In response to widespread suppression of women’s health vocabulary, health creative studio Ouch! launches the GOOD WORDS campaign: a series of posters highlighting how essential terms such as “vulva,” “uterus,” and “period” are censored by digital platforms, forcing women to navigate a growing “euphemism economy” of coded language just to find information online.  The campaign calls out the culture of silence, inviting anyone to download free, high-impact prints for use in public spaces and digital sharing.  Recent research, including the June 2025 CensHERsip White Paper, documents that up to 95 per cent of women’s health businesses in the UK say their educational content is routinely shadowbanned, hidden, or rejected by algorithms on social and advertising platforms.  In June, more than 190 organisations, founders, health professionals and campaigners have co-signed an open letter calling on social media platforms to end the routine censorship of women’s health content online. It followed formal complaints filed in March 2025 by CensHERship and The Case For Her under the EU Digital Services Act (DSA). These complaints, submitted on behalf of six women’s health companies, documented biased moderation, lack of transparency, and failures to provide effective appeal mechanisms. Despite clear evidence and growing public concern, no meaningful response or action has been taken to date. Key terms describing anatomy, menstrual health, menopause, and postpartum care are flagged as “adult content” or “unprofessional,” while equivalent male health language remains visible.  Further, research by CASANEGRA Studio shows this goes beyond erasure, revealing how algorithmic content moderation distorts language and stifles vital health conversations.  Their analysis reveals an euphemism economy flourishing across social platforms, where medically precise terms like vulva, uterus, and period mutate into code words or symbols to evade banishment: “down there”, “seggs” or “that time of the month”.  As a result,  clinical language is now treated with the same severity as pornography, pushing women toward euphemisms like *“down there” or “per!od.”  This linguistic regression harms health literacy and deepens shame around female anatomy, especially for Gen Z and Gen Alpha, who rely on these platforms for information.According to Carrie Kenyon, founder of Ouch!: “There is something refreshing about a traditional print campaign as a call to arms against the online censorship of women's health. Using a range of visual icons, and with inspiration taken from the words themselves, we created this series to signal that all words associated to women's health are first and foremost good words.”  Taking a stand beyond the digital, the campaign’s print run acts as a symbol of leaving behind the very platforms perpetuating this censorship, reclaiming trusted physical spaces like GP offices, libraries, and community centres.  Alongside print, the free digital versions encourage sharing and reconquering of digital spaces through community-driven efforts on social media. 

Recruitment tech startup Helio AI has secured a $1 million Seed round led by SABAH.fund, joined by DOMiNO Ventures, Axiom, Tetrad VC, and Angel investor Bas Godska.  The US-based, Georgian-founded team has developed an AI-powered recruiting platform for high-volume and frontline hiring. It combines an intelligent recruiting agent, able to chat, think, and act in local languages with game-based psychometric tests.  The platform automates up to 70 per cent of recruiter tasks, instantly ranks top candidates, and improves the accuracy and speed of hiring for companies with large applicant volumes. The company previously raised a $350K pre-seed round from angel investor Teimuraz Jashi, Georgian Business Angel Network - Axel, and 500 Eurasia. This early backing enabled Helio to build its core AI technology and prove strong traction across emerging markets with hundreds of international brands across 7 countries.  “We’re thankful for the continued trust of our early investors and more than happy to welcome new ones. We choose our partners carefully, people who share our culture, energy, and way of working, because synergy matters when you’re building something big. This round marks an important step in scaling Helio globally and amplifying the impact we’re already creating across our markets,” said co-founder and CEO of Helio AI, Iako Jikia.  According to the Managing Partner of SABAH.fund, Abbas Kazmi, Helio AI’s vision directly aligns with the mission at SABAH.fund, backing founders who are solving large-scale, systemic challenges: “HR technology touches nearly every organisation in the world, yet remains underserved by advanced AI. Helio is closing that gap and we believe they have an exceptional team that is uniquely equipped to power the future of recruitment.”  The new funding will be used to scale Helio’s AI Recruiting Agent globally, expand product capabilities, and transform how companies hire in fast-growing markets.

London-based Procure AI, a company pioneering AI-native procurement automation for procurement and supply chain management, has raised $13 million in seed funding. The round was led by Headline, with participation from C4 Ventures, Futury Capital and notable angel investors from across the procurement industry. Procurement teams are under pressure to do more with fewer resources. Forty-seven per cent of B2B buyers cite operational complexity as a major challenge, and 90 per cent of companies say constraints such as limited headcount, budget pressures and skills gaps are hindering their ability to transform. At the same time, organisations face rising costs, unpredictable delivery timelines and increasingly complex compliance requirements. Founded by Konstantin von Bueren and Yves Bauer, Procure AI’s platform is designed to deliver measurable cost savings and operational efficiency by helping businesses optimise spend. A key differentiator is its end-to-end approach. Rather than targeting isolated workflows, Procure AI offers an AI-native procurement platform that spans the full range of processes and use cases where AI can have an impact. By integrating and enriching fragmented procurement data instead of replacing existing systems, the platform addresses the practical challenges procurement teams face. It acts as a secure and sovereign procurement data layer, with dedicated hosting and end-to-end autonomous solutions built to deliver direct customer value. The platform deploys more than 50 AI agents across three categories: autonomous agents that execute procurement tasks independently, collaborative agents that support and enhance human decision-making, and ambient agents that provide proactive assistance. This AI-native architecture enables end-to-end automation across sourcing, contracting, purchasing and invoice management. Core solutions include Autonomous Spot-Buy and Tactical Sourcing, which have shown 35–46 per cent time reductions and 3.7–5.2 per cent savings per event, and Quote-to-Order Intake, where around 60 per cent of requests can be handled autonomously. Yves Bauer, Co-founder and co-CEO of Procure AI, noted that while many procurement tools require companies to rebuild their systems from the ground up, Procure AI intentionally chose a different approach. Our platform sits on top of fragmented data landscapes and makes them intelligible, enriching what is there rather than replacing it. That is why we can deliver ROI in months, not years, and why our clients see us as a partner rather than just another vendor. With the new funding, Procure AI plans to expand its engineering team and strengthen its go-to-market capabilities, supporting growth beyond its initial focus on the DACH region into the UK, Nordics, Benelux and France.

An angel investor in UK AI unicorn ElevenLabs and Revolut has launched a $15m solo GP fund to back pre-seed and seed stage founders building startups across AI, robotics, and defence.Carles Reina has launched Baobab Ventures, an “oversubscribed” fund backed by institutional LPs Cendana Capital, Isomer Capital, RSJ Investments, Emergence Ventures, and Cyber Fund.  Partners from Concept Ventures, Credo Ventures, as well as business angel and professional football player Mario Goetze and deep tech investor doctor Fatima Godall are also backing it.Reina currently works as the GTM (Go-To-Market) lead at ElevenLabs, the voice AI startup now valued at $6.6bn, a role he will continue in alongside Baobab Ventures.An early investor in ElevenLabs, he also became the company’s fourth hire.Baobab Ventures will make average investments of $300,000 and $350,000 in pre-seed and seed stage startups, it said.According to the fund, its philosophy is that building momentum quickly is the most important part of a startup journey, while Reina will be focused on helping founders develop and execute their GTM, operations, and product strategies, as well as providing hands-on support with customer pitches, contract negotiations, and critical hires.London and Barcelona-based, Baobab Ventures is a European fund with a global mandate, backing early-stage technical founders operating with an international expansion mindset from day one, it said.Half of the fund’s investments will be focused on Europe, with the rest to be deployed in the US and other markets.Reina said: “Building startups has dramatically changed in the last few years. Sales cycles are faster, there are hundreds of competitors within months, and AI has killed cold outreach conversion rates. "Founders need to move incredibly quickly whilst building a sales and growth motion fit for the AI age. To do that, they need operators on their cap table who can draw on relevant frontline experience from the AI era and who are hands-on with their help. "This AI-informed operator experience is a clear gap in the European landscape and it’s one I believe Baobab can fill.”

Women across Europe are building innovative solutions in agrifood — yet many still lack access to the support, visibility and networks needed to scale. The EWA — Empowering Women in Agrifood program from EIT Food was designed to change that. It is open to women from selected European and neighbouring countries (in 2025, 13 countries including Albania, Estonia, Greece, Italy, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Türkiye and Ukraine). Participants benefit from a comprehensive curriculum including online training modules, one-on-one mentorship (over 20 hours) from business and agrifood advisors, and a strong networking component through an established community of more than 500 mentors and female entrepreneurs. The programme also offers funding opportunities (country-level prizes of €10,000 and €5,000) and access to investors and corporate partnerships. In our latest podcast, we spoke with Alicja Krakowska, Project Manager at EIT Food North-East, as well as two founders whose journeys highlight how transformative this programme can be. Débora Campos, CEO and founder of AgroGrIN Tech, entered EWA while still validating her technology for upcycling fruit sidestreams into clean-label food ingredients. The programme helped her refine her business model, connect with suppliers, and move toward building a pilot facility capable of producing ingredients at scale. Meanwhile, Greta Budreike, founder of TASTIK, joined with the goal of creating alternative protein products made from crickets to support healthy ageing and nutritional needs.  Watch/listen to our latest Tech.eu podcast to hear firsthand how EWA is helping women turn bold agrifood ideas into real, scalable businesses. Accelerating innovation through women's leadership The upcoming Next Bite Satellite in Warsaw will gather 13 EWA Innovators, investors, partners, and leaders from across the European agrifood ecosystem. The event is designed as a space for dialogue, shared learning, and meaningful networking, with a dedicated focus on advancing women’s leadership in agrifood innovation. Across its Inspire and Empower stages, attendees will have access to panel discussions with investors, conversations on gender equity and sustainable innovation, and presentations from women-led startups. The in-person format also enables participants to schedule one-to-one meetings and connect directly with peers, experts, and ecosystem partners. Those interested in taking part can explore the full agenda and registration details through the event page.

Norwegian startup Bsure has secured a $2.1 million seed round to help companies gain visibility into blind spots within their Microsoft environments. The round was led by Scale Capital, with participation from existing US investors. Most companies rely on identities such as people, apps and services that need access to do their work. The challenge is that this access tends to accumulate and is rarely cleaned up. In a typical Microsoft 365 environment, accounts and admin roles grow faster than they can be managed. Old permissions remain, inactive users stay enabled, and over time, this creates blind spots. Few companies can clearly say who all their users are, which accounts should still exist, and what they currently have access to. Founded in 2022, Bsure is building an Azure-based platform that connects directly to Microsoft Entra ID in order to address this problem. The platform provides companies with a real-time view of users and access rights, flags inactive or risky accounts, and helps reduce unnecessary license costs. The need for this type of solution is clear. Microsoft’s 2024 Digital Defense Report finds that over 90 per cent of account compromise cases involve forgotten or unmonitored accounts. At the same time, EU rules such as NIS2 and the Digital Operational Resilience Act require organisations to document and monitor digital access, with possible fines of up to €10 million or 2 per cent of global turnover. Gartner expects that by 2028, 70 per cent of CISOs will use new identity visibility tools to reduce unauthorised access and improve security. We often see that up to 40% of user accounts are inactive. That represents both a security risk and unnecessary cost. Companies are often genuinely surprised when they see the real picture for the first time, says Henrik Skalmerud, CEO and co-founder of Bsure. Bsure currently serves more than 200 customers across nine countries in both the public and private sectors. With this funding, Bsure will expand its team and accelerate international growth, building on its position in the Nordics and early presence in the U.S. The company will also continue to invest in product development, with an emphasis on scalability, ease of deployment, and new AI-driven features to make visibility more actionable.

Noahs, a Copenhagen-based food-tech company that transforms the service stations, convenience stores (c-stores), supermarkets, and travel hubs into modern food destinations, has raised €1.9 million in new funding at a €6.5 million pre-money valuation.  Founded in 2020, Noahs has redefined how food integrates into retail — building a platform that enables global retailers to enter the digital food economy with zero capex and minimal labour.  I spoke to Daniel Baven, CEO and co-founder of Noahs, and Helle Uth, co-founder and Partner at PSV Tech, who led the investment, to learn more.  3 million retail locations, yet most analog  While the retail sector counts more than 3 million locations worldwide, much of it remains analog. Meanwhile, the daily consumer's behaviour is notably changing towards convenience and tech-enablement: almost 50 per cent of households’ food consumption is food away from home. Add to the fact that Millennials and GenZers favour zero-human interaction when it comes to C-stores check-out experience. “Until recently, the tech wasn’t good enough.” According to Uth, service stations and supermarkets are being pushed into new roles:  “Fuel matters less due to electrification, and fresh food sales are declining. Both service stations and supermarkets can meet this shift by offering healthy, ready-to-eat meals — but doing so at scale is hard without strong digital tools. " Baven contends that, against this, until recently, the tech wasn’t good enough: “Traditional integrations were complex, slow, and expensive. What we’ve built is a unified system that lets retailers digitise and layer in food brands without a massive investment. Interestingly, some retailers stayed analog simply because digitisation wasn’t strategically important—until now. Today, they feel the urgency.” Uth agrees, asserting that,”AI and automation are finally mature enough to work reliably in stores, and you have the perfect moment for change. The technology simply wasn’t mature enough before; now it is, and the industry can’t afford to stay analogue.” From chef in Thailand to a foodtech entrepreneur Baven originally comes from the culinary world; he’s a trained chef and spent his first ten years in kitchens. At around age 24, he moved to Thailand to work in hotels and opened a sandwich shop on the side.  Baven shared, “The demand was huge, and within six years we grew it into more than 20 locations." During that journey, the team developed strong tech capabilities and built a modern franchise system unlike anything else at the time. But when COVID hit, Thailand closed its borders for nearly two years, and the business essentially collapsed.  “That’s when we started looking ahead and asking: ‘What will the future of food production look like?’ We saw it becoming more digital, higher volume, and integrated into retail spaces.” Noahs was born from that thinking. Over the past five years, the team has built the “implementation recipe” for how food gets embedded into retail at scale. In response, the team has developed a  comprehensive platform consisting of three layers:  The three-layer system powering retail food digitisation The technology stack According to Baven, most retailers are extremely analog, running on legacy IT systems that make digitisation slow and bureaucratic.  Noahs has built a plug-and-play omnichannel system—kiosks, app ordering, QR, aggregators—all feeding into one decentralised cloud-based POS. With just Wi-Fi, a retailer can digitise their entire shop. “We also unify all digital revenue through one reconciliation and BI system. That means a single store can run its own products, plus additional digital storefronts, plus multiple food brands simultaneously,” explained Baven. Streamable food brands “We provide simple, high-quality food brands—bowls, tacos, sandwiches, chicken concepts—that retailers can produce using the equipment they already have," detailed Baven.  These aren’t typical convenience items; they compete with restaurants. Suddenly a convenience store can offer restaurant-quality meals during hours when footfall usually drops. Further, “there’s almost no CapEx involved, and no extra labour. A retailer can start offering QSR-level dishes immediately.” Long-term kitchen transformation as cooking at home becomes rarer Baven predicts that over the next decade, retailers will move increasingly into hospitality because food has higher margins and larger basket sizes. “Our 10-year thesis is that cooking at home will become rarer because it will be more expensive than ordering prepared food. Retailers have the locations, scale, and pricing power to outcompete many traditional restaurants. We’re helping them build that future step by step.” According to Baven, the concept has roots in the ghost kitchen model, “but we rebuilt it to be much more applicable to retail. This is designed for walk-ins, service stations, supermarkets—physical spaces with existing footfall.” “Noahs is completely brand-agnostic. We enable famous brands, local restaurant IP, and our own streamable brands to run inside the same retail location. It's a hospitality layer that sits on top of retail infrastructure.”   Investor confidence in a tough foodtech market Noahs’ plug-and-play solution has gained considerable traction, positioning it to become one of the frontrunners in the food-tech industry. The company has experienced an exponential 200 per cent revenue over the last three years. It successfully onboards major international conglomerate clients and partners, including. MAXOL, Q8, DSC, and MENY, Further, it has over 88 + service-station locations live in DK and  a broader EU rollout underway; It's an approach that has gained traction with investors.  “The winners will simplify—not complicate—retail operations.” PSV Tech was launched in 2020 as part of the PSV Venture House to back Nordic founders even before product/market fit. The team supports founders in taking their software startups from early validation to scalable growth. With more than €100m under management, numerous tech investments and six exits from their first fund—including Helloflow and Heyhack—the PSV Tech team has proven its strength in the earliest growth stages and truly knows the craft According to Uth, food-tech funding has gone through a reset, but companies that combine operational knowledge with strong technology are still attracting high-quality investors.  “The trend is shifting away from capital-heavy models toward software-driven infrastructure — exactly where NOAHS sits. Its platform is built to be light, cloud-based, and API-driven. There’s no heavy hardware rollout and almost no implementation downtime. Stores can be live in days, not months — which makes fast scaling possible without big upfront investments. NOAHS turns food operations into something scalable and profitable.“ She contends that retail is changing fast, and the winners will be the companies that make everyday operations simpler, not more complicated.  “NOAHS is building exactly that kind of solution, and we’re proud to support a team that understands both the food world and the technology powering it.” The investment round was also joined by angel investors, Kraen Nielsen, ​​Executive Advisor & Tech Investor, Former Group CEO & CTO of Coop Denmark, Denmark's largest consumer cooperative, and Bob Stein, President RBS & Associates. Existing shareholders, including early Noahs investor Torben Frigaard Rasmussen, Former e-conomic CEO and active angel investor, also participated in the round.  According to Uth, “Our role is to help NOAHS scale in a structured way." "We’ve backed many companies through this stage, so we know what it takes operationally and how to prepare for the next round of investors. We bring the experience and network that let companies grow fast without losing focus.” Rapid market expansion from Europe to the world  Noahs is currently expanding into Ireland, Belgium, and Luxembourg, and expects to have around 600 locations across Northern Europe by 2026. The startup is running pilot projects in many countries, so the funding is going toward building the international rollout team and strengthening its product.  “We’re also consolidating our IP into a more centralised, high-value stack,” shared Baven. “The goal is strong traction ahead of a Series A round in Q3 2026. In 2026 we’re also planning pilot locations and local HQs in both the UAE and the US. The model is very adaptable — retailers can localise brands, ingredients, or concepts easily." He believes that food is going to become one of the next big verticals emerging from the AI wave: “Noahs sits at the intersection of culinary IP, hardware, and operational tech. We think the real value of this vertical will become much more visible over the next couple of years.”

Stockholm-based Kovant, an autonomous enterprise platform that enables businesses to create, run and manage entire operations and departments of AI agents, has raised €1.5 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Stockholm-based VC firm J12 Ventures, with participation from Ampli, Green Ventures and a group of angel investors ranging from tech veterans to industry leaders, including Sarah Öhrvall, board member at Axfood and Verisure, who will also join the Kovant board, and Emmanuel Martin-Chave, VP AI at Data Guard. Unlike copilots or isolated bots that only assist at specific points in a workflow, Kovant provides managed agentic workforces, meaning teams of specialised AI agents that can autonomously operate across functions such as procurement, supply chain, inventory management, compliance and customer success. Kovant uses a novel architecture that allows enterprises to deploy swarms of agents based on small language models (SLMs) rather than relying solely on large, general-purpose AI models, which helps reduce the risk of hallucinations and errors. Each agent operates within clearly defined guardrails to support accuracy, auditability and compliance. Designed to be deployed within weeks rather than months, Kovant’s agentic teams run continuously, learn over time and escalate only when human input is needed. Ali Sarrafi, CEO and co-founder of Kovant, explained: Too often, AI is used in ways that strip the human element out of work. We’ve flipped that. We’re pioneering a system where AI handles the execution so people can focus on what actually needs human judgment. What matters to us is real P&L impact, not building more agents or running endless POCs. Something that can be achieved in weeks, not months. Kovant’s current portfolio is already generating business value by turning processes that previously took a month, such as procurement and bidding, into autonomous executions completed within one to two days while retaining human oversight. The company is now launching globally, making its platform available to enterprises of all sizes and across markets. With this funding, Kovant plans to expand its presence across the Nordics, Switzerland and the Benelux region. This expansion supports the company’s goal of helping enterprises adopt agentic-first operations, where AI workforces execute end-to-end business functions under full governance, compliance and human oversight.

Dutch-based Yasu, an AI startup building autonomous agents to prevent cloud waste, has raised €850,000 in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Akka, with participation from Empower Impact and earlier investment from Antler. Founded in 2025, Yasu is developing an AI Cloud Engineer designed to bring cloud cost visibility into the development process and prevent waste before it occurs. This addresses a major challenge in the €1.6 trillion global cloud infrastructure market, where an estimated €512 billion is lost annually due to misconfiguration, inefficiency and complexity. The issue has grown with the rise of generative AI workloads, which have led to average cloud spending increases of 30 percent, and 72 per cent of IT and finance leaders now describing GenAI-related costs as unmanageable. Since launching in April 2025, Yasu has delivered average cost savings of 35 per cent for its customers and is managing €3.9 million in cloud spend across companies, including alpha.One, TRaiCE and Smiler. Commenting on the problem, Vikram Das Ambar, Co-founder and CEO of Yasu, explains that he saw companies value the flexibility of the cloud while suspecting they were overspending, a concern now supported by data showing that nearly one-third of all cloud spending is wasted. Current tools only detect problems after deployment, when fixes are ten times more expensive. Yasu shifts cost visibility into development, where our AI agents prevent waste before it happens. We are building an AI cloud engineer for every team, not just another monitoring platform. This funding accelerates that vision across Europe. The new investment will be used to expand Yasu’s go-to-market across key European markets, advance its agentic AI capabilities and further develop its autonomous optimisation platform.

London-based Monq has emerged from stealth with $3 million in pre-seed funding to launch its AI-driven strategic negotiation platform. The round was led by Outward VC, with participation from Cornerstone VC, Portfolio Ventures, Octopus Ventures, Endurance Ventures, Lakestar Halo and strategic angels. Founded in April by Revolut and Deutsche Bank alumni, Yasin Bostancı and Duygu Gözeler Porchet, Monq is addressing a major inefficiency in enterprise operations: how global corporations negotiate their most important deals. Complex, high-value supplier contracts in the $1 million to $100 million range are central to enterprises across industries, including manufacturing, technology, logistics and professional services. Yet, despite being part of a $10.4 trillion market, strategic procurement remains one of the few core enterprise functions not fully automated. It is still dominated by manual processes that consume resources, with nearly a quarter of procurement time spent on low-value tasks, and it often depends on instinct rather than data-driven analysis. At the same time, many existing technology solutions focus on applying AI to existing processes instead of fundamentally changing how procurement teams operate. Monq’s multi-agent AI system combines LLM-based reasoning, contract intelligence and behavioural science to support, rather than replace, human judgment. Each agent analyses deal history, supplier performance data and negotiation behaviour patterns to anticipate counterparty responses, suggest negotiation levers and, where authorised, autonomously manage deals end-to-end. Teams retain full control over negotiation parameters and can decide how much to delegate, allowing them to focus on higher-value relationship building and strategy while gaining a measurable competitive advantage. Yasin Bostancı, co-founder and CEO of Monq, noted that strategic procurement has been slow to benefit from real automation because it still relies heavily on human intuition. By empowering procurement teams with strong, actionable, data-driven and intelligent insights, we’re giving enterprises the speed, clarity and confidence to negotiate at a new scale while unlocking billions in hidden deal flow, value and efficiency before that value is lost to the company. In early pilots with partners, Monq is estimated to have reduced costs by up to 40 per cent, accelerated deal cycles by up to a factor of five and unlocked millions in additional value. These pilots have covered negotiations across capital expenditure agreements, consulting and professional services, software and technology licensing, as well as logistics and supply chain arrangements. The capital will be used to scale ongoing pilots, expand operations and build full-time engineering and product teams across the EU, US and the Middle East. Monq is launching with a subscription-based model and plans to explore value-based pricing over time, where enterprises would pay a percentage of the savings generated by its technology.

Cerrion, the Swiss-founded AI video agent platform that detects and resolves production line issues in real time, has raised $18 million in Series A funding to further expand and scale operations in the US and Europe. The round was led by Creandum, with participation from existing investors Y Combinator, Goat Capital, 10x Founders and Session VC, alongside prominent angels including Harry Stebbings (20VC), Oskar Hjertonsson, Thomas Wolf (Hugging Face) and Garret Langley (Flock Safety). Factory downtime costs the global manufacturing industry an estimated $1.4 trillion annually, and with rising energy prices and increasingly complex supply chains, related costs have increased 319 per cent since 2019. Cerrion addresses this issue with AI video agents that monitor factory operations beyond what workers can directly observe. These agents help operators detect and respond to process deviations, quality issues and safety risks in real time, triggering alerts, slowing or stopping machines and notifying relevant personnel as needed. This combination of automated intervention and human oversight enables manufacturers to resolve problems up to 50 per cent faster, reducing downtime and scrap losses by up to half. Cerrion is rapidly emerging as a key provider of AI-enabled automation, safety and efficiency solutions for the manufacturing sector. Its platform is already in use in live production at manufacturers such as Unilever, Riedel, Schott Zwiesel, Stölzle Lausitz, Sisecam and Verallia, spanning glass, food, timber and CPG industries that supply major global brands including Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Pfizer and Novartis. Customers frequently scale quickly once the platform is deployed, often moving from single-site pilots to company-wide rollouts within months of seeing results. Global manufacturers are facing mounting pressure from unplanned downtime and rising operational costs, and the demand for solutions that tackle these challenges has never been higher, said Karim Saleh, Co-founder and CEO of Cerrion. With a team built from talent originating at ETH Zurich, Google and EPFL, Cerrion plans to use the new funding to double its headcount in Europe and the US and to expand its platform beyond vision to support a wider range of manufacturing processes and customers.

Fintech has secured a credit facility and acquired Planky, a UK-based tech company specialised in AI-driven financial analytics and open banking.  The credit facility accompanies its latest Series B round, bringing the total raised to £29 million. The BKN301 Group is a fintech architecture provider that supports banks and fintech companies. Its cloud-native, proprietary suite enables institutions to modernise legacy architectures without disruption, speeding time-to-market and ensuring long-term scalability. The platform is built on three core components: the API Orchestrator, the Data Decoupling Layer, and the Business Logic Engine. These components work together to provide a flexible, vendor-neutral foundation.  Through the acquisition of Planky, BKN301 gains a proprietary AI and data analytics engine that will be fully integrated into its digital banking architecture. Planky’s machine learning models, specialised in real-time financial insights, behavioural scoring, and predictive analytics, will enhance the intelligence and automation of BKN301’s platform. This integration will enable financial institutions and fintechs using BKN301’s technology to deliver smarter, faster, and more personalised digital banking experiences, while maintaining high compliance and scalability standards. “This milestone marks a defining moment for BKN301,” said Stiven Muccioli, Founder & CEO of BKN301. “With the growth financing and Planky’s AI capabilities, we’re accelerating toward our vision of a next-generation fintech infrastructure — one that’s intelligent, open, and designed to empower financial inclusion at scale across emerging markets.” The company’s growth strategy for the next 18 months includes: Strengthening its AI and data analytics capabilities across the core platform, Expanding strategic partnerships with regional financial institutions, and,   Exploring new M&A opportunities to accelerate technological innovation and market reach. “We’re building the rails for the next wave of financial innovation,” added Muccioli. “AI is transforming how financial services operate, and BKN301 is at the forefront — combining intelligence, scalability, and regulatory readiness to help our clients innovate faster.” The new financing will also accelerate BKN301’s roadmap, enabling the company to scale its digital banking architecture platform across EMEA markets. 

Corporate food companies group NutriUnited has raised €8.5 million Seed financing. Founded by Josef Brunner, NutriUnited builds,  connects and develops artisan-oriented food companies. It aims to create a home for family-run businesses in the product categories meat,  meat alternatives and ready-made meals. Josef Brunner is a serial entrepreneur, executive, and investor with over two decades of experience building and scaling technology companies across cybersecurity, IoT, industrial digitalisation, and the future of nutrition. He is the Founder and CEO of NutriUnited, launched in 2024, where he is building technology-enabled solutions in the nutrition and health domain. He serves as Chairman of the Board at Startup Insider, supporting Europe’s tech ecosystem, and is a Supervisory Board Member at learnd. Previously, he was the Founding Investor and CEO of relayr, one of Europe’s leading industrial IoT success stories and co-founder of JouleX, which was acquired by Cisco.  Accomplished entrepreneurs from the fields of food, buy & build,  communications, and new business models (including Flink, ETL and Chrono24), including;  Martina Pfeifer (flatexDegiro), Tim Stracke  (Chrono24), Oliver Merkel (formerly Flink), Christof Wahl (G-FUND), Marc  Müller (formerly ETL Group), Frank Dopheide (human unlimited), Arnd  Hungerberg (ServiceNow), Finn Wentzler (Atlantis Ventures), Leon Mann  (Direkt Gruppe), Dr Hadi Saleh (CeramTec) and Timo Seggelmann (OakHorizon). “We want to create a home for family-run food companies,” says Josef  Brunner, founder and CEO of NutriUnited.   “We stand for true entrepreneurship, dedication to craftsmanship, and honest products – and we see ourselves as the anti-corporation. Even as we grow, we want to remain small, agile and close to our customers. As the son of a baker, returning  to my roots and dedicating myself to the most important mission of my life  is deeply personal: ensuring the future of medium-sized artisan food  producers with NutriUnited.” According to Arnd Hungerberg (ServiceNow): “I invested in NutriUnited because I  believe in sustainable food innovation that connects tradition and the  future, creating real value for people and businesses.” Leon Mann (Direkt Gruppe) shared: “NutriUnited’s contribution to the food  industry is more important than ever – not only in terms of high-quality  products but also in securing the competitiveness of SMEs.”  The new capital will be used to fuel further growth, integrate additional companies and advance the shared mission. The objective is clear:  strengthening family-owned businesses, 

SportAI, a B2B sports technology company that uses AI-powered video analysis to provide professional-grade performance insights, has raised an oversubscribed $3 million round from investors including Norwegian fund Altitude Capital and tennis player Casper Ruud. Endre Holen, former Head of McKinsey’s Global Tech & Media practice, has also invested and will serve as Chairman. Other participants include US professional soccer player Alejandro Bedoya and Trond Riiber Knudsen (TRK Group founder). SportAI provides AI-powered technique analysis, in-depth match statistics, tactical insights, and highlight videos using computer vision and machine learning. Traditionally, video analysis relied on manual tagging by coaches, which limited scale, long-term use, and accessibility—making it viable mainly for professional players with dedicated performance staff. As mounted court cameras, broadcast feeds, and mobile video recording become standard at sports venues, SportAI is leveraging this shift to meet growing demand for advanced, automated analysis. Through its SaaS platform and APIs, the company integrates with court camera systems to match the rapid global rollout of cameras and streaming services. The platform is camera-agnostic, allowing its AI technology to be deployed across thousands of sports facilities worldwide, where players and coaches can access real-time statistics and highlights. As a former NCAA player, I know how transformative good coaching and analysis can be—and how inaccessible it often is. That’s what we’re solving at SportAI, said Lauren Pedersen, CEO and co-founder of SportAI. By prioritising an API-first model, SportAI focuses on partnering with court camera and streaming providers that want to add AI-driven analysis to their existing hardware solutions, strengthening their product and go-to-market strategies. The funding round will be used to scale SportAI’s global rollout and expand technical development.

Talliin-based PowerUP Energy Technologies has closed a €10 million Series A funding round to accelerate the manufacturing and commercialisation of its hydrogen-powered electric generators. Co-led by Mercaton and ScaleWolf and joined by SmartCap’s Green Fund, the investment will enable further scaling of the technology, recognised for its dependable performance in extreme environments. PowerUP Energy Technologies, founded in 2016, develops and manufactures modular hydrogen fuel cell systems for defence, industrial, and off-grid applications. Its silent, emission-free generators are designed for use in sensitive military forward operating bases and critical civilian infrastructure, supporting customers that prioritise reliable, security-grade energy independence. At the core of PowerUP’s strategy is a dual-use approach: providing robust, resilient power solutions that meet the high demands of the defence sector while also serving critical commercial use cases such as security and telecommunications. The company’s technology has gained international recognition for its reliability in extreme environments, including deployment and validation in high-risk regions such as Ukraine. PowerUP was founded on a clear mission: to deliver clean, reliable energy solutions. While other technologies are still being tested in labs, ours has already been battle-tested on the front lines in Ukraine. This is the very definition of dual-use innovation: a cleantech solution that has been forged and validated by the urgent needs of defence, said Ivar Kruusenberg, founder and CEO of PowerUP Energy Technologies. The new investment will be used to meet growing demand across both commercial and defence markets. PowerUP plans to expand its sales and technical teams to enter new commercial segments, with a focus on backup power for critical infrastructure, while building strategic sales and support hubs in key regions such as Central Europe and North America to strengthen its international presence. In parallel, the company will accelerate R&D to develop higher-density fuel cell models tailored to a wider range of power requirements.

Leeds-based Uniphy, whose technology could replace car dashboard controls and change how people interact with appliances, has raised £3 million to prepare for mass production. The funding comes from existing investors NPIF II – Mercia Equity Finance, managed by Mercia Ventures under the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II, and Mercia’s own funds. Founded in 2015 by microelectronics specialists David Lomas and David Dean, Uniphy develops its BeyondTouch® smart-surface technology, which enables integrated user interfaces built into 3D plastic or glass panels. Uniphy’s smart surfaces allow controls to be embedded into 3D panels of almost any shape, enabling users to locate functions by feel alone. This offers a safer alternative to in-car touchscreens by allowing drivers to keep their eyes on the road and provides a sleeker, more hygienic, and lower-cost option than traditional buttons. As manufacturers move away from touchscreens toward physical controls, driven by safety concerns in automotive and reliability issues in home appliances, Uniphy’s solution offers a compelling alternative. It works with standard plastic or glass surfaces, can incorporate haptic or voice feedback, uses conventional manufacturing methods to keep costs low, and is highly recyclable. It also functions reliably in the presence of liquids, making it suitable for marine cockpits, hobs, and washing machines. Jim Nicholas, CEO of Uniphy, explained: As humans, we spend much of our lives interacting with machines – on our mobiles, in our cars or our homes – but the limitations of current controls can make it a frustrating experience. Uniphy’s technology offers designers the freedom to create new, more intuitive interfaces and transform the way we engage with machines. The technology has already been successfully tested by Hyundai and Grupo Antolin, who are now exploring how to integrate it into their vehicles. The new investment will enable Uniphy to develop its own integrated chip ahead of mass production and to miniaturise the technology for mobile use cases.

Juo, a Warsaw-based startup building technology for physical product subscriptions, has raised €4 million in seed funding. The round was led by Market One Capital and Peak, with participation from SMOK Ventures, BADideas, FJ Labs, and Lakestar, bringing the company’s total funding to around €5 million. The subscription economy has transformed how consumers purchase and interact with products, with physical goods already accounting for around 40 per cent of a market projected to reach $3.5 trillion by 2030. Juo focuses on this fast-growing segment of physical and hybrid product subscriptions at the infrastructure layer. Its platform provides a full toolkit to design, launch, and manage subscription models for a wide range of physical products, from simple recurring orders, such as supplements, cosmetics, meal kits, and pet food, to complex, higher-value items like home appliances or medical equipment. With separated workspaces, operators and developers can collaborate in the same environment while using tools tailored to their roles, and Juo’s proprietary technology supports virtually any development stack, allowing business teams to manage operations without writing code. The platform includes the core logic layer, API, SDK, CLI, and a collaborative editor. Using its APIs and prebuilt components, merchants can integrate subscriptions in days rather than months. The toolkit works with modern e-commerce stacks such as Hydrogen (Shopify), Medusa, and commercetools, as well as established platforms like PrestaShop and Shopware. To support the full subscription lifecycle, Juo enables recurring payments via credit cards, SEPA Direct Debit, and regional methods like iDEAL and BLIK, through partners including Adyen, Mollie, PayU, and Tpay. Since launch, Juo has built strong traction in the subscription e-commerce market, supporting over 500,000 active subscriptions across hundreds of clients in Europe and North America. Customers include Pulse4all, Mother’s Earth, Meowbox, Impossibrew, Boerschappen, Guud, Yummygums, and Natulim. With the new funding, Juo plans to enter its next stage of growth, expanding the platform’s capabilities for developers, administrators, and AI agents across custom implementations and e-commerce platforms, including support for modern front-end technologies and Model Context Protocols (MCPs) that enable AI systems to interact directly with subscription infrastructure.

Today, Coinvest Capital, the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), Depo Ventures, BSV Ventures, Balnord, and New North Ventures — six VC funds actively investing in dual-use and defence — together with market-intelligence platform Dealroom, unveil the inaugural Tough Tech by the Tough Ten report, The report is the first comprehensive mapping of tough-tech ecosystems spanning mission-critical defence, dual-use, and space innovation across Europe’s eastern frontier. It examines how these “Tough Ten” nations are mobilising talent, capital, and technology in response to shifting security realities.  It covers priority innovation domains identified by NATO, from AI and quantum technologies to hypersonics, energy, and next-generation communications.  The tough ten countries sit from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and include Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria.   The report highlights the true dynamics of defence innovations in the region. Key findings include:  The Tough Ten nations are outpacing the rest of Europe in mission-critical innovation.  Between 2019 and 2022, tough-tech ventures made up 7 per cent of all startups in these countries, compared to 5 per cent across the rest of Europe.  By 2023–2025, this share more than doubled to 16 per cent, while the rest of Europe lags at 10 per cent.  By 2025, 53 per cent of all Deep Tech and 23 per cent of total VC investment will flow into Tough Tech, a dramatic shift from software convenience to hardware courage.   Futher, as part of defence efforts, NATO launched Operation Eastern Sentry; the European Union (EU) is building the European Drone Wall and Eastern Flank Watch; and the Baltic countries and Poland are creating the Eastern Shield and Baltic Defence Line.  Space and quantum dominate defence investment across the Tough Ten Across the Tough Ten, defence tech investment remains concentrated in a few deep-tech verticals: Quantum computing, cryptography, and sensing ($606 million) and Space and Satellite ($703 million) dominate, accounting for most funding since 2019.  Broader security segments, such as Energy Security ($253 million) and Health Crisis Preparedness ($166 million), highlight an expanded notion of defence, linking resilience and infrastructure.   Core military areas - C4IS — which stands for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance — ($22 million), UAVs/UGVs ($28 million), and Advanced Materials ($38 million) — show steady but limited venture traction, reflecting Europe’s ongoing shift from early-stage R&D to scalable dual-use commercialisation.   The rise of a defence-driven innovation economy Tough tech in the region has grown from a handful of early-stage experiments into a mature, multi-stage pipeline, with companies now progressing from pre-seed through to Series C. This acceleration is reinforced by national initiatives across Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, and others, which have launched sovereign funds, defence-industry parks, DIANA hubs, and rapid-testing frameworks to support scalable dual-use innovation. At the European level, programmes such as SAFE, EDIP, and the European Defence Fund add more than €150 billion in stimulus, creating unprecedented momentum for defence and resilience technologies across the Tough Ten. What began as a necessity to deter and defend is fast becoming the region’s competitive identity. This surge underscores a decisive strategic shift: proximity to geopolitical pressure has translated into faster mobilisation, deeper investment in dual-use capabilities, and a sharper focus on technologies with defence and resilience applications.    The steady climb since 2020 signals ecosystem maturity, where early-stage experimentation is giving way to scalable, capital-intensive breakthroughs in defence, autonomy, and deep industrial tech - proof that the region no longer only invents, but begins to industrialise innovation.    According to Viktorija Trimbel, Managing Director at Coinvest Capital, who has initiated the report, with geopolitical tensions on the rise, this report, for the first time, provides summary insights into the defence innovation trends, key ecosystem players, funding instruments available, and most notable startups to be watched and partnered with: “Living at the borders of the European Union, having experienced in our own lifetime the Soviet Russian occupation, makes each of us very much aware of the price we all have to pay to protect our freedom and way of life. Currently, the highest price is being paid by the freedom fighters and people of Ukraine. Here in Europe, we must ensure that the time we still have is put to the best use, investing in deterrence, building resilience, and advancing innovation, capabilities, and competitiveness. Our region demonstrates just that by actions taken and changes initiated at increasing speed.” “Tough tech is Europe’s new competitive edge. Founders on the Eastern Flank are proving that innovation is the real deterrent. With unprecedented capital ready to deploy into resilient, dual-use, and industrial tech, Europe has never had a stronger moment—or greater responsibility—to build the technologies that will secure its future,” shared Jarek Pilarczyk, Operating Partner at Balnord.   Sandra Golbreich, General Partner at BSV Ventures, sees tough tech as more than a category: "We invest in people who take on the hard problems because they have to, because it's a mission for them, not because it’s fashionable. That’s where real value and real impact come from. As BSV we’re glad to contribute towards this report and the community in the ecosystem, choosing to build and back things that last — and to stand for something that does too." For Patrick Schneider-Sikorsky, Partner, NATO Innovation Fund, defending the Alliance’s Eastern Flank isn’t just about presence - it’s about preparedness. "Supporting and scaling local innovations is essential to that effort. Their technologies, which are informed by each nation's capability needs - across sensing, autonomy, and secure communications - are helping to ensure that our forward defences are smarter, faster, and more connected. The growth of these innovative companies strengthens not just the Eastern Flank, but the Alliance’s collective technological edge."

An AI automation platform for the financial services industry, founded by two brothers, has raised $75m in a Series A funding round.The funding round in London and New York-based Model ML was led by FT Partners with participation from Y Combinator, QED, 13Books, Latitude and LocalGlobe.The Series A follows six months after Model ML’s seed raise, led by LocalGlobe, and twelve months after its launch.Founded by brothers and repeat entrepreneurs Chaz and Arnie Englander, Model ML is leveraging AI so that financial services firms can work more efficiently..In particular, it says its tech enables financial teams to build AI workflows that automate repeat work, helping speed up compiling pitch decks and diligence reports as well as investment memos. The platform slots into existing workflows, only pulling and processing data from a company's bank of trusted sources. Model ML says its platform is akin to building a bespoke AI brain for each organisation, and each AI agentic system is custom-built for individual clients. The startup says its tech is used by several of the world's largest banks, asset managers and consultancies, including two of the Big Four accounting firms.The funding will be used to propel global expansion and beef up its AI capabilities across key financial hubs, it saidChaz Englander said: "High-stakes business runs on documents: pitch decks, diligence summaries, investment memos. But most firms still build them the hard way. "Analysts spend entire weekends cross-checking numbers and formatting slides. Despite all that effort, mistakes still slip through because no one can realistically verify every data point in a 100-page deliverable. "That's why we built Model ML. Our agents reason across data sources, write the code to extract and transform what's needed, and generate finished, branded outputs with verification built in. We're eliminating the grunt work so teams can focus on the analysis that actually matters."

Netherlands-based Social Links has secured $3 million in follow-on funding to advance the development of next-generation tools that help organisations protect their brands, assets, and personnel in an AI-driven risk environment. The investment is led by Yellow Rocks!, which has increased its total commitment sixfold since its initial funding. Drawing on a decade of experience in Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) and digital investigations, Social Links has translated its expertise into AI agents that counter AI-driven crime and operate collaboratively as an autopilot system. The product marks a key step in the company’s approach to protecting against modern threats, complementing and extending beyond traditional infrastructure-focused cybersecurity solutions. The company provides comprehensive data intelligence to help organisations detect and address AI-enabled fraud and crime across social media, messaging services, and other digital platforms, with a focus on anticipating new AI-driven attack surfaces. Ivan Shkvarun, CEO of Social Links, noted that the misuse of AI by the criminal sector has introduced complex risks that current protection methods can no longer keep up with. Our responsibility is to provide clarity and actionable insight, turning fragmented and overwhelming data into effective defence. This is essential for securing trust in an AI-driven world. We deeply care about our investors and customers, and it is important for us to develop and grow together. Social Links’ flagship AI initiative, developed under the AI Defender Autopilot concept, is designed to address emerging AI-related digital risk challenges, such as detecting fraud and scam messages in employee communication channels and identifying misinformation or false content about a brand, with a focus on accuracy and scalability. The company also plans to accelerate its growth with the introduction of new products built on its AI Defender Autopilot concept.