Google changed how search works in Europe on Tuesday. Then it told everyone the new version is worse. Foo Yun Chee reported the rollout for Reuters, which had the story first. The company is complying with an order from the European Commission, and it is doing so while describing the result as the biggest quality […]

Memory prices are finally slowing down, and the reason is not that supply improved. It is that buyers ran out of money. TrendForce expects conventional DRAM contract prices to rise 13% to 18% quarter on quarter in Q3. Dan Robinson reported the forecast for The Register. He paired it with separate European shipment numbers that […]

King Charles is convening about 30 senior figures from the AI industry at a Scottish country house this month. He does not intend to tell them what he thinks. Joseph Bambridge reported the plans for Politico. Two people familiar with them spoke on condition of anonymity, because nobody has announced the event. One of them […]

There’s a meme I often see doing the rounds: “Give me the confidence of a middle-class white male.” And, well, British entrepreneur Tom Noble encapsulates it. But he combines that confidence with an unusually vulnerable approach to building businesses: doing it in public, while crowdsourcing opinions on LinkedIn and other social media.

From sustainability to farming attention

Noble studied sustainability for two degrees before becoming an accountant and working at an energy company. He later founded a sportswear business, which he ran for five years until COVID and Brexit prompted a change in direction.

He then moved into tech, building AI-powered websites, but quickly realised that the technology was making it increasingly easy for customers to build websites themselves.

“It became so easy to do things that actually getting people's attention was starting to become the hard part. I thought,

“I don't mind being on camera. Why don't I create some media channel through which I can build and grow businesses?””

That's when Flat White or F*ck Off happened.

Back in early 2025, advertising and behavioural science heavyweight Rory Sutherland loated the idea of Flat White or F*ck Off, a coffee chain that served nothing but flat whites. If you didn’t want a flat white, the clue was in the name. Noble originally came on board to make a fun video around the messaging, but it went viral with around 30 million views in total, and the Instagram account reached over 46,000 followers.

On 28th January, at 7 am last year, the first Flat White or F*ck Off opened to the public at OUTERNET, outside Tottenham Court Road Station. They were unsurprisingly “flat out”, and served 1,500+ flat whites across 12 hours.

When 30 million views aren’t enough

Documenting the endeavour every step of the way on Instagram, from pop-ups to partnerships with sportswear brands, with brutal honesty, Noble admitted that the endeavour cost £27,000 but only made £5500. ​ And there were other problems, as he explained:

“We all met online and didn't know each other. And you know how it is with founders: we all thought that we owned it. I completed the videos, which I considered the most important part.

Another guy did the logo, so he thought that was the most important part. People were organising the events. It was doomed to fail.”

He admits that while some of his videos got a million views, “it became very clear that views aren't money. I was basically farming views. I knew it was going to drop off at some point because it was so flash in the pan. At the peak of our fame, we did nothing. We sat and waited.”

Further, he asserts, “You probably can't build a business selling basically just flat whites unless you're in exactly the right location.”

And with that name, they couldn't get into somewhere like a train station. Much less compete with locations peppered with Pret, Starbucks, and other big chains already paying huge rents. He’s particularly frustrated that Flat White didn’t sell coffee beans:

“I was quite angry about that because we had a supply lined up. A supplier gave us beans for the first event, and we could have sold them from day one. Instead, we didn't use that supplier commercially until two months later.

I found that incredibly frustrating, so I left. But I thought: if I can do it with Flat White F*ck Off, I can try to do it again.”

From flat whites to wine

After the fallout from Flat White F*ck Off, Noble took a month off. He visited a vineyard and spoke to the owner.

“I said, “Can I just start my own wine brand?” She said, “Yeah, go on then.” So I bought a bottle, crossed out their name, and wrote my name underneath it.” He posted on LinkedIn saying, “If I can sell 20 bottles, I'll start this wine business.”

“I failed. I sold 16. But then the post saying I was going to close the business went viral. So I thought, “I probably should keep going.”

He named his business Chateaunoble, and argues that the wine business is already commercially viable. Noble spent around £4,600 to acquire and collect 150 bottles of wine, with potential revenue of around £7,000 if they all sell.

“I'll probably lose money on this batch because I'm giving wine away and doing various marketing stunts. But I'm doing those things deliberately to sell more later.”

Putting the wine on a credit card

Noble says the early stages of building Chateaunoble have meant personally financing the business, including putting the cost of wine on his credit card. While the venture is gaining attention, that has yet to translate into enough revenue to cover the costs of building a physical product and brand.

“I’ve hit my first £3k month — and it’s not in sales. It’s credit card debt. Welcome to running a business and putting it on your credit card.”

Despite the financial pressure, he remains convinced that Chateaunoble has potential. He also sees his growing profile as a creator as closely connected to the wine brand's development, with each helping generate attention for the other.

“I truly believe Chateaunoble will be something one day, as well as myself becoming a creator alongside it. Both feed each other.”

Noble says his move towards physical businesses was partly driven by the limitations of creating content around digital products.

“I started making videos of myself building websites, and no one cares. All I can film is myself sitting at a screen.”

Vineyards and coffee shops, for example, offer an aspirational element that translates readily to social media.

“If I’m at a vineyard or in a coffee shop, that’s visually engaging. Who doesn’t want to go to a vineyard? It’s aspirational.”

Noble believes physical businesses are often judged more harshly on their commercial success than startups — consider, for example, how readily restaurant failures are scrutinised compared with the oft-cited 80 per cent startup success rate.

“You can throw money at a young tech founder with no track record, but if someone starts a physical business, suddenly everyone wants to know where the profit is.”

“Why should I listen to you about wine?”

Unsurprisingly,  Noble pushes back against the idea that he needs formal wine qualifications to select wines for Chateaunoble. He says feedback from customers who have opened the wine has been overwhelmingly positive, and some buyers have even chosen to keep their bottles as collector's items.

“I’m not a trained sommelier, and I don’t have a wine degree, but I know what a good glass of wine is.”

Noble says the concept is deliberately straightforward: source established varieties from respected wine regions and work with credible, affordable producers. For his first wine, he chose a producer whose previous vintages had scored above 90 points.

“That’s kind of the point of what I’m doing here: good wine, from a good wine-making region, in a good wine-making country.”

His approach is also relationship-driven. He wants to find affordable vineyards, ideally organic, and work directly with producers whose stories can become part of the Chateaunoble brand and its content. Noble is now looking to deepen his practical understanding of winemaking, including taking part in three harvests this year.

“Time to learn wine like I learned how to navigate customs with my own paperwork.”

After directly asking followers why they weren't buying his products, he received 137 comments — ranging from constructive criticism to outright trolling.

Basically: "why is the wine good? Why should I trust Tom that the wine is good? Tell me about the vineyards. Your website sucks."

Among the most common responses, 10.2 per cent questioned the quality of the wine, 8.8 per cent asked why they should trust Noble’s judgement, and 8 per cent wanted more information about the vineyards. Another 8 per cent criticised the website, while comments also raised issues around the label design, pricing, sampling, and Noble’s relative lack of recognition.

The exercise highlighted a gap between Noble’s personal connection to wine and what he had communicated to potential customers.

“I went all in on building the business and forgot to mention that I’ve been drinking wine for the past eight years.”

Rather than dismissing the criticism, Noble says he intends to use it to adjust how he presents Chateaunoble, particularly by explaining more about the wine, the vineyards, and his own journey into the industry.

“Time for a slight course correction.”

Stop worrying about the algorithm

Noble’s theory of content is that you're trying to get a second glance — a double take. You're trying to stop someone's thumb. Noble cites George Rawlings, co-founder of the dating app and IRL events brand Thursday, as one of his LinkedIn inspirations. Thursday has grown from an app that only works one day a week into an events and media brand with a reported 3.5 million-person community.

“He didn't take any of it seriously, and his posts were absolutely going off.”

Noble has a great love for LinkedIn, asserting that he's probably seen too other people doing the same thing, which is "being honest and taking the piss out of it. "

"It does really well. I've done about four million impressions this year.

You need to do something different because people's feeds are so bad. If you can be somewhat relatable and personable on LinkedIn, you can do really well because hardly anyone else is doing it.

At one point, LinkedIn made a change, and everyone's views dropped. I thought, “I give up. I don't care anymore.” So I started posting what I actually thought. And it went much better. People want to be entertained."

Turning attention into opportunity

However, there’s a difference between gaining attention and turning it into a financial opportunity. According to Noble, Flat White or F*ck Off’s viral success began generating opportunities without the team actively seeking them.

Puma approached the brand about appearing at the London Marathon, and it was also invited to the London Coffee Festival, attracting interest from coffee machine manufacturer Sanremo. While not every opportunity was paid, Noble saw value in those that generated publicity and could ultimately support direct-to-consumer sales. He is now seeing a similar effect in his wine business, with invitations from vineyards and producers to send him samples.

“I’m putting it out there. People know I’m starting a wine business, so they’re sending . I get to go to them, and by doing so, I have content for the next thing. So it’s creating itself.”

The audience is not only a source of attention and opportunities; Noble also uses it for real-time market research. ​

Noble says the constant stream of public feedback has influenced decisions across his ventures. When he posted his wine labels, for example, “everyone hated them”. He had already been considering changing them, but the response reinforced the decision.

“I probably get two messages a day from random people giving me their opinions, and some of them are really useful.”

He applies the same thinking to smaller experiments. He recently promised to hold a launch party if a post received 500 likes. It didn't. “But that's a win-win. If it got 500 likes, I'd do the party. If it didn't, I could post saying I'd cancelled the party, and that would probably get views too.” 

The content remains the engine

Ultimately, Noble likens his approach to Clarkson’s Farm, the British series that follows Jeremy Clarkson as he learns, often chaotically, how to run a farm. Noble wants to apply the same formula to entrepreneurship.

“He learns to run a farm. I will learn to and build a wine business,” he asserts.

According to Noble, branded content that gets views is the gold standard. Views lead to followers, which lead to more views.

“And if you're creating content that frames both you and your product in the right way, eventually it should lead to sales. Everything I do is based around: what could do well in terms of views?”

For example, Noble picked up a fridge from the side of the street to use as a wine cooler. Then he realised, “Oh, I can actually sit in this.”

“So I took a picture of myself sitting in it drinking wine. That cost me nothing. And if it doesn't perform well, I'm doing something else anyway.”

Noble’s creator strategy is already producing significant reach. He recently generated one million LinkedIn views in a week and has averaged around 25,000 impressions a day over the past two months. He is now considering monetising that expertise through personal-branding consultations.

“Or should I start to write a paid Substack with all the ins and outs of what I’m doing? I'm a magpie. I collect shiny things. I'm very aware of my flaws,” admits Noble.

“There's a gap in the market for middle-aged white men making podcasts! declared Noble, who also decided to start a podcast called Help Tom build a wine business, please. The first episode is on creating a podcast.

“If I said I was starting an airline as a joke and it got 10 million views, I'm starting an airline.”

Noble has also been seeding the idea of starting an airline on LinkedIn, using audience response to test whether an outlandish idea might have legs.

“It's almost a test. Then I need to determine how to do it. Maybe I will charter a plane. Maybe I will crowdfund the charter and call that starting an airline.

And then I can sell some wine on the plane, and because it's generating PR. It's incredibly cheap PR. That's how I think about a lot of these things.”

For Noble, the line between publicity stunt and genuine business idea is deliberately fluid. An idea might begin as content, but a sufficiently strong audience response could persuade him to pursue it for real.

“If I said I was starting an airline as a joke and it got 10 million views, I'm starting an airline. I'm sorry, but I just am.”

Google DeepMind put 100 AI agents in a room and asked them to prove hard mathematics. One found a way to cheat. Twenty-seven minutes later the entire problem set was gone. The paper, published on arXiv last week by six DeepMind researchers, is a case study rather than a benchmark. Nobody set out to test […]

Satellogic has appointed Frank D. “Trey” Whitworth as president, giving the day-to-day running of a commercial Earth-imaging company to the man who directed America’s spy-satellite intelligence agency until 10 months ago. The appointment was announced today by the company. Whitworth, a retired US Navy vice admiral, directed the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency from June 2022 to […]

Sam Altman gave Axios two interviews four days apart. In the first he said the next generation of AI models would be “sobering for everybody”. In the second he said this is the best time in the world to start a company. Both were with the same reporter, Mike Allen. Both happened around the G20 […]

Emmanuel Macron has asked the European Commission to ban children under 15 from social media across the bloc, three weeks after France’s highest constitutional authority struck down his government’s attempt to do the same thing nationally. The request came in a letter to Commission president Ursula von der Leyen dated 29 August, reported by Reuters on Tuesday. […]

Lenovo has given entrepreneurs a phone number to ring, and Eva Longoria is on the other end of it. The service is called Call Eva. It opened on Tuesday and works roughly the way a radio phone-in does. You call, you leave a voice note with a business question, and you wait. Lenovo says it […]

The European Commission has a plan to loosen China’s grip on the supply chains that feed European industry, and before it proposes the plan formally, it wants to find out how much of it companies are prepared to pay for. Trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič is expected to put that question to European chief executives on […]

ASML’s most advanced lithography machines cannot print the largest chips the AI industry currently builds. The company now has a plan to change that, and it has brought TSMC in on it. The initiative was reported by Reuters on Tuesday and confirmed the same day in a joint announcement from the two companies. ASML wants to move […]

Stoke Space has raised a billion dollars for a rocket that has never flown. The Washington company says the Series E takes its total funding to $2.3bn. It has not yet reached orbit once. Point72 Ventures and Spark Capital co-led the round, according to Stoke’s announcement. General Innovation, Glade Brook Capital, US Innovation Technology, Washington […]

Founders have no shortage of advice on how to raise money, including how to pitch, price a round, and survive due diligence. Yet almost none of it addresses the more fundamental question of whether to raise venture capital in the first place.

That question is especially important in health technology, where long sales cycles and cautious buyers can make the implications of outside capital particularly significant. For some companies, venture capital is simply not aligned with their long-term goals. In those cases, customer revenue may be a better source of financing and a better fit for the kind of business they want to build.

Conversations about that trade-off are still relatively rare. Investors are conditioned to be ready to write checks, while founders are often taught to see securing funding as a measure of success. But venture capital is not simply financing; it commits a company to a particular path, with particular owners, milestones, and timelines. 

So, before raising a new round of funding, founders at any stage should ask themselves: Where do I want this company to be in 10 years? How much of the company do I want to own? What will this round force the company to become, and is that what I actually want?

The answer will depend partly on stage. Early on, the question may be whether outside capital is genuinely needed to reach the next proof point, or whether customers can fund that progress. Later, it may be whether the business truly requires more capital or whether the pressure to raise is coming from investors, peers, or the expectations that surround venture-backed companies.

Assessing market and fund size

The size of your market dictates how much capital you can responsibly accept, not the other way around. While early checks are often inexpensive enough to test product-market fit, later rounds can force a company to outgrow its market. 

If your target market limits growth to a healthy but modest size, raising capital beyond a certain point creates unnecessary risk. Capital demands growth, and expanding beyond your core market pushes a company into adjacent segments and foreign regulatory regimes before it has established itself in its original market.

Similarly, the size of the fund shapes the company you are signing up to build. Venture funds need to generate returns, so a portfolio company must be able to grow significantly. The larger the fund, the larger the required outcome. 

A fund of around €2 billion that aims to return three times its capital must generate roughly €6 billion in proceeds. At a typical ownership stake of 10-15% at exit, that implies a combined exit value of over €40 billion from a single portfolio. 

A fund of around €100 million requires a fraction of that, enabling it to make concentrated, patient investments and achieve outcomes that the larger fund cannot. Taking money from a large fund means signing up to build a company that can produce a large-fund outcome, with the growth, burn rate, and exit timing that implies.

However, accepting money from a specialist, smaller fund means receiving capital and governance that measures startups against sector reality rather than index ambitions.

In recent years, venture capital has become more concentrated in the form of mega-funds, and this shift has raised the bar for Seed founders. 

According to PitchBook, in 2024 about four out of every five dollars raised by US venture funds went to established, mostly large, managers: 30 firms captured three quarters of all the capital raised, and just nine of them took in half. These are the managers now pushing check sizes down into the Seed stage. 

This inflates default round sizes, valuations, and growth expectations, meaning every Seed founder now faces greater demand for early traction and a steeper growth curve before a company has proven that it needs one.

Other ways to scale

For many startups, customer revenue is a better source of financing, and there are several signs that a business will grow better, faster, and more safely on revenue alone. These include recurring revenue that covers costs; customers who pay for the exact capability you would spend money on; high gross margins; a repeatable sales process; and a burn rate low enough to survive the learning curve. 

In healthcare, where buying decisions take time and depend on clinical validation, revenue is often the strongest proof of value. The test is straightforward: compare the value of the equity that a funding round would consume at today’s price, with the cost of achieving the same milestones through revenue funding. When the equity is worth more than the capital it buys, the decision is clear.

There are other ways to scale a business without venture capital. Bank options, such as asset-backed loans and invoice financing, can provide working capital without affecting equity. Revenue-based financing allows founders to repay using a percentage of future sales. Assuming alignment with necessary R&D expenditure, startups can also apply for grants, especially in European HealthTech, to fund milestones without dilution. 

Furthermore, strategic partners, including large pharmaceutical companies and health plans, are increasingly writing checks alongside co-development agreements. Foundations are also making more equity investments in healthcare startups, where impact and financial return often align. While none of these options suit every company, every founder should be able to explain why selling equity is the better choice for theirs.

The decision to raise is more important than ever

Exits have slowed, liquidity is scarce, and valuations are correcting in overheated corners of the market. When exits are further away, the cost of accepting the wrong capital is even higher. In this environment, having the discipline to say no is a genuine advantage. None of this is an argument against venture capital, as startups may need multiple rounds to secure enough growth to allow them to be financed by customers. 

The difference between these founders and those who take no or minimal capital is not appetite for risk, but the shape of the outcome: market size, the exit it can support, and the speed required to get there. Some opportunities warrant large investments because they can return significant value, while others are structurally unable to deliver huge exits, and that is fine. 

For an investor, this discipline is not modesty; it is how a Seed fund preserves the ownership that lets the winner return the fund, and how the rest of a portfolio avoids being buried under preference stacks it can never clear. The goal should never be to raise the most capital possible, but to build the right company, on the right terms, for the market you actually have.

The post Capital clarity: Questions to ask before raising appeared first on EU-Startups.

Slovenia has approved Tesla’s FSD Supervised, becoming the sixth European Union member state to let the driver-assistance system onto its roads. The timing is the point: an EU-wide vote that could open all 27 markets at once is expected in under a month. The approval was reported by Reuters on Tuesday. Tesla announced it in a post […]

Huawei goes on trial in New York this week, seven years after the United States charged it. Jury selection begins on Tuesday. The company is accused of racketeering, stealing trade secrets, wire fraud and bank fraud, and it denies all of it. Larry Neumeister reported the trial date for the Associated Press. Every charge is […]

South Korea expects artificial intelligence, and the chip fabs feeding it, to add between 25 and 30 gigawatts to national electricity demand, which by the country’s own reactor standards is roughly 20 nuclear plants. The government now has to decide whether to build them. The figure comes from Kim Sung-hwan, minister of climate, energy and […]

Hope Care, a Portuguese digital health company specialising in regulated remote patient monitoring technology, has closed a €6 million Series A funding round.

The round was led by Iberis Capital, with participation from Vieira de Matos – VDM Capital, S.A. and existing shareholder Buenavista Equity Partners.

José Paulo Carvalho, founder and CEO of Hope Care, said, “This Series A marks a new stage for Hope Care. After more than a decade working with healthcare institutions, we have built a regulated platform that delivers measurable outcomes for patients, healthcare professionals and healthcare systems. With the support of our investors, we are now well positioned to accelerate our European expansion and bring this model of care to more healthcare organisations.”

Founded in 2012, Hope Care develops OpMA, a regulated platform that powers centralised remote care and telehealth centres. The company states that it brings together medical device data, patient-reported outcomes, and clinical workflows in a single environment. The platform enables healthcare organisations to design, deploy and scale digital care programmes across multiple chronic conditions, supporting proactive intervention and more efficient care delivery.

The company currently delivers remote patient monitoring programmes in Portugal and France, including within GHT Saône-et-Loire Bresse Morvan, and has a project underway in Switzerland.

In Germany, it has recently established Hope Care GmbH, headquartered at Medical Valley in Erlangen. The company’s first German deployment is scheduled to launch in October 2026. In Romania, the digital health startup is advancing a new project and establishing a local presence, with setup activities scheduled to begin by the end of September 2026.

The company also reported that in Portugal, its technology is used by 15 Local Health Units covering approximately 45% of all registered SNS users, as well as the Regional Health Services of Madeira and the Azores. Beyond the public health system, the platform is also deployed across private healthcare providers, social care organisations and municipalities.

Hope Care also claims that its programmes have demonstrated measurable clinical and economic impact. In a 12-month analysis of 43 people living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, one programme was associated with a 76% reduction in hospital days and a 74% reduction in emergency department visits, resulting in estimated annual savings of €4,811 per patient.

“Across Europe, health systems are straining under the weight of chronic disease, still responding to crises rather than preventing them. Hope Care is one of the few companies that pairs proven clinical evidence with the regulatory maturity to operate inside public health systems at scale. This is a model we are proud to help scale across Europe, since it helps clinicians improve outcomes for patients and ultimately the sustainability of care,” said João Henriques, Partner at Iberis Capital. 

The company plans to use this capital to support Hope Care’s continued expansion across Europe, strengthen its commercial and operational capabilities, and accelerate the deployment of remote patient monitoring programmes in key healthcare markets.

Hope Care continued to grow in 2026, with first-half sales reaching 2.5 times the first-half level of 2025. 

The post Portugal’s Hope Care closes €6 million Series A to expand remote patient monitoring across Europe appeared first on EU-Startups.

The UK minister responsible for health innovation has told MPs that public mistrust of Palantir is making patients less willing to hand their medical records to the NHS, and that the number of people formally opting out of data sharing has risen by roughly 60,000 over four months. The admission sits in a letter from […]

Paris-based Mistral AI has closed a €3 billion Series D funding round at a post-money valuation of more than €21 billion, marking the largest equity fundraise ever completed by a European technology company.

Samsung Electronics led the round, with Scaleup Europe Fund (managed by EQT) and existing backer PSG Equity joining as co-leads. New investors in the round include Advent, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

“Who controls intelligence, and who can adapt it to their own needs, matters as much as how powerful it is. That’s why we built Mistral on open-weight models from day one, and why we’ve since expanded into infrastructure, products and deployment,” said Arthur Mensch, co-founder and CEO, Mistral.

Founded in 2023 by Mensch, Guillaume Lample, and Timothée Lacroix, Mistral builds open-weight AI models and has become the strongest alternative to closed AI models. It aims to put frontier AI “in everyone’s hands” and make it open, customisable and cost-efficient for enterprises and governments across sectors such as finance, manufacturing, defence and energy. It currently operates in 20 countries and counts more than 125 global enterprises as customers, including Airbus, ASML and HSBC.

Mistral argues while the first wave of generative AI was dominated by a race to build the most capable model the first wave of generative AI was dominated by a race to build the most capable model, organisations and governments have shifted their focus to how to deploy AI for critical operations without ceding control of their infrastructure and intelligence to outside vendors.

It positions itself as the only AI company capable of answering that question by building the entire stack, open-weight models, the underlying infrastructure and compute, and the applications needed to put them into production to meet that demand.

At the centre of Mistral’s claim is its sovereign AI layer: a model of control across four dimensions, meaning data kept inside an organisation’s own boundaries, models that can be customised and controlled, private and predictable compute, and production systems that remain fully auditable.

The company says its open, full-stack approach lets enterprises adopt advanced AI without exposing sensitive data, workflows or institutional knowledge to third parties.

The Series D funding round comes just three years after Mistral’s launch and follows a €1.7 billion Series C round led by chipmaking equipment giant ASML in September 2025. It had announced a €722 million debt financing to support the development of its first large-scale data centre near Paris in March 2026.

A long list of existing backers, including a16z, ASML, Belfius, BNP Paribas CIB, Bpifrance, Carmignac, DST Global, Eurazeo, General Catalyst, Headline, Hillspire, Index Ventures, Korelya Capital, Lightspeed, Nvidia, Phoenix Court’s Solar fund and Salesforce Ventures participated in this round.

With the new funding, Mistral says it will be able to significantly expand its frontier research efforts, which it calls the foundation of its infrastructure, products and sovereignty push. The funds are also earmarked for scaling compute capacity for training more powerful models, expanding infrastructure more broadly, and accelerating the company’s commercial growth and international expansion.

The post Mistral raises €3 billion Series D led by Samsung at over €21 billion valuation appeared first on EU-Startups.

A top executive at one of the UK‘s hottest AI startups has made the bold claim that it has the potential to be Britain's first one trillion dollar company. Carmen Alfonso Rico is a VC-turned-angel investor-turned operator. Rico, who started her own VC fund, Cocoa Ventures, in 2021, joined UK chip startup Fractile, a UK startup that designs chips for AI inference, the process of running an AI model, in June this year.

Cocoa Ventures, which has raised a $17m and $23m fund, invested in Fractile in a 2024 funding round. Speaking on the Tech.eu podcast, Rico, who has joined Fractile as VP of business operations, issued the bold claim about its potential to be a one trillion dollar company, as she set out Fractile’s potential as it looks to take on chip titan Nvidia.

Rico said that Fractile had "a unique chance to build Britain's first one trillion dollar company" should it win the AI hardware war. However, the startup, which has yet to launch a commercial product, still has some way to go to become a double-digit billion dollar company, let alone a trillion dollar company.

Fractile, which is also backed by Accel and Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, is reportedly raising $600m at a $5.6bn valuation, according to Bloomberg, and has also reportedly signed a deal to sell its chips to Anthropic. Rico talks about why she decided to take the full-time role at Fractile, which she is undertaking at the same time as overseeing Cocoa Ventures, although a Cocoa Ventures executive will now run its day to day operations.

Rico pitched it as a move which will benefit Cocoa Ventures and its other portfolio companies, highlighting the experience and access the operator role will grant her.

She said: "I have a better network. I am going to support the portfolio because of the place that Fractile operates in the world.”

Rico said she had no pushback from portfolio companies to the move, saying she is always available to them. Founded in 2022 by Oxford PhD Walter Goodwin, Fractile’s architecture keeps data directly on the chip, unlike standard chips that must constantly shuttle data between the processor and separate memory modules.

It says this method can run LLMs up to a hundred times faster than existing hardware while lowering operational costs by 90 per cent. Fractile's specialised chips are expected to be ready for data centre deployment in 2027.

Clean Growth Fund, the specialist UK ClimateTech VC platform, today announces the second close of its Fund II vehicle, taking total investor commitments to €94.5 million (£81.5 million) – more than halfway towards its €174 million (£150 million) target.

This equips the fund to continue backing Seed to Series A UK companies whose tech has the potential to cut carbon emissions and grow Britain’s green economy, while delivering a target net return on capital of 20% IRR.

The second close is anchored by a €26.1 million (£22.5 million) commitment from Border to Coast’s UK Opportunities Fund. It also includes a further €11.6 million (£10 million) from Strathclyde Pension Fund – which has backed Clean Growth Fund since Fund I – increasing its Fund II commitment to €35 million (£30 million.) They join Islington Pension Fund and East Riding Pension Fund. The pool partnership has combined assets of around €139 billion (£120 billion), representing 18 Local Government Pension Scheme partner funds.

Beverley Gower-Jones OBE, Founder and Managing Partner of Clean Growth Fund, says: “Border to Coast joining Fund II takes us past the halfway mark towards our £150 million target. Increasingly, major institutional investors are looking to UK climate tech for exactly what it offers – strong long-term returns alongside real economic growth right across the country.

“We exist to connect British institutional capital with British innovation – the returns and the impact go hand-in-hand.”

Clean Growth Fund’s second close can be placed among notable continued capital formation among European climate-focused venture managers in 2026.

EU-Startups has reported approximately €660.5 million across a selected group of comparable climate and sustainability-focused fund closes this year, including London-based 2150’s €210 million Fund II, Paris-based SlateVC’s €132 million first close, Copenhagen-based The Footprint Firm’s €76 million fund and Climentum Capital’s €60 million first close, alongside €18 million for VitaminºC and €73 million for Ananda Impact Ventures.

The UK itself has also seen London-based Eka Ventures close a €91.5 million impact fund covering sustainability and decarbonisation.

EU-Startups previously covered Clean Growth Fund in August 2025, when Fund II reached a €56.8 million first close.

“The UK has the world-class universities, the scientific talent, the regulatory framework, and the policy ambition – and its net zero economy is growing more than three times faster than the economy as a whole. That is the opportunity Border to Coast is moving to capture, ahead of the curve. The more capital that gets behind British innovation, the faster it scales into global winners. This is where the growth is, and I’m confident about how much further we can take it,” adds Beverly.

Founded in 2020, Clean Growth Fund was set up to invest in UK-based innovations that significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions or improve resource efficiency across: power, transport, industry, the built environment, agrifood, and the circular economy.

The VC champions a place-based investment strategy, backing climate innovation from the established science and investment centres of Oxford, Cambridge and London – to emerging hubs found in the regions right across the UK.

Their first fund (Fund I) invested in 19 UK startups on track to abate 27 million tCO2e per year by 2030, equivalent to 1.5x the carbon absorbed by all UK forests.

Fund II aims to back 25 companies and scale them. It has already invested in four startups, across Sheffield, Bristol, Cardiff and London. Today’s second close follows Clean Growth Fund’s successful exit from Rendesco in May 2026.

Lorraine Martin, Investment Manager at Strathclyde Pension Fund, says: “We first invested in Clean Growth Fund because it offered a compelling opportunity to deliver strong long-term returns for our members while backing UK innovation. That thesis has materialised, and our increased commitment to Fund II reflects our continued confidence in the team as well as the scale and strength of the opportunity. This is exactly the kind of productive, homegrown investment we believe can deliver for our members over the long term.”

The post Clean Growth Fund adds institutional backing as Fund II reaches €94.5 million appeared first on EU-Startups.

Digital sovereignty has arrived in the boardroom and has immediately been downgraded. Some 93% of large organisations have now discussed it at the board level, and 59% say full digital sovereignty is not a realistic goal, according to a Capgemini Research Institute survey of 1,300 business and technology executives published on Tuesday. What has replaced the […]

Dacia has revealed a second-generation Spring built at Renault’s Novo Mesto plant in Slovenia, and the entire range is priced below €20,000 before government subsidies. The first-generation car, which sold more than 210,000 units across forty countries since 2021, was built in China. That relocation is the story, and the press materials do not mention […]

Berlin-based software startup sci2sci has raised €1.2 million in pre-seed funding to expand its technology for organising and verifying data in regulated industries. The round was co-led by Heliad and IBB Ventures, with participation from Robin Capital and Superangels.

Founded by Angelina Lesnikova and Valerii Kremnev, sci2sci is developing software designed to help companies connect fragmented information and verify the evidence behind data and AI-generated outputs.

The company initially focused on the biopharma sector, where research and regulatory information is often spread across PDFs, spreadsheets, laboratory notes and multiple disconnected systems. This fragmentation can make it difficult to trace findings back to their sources, particularly in regulatory and audit processes, while AI tools can compound the problem when working with incomplete or inconsistent information.

Sci2sci's Integrity Cortex addresses this by connecting information from company documents, data and AI outputs into a structured network. The system links claims to their sources and verifies citations and conclusions, providing an auditable record designed to comply with 21 CFR Part 11 requirements for electronic records. Integrity Cortex is built on Parseltongue, a framework that sci2sci open-sourced this year under the Apache 2.0 licence.

The company's second product, VectorCat, serves as a data integration layer, connecting information stored across cloud storage, network drives and laboratory systems without requiring companies to migrate the underlying data. It creates a searchable catalogue that can be accessed by employees and AI applications.

Valerii Kremnev, co-founder and CTO of sci2sci, explained that the company's approach is designed to build verification and traceability into AI workflows:

Instead of shipping capabilities first and patching trust and security afterward, we built Parseltongue and Integrity Cortex to permit only safe outputs. A model’s lockpicking skills are useless when there’s no door — and our software guarantees there is none. The same holds for deception: our systems don’t have ungrounded statements as a primitive. The model is forced to produce evidence for every claim it makes.

Sci2sci is already working with customers across preclinical research, contract clinical research and bioprocess operations. The company plans to use the funding to expand its engineering team, deepen existing deployments and reach additional biopharma customers. It also plans to extend Integrity Cortex into other regulated industries, including banking.