto and Stablecoin infrastructure, and regtech for digital assets, if regulatory clarity improves. NL held 4 per cent of the European fintech funding value in H1 2025, just pipping Ireland and Poland (both 3 per cent) to fourth place.

These figures speak to considered and confident investment decisions, funnelling capital into established entities, courting longevity and staking a hefty claim on the continued momentum of the market.

Aman Ghei, Partner, Finch Capital, says: 

"The fintech vertical is the most important sector in Europe. Having undergone its own transformation 2-3 years ago, the quality of companies and entrepreneurs that are burgeoning from the ecosystem sets itself apart from other verticals.

They are the first to implement new technologies, enable AI infrastructure in their products and build profitable businesses at scale.” 

Volume trumps value

European fintech companies constituted a quarter (25 per cent median) of all VC/Growth deals done by the top global technology investors in Europe in the six months to H1 2025, and looks to be re-setting its status as prime asset class for the longer term, given the steady rise from 18 per cent of total deal value in 2024 to 23 per cent in H1 2025. Fintech investment up 23 per cent.

While the overall number of deals is down 32 per cent YOY from H1 2024, overall capital invested in fintech is up 23 per cent to €3.6bn within the same period.  Within this, the hotbed of activity lies in the €100-500m M&A transaction range.

The total volume of these is 5.3x that of the €500+ range and constitutes the greatest differential to date, indicating great investor appeal and significant potential for fintech founders.

US investment in European fintech now accounts for 28 per cent of all transactions

According to the report authors, the consistency and stability in European trading is a key draw after the volatility brought about by President Trump’s election and subsequent decisions.

This figure runs above the median figure for US investment since 2018. Furthermore, Europe’s exit market is quietly robust, with a pipeline almost half full of fintech.

Question marks remain over the US, still attracting major future listings, but an IPO backlog of 47 per cent is a clear reflection of a sustained, buoyant fintech ecosystem.

Engineering teams are shrinking due to software optimisation

AI-based start-ups and scale-ups account for 21 per cent of deal volume in European fintech (up from 16 per cent in 2024), but only 7 per cent of deal value in H1 2025. 

However, a closer look at R&D teams in the report reveals a stark stemming of growth in engineer teams since 2022 when there was a 20 per cent increase in net new hires in R&D at top fintech firms. This fell to 14 per cent in 2023, 9 per cent in 2024, and it is expected to be a mere 2 per cent by the end of 2025. Firms are optimising activities, focusing on computer engineering- fine-tuning existing models, maintaining and integrating, rather than building.

According to Aman Ghei, Partner, Finch Capital, “firms don’t have resources to develop their own models, per se, hence they need to use what’s out there, putting their own wrapper on it. 

“That is what’s happening in the market today and what probably will happen for the next year or two.

Replacing front-end engineers, the biggest job posting out there is prompt engineer-- someone who interacts with language models to get the best output possible from an engineering perspective. Now, you don’t have to worry about needing as many engineers to grow your business.”

AI’s fortifying force

AI strongly features in software focused on modification and cost-saving, as seen in Wealth Management and Underwriting. 

For example, genAI in wealth management is improving margins rather than generating return. Forty-eight per cent of wealth managers are already investing in AI, with client experience and enhancements (69 per cent), task automation (62 per cent) and cost reduction (56 per cent) the top three incentives.

Underwriting is where the greatest revenue gains and cost reductions across functions are to be had for insurance firms embracing AI. Using AI increases the value in underwriting to 36 per cent, from a mere 10 per cent.

Interesting to note, at this time, there is zero value (0 per cent) to be gained from AI implementation in insurance Procurement, Legal or product management. The report projects that in the space of two years from 2024 to 2026, the number of lenders piloting or scaling AI for loans will have almost doubled, from just over 35 per cent to just under 70 per cent. 

Even more stark, in the same timeframe, the report predicts the use of AI could replace manual loan underwriting completely for those that use it, shortening the average cycle from 12 days in 2024 (entirely manual) to 2.5 days (entirely AI).

Sebastien Marchon is the CEO of Belgium HQ’ed Rydoo, which recently acquired Nordic fintech Semine. He agrees that fintech has matured in Europe and investor confidence is growing, including from US investors; however, more private capital is needed to keep pace with the UK.

“Investors are showing confidence in European fintech as a resilient asset class and betting on a strong pipeline of IPOs, underscoring the region’s position as a fintech powerhouse.  

However, the UK is dominating Europe with more funding deals and greater diversification. The EU needs to do more to stimulate private capital investment in promising early-stage fintechs.”      

In the first half of 2025, software companies in Europe raised €3.6 billion across 335 deals, representing around 11 per cent of total European tech funding (€33.7 billion) and around 17 per cent of all tech deals (1,940+). While software captured a smaller share of capital, it remains a vital driver of deal activity, accounting for a higher proportion of transactions than funding volume.

The average deal size in software was about €10.7 million, compared to €17.4 million across European tech overall. This highlights a more fragmented funding landscape in software, with a larger number of smaller- to mid-sized rounds fueling innovation.

The period featured several outsized software rounds across Europe, highlighting the sector’s diversity, from productivity AI and workforce platforms to enterprise SaaS, risk decisioning, cryptography/FHE, FinOps, and healthtech. These raises indicate continued investor interest in AI-enabled, mission-critical tools that address both broad and industry-specific needs.

Overall, the data suggests that while mega-rounds in other sectors drove headline numbers, software continues to demonstrate resilience and breadth, with strong deal activity and a steady flow of capital into companies scaling AI, automation, and digital infrastructure.

Here are the biggest software deals in H1 2025.

Amount raised in H1 2025: $1B Grammarly is an AI writing assistant used by over 40 million people and 50,000 organisations to improve clarity and effectiveness in English. Founded in Ukraine in 2009, it provides real-time support across 500,000+ apps and sites, from email and word processors to web browsers. Its product lineup, Grammarly Free, Pro, Business, and Education, serves users ranging from students to Fortune 500 companies. Features such as grammar and spelling checks, tone and style guidance, and plagiarism detection are designed to enhance writing while maintaining each user’s voice and context. In May 2025, the company secured $1 billion in non-dilutive financing from General Catalyst to further its transformation into a comprehensive AI productivity platform.

Amount raised in H1 2025: €800M Your.World is a European platform providing online services that help more than one million customers establish and grow their digital presence. Since entering the market in 2016, the company has expanded through a mix of organic growth and acquisitions, offering recurring services across online productivity (workspaces), domains and hosting (web presence), digital trust (security), and digital transformation. The company has secured €800 million in long-term capital to expand in the European SME market, with planned investments and acquisitions in managed IT services, cloud infrastructure, and online productivity solutions.

Amount raised in H1 2025: $110M Ascendx is a salesforce-focused solutions company that helps enterprises “10x the value of their CRM.” Its connected portfolio of salesforce-native apps powers sales, service, operations, and data, delivering real-time insight and faster workflows. Offerings span sales enablement, service automation, workflow orchestration, secure data management and backup, data integration to warehouses like Snowflake, and point-of-sale experiences, enterprise-grade, compliant, and built to scale. Ascendx Cloud raised $110 million to accelerate US expansion and fund acquisitions to strengthen its AI-driven CRM suite.

Amount raised in H1 2025: $62M Incident.io is an all-in-one AI platform for on-call, incident response, and status pages. It gives fast-moving teams a unified command centre from alert to resolution to cut downtime and keep customers informed. The AI platform, including AI SRE, analyses alerts, triages issues, summarises context, and accelerates root-cause diagnosis so engineers resolve incidents faster with less effort. With workflows, a service catalogue, insights, and integrations, it’s trusted by teams at Netflix, Airbnb, Etsy and more. In April, Incident.io raised $62 million at a $400 million valuation and will use the funds for hiring, sales and marketing, and product development.

Amount raised in H1 2025: $60M Shop Circle is an AI-driven technology group powering the infrastructure of modern enterprises. It focuses on digital commerce with a portfolio of Shopify-native business apps and developer tools that help brands drive sales, streamline operations, and scale. Examples include Product Options, Digital Downloads, Easy Redirects, Back-in-Stock alerts, Referrals, and AI Order Tags & Flows. Customers get setup assistance, customisation, and 24/7 support. Shop Circle has raised $60 million (half equity, half debt) to expand into new sectors and accelerate development of its AI capabilities for B2B customers. Recently, Shop Circle extended Series B to $100 million.

Amount raised in H1 2025: $57M Zama is a privacy-focused cryptography company whose solution is Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), which enables data to be processed while still encrypted, so cloud services and applications can perform operations without ever exposing sensitive information. The technology supports true end-to-end confidentiality, quantum-resistance, and verifiable computations, making it suitable for privacy-sensitive use cases in finance, healthcare, blockchain, and other regulated environments. In June, Zama raised $57 million to launch its mainnet, broaden adoption within its developer ecosystem, and support further research and development of its Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) technology.

Amount raised in H1 2025: $54M Taktile is an AI-powered decisioning platform aimed at financial institutions, enabling teams in banking, fintech, and insurance to automate and optimise risk decisions, from onboarding and credit evaluation to fraud, compliance, and collections. Its offerings (Decision Workbench, Data Marketplace, Optimisation Studio, plus tools like AI Copilot) allow organisations to design, test, monitor, and deploy decision workflows with greater speed, safety, and transparency. The company raised $54 million in February to enhance risk management for fintechs and financial institutions while expanding its reach into the insurance sector.

Amount raised in H1 2025: $50M Tandem Health is a company which builds an AI medical scribe and clinician co-pilot that captures consultations and drafts structured notes so clinicians can focus on patients. It supports multiple specialities and languages, works for in-person and virtual visits, and is used daily by 1,000+ care organisations across Sweden, the UK, France, Spain, and Germany. In June, the company closed $50 million to build an AI-native operating system for clinical workflows across Europe.

Amount raised in H1 2025: $50M Vertice is a spend-optimisation platform focused on SaaS and cloud costs. It helps procurement, finance, IT/security, cloud engineering, and legal teams improve visibility, negotiate better vendor contracts, manage renewals, and automate procurement workflows. Vertice offers contract benchmarking and analytics, cloud cost optimisation tools, and intelligent approval processes. It integrates with ERPs and finance tools to help organisations control spending, improve efficiency, and deliver faster ROI. In January, Vertice raised $50 million in new funding to expand its vision.

Amount raised in H1 2025: $43M Granola is an AI-powered notepad app for meetings that listens to your calls, transcribes them in the background, and enhances your own notes with summaries, action items, and contextual insights, all without joining as a bot. It lets you use your own writing first, then fills in key details afterwards, supports customizable templates, and syncs with tools like Zapier, Slack, and Notion. Granola raised $43 million in a Series B round in May to expand its London-based team and accelerate product development.

Paris-based mental health startup Moodwork has raised €3.1 million in fresh funding. The round was led by French VC firm Newfund, with participation from new investor and Co-CEO Grégory Salinger, along with business angels Guy Lacroix and Alain Dublin.

Salinger, who has held senior roles at Microsoft and Apax Partners, joins company co-founder Benjamin Brion as Co-CEO.

The funding comes as the French government has designated 2025 as the “Great National Cause” for mental health, highlighting issues such as workplace stress and burnout. In this context, Moodwork is developing its platform that combines scientific research, psychological support, and AI-based personalization to help companies address employee well-being.

The company reports that six months of using its platform correlates with a 13% drop in burnout risk and a 9% decrease in stress levels. Moodwork is already profitable and plans to expand its product suite, grow its workforce, and adapt its tools for executives, healthcare staff, industrial workers, and logistics professionals.

Its offerings include individual support, HR and leadership tools, and company-wide assessments to identify risks before they escalate. Moodwork also provides consulting, training, and evaluation services.

Across Europe, demand for workplace mental health solutions is growing. UK-based Spill and Unmind and Dutch startup OpenUp are gaining traction, while Moodwork is building its presence with a focus on scientific validation and tailored solutions.

We are thrilled to unveil the first round of speakers for the Tech.eu Summit London 2026. The two-day event will take place 21–22 April 2026 at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London, bringing together leading voices in Europe’s tech ecosystem, from venture capital and startup founders to regulators and innovation leaders.

Key Themes at the Summit

This year’s summit will explore the latest technological advancements shaping industries worldwide. Key topics will include artificial intelligence, deeptech, climate tech, fintech and other transformative fields. Attendees can look forward to insights into the future of innovation, the challenges of the climate crisis, and the financial sector’s evolution.

Meet the First Round of Speakers

We are pleased to announce the following industry leaders who will be speaking at the summit:

Agata Nowicka - Visionaries Female Foundry

Ali Morrow - Clay Capital

Cecilia Ma - Norrsken VC

Dimitri Sedashev - Cherry Ventures

Hussein Kanji - Hoxton Ventures

Iwona Biernat - EU-Inc Petition

Jessica Lennard - Competition and Markets Authority

Joel Udden - Ventech

Laura Waldenstrom - Earlybird

Malin Posern - Project A Ventures

Patrick Newton - Form Ventures

Sam Nasrolahi - InMotion Ventures

Sean Duffy - CIBC Innovation Banking

Simone Lavizzari - Join Capital

Stefan Heilmann - IEG Investment Banking Group

Tommy Stadlen - Giant Ventures

This diverse lineup reflects the breadth and depth of Europe’s technology scene, bringing together perspectives from investors, founders, regulators and innovation experts. More speakers and detailed program information will be announced soon.

Get Your Ticket Now

Stay tuned for more updates as we count down to what promises to be an unmissable event for the global tech community. Don’t miss out on Early Adopter tickets, which will expire soon. Secure your spot today and join us in London on 21–22 April 2026.

Start Networking Before the Summit with the Tech.eu Events App

To help attendees make the most of their summit experience, we have developed the Tech.eu Events App. The app allows participants to connect with each other ahead of the event, arrange meetings in advance, browse the full agenda and speaker lineup, and receive real-time notifications and updates during the summit. It is designed to make networking easier and to ensure you get the maximum value from your time in London.

We look forward to welcoming you to London in April for two days of insight, inspiration and innovation.

London-based enterprise AI start-up Conduct has closed a $12 million seed round and emerged from stealth with a mission to lead the largest transformation in enterprise IT by modernising legacy ERP systems.

The round was led by Creandum, one of Europe’s leading early-stage VC firms, with participation from Lucid Capital, Booom, angel investors from Palantir, Google DeepMind, and Workday, as well as a senior leader from SAP.

Conduct uses cutting-edge agentic AI to help organisations truly understand their own systems, restoring agility, accelerating innovation, and powering digital transformation. By transforming opaque legacy ERP estates into intuitive, actionable insights, the company aims to achieve GDP-scale impact and unlock billions in economic value through faster innovation, higher efficiency, and increased operational speed.

Founded in 2024 by former Palantir leaders Jan Philipp Haas, Philipp Hoefer, and Henry Thompson, Conduct’s mission is shaped by firsthand experience with the growing burden of legacy ERP on large organisations.

Its breakthrough platform lets organisations converse directly with their ERP systems, giving IT leaders and business stakeholders real ownership of their estates. It instantly reveals how even the most complex codebases operate and the business logic they contain, a level of clarity that has long been out of reach for most large enterprises.

We believe that IT should be the core growth engine of every enterprise but today CEOs repeatedly tell us that IT is becoming a blocker to business outcomes: 3-4 per cent of enterprise revenue is spent on system maintenance. Counterintuitively, this is not driven by new code generation, but by having to manually decipher how complex systems spanning millions of lines of code actually work. Conduct’s AI agents drastically reduce the resource burden of software maintenance, allowing IT teams to focus on system innovation that drives revenue and productivity gains,

explains Jan Philipp Haas, Co-founder and CEO.

With SAP’s initial 2027 deadline for S/4HANA migration, CIOs face high-stakes decisions about the future of their systems. Instead of spending tens of millions on multi-year consulting projects that often fail or cause costly downtime, enterprises are looking for more reliable and accurate ways to modernise and extend their ERP estates, and Conduct aims to meet that need.

The company’s broader vision is to remove the structural barriers in enterprise IT that have long constrained innovation and revenue growth.

AI startup Eagl has raised €825,000 in funding to accelerate the development of its AI-native financial agentic platform, expand its AI and engineering teams, and scale across Europe. 

Eagl is an AI-native financial operations platform that automates accounting and controlling workflows, monitors data quality, and shortens audit cycles, freeing finance teams from manual month-end work so they can focus on strategy. 

The platform plugs into ERP and accounting systems, automating accounting and controlling workflows, continuously monitoring data quality, and resolving anomalies with business context. By ensuring accurate, structured financial data, Eagl helps finance teams reduce errors, speed up month-end closes, and shorten audit cycles; transforming one of the biggest pains for in-house finance teams into a streamlined, proactive process.

“Most finance teams are stretched thin, fixing problems instead of adding real value,” said Samuel Van Innis, co-founder and CEO of Eagl.

“With Eagl, we turn days of manual checking into instant insights, empowering finance leaders to focus on strategic topics while auditors get cleaner books, faster.”

“Beyond automating workflows, we continuously monitor data quality and resolve anomalies in real time,” added Frederik Bakx, co-founder and CFO.

“This means finance teams can close faster, scale efficiently, and cut down the time and stress of audits.” 

Finance leaders currently spend up to 70 per cent of their time gathering, cleaning, and reconciling data instead of analysing it.

Eagl’s platform plugs directly into a CFO’s stack, connecting to ERP and accounting systems to ensure accuracy of the books and generate reports enriched with business context.

While legacy tools have improved task tracking, they still leave finance teams buried in manual work. Unlike these systems, Eagl is AI-native from the ground up, designed to bring context and intelligence into every accounting and controlling workflow.

Syndicate One and CNBB Equity Partners (Founder ExactOnline & Yuki) led the round, which is backed by leading SaaS founders, including:

• Matthias Geeroms (Lighthouse),
• Joris Van Der Gucht (Silverfin, Ravical),
• Jeroen De Wit (Teamleader),
• Lorenz Bogaert (Rydoo, StarApps),
• Louis Jonckheere (Showpad),
• Roeland Delrue (Aikido Security), and
• Jorn Vanysacker, Gilles Mattelin, and Wouter Van Respaille (Henchman).

“Eagl is tackling one of the most frustrating bottlenecks in finance with technology that actually understands business context,” said Matthias Geeroms, founder and CFO of Belgian unicorn Lighthouse.

“That’s why many of us in the SaaS ecosystem believe this platform will fundamentally change how finance teams operate.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Handwave (Latvia), a biometric authentication platform,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

commented Mulllaney.

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

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

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

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

From the growth grind to independence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finary’s founder thought like a media operator

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shapers: do one thing, do it well 

Shapers is a hyper-focused and concentrated fund. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The “Shapers Club” advantage

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

Da Mota likes to call his network the Shapers Club.

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

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

Funding the next decade’s giants

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beyond equal strength in teams

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sandven added:

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

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

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

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

From legal gatekeepers to trust managers

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

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

What does it mean for business?

For startups and scaleups, the benefits are massive:

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

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

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

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

The “One Lawyer Company”

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

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

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