Finnish foodtech Foodiq has raised €10 million in funding to accelerate its international expansion and scale up its proprietary Multi-Layer Cooker (MLC), a manufacturing platform aimed at reshaping how food is produced locally and sustainably.

The funding will enable Foodiq to bring its patented technology to new markets and develop a customer base for its clean-label, additive-free products, particularly in the dairy and alternative protein categories.

Foodiq’s MLC platform has been designed to modernise traditional food manufacturing by offering a more flexible and efficient system that is agnostic to the raw material used. According to the company, the MLC system is particularly well suited for the dairy and plant-based sectors, which are under increasing pressure to innovate and reduce environmental impacts.

The technology enables both large-scale production and R&D prototyping, allowing food producers to rapidly develop new formulations without the need for artificial stabilisers, gums, or emulsifiers. This is a growing demand in the clean-label movement across Europe and North America.

Foodiq’s model taps into rising consumer and regulatory expectations for transparency and sustainability in food production. With regulatory tailwinds, including the EU’s Farm to Fork strategy and growing concerns around ultra-processed foods, platforms like MLC offer manufacturers a way to pivot toward more natural formulations without sacrificing scalability.

“This raise is a strong vote of confidence in our vision and business model,” said Robert Savikko, CEO and Co-founder of Foodiq. “We’re proud to remain fully focused on food tech - where innovation, sustainability, and scalability meet. With this funding, we’re ready to bring our technology to the world stage and help build a smarter, cleaner, and more local food future.”

Foodiq has gained traction in the Nordic markets and is now positioning itself for broader international growth. The fresh capital will go toward expanding both manufacturing capacity and market reach, with the aim of establishing localised production hubs that reduce supply chain emissions and improve food security.

The company is part of a broader wave of European foodtech startups leveraging hardware innovation to address long-standing bottlenecks in food processing and formulation. While much of the investment in foodtech has traditionally gone to alternative proteins, infrastructure and tooling for production such as MLC are increasingly seen as essential to commercial viability.

A partner at VC firm Plug and Play today stressed the importance of co-founders having an equal equity split in their startups when they start out, questioning the passion and motivations of those with a minority stake.

Plug and Play partner Carolin Wais — whose firm has backed PayPal, Shopify and N26 — also reiterated common concerns about investing in first-time solo-founders, saying they might lack resilience.

While a 50-50 split between co-founders might appear the fairest deal, it can lead to founders becoming deadlocked on tough decisions and possible legal disputes.

Wais, who oversees Plug and Play's investments in EMEA, said: “I believe in equal splits of equity. If you are not splitting the equity equally or at least in a fair way, long-term you won’t be incentivised.”

Wais pointed to the example of a startup, in which the founders had a 95 per cent and 5 per cent equity split, which would then get diluted over subsequent funding rounds.

She said: "Would they really want to stick around and spend their life’s purpose on this?"

"I think it’s just about long-term founder incentivisation and making sure everybody comes in every day with the same energy and passion.”

Speaking at the SIM conference today in Porto, Wais also highlighted the dangers of VCs and other investors investing in solo founders.

She said: “If you think about the life of a startup. At the beginning everything looks great and you have a lot of motivation. 

"And then it starts getting rough, you know. You don’t raise that round, you maybe don’t get that customer on board, or something falls through. And then usually, if you have someone else, or even a third person in your team that backs you up, that takes you through these ups and downs, it’s way more successful."

She said: “The companies that have more than one founder they are more successful, just because they have more resilience, more drive and more energy to do this.”

Exceptions to the rule, she said, were solo founders who had previously backed successful startups, such as unicorns.

Dublin-based Axe, an AI startup building autonomous agents for logistics teams, announces its public launch today, alongside the successful raising of €1.5 million in pre-Seed funding.

The round was led by Pitchdrive, with participation from Accel Scouts, Enterprise Ireland, and strategic angel investors including Colm Long (Google, Tines) and Colm Lyons (Realex, Fire).

“Logistics is the backbone of the global economy, yet it still runs on billions of emails, spreadsheets, and phone calls,” says Co-founder and CEO James McElroy. “Our AI agents act as digital teammates, automating repetitive tasks to free up teams for higher-impact work. As margins tighten due to global tariffs, AI provides a crucial advantage by unlocking efficiency and cost savings.”

Founded in 2024 by James McElroy (CEO) and Dan Quill (CTO), Axe builds AI agents that “work like teammates” for logistics operators—logging into systems, making calls, sending emails, and coordinating tasks end to end. These agents reportedly execute full workflows and adapt in real time, cutting through back-office chaos.

One of the AI Agents’ main attractions, according to the company, is the ability to book loads, resolve issues, and keep shipments on track without having to add headcount.

McElroy previously Co-founded Gudog, an EU pet services marketplace acquired by Blackstone earlier this year following its €2.2 billion acquisition of U.S.-based Rover. Previous to this he held roles at document logistics company Oasis. Quill previously served as founding CTO at Peblo, acquired by unicorn FinTech Wayflyer in 2023, and has held engineering roles at FinTech leader iwoca.

“We backed Axe because they’re tackling one of the most painful and outdated workflows in a $10 trillion industry—with a team that knows how to ship fast, build real AI, and sell into logistics. James and Dan have done this before, and they’re building exactly what freight teams have been crying out for: AI agents that actually get things done,” added Koen Christiaens, Partner at Pitchdrive

According to Axe, freight carriers and brokers handle thousands of calls and emails each week; repetitive and time-consuming tasks. Axe’s AI agents take over these repetitive tasks like order entry, quoting, scheduling, and even making phone calls to drivers, freeing up teams to focus on higher-value, more complex work.

Axe is already working with several logistics companies and reportedly saving them as much as two hours per person per day, improving productivity and customer responsiveness.

The funding will accelerate Axe’s product development, grow its engineering and customer success teams, and support expansion into the U.S. market. The company currently operates from Dublin and London, with plans to open its first U.S. office later this year.

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Tokenization has become a valuable alternative for founders seeking to avoid the often burdensome traditional VC/PE funding route. 

Tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) is the process of converting ownership rights in a real-world asset — such as real estate, equity, artwork, or commodities — into a digital token that exists on a blockchain.

Each token represents a share, claim, or stake in the underlying asset. Once tokenized, the asset can be traded, transferred, or used as collateral much more efficiently than through traditional systems.

This week Stobox released a report on the current state of  global tokenization. 

Stobox is a licensed and regulated tokenization provider building financial markets for small and medium businesses. 

It provides an all-in-one solution for tokenizing, investing, and trading RWA and operates in multiple jurisdictions, including the United States. Since its inception in 2018, the company has tokenized over $500 million in assets across finance, mining, energy, and real estate. 

I spoke to Stobox co-founders Gene Deyev (CEO) and Ross Shemeliak to learn more. 

A vision for seamless, decentralised ownership

According to Deyev, Stobox launched in 2018, when the crypto space was still "highly experimental and unstructured. Blockchain was new to everyone — developers, finance professionals, and regulators.

Since then, we've witnessed the market mature from a kind of "anarchy" to one where blockchain assets are increasingly treated like traditional ones."

Stobox's focus is on enabling real-world asset tokenization — not just digital products, but tangible assets like real estate and businesses. 

It's building the technology and narratives to support the transition from legacy systems to decentralised ownership. It's not just about turning things into tokens — it's about embedding compliance, rights, and identity verification into these tokens so they function in the real world. 

Deyev contends:

"Our goal is to make ownership, trade, and investment in these assets as seamless as using electricity — something you don't need to think about.

"Traditional ownership systems are outdated and siloed; we believe ownership, just like communication, should be decentralized and accessible globally."

Europe diversifies assets while Stablecoins capture majority share

Europe is seeing growth beyond traditional real estate tokenization — notably in  sectors such as agriculture, medical research, and natural resources, where various initiatives such as P2P energy marketplaces have expanded globally from pilots to commercialisation over the last decade. 

Further, Stablecoins have experienced impressive growth, increasing by 46% from $100 billion to $146 billion. As a result, they now represent the majority of the tokenisation market. Just this week Visa made a "strategic investment" in stablecoin infrastructure startup BVNK.

Deyev asserts that the real opportunity isn't tied to the rise of any single industry, but rather lies in building the infrastructure for high-quality tokenization that benefits all sectors.

Two key areas are driving this shift: data-rich tokens and security tokens, particularly in DeFi and lending protocols utilizing tokenized real-world assets.

He contends:

"This is a rising tide that will lift all boats, bringing more liquidity to traditional use cases while enabling more sophisticated financial applications."

The UK as a tokenization hub

The report finds that the UK is establishing itself as a key hub for tokenization, with its share of global tokenized assets by jurisdiction rising to 11 per cent in 2024 from 7 per cent the previous year. In the market for special purpose vehicle (SPV) jurisdictions—legal entities used for asset issuance—Britain's share climbed from zero to 7 per cent.  An SPV is an entity that runs token issuance and sales to investors.

Underlying the SPV increase, UK authorities have promoted tokenisation through initiatives such as the Digital Securities Sandbox by the FCA and Bank of England.  

The DSS is a regulatory framework that allows firms to test and operate DLT-based securities issuance, trading, and settlement under temporarily modified rules. P

articipants can use new technologies to perform activities traditionally reserved for central securities depositories and trading venues, such as notary, maintenance, and settlement.

Bitpanda and Coinbase secure UK regulatory green light 

Furthermore, in February, the Austrian cryptocurrency platform Bitpanda was officially launched in the UK after obtaining approval from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). It marked a significant expansion in its European presence alongside its MiCAR license for EU crypto service providers. 

For retail investors, this means access to 500+ cryptocurrencies—the widest selection of cryptocurrencies available on the market on one secure platform. Access to Bitpanda staking provides the ability to earn rewards on digital assets. 

Banks, financial institutions, and crypto platforms can now integrate Bitpanda's regulated infrastructure into their offerings. Therefore, major banks and fintech in the UK can seamlessly offer crypto trading, investment, and custody services with full regulatory oversight.

Separately, Coinbase was also granted permission to operate a full suite of cryptocurrency services in the UK, including trading and custody, for both retail and institutional investors. 

Both platforms allow users to buy, trade, and hold cryptocurrencies, many tokenized representations of value, including stablecoins, utility tokens, and increasingly, real-world asset (RWA) tokens like tokenized equities, commodities, or bonds. 

Germany is positioned to lead in tokenized finance with the underused FlexCo model

Further in Europe, the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation has reshaped the European tokenization landscape, categorising commodity tokens as Risk-Weighted Assets (RWA) and creating a clear path for regulated issuance of tokens backed by real-world assets.

A legislative change called "Flexible Kapitalgesellschaft" (FlexCo) launched in Germany last year,  designed to be more adaptable, especially for startups and young companies. FlexCo allows for simplified ownership transfer of shares and simplifies ownership transfer for tokenized equity.

Shemeliak predicts that while still underutilised, "it is expected to gain adoption and enable Germany to become a leading tokenization jurisdiction in the coming years."

The challenge of liquidity is a persistent painpoint

According to Shemeliak, one key takeaway from the report is that liquidity remains a huge challenge for business owners. Many don't have access to the networks or tools for global fundraising, which is why they come to us. Another insight is the difficulty of balancing regulatory compliance with profitability. 

"Many new providers enter the space without fully grasping the legal frameworks, and they often disappear just as quickly."

For institutional players, tokenizing a fund is relatively straightforward — it's just a more efficient way of issuing traditional finance instruments.

However, for non-financial businesses, tokenization still falls under securities law. According to Deyev, the UK has a small offering exemption that allows businesses to raise up to £8 million without needing full FCA approval—as long as they meet compliance requirements. 

"That's a huge opportunity for smaller, non-traditional issuers, though many still don't realize that tokenized assets are classified as securities."

"No longer the crypto hypecycle"

Further, Deyev contends that the "speculative, hype-driven altcoin era is fading. What's emerging is a serious push — including from the US administration — toward stablecoins, regulated assets, and institutional infrastructure."

He asserts the single biggest shift will come when government asset registries move to the blockchain. 

"Right now, ownership is still managed via outdated, siloed systems. When ownership data — for things like apartments — exists natively on-chain, that's when true tokenization will happen.

today we're in a quasi-tokenization phase, often relying on SPVs (Special Purpose Vehicles) as proxies. It's still complex, with legal and transparency challenges.

But when registries modernize, asset transfer, fractionalization, and trading will become truly seamless."

Deyev stresses that pre-existing or nascent startups wanting to enter the tokenisation space need to be honest with themselves. 

"This is no longer the crypto hype cycle — it's institutional, regulated, and demanding. 

Ask yourself what kind of company you want to build and what kind of life you want to lead. You'll be working across finance, law, blockchain, and maybe even AI. 

It takes deep domain knowledge, long-term dedication, and a clear mission.

Many startups rush in without understanding the responsibilities or regulations, and they burn out quickly. If you're serious, do your homework, understand your role, and then execute with clarity."

Mondelēz International’s impact investing arm, Sustainable Futures, has made a strategic investment in eAgronom, an Estonia-based agritech startup focused on scaling regenerative agriculture across Europe.

The funding, part of eAgronom’s ongoing Series A2 round, aims to support the company’s expansion into new markets and increase its footprint to over 4 million hectares of farmland by 2026.

Founded in 2016, eAgronom currently works with more than 3,000 farms managing 2.5 million hectares across 10 countries, including Poland, Romania, and Sweden. The company provides farmers with digital tools to improve soil health, measure carbon impact, and participate in carbon credit markets, offering both environmental and financial incentives for sustainable farming.

The deal was facilitated by Sagana, a global impact investment advisory firm, which conducted due diligence on eAgronom’s commercial model and its environmental impact.

“This investment in eAgronom fits well with the Climate impact thesis of Sustainable Futures and our wider sustainability goals of building greater resilience within our key supply chains,” said Susanne Mathis-Alig, Senior Director of Sustainability at Mondelēz International.

The move underscores a growing interest from multinational food companies in climate-resilient sourcing strategies, particularly in the face of supply chain disruptions, biodiversity loss, and tightening ESG regulations. With agriculture contributing nearly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, corporate players are increasingly investing in regenerative practices not only to reduce their environmental footprint but also to meet evolving consumer and regulatory expectations.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Mondelēz as investors,” said Robin Saluoks, CEO of eAgronom. “More broadly, partnerships with food companies play a vital role in driving progress toward net-zero food production over the long term. Together, we can empower farmers to adopt sustainable practices and improve soil health, which are both essential steps toward building a sustainable agriculture sector.”

This partnership also positions eAgronom as a valuable player in the carbon insetting movement where companies reduce emissions within their own supply chains rather than buying external carbon offsets.

“eAgronom’s platform provides a broad set of capabilities covering project development, on-the-ground support, and financial access,” said Michael Weber, Senior Director of Climate & Environment at Mondelēz International. “We look forward to supporting the team’s efforts, especially on the insetting side with carbon removals forming part of many companies’ carbon reduction pathways while external standards continue to evolve.”

eAgronom allows farmers to measure their carbon footprint more accurately and participate in verified carbon programs, a sector expected to grow substantially as food brands seek science-backed decarbonization strategies.

The global voluntary carbon market is forecast to exceed $50 billion by 2030, and agri-carbon credits - generated from practices like no-till farming, cover cropping, and reduced fertilizer use - are increasingly in demand

Space logistics startup ATMOS Space Cargo (ATMOS)has formed a strategic alliance with ARX Robotics (ARX), a leader in autonomous unmanned ground systems (UGV), integrating orbital re-entry logistics with autonomous unmanned systems (UxS). 

In April 2025, ATMOS launched the first iteration of its re-entry capsule, PHOENIX 1, into space and conducted a re-entry mission. The company plans to launch PHOENIX 2, its next-generation capsule, in 2026, further advancing its scalable, autonomous return logistics platform.

Strategically, the use of space and orbital infrastructure significantly enhances European resilience. This capability is crucial in situations where traditional sea, land, or air connectivity is unavailable or compromised. Orbital logistics ensures Europe maintains operational autonomy and swift responsiveness in crisis situations, enabling rapid intervention even in isolated or difficult-to-reach regions.

The integration of PHOENIX, ATMOS’s orbital re-entry capsule, with ARX Robotics' modular unmanned systems opens up new mission profiles. 

On the ground, ARX’s Mithra OS coordinates the deployment and operation of these systems, and connects them with unmanned assets in the sea and air domains.

PHOENIX will serve as an active orbital depot, able to precisely deploy ARX's and its partners’ autonomous systems within minutes, ensuring unmatched response times anywhere on the planet. With its modular platforms and software-defined architecture, ARX enables flexible, mission-specific deployment – now extended to orbital operations.

Joining both companies’ technological abilities generate a wide range of potential use cases, including:

• Rapid Disaster Response: Immediate deployment of unmanned vehicles for search-and-rescue operations and critical infrastructure repair following natural disasters.
• Reconnaissance Missions: Real-time intelligence gathering and environmental assessment in high-risk or inaccessible regions.
• Defence and Security Operations: Efficient deployment of dual-use autonomous systems supporting ground operations, enhancing personnel safety, and improving situational awareness.

ATMOS has recently established a new French subsidiary in Strasbourg to expand its European partner network in preparation for upcoming missions to and from the European continent. With this new alliance it strengthens its growing network. 

Further, as part of the newly formed alliance, ATMOS expands its European network of launch providers by connecting with ARX’s dedicated defence technology innovators network, UXS Alliance. 

Sebastian Klaus, CEO of ATMOS Space Cargo, emphasises: 

"By integrating orbital capabilities with advanced robotics, we are equipping Europe with unprecedented rapid-response infrastructure. This is a new standard for safety, innovation, and cooperation."

ARX, which recently secured €31 million in Series A funding, has entered multiple European partnerships with notable defense companies such as Daimler Truck and confirmed expanding into the UK, where the company is already working with the British Army and the UK Ministry of Defence, with plans for a new headquarter and production facilities. 

According to Marc Wietfeld, CEO of ARX Robotics, the alliance and development of the groundbreaking platform with ATMOS allows ARX to store and deploy autonomous unmanned technologies from orbit rapidly and flexibly, at any time and to any place in the world. 

“This significantly expands European military-strategic capabilities and operational possibilities for NATO forces. This partnership is a clear statement for the multidimensional future of European resilience.

It contributes directly to NATO readiness by enabling allied forces to act faster, further, and with greater autonomy than ever before.” 

The alliance is further supported by a tactical investment from J14 European Resilience, a DefenceTech-focused investor network established by ARX shareholders Marc Wietfeld and Daniel Kirch.

Zurich-based ConstructionTech Scalera, an ETH Zürich spin-off using AI to modernise construction procurement, today announces a €5.7 million Seed round to fuel its expansion into Germany and Austria.

The funding round was led by firstminute capital, Speedinvest, and a group of strategic angels from Google, unicorn startups, and the construction world.

“The opportunity is enormous, but the system is broken,” said Leonardo Reinhard, Co-founder and CEO of Scalera. “To win public tenders today, companies still comb through thousand-page PDFs, copy line items into Excel, and email suppliers one by one. We started Scalera to end that madness and get vital projects moving again — faster, more affordably, and with total transparency.”​

Founded in 2023 by Leonardo Reinhard (CEO), Sven Affeltranger (CCO), and Federico Gossi (CTO), Scalera is an AI-powered tendering and procurement platform for the construction sector. It automates the parsing, matching, and coordination behind construction bids — public or private.

By eliminating procurement chaos, Scalera looks to empower governments and builders to move faster, reduce costs, and collaborate better across the entire construction supply chain.

Sam Endacott, Partner at Firstminute Capital, says: “LLMs and Generative AI are one of the most exciting platform shifts in technology, and we believe much of the commercial value will be built by teams focused on verticalised use cases in sectors which have yet to fully undergo digital transformation. The construction sector is a perfect example of this, which is why we are so excited to partner with the Scalera team to reimagine how their customers can analyse tenders, find suppliers, request quotes, and manage bids.”

According to data provided to EU-Startups, every year, governments around the world spend €11.5 trillion on procurement. In the EU alone, over 250,000 public bodies allocate approximately €1.7 trillion annually across contracts for roads, housing, energy, transport, and other public works.

Scalera argues that much of this is driven through antiquated procurement processes that frustrate both suppliers and contractors.

Scalera’s platform automates the “most painful parts of procurement“. It ingests lengthy, unstructured tender documents, parses them using AI, and maps items to standard taxonomies like NPK, BKP, VOB , and ÖNorm. Suppliers upload their catalogs and Scalera matches their products to relevant tenders.

This supposedly accelerates bidding cycles — from three days to just half a day — while reducing errors and unlocking new collaboration between buyers and suppliers.

Andreas Schwarzenbrunner, General Partner at Speedinvest, says: “The construction and real estate sector, the largest in Europe, is still stuck in outdated, cumbersome, and inefficient processes. We believe AI has the power to bring construction companies to the next level by automating essential mid- and back-office functions, improving overall efficiency and profitability. Scalera’s platform has already delivered game-changing results for numerous clients, and we are excited to back Leo, Sven, and​ Federico in their next phase of development, as they lead the construction industry’s adoption of AI.”

Scalera has reportedly processed over €2.1 billion in tenders and now covers 65% to 75% of construction contractors in Switzerland. Its expansion into Germany and Austria is also already underway.

Backed by 74% MoM growth, Scalera’s product aims to establish itself as the preferred procurement engine for the DACH region’s builders.

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Swiss constructiontech Scalera has secured $6.5 million in seed funding to address inefficiencies within public and private construction procurement.

The round was led by firstminute capital and Speedinvest, with participation from a strategic group of angel investors including Google executives, unicorn founders, and seasoned construction industry veterans.

Founded out of ETH Zürich, Scalera is tackling a sector widely recognized as one of the least digitised: construction. With mounting delays in infrastructure delivery and rising demands for housing, transport, and energy projects, the startup wants to accelerate Europe's building pipeline.

“The opportunity is enormous, but the system is broken,” said Leonardo Reinhard, co-founder and CEO of Scalera. “To win public tenders today, companies still comb through thousand-page PDFs, copy line items into Excel, and email suppliers one by one. We started Scalera to end that madness and get vital projects moving again — faster, more affordably, and with total transparency.”

Scalera’s core product uses artificial intelligence to automate the parsing of complex tender documents, match supplier catalogs to line items, and help contractors generate bids in a fraction of the time. It supports industry taxonomies such as NPK, BKP, VOB, and ÖNorm, streamlining collaboration across different national standards in Europe.

This automation shortens bid preparation timelines. In a market where time and accuracy are critical to securing contracts, the platform aims to replace the outdated manual processes that dominate the sector.

“LLMs and Generative AI are one of the most exciting platform shifts in technology,” said Sam Endacott, Partner at firstminute capital. “We believe much of the commercial value will be built by teams focused on verticalised use cases in sectors which have yet to fully undergo digital transformation. The construction sector is a perfect example of this, which is why we are so excited to partner with the Scalera team.”

“The construction and real estate sector, the largest in Europe, is still stuck in outdated, cumbersome, and inefficient processes,” said Andreas Schwarzenbrunner, General Partner at Speedinvest. “We believe AI has the power to bring construction companies to the next level by automating essential mid- and back-office functions, improving overall efficiency and profitability.”

London-based compensation data platform Ravio has raised $12 million in a Series A round, as companies look to modernise how they manage pay transparency and equity in an increasingly competitive global hiring market. The round was led by Spark Capital (US), with participation from Blackbird (Australia) and Cherry Ventures (Europe).

The fresh capital will fuel Ravio’s international expansion, as well as investment into predictive analytics, new hire benchmarks, and compensation planning tools. The company’s broader goal is to position itself as the go-to platform for real-time pay intelligence.

Founded in 2022, Ravio is addressing a long-standing pain point in HR: companies are still making some of their most financially significant decisions - compensation - based on market data that is often 12 to 18 months old. Ravio offers an alternative by integrating directly with HR systems and delivering live compensation benchmarks across more 46 countries.

With compensation often accounting for 70 percent of a company’s operating costs, relying on outdated or limited data can lead to multiple problems: high attrition, inefficient salary allocation, and growing pay inequities.

The platform operates on a “give-to-get” model, where customers contribute anonymised compensation data via API integrations with their HR software. In return, they gain access to real-time salary, equity, and benefits benchmarks that can be filtered by company size, funding stage, and industry.

Ravio has already secured a customer base that includes Just Eat Takeaway, Octopus Energy, Wise, Adyen, Mollie, Zoopla, and Skyscanner.

“Market data hasn't kept pace with today's dynamic market,” said Merten Wulfert, co-founder and CEO of Ravio. “We're bringing decades-old survey methodology into the modern age by plugging directly into our customers' HR systems. This approach automates the data collection process and lets us continuously analyse market movements as they happen.”

“The idea for Ravio was born from running compensation reviews during the early days of building Deliveroo,” said Vaso Parisinou, Chief People Officer at Ravio. “We were scaling rapidly, and it was painful finding data from relevant companies. I was building bands across countries, ensuring my data reflected the current market, and trying to fill in gaps for remote markets. It was impossible.”

“When we built salary bands using Ravio, we could immediately see a few outliers – it was easy to spot pay equity issues,” said Anna-Lena Grimm, Director of People & Culture at HERO Software, a German SaaS company scaling from 100 to 250 employees this year.

“Access to Ravio's live market data means no more headaches from delayed data sets or having to age compensation data,” said Jodi Slomp, VP People at Mollie. Evert Kraav, Senior Compensation Manager at Bolt, added: “What I love about Ravio is the ability to track what's going on in today's market. Now, we can benchmark against current market rates in real-time.”

HRtech is seeing renewed interest, particularly in areas that support compliance, pay equity, and workforce transparency. “We're excited to double down on our previous investment in Ravio by leading their Series A,” said Alex Finkelstein at Spark Capital. “Getting compensation right is challenging for companies of any size and industry. We believe Ravio is positioned to become the industry standard for real-time compensation data.”

“What does an average day in this role look like?” It’s a perfectly common question asked in any job interview, across any industry. But in a field like venture capital—a sector 94% of the British public can’t confidently describe—it’s a much-needed enquiry.

I was a VC outsider myself for most of my career. Before I took the plunge, I wouldn’t have imagined that working in this sphere would involve being invited to No. 10, hosting panels at London Tech Week, or learning a whole new ‘VC vocabulary.’ There’s simply too much variety to fit into a neat job description, and my experience is by no means unique.

So, drawing from my own journey and the insights of colleagues and industry friends, I’ve gathered some of the most surprising aspects a career in VC can involve.

Spreading your wings beyond spreadsheets

For those familiar with VC, the day-to-day might conjure images of spreadsheets, valuations, and relentless number crunching. And yes, that’s part of it, but the reality is that VC involves much more than just chasing and closing deals. It’s about spotting talent before the rest of the world catches on, staying plugged into emerging trends, and acting as a sounding board for founders.

Mukami Kamau, Investment Manager at Chui Ventures, summed it up perfectly when she told me that what she initially thought would be “all spreadsheets and strategy” actually involves “negotiating like a diplomat and networking like a politician.” It’s an important reminder that while the numbers matter, so do relationships, persuasion, and the ability to read the (board)room.

Wearing many hats, in many places

In VC, no two days are the same. One day, you might be combing through pitch decks; the next, you’re trialling body scans with the newest health tech firm. Your role can shift constantly, and it’s this dynamic nature that makes the job so exciting.

A glimpse into the life of Muhammad Malik, Founder of Tijara Ventures, perfectly captures this. “I never imagined I’d be handwriting ‘reserved’ notices for seats at the House of Lords while organising a symposium on AI and tech […] or drinking camel milk with Bedouins in Al Ula,” he told me. So much of VC is what you make of it. Saying yes to new opportunities can quite literally take you anywhere—whether that’s the hallowed halls of parliament or repeated trips to the departures lounge.

But he also noted that behind the glamour, he’s found himself “separating plastic from treats” at an event he curated to connect VCs and startups from five continents to Riyadh’s ecosystem. It’s an important reminder that the role isn’t just about making deals or attending major events—it’s about doing the work that fuels those moments. It’s the blend of pinch-me experiences and behind-the-scenes effort that makes a career in VC so unique.

Spotting potential, not perfection

Venture capital isn’t about perfectly formed companies or flawless business plans. Much of the work in VC is about identifying potential—whether that’s a talented founder, an innovative idea, or an industry ripe for disruption. It’s about seeing what others might overlook and backing people and companies that are still figuring things out. This often means investing in businesses at a very early stage, with all the uncertainty that comes with it.

In her work helping founders assess funding, Ankshita Chaudhary, Co-founder at Startup Discovery Asia, used to think VC was “like navigating a treasure hunt – startups had to decode the map and uncover the right clues to unlock funding.” Now, having seen how VC works first-hand, she recognises that “there’s so much more to VC than just finding the ‘right’ answers. It’s about understanding the nuances of markets, relationships, and timing.”

This mindset is one of the many surprising aspects of VC. Whether evaluating businesses or people, it’s all about recognising potential—even when it’s still in its early, unpolished form.

Taking off without an elite education

Many of us know the stats: senior roles in VC are overwhelmingly held by the privately educated. On top of that, there has long been an expectation that a prestigious degree or an MBA is a must-have to make it in this industry. But in reality, the VC world—and the people within it—come from all walks of life.

Thea Otto, COO at Foundrise—and a master pastry chef herself—is a perfect example of how those from unconventional backgrounds can reshape industries. She shared with me how learning about the VC world proved to her that “true innovation happens when we break down systemic barriers and bring diverse perspectives to the investment table.” She has firmly embedded that ethos in her work with innovative companies and is committed to “rewriting the blueprint,” ensuring that a new generation makes diverse perspectives their competitive advantage.

It’s one of the many surprising things about a career in VC—your background might not fit the traditional mould, but that’s precisely what can make you stand out.

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Berlin-based startup Circula has raised €15 million in an extended Series A round to advance its AI-driven expense management platform to build out autonomous finance workflows, deepening its platform’s utility for mid-sized businesses across Germany and Europe.

The round was backed by a roster of returning investors including Alstin Capital, Capnamic Ventures, Peak Capital, Wenvest Capital and Storm Ventures, along with financial support from CIBC Innovation Banking.

“We have a clear goal: to become Germany’s AI-based champion in expense and spend management for small and medium-sized businesses,” says Nikolai Skatchkov, CEO of Circula. “With hundreds of millions of euros in transaction volume, hundreds of thousands of active users, and the trust of countless tax advisory firms, we are in an ideal position to realize our vision of a seamless workday for finance teams in the coming years.”

Circula, founded in 2017 by Nikolai Skatchkov and Roman Leicht, offers a modular SaaS platform designed to streamline business expense management. Its key features include AI-powered receipt capture, automated tax-compliant data extraction and real-time booking verification.

With over 2,800 customers, Circula’s customer base includes companies like Aston Martin, About You, DATEV and Securitas. More than 150,000 employees across Europe currently use the platform to manage travel expenses, per diems, credit card transactions and employee benefits.

According to Circula, companies using its platform reduce manual effort by 80% and shorten monthly closing cycles by several business days—an increasingly critical advantage amid economic uncertainty and cost-cutting pressures.

The demand for digital expense solutions is underscored by research from ERP provider Diamant, which reports that only 8.8% of Germany’s mid-sized businesses have fully automated their expense workflows. Circula’s mobile-first approach aims to close that gap by reportedly capturing over 70% of expenses at the point of occurrence, pre-booking them with tax-relevant data, and cutting billing cycles to fewer than two days.

Charlotte Goggin, Director of CIBC Innovation Banking, says: “Circula is transforming traditional paperwork into smart, AI-powered processes – setting new standards in digital expense management. We are excited to support this growth.”

The company says its success is built on strong revenue growth and a disciplined approach to profitability—traits that have helped it weather the volatility of the current funding environment.

With this latest capital injection, Circula plans to enhance its AI capabilities and introduce further automation features tailored for finance teams.

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London-based Loxa, an InsurTech firm focused on innovating product protection, has successfully raised €1.9 million in a Seed funding round, with €147k coming directly from the Angel Investment Network (AIN).

According to Founder Jamie Hamer: “Loxa is on a mission to rebuild trust in repair-first insurance and unlock significant value for UK retailers in the expanding product protection market. This fundraise marks a significant step in our journey. The process can be fraught but partnering with the right investors, like those we found through AIN, makes all the difference. We’re excited to use these funds to scale Loxa, execute our ambitious plans, and get this business motoring towards profitability.”

Founded in 2023, Loxa (formerly known as Bolt Cover) empowers retailers of any size to offer their customers Product Protection cover at checkout for repairable items like furniture, eyewear, and power tools. The Loxa system can be integrated with both online and in-store retailers. Clients can plug into their platform API or use their tailor-made plugins for Shopify, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, and Magento.

Jamie Hamer, Co-founder and CEO, brings a proven track record in scaling ventures—having Co-founded and exited React News after driving it to €11.7 million+ in revenue—and experience with major corporates like Procter & Gamble and Gartner. Tori Hutchinson, Co-Founder and COO, draws from senior roles in global companies like Cirque du Soleil and Monica Vinader. Richard Smith, CTO and board member, has delivered high-performing digital solutions for top brands like L’Oréal and the Department for Education.

Partnering with established insurance companies, Loxa provides embedded insurance solutions that retailers and manufacturers can integrate into the customer sales journey, both online and in-store.

The firm’s vision is to become the UK’s leading provider in the “underserved” B2B2C insurance retail market across all consumer product categories.

The raised funds will enable Loxa to complete its tech stack, expand its scalable technology to integrate with websites and EPOS systems, and strengthen its D2C upsell offerings, starting with a power tool scheme.

The goal is to offer a consumer product-specific alternative to traditional home insurance by 2026.

According to Alex Caparros from the Angel Investment Network: “Loxa is addressing a significant gap in the market with its innovative approach to product protection. We are delighted to have connected them with our strategic investors, who recognise the strength of Loxa’s vision. Their commitment to empowering retailers and delivering enhanced value to consumers represents a compelling proposition, with a journey that is just beginning.”

At present, Loxa only insures items sold to UK-based customers.

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The co-founder of Glovo, the Spanish food delivery app owned by Germany's Delivery Hero, says future consolidation in the food delivery sector will likely be limited to smaller “opportunistic” acquisitions.

Sacha Michaud, co-founder, Glovo, said: "I think there are not too many players now to consolidate. There are some big companies. It might just be some very opportunistic, smaller companies being acquired.”

Earlier this week, Deliveroo, the UK based food delivery app, agreed to be acquired by US giant DoorDash in a deal valuing the business at £2.9bn. The combined company will have a presence in more than 40 countries serving about 50 million customers per month.

Michaud said the deal was a “positive” thing for the food delivery market in Europe and that there was huge growth potential in Europe compared to Asia, saying that average food orders per month in Europe were “tiny” compared to Asia.

He added: "The growth of our industry is huge and it’s going to be through quick commerce.” The tie-up is expected to provide competition to rivals like Just Eat and Uber Eats in the UK. The tie-up comes amid broader consolidation across the food delivery sector. 

Earlier this year, Just Eat was snapped up by South African-owned internet investor Prosus while Deliveroo sold parts of its Hong Kong business to Delivery Hero.

Separately, Michaud, who heads up global affairs at Glovo, added his voice to the debate about whether European founders lack ambition compared to US founders.

He said: “I think the ambition is there. The reality is that role models are key for startups. We need more role models. We need some Steve Jobs, Bill Gates Europeans.

“There have been some great companies out of Europe. I think European founders are super-ambitious."

Michaud was speaking at the SIM conference today in Porto.

London-based Doubleword, a self-hosted inference platform for enterprises, today announced a €10.6 million Series A funding round in order to help enterprises own & control their AI by solving the inference problem.

The funding round was led by Dawn Capital. Doubleword also counts K5 Tokyo Black as an investor alongside leading AI entrepreneurs as angel investors, including Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue and Dataiku CEO Florian Douetteau.

Meryem Arik, Co-founder and CEO of Doubleword, said: “Our customers want to build AI-powered applications—not AI infrastructure. We eliminate the heavy lifting of inference at scale so they can go from idea to production faster, without racking up technical debt. We ensure that our customers can deploy any AI model with a single click, while always having the latest models and hardware supported – and without being wedded to a single model provider.

“With this funding, we’ll continue to grow our team globally and invest in our platform to solve even more of the inference problem for our customers.”

Founded in 2021, the UK-based company – formerly TitanML – is solving one of the biggest barriers to large-scale enterprise AI adoption: self-hosted inference. Inference is where AI delivers real-world value — from answering questions to generating images, it transforms models into business outcomes.

Founded pre-ChatGPT by Meryem Arik (CEO), Dr Jamie Dborin (CSO), and Dr Fergus Finn (CTO). During their postdoctoral research at UCL, Jamie and Fergus realised techniques used in their quantum machine learning model compression were also well placed to improve AI inference performance.

The UK’s Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology Peter Kyle said: “AI will help us to deliver growth for our economy and new opportunities for people up and down the country, so it’s vital businesses have the confidence to adopt and realise its potential. Doubleword’s work is helping set the standard for how companies can do exactly that – adopting AI quickly and efficiently so they can realise their ambitions and allow their workers and customers to thrive in the age of AI.

“This is yet another illustration not just of how British-born tech expertise is tapping into AI to help give businesses the world over a unique point of difference, but in the steps we’ve taken to make our tech sector a true global magnet for innovation and investment.”

As AI adoption grows, inference has become mission-critical — a capability enterprises must own and control — driving a shift toward self-hosted inference.

Self-hosting, however, brings with it the task of building and maintaining performant, scalable inference infrastructure. As a result, many teams find themselves trapped in an ongoing cycle of assembling tools, hunting for specialised talent, and continually updating their infrastructure to keep pace.

This is where Doubleword looks to come in. They have already scaled into the US and secured partnerships with Snowflake and Dataiku.

“Enterprises creating specific business-critical AI would gladly self-host, if ‘expertise’ and ‘cost’ didn’t sound like double trouble,” said Florian Douetteau, CEO at Dataiku. “Doubleword flips the script, making self-hosting effortless and reshaping the market for enterprise customers.”

Doubleword’s end-to-end solution reportedly enables enterprises to self-host AI models—open-source, proprietary, or fine-tuned—without having to build, maintain, or optimise complex infrastructure. Doubleword looks to empower enterprises to:

• Deploy 1 or 1000 models in their environment effortlessly, with one-click private deployment of any open-source, domain-specific, or custom model

• Manage all their deployments in one place, acting as the unified control layer across cloud and on-prem deployments with analytics, logs & alerts built in

• Scale AI on their terms, with proprietary inference optimisation research that optimises your GPU research, and dynamic infrastructure that is built to flex with your roadmap, not dictate it

Haakon Overli, General Partner at Dawn Capital, addeed: “Doubleword is the most exciting startup in this space, and we’re extremely excited to be supporting Meryem, Jamie, Fergus and the team as they take the company to the next level. The team has a market-leading product, and has proven they can flawlessly execute to deliver for global customers. They are scaling a product that businesses need at the right time, with the right expertise.”

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UK-based mobile games developer Tripledot Studios has announced the acquisition of AppLovin’s mobile gaming studio portfolio in a deal valued at approximately $800M, marking one of the largest consolidations in the mobile gaming sector to date.

The transaction - structured as half cash and half equity - will make AppLovin a minority shareholder in Tripledot and significantly expand the acquirer’s global footprint and talent base.

Subject to regulatory approvals and completion, the acquisition will bring Tripledot’s total to 12 studios across 23 cities, with more than 2,500 employees and an active player base of 25 million daily users. Annual gross revenues are projected to reach nearly $2 billion, placing Tripledot among the top five independent mobile gaming companies in the world by revenue.

Tripledot already operates from offices in London, Warsaw, Minsk, Barcelona, Jakarta, and Melbourne. The new studios span an additional 17 cities across North America, Europe, and Asia.

“This is a big step towards achieving our goal—taking us from being a high-performing challenger to a true global leader,” said Lior Shiff, co-founder and CEO of Tripledot Studios. “It gives us additional scale, diversification and access to the best talent globally. We’re thrilled to welcome these incredible teams to Tripledot.”

The acquisition is a notable validation of Europe's maturing gaming ecosystem. Tripledot now follows in the footsteps of earlier European mobile gaming giants like Rovio, King, and Supercell, helping reaffirm the region’s influence on a sector historically dominated by U.S. and East Asian studios.

The company has been profitable since its second year of operations, an increasingly rare feat in a market where user acquisition costs and platform fees can strain margins even at scale.

Studios and titles included in the acquisition include:

• Lion Studios – Hexa Sort, Wordle!, Found It
• PeopleFun – Wordscapes, Wordscapes Solitaire, Bricks n Balls
• Belka Games – Clockmaker, Train of Hope
• ZenLife Games – Cooking Madness, Word Connect

AppLovin, the US-based mobile tech and marketing platform, originally acquired studios as part of its broader machine learning strategy. Now, it is exiting game development to sharpen its focus on its core ad tech and software platform business.

“Seven years ago, we began acquiring gaming studios to help train our earliest machine learning models. However, we've never been a game developer at heart,” said Adam Foroughi, co-founder and CEO of AppLovin. “I have watched Lior build his company from the ground up... and give me incredible confidence they are the right partner to help these studios thrive going forward.”

London-based Ravio, a FinTech startup that creates a real-time view of the market for what different job roles are being paid, has raised a €10.6 million Series A funding round to modernise how companies manage compensation with real-time market data and decision making tools.

The round was led by Spark Capital with participation from Blackbird and Cherry Ventures.

“Market data hasn’t kept pace with today’s dynamic market,” said Merten Wulfert, Co-founder and CEO of Ravio. “We’re bringing decades-old survey methodology into the modern age by plugging directly into our customers’ HR systems. This approach automates the data collection process and lets us continuously analyse market movements as they happen.”

Founded in 2022, Ravio provides data and tools for companies to achieve compensation confidence. By delivering real-time market insights and modern compensation management software, Ravio looks to help forward-thinking businesses avoid the ‘compensation debt’ that occurs when pay practices fall out of alignment with market realities.

Ravio counts consumer brands like Just Eat Takeaway and Octopus Energy among its customers, alongside FinTech leaders such as Wise, Adyen, and Mollie. Names like Zoopla and Skyscanner have also chosen Ravio to set their compensation strategies.

“The idea for Ravio was born from running compensation reviews during the early days of building Deliveroo,” said Vaso Parisinou, Chief People Officer at Ravio. “We were scaling rapidly, and it was painful finding data from relevant companies. I was building bands across countries, ensuring my data reflected the current market, and trying to fill in gaps for remote markets. It was impossible.”

According to data provided by Ravio, despite representing 70% of operating costs, most companies make these important decisions using “patchy” data that’s 12-18 months old. Ravio believes this approach creates significant issues:

• Talent leaves when underpaid compared to current market rates
• Companies overspend on some roles while struggling to attract talent in others
• Pay inequities develop as new hires and existing staff operate from different reference points

HERO Software, a German SaaS company growing from 100 to 250 employees this year, used Ravio to transform their compensation strategy. “When we built salary bands using Ravio, we could immediately see a few outliers – it was easy to spot pay equity issues,” explains Anna-Lena Grimm, Director of People & Culture at HERO.

Ravio’s platform reportedly delivers market data across 46+ countries and 100+ roles, helping companies make informed decisions quickly.

Customers using Ravio can connect data from their HR software via API, which is then anonymously aggregated into market-level benchmarks, with a give-to-get model. They can then compare their salary, equity and benefits packages to today’s market – with filters for headcount, funding stage, and industry. 

“Access to Ravio’s live market data means no more headaches from delayed data sets or having to age compensation data,” explains Jodi Slomp, VP People at Mollie. “Ravio offers real-time data with amazing visualisations.”

“What I love about Ravio is the ability to track what’s going on in today’s market,” said Evert Kraav, Senior Compensation Manager at Bolt. “Now, we can benchmark against current market rates in real-time.”

With Series A funding, Ravio will continue its international expansion to help compensation Rewards leaders access modern tooling needed to deploy competitive pay strategies.

“After supporting 1,200+ companies, we’ve seen how compensation leaders are put in tough positions with insufficient data and outdated tooling,” said Raymond Siems, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Ravio. “We’ve built what our customers told us they need: real-time insights and decision-making tools without painful or time-consuming admin. Our mission is to empower compensation teams to lead with accurate, defensible data in every conversation.”

Ravio plans to use the new funding to:

• Continue growing a comprehensive dataset with expanded regions and industry coverage
• Develop advanced market insights, including new hire benchmarks and predictive analytics
• Invest in best-in-class tools for efficient compensation management

“We’re excited to double down on our previous investment in Ravio by leading their Series A,” said Alex Finkelstein at Spark Capital. “Getting compensation right is challenging for companies of any size and industry. We believe Ravio is positioned to become the industry standard for real-time compensation data.”

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