Midnite, a UK sportsbook and casino operator, today announced that it has raised €30 million ($35 million) in a Series C funding round to scale operations, accelerate development of their products and support international expansion.

The round was led by Raine Partners IV, The Raine Group’s flagship growth equity fund. Existing investors Play Ventures, Discerning Capital, Makers Fund and Big Bets also participated in the round, bringing Midnite’s total equity funding to more than €64 million ($75 million). This follows the €86 million ($100 million) credit facility Midnite secured earlier this year to fund marketing initiatives and further business growth.

Nick Wright, co-founder of Midnite, says: “We’re thrilled to have the continued support of some of the best investors in gaming. Our product-centric approach is what has got us to where we are today, and we will continue to place the experience of our players as our highest priority.

“This capital enables us to hit the gas and accelerate our growth strategy as we pursue tier-1 operator status, investing heavily in our product team to truly disrupt the industry with a challenger brand platform for a new generation of players.”

A good point of comparison is Ultra, a Tallinn-based gaming platform startup, which raised €10.8 million to expand its team and further develop its platform serving gamers, publishers and developers.

Against this backdrop, Midnite’s €30 million Series C stands out as a significantly larger, later-stage round within the sector.

John Salter, co-founder and Partner of Raine, adds: “We’re pleased to deepen our relationship with Midnite as it continues to develop its product portfolio and grow at scale. The Midnite team has a clear vision, with the dedication and passion necessary to be an industry leader in product innovation. We look forward to seeing what comes next as Midnite paves the path forward for the next generation of players.”

Founded in 2015, Midnite says they distinguish themselves by developing its entire sportsbook and casino platform in-house. This proprietary technology empowers Midnite to prioritise a customer-centric approach.

Midnite plans to leverage its in-house technology stack to disrupt the global market and position itself as a tier-1 operator. A majority of this new investment will be channelled into expanding Midnite’s human capital, bolstering its product-led strategy and helping to close the gap with the market’s largest operators.

The company also specifies that its engineering teams will remain onshore in the UK to invest in local talent.

Anton Backman, General Partner at Play Ventures, says: “We’re excited to continue backing Midnite as they scale towards tier-1 status. Midnite is a true first-mover in building social, rewards and live operations at the core of the gaming experience, combining operational excellence in real-money gaming with best practices from leading mobile game publishers.

“Our firm’s thesis is deeply rooted in the belief that these industries will continue to converge, and that Midnite is best positioned to capitalise on this opportunity.”

Midnite’s sportsbook was launched in 2018 by Nick Wright and Daniel Qu, who previously created daily fantasy sports platform Dribble in partnership with Sky Bet. Midnite added horse racing and casino to the product mix in 2023 and embarked on a stage of growth in 2025, growing its team to 150 employees.

The post London’s Midnite raises €30 million to scale sportsbook and casino platform appeared first on EU-Startups.

Parloa, the German-founded startup which develops AI voice agents for call centre work, has raised $350 million in a Series D funding round, vaulting its valuation threefold to $3 billion in seven months.

The round was led by existing investor General Catalyst, with other existing investors, including EQT Ventures, Altimeter Capital, Durable Capital Partners, and Mosaic Ventures, also participating.

The Berlin startup’s Series D round follows seven months after it raised $120m at a $1bn valuation. Malte Kosub, CEO and co-founder, took to LinkedIn to describe his surprise at carrying out Parloa’s Series D so soon after its Series C.

Kosub said: "I didn’t expect to be writing about our Series D already today - just seven months after our $1bn Series C.

“Two funding rounds in less than a year reinforce what we are seeing every day. Agentic customer experience is no longer a nice-to-have.

"It is becoming the new standard. We are incredibly fortunate to be building at one of the fastest-moving and most exciting moments in the history of software.”

Parloa has now raised more than $560m in less than four years. 

The startup says it will use the funds to expand globally, with a focus on the US and Europe, including offices scouted in San Francisco and Madrid, a localised team in London, and a recently established US HQ in Manhattan.

Parloa, whose customer base includes Allianz, Booking.com and SAP, is playing in a competitive field, going up against several startups, including UK startup PolyAI.

Parloa’s platform combines automated speech recognition and natural language understanding to enable companies to build automated dialogues for phone, chat, voice assistants and messenger – all in one place. The company claims its AI setup understands the same amount of words and contexts as a call centre agent.

Just seven months after its Series C, Berlin’s Parloa – a developer of enterprise customer AI agents – has raised €310 million ($350 million) in Series D funding to continue its expansion in the U.S. and Europe, enhance its AI Agent Management Platform (AMP), and launch the Parloa Promise, a commitment to preeminent agent reliability, relentless innovation, and human-centric responsible AI.

The round was led by General Catalyst, with continued support from Parloa’s existing investors, including EQT Ventures, Altimeter Capital, Durable Capital Partners, and Mosaic Ventures – bringing its total valuation to €2.5 million ($3 billion). This round brings Parloa’s total raised capital to more than €482 million ($560 million) in less than four years.

For co-founder and CEO Malte Kosub, the Series D is proof positive Parloa’s mission is exacting needed change, for enterprise teams as well as consumers: “This funding marks a pivotal moment for Parloa as we expand globally, advance our approach to reimagine customer experience, and help enterprises to build meaningful relationships with their customers.

“Our commitment to these organisations is clear: to enable exceptional, hyper-personalised customer journeys through agentic AI that deepen loyalty, responsibly and at scale.”

In the broader European enterprise AI and customer-experience agent landscape, Parloa’s  Series D follows a series of substantial funding rounds covered by EU-Startups in 2025.

Earlier in 2025, Parloa itself raised a €105 million Series C to scale its agentic AI platform from Germany, signalling early investor confidence in enterprise-grade AI agents. The UK has also seen notable activity, with London-based PolyAI securing €73.2 million in a Series D to expand its conversational AI and voice agent technology, and Gradient Labs raising over €11 million to develop AI customer service agents for regulated industries.

In France, GetVocal closed a €22 million round to grow its hybrid AI and human-in-the-loop CX platform, while Belgium-based Donna raised €4.1 million to scale its AI assistant for field sales teams. Southern Europe has also contributed to this momentum, with Madrid-based Omnia securing €3.5 million in pre-Seed funding to build an agentic AI marketing platform.

Taken together, these EU-Startups-reported rounds represent well over €210 million in funding flowing into enterprise AI agent and CX-focused startups in 2025 alone, providing context for Parloa’s significantly larger Series D.

“Parloa is setting the standard for enterprise-grade AI throughout the customer journey,” adds General Catalyst’s CEO Hemant Taneja. “Their platform combines innovation and scalability, making them a clear leader in this rapidly evolving space. We truly believe Parloa’s approach to agentic AI will transform how global enterprises engage with customers, and we’re excited to support their vision and continued growth.”

Taneja, along with General Catalyst’s President and Managing Director Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, will be added to the Supervisory Board for Parloa.

Founded in 2018, Parloa empowers global enterprises to build, train, and manage AI agents for customer experience. Founded by Malte Kosub and Stefan Ostwald, Parloa employs 380 people across offices in New York, Berlin, and Munich.

The company is trusted by Fortune 200 companies and global partners, including Allianz, Booking.com, HealthEquity, SAP, Sedgwick, Swiss Life, and TeamViewer.

Carolina Brochado, Head of EQT Growth US and Head of EQT Ventures says: “Parloa is contributing to redefine what customer relationships look like at scale. Their ability to combine enterprise-grade AI with real-world intelligence, built on a strong foundation of safety and reliability, helps to set them apart in a crowded market.”

The company’s AMP aims to give enterprise CX teams a clear, intuitive way to design, manage, and evolve AI agents. According to them, there is no heavy coding necessary; just natural language used to build bespoke agents that adapt across dialects, contexts, and changing customer needs.

AMP allows experience teams to simulate agents at scale while evaluating conversation performance. Real-time dashboards provide insight into what agents are doing and why, offering visibility into system behaviour.

Apoorv Agrawal, Partner at Altimeter Capital adds: “Parloa combines a leading agentic AI platform with the enterprise DNA to deploy it at scale – forward-deployed engineers on the ground, Fortune 500 customers in production, and a world-class go-to-market team armed with fresh capital to capture the global CX market.”

Parloa’s plan for geographic expansion is focused on key markets in North America and greater Europe, with offices scouted in metros like San Francisco and Madrid, a localised team in London, and a recently established U.S. HQ in midtown Manhattan.

The post €310 million raise positions Germany’s Parloa far ahead recent European enterprise AI agent rounds appeared first on EU-Startups.

Cyprus-based AINA has raised $1 million in seed funding from a private angel investor to expand its AI-driven hiring platform, which aims to improve hiring efficiency and reduce recruitment costs.

As competition in the job market intensifies, employers are receiving growing volumes of AI-generated applications, many of which are poorly aligned with open roles. At the same time, recruiters increasingly rely on AI to create job descriptions, screen candidates, and conduct automated interviews, yet many qualified applicants still fail to reach human review. With hundreds of candidates often competing for the attention of a single recruiter, this growing dependence on automation has introduced new challenges around efficiency, quality, and cost.

Candidates are also navigating a more complex hiring environment. Many, particularly younger job seekers, use AI tools for career guidance, but a significant number continue to struggle to progress effectively through the recruitment process.

AINA positions itself as an integrated AI-driven hiring platform designed to address these challenges for both employers and candidates. The platform focuses on improving efficiency and decision-making by automating repetitive tasks, enabling more precise candidate screening, and delivering actionable insights. This allows hiring teams to shortlist candidates more quickly, manage interviews more effectively, and reduce the risk of poor-fit hires.

For candidates, AINA offers an AI-based career coaching system that builds personalised career pathways, recommends roles aligned with individual profiles, and provides interview simulations to support preparation for real hiring conversations.

According to founder and CEO Natallia Mikhnovets, AINA has facilitated more than 2,000 interviews and helped fill over 300 positions, with clients now able to recruit for specialised roles much faster, often within hours or a few days.

The new funding will support continued development of AINA’s platform, including further enhancements to its AI-based recruiting, candidate screening, analytics, and career coaching capabilities.

While many venture capital funds are optimised for speed, scale, and short fund lifecycles, High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) was built to address a structural gap in Germany’s innovation ecosystem.

HTGF combines public mandate with private capital to back technically complex startups that require time, industrial grounding, and early conviction to succeed.

I spoke to Dr Achim Plum (Managing Director) and Dr Tanja Emmerling (Partner) at HTGF to learn all about it. 

From scientist to investor: Achim Plum’s path into venture

Dr Achim Plum, one of the three managing directors, joined HTGF in January 2025, strengthening the firm’s life science industry expertisewithin management. He is a geneticist by training and began working in industry after completing his PhD.

A defining strength of Plum’s profile is the combination of scientific depth with strategic business acumen. 

Earlier in his career, Plum spent several years at Siemens in a specialised role focused on licensing research innovation. His role as Head of Diagnostics & BioScience Research contributed to strengthening the connection between Siemens’ research excellence and its core business, with the goal of translating innovation into long-term strategic value.

His professional background includes roles at Epigenomics, Siemens, Curetis, Ares Genetics, SphingoTech, and InfanDx. He also brings a strong corporate finance track record, including involvement in two IPOs, and a clear understanding of financing dynamics across all stages of company development. 

He’s since founded companies, scaled them, and also overseen liquidations — gaining first-hand experience of the full company lifecycle.

He recalls: 

“I’ve mostly been interested in smaller companies with disruptive ideas — diagnostics, medtech, life science tools, less classic pharma.

Over the years, I’ve raised around €200 million, done two IPOs, and lots of follow-ons. At this stage, I thought changing perspectives and moving to the investor side would be interesting. And I don’t regret it.”

Taking risk where it matters

Tanja Emmerling has been at HTGF since 2014, after serving as Head of New Venture at a B2B publishing business with a value-investing family office.   

“At some point, I felt that if you really want to change something, you need to be in the startup world — more risk-taking. So I switched to HTGF and started in the digital tech team. I built a portfolio of around 15 companies, most of which I’ve exited. The portfolio ranged from IT security to e-commerce, depending on what was popular at the time,” she recalled. 

“In 2018, I helped build up the Berlin office, which has grown from a couple of people to about 17.”

What makes HTGF different

Most VC funds raise capital from limited partners, deploy it over a fixed fund lifetime, and are judged primarily on financial return. HTGF, by contrast, was created as a public–private partnership with a long-term mission to strengthen Germany’s — and Europe’s — innovation ecosystem.

According to Plum, originally, when the fund started in 2005, Germany’s startup ecosystem was still in its early stages, and Seed financing had largely stalled. There were very few institutional investors willing to take the risk of backing tech founders at the idea stage. The fund was created to fix a funding gap.

“Back then, it was seen as a public vehicle. The expectation was that the fund might lose money, 50 per cent research, 50 per cent loss.

In reality, we’ve proven that early-stage investing can be both impactful and financially successful. We now have around 30 per cent private capital and 70 per cent public.

There’s a misconception that public money limits us. It doesn’t. We can invest alone, set prices, and act like a normal VC. The only restriction is that we can’t match other public money.”

Public mandate, private discipline

HTGF’s capital comes from a mix of the German federal government, public institutions, and a large group of industrial partners. That structure gives HTGF a strategic and systemic role that goes beyond maximising short-term returns. While financial discipline matters, the fund is equally focused on technology transfer, industrial relevance, and helping research-driven startups cross the gap from lab to market. This also shapes how HTGF invests.

It typically enters at the very earliest stages, often before a conventional VC would engage, backing companies that are still highly technical, capital-intensive, or long-cycle — particularly in life sciences, chemistry, industrial tech, climate tech, and deep tech more broadly.

Many of these businesses require patient capital, strong operational support, and access to industrial networks rather than rapid scaling alone.

Unlike many funds, HTGF is not tied to a single general partner model or a purely external-facing leadership structure. Each managing director is responsible for a specific investment domain and combines internal portfolio leadership with external ecosystem building — working closely with founders, corporates, research institutions, and later-stage investors.

As well as anchor public investors like the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and KfW Capital, HTGF IV’s investor roster includes 45 companies from industry, including Adesso, Fraunhofer, Deutsche Bank, PwC and DHL, as well as SMEs and family offices. 

HTGF’s ambition is to be financially successful — like any other VC — while keeping its political mandate in mind: investing early, taking risk, and crowding in private capital. 

“Last year, for every euro we invested, about €14 came in from other investors, Plum asserts.

“But we also need to be realistic. If we invest in something and no follow-on funding exists, that’s a problem. So we have to balance how far ahead of the market we go.”

Emmerling agrees, asserting:  

“We always have to think ahead of hype cycles. Topics come and go — blockchain, IoT, Industry 4.0, AI — but long-term you need a diverse portfolio that survives those shifts.” 

The firm also thinks about follow-on funding:

“If a topic isn’t attractive to later-stage investors, companies can struggle. So we have to balance technological conviction with market realities.”

A Seed fund — with room to grow

HTGF focuses on Seed investments, defined as tech companies younger than 3 years old. 

Because HTGF specialises in Pre-Seed and Seed financing, most of its companies are very early-stage when it invests — so hitting billion-dollar valuations later is proportionally less common than for later-stage funds.

Still, there have been notable exceptions, especially in life sciences: Cardior Pharmaceuticals, for example, reached a unicorn‑level outcome when Novo Nordisk agreed to acquire the company in a deal worth up to €1.025 billion.

MYR is another example of an early HTGF success that later achieved a unicorn‑scale exit.  EGYM — a major standout in HTGF’s portfolio — officially became a unicorn in 2024 after raising around $200 million at a valuation.

In addition, several HTGF companies raised major rounds in late 2025, including FMC, Neural Concept, and Tubulis, contributing to the €1.2 billion in follow‑on financing raised by the portfolio last year, with around 90% of that coming from private investors.

HTGF’s portfolio: from space to biotech to cybersecurity

Recent investments include:

Marble Imaging: A Bremen Earth observation spacetech company developing a high-resolution satellite constellation and analytics tools to provide up-to-hourly data for defence, climate, and crisis response.

Tubulis: A German biotech focused on next-generation antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) that secured a record-breaking €308 million Series C to advance its cancer therapy pipeline.

TrustNXT:  A deep-tech spin-off developing cryptography-enhanced computer vision solutions to protect images and video from AI-driven manipulation and cyberattacks.

SereneDB: A Berlin-based database startup building a unified search, analytics, and PostgreSQL engine to deliver real-time data insights without stitching together multiple tools. 

RedMimicry: A cybersecurity startup offering realistic cyber-attack emulation to help organisations test and strengthen their defences against complex threats.

nuuEnergy: A Munich-based energy startup combining digital planning and local craft installation to deliver high-quality heat pump solutions and simplify the energy transition for homeowners.

Emerge Tech: A HRtech company founded by veteran founders from Babbel and WorkGenius that uses AI agents to greatly reduce recruitment costs and help SMEs enhance employer branding. 

Acting as a bridge between startups and the Mittelstand

A big part of HTGF's mandate is connecting startups with German industry.  “Many of our private LPs are Mittelstand companies,” shared Plum.

“They often struggle to work with startups. We act as a bridge: they see our deal flow, co-invest, partner, and sometimes acquire portfolio companies.”

Built for the long haul

When asked how HTGF balances early-stage investing with the long innovation cycles typical of biotech and life sciences, the answer is patience backed by a broad portfolio.

“We’re patient,” said Achim Plum.

“Our first fund started in 2005, and we still hold around 30 companies from it. We don’t push for premature exits. Deep tech and biotech need longer cycles.

Scientific breakthroughs, industrialisation and regulatory pathways don’t happen overnight. That’s why patience isn’t a luxury for us, it’s part of the model.”

That long-term mindset is reflected in HTGF’s exit timelines. “On average, an exit takes around eight years.” Plum added. “Sometimes longer.”

According to Dr Tanja Emmerling, HTGF’s ability to support long-cycle technologies is also a function of portfolio design. The fund invests at volume, allowing different technology sectors to mature at their own pace.

“Our large portfolio helps,” Emmerling said.

“We invest around 40 companies per year. Digital tech may move faster; life sciences take longer. But we can balance that.”

Staying active in down markets

While 2023 and 2024 reflected a downturn in funding across the sector, Emmerling revealed:

“We never stopped investing — even during COVID. We stuck to our pace, which paid off. It also stabilises the market. When others pull back, we’re still active.”

Plum agreed, asserting:

“Consistency is a competitive advantage in downturns, and it creates opportunities. When others retreat, you can do great deals.”

HTGF now has an Opportunity Fund that allows the team to invest up to €30 million into existing portfolio companies. The seed fund is capped at €8 million per company.

“This helps us stay involved longer and avoid dilution,” explained Plum. 

"We like the real challenges"

Rather than chasing trends, HTGF uses a technology-first thesis investing in teams with deep technical insight and scalable innovation, across sectors such as industrial deeptech, life sciences and digital tech."

Emmerling professed an interest in digital tech, proclaiming:

“We like the real challenges, problems that are hard to solve, capital-intensive, and therefore difficult to copy.”

“AI is everywhere, but we focus on concrete use cases: productivity tools, cybersecurity, health IT, legal and regulatory tech, and govtech.”

At the risk of a massive understatement, Germany is very bureaucratic. Emmerling sees this as both a burden and an opportunity.  

“Digitisation would change everything — even starting a company is still too slow here.”

Category leaders, capital gaps, and Europe’s growth challenge

For Plum, one structural weakness in Europe’s startup ecosystem is the tendency to exit too early — often before companies have a chance to become true category leaders. “We’d like to see more category leaders,” Plum said.

“Too many exits happen too early.”

A key driver, he argues, is the scarcity of late-stage capital in Europe. Without sufficient growth funding, startups are pushed toward early profitability at the expense of long-term scale.

“Late-stage funding scarcity pushes companies toward early profitability, which kills growth,” he said.

“In the US, companies grow aggressively while loss-making. Europe still struggles with that mindset.”

In a significant shift for Germany’s venture funding landscape, the federal government has moved to integrate the DeepTech & Climate Fonds (DTCF) into HTGF, creating a more unified public–private VC platform spanning seed to growth-stage deep tech.

The move is intended to reduce fragmentation between early and later-stage funding and give founders a clearer capital pathway as they scale. For HTGF, it reinforces its role as a central pillar of Germany’s — and increasingly Europe’s — deep-tech financing infrastructure. According to Plum;

“With the vision of a joint investment platform, we are creating the public-private VC structure that Germany and Europe need right now: continuous innovation financing – from technological idea to market leadership.

Companies like FMC and Proxima Fusion already show how seamlessly HTGF and DTCF complement each other.

Talent isn’t the bottleneck — scale is

While Europe is often framed as facing a talent shortage, both Plum and Tanja Emmerling see the issue differently. For Emmerling, the challenge lies in building a stronger market for innovation itself. “We need European buyers willing to pay for innovation,” she said.

Plum is even more direct:

“Talent isn’t the problem. Scale capital is.”

He argues that Europe’s fragmented approach to growth financing and market building continues to hold companies back. “We need to think European, not national.”

“Europe needs entrepreneurs willing to take risks”

Looking ahead, Plum believes Europe must become more comfortable with risk — and with failure — if it wants to produce globally competitive technology companies.

“Europe needs entrepreneurs willing to take risks,” he said.

“Germany excels at incremental innovation — now we need disruption.”

Failure, he added, should be seen as part of that process rather than an endpoint. “Failure isn’t the end. Founders who fail learn fast and often come back stronger.”

Emmerling shares the optimism, pointing less to missing ingredients than to missing links.“The ingredients are all here,” she said. “We just need better connections between them.”

Luxembourg and US-based Hydrosat, a provider of thermal infrared satellite data and AI-powered analytics, today announced the close of €51 million ($60 million) in Series B to accelerate growth across commercial, civil government, and defense markets.

The round was led by Hartree Partners, Subutai Capital Partners, and Space 4 Earth, with new investment from Truffle Capital. The round includes follow-on investment from the Luxembourg Future Fund, OTB Ventures, Blue Bear Capital, Statkraft Ventures, Cultivation Capital, and Santa Barbara Venture Partners. The total reflects the core Series B financing as well as additional equity investments.

“We’re seeing remarkable momentum behind Hydrosat’s mission,” says Pieter Fossel, CEO and co-founder of Hydrosat. “This new funding underscores the company’s sustained growth and positions us to meet the increasing demand for intelligent solutions to some of society’s most complex challenges in national security and natural resources.”

Hydrosat’s Series B sits within a wider flow of capital into Earth observation, satellite infrastructure and AI-driven geospatial analytics across Europe in 2025, as tracked by EU-Startups.

Recent examples include Italy-based Titan4, which raised €4 million to scale its AI-enabled Earth intelligence platform combining satellite data and ground sensors, and Germany’s Marble Imaging, which secured €5.3 million to advance a very-high-resolution Earth observation constellation ahead of its first satellite launch.

In France, Infinite Orbits closed a €40 million round to expand satellite inspection and servicing capabilities, while Spain’s Kreios Space raised €8 million to develop very-low-Earth-orbit propulsion systems aimed at improving observation performance. Germany has also seen larger growth rounds, notably Reflex Aerospace with a €50 million Series A to build high-performance satellite platforms for ISR use cases, and Spain-based Xoople, which emerged from stealth with €115 million to deliver AI-ready Earth data streams.

Taken together, these deals represent well over €220 million flowing into adjacent SpaceTech and Earth intelligence segments, indicating sustained investor focus on both upstream satellite capabilities and downstream analytics.

Against this backdrop, Hydrosat’s latest financing places it among the larger growth rounds in the sector, reflecting continued demand for high-frequency, decision-grade thermal data across agriculture, water management, insurance and defense.

“Hydrosat’s data is rapidly becoming essential infrastructure for managing water resources. By providing continuous, regional or field level, insights into irrigation patterns and best practices the company gives governments,​ agribusinesses, and communities the clarity they need to build resilience,” adds George Potts, Head of Hartree Partners’ Technology Investment Business.

Founded in 2017, Hydrosat leverages thermal satellite data and AI to address critical global challenges in food production, security, and natural resource management.

Hydrosat currently monitors millions of acres for customers such as NOAA, NRO, Bayer, SupPlant, and Nutradrip, who use the company’s high-resolution, timely satellite thermal imagery to deliver advanced analytics that convey precise crop yield forecasts and improved irrigation tools to agricultural, commercial, and public sector customers.

Through global temperature insights, the company provides critical data to monitor water use, optimise irrigation, improve water productivity, and detect early indicators of vegetation stress or drought.

These capabilities are increasingly vital as water scarcity reshapes agricultural and economic systems worldwide.

With two thermal infrared satellites in orbit, Hydrosat’s collection capacity now exceeds 10 million square kilometers of imagery per day. Advanced AI and machine learning models further enhance this data.

Beyond commercial and civil government use, Hydrosat’s imagery also supports defense and intelligence organisations that rely on temperature-based signals to monitor activity and change on the ground.

“We’re entering a new era where space-based intelligence is no longer optional for insurers – it is becoming fundamental infrastructure. Hydrosat exemplifies the convergence of SpaceTech, DefenseTech, AgriTech, and InsurTech, with its thermal constellation delivering the high-frequency data needed to accurately price agricultural and water risk and enable parametric insurance.

“That’s why Hydrosat has invited Truffle Capital to this round for its added value to accelerate adoption across insurance and financial services,” shares Bozena Adamczyk, Partner at Truffle Capital.

The funding will further expand Hydrosat’s global footprint – with deepened presence in key regions such as Central Asia, MENA, India, and Latin America – and support the next phase of constellation development and product evolution.

The company will scale its thermal satellite fleet, with advanced next-generation imaging systems, and expand its Water & Crop management solutions.

The post Hydrosat’s thermal satellite tech targets water scarcity and agricultural risk, backed by new €51 million appeared first on EU-Startups.

TaleMonster Games, an Istanbul studio founded by former Peak Games veterans, has raised $30 million in Series A funding led by Arcadia Gaming Partners and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from Point72 Ventures and General Catalyst. The new round comes roughly eight months after the company closed a $7 million seed round.

The company’s first game, Match Valley, combines traditional puzzle mechanics with elements from hero and tower defence genres. The game has shown strong early performance, including high user engagement and extended average playtime.

Irem Sümer, CEO and co-founder, said the team is focused on expanding what casual games can offer:

Today’s players are far more experienced than before. Having played mobile games for years, they now seek greater depth in their games. We see a significant opportunity to meet this shift in expectations at scale.

While the global casual gaming market serves a very large audience, meaningful differentiation, particularly in the puzzle segment, has become increasingly limited due to common design approaches. TaleMonster’s strategy is to address this by developing games that offer broad appeal while introducing deeper and more distinctive gameplay.

The Istanbul-based studio was founded by developers who previously worked on globally recognised titles such as Toon Blast and Toy Blast at Peak Games, which was acquired by Zynga for $1.8 billion. Sümer added:

We are a team brought together by a passion for product and a deep love for games. Our mission is to create games that surprise players, challenge them, and evolve alongside them.

Commenting on the investment, Akın Babayiğit, Founder and Managing Partner of Arcadia Gaming Partners, said that while early-stage companies often perform strongly in only a few areas, TaleMonster shows strength across multiple dimensions, including monetisation and retention.

The company plans to use the new funding to continue developing and expanding its game portfolio.

According to the Tech.eu 2025 Annual Report, European technology companies raised €72 billion in 2025, making it the second-strongest year of the past three for tech investment. With more than 3,740 deals completed, investor activity remained resilient across the ecosystem.

The largest funding rounds of 2025 highlight a European tech ecosystem that is becoming more selective, strategic and infrastructure-driven, with investment flowing into technologies that support economic resilience, industrial competitiveness and long-term growth.

The companies attracting the most capital reflect a wide range of growth strategies and financing structures. While traditional venture and equity rounds continued to dominate in AI, software and defence technology, many of the largest transactions took the form of debt financing, particularly across infrastructure, energy, mobility and financial services (excluding acquisition-specific debt facilities).

Geographically, the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands emerged as key funding hubs, with strong contributions from the Nordics and Southern Europe.

Below is a list of the 25 European tech companies with the highest funding totals in 2025.

Amount raised in 2025: £2.3B CityFibre designs, builds, and operates one of the UK’s largest independent full-fibre broadband networks, providing gigabit-capable fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) infrastructure to homes, businesses, public sector organisations, and broadband providers. The company raised £2.3 billion in financing to support the continued expansion of its full-fibre network across the UK, including new home and business connections and potential acquisitions of additional fibre network assets.

Amount raised in 2025: £1.5B Propel Finance provides fast, flexible asset, vehicle, embedded and green finance solutions that help businesses access essential equipment and technology, combining digital tools with personalised service. It supports companies in financing growth-critical assets and improving cash flow. Propel Finance raised £1.5 billion to expand its lending capacity and support continued growth in SME financing.

Amount raised in 2025: €1.7B Mistral AI develops advanced generative AI models and tools that help organisations build, customise, and deploy large language models, AI assistants, and autonomous agents for tasks like search, coding, automation, and data processing. Mistral AI raised €1.7 billion, more than doubling its valuation to around €11.7 billion, to accelerate research, expand computing infrastructure, and scale its AI platform globally.

Amount raised in 2025: $1.53B Nscale builds and operates high-performance AI infrastructure, offering scalable GPU-powered cloud and data centre solutions for training, fine-tuning, and deploying AI workloads. The company focuses on vertically integrated compute, networking, and tools to support advanced AI development and large-scale deployment. The company raised approximately $1.53 billion across two rounds to expand its AI data centre capacity and support global infrastructure growth.

Amount raised in 2025: €1.16B Ubisoft creates and publishes interactive video games and entertainment across console, PC, and online platforms, with well-known franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Tom Clancy’s, Just Dance, and Watch Dogs. The company focuses on delivering immersive gaming experiences and expanding its digital entertainment ecosystem for players worldwide. In 2025, the company raised €1.16 billion to strengthen its core game development operations and support long-term content production.

Amount raised in 2025: € 1.1B Bending Spoons develops, acquires, and scales consumer software products across multiple digital categories. In 2025, the company raised approximately €1.1 billion across two corporate financing rounds to support the continued expansion of its product portfolio.

Amount raised in 2025: € 1.05B EcoDataCenter designs, builds, and operates high-performance data centres with a focus on sustainability, energy efficiency, and support for AI and cloud workloads, using renewable energy and innovative cooling solutions. EcoDataCenter raised €1.05 billion over two rounds to expand capacity and meet growing demand for AI and cloud services.

Amount raised in 2025: €1B FINN offers a flexible car subscription service with all-inclusive monthly plans that cover insurance, maintenance, taxes and delivery, letting users order and receive a vehicle through a fully digital process without long-term ownership commitments. Finn raised €1 billion to expand its vehicle fleet and support international market growth.

Amount raised in 2025: €1B NXP Semiconductors designs, develops, and manufactures a broad range of high-performance semiconductor products, including microcontrollers, processors, sensors, and secure connectivity solutions used in automotive, industrial, IoT, mobile, and communications applications. Its technologies enable devices to connect, sense, and act intelligently across smart and embedded systems. NXP Semiconductors secured €1 billion to fund research, product development, and manufacturing expansion.

Amount raised in 2025: $1B Grammarly offers an AI-powered writing assistant that helps users improve clarity, correctness, and tone across documents, emails, and messages, with tools for grammar, spelling, style, and communication enhancement used by individuals and teams. Grammarly has raised $1 billion in financing to scale sales and marketing and for strategic acquisitions to grow its customer base and extend the reach of its AI productivity platform.

Amount raised in 2025: $1B Nebius provides scalable, full-stack AI cloud infrastructure with high-performance GPU clusters and tools to support the development, training and deployment of advanced machine learning and AI workloads on a secure, cost-optimised platform. Nebius Group raised $1 billion through the issuance of convertible notes to support ongoing business growth, including expanding compute capacity, extending its data centre footprint, and covering general corporate purposes.

Amount raised in 2025: $1B Nokia develops advanced network infrastructure, connectivity solutions and digital technologies that enable secure, high-performance communication across fixed, mobile, and cloud networks, helping organisations meet modern connectivity needs. Nokia has secured a $1 billion equity investment from Nvidia as part of a strategic partnership focused on integrating AI into telecommunications networks and advancing data centre development.

Amount raised in 2025: €810M Enpal offers integrated renewable energy solutions, including solar panel systems, energy storage, heat pumps, wallbox chargers, and flexible purchase or rental options to help households produce and manage clean energy with lower costs and greater independence. Enpal raised €810 million to expand installation capacity and scale its clean energy platform.

Amount raised in 2025: €800M Your.World operates a platform that acquires, develops, and scales online services companies, offering web presence, cloud, productivity, security and digital transformation solutions to support business growth. It serves over a million customers through a network of brands, and a serial acquirer model focused on long-term value creation. Your.World raised €800 million to support acquisitions and strategic investments aimed at strengthening its market position and expanding its industry presence.

Amount raised in 2025: $900M Oura Health develops the Oura Ring, a sleek smart wearable that continuously tracks sleep, activity, heart rate, and other biometric data to provide personalised health and wellness insights through its connected app. Oura raised over $900 million in a new funding round, valuing the company at approximately $11 billion. The capital will be used to accelerate AI and product development, expand global distribution, and support the creation of new health features.

Amount raised in 2025: €600M Helsing develops AI-driven software and decision-support tools for defence and security applications, aiming to enhance operational insights, planning, and situational awareness for organisations using advanced machine intelligence. Helsing raised €600 million in a Series D funding round, increasing its valuation to approximately €12 billion.

Amount raised in 2025: €600M IONITY operates a network of ultra-fast electric vehicle (EV) charging stations across major European routes, enabling high-power charging to support long-distance EV travel with shorter stop times. The company focuses on expanding reliable, renewable-energy powered charging infrastructure and solutions for both individual drivers and fleet operators. IONITY raised €600 million in a major financing round to support the expansion of its high-power EV charging network, with plans to significantly increase the number of charging points and broaden its energy supply coverage by 2030.

Amount raised in 2025: £500M Capital on Tap provides small and medium-sized businesses with flexible credit solutions, including business credit cards and financing products, to help manage cash flow, support growth, and simplify access to working capital. Capital on Tap secured a £500 million funding package through the completion of its third asset-backed securitisation, backed by receivables from its business credit card portfolio.

Amount raised in 2025: $600M Isomorphic Labs uses artificial intelligence to accelerate drug discovery and life sciences research, developing AI-driven platforms that help identify and design novel therapeutic candidates more efficiently. Isomorphic Labs raised $600 million in its first external funding round. The capital will be used to advance development of its next-generation AI drug design platform and support progress of its internal programs toward clinical development.

Amount raised in 2025: €505M Bees & Bears offers a digital embedded-finance platform that lets installers and vendors provide flexible, real-time financing for renewable energy products like solar panels, batteries, and heat pumps, helping accelerate the adoption of sustainable technologies. In 2025, Bees & Bears raised €505 million, comprising a €500 million financing framework with a listed European bank and €5 million in seed funding. The capital is intended to support scaling operations, expansion into commercial and industrial segments, market entry across nearby European regions, workforce growth, and the financing of renewable energy installations, including solar, heat pumps, and battery systems.

Amount raised in 2025: €500M Brevo provides an all-in-one customer communication and marketing platform that helps businesses manage email, SMS, chat, CRM and automation tools to engage customers, grow audiences, and streamline workflows. Brevo secured €500 million in funding, reaching unicorn valuation status. The investment will support additional acquisitions and continued expansion in the US market.

Amount raised in 2025: €500M Elvy develops energy management and optimisation solutions that help businesses and utilities monitor, control, and reduce energy consumption using real-time data and intelligent automation to improve efficiency and lower costs. Elvy raised €500 million to accelerate the development and adoption of its next-generation home energy solutions and expand access to modern energy systems for homeowners.

Amount raised in 2025: €470M Lovable offers an AI-powered no-code platform that enables users to build software applications and automate workflows using natural language, making app creation more accessible to non-developers. Lovable raised approximately €470 million across multiple funding rounds (including the most recent $330 million Series B round in December, valuing the company at $6.6 billion) to scale its AI-powered no-code platform, expand product capabilities, accelerate growth, and drive broader adoption of its software-building tools for non-developers.

Amount raised in 2025: £400M Ferovinum provides specialised financing solutions for the wine and spirits industry, offering flexible credit and funding options that help producers, distributors, and retailers grow their businesses and optimise cash flow. Ferovinum secured a £400 million asset-backed securitisation facility with support from credit investors and investment banks. The funding will be used to expand its service offerings beyond the UK, including planned entry into the US, the EU, and Australia.

Amount raised in 2025: €433M Electra builds and operates a network of ultra-fast electric vehicle charging stations, offering high-power chargers and a seamless app-based experience to help drivers recharge quickly and support wider EV adoption. Electra secured a green loan facility of up to €433 million to accelerate the deployment and expansion of its high-power EV charging infrastructure across Europe, strengthening its network and supporting growth toward its target of thousands of charging points by 2030.

Ukrainian-born edtech startup Headway Inc has raised Series A extension funding from Endeavor Catalyst.

Headway Inc has closed the second tranche of its first external funding round, with Endeavor Catalyst participating and investing above its typical check size. 

While financial terms were not disclosed, Endeavor Catalyst typically invests up to $2 million per company, according to its public disclosures.

In this case, its investment in Headway Inc exceeded its usual allocation. The investment follows Headway Inc becoming the first Ukraine-born company selected into the Endeavor network in early 2025. 

Endeavor Catalyst coinvests exclusively in companies founded by Endeavor entrepreneurs. Its portfolio includes 66 companies valued at over $1 billion. The fund leads globally in early-stage unicorn investments outside the US, China, and India.

Headway Inc is a global technology company with over 160 million users that transforms lifelong learning through gamified and personalised digital products. 

Check out our earlier interview with Anton Pavlovsky, Founder and CEO at Headway Inc.

"Being backed by one of the world’s most active unicorn investors outside traditional tech hubs sends a strong signal about the quality of innovation emerging from Ukraine," says Anton Pavlovsky, founder and CEO of Headway Inc.

"Our focus is on helping busy adults build a lasting habit of self-growth through personalised learning. We want to bring this experience to hundreds of millions more people."

The investment in Headway Inc marks a defining moment for Endeavor Ukraine, strengthening the entire ecosystem and expanding the global network of investors supporting Ukrainian scale-ups.

"When a fund with 60+ unicorns in its portfolio invests above its typical allocation in a Ukrainian-born company, it represents a pivotal moment not just for Headway Inc, but for our entire ecosystem. We've always known that exceptional entrepreneurial talent exists everywhere, and now we have the institutional backing to prove it,” says Sviatoslav Sviatnenko, Founding Managing Director at Endeavor Ukraine.  

“We're honoured to help pave the path for the Ukrainian founders, making it easier for the next generation to raise capital and scale faster."

Over the past few years, France has significantly strengthened its position as one of the most dynamic technology hubs worldwide, with artificial intelligence emerging as a particular area of momentum. The country has seen a wave of large-scale AI funding rounds, including landmark raises by companies such as Mistral AI, which have helped position France not only as a European leader but as a visible player on the global innovation map. Strong public support, world-class research institutions and a deep pool of technical talent continue to fuel this growth.

This week, in our country-by-country series highlighting some of the most promising startups across Europe, we turn our focus to the French startup ecosystem! All founded between 2024 and 2025, these 10 startups reflect the pace, ambition and depth of innovation currently shaping France’s next generation of startups, from AI and deeptech to defence, materials and applied science.

Founded in 2024, altrove AI develops new inorganic materials designed to replace critical components that face supply chain, regulatory and sustainability risks. The company uses a combination of physics-based AI and lab automation to screen, synthesise and scale alternative materials much faster than traditional research and development processes. Its work focuses on areas such as magnets, piezoelectric materials, thermoelectrics and insulating materials used across energy, automotive, electronics, aerospace and robotics industries.

Altrove AI helps industrial companies reduce dependency on scarce or problematic materials by offering substitutes built from abundant and globally available resources. Its approach prioritises predictable costs, regulatory compliance and non-toxic alternatives, while maintaining or improving performance for specific industrial applications. The company works directly with large industrial partners to deliver end-to-end material substitution, from early screening to scalable manufacturing, and has raised €12 million to advance its platform and commercial partnerships.

Founded in 2024, Bioptimus develops a universal AI foundation model designed to bring together biological data that is typically fragmented across formats and scales. Its core platform integrates multi-modal biological information, ranging from molecular data to tissue and organism-level signals, into a single model that can be used across research, clinical trials and biomedical analysis. The company’s flagship models, including H-Optimus for histology and M-Optimus for broader biological modelling, are designed to support tasks such as pathology analysis, data interpretation and predictive research.

Bioptimus’ technology is already widely adopted within the scientific community, with its models approaching one million downloads and being referenced in around 100 scientific publications each year. The platform has been trained on billions of biological images and supported by data contributions from thousands of clinical practices. Bioptimus has secured €65.3 million to date to further develop its foundation models, expand research partnerships and support applications across biomedical and environmental sciences.

Founded in 2024, Biolevate develops an AI-powered knowledge platform designed to support professionals working across the life sciences sector. The platform helps teams manage and use complex scientific information more efficiently by automating tasks such as literature retrieval, document screening and evidence synthesis. It is used across research and development, regulatory affairs, industry and post-market activities, allowing organisations to handle large volumes of scientific data in a more structured way.

Biolevate’s technology focuses on making AI usable and governable within organisations, turning scattered documents and data into an evolving system of actionable knowledge. Its platform supports workflows such as systematic literature reviews and assisted content generation, helping teams accelerate decision-making while maintaining transparency and control. To date, they have landed €6 million in funding to continue developing their platform and support life sciences organisations looking to bring treatments to patients more efficiently.

Founded in 2024, CrunchDAO is a research community that brings together data scientists and machine learning engineers to build and test predictive models. The platform organises structured competitions where participants develop models to solve specific problems, such as forecasting or pattern detection, using shared datasets and clear evaluation rules. These competitions allow organisations to access a wide range of ideas and approaches without relying on a single in-house team.

CrunchDAO operates as a decentralised network, with thousands of contributors taking part in its research challenges and being rewarded when their models perform well. This setup allows skilled researchers to monetise their work while companies benefit from a broader pool of expertise. CrunchDAO has raised €9.1 million to support the growth of its platform, expand its research community and improve the tools used to run and evaluate its modelling competitions.

Founded in 2024, Entalpic develops an AI-driven materials discovery platform focused on industrial chemistry and sustainability. The company applies predictive and generative AI models to design new catalysts and chemical processes that improve efficiency in carbon-intensive industries. Its platform combines scientific literature, simulations and experimental data to help research teams identify new materials and optimise chemical reactions.

A core goal of Entalpic is to support the energy transition and contribute to Net Zero by enabling cleaner and more efficient industrial processes. The company works on areas such as energy storage, carbon capture, hydrogen and ammonia production, and the optimisation of critical materials. To date, they have secured €8.5 millionin funding to further develop its platform, expand its research team and support industrial collaborations focused on sustainability.

Founded in 2024, Genesis AI is a physical AI lab and full-stack robotics company focused on building general-purpose robots. The company develops systems that combine robotics hardware, software and artificial intelligence to enable machines to perform a wide range of physical tasks in real-world environments. Its work brings together robot control, simulation and data-driven learning to train models that can operate across different robots and use cases.

Genesis AI aims to make robots more adaptable and reliable by training them using a mix of real-world interaction data and high-quality simulations. Alongside its research, the company also contributes to open-source tools and simulation infrastructure used in robotics development. Genesis AI has secured over €90 million to support its research, expand its engineering team and advance the development and deployment of its robotics systems.

Founded in 2024, Gradium develops audio AI models and infrastructure designed to support real-time voice applications. The company provides tools for speech-to-text, text-to-speech and voice-based interactions that can be integrated into products such as voice assistants, customer support systems and other conversational interfaces. Its models are built to work with low latency and support multiple languages, allowing developers to create natural voice experiences across different use cases.

Gradium focuses on making voice technology reliable and practical at scale, with features such as expressive speech output, accurate transcription and real-time streaming. The company’s work is based on long-standing research in audio and speech modelling, translated into systems that are ready for production use. Gradium has raised €60.2 million in funding to further develop its voice models, expand language support and strengthen its infrastructure for enterprise and developer adoption.

Founded in 2024, Harmattan AI develops autonomous defence systems that combine artificial intelligence with real-time intelligence and unmanned technologies. The company focuses on building affordable and modular unmanned aerial systems designed for tasks such as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Its systems are designed to be adaptable, repairable and suitable for deployment in complex operational environments.

Harmattan AI’s goal is to support armed forces by improving operational readiness through autonomous and AI-enabled capabilities. The company works on integrating autonomy, sensor payloads and counter-UAS solutions while maintaining scalability and manufacturing efficiency. Harmattan AI has raised over €200 million to date, including a large Series B round, to accelerate product development, expand production and support deployments with defence partners.

Founded in 2024, Kolet provides an eSIM-based mobile connectivity service designed for travellers who want internet access abroad without dealing with roaming fees or physical SIM cards. They offer a single eSIM that can be used across more than 190 destinations, allowing users to connect to local networks as soon as they land. Plans can be purchased and activated through the Kolet app, with data starting only once the user arrives at their destination.

They aim to make mobile internet access simple and predictable for frequent and occasional travellers alike. Users can track data usage, top up when needed and reuse unused data on future trips, reducing waste and unexpected costs. The service is designed to work quickly without a complex setup, supported by customer assistance when needed. To date, they have landed €15 million in funding to expand their coverage, improve their app experience and grow their international user base.

Founded in 2025, Orasio is a video AI company that helps organisations turn live and recorded video feeds into actionable information. Its technology analyses video streams to detect events, behaviours or anomalies in real time, supporting faster decision-making in situations related to public safety, security and critical infrastructure. The platform can also be used after an incident, allowing users to search and review hours of footage quickly using structured filters or natural language queries.

They place a strong emphasis on sovereignty, privacy and regulatory compliance. Its technology is designed to meet GDPR and AI Act requirements and can be deployed in different environments, including cloud, on-premise or directly on devices, depending on operational needs. They have raised €16 million to further develop their platform and expand its use across security and urban environments.

By the way: If you’re a corporate or investor looking for exciting startups in a specific market for a potential investment or acquisition, check out our Startup Sourcing Service!

The post 10 French startups to keep an eye on in 2026 and beyond! appeared first on EU-Startups.

Dublin-based Equal1, a quantum semiconductor company, today announced it has raised €51 million ($60 million) to accelerate development of scalable, silicon-based quantum computers and deployment of its datacenter-ready Bell-1 quantum server.

The round was led by the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF), with participation from Atlantic Bridge, the European Innovation Council Fund, Matterwave Ventures, Enterprise Ireland, Elkstone and TNO Ventures.

“This $60 million in funding marks the transition of Equal1 from development to deployment,” says Jason Lynch, CEO of Equal1. “As AI pushes classical computing into power and cost limits, quantum is the way forward, but only if it can be manufactured and deployed like the rest of the stack. By building quantum processors on standard silicon, we’re turning quantum from bespoke hardware into deployable infrastructure – positioning Equal1 as the quantum standard for HPC.”

When considering the sector context, Equal1’s new round positions the Dublin-based company among a cohort of European quantum startups attracting capital in 2025, positioning in the larger end of raises in the past year.

The most significant round reported was secured by IQM Quantum Computers in Espoo, Finland, which raised €275 million to scale its superconducting quantum computers and expand internationally. In the UK, Phasecraft closed a €29 million Series B to advance quantum algorithms for real-world industrial use cases, while Dutch hardware company QuiX Quantum raised €15 million to deliver its first-generation universal photonic quantum computer.

Earlier-stage infrastructure plays include Delft-based Orange Quantum Systems, which secured €12 million to commercialise quantum chip-testing technology, alongside smaller seed and pre-Seed rounds such as QFX (€2.2 million), FirstQFM (€1.2 million), and Zurich-based YQuantum (€160k).

Taken together, these announcements represent approximately €330 million in disclosed funding flowing into European quantum technologies during 2025.

Against this backdrop, Equal1’s raise stands out as one of the larger late-development rounds outside of Finland and adds to Ireland’s comparatively smaller but growing footprint.

“This commitment aligns with ISIF’s double bottom line mandate to invest commercially while supporting economic activity and employment in Ireland. Backing innovative Irish companies like Equal1 as they scale internationally is central to ISIF’s scaling indigenous businesses investment theme.

“Equal1 is already making its mark in silicon-based quantum technology and we look forward to working with Equal1 as it enters its next phase, helping to realise its vision for the advancement of quantum computing technology in Ireland,” adds Brian O’Connor, Senior Investment Director at ISIF.

Founded in 2017, Equal1 is an innovator in silicon-powered quantum computing tech. Its UnityQ processor family, the world’s first hybrid quantum-classical silicon-on-chip (QSoC) technology, integrates all quantum components in a rack-mounted quantum server.

By consolidating the entire quantum computing system onto a single chip, Equal1 reportedly reduces the size and cost of quantum computers, transforming their performance and scalability.

McKinsey estimates quantum computing could unlock €85 million ($100 billion) in value by 2035. A key barrier to capturing this value is the cost and specialised infrastructure current technologies demand. Equal1’s approach solves this.

As AI drives exponential growth in compute demand, power and cost are becoming major constraints. Quantum computing promises to go far beyond the capabilities of even the most powerful computers today, unlocking applications from new material discovery for better drugs or batteries, next generation grid optimisation and financial portfolio optimisation.

The company argues that quantum computing will put our current AI compute infrastructure on a more sustainable energy trajectory delivering advantage, not as a replacement, but as a tightly integrated accelerator.

They go on to outline that today’s quantum problem isn’t physics – it’s production. Current quantum computers demand huge investment: custom fabrication, exotic cooling, specialist teams. Equal1 aims to deliver a different model: quantum servers where cost, ease of deployment, power efficiency, and integration are first-order requirements.

“Atlantic Bridge, who has helped build the company since inception, recognised Equal1’s potential to fundamentally change the future of quantum computing,” says Gerry Maguire, Board Director at Equal1 and General Partner at Atlantic Bridge. “This funding milestone is a significant step forward, enabling Equal1 to move from breakthrough innovation to commercialisation, and we are proud to continue supporting the team as they execute on this next phase of growth.“

Equal1 develops its quantum computers using today’s silicon semiconductor industry. This unlocks semiconductor economics: costs that fall with volume, yields that improve with iteration.

The result is Bell·1 – a rack-mounted quantum server for standard datacentre environments.

Svetoslava Georgieva, Chair of the EIC Fund Board, adds: “Equal1’s approach – building on standard Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible semiconductor manufacturing – aligns directly with Europe’s semiconductor and quantum ambitions. The EIC Fund is proud to back a European company turning breakthrough science into industrial reality.”

Today’s new round, expected to expand with follow-on investors in the coming months, builds on significant technical and commercial momentum. The funding will:

• Deploy Bell·1 into the world’s leading HPC centres

• Embed quantum into real workloads

• Advance the company roadmap towards millions of on-chip qubits

• Scale manufacturing through existing foundry partnerships

• Grow the team to deliver production quantum at scale

Amanda Ward, Head of Digital Technologies at Enterprise Ireland shares: “Innovation from pioneering Irish businesses like Equal1 are gaining increasing international recognition and Enterprise Ireland is delighted to have supported the company on each stage of its rapid growth. Our investment is an endorsement of Equal1’s ground-breaking technology, team, and global reach. This investment directly reflects our strategic focus on supporting ambitious companies to scale globally and we look forward to working with Equal1 on their continued growth and scaling plans.”

The post Irish quantum semiconductor startup Equal1 closes €51 million round to scale silicon-based quantum computing appeared first on EU-Startups.

For decades, financial control was a function of accounting discipline. Budgets were set annually, spend was reviewed retrospectively, and finance teams relied on reports generated long after money had left the business. Technology supported the process, but it rarely defined it.

That model no longer holds. As companies digitise their operations, financial control has quietly migrated from spreadsheets and policies into software architecture. Today, the biggest risks to financial visibility are not accounting errors but broken integrations, delayed data flows, and tools that were never designed to work together.

The result is a fundamental shift in responsibility. Finance leaders are increasingly forced to think like technologists, while engineering teams are inheriting financial constraints they did not previously own. leaders are increasingly forced to think like technologists, while engineering teams are inheriting financial constraints they did not previously own.

Financial control has moved into the stack

In modern businesses, spend does not happen in one place. It is distributed across cloud infrastructure, advertising platforms, subscription software, contractor payments, and regional operations. Each system generates its own data, follows its own rules, and updates on its own schedule.

From a finance perspective, this fragmentation creates a problem. Traditional controls were designed for centralised payment systems and predictable workflows. Today, money moves at the speed of APIs, not month-end close.

A marketing team can deploy a new campaign in minutes. A product team can spin up infrastructure instantly. Without real-time visibility into how these systems interact, finance teams are left reconstructing reality after the fact.

This is why financial control is no longer just a governance issue. It is an infrastructure challenge.

Finance teams now manage systems, not just spend

As organisations scale, finance teams are being pulled into decisions that look increasingly technical. Questions about spend limits turn into questions about permissions. Approval workflows depend on system logic rather than policy documents. Reconciliation hinges on whether platforms can exchange clean, consistent data.

In practice, this means finance teams are now responsible for outcomes they do not fully control. A failed API connection can delay reporting. An incompatible data model can obscure compliance risks. Manual workarounds become permanent fixtures, introducing operational fragility into what should be core financial processes.

The uncomfortable truth is that financial control without technical understanding is becoming impossible. If finance does not understand how data moves through the organisation, it cannot guarantee accuracy, compliance, or accountability.

The CFO–CTO relationship is no longer optional

This shift has implications for leadership structures. Historically, the CFO and CTO operated in parallel, intersecting occasionally on tooling decisions or security concerns. Today, their responsibilities are converging.

Financial decisions increasingly depend on technical implementation. At the same time, engineering teams must account for regulatory, audit, and reporting requirements that were once handled downstream by finance.

Consider a fast-growing European SaaS company operating across multiple markets. Its engineering team builds a product designed for rapid iteration and decentralised decision-making. Its finance team must ensure spend controls, auditability, and compliance across jurisdictions. Without shared ownership of the underlying systems, neither side can succeed.

In this environment, financial control becomes a shared discipline. It requires collaboration on architecture, not just alignment on budgets.

Scaling exposes the limits of manual control

These challenges often remain hidden until a company begins to scale. Early-stage teams can rely on trust, small numbers, and manual checks. At scale, those approaches break down quickly.

As transaction volumes increase, manual reconciliation becomes a bottleneck. As teams expand geographically, local autonomy collides with central oversight. As systems proliferate, the cost of poor integration compounds.

What looks like a finance problem on the surface is usually a systems problem underneath. Controls that are not embedded into the technology stack cannot keep pace with modern operating models.

This is why many growing companies experience a sudden loss of financial visibility just as they need it most. The tools that worked at one stage of growth are no longer fit for purpose.

Where finance-grade compliance meets developer tooling

In response, a new category of financial infrastructure is emerging. These platforms are designed to serve both finance and engineering teams, combining regulatory rigour with technical flexibility.

Instead of treating financial controls as external constraints, they embed them directly into workflows and systems. Permissions, limits, and reporting are handled programmatically. Data flows in real time. Compliance becomes a property of the infrastructure, not an afterthought.

Platforms like Wallester Business illustrate this shift. By offering finance-grade controls through developer-accessible tooling, they reflect a broader trend in how companies approach financial management. The emphasis is no longer on retroactive oversight but on designing control into the system itself.

Importantly, this is not about replacing finance expertise with technology. It is about enabling finance teams to operate effectively in a software-driven environment.

Financial management is becoming a technology discipline

The implications of this shift are clear. Companies that continue to treat financial control as a purely administrative function will struggle to maintain visibility as they scale. Those that recognise it as a technology challenge can design systems that support growth without sacrificing governance.

For finance leaders, this means developing a deeper understanding of how tools integrate and data flows. For technology leaders, it means acknowledging that financial constraints are not obstacles to innovation but parameters that must be engineered into the product.

The future of financial management does not belong exclusively to CFOs or CTOs. It belongs to organisations that understand that control, compliance, and scalability are now properties of their technology stack.

In that sense, financial control has already become a technology problem. The only question is how deliberately companies choose to address it.

The Novo Nordisk Foundation has allocated up to €736 million (DKK 5.5 billion)  to BioInnovation Institute (BII), a leading institute for life science and deep tech innovation in Copenhagen. 

The funding will enable BII to expand its activities into new strategic areas and geographies, and support even more entrepreneurs and startups, strengthening innovation in Denmark and Europe.

The BioInnovation Institute (BII) accelerates world-class innovation through its programmes: Venture Lab, Bio Studio, and BII Quantum Lab. It supports life science and deep tech startups with access to expertise, networks, infrastructure, and funding of up to €3 million per project and €1.8 million per startup.   

The new funding frame runs from 2026 to 2035. Europe faces a critical challenge:

Europe produces world-class science, but lacks behind other leading regions in translating discoveries into groundbreaking innovations that create jobs, drive economic growth and address urgent societal challenges.

Now, the Novo Nordisk Foundation empowers BII to take a leading role in Europe’s response to pressing issues within human health, planetary health and societal resilience.  

With BII’s proven platform that has already helped create and develop more than 130 companies and attracted more than €938 million (DKK 7 billion) in external funding, the aim is to ensure that Denmark’s innovation engine can scale in a way that supports broader European competitiveness.

Over the coming years, BII expects to scale its activities by significantly increasing the number of start-ups supported each year. While supporting life science and biotech start-ups will remain key, the new long-term support from the Novo Nordisk Foundation enables BII to venture into new scientific and technological fields, such as AI and quantum.

“We are giving BII the opportunity to expand its reach and further strengthen its position as a European powerhouse for innovation. This will prove instrumental in securing that even more science is translated into new companies, jobs and solutions benefitting people and our planet – and ultimately driving the growth and entrepreneurial culture that will benefit European competitiveness,*  says Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, CEO of the Novo Nordisk Foundation.

According to Jens Nielsen, CEO of BII, none of this would be possible without the long-term support from the Novo Nordisk Foundation, which provides exceptional conditions for bringing more scientific breakthroughs to the market to address global challenges:

“We have proven that our innovation platform is successful, but we cannot push the boundaries of innovation alone. Strengthening partnerships will remain a top priority as we continue to develop Denmark’s innovation ecosystem and help ensure Europe’s competitiveness.” 

BII’s platform has already attracted major commercial and philanthropic partners. Notable collaborations include joint initiatives with Ferring and the Gates Foundation to advance women’s health innovation, and more recent partnerships with the Villum Foundation and the Lundbeck Foundation to support early-stage start-ups in Power-to-X technologies and brain disease treatment.

The new funding will further strengthen BII’s position as an attractive destination for investors, enhance its ability to collaborate with academic institutions across Denmark and Europe and support the formation of new partnerships with industry and foundations - all of which are critical elements in sustaining a vibrant innovation ecosystem.

Ghent-based startup Feedelity has raised €510,000 to support its next phase of growth, in an investment round backed by private investors including Gilles Mattelin and Jorn Vanysacker (Henchman), Wouter Fransoo (Delaware), Robbrecht Delrue (Smartendr), and the venture funds Newschool VC and Scalefund.

Processing a single customer review takes companies several minutes on average, and hospitality groups with multiple locations may need to manage large volumes of reviews each week. These are spread across platforms such as delivery apps, search engines, email and social media, making it difficult for customer support teams to keep up.

At the same time, customer feedback plays a critical role in purchasing decisions, with a significant share of consumers relying on reviews when choosing where to dine. Businesses that actively engage with feedback are therefore better positioned to encourage repeat visits.

To address this, Ghent-based entrepreneurs Martin Vander Ghinste (CEO), Achilles Demey (CTO) and Henri Coorevits (CPO) founded the feedback management platform Feedelity. The AI-powered solution centralises feedback from multiple channels, enables semi-automated responses and flags urgent or high-priority issues. It also aggregates review data to provide customer support teams and sales managers with clearer insights into customer behaviour.

Henri Coorevits said the platform allows for more personalised customer responses while reducing the workload for support teams, helping them focus on priority feedback and faster follow-up. He added:

What makes Feedelity unique is our ability to turn feedback into usable operational data for in-depth analysis. A restaurant chain recently discovered that wooden bowls did not resonate with part of its customers, even though they were more expensive. They were able to act on that insight immediately.

Since launching in March 2025, Feedelity has attracted established hospitality brands including Panos, Hawaiian Pokebowl and Pureto, and recently won the top prize at the pitch competition of startup festival Tectonic.

Looking ahead, the company plans to expand beyond hospitality into sectors such as multi-location retail and real estate, where feedback is widely collected but often underused.

The new funding will support team growth, further product development and expanded marketing efforts as Feedelity scales its platform.

Lausanne-based AlphaLum today announced the close of its €3.6 million (CHF 3.4 million) Seed financing round to scale its optics and sensing platform for smart glasses.

The round was led by Vsquared Ventures. With this funding, the Swiss startup aims to accelerate its transition from R&D to becoming a technology supplier for smart glasses and spatial-computing product generation. 

“AlphaLum is building foundational technology for one of the most important computing transitions ahead. Smart glasses are already a reality – the next step is to make them available at scale. AlphaLum is the player targeting the technological bottlenecks to enable this, and we are looking forward to partnering on this journey,” said Benedikt von Schoeler, General Partner at Vsquared Ventures.

AlphaLum was founded in 2025 as a spin-out from ams OSRAM’s corporate incubator, by Markus Rossi, who previously exited Heptagon as CIO to ams AG in 2017, and Tanja Koch. It develops high-​efficiency holographic display optics and miniature sensing technologies for AR, MR, and spatial computing. 

AlphaLum stated the recent developments in the smart glasses market highlight both the growing demand for AR products as well as structural bottlenecks preventing global scale. This view is underscored by Meta’s recent decision to pause the international expansion of its Ray-Ban Display smart glasses in the UK, France, Italy, and Canada, originally scheduled for early 2026. The waitlists now extend well into 2026, as the tech giant prioritises fulfilling demand in the US. 

According to AlphaLum, the gap between demand and manufacturability has become a defining challenge for the sector. It blames the inefficient optical architectures and power-hungry sensing systems for limiting scalability beyond early launches.

The company claims to be addressing this challenge by enabling AR hardware to move from constrained pilot production to true mass manufacturing. It combines two integrated technologies: holographic optical combiners and ultra-low-power​ interferometric laser sensors, addressing the low efficiency of transparent displays and the high-power consumption of vision-based sensing. 

“AlphaLum’s thin, invisible optical layer minimises light loss between the display and the human eye, delivering over 10× higher optical efficiency than conventional waveguides while significantly reducing system cost. Complemented by an AI-powered motion-sensing platform, the technology enables intuitive, hands-free AR interaction and high-resolution, distortion-free images—unlocking mass-market scalability that has so far remained out of reach,” AlphaLum explained in the press release. 

The company states that its transparent displays are built on advanced Volume Phase Holograms (VPHs) designed and engineered in-house. It further mentions that, combined with machine-learning-enhanced signal interpretation, its SMI sensor delivers motion and distance sensing at a fraction of the power of traditional vision or 3D sensing systems. Self-Mixing Interferometry (SMI) is a laser-based optical sensing technique that directly encodes motion and distance into the laser signal itself.

Markus Rossi, CEO and co-founder of AlphaLum, said, “At AlphaLum, our goal is to make the next generation of smart glasses truly wearable – not as prototypes, but as scalable products. By solving the low efficiency of transparent display technologies and always-on constraints of vision-based sensing, we enable our partners to bring interactive, everyday AR to market at scale.

“With this round, we are preparing the next phase of industrialisation and strengthening our role as a core technology supplier for future smart glasses platforms.”

AlphaLum’s team includes professionals with experience in optics, AI, and industrial process design, pursuing a fabless model focused on IP, contract manufacturing, and product engineering.

The post Lausanne-based AlphaLum raises €3.6 million to build the missing hardware layer for mass-market smart glasses appeared first on EU-Startups.