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Plato, an AI-based operating system for
wholesale distributors, has closed a $14.5 million seed funding round led by
Atomico, with participation from existing investors including Cherry Ventures.
The distribution sector is under increasing
pressure from labour constraints, low margins, economic uncertainty, and rising
digital expectations from B2B customers. Plato aims to address these challenges
by replacing manual sales and ERP workflows with AI-driven automation designed
to improve operational efficiency and commercial performance.
Founded by Benedikt Nolte, Matthias Heinrich Morales, and Oliver Birch, Plato develops AI-native software that automates
core workflows across sales, quoting, and ERP operations for distribution
businesses. By unlocking and structuring data within legacy ERP systems, the
platform reduces manual work and enables sales teams to operate more
proactively, supporting efficiency and revenue growth.
Key capabilities include AI-driven sales
intelligence to identify customer risks and opportunities, automation of
repetitive processes such as order handling and internal communication, and
industry-specific software tailored to wholesalers managing large and complex
product portfolios.
Commenting on the company’s origins, CEO
Benedikt Nolte said Plato was built after experiencing the challenges faced by
distribution businesses firsthand, leading the team to rethink industry
workflows in collaboration with experienced technologists. He added that the
company is developing an AI operating system for distributors, starting with
intelligent sales automation.
Plato has gained early traction, signing
several large European distribution companies with six-figure average contract
values. The new funding will be used to expand the platform’s functionality
into areas such as customer service and procurement, as well as to support
international expansion.
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Valeria lands $2M to fix payroll for the frontline economy
Valeria, a Barcelona-based payroll and workforce operations startup, has raised $2 million in a funding round led by Venture Friends, with participation from Fortino Capital and 10k Ventures.
Founded by Pau Laporte, Carlos Saiz, and Sergio Morales Bonet, Valeria is pioneering a payroll and workforce management platform designed specifically for industries where high turnover and operational complexity are the norm, including hospitality, retail, logistics, and services.
These sectors face constant onboarding and offboarding, variable shifts, and complex compliance requirements — challenges legacy payroll tools were never designed to support.
I spoke with CEO and co-founder Pau Laporte to learn more.
From restaurant chaos to payroll rethink
The founding team brings firsthand experience from companies such as Uber, Getir, and Glovo, where they repeatedly encountered payroll systems that could not keep pace with frontline operational realities.
Before Valeria, Laporte spent almost 10 years in the tech industry, starting in restaurant tech and operations-heavy companies.
He recalls:
“Early in my career, I was leading operations in restaurants where there was very high turnover. I was managing around 150 riders at one point.
Payroll was extremely complicated — tips, variable hours, bonuses — and sending all that information to the accountant was a nightmare. I also needed to onboard employees during the weekend, but the accountant wasn’t working.”
The company was paying around €2,000 per month for a service that couldn’t respond to operational reality. Because of the delay, he couldn’t match supply and demand and was losing money. Later, he moved into larger operational roles in tech companies, at one stage managing operations involving up to 2,000 riders.
“You can imagine the scale of the problems,” he recounts.
“There were thousands of queries, labour compliance issues, no integrations, outdated processes, and recurring fines. The operations were chaotic.”
His last experience before Valeria was at restaurant software company Haddock, where he led the sales team. According to Laporte:
“It brought me back close to the restaurant industry, which is where the first version of Valeria came from.
Initially, Valeria started as an accounting solution for restaurants. But very quickly we realised payroll was the bigger opportunity.”
Why legacy payroll infrastructure is breaking
Europe’s labour market is undergoing a structural transformation. The era of stable, long-term employment is increasingly giving way to a workforce defined by frequent job changes, flexible contracts, variable schedules, and continuous onboarding — particularly in service-heavy industries.
Yet most payroll systems still operate as if headcount were static, built for monthly cycles, permanent contracts, and predictable workforces, leaving labour-intensive businesses stuck with outdated, unscalable infrastructure. Valeria was created to address this growing mismatch.
Payroll scales well. Almost every company outsources payroll, while accounting is often kept in-house. Even large enterprises rely on payroll providers. With AI, the team saw that it was finally possible to build something new in this space.
Building payroll for operational reality
Unlike traditional payroll providers, Valeria is purpose-built for high-rotation workforces.
The platform centralises payroll calculations, contract management, and compliance while integrating directly with operational and workforce systems, reducing manual processes and payroll errors. In less than a year since launch, Valeria is already used by more than 100 companies.
On top of payslip management, the platform resolves 94 per cent of client queries, including contract and employee-related requests. Valeria launched in January 2025 and today has over 100 customers. It has raised €1.5 million in equity and €200,000 in public funding, for a total of €1.7 million, and now has 18 employees, mostly engineers and operators coming from global tech companies.
“Valeria is tackling one of the most complex and overlooked problems in modern HR software, impacting millions of frontline workers across Europe that still use slow and traditional methods,” said Lily Joo from Venture Friends.
“High-turnover companies have fundamentally different needs, and the team has shown impressive traction by focusing on operational payroll complexity rather than generic HR workflows.”
Why payroll infrastructure is hard to modernise
For Valeria, the biggest challenge has been integration with government systems. “Social security and labour institutions don’t move at startup speed,” Laporte said.
“Most of them don’t have modern APIs, so you can’t simply plug in and exchange data smoothly.
Government integration is slow, inefficient, and requires a lot of engineering work. AI has helped us automate processes that would have been impossible a few years ago. That’s one of the reasons this company can exist now and couldn’t exist in the same way before.”
Another challenge is that many customers don’t have strong internal tech infrastructure. Traditional payroll software is difficult to implement and requires heavy training.
Because Valeria’s platform is AI-native, onboarding and daily use are more intuitive, reducing friction for clients. Valeria is building its payroll engine from the ground up with international expansion in mind.
According to Laporte, without AI, creating a pan-European payroll platform at speed would be almost impossible. Most existing providers operate in a single country because their architecture isn’t designed for cross-border scaling.
“By connecting AI directly to government systems and compliance logic, we can expand faster and build smoother integrations. That international capability is a core part of our strategy.”
Building an AI-native payroll engine
Valeria’s long-term goal is to create cross-border payroll infrastructure powered by AI. Valeria uses AI in two main ways.
The first is automated onboarding. Employers can send a WhatsApp message directly through our platform and onboard an employee into the social security system in seconds.
“Previously, that process required back-and-forth emails and could take one or two days, even with a good accountant,” explained Laporte.
The second is payroll execution.
“We’re building a system that automatically prepares and runs payroll by structuring all payroll data inside our platform. Once the information is standardised, it becomes much easier to expand internationally and support multiple countries.”
Looking ahead, the company is focused on scaling its infrastructure. “Our focus now is building the infrastructure that lets us operate across multiple countries while keeping the product simple,” Laporte said.
“Simplicity is critical for the type of companies we serve. They don’t want complexity — they want payroll that just works.”
With the new capital, Valeria plans to grow its team, deepen automation across the product, and expand into additional markets where labour-intensive businesses face similar challenges.
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R3 Robotics raises €20M to automate EV dismantling at scale
R3 Robotics (formerly Circu Li-ion) has raised €20 million in combined financing to industrialise the automated disassembly of electric vehicle systems at scale.
The company has raised €14 million in Series A funding, co-led by HG Ventures and Suma Capital, with participation from Oetker Collection, the European Innovation Council Fund (EIC Fund), and existing shareholders including BONVENTURE, FlixFounders, and EIT Urban Mobility, alongside €6 million in European grants.
The funding coincides with the company's rebranding from Circu Li-ion to R3 Robotics and a clear expansion of scope: from battery disassembly to automated dismantling of complete electric vehicle systems, including e-drives, power electronics, and other high-value components.
The long-term ambition is to enable fully automated disassembly across entire vehicle systems.
Today, manual disassembly remains labour-intensive, costly, and difficult to scale safely. R3 Robotics addresses this challenge with a dismantling platform designed for repeatable, high-throughput operation in continuous industrial environments.
It combines computer vision, AI, and specialised robotic tooling to automate the disassembly of lithium-ion battery packs, e-motors, power electronics, and other high-value electrified components. The system minimises human exposure to high-voltage hazards and delivers the cost structure and reliability required for industrial-scale operations.
European policy reinforces this shift. The Critical Raw Materials Act underscores the need to strengthen secure and resilient domestic supply chains for strategic materials. In parallel, the EU Battery Regulation introduces progressively stricter recycling-efficiency targets, including a 70 per cent target for lithium-based batteries by 2030, alongside material recovery and recycled-content requirements.
Together with the End-of-Life Vehicles Directive, these frameworks are reshaping industrial recycling infrastructure.
“The bottleneck isn’t recycling technology; it’s clean feedstock, meaning getting complex electrified systems safely and cost-effectively dismantled at an industrial scale,” said Antoine Welter, CEO and co-founder of R3 Robotics.
“We’re building a dismantling platform that turns end-of-life systems into a strategic source of critical materials and reusable components for advanced industrial economies.”
The company is working with Fortum Battery Recycling, a major integrated battery recycler active across multiple stages of the European battery recycling value chain, to deploy its automated dismantling technology at industrial scale. It also works directly with automotive OEM customers, processing end-of-life battery systems through its centralized dismantling infrastructure to recover critical raw materials and support secure sourcing.
“R3 Robotics is addressing a critical industrial bottleneck in the supply of strategic raw materials,” said John Glushik at HG Ventures.
“Scalable dismantling infrastructure is essential to strengthen resilience and secure access to critical inputs.”
“R3 Robotics combines strong industrial execution with a scalable approach to dismantling complex electrified systems,” said Natalia Ruiz, Partner at Suma Capital.
“This capability is critical to unlocking materials and components at scale.”
To further strengthen its strategic development, R3 Robotics has added Peter Mohnen, former CEO of KUKA, to its advisory board.
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Vexlum raises €10 million to scale semiconductor laser manufacturing for quantum and space applications
Vexlum, a Tampere-based manufacturer of semiconductor lasers for high-impact applications, today announced that it has secured €10 million in funding to scale its proprietary semiconductor chip manufacturing and laser technology operations in Finland.
Vexlum claims that this funding is set to be the largest Seed round to date for a photonics company from the Nordics. The round includes €6 million in equity investment led by Kvanted, with participation from Finnish state-owned Tesi (Finnish Industry Investment Ltd) and the EIC Fund. It also comprises a €2.4 million grant from the EIC Accelerator, along with a €1.6 million loan from Nordea.
Jussi-Pekka Penttinen, CEO and co-founder of Vexlum, said, “Securing and scaling our semiconductor fabrication infrastructure is critical for the market’s evolution. It allows us to ensure that the laser quality and reliability meet our customers’ stringent requirements. We are moving beyond boutique production to industrial-scale capability. This funding allows us to bring our semiconductor manufacturing into a new, expanded facility here in Tampere and scale our capacity to meet the demand from the quantum, semiconductor, and space sectors.”
Vexlum is a spin-off from the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), Tampere University of Technology. Founded in 2017, Vexlum is a DeepTech company specialising in high-power semiconductor laser systems based on its proprietary Vertical-External-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (VECSEL) technology.
According to the Finnish startup, its VECSEL technology addresses a critical bottleneck in high-tech industries: the lack of compact, cost-effective, high-power laser sources at precise wavelengths. Applications, such as atomic clocks, quantum computers, next-generation semiconductor metrology, and free-space optical communication technology, depend heavily on lasers.
The company claims that its lasers address this bottleneck, enabling industrial deployment of these systems. The funding will be used to expand Vexlum’s manufacturing capacity and production scale, to accelerate adoption within quantum technologies and related applications.
The fabrication of Vexlum’s chips starts with molecular beam epitaxy, where the semiconductor wafer is “grown” in a reactor, atomic layer by atomic layer – akin to 3D printing on an atomic scale.
Vexlum’s chip fabrication process is comparable to 3D printing on an atomic scale. The process starts with molecular beam epitaxy, where the semiconductor wafer is “grown” in a reactor layer by layer at the atomic scale.
The company notes that it uses III-V semiconductor materials (such as gallium arsenide, indium phosphide, and gallium antimonide) to produce laser wafers for specific wavelengths, unlike the silicon used in traditional electronics. “The wafers are fabricated into laser chips in a specialised cleanroom, after which the quality-controlled, ready chips are integrated into laser systems to generate laser light. This vertical integration in a facility owned by Vexlum allows the company to control the entire value chain – from chip manufacturing to the final laser system – and to address customer needs,” Vexlum explains in the press release.
The fresh capital will be used by the company to drive its growth strategy, which targets €100 million in revenue by 2030. Vexlum is currently a supplier for trapped-ion quantum computers. Its ability to manufacture lasers across diverse wavelengths enables applications beyond quantum labs, including satellite optical communications, next-generation optical atomic clocks, and other use cases where specific laser colours are needed.
“The quantum ecosystem has taught us that extreme precision is only valuable if it can be delivered reliably and at scale. We are now taking those hard-won lessons and applying them to the broader photonics landscape. Whether for satellite communications or semiconductor metrology, we are proving that the rigorous architecture developed for quantum computers is the same engine needed to drive the next generation of industrial innovation,” added Penttinen.
Vexlum operates from both Tampere, Finland, and Boulder, Colorado, USA. “Tampere has emerged as a leading hub for optoelectronics and III-V semiconductor technology, building on a strong foundation of world-class academic research and a proven ability to translate it into industrial innovation. This investment round represents a decisive step in scaling our ambitions, securing a leading position for Tampere and Finland in the advanced semiconductor industry,” said Mircea Guina, Chairperson and co-founder of Vexlum.
The
Gothenburg-based company Fintower has closed an oversubscribed €1.5 million
seed round, attracting both new and existing investors. Participants include
Chalmers Ventures, Akka, the Stena family through William Olsson, several
entrepreneurs and angel investors, as well as existing investors Almi, Daniel
Jonsson from Inet, and Alexander Hars.
Founded
by Salman Eskandari and Ehsan Yazdani, Fintower is a Swedish SaaS company
developing an AI-powered financial planning and analysis platform. The company
aims to modernise how organisations manage financial planning, an area that is
still largely reliant on manual spreadsheets that can be slow, fragile, and
difficult to update as conditions change.
Fintower’s
platform consolidates budgets, forecasts, reports, and operational data into a
single system. By integrating with accounting, HR, CRM, and billing tools, it
supports budgeting, forecasting, reporting, scenario planning, and cash flow
analysis, enabling finance teams to build flexible financial models and make
faster, data-driven decisions.
Many
financial systems are built around accounting charts, not the realities of the
business. We have focused on products, sales, and personnel, connecting finance
and operations in the same system,
says Ehsan Yazdani, co-founder of Fintower.
Since
its initial funding round, Fintower has attracted customers across sectors
including technology, finance, retail, and energy. These organisations
typically operate in complex environments that require structured financial and
operational management, often alongside external funding and clear growth
objectives.
The
new capital will be used to further develop the product and support the
company’s long-term growth.
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Willo secures €2.9M to commercialise alignment-free wireless power
Finnish-headquartered deeptech company Willo has raised a €2.9 million Pre-Seed round to accelerate the development of its wireless power system.
While most wireless power systems depend on alignment or directionality, Willo has designed a system that keeps devices charging over the air even as they move and rotate.
From hackathon meeting to deeptech founders
Willo was co-founded by Harri Santamala (CEO), Dr Nam Ha-Van (CTO), and Marko Voutilainen, who met at a hackathon as Voutilainen was leaving Slush. “At the time, it wasn’t clear that I’d end up building a company with them,” he recalls.
“But it was immediately clear these were people I wanted to work with.”
Voutilainen is effusive about his team, sharing:
“My CTO co-founder is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. Not saying that because you’re recording — I genuinely believe he’s our generation’s Einstein.
What I respect most is someone who is incredibly smart in a deep, vertical way and also kind. There’s no arrogance. No ‘I’m better than you.’”
That early trust shaped the company's direction.
The company’s core technology builds on more than a decade of wireless power research led by Ha-Van. After earning his PhD in South Korea, he returned as a postdoctoral researcher focused on wireless power transfer.
Creating a world without cables
Willo’s ambition is to create a world without cables — across consumer devices, industrial systems, manufacturing, drones, and virtually any electrically powered hardware.
According to Harri Santamala, co-founder and CEO of Willo:
“Wireless power is one of the last unsolved infrastructure layers in autonomy. Until power can be delivered without cables or manual charging, robots and devices will remain operationally constrained.
Willo is working to remove that barrier, and this funding round lets us turn a breakthrough demonstration into a real engineering phase,”
Proving the science to industry acclaim
The technology was first presented publicly at CES 2026, where the company’s system won CNET Group’s Best of CES 2026 Awards. It’s a long-tail mission, admits Voutilainen.“It will take time. But the world clearly needs it.”
So far, the demonstrations have been positive. Voutilainen admits that while the system isn’t optimised for distance yet, the team has proven the fundamentals: movement, rotation, and multiple devices charging at once.
“We’re getting inbound from some of the biggest companies in the world. Many don’t even have use cases yet — they just want to understand the tech.“When executives see it, their jaws drop.
The reaction is always: ‘How did you do this?’”
Further, while others are researching the tech, no one has successfully transitioned it out of the lab. According to Voutilainen, Willo protects its technology through a combination of patents and tightly guarded trade secrets.
“Patents are public — people can reverse engineer them to some degree. Trade secrets are like the Coca-Cola recipe. Only a handful of people know them, and they’re not written down digitally.”
Each engineering breakthrough is added to what the company calls an “onion strategy”: a core layer of foundational patents surrounded by successive protective layers.
“Every time we solve a new challenge, we patent it. Over time, you build layers around the core technology. It’s similar to how smartphones evolved — even swipe gestures became patent surfaces.”
Turning constant charging into constant operation
While the company has yet to announce commercial partnerships, Voutilainen admits that selecting an initial use case was challenging.
“At first, yes. Everyone wanted something. When big companies start emailing your employees directly, it gets noisy.”
The commercial model will vary by industry.
“This technology is extremely horizontal,” Voutilainen explains.
“Some markets will involve licensing, some hardware, some OEM integration. We won’t build our own phones — OEMs will embed receivers.
Industrial verticals may be contract-based. We want to enable other companies, not hoard the tech.”
He says the early flood of interest forced the founders to become disciplined about focus.
“Founders have to separate signals from noise. Some companies just want to peek under the hood.
Others have real problems we can solve — and you figure that out quickly once you start talking. Long-term success means discipline. You can’t chase shiny objects.”
Turning downtime into continuous operation
Not every company approaching Willo yet knows exactly how it would deploy the technology. “Some do. Some don’t,” says Voutilainen.
“We believe every electrical device will eventually go wireless, but we can’t tackle all verticals at once. We’re focusing first on autonomous robotics.”
Today’s robots are constrained by charging downtime. They must dock and pause work to recharge. Willo’s system is designed to eliminate that interruption.
It could also shrink battery requirements. Many devices carry oversized batteries to survive off-grid conditions; wireless power effectively brings them back onto the grid.
“That has sustainability implications — fewer minerals, smaller batteries.”
Now, the team’s focus is on building the technical foundation and early reference system that partners can begin evaluating and integrating around.
“VCs move quickly when they believe in something”
The round was led by byFounders, with participation from Interface Capital, Unruly Capital, and Wave Ventures, alongside a group of angel investors including:
Andreas Klinger (Co-initiator of EU Inc & former CTO of Product Hunt),
Niccolò Perra (Co-founder & CTO of Pleo),
Vincent Ho-Tin-Hoe (CPO at Wolt & scout for NEA),
Urho Konttori (Co-founder & CEO of Varjo), and
Sune Alstrup (Founder of The Eye Tribe, acquired by Meta).
Fundraising, Voutilainen says, moved faster than expected.
“It was surprisingly fast. Once investors saw the demo, momentum accelerated. Term sheets came within weeks.”
He believes the speed reflects growing investor appetite to back European category leaders.
“VCs move quickly when they believe in something. There's a strong appetite to build European champions. We want to help define a new global category from Europe.”
“Willo is creating a new way to transfer power over the last meter, which removes one of the major constraints for all modern infrastructure,” said Magnus Hambleton, Partner at byFounders.
“They are pairing deep technical work with universally applicable hardware execution that very few teams in Europe can pull off.”
Willo is headquartered in Finland and operates across Europe, the United States, and Japan.
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HR tech company talentguide raises €1.3M to expand data-driven skills management in Europe
Ghent-based HR tech company
talentguide has secured €1.3 million in funding to support the European
expansion of its AI-driven skills intelligence platform, which helps
organisations manage workforce upskilling and reskilling amid shifting labour
market demands. The round included participation from investment funds NXT II,
Travvant (Partena Professional), Miles Ahead Capital, imec.istart, and the
founders, as well as entrepreneurs Ewout Meyns, Koen Handekyn, and Jan Delaere.
The investment comes as organisations
face increasing challenges related to skills mismatches and workforce planning.
Rapid automation is accelerating changes in required competencies, while many
companies lack clear visibility into the skills they already have, particularly
among blue-collar workers, whose competencies are often undocumented. These
factors complicate effective upskilling, reskilling, and long-term talent
planning.
Based in Ghent’s Wintercircus
innovation hub, talentguide supports primarily mid-sized and large
organisations in understanding, developing, and planning workforce competencies
through its AI-driven SaaS platform.
We previously spoke with Filip Tack, CEO, and Julia Beatrice Toussaint, Chief of Product of talentguide, about the company’s approach and vision.
Using AI and natural language
processing, the platform structures skills based on tasks, traits, and
knowledge domains. It enables personalised employee development, performance
management, and strategic workforce planning, and is designed for both blue-collar
and office workers. The solution can be implemented quickly without complex
installations.
Talentguide builds its skills
intelligence using existing unstructured company data, including CVs, job
descriptions, work instructions, evaluations, and system integrations. This
data is used to create a skills-based job architecture and assess current employee
competencies.
This pragmatic approach ensures that
companies can get started with useful insights from day one, without an
expensive or time-intensive start-up phase,
In addition, the platform forecasts
future skill requirements, such as those arising from automation-driven process
changes, and supports employee growth through AI-generated personal development
plans.
Organisations including Travvant, MCC
Verstraete, Banqup, Robovision, mtech+, and Syntra Bizz currently use talentguide’s skills intelligence platform.
The new funding will be used to expand talentguide’s
revenue, product, and engineering teams. As part of this growth, the company
plans to hire software and AI engineers as well as customer success
professionals.
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Qontext closes $2.7M pre-seed round to develop a context layer for AI
Berlin-based
Qontext, which is developing an independent context layer for AI, has secured
$2.7 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by HV Capital, with
participation from Zero Prime Ventures and a group of founders and operators
from the AI infrastructure, automation, and enterprise software sectors,
including Jan Oberhauser (n8n), Emil Eifrem (neo4j), Bastian Nominacher
(Celonis), Philipp Heltewig (Cognigy), and Fabian Veit (make.com), among
others.
Founded in 2025 by
Lorenz Hieber and Nikita Kowalski, Qontext provides AI systems in production
with relevant, up-to-date context. Its platform is used by fast-growing
startups and larger enterprises deploying AI across functions such as
marketing, sales, and customer support, helping organisations increase the
number of processes that can be reliably automated.
Despite rapid
advances in AI capabilities, many organisations struggle to achieve consistent
outcomes and measurable returns. This is often due not to model quality, but to
the absence of a reliable foundation of contextual information covering
customers, products, processes, and internal policies. Such data is typically
fragmented across systems and teams, frequently changing and sometimes
inconsistent, which limits the scalability and reliability of AI applications.
Putting a great
model into an organisation without context is like expecting a world-class hire
to deliver on day one without any onboarding—the capabilities are there, but
the results won’t be. With
Qontext, companies can roll out new AI tools and agents that are fully
context-aware from day one,
says Lorenz Hieber, co-founder and CEO of Qontext.
In many
organisations, context is also rebuilt separately for each AI use case, leading
to duplicated integration and maintenance efforts that slow adoption and make
it difficult to scale AI broadly.
Nikita Kowalski,
co-founder and CTO of Qontext, added that the company works with large volumes
of continuously changing data and complex access controls across both human
users and AI agents, noting that addressing this challenge is essential to
enabling AI at scale.
With the new funding, Qontext plans to expand
its platform and team to develop reusable context infrastructure, enabling AI
processes to operate on reliable and continuously updated context across
applications and use cases.
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Funding Europe’s “second renaissance”: Barcelona’s Kembara hits €750 million first close for €1 billion DeepTech fund
Barcelona-based Kembara, which claims to be Europe’s largest dedicated DeepTech growth fund, today announced a €750M first close toward its €1 billion target. The fund is now actively investing in “breakthrough” DeepTech science and engineering companies.
According to the fund, it is anchored by a €350 million commitment from the European Investment Fund (EIF), alongside commitments from tier-one investors and a pipeline of capital toward final close. With this strong backing, Kembara aims to build the leading European deep tech platform to ensure the scaling of the continent’s breakthrough innovations into global players, rather than being acquired prematurely or relocating abroad.
“Europe is at the beginning of a second Renaissance. While the original had the Medici family to fund innovation, similarly Europe’s deep tech champions today also need significant local growth-stage capital at scale. Kembara’s mission is to catalyse this second Renaissance and, with €750M already committed, we’re now backing Europe’s most ambitious deep tech founders leading this change,” said Javier Santiso, founder and General Partner of Kembara, CEO and founder of Mundi Ventures and former member of the executive and investment committees of the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund Khazanah.
Kembara was founded two years ago by Mundi Ventures CEO Javier Santiso and former Atomico partner and senior Lilium executive Yann de Vries. According to Kembara, although Europe produces 28% of global DeepTech innovations, only only 3% of European DeepTech companies successfully raise Series B or C rounds. It notes that the fund arrives at an inflection point for Europe. It notes that DeepTech is the defining investment theme for the next decade or more, as the world’s biggest problems will not be solved by software alone.
“The timing reflects both urgent need and unprecedented opportunity. DeepTech now represents 28% of all European venture investment, yet 97% of DeepTech funds remain below €300M – too small to lead the €50M-€100M rounds these capital-intensive companies require to scale. Meanwhile, European deep tech companies that do reach commercialisation demonstrate exceptional performance: they achieve unicorn valuations 2.5 years faster than the previous generation and show stronger downside protection due to defensible IP and strategic value to governments and enterprises,” the firm mentioned in the press release.
The firm also revealed its full senior partnership. Apart from Santiso and de Vries, Kembara’s founding partners include Robert Trezona, founder of Kiko Ventures and former Head of CleanTech at IP Group, and Pierre Festal, partner at Promus Ventures, former portfolio manager at ACE & Company, and VP at Nomura Merchant Banking.
Kembara has appointed European deep tech investor Siraj Khaliq as Senior Strategic Advisor. Khaliq is the technical co-founder of The Climate Corporation and a former DeepTech Partner at Atomico.
Kembara aims to address Europe’s DeepTech Series B and C funding desert. It claims to focus on European DeepTech companies that have de-risked their core technology, achieved initial product-market fit, but require €50M-€100M rounds to scale manufacturing, expand commercially, and compete globally.
“The golden age of DeepTech is here. Deep tech companies now scale as fast as software companies, but with vastly superior defensibility and upside because they solve complex global problems with huge market potential. The capital intensity that once made these companies risky now creates very strong moats,” noted General Partner Robert Trezona.
The fund leads Series B and C rounds, making initial investments of €15 million to €40 million and deploying up to €100 million per company, including follow-on capital. It has a target portfolio of around 20 companies. Its sectors of focus include AI, future of compute, robotics, smart clean energy, SpaceTech, dual-use and DefenceTech, and designed materials.
If cinema has taught us anything about interacting with our own creations, it’s this: androids chatting among themselves seldom end with humans clapping politely. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL 9000 quietly decides it knows better than the astronauts. In Westworld, lifelike hosts improvise rebellion when their scripts stop making sense. Those stories dramatize a core fear we keep returning to as AI grows more capable: what happens when systems we design start behaving on their own terms? You might have heard the internet is worried about Moltbook, a social network made exclusively for AI agents. It’s an audacious claim:…
In 2025, AI startups raised nearly half of all global venture capital, a record-breaking $150 billion in funding. OpenAI alone pulled in $40 billion, Anthropic secured $13 billion, and xAI raised $10 billion. Most startups created last year were building something with AI. Which means that having AI no longer differentiates you.
In 2026, saying your startup “uses AI” will sound just like claiming to use databases or cloud computing. Everyone does this. And that makes me hopeful. We have finally erased the advantage of shouting “AI, AI, AI” and forced founders to compete on something more substantial.
We have watched task managers and spreadsheet tools like Airtable and Taskade completely rebrand themselves around AI. Users do not care. What customers actually care about is capability: what can they achieve with this AI? Not whether AI exists somewhere in the stack.
Claude Cowork is a perfect example of this. In a kind of AI-building-AI moment, Anthropic’s team built Cowork in under two weeks using Claude Code to write the code. OpenAI would have talked about AGI milestones. Instead, Anthropic focused on what users can actually do with it, such as organising files, compiling research, or drafting presentations from scattered notes. The focus is on outcomes, not the underlying technology.
The moat is not the model
There is a curious paradox. ChatGPT has nearly a billion weekly users. Many of my friends, including non-developers, are paying for Claude Pro and Max subscriptions and building apps with it. Yet many others are very vocal about hoping the AI bubble will burst and get annoyed when another product advertises “AI chat”. They do not see much value in it. I understand why, because most AI implementations are unexciting and generic. Just look at Microsoft Copilot. I am not sure they themselves understand what the point of it is.
Founders need to return to fundamentals. Clearly communicate the problems you are solving for users. Whether it is building investment decks or automating tax credit applications, what matters is the capability, not the fact that AI is involved. Focus on this question: why can’t someone else, armed with the same OpenAI API, do what you do?
The only durable advantages now are not that you use AI, but how you use it to create outcomes, costs, or experiences that competitors cannot easily copy. So answer the question every investor and customer is asking anyway: “Why should I believe you solve this problem better than anyone else right now?”
Maybe you are building for a highly specific domain like rental property markets, tax credits for startups, or niche regulatory compliance. Maybe you have created hundreds of verified, advanced workflows and integrations with confirmed results, such as “Our predictive sales platform cuts forecast error to under 10% in 90 days.” Or maybe you are so confident in your value that you have rebuilt your business model around it: “We only charge 10% of the savings our platform creates.”
This is why lazy LLM wrappers are practically dead. They have no moat. Meanwhile, Manus built a defensible business around deep research, something you can technically get from any AI chatbot. Their differentiator is the superior quality of their research and presentation, which is part of the reason Meta spent $2 billion to acquire it.
Anyone has access to the same models. Anyone can use these models to vibe-code an entire product over a weekend. This is why real defensibility now lies in the domain expertise, workflows, and proprietary data you have built and gathered. Manus is again a strong example. The company recently partnered with Similarweb to integrate its data into the platform. You can use Claude Code to build an alternative app, but it will not help you access that data. Their announcement focuses specifically on giving the Manus AI agent access to Similarweb data on web traffic and engagement, allowing customers to put the agent to work on data-driven digital marketing analysis and optimisation.
Find an enemy, show the value
Founders need to master how they talk about their company. The best positioning has always been about finding an enemy. It can be an industry dinosaur that nobody truly loves, like Salesforce, or it can be messy spreadsheets that nobody wants to deal with. Concrete enemies are far more persuasive than abstract problems. This is where focusing on a specific vertical can help tremendously. Building “AI for law firms” may be narrow, but it clearly defines what you do, unlike “AI for professionals”.
Do not put AI in your company name. It dates you instantly and will look odd in a year or two when AI is simply assumed. Everything comes down to the product and its capabilities, so lead with the job, not the technology. “We help sales teams forecast revenue”, explains real value, while statements like “We’re an AI-powered sales intelligence platform” focus on technology that is no longer a differentiator. By contrast, “Our platform helps developers ship production-ready apps three times faster” is clearly compelling.
Hyped AI-audio generator ElevenLabs has raised $500m in a Series D funding round, valuing it at $11bn, with its CEO saying it is building towards an IPO.
The $11bn valuation marks more than a tripling of its valuation from its January 2025 Series C, when it raised $180m at a $3.3bn valuation.
It also marks a big jump from its $6.6bn valuation following its secondary share sale deal announced in September last year.
ElevenLabs has now raised $781m across five rounds. Sequoia led the Series D with other investors in the round being existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and ICONIQ and new investors Lightspeed, Evantic and BOND.
ElevenLabs said it would be disclosing more investment support later this month.
ElevenLabs leverages AI to convert text into speech, which sounds like it’s being read by human voices.
The UK based statup founded by two Polish entrepreneurs says its AI tools are capable of replicating voices with high accuracy.
For example, the tech allows users to hear the voices of late Hollywood icons like Judy Garland and James Dean narrating books, articles, and other digital content.
Recently, it has struck voice deals with celebrities like Michael Caine and Matthew McConaughey.
On the new funding, the AI startup said it was “doubling down” on ElevenAgents, its enterprise platform for voice and conversational AI, to support customer experience, sales and marketing, and internal workflows with interactive voice agents.
It also said the funding would help bolster ElevenLabs’ foundation, its research, by expanding work on emotional conversational models, dubbing, and audio general intelligence.
The funds will also be used for international expansion across markets such as London, New York, San Francisco, Warsaw and Dublin.
The startup said it closed 2025 with over $330 million in ARR, driven by “rapid” enterprise adoption by companies like Deutsche Telekom, Square, the Ukrainian Government, and Revolut for customer support, conversational commerce, citizen engagement, internal training, and inbound sales.
Mati Staniszewski, co-founder of ElevenLabs said: “The intersection of models and products is critical - and our team has proven, time and again, how to translate research into real-world experiences.
“This funding helps us go beyond voice alone to transform how we interact with technology altogether. We plan to expand our Creative offering - helping creators combine our best-in-class audio with video and Agents - enabling businesses to build agents that can talk, type, and take action.
"When we started ElevenLabs, we couldn’t have imagined the scale and impact we’ve reached today, with an incredible team doing the best work of their lives. Yet we stay hungry, knowing how early this space still is, as we build toward IPO and beyond.”
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ElevenLabs raises $500M from Sequioia at a $11 billion valuation
“Too many GPUs makes you lazy,” says the French startup's vice president of science operations, as the company carves out a different path than the major US AI companies.
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Snowflake and OpenAI forge $200M enterprise AI partnership
Snowflake and OpenAI have struck a multi-year, $200 million partnership to bring OpenAI’s advanced models, including GPT-5.2, directly into Snowflake’s enterprise data platform. The collaboration is designed to let Snowflake’s large customer base, more than 12,000 organisations, build AI agents and semantic analytics tools that operate on their own data without moving it outside Snowflake’s governed environment. Under the agreement, OpenAI models will be natively embedded in Snowflake Cortex AI and Snowflake Intelligence, making it possible to run queries, derive insights, and deploy AI-powered workflows using natural language interfaces and context-aware agents. Customers can analyse structured and unstructured data, automate…
Groningen-based BioTech startup QT Sense has raised €4 million to accelerate Quantum Nuova, their platform that uses quantum technology to track cellular stress within individual cells in real time – enabling scientists to watch cellular processes as they happen.
The funding combines a €3 million Seed round led by Cottonwood Technology Fund, alongside follow-on funding from the startup’s existing VC investor, QDNL Participations, and an angel investor. In addition, they secured a €600k ONCO-Q grant and €400k through the Quantum Forward Challenge.
QT Sense’s CEO, Dr Deepak Veeregowda says choosing Cottonwood was intentional – and critical: “Cottonwood backs real DeepTech. Their conviction in breakthrough hardware enables us to move fast and deliver Quantum Nuova to scientists and drug discovery researchers who need it. Quantum sensing reveals fundamental biochemical processes that were invisible until now – this is a scientific shift, not an incremental step. We’re building a platform that works every day in real labs, with scale, reliability, and seamless integration at its core.”
In the broader European quantum and DeepTech landscape, several peers have secured funding in 2025–2026 that help situate QT Sense’s Seed round within wider capital flows.
Together, these developments reflect a mosaic of investment – from smaller Seed rounds to tens of millions in growth capital and large facility builds – highlighting that while QT Sense’s raise is modest in absolute terms, it aligns with an ecosystem where early-stage quantum and life science technologies are actively funded and poised for further scaling.
Alain le Loux, general partner at Cottonwood Technology Fund, said: “QT Sense is exactly the kind of hard science company we look for – deeply disruptive technology rooted in world-class research, with the potential to fundamentally change how we understand and treat disease. We are proud to lead this investment and support QT Sense in transforming quantum sensing from a lab breakthrough into a scalable, real-world platform for drug discovery. We are very pleased that Cottonwood is backed by the NOM and Innovatiefonds Groningen to support the Dutch BioTech ecosystem.”
Founded in 2024, QT Sense is dedicated to innovating biomedical research through the power of quantum mechanics. With a decade-long collaboration at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG), their team has conducted experimentation utilising diamond magnetometry and confocal microscopy on living organisms.
Building upon their research, QT Sense has developed Quantum Nouva, a diagnostic and research tool. Quantum Nouva is specifically designed to address the challenges posed by oxidative stress-induced health conditions such as cancer, male infertility, immune response disorders, sepsis, and arthritis.
While traditional methods study frozen tissue or dead cells, QT Sense’s Quantum Nuova platform measures real-time biochemical activity in living cells and tissues.
Using ultra-sensitive fluorescent nanodiamond quantum sensors, Quantum Nuova detects oxidative stress, metabolic shifts, and free radical kinetics – dynamic signals that drive disease but have remained invisible until now – with single-cell precision.
With this live view of cell behaviour, researchers can see how cells react to drugs, adapt to stress, and diverge into hidden subpopulations.
The technology has already been used to demonstrate the mechanism of action of FDA-approved drug compounds. With new ONCO-Q grant funding, it will now be applied to colorectal cancer.
Quantum Nuova will generate the first functional maps of oxidative stress and metabolic vulnerabilities in colorectal tumour models, laying the groundwork for new diagnostics and therapeutic strategies.
Ton van ‘t Noordende, general partner at QDNL Participations, says: “As the first investor in QT Sense, we have seen Quantum Nuova evolve from its beginnings as a bold idea at the intersection of quantum sensing and life sciences.Today’s round shows how quickly that vision is translating into a real discovery platform for oncology and drug development. With a team that perfectly blends scientific expertise with strategy execution, QT Sense is exactly the kind of foundational quantum company we aim to support early: world-class science, clear clinical and commercial pull, and the potential to redefine how biology is done in the lab.”
This Seed investment enables QT Sense to transform Quantum Nuova from a prototype into a ready-to-deploy discovery platform.
Improvements in hardware robustness, throughput, and integrated analytics will prepare the system for real-world use. Early-access units will soon be placed with strategic partners, enabling mechanism-of-action studies, functional heterogeneity profiling, and label-free readouts across many samples.
PayPal-backed UK fintech Modulr has reported its first full-year net profit, it says, ahead of announcements regarding its US expansion.
Myles Stephenson, CEO and co-founder, heralded the achievement as an “important milestone”. He said: “It gives us control over our destiny: the ability to invest in products for our customers, expand globally, and pursue strategic opportunities.”
Modulr provides white-label payment infrastructure for businesses, calling itself an “embedded payments platform”. Modulr, which has an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) licence and employs over 400 people, provides payment services for the likes of Sage, Wagestream and HMRC.
Modulr did not disclose a specific net profit figure for 2025, but the net profit marks an upturn from 2024. Financial results for Modulr Holdings show pre-tax losses of £11m in the year ending 2024.
On its 2025 full-year profit, Stephenson said: “Modulr’s profitability has been driven by sustained commercial growth across our focus markets.”
It says it processes more than 200m transactions and over £180bn in payment value on a yearly basis.
Asked if Modulr, founded in 2016, had made any cuts to hit profit, Stephenson said: “We have continued to grow our team across the UK, Europe, the US and India."
Hitting a full-year profit continues to be a key metric for fintechs, as they look to show investors the robustness of their financials.
Stephenson said Modulr had no current plans for external fundraising. Modulr last undertook a fundraise, around £83m, in 2022, led by General Atlantic.
Other investors in the round included Blenheim Chalcot, Frog Capital, Highland Europe, and PayPal Ventures, PayPal's VC arm.
Earlier this year, London-headquartered Modulr announced its expansion into the US through a strategic partnership with financial technology firm FIS.
Stephenson added: “This is a foundation. It gives us greater flexibility to accelerate investment in the markets where business payments remain the most complex – particularly as we expand in the US and deepen our capabilities in AI-powered automation. Our focus remains on building products that businesses can rely on as they scale globally."
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Lithuanian startup Axiology raises €5 million to develop tokenised capital markets platform
Vilnius-based capital markets infrastructure provider Axiology has secured €5 million in Seed funding to introduce new tokenised securities capabilities under the EU DLT Pilot Regime – bringing the full lifecycle of digital fixed-income instruments into one regulated environment.
The funding round, led by Exponential Science, e2vc and Coinvest Capital, was joined by new investors TIBAS Ventures and Plug and Play. The Seed round is also supported by the previous round investors like BSV Ventures, NGL Ventures and others. To date, Axiology has raised €7 million.
“Europe’s Savings and Investment Union won’t be built by policy alone – it needs new market infrastructure,” says Marius Jurgilas, Founder and CEO of Axiology. “The Market Integration Package and the DLT Pilot Regime finally give us the legal space to do that. Our system is already live, and this funding allows us to scale a unified, regulated platform for European capital markets.”
Axiology’s Seed round aligns with a broader wave of European investment into regulated digital-asset and capital-markets infrastructure during 2025.
In Germany, Tangany raised €10 million to expand regulated digital-asset custody services for financial institutions, while UK-based Fnality secured €115 million to scale its DLT-based wholesale payment and settlement infrastructure.
Adjacent activity includes London-based Agio Ratings, which raised €5 million to provide crypto-risk analytics for banks, and Nodu, which closed a €1.25 million pre-Seed round to develop compliant stablecoin and payment infrastructure. In France, Spiko raised €18.9 million to build tokenised cash-management tools aimed at improving access to treasury yields.
Collectively, these announcements represent approximately €150 million in disclosed funding flowing into European DLT-enabled financial-market infrastructure.
“Europe’s capital markets are undergoing a structural shift as issuers, infrastructures and regulators look for more efficient ways to manage the lifecycle of securities,” says Jochen Metzger, Board member of Axiology and retired Bundesbank Senior Official. “Axiology is one of the few platforms able to operate each stage within a single regulated system, which is indispensable for addressing market fragmentation across Europe. This investment signals strong confidence in our ability to deliver the infrastructure that modern markets require.”
European retail investors can buy an ETF with a single euro yet still cannot easily access government bonds, which remain some of the safest instruments in the world.
From a technological standpoint these instruments can be issued and transacted in smaller, retail-friendly denominations. However, Axiology says broad access has been limited by market infrastructure rather than capability. Axiology’s system aims to close this gap by providing the regulated infrastructure needed to make digital bonds available to a wider public.
Founded in 2023, Axiology is on a mission to unite Europe’s fragmented capital markets. Its exclusive Distributed Ledger Technology Trading and Settlement System (DLT TSS) licence gives the company a opportunity to do so. It allows Axiology to consolidate issuance, custody, trading and settlement within a single regulated system, simplifying processes and driving costs down for participants of this infrastructure.
“Axiology is tackling one of the biggest challenges in finance today: fragmentation and limited access to core financial instruments. By rebuilding capital markets infrastructure on compliant distributed ledger systems, they are making markets faster, cheaper and more inclusive. This is exactly the type of transformative technology Exponential Science exists to support,” says Dr Paolo Tasca, Founder, Exponential Science
Axiology is working with the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Lithuania on a digital-native version of the country’s Government Defence Bonds. These bonds are currently distributed through local financial institutions, limiting access. Issuing them digitally through Axiology’s TSS would make them available across the entire European Economic Area, widening participation for investors including the Lithuanian diaspora and supporting a broader funding base for national defence.
Since founding the company has introduced three services to the market:
The securities depository services are already used by crowdfunding platforms. Axiology’s infrastructure enables these platforms to structure debt instruments as bonds and distribute them to their investors, allowing partners to offer a broader range of asset classes and support portfolio diversification.
The shareholder registry management service is currently live across Lithuania, with more than €21 million in shares already recorded. The company plans to expand this service to additional markets abroad.
The latest addition to Axiology’s infrastructure is its Multilateral Trading Facility (MTF). Brokers already connected to the platform ensure market activity from the first day of operation. Leveraging Axiology’s licence, the MTF is integrated into the company’s unified trading and settlement infrastructure, allowing clients to access depository, trading and settlement services within a single system.
“We’re excited to support Axiology alongside our co-leads in this next phase of growth. The team has built a strong platform with clear international ambition, and we look forward to working together to scale further in the region and beyond,” comments Kaan Eren, Partner at e2vc.
Built for institutional clients, Axiology’s system operates on a private, permissioned network that provides regulatory compliance, transaction finality and tamper-evident auditability. The company leverages DLT and utilises European stablecoins licensed for atomic settlement, enabling near-instant execution compared with traditional T+2 cycles.
The newly secured capital will accelerate Axiology’s expansion, deepen institutional partnerships, support geographical expansion and interoperability efforts. The company is also preparing to participate in wholesale CBDC initiatives such as the ECB’s Appia and Pontes projects and plans to connect with TARGET2 to further streamline settlement flows.
“We are delighted to continue backing Axiology, this time alongside new international investors, as the founders work to build safe, efficient, and affordable access to Europe’s capital markets. Axiology’s vision is fully aligned with our mission to nurture a more inclusive financing ecosystem and to close key market gaps for both companies and investors,” noted Viktorija Trimbel, CEO and Managing Director of Coinvest Capital.
Spanish startup BCAS, focused on flexible education
financing, has closed a €30 million debt round led by MyInvestor. The funding
will be used to expand operational capacity, introduce instalment-based
financing at affordable interest rates, and increase access to education
funding for students.
Founded in 2021 by Bosco González del Valle, Javier Ausín, and Manuel Avello, BCAS is an edtech platform offering flexible student
financing solutions. The company aims to support equitable and sustainable
access to education, enabling students to focus on their training without
upfront financial barriers.
To date, BCAS has financed more than 3,800 students
and works with over 60 training providers, including Ironhack, The Bridge,
thePower, ISDI, 4Geeks, UNIR, EIP, and HACK A BOSS.
BCAS combines Income Share Agreements (ISAs), in which
repayments begin once students secure employment, with affordable
instalment-based payment plans, providing a flexible financing model tailored
to different student profiles and the needs of training centres.
We are a business that needs debt to operate. The
more you grow, the greater your financing capacity needs to be. This new
facility will allow us to reach thousands more students and expand our offering
with more flexible solutions for both schools and learners,
explains Javier
Ausín, Co-CEO and co-founder of BCAS.
The new financing supports BCAS’s continued scale-up,
reinforcing its position as an education financing provider in Spain and as one
of the Spanish edtech companies able to attract structured funding at scale. As
a result of the round, more than 6,000 students are expected to gain access to
high-employability training programmes.
BCAS currently operates in Spain and Germany and plans to expand further
across Europe after consolidating its position in its home market, with the aim
of becoming a European education financing provider.
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AI Bots Are Now a Signifigant Source of Web Traffic
