The Fourth Law (TFL), a Kyiv-based defence technology company, has secured a new funding round backed by Axon, a US public safety technology group. TFL develops AI and robotics solutions for defence and public safety, with a focus on autonomy technologies. The company builds an autonomy-focused software stack that includes simulation and analytical tools, autonomous applications, and fleet management systems. Designed to operate across multiple platforms, the technology can be integrated into quadcopters, fixed-wing UAVs, missiles, and ground or maritime drones. The system functions independently of satellite navigation (GNSS), allowing operation in GPS-denied environments, and may also have applications beyond defence, including logistics, manufacturing, and construction. TFL’s flagship products include the Lupynis-10-TFL-1 UAV and the TFL-1 autonomy module, which are used by more than 50 Ukrainian military units across multiple frontline areas. According to the company, its first-level autonomy technology increases FPV drone mission success rates by two to four times while adding around 10 per cent to unit costs. The company’s latest product, TFL-AntiShahed, is a module for interceptor drones that uses on-edge AI to detect and identify strike drones such as the Shahed and Geran more quickly than manual observation. TFL’s autonomy technology is designed for integration across platforms. In addition to its own Lupynis-10 UAV, the company’s AI modules have been integrated with dozens of third-party UAV manufacturers. The modules can be installed on external airframes, used with different ground stations, and operate across various connectivity architectures. As stated by Yaroslav Azhnyuk, founder and chief executive of The Fourth Law, the funding will support research and development of new autonomy capabilities intended to help protect cities and critical infrastructure from Shahed-type attacks.  

Last week, we tracked more than 65 tech funding deals worth over €3.4 billion, and over 10 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.Click to read the rest of the news.

The CEOs of two prominent Swedish AI startups have rejected suggestions that well-funded US frontier AI labs are threats to their business models.  Max Junestrand, CEO and co-founder of AI legaltech startup Legora, and Lukas Saari, CEO and co-founder AI healthtech startup Tandem Health, said the rise in popularity of chatbots such as Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini galvanised interest in their startups, but they were not a threat. Their views follow Claude chatbot maker Anthropic recently launching a legal plug-in to Claude, which specialises in legal tasks to "review documents, flag risks and track compliance". The tool aims to save firms time and money in legal costs. The plug-in launch, which is expected to be followed by similar type launches by OpenAI and Google, sent the share price of several large legal data firms tumbling.  Meanwhile, in January this year, ChatGPT maker OpenAI launched a new ChatGPT feature in the US, ChatGPT Health, which can analyse people’s medical records.   Some experts believe that OpenAI and Anthropic, which are looking to drive up paying customers to help fund their billions of dollars needed to power their growth plans, could cannibalise sales of startups built on their tech with rival offerings. Junestrand wrote a post on LinkedIn about the Claude plug-in launch, outlining its differences to Legora, which is built on top of LLMs.  Explaining more at the Techarena conference in Sweden, Junestrand said: “One of the frustrations that we’ve had is that the models have been really good at say coding, but they haven’t actually been that good on complex legal tasks.  “To give you an example, if you need to draft a share purchase agreement and just throw that into Claude, it is not going to turn out so good.”  He called Claude a “pocket lawyer”, which was used by individuals for one-off tasks, whereas Legora was a broad infrastructure used by over 400 legal firms.  He said: “We keep track of hundreds of millions of documents, we store them, we build knowledge graphs between them, we collect and ingest all the world’s legal data.”  Asked if he was worried about AI frontier labs launching a direct rival product, he said: “We don’t feel very threatened by the model providers. But I do think they serve as a very good spark and idea engine.”  He highlighted the importance of having industry-specific chatbots, using the example of Microsoft Copilot, saying it could have dominated in office use. But he said that “even if it’s really good, it’s very hard to be good for a finance professional, a tax professional, a legal professional”.  Legora, founded in 2023 and valued at $1.8 billion, is said to be raising funds that would triple its valuation to $6 billion, four months after its last financing round.  Asked whether this is true, Junestrand said: ”There are always a lot of rumours about these things. But that is something I cannot comment on.”  Comparing Legora to Sequoia-backed US rival Harvey, he said: “We started in Stockholm with a €50,000 angel cheque versus competition that had over $20 million from Sequoia and OpenAI.” He said Legora was winning a high per cent of deals it was competing for. Meanwhile, Saari said it is “not something that I worry about” when asked about a frontier AI lab launching a rival product to Tandem Health. Tandem Health, powered by LLMs, offers clinicians an AI co-pilot that generates medical notes during patient consultations. Saari said: “We are active in a field where you require so deep vertical integration that horizontal generalist solutions will never make the cut.   "And where you need to tailor the workflow so much to the users, you need to integrate with their systems, you need to follow local guidelines and so on.”  He pointed to the launch of ChatGPT Health, which he said now generates 230m users asking health-related questions every week, as an indicator of broader interest in health chatbots.  He said: “This is something that shows the demand for this type of product. "And we are here offering what is the safe option for doing this, where we are actually protecting like data sovereignty and processing it in Europe. And also anchoring it in the right clinical guidelines.”  Tandem’s co-pilot has evolved from solving the niche use case of medical note taking, expanding to a full medical assistant, which now includes referral notes and patient communications before, during and after patient visits.  In July last year, Tandem raised $50 million in a Series A round after a $10m seed round in 2024. On future funding, Saari said Tandem would “quite likely” to raise new funds this year. He said: “Capital is a means to go faster and be more ambitious. I very much optimise for speed. As soon as capital starts being a constraining factor, that is when we will fundraise again." Tandem, which employs around 130 people, is purely focused on the European market, with the UK, where NHS clinicians use it, its biggest market in terms of user numbers.  He said: "The UK is the most mature market in Europe for these types of solutions.  “In some of the other European countries, when we do our demo to the users, this will be the first time they have ever seen something like this.”  On the agenda for 2026, Saari said he wants to “make sure that all of the large care providers are choosing us as their long-term AI partner. And how we can parallel with this the build out of the product to be a complete AI medical assistant". Image: Nano Banana Pro

Munich-based construction robotics startup Sitegeist has raised €4 million in a pre-seed funding round co-led by b2venture and OpenOcean, with participation from UnternehmerTUM Funding for Innovators and several angel investors, including Verena Pausder, Lea-Sophie Cramer, Alexander Schwörer, and additional strategic backers from the construction and robotics sectors. Across Europe, ageing bridges, tunnels, parking facilities, and public buildings require major renovation. In Germany alone, the repair backlog amounts to hundreds of billions of euros, with similar challenges seen in North America and other regions. Labour shortages and the physically demanding nature of concrete repair make projects costly, hard to staff, and difficult to scale. Concrete renovation is particularly complex and capacity-constrained. Removing deteriorated concrete using high-pressure water or abrasive blasting requires precision and close supervision to avoid damaging steel reinforcement. Because the process is largely manual and site-specific, construction companies often face low efficiency, rising safety demands, and significant project backlogs. Sitegeist aims to address these challenges with modular automated robots designed for unstructured construction environments. Unlike conventional automation systems that rely on pre-existing 3D models or standardised site conditions, the company’s robotic systems are built to operate directly on existing structures. Using advanced sensing, AI-based decision support, and adaptive control, they can handle complex geometries and varying material conditions without prior digitisation, enabling deployment on active renovation sites. Building on this approach, Dr Lena-Marie Pätzmann, co-founder and CEO of Sitegeist, said that infrastructure renovation, particularly concrete repair, is facing a major bottleneck. She explained that deteriorated concrete is still removed through labour-intensive methods that are difficult to scale, and that Sitegeist is addressing this challenge by developing specialised, modular automated robots capable of performing renovation tasks directly on existing structures. The company works closely with concrete renovation firms on-site and is developing a modular platform intended to expand across the renovation value chain over time. Looking forward, Sitegeist plans to collaborate with additional test sites, co-development partners, and new talent to further validate and refine its robotic systems. The new funding will support team expansion and accelerate the deployment of Sitegeist’s automated, AI-enabled robots on real-world construction sites, helping concrete renovation companies address ongoing capacity constraints.

This week, we tracked more than 65 tech funding deals worth over €3.4 billion and over 10 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe. Alongside the week’s top funding rounds, we’ve highlighted key industry developments, as well as notable trends in European venture activity, investor moves and emerging sectors shaping the current funding landscape. If email is more your thing, you can always subscribe to our newsletter and receive a more robust version of this round-up delivered to your inbox. Either way, let's get you up to speed. ? Notable and big funding rounds ?? Nscale has secured a $1.4M Delayed Draw Term Loan backed by GPUs ?? Satellite operator Eutelsat secures €975M for LEO expansion ?? 25-year-old founder’s Olix nabs $220M for photonic AI inference chips to take on Nvidia ??‍?? Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers ?? London-headquartered tech firm Reward has been acquired in a $230M deal ?? Admiral Group has acquired London insurtech Flock for £80M ?? Uber acquires Getir’s Turkish delivery business ?? Dcycle acquires ESG-X to scale sustainability data management in Europe ? Interesting moves from investors ? Elaia’s Digital Venture Fund V reaches €120M at first close ? Zilch co-founder raises $20M for latest venture ? ET Capital closes £270K fund to challenge traditional VC winner-picking. What about diversity? ? Antler launches always-on Nordic residency and $100M+ fund to accelerate startup investment ?️ In other (important) news ? From industrial depth to strategic growth: the German tech ecosystem ?? Bending Spoons is offering €1.5 million in tech scholarships with its new fellowship program ?? Poland’s VC market leans heavily on seed-stage funding ? Why is a $700M startup “testing” its AI in the Balkans? ? Recommended reads and listens ?? Mistral boss calls for European unity in AI race, as pledges €1.2B Swedish data centre investment ? MuseCool is using audio AI to fix the biggest problem in music education ?? Ukraine’s wartime VR therapy is scaling beyond trauma care ? Startup Nation Switzerland: Agenda for more innovation and growth ? European tech startups to watch  ?? xWatts closes £1.6M to expand AI-powered energy management solutions ?? Vesiro raises €1.6M to optimise elasticsearch and lower server energy use ?? AI-native proptech startup MARC has raised a $1M by a group of angel investors ?? Nocomed raises €650,000 in seed funding to address healthcareʼs biggest emissions blind spot

Zurich-based startup ScyAI has closed a €2 million pre-seed funding round led by AENU and co-led by PT1. The round also includes participation from unicorn founders David Helgason (Unity), Maex Ament and Philip Stehlik (Taulia, Centrifuge) through Anti Ordinary Ventures, as well as Bela Lainck, Robert Levenhagen, Christoph Aufmhof and Stefanie Gerhart through the angel investor alliance better ventures. For manufacturers, energy producers and other organisations with large physical asset portfolios, climate risk has become an increasingly important operational challenge. Industry data indicates that natural catastrophes continue to generate significant economic losses, with a substantial share remaining uninsured. One reason for this protection gap is that insurance pricing is often based on broad industry categories and regional averages rather than company-specific risk profiles. Without detailed information on factors such as facility construction, mitigation measures or asset separation, underwriters may apply more conservative pricing. As a result, companies with strong risk management practices may face higher costs or retain more risk than intended due to limited visibility into potential coverage gaps. In response to these challenges, ScyAI has developed a platform that creates quantified, auditable risk profiles by combining operational data with external hazard models. This allows organisations to demonstrate their specific risk characteristics using metrics aligned with those used by underwriters. According to the company, early users of the platform have reported reductions in insurance premiums alongside improved coverage terms. ScyAI’s solution is aimed at organisations with significant physical infrastructure and is designed to help address both affordability and coverage adequacy, which contribute to the existing protection gap. Bernhard Rannegger, founder and CEO of ScyAI, said that physical risks are becoming a central operational and financial issue for companies. He added that the company’s goal is to help organisations make these risks measurable and easier to understand, enabling risk and insurance teams to make more informed decisions.

simmetry.ai, a synthetic data company working across agriculture, food and industrial sectors, has secured €330,000 from NBank, the investment and development bank of the German state of Lower Saxony. The funding was provided through the High-Tech Incubator (HTI) accelerator programme. simmetry.ai was founded in 2024 as a spin-off from the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) by Kai von Szadkowski (CEO), Anton Elmiger (CTO) and Prof. Dr. Stefan Stiene. The company develops a simulation platform that generates photorealistic, fully annotated synthetic data across multiple sensor modalities for training computer vision models. Its current focus includes agriculture, food and industrial computer vision applications. The platform supports tasks such as semantic segmentation, object detection, 3D pose estimation and regression. It is aimed at computer vision engineers and AI developers working in areas such as robotics, autonomous machinery, quality inspection and other environments that rely on visual perception under complex and changing conditions. simmetry.ai aims to address what it describes as a key data bottleneck in AI development. According to the company, a significant portion of effort in building AI models is spent on data collection and preparation, particularly in industries where capturing diverse real-world scenarios is costly or difficult. Its synthetic data approach is intended to augment real-world datasets and improve model robustness by generating photorealistic images across controlled conditions, environments and edge cases. The technology is being applied to use cases including precision weed control, quality inspection in food production, and AI-based monitoring in industrial environments. Commenting on the company’s focus, Anton Elmiger, said that agriculture was chosen as an initial sector due to its technical complexity and potential impact. He explained that improving crop monitoring and management requires reliable computer vision systems, which are often limited by a lack of diverse training data. With new funding, the company plans to develop a scalable platform that enables AI developers to generate photorealistic, fully annotated training data tailored to specific use cases, with the aim of reducing the time and cost required to build robust computer vision models in data-constrained environments.

In 2025, European tech companies raised approximately €72 billion in total funding. Germany secured €11.5 billion across 539 deals, accounting for around 16 per cent of the total capital invested and ranking second among European countries by total amount raised. Within Germany, the tech ecosystem was shaped less by overall deal volume and more by the size and concentration of capital flowing into a limited number of core sectors. The year was marked by several large financing rounds, particularly in energy, climate, mobility and artificial intelligence, giving the market a notably infrastructure-focused profile. Energy attracted the highest level of investment at around €2.1 billion, followed by fintech at approximately €1.5 billion, artificial intelligence at €1.3 billion, transportation and mobility at €1.2 billion, and cleantech at €1.1 billion. This distribution highlighted Germany’s continued strength in capital-intensive, industrial and real-economy innovation. Overall, 2025 reflected a scale-driven and high-conviction investment environment, with funding concentrated in technologies considered strategically important for long-term economic transformation and infrastructure development (for more detailed analyses of the European technology ecosystem, check out Tech.eu’s annual report: European Tech 2025–The Big Picture). Here are the 10 companies that raised the most in 2025. Amount raised in 2025: €1B FINN is an automotive subscription platform that offers flexible, all-inclusive car subscriptions as an alternative to traditional ownership and leasing. The service allows customers to access a range of vehicles with insurance, maintenance and other costs bundled into a single monthly fee, without long-term commitments, and delivers cars directly to users’ locations. In 2025, FINN secured €1 billion ABS financing for fleet expansion. Amount raised in 2025: €810M Enpal is a renewable energy company that provides solar power solutions for homeowners, including photovoltaic systems, battery storage, heat pumps and energy management services. The company offers flexible options to rent or buy integrated clean energy systems, covering planning, installation and maintenance, with the aim of making solar energy more accessible and supporting the transition to decentralised, sustainable power. In 2025, Enpal raised €810 million across two funding rounds to support making solar panels and heat pumps more affordable for households across Europe. Amount raised in 2025: €600M Helsing is a defence technology company that develops AI-enabled systems and autonomous solutions to support military decision-making and security operations. Its technology integrates artificial intelligence with existing hardware and software to produce advanced battlefield insights and autonomous systems, including AI platforms for data analysis and autonomous vehicles across air, land and sea domains. In 2025, Helsing raised €600 million, more than doubling its valuation to €12 billion. Amount raised in 2025: €600M IONITY is an electric vehicle (EV) charging network that builds and operates high-power charging stations along major highways and transport routes. Founded as a joint venture by several automotive manufacturers, IONITY aims to support long-distance EV travel by providing reliable, fast charging infrastructure across Europe. Its stations offer high-capacity chargers compatible with a range of electric vehicles, helping to accelerate EV adoption and reduce barriers to sustainable mobility. Ionity has secured €600 million in financing from nine European commercial banks in 2025, to accelerate expansion, with plans to exceed 13,000 charging points by 2030 and broaden its network across Europe. Amount raised in 2025: €505M Bees & Bears is an online marketplace that connects consumers with a wide range of natural, sustainable food and lifestyle products from independent brands. The platform focuses on ethically sourced, eco-friendly goods and aims to make it easier for customers to discover and shop high-quality items that align with environmentally conscious values. In 2025, Bees & Bears secured €505 million in funding, including a €500 million financing framework with a listed European bank and €5 million in seed capital. The funding will support operational scaling, expansion into commercial and industrial segments, entry into additional European markets, team growth, and the deployment of renewable energy systems such as solar, heat pumps and battery storage. Amount raised in 2025: €400M Green Flexibility is an energy company that develops, builds and operates large-scale battery storage systems to support grid stability and accelerate the integration of renewable energy. The company focuses on strengthening energy infrastructure by providing flexible storage capacity that helps balance supply and demand within the power grid. Green Flexibility has secured over €400 million in funding in 2025 to expand its battery storage capacity and support growing demand for grid stability and energy system flexibility. Amount raised in 2025: €340M Quantum Systems designs and manufactures unmanned aerial systems (UAS), including long-endurance drones for commercial, governmental and defence applications. Its aircraft combine vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) capabilities with fixed-wing efficiency, enabling flexible, high-performance operations for survey, mapping, inspection and monitoring tasks across industries. In 2025, Quantum Systems raised €340 million across two rounds (a €160 million Series C in May and a €180 million Series C extension in November) to accelerate development of its AI, software and hardware platforms, supported by its multi-domain mission software, MOSAIC UXS. Amount raised in 2025: €308M Tubulis is a company focused on developing next-generation antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and other targeted cancer therapies. Using its proprietary biological engineering platform, the company aims to create precision therapeutics that improve treatment effectiveness while reducing side effects. Tubulis raised €308 million in a Series C round in 2025 to advance the clinical development of its lead candidate, TUB-040. Amount raised in 2025: $300M Black Forest Labs is a software company that builds tools to help organisations create, deploy, and monitor large-scale artificial intelligence applications. Its platform focuses on improving AI observability and reliability, enabling teams to track performance, detect issues, and manage models throughout their lifecycle. In 2025, Black Forest Labs closed a $300 million Series B round at a $3.25 billion post-money valuation to accelerate research and development. Amount raised in 2025: €240M AMBOSS is a medical knowledge and clinical decision support platform designed for healthcare professionals and students. It combines a comprehensive medical library with integrated clinical tools and analytics to help users study, review, and apply medical knowledge efficiently, supporting clinical decision-making and exam preparation. In 2025, AMBOSS secured €240 million to strengthen medical knowledge and support healthcare professionals.

Warsaw-based Demoboost, a platform that enables B2B software companies to deliver scalable, data-driven product demos, has raised €2.8 million in funding to support further product development and international expansion. The round was co-led by Digital Ocean Ventures and Rafał Brzoska’s family office RIO, with participation from B-Value. As B2B software sales cycles lengthen and conversion rates decline, companies are looking for ways to improve sales efficiency. Industry benchmarks indicate that only a minority of sales-qualified leads convert, leading to significant time and resources being spent on opportunities that do not generate revenue. A key challenge is the gap between buyer expectations and traditional sales processes. Many buyers seek greater flexibility and responsiveness, yet often encounter structured and rigid sales journeys. This can result in longer sales cycles, lower win rates, and increased pressure on presales teams that spend considerable time preparing repetitive demo materials. Demoboost addresses these challenges by helping B2B software companies standardise and scale their demo processes. Its platform enables sales, presales, and revenue teams to create, personalise, and share product demos that buyers can explore independently at an early stage or use during live sales interactions. These range from guided product tours to more complex, interactive sessions. AI-supported tools allow teams to reuse and adapt demo environments efficiently, reducing manual preparation and turnaround times. In addition to streamlining demo creation, the platform treats demos as a source of behavioural insight. It tracks how stakeholders interact with content, including what is viewed, shared, or revisited, generating data that can inform sales strategy. This approach turns demos into an ongoing source of revenue intelligence, helping teams prioritise opportunities, allocate resources more effectively, and improve conversion performance across the funnel. Demoboost plans to use the new funding to support continued investment in AI-driven demo creation and revenue intelligence capabilities, alongside team expansion across key functions.

London-based Bracket, an FX, treasury, and cash management platform for mid-market businesses, has raised $7 million in seed funding. The round was led by Macquarie Group’s Commodities and Global Markets business and Blackfinch Ventures, with participation from existing investor Failup Ventures. Demand for modern treasury infrastructure has grown among mid-market companies, many of which continue to rely on spreadsheets and manual processes to manage FX exposure, cash visibility, and bank connectivity. These limitations have increased the need for more integrated and automated solutions. Founded in 2024 by FX and treasury industry leaders Alex Charles, Pierre Anderson, and Martin Lee, Bracket was established to address these challenges. The company’s AI-enabled platform centralises bank accounts, automates FX workflows, and provides real-time treasury insights, reducing reliance on manual processes that still dominate many finance teams’ operations. In addition to serving corporate clients directly, Bracket has developed a bank distribution model, licensing its platform to global banks and financial institutions to help them deliver modern treasury tools to their mid-market customers. Commenting on the funding, Pierre Anderson, Co-CEO and Co-founder of Bracket, said that mid-market companies are often expected to meet the same standards as large corporates without access to equivalent tools, leaving many dependent on outdated systems. He explained that Bracket’s platform automates treasury operations using AI and provides finance teams with real-time visibility and control over bank data within a single system. The new investment will support further product development and Bracket’s next phase of growth, including plans to open offices in Europe and Australia and expand its workforce over the coming year.

Paris-based Rivage has closed a €2.6 million pre-seed funding round to support the rollout of its payroll software across accounting firms. The round includes Partech, alongside business angel investors from the technology and accounting sectors, including the founders of Skello, Hexa, Quarksup, and Teledec. More than half of employees in France rely on accounting firms or outsourcing providers for payroll and social security declarations. As a result, payroll software plays a central role in a large market that remains largely dominated by legacy systems, many of which are not fully aligned with the ongoing digital transformation of firms and their small and medium-sized business clients. In response to these challenges, Rivage is developing an open, interoperable payroll software platform designed to increase the productivity of payroll managers and position payroll data as a tool for broader HR advisory services. The solution is already being deployed across eight partner firms. Founded in July 2025 by Ayoub Saidane, Hector Vergeron, Paul Lemoine, and Tancrède d’Hauteville (CEO), Rivage aims to offer a modern, scalable alternative focused on interoperability. The platform is designed to adapt to evolving regulatory requirements at scale while reducing the administrative burden on payroll managers through the automation of complex and time-consuming tasks. In a segment that has seen limited technological innovation, the company positions itself within a market where advances in AI are creating new opportunities to improve efficiency for firms. Commenting on the challenges facing the sector, Tancrède d’Hauteville said: Between the increasing complexity of regulatory frameworks, the accelerating digitalisation of VSBs/SMBs and the suffocating monopoly imposed by legacy solutions, payroll has become a major pain point for firms. From the outset, we built Rivage with our accounting partners, to enable them to break out of this dependence, to gain long-term productivity and to be in line with their customers’ demands. The funding will support two main priorities: continued development of the platform to improve the efficiency and reliability of each stage of the payroll cycle, including HRIS integrations, simplified advanced configuration, and enhanced auditability of payroll and DSN calculations; and the expansion of collective agreement coverage, with plans to broaden the number supported by the platform by the end of the year.

Electric Twin, an AI platform developing synthetic audience models designed to simulate real-world human thinking and behaviour, has raised $14 million in funding. The total includes a $10 million round led by Atomico, with participation from LocalGlobe, Mercuri and Samos Investments, as well as several angel investors, including Marc Andreessen, Cal Henderson, Eric Salama, Tom Shinner and Louis Mosley. The funding follows a previously undisclosed $4 million pre-seed round. Founded by Dr Ben Warner and Alex Cooper, Electric Twin develops tools to help organisations better understand their audiences and inform decision-making. By combining real-world survey data with large language models, social science research and machine learning, the platform creates synthetic audience models designed to estimate how people may respond to messaging, product launches or strategic proposals. This approach is positioned as an alternative to traditional research methods, which can be time-consuming and costly and are often limited by fixed questionnaires and sample sizes. Such constraints can leave decision-makers with incomplete insights. Electric Twin seeks to address these limitations by transforming static research inputs into dynamic digital audience models, enabling faster analysis and broader scenario testing. The platform enables organisations to explore audience perspectives in greater depth and evaluate ideas more efficiently. Commenting on the company’s origins, Alex Cooper, co-founder and CEO, said that their experience leading during a crisis highlighted how often important decisions had to be made with limited information. He explained that Electric Twin was created to equip leaders with tools to better understand their audiences, interact with them in real time and anticipate likely responses or behaviours. The funding will support Electric Twin’s international expansion and continued development of its prediction technology. As the company grows, it plans to enhance its synthetic audience models and expand the range of scenarios organisations can analyse, with the aim of making advanced decision-support tools more widely accessible.

A London-based fintech which helps companies access and manage debt finance has raised $4.3m in a seed funding round. The funding round in Tangible was led by Pale Blue Dot with participation from MMC, Future Positive Capital, Unruly, SDAC, Prototype Capital, and Aperture. It follows a £4m ($5.45m) funding round Tangible carried out last year. Tangible helps tech companies access and manage debt financing. It helps the likes of robotics, climate, mobility and data centre companies or what it calls “hardtech” companies with financing.  Tangible works with a broad range of lenders, from private credit and hedge funds to equipment financiers and traditional banks. It says “hardtech” firms don’t fit into the defined VC playbook, and the companies need well-structured debt alongside equity financing. It says most "hardtech" companies struggle to obtain scalable debt financing until they are deemed mature or “institutional-ready”.  Tangible says its AI-powered platform and finance experts standardise the data, documentation, and ongoing reporting that lenders need.  It says this reduces underwriting time and cost for lenders, and enables founders to run structured facilities without building an in-house structured finance team. Tangible, which employs 13 people, says it will use the funds from the round to expand its team and develop new products. William Godfrey, co-founder & CEO, Tangible, said: "As hardtech companies scale at speed, investors need modern infrastructure to deploy capital just as fast. And legacy processes that are reliant on bespoke documentation and manual coordination no longer cut it. This is the exact problem we’re trying to solve with Tangible - we provide the financial infrastructure that makes hardtech easy to diligence for institutional credit to allow companies to raise asset-backed financing faster, and with less friction.”

Lifeaz, a France-based company focused on improving access to defibrillators for individuals and businesses, has closed a €13 million funding round. The round includes continued participation from existing investor Mutuelles Impact, initiated by La Mutualité Française and managed by XAnge in partnership with Impactivist, as well as new investments from BNP Paribas, GO CAPITAL, and Mirova, an affiliate of Natixis. Founded in 2015, Lifeaz develops defibrillators designed for use in both home and business environments. The devices are designed to be easy to operate and provide step-by-step visual and audio guidance to assist users, including those without prior training. Connected technology enables remote monitoring and maintenance through regular automated self-checks, helping ensure the devices remain operational in emergency situations. In addition to providing equipment, Lifeaz offers training resources through a free mobile application and in-person workshops to support awareness and preparedness for life-saving interventions. Commenting on the funding, Johann Kalchman said the company aims to improve the availability of defibrillators and ensure that individuals feel prepared to respond in emergencies across both private and professional settings. Looking ahead, the company plans to expand its customer base, increase the number of lives saved through its solutions, begin a broader rollout across Europe, and strengthen its organisation by adding new team members to support its next phase of growth.

Nocomed, a Dublin-based sustainability software company, has raised €650,000 in seed funding to support the continued development and expansion of its platform, which focuses on supply chain-related emissions in the healthcare sector. The investment came from independent medtech investor Barry Comerford (Founder of Sauleen Holdings and Cambus Medical), software angel investor Edmund Wilson (Co-Founder of Titian Software), and Enterprise Ireland. Healthcare is responsible for more than 4 per cent of global carbon emissions, exceeding the aviation sector. More than 70 per cent of these emissions occur outside hospital facilities, primarily through purchased goods, manufacturing, and logistics. As health systems across Europe strengthen climate and procurement requirements, suppliers face growing expectations to provide credible, auditable emissions data and demonstrate measurable progress over time. Founded through the Dogpatch Labs Founders Talent programme, Nocomed has built a platform for life sciences and healthcare organisations to measure, report, and reduce emissions, automating data collection and applying region-specific factors aligned with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Designed to integrate into the day-to-day operations of healthcare organisations and suppliers, the platform functions as an ongoing system rather than a standalone carbon accounting tool or one-off reporting solution. Customers use it to continuously collect emissions data, maintain auditable baselines, and update reduction plans as suppliers, operations, or energy sources evolve. Rosemary Durcan, CEO and co-founder of Nocomed, said that while healthcare aims to improve human health, the sector’s emissions and pollution are increasingly contributing to related health challenges. We built Nocomed so healthcare and life sciences organisations can clearly see where emissions sit in their supply chains and take practical steps to reduce them, not just produce reports. Many suppliers continue to rely on fragmented spreadsheets or one-off, project-based approaches that can be costly and may not provide full visibility into underlying data or assumptions. Nocomed positions its platform as an in-house alternative designed to retain data ownership, build institutional knowledge over time, and streamline recurring reporting requirements. Co-founder and CTO Dónal Adams said the platform is intended to serve as an ongoing system, enabling customers to build on existing data when tenders, audits, or reporting deadlines arise rather than starting from scratch. The new funding will support further product development and commercial expansion as the company grows customer adoption. Nocomed plans to expand its presence across Ireland, the UK, and wider European markets, while continuing to enhance the platform’s capabilities to support healthcare and life sciences organisations in managing supply chain emissions.

Stockholm-based Lassie, a prevention-focused pet insurer, has raised $75 million in Series C funding to support its expansion across Europe’s pet care and insurance market. The round included participation from Balderton Capital, Felix Capital, Inventure, Passion Capital, and Stena Sessan, backing the company’s approach to insurance built around automation and preventive care. Across Europe, pets are increasingly regarded as members of the family, influencing spending patterns on care, insurance, and well-being. At the same time, rising veterinary costs are placing greater financial pressure on owners and exposing limitations in slower, reactive insurance models. As a result, both the pet insurance and broader pet care markets are expected to continue expanding in the coming years. Founded by Hedda Båverud Olsson, Sophie Wilkinson, and Johan Jönsson, Lassie combines insurance expertise, operational experience, and engineering-driven automation. Its model integrates insurance with preventive care to support long-term animal health. The company delivers localised insurance products through a daily-use app that provides educational content and incentives for preventive care, using AI to streamline processes and improve the customer experience. Within its claims operations, Lassie has increased automation compared to traditional insurers that rely more heavily on manual processes. In Germany, a significant share of claims is processed end-to-end within minutes, with customers uploading a photo of a veterinary bill and receiving prompt reimbursement for straightforward treatments. With the Series C funding, Lassie plans to expand further across Europe’s major pet insurance markets and continue investing in AI-supported claims processing and preventive health capabilities. The company is also developing partnerships designed to connect routine pet care with insurance services. These include a collaboration with Lidl to offer pet insurance through the Lidl Plus rewards programme, and a partnership with Tractive to provide activity-based rewards and discounts through GPS pet tracking.

Reflow has closed a seed funding round of more than $15 million to support ongoing technology development and broaden access to its workflow and AI automation intelligence, alongside the launch of its workforce and workflow intelligence platform for enterprise customers. As organisations adopt AI, many are able to measure outcomes but have limited visibility into the processes that produce them. As operations scale, this can make it more difficult to assess capacity, identify automation opportunities, or evaluate the impact of AI initiatives. Reflow is designed to address this challenge by making operational work observable. The platform provides real-time visibility into how work moves across people, systems, and processes, without relying on time tracking, self-reported data, or complex integrations. By converting operational activity into structured data, it enables organisations to identify workflows suitable for automation and assess the results of those efforts. The platform takes a system-level approach, observing workflows end to end to surface task flows, bottlenecks, and process deviations. This supports more informed decisions around automation and optimisation and is suited to mid-market and enterprise organisations with large operational teams performing high-volume, computer-based work across functions such as customer support, accounting, legal, and compliance. Reflow is built to support understanding of workflows and capacity rather than monitoring individual employees. The platform incorporates privacy-focused design principles and enterprise-grade controls, including configurable metadata collection and flexible visibility settings. Founded by Ugur Kaner, a founder with Turkish roots now based in the United States, Reflow builds on prior experience in developing technology platforms for business users. Commenting on the launch and funding, Kaner said: Reflow gives leaders a clear, shared view of how work actually happens, so automation decisions are grounded in reality, not assumptions. In an AI-driven world, that visibility becomes essential infrastructure. Early users of the platform have reported improved visibility into operational capacity, more efficient resource allocation, and clearer identification of workflows suitable for automation. Looking ahead, the company plans to scale its platform to support a broader set of mid-market and enterprise customers while continuing to invest in product development. Its focus is on expanding workflow and workforce intelligence capabilities that help organisations better understand how work is performed before applying automation or AI, with the goal of establishing the platform as foundational infrastructure for AI-driven enterprise operations.

The boss of one of Europe's most high-profile AI startups today called on European unity in the global AI race, as it committed €1.2 billion to build its first data centres outside of its native France, in Sweden. Arthur Mensch, the CEO and co-founder of French AI startup Mistral, said: “We think it is a bit of a trap to think about AI as something that is owned by states. "This is not a state project. The only way to think about this technology is at a community level. "In the US, it is a big market. Their strength is they can scale quickly. If you want to compete, and we need to compete because it is too important a technology to give up on, we need to think of Europe as a unified market. “We need to come together and think of Europe as a single market, with enterprises buying European technology, with states buying European technologies.” Speaking at the Techarena tech conference in Sweden, Mensch pointed to Mistral's work with German firms and new European office openings as indicators of its commitment to Europe, but said Mistral was "really a global company”. At the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year, Mensch said Paris-headquartered Mistral, which is seen as a competitor to the bigger US LLM firms, should top €1 billion in revenue this year. Mensch today said Mistral had experienced 20 times growth over the past year, helped by increased enterprise demand. The French AI startup, valued at around €11.7bn, also announced that it was building new AI data centres in Sweden, working with Swedish data centre provider EcoDataCenter, which will design, build and run the infrastructure, on a 23 MW power facility, "which is quite significant and can actually serve a lot of enterprises". The data centre is part of a €1.2bn AI infrastructure investment Mistral is making in Sweden. On why Sweden, Mensch said: “Because it has access to clean energy, so low-carbon energy. We work with a lot of European enterprises and sustainability is a big concern for us.” Also speaking at the event, Sweden's deputy prime minister and business minister Ebba Busch said Europe's edge in the global AI race against the US was its "political stability", pointing out that stable markets helped bring in investment. In an apparent criticism of Donald Trump, she said: “One of the main things we have is political stability. The Swedish position on AI is not going to change tomorrow in a new tweet. It is what it is." Busch said the key to European success in the global AI race would not be which country built the biggest AI models but “who builds the most trusted system”. Meanwhile, Lovable co-founder Fabian Hedin responded to a question about whether there was a current AI bubble by pointing out Lovable was getting more usage from the apps built on top of Lovable, than Lovable itself. He said: “This demonstrates that what is being created, there is value in it. I think that is hard to debate."

When Russia’s invasion overwhelmed Ukraine’s mental-health system, clinicians faced a surge of trauma patients with no increase in staff or therapy time. That constraint — rising need without added capacity — is also familiar in the US, where provider shortages, long waitlists, and brief appointments are common. But now, a Ukrainian startup, Luminify, has found a way forward. I met with co-founder Viktor Samoilenko at TechChill Kyiv to learn all about it.  Extending therapists, not replacing them Instead of trying to automate therapy, Ukrainian founders Viktor Samoilenko and  Max Goncharuk built a clinician-guided immersive VR system designed to help patients regulate faster, allowing therapists to use limited session time more effectively. The goal was not to replace clinicians, but to extend their reach under extreme system strain. Developed by health-tech company Aspichi, Luminify translates evidence-based approaches such as cognitive behavioural therapy, mindfulness, and trauma therapy into guided mixed-reality experiences delivered through headsets. Patients engage in structured therapeutic environments while clinicians retain oversight, using the system to monitor progress and shape treatment. AI tools personalise exercises and generate outcome data, helping practitioners adapt care to individual needs. The platform is designed for clinics, rehabilitation centres, and workplace wellness programs that aim to scale mental health support without sacrificing quality. In essence, Aspichi positions Luminify as a bridge between clinical psychology and immersive technology — turning therapy into repeatable, measurable digital interventions that can reach more people than traditional one-to-one care alone. From automotive AR to emotional VR Samoilenko’s background spans IoT and automotive technology, and the origins of his current work trace back more than a decade. He previously co-founded Apostera, a developer of mixed-reality navigation solutions for the automotive industry. Apostera’s technology — which projects navigation directly onto a vehicle’s windshield — was later acquired by Harman International, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics. After the exit, Samoilenko began reflecting on how access to experience shapes people. “I was travelling a lot and realised how much money is spent on travel, and how many people simply don’t have that ability,” he said. “That limits their experience. Experience is what makes us more advanced as people — more empathetic, more flexible, more understanding of diversity.” Together with a partner, he began exploring the idea of an audiovisual “teleportation” platform. Drawing on his venture background and familiarity with 360° cameras and VR headsets, the concept was to let one person stream their surroundings while another experienced it immersively in virtual reality. “The idea was that someone could appear in another place for the first time,” he explained. “We wanted to build a platform that could share experience and knowledge at a fraction of the cost of travel.” The company was registered in the United States, with an office opened in Ukraine shortly after. “Five days later, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began,” he said. “It was a moment where we were reconsidering everything — our lives, our place in the world, our place in the country. We decided to use the initial idea to build something impactful for Ukraine.” Building a psychologically safe space in virtual reality In the early days, the team saw friends go out to battle in jeans, armed with guns. According to Samoilenko, they were coming back psychologically broken and traumatised.  “We realised we could provide an ability for them to move from a stressful environment into a safe place where they could feel peaceful and comfortable. It’s a kind of teleportation, but emotional. As we delved deeper into psychology, we realised that VR is a powerful tool for influencing emotional states. It also solves the stigma problem — it’s much easier to put on a headset than to open up immediately to a therapist.” Four years in fight-or-flight When asked whether mental-health awareness is growing locally, Samoilenko says the shift has been driven more by necessity than by campaigns. “We’re trying to build it. After four years, it has become a real topic because everyone in Ukraine feels it,” he explained. While awareness may not yet match countries with large-scale public health initiatives, he notes that more people are independently seeking support. The prolonged strain of war has reshaped the population’s psychological baseline. “For four years, we’ve been in fight-or-flight mode. Now there’s no energy left to sustain that. You want to run, but you don’t have the energy,” he said. Aspichi’s work focuses on restoring that depleted capacity. "We help people restore energy and self-awareness through mindfulness and psychological techniques — basically helping them take care of themselves again.” That said, Samoilenko stresses that trauma is delicate work: ”It cannot be optimised. We don’t replace professionals. We augment their work by helping people relax and become ready to approach trauma. We prepare them. The actual trauma processing is left to specialists.” Turning trauma response into valuable data Image: Luminify VR headsets. Photo: Oksana Lahzdukalns. However, what began as an emergency intervention quickly became measurable science. In Ukraine, Luminify has already been used by more than 1 million people across rehabilitation settings, effectively serving as a large-scale test of a clinician-extension model in crisis conditions. In a controlled study at a Veterans’ Mental Health & Rehabilitation Centre in Kyiv, the VR-supported group showed measurable reductions in anxiety and depression compared with standard rehabilitation alone.  Aspichi published its first clinical research on Luminify in the European Psychiatry and Psychology Journal.  “On average, we saw a 20–30 per cent reduction in depression and anxiety symptoms and about a 40 per cent increase in overall wellbeing,” shared Samoilenko. The ethics of learning from trauma Samoilenko acknowledges the ethical tension of working at such a scale in a country shaped by trauma. Ukraine’s crisis, he says, is devastating — but it also creates conditions for unprecedented research. “Unfortunately, Ukraine has many traumatised people, but it gives an opportunity to make a global breakthrough in psychology,” he said. Demand from practitioners reflects that urgency. “In Ukraine, there’s basically a queue,” Samoilenko explained. Luminify currently supports around 150 rehabilitation centres and has already delivered therapy to more than one million people, with capacity projected to reach two to three million annually. The resulting dataset is drawing international attention.   “Scientists worldwide are very open to collaboration because the scale of data is unprecedented,” he said.  Typical psychological studies involve hundreds of participants; Luminify is operating at a national scale.   “That’s three or four orders of magnitude more. We’re already validating in multiple countries and working with universities.” Crossing into mainstream care The system is now being tested beyond trauma recovery, including post-acute rehab through a partnership with Rocky Mountain Care. It already has customers in assisted living, nursing homes, and acute care facilities. In the US, in assisted living, there is almost no competition.  “The niche is conservative and not open to innovation. We compete with mindset, not technology,” shared Samoilenko. Facilities can be reimbursed by insurance, so there are no objective financial barriers. However, the challenge is staff exhaustion. Medical and social workers worldwide are burned out. “Ironically, they could benefit from the technology themselves,” admits Samoilenko. “We’re seeing improvements even in dementia and Alzheimer’s cases, including some very bright recoveries.” The program recommends at least ten consecutive days of daily therapy practice. It’s a structured program rather than weekly sessions. Progress is measured using professional clinical questionnaires. Aspichi received a large donation of headsets from a manufacturer, allowing the company to provide up to 20,000 sessions per day. The headsets have built-in cameras for eye, head, and body tracking. That allows the team to capture behavioural changes similar to those therapists observe in person. “It's a trend to use biometric data, but what we're doing is capturing behavioural data. Biometric data can't tell a lot about psychoemotional state, but behavioural data can. Amazing results can be achieved when both approaches are used,” shared Samoilenko. From here on in, objective diagnostics is the priority. The company is scaling in the US, using generative AI to deliver therapy in multiple languages, building personalised programs, and doing deeper research into the human brain. Luminify’s journey so far shows how care delivery changes when time and staff are the binding constraints, and why models forged under wartime healthcare pressure may be relevant to the US system now and beyond. WhileUkraine has become an unwilling laboratory for psychological resilience, Luminify is trying to ensure that what’s learned there reshapes care far beyond its borders.

London-based Overmind, which is developing a supervision layer for AI agents, has closed a £2 million seed funding round. The round was led by specialist cybersecurity investor Osney Capital, with participation from 14Peaks, Portfolio Ventures, Antler, and Endurance Ventures. As agentic AI systems advance, security requirements are becoming more complex and are increasingly difficult to address with existing tools. These systems can be exposed to adversarial inputs and data integrity issues, particularly when operating autonomously in production environments. As a result, risk management has become a limiting factor for deployment. Overmind develops technology designed to support the secure deployment of agentic AI. Its platform provides visibility into agent behaviour, enabling monitoring and intervention when deviations occur during live operation. The system also applies reinforcement learning techniques to improve agent performance and reliability over time. Overmind was founded by a team with backgrounds across intelligence and technology, including Tyler Edwards (CEO), Akhat Rakishev (CTO), and Sam Brunt (CRO). According to Edwards, the company’s focus is on addressing risks that arise when AI agents operate in live environments, where behaviour can change over time and direct oversight is limited. The company plans to use the funding to expand its technical teams, continue product development, and scale go-to-market efforts in regulated industries such as legal, healthcare, and fintech, where agentic AI deployment requires strong compliance and data protection controls.