Helsinki-based retail technology startup Retailgrid has raised €358,000 in a pre-seed funding round led by Finnish B2B SaaS investors Ali Omar, Henry Nilert and Pekka Ylitalo, with participation from Innovestor Angel CoFund. Retailgrid develops an AI-powered workbook designed for retail pricing, assortment planning and forecasting. The company focuses on mid-market retailers and FMCG companies that manage large product catalogues but often rely on fragmented systems and spreadsheet-based workflows for operational decision-making. Many retailers continue to manage pricing, promotions and inventory decisions through manual spreadsheet models or external consulting projects, while enterprise software solutions are often too complex and resource-intensive for mid-sized organisations. Retailgrid aims to address this gap with a cloud-based platform that combines the familiarity of spreadsheets with AI-driven analytics and automation. The platform connects directly to existing retail data sources, including ERP systems, e-commerce platforms and market-data feeds. Users can generate pricing models, demand forecasts, assortment recommendations and promotion analyses using natural language prompts, while maintaining visibility into the underlying data and logic behind each recommendation. According to Retailgrid, the platform is designed to reduce the time and operational complexity associated with retail analytics workflows, with pre-built AI agents supporting use cases including price optimisation, sales forecasting, assortment planning, promotion analysis and competitor monitoring. Every retailer we talk to says the same thing: we already do this in Excel - but it’s breaking. Our job is to give them a tool that feels as flexible as the spreadsheet they know but actually scales with their data and their decisions, said Maxim Morozov, CEO and founder of Retailgrid. The company primarily serves omnichannel retailers and FMCG brands across sectors, including grocery, fashion, beauty, DIY and specialty retail. The new funding will be used to further develop the AI Grid platform, expand the customer base across Europe, and grow the engineering and commercial teams.

As the European AI Act moves from paper to practice, the tech landscape is shifting. For the continent’s innovation leaders and decision-makers, the challenge is no longer just "building fast," but building with sovereignty and scale. Nexus Luxembourg 2026 has emerged as the premier forum where these critical conversations turn into action. Strategically located at the crossroads of tech, European policy and finance, Nexus Luxembourg is far from a standard trade show. It is a curated event designed for high-level exchange. With 10,000 attendees expected and over 150 speakers, the 2026 edition focuses on key pillars such as cybersecurity, data sovereignty, fintech and digital finance, govtech, climate tech, space tech and health tech. Why Decision-Makers are attending: Positioned in Luxembourg, the event serves as a natural bridge between EU regulators, decision-makers and tech pioneers, offering a unique perspective on innovation and growth. With four dedicated zones -the Intelligence Forum, the Fintech Sphere, the Launchpad Arena and the Luxembourg Makes It Happen space- the event is structured to foster collaboration between established industry leaders and innovative companies. Nexus Luxembourg provides a "boutique" and human-sized experience, gathering a high-density of decision-makers and public-sector visionaries. The clock is ticking. To maintain the exclusivity and high-caliber networking environment, tickets are strictly limited. The current registration tier expires this week. Prices will officially increase on Friday, May 22nd. Position your organization at the heart of European innovation. Secure Your Pass at the Best Rate

Investor appetite is increasingly shifting toward infrastructure-heavy categories tied to food resilience, including AgTech, aquaculture, robotics, bio-inputs, and precision fermentation.  Europe’s foodtech sector is entering a more sober, pragmatic phase. According to DigitalFoodLab’s State of the European FoodTech Ecosystem in 2026 report, European foodtech startups raised €3 billion in 2025 — a 25 per cent decline year-on-year — as the industry continues to cool from the investment frenzy of 2021 and 2022. I spoke to Matthieu Vincent, co-founder of DigitalFoodLab, to learn more. ​ Europe’s food startups face a timing problem, not an innovation problem Reading the report, I found the investor funding rates shockingly low for such a sector that touches everyone. Vincent attributes the rate to “a dichotomy between the expectations of investors (rapid scalability) and the reality (5 to 10 years of research before real market adoption).  However, he notes that on the positive side, “we can compare AgriFoodTech funding to R&D investments of the industry: traditionally, food companies invest a tiny share of their turnover in R&D, much less than in other industries.” ​ Further, in most cases, food innovation is incremental (notably new food products) and doesn't require much funding. “As many technologies are (finally) maturing, they will enter the market in the next 12 to 18 months, which should lead to a new wave of funding.” ​ Beyond this, early-stage funding has remained relatively stable; Europe now accounts for 28 per cent of global FoodTech investment. According to Vincent, this is  “a very positive sign” in an otherwise depressed ecosystem. “Investors, as well as established companies, are betting on early-stage innovation. The support of leading companies has become a "must-have" as many investors now want corporate validation before investing.” ​ Despite regulatory friction, Europe remains a powerhouse for next-generation food startups Europe’s Novel Foods framework continues to slow the commercial development of many startups across both agriculture — including robotics and bioinputs — and food innovation sectors such as precision fermentation and cellular agriculture, particularly when compared to markets like the US and Singapore. As a result, many European startups now prioritise regulatory approval in the US or Singapore first, using those markets to validate demand and scale commercially before eventually expanding back into Europe. According to Vincent, “The goal is to test the market there and eventually come back to Europe at some point when they receive approval." "And, it should be pointed out that nowadays, a very large share of the "new ingredient" startups are based in Europe rather than in the US or Israel. So, European regulation is a challenge, but not a barrier.” ​ I’ve long been bullish on cell-cultivated meat and was disappointed to hear that Meatable announced its dissolution in December last year due to its inability to obtain further funding from existing or new investors. In April 2024, Meatable was the first company in the European Union to receive regulatory approval from the EFSA for a public tasting of cultured meat, in this case sausage.  Earlier this month, cultivated meat pioneer Meatly, Europe’s first company to sell cultivated meat for pet food raised £10.4 million in Series A funding. ​ Check out our earlier interview with Owen Ensor, founder and CEO of Meatly. Further, French dairy protein precision fermentation company Standing Ovation announced a €30 million Series B financing round in April this year , including €25 million in equity. Food manufacturers are becoming foodtech’s key startup partners The food and beverage industry has continued to show strong interest in startups, although that engagement is coming primarily from food manufacturers rather than retailers — with notable exceptions such as REWE Group in Germany, which has taken a more active approach to investing in and partnering with startups. According to Vincent, both global and European ingredient companies are also increasingly investing in and collaborating with startups as they recognise that many of these technologies are moving closer to commercial readiness. Last year, foodtech startup Nosh.bio publicly debuted its Koji-based hybrid beef mince through a week-long cafeteria partnership at Speisemanufaktur Adlershof in Berlin.  Rather than the conventional B2C route, Nosh.bio partners with food manufacturers to overcome the taste, texture, and price challenges, especially in hybrid and plant-based applications. With a focus on industrial readiness and cost-effective scale-up, the team is helping accelerate the shift toward more sustainable, consumer-ready products. Check out our earlier interview with Nosh.bio co-founder and CEO Tim Fronzek. Agritech and aquaculture emerge as Europe’s foodtech stabilisers Agritech is holding up the sector, especially in the Nordics, due to a rise in funding for aquaculture: “Europe is indeed importing a lot of fish from other areas of the world, and consumption is rising,” explained Vincent. The report notes that Europe as a whole is doing well in agricultural robotics, but, again, due to regulatory challenges (and other farm-size challenges), many companies have to move to the US for commercialisation. “That's an issue that should be tackled at the European level.” Further, he notes that many startups, initially focused on supporting carbon credit verification through satellite imagery, emerged in Europe but struggled to scale up and find clients. “The rise of defence budgets is creating new business streams for them, and we can hope that agriculture will, in the end, benefit from it.” Dutch grocery delivery startup Picnic raised the largest deal of 2025: €400 million. The investment is notable as the company has triumphed where numerous competitors, including Gorillas, Getir and Jiffy, etc.closed over the past few years. Vincent attributes the company’s success to price and affordability: “From the consumer perspective, companies like Picnic and Rohlik Group have focused on delivering groceries at competitive prices rather than simply maximising convenience. That contrasts sharply with many quick-commerce startups, where convenience was the core value proposition. In an environment shaped by inflation and growing consumer sensitivity to price, the model centred on affordability is clearly performing much better.” Further, the rapid growth of quick-commerce startups, with the opening of many dark stores in urban centres, made them enemies of many city councils, which banned them. “Instead, Picnic has a model focusing on suburbs, with large hubs, and is not creating the same defiance.” Ultimately, the report suggests that Europe’s foodtech slowdown is less a collapse than a reset. The question now is not whether Europe can generate foodtech innovation but whether it can create the regulatory, industrial, and investment conditions needed to keep those companies scaling at home rather than abroad. Lead image: Nosh.bio.

Milan-based legal AI company Lexroom has raised $50 million in a Series B funding round led by Left Lane Capital, with participation from Base10 Partners, Eurazeo, Acurio Ventures, Entourage and View Different. The round comes eight months after the company’s Series A and brings Lexroom’s total funding to more than $73 million. Lexroom develops AI infrastructure for legal professionals, focusing on a data-first approach built around verified legal sources rather than fine-tuned general-purpose language models. The company says its platform is designed to address reliability and verification challenges associated with generative AI tools in legal work, including fabricated citations and inaccurate legal references. Its platform is built on a proprietary database of more than six million verified legal sources, including legislation, case law and regulatory materials, which are continuously updated and structured for legal research and retrieval. Lexroom says this architecture is designed to align more closely with legal workflows by grounding outputs directly in source material. When we started Lexroom, two things were immediately clear: lawyers needed a better way to work, and LLMs could deliver it. The missing piece was data - always-updated laws, relevant case law and legal proceedings. Civil law countries need an AI legal engine that reasons data-first, said Paolo Fois, CEO and co-founder of Lexroom. The platform is now used by more than 8,000 law firms and corporate legal teams, with a majority of users engaging with the product on a daily basis. Lexroom aims to reduce the time required for legal research and drafting, allowing firms to handle more work while maintaining professional standards. The new funding will support the company’s expansion across civil law jurisdictions in Europe, beginning with Spain and Germany. Lexroom plans to build local teams and develop jurisdiction-specific capabilities in collaboration with firms operating in those markets.

Finnish cybersecurity startup CRACI has raised €1.4 million in pre-seed funding in a round led by Lifeline Ventures, with participation from First Fellow Partners and Wave Ventures. The funding will support product development and the expansion of the platform ahead of new European cybersecurity regulations coming into force in 2026. Founded in 2025 by Juho Niemi, Dennis Marttinen, Jaakko Sirén and Petteri Pulkkinen, CRACI develops software supply chain security technology designed to help companies comply with the European Union’s Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). The regulation will require products with digital elements sold in the EU to meet stricter cybersecurity, documentation and lifecycle management standards, affecting hundreds of thousands of companies globally. The company says the increasing complexity of software development, driven by third-party components, open-source dependencies and AI-generated code, is making visibility and control across software supply chains more difficult. At the same time, businesses face growing regulatory pressure to ensure software products remain secure and traceable throughout their lifecycle. CRACI’s platform provides visibility across software supply chains while automating vulnerability tracking, lifecycle management and compliance processes. The company aims to help organisations meet CRA requirements related to supply chain control, traceability and continuous security without slowing software development. Juho Niemi, co-founder and CEO of CRACI, said: Supply chain security is now business-critical for software organisations. Companies that invest early will gain a competitive edge through faster market access and stronger trust. Those relying on manual approaches risk delays and higher costs. We enable fast and reliable security and compliance without slowing growth. He added that AI-driven software development is increasing both the complexity and risk associated with modern applications, while the CRA places greater accountability on companies to ensure the security of every product they ship. The new funding will support CRACI’s efforts to help businesses prepare for the Cyber Resilience Act and manage evolving software supply chain security and compliance requirements across the European market.

Mouro Capital has announced the first close of its third fund, securing $400 million from Banco Santander, the firm’s longstanding strategic partner. The latest fundraising brings Mouro Capital’s total investment commitments to more than $1 billion. Mouro Capital is an independently managed venture capital firm focused on financial services and technology. Since 2015, Mouro Capital’s team has invested across North America, Europe and Latin America, typically backing companies from seed through to Series C stages. Its investment strategy is centred on emerging technologies shaping financial services, including artificial intelligence, data infrastructure, blockchain and governance, risk and compliance technologies. Areas of focus for the new fund include capital markets, wealth management, insurtech and AI-enabled enterprise infrastructure. Manuel Silva Martínez, General Partner at Mouro Capital, said: We’re proud to have built a global platform delivering strong, consistent returns. With this fund, we’re excited to back the next generation of global founders rewiring financial services through the lens of AI, data and infrastructure. He added that Mouro Capital sees growing opportunities in areas such as capital markets, wealth management and governance, risk and compliance technologies, driven by developments in AI and blockchain, while insurtech remains an underserved segment where the firm plans to increase its focus. With seven investments already completed through the new fund, Mouro Capital has begun deploying capital into companies, including Eleven Labs and Sakana AI, reflecting its focus on AI-driven transformation within financial services and enterprise operations. According to Mouro Capital, the new fund will continue supporting founders across fintech and enterprise infrastructure, while maintaining follow-on investments in existing portfolio companies.

Agentic AI company Dust today announced a $40 million Series B led by Abstract and Sequoia, with participation from Snowflake and Datadog. With this round, Dust has raised over $60 million in total funding.  Most companies have adopted AI, but they haven’t become meaningfully more intelligent as organisations. One person prompts an assistant, gets an answer, and the context disappears into a private chat window. The result is real productivity at the individual level, with very little compounding across teams.  Dust is on a mission to transform how work gets done. It is the Operating System for AI Agents. It enables businesses to deploy, orchestrate, and govern fleets of specialised AI agents that work alongside the team, safely connecting the company's knowledge and tools.  "This is a century-defining transformation, and we're only in year three,” said Gabriel Hubert, Co-Founder and CEO of Dust. “What will transform the way we work isn't the next best model or assistant. It's going to be a completely new type of system that gives humans and agents shared, governed access to the same information and capabilities so that they become true collaborators, working with the same context, notifications, artifacts, and goals to compound organisational impact. This is what we call multiplayer AI, and this is what we’re building at Dust." Dust is the multiplayer AI system for human-agent collaboration. It’s a platform where business teams build, deploy, and manage AI agents that work together across an organisation, connected to company knowledge, integrated with the tools teams already use, and governed with enterprise-grade controls.   The product is built around a shared collaboration surface where teams and agents work in the same workspace with shared projects, context, conversations, to-dos, notifications, and a cloud-based compute environment for processing files and generating documents.  An intelligence layer connects more than 100 data sources and integrates with tools teams already rely on, enabling agents to work with company context and take action.  Built-in memory and reinforcement loops help teams achieve more impact with AI over time by understanding their preferences and proactively recommending agent improvements. Enterprise governance provides granular permissions, cost and usage monitoring, a full audit trail, and agent analytics.  Dust is SOC 2 Type II certified, GDPR compliant with EU and US data residency, and does not train models on customer data, as contractually guaranteed by major providers.   Dust is used by more than 3,000 organisations, many of them household names. Over 300,000 agents have been deployed across the platform, with 70 per cent weekly active usage across customers and zero churn in 2025. The company was founded by Gabriel Hubert and Stanislas Polu, who have been building together since meeting at Stanford in 2007. They previously co-founded TOTEMS, a data analytics company acquired by Stripe in 2014, and spent five years at Stripe scaling products and teams.  Polu later joined OpenAI as a research engineer on Greg Brockman’s team, co-authoring papers on AI reasoning with Ilya Sutskever. Hubert became Chief Product Officer at Alan.  In September 2022, Polu left OpenAI with a conviction that became Dust’s founding thesis: the models were already powerful enough to be economically transformative, but were under-deployed because the product layer was missing.   “We're in the early innings of a massive shift in how organisations use AI,” said Konstantine Buhler, Partner at Sequoia.  “Most enterprise AI today is single-player: one person, one prompt, no compounding. Dust is building the multiplayer system, where agents and humans share context and work together across the entire company. Zero churn and 70 per cent weekly active usage tell you this isn't experimental anymore. This is how enterprises will actually operate.”   "Most AI platforms are stuck in single-player mode: one person, one chatbot, one task,” said Ramtin Naimi, General Partner at Abstract.  “Dust is multiplayer. AI Operators inside companies like Datadog and 1Password don't just use Dust; they build agents that collaborate across teams, learn from every interaction, and rewire how the entire company works. That's a new operating model and category. That's why we participated in this round."   Dust plans to use this round to push three frontiers at once: agents that learn and improve automatically as they’re used, collaboration primitives that make humans and agents equal co-contributors with bidirectional access to shared projects, tools, and context, and infrastructure that makes governance and orchestration predictable at enterprise scale.  Lead image: Dust founders Stanislas Polu and Gabriel Hubert. 

Milan-based future of work company Cosmico has raised €12 million in a funding round combining equity and debt, led by P101 SGR. Existing investors, including Prana Ventures, also participated in the round. Alongside the funding round, Cosmico completed the acquisition of Flatmates, a creator agency focused on applying Talent-as-a-Service models to the creator economy across Italy, Spain and the United States. The transaction gives Cosmico full ownership of the company following its earlier acquisition of a majority stake in 2024. Cosmico operates as a holding company focused on the future of work, with activities spanning Italy and Spain. Its ecosystem is organised across several business verticals, including Talent-as-a-Service for digital professionals and creators, community-based employee engagement, and AI-supported team design. The company says its acquisition strategy will focus both on expanding into adjacent future-of-work segments and strengthening existing business units through further consolidation. Founded in 2021, Flatmates operates across talent representation, creator-brand partnerships, original content production and editorial channels. The company works with brands including Ducati, NordVPN, Google, Xiaomi, Trade Republic and Generali. According to Cosmico, the acquisition strengthens the group’s position in the creator economy market across Italy, Spain and the United States. Francesco Marino, CEO and co-founder of the Cosmico Group, said the funding supports Cosmico’s long-term expansion plans and continued acquisition activity: Cosmico is no longer a scale-up with a single product: we have become a future of work holding company, with multiple verticals and a growth strategy that also includes strategic acquisitions. Founded by Francesco Marino, Simone Tornabene, and Matteo Roversi, Cosmico today operates across Italy and Spain with a network of more than 35,000 digital professionals, more than 300 clients and teams based in Milan and Madrid. The new funding will support the next phase of the group’s expansion strategy, including three additional acquisitions planned by the end of 2026.

Last week, we tracked more than 55 tech funding deals worth over €4 billion, and over 10 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.Click to read the rest of the news.

UK voice AI startup SLNG says the voice labs that have dominated the market have been systematically overcharging enterprises — and that the industry is heading for a price correction. "The market has been shaped by voice labs whose business model depends on maximising compute at every step of every call," says Luke Miller, SLNG's CEO. "Every syllable through the most expensive TTS, every pause analysed by a full LLM call, every transcription through the highest-cost engine. We want to reprice the entire voice agent market." SLNG, which raised €3.3M in pre-seed funding from Earlybird, StepFunction and a16z scouts in late 2025, is building what Miller calls "the Vercel for voice agents" — an execution layer that sits between a team's existing voice agent orchestrator and the underlying AI models. Teams bring their agent — built on LiveKit, Pipecat, or whichever framework they've chosen — plug into SLNG, and the platform handles model selection, in-region routing, failover and compliance across 11 sovereign regions. Miller was previously a venture partner at Earlybird VC and the first seller at Vercel, where he built the company's international business. The execution layer — a new category for voice agents Miller argues that voice agents are following the same infrastructure pattern he saw at Vercel. "Before Vercel, deploying a web app at scale meant stitching together CDNs, build pipelines, edge functions and caching layers yourself," he says. "Every team reinvented the same infrastructure. Voice agents are at exactly that inflection point — the models are powerful, the orchestrators work, but there's no platform layer between them and production." Frameworks like LiveKit and Pipecat have made it possible for almost anyone to build a voice agent. But the prevailing approach — what Miller calls "token-maxing" — is to route every step of every call turn through the most expensive frontier models available. Every transcription, every response, every utterance gets the full treatment. Voice labs' revenue scales with compute consumed, so the incentive is to maximise model calls per conversation, not to optimise them. The problem, Miller argues, is not just cost. It is outcomes. Repeatability and reliability matter far more at scale than raw model power on any single turn. A voice agent handling thousands of calls a day needs consistency — and frontier models called unnecessarily introduce latency, variability and cost that actively work against that. SLNG sits in that gap, coordinating speech-to-text, text-to-speech and LLMs in real time, intelligently routing at every step of every call. The platform still calls the best models when they are needed — a complex financial advisory question gets different treatment to a simple appointment confirmation. But the gains, Miller claims, come from knowing when a deterministic response or a lighter model will deliver a better customer outcome than a frontier LLM. The results are significant. Teams plugging into SLNG are seeing model costs across their voice agents drop by over 50%, latency per call turn cut by more than half, and target outcomes — whether that's appointment bookings, resolution rates or conversion — actually increasing as a result. For teams already building on orchestrators like LiveKit or Pipecat, the integration is simple: keep your agent, plug into SLNG, and the execution layer handles model routing, failover, compliance and cost optimisation across every call turn. Global by design, not by expansion Much of SLNG's growth has been driven by financial services, banking, insurance and healthcare — sectors where data sovereignty is a legal requirement, not a preference. Miller says the company's approach could not have been built in Silicon Valley, where abundant compute encourages teams to throw GPUs at every problem. In the markets where much of the world's enterprise demand sits — Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, India — GPU supply is limited and Northern Virginia's cost structures don't apply. That constraint forced a different discipline. Co-founder and CPO Ismael Ordaz says the team developed approaches using CPU and memory to handle workloads that competitors route through expensive GPU accelerators. "When you don't have abundant GPUs to fall back on, you have to be creative," says Ordaz. "That discipline now runs through everything we build." "A voice agent handling a mortgage application in Australia can't have its audio processed in Virginia," says Miller. "A patient triage system in Switzerland can't send recordings to a US-hosted model. These aren't edge cases — this is where the enterprise demand is." One early example is Ixigo, India's second-largest online travel agent, which has shifted a significant portion of its customer support to SLNG. As Ixigo scaled its voice agent operations, the company found itself managing multiple vendor contracts, building in-house voice infrastructure expertise that wasn't a core competency, and absorbing the overhead of coordinating it all. Since moving to SLNG, Ixigo accesses whichever models it needs through a single platform, has eliminated the vendor management burden, and redirected engineering time toward customer outcomes rather than infrastructure. That demand has pushed SLNG to build sovereign infrastructure across 11 regions: Australia, Singapore, India, Indonesia, the UAE, UK, EU, Switzerland, Canada, the US and Brazil. Miller says Europe's regulatory environment, often framed as a burden, is creating a structural advantage for SLNG. While US voice labs optimise for a single market, SLNG is building distributed infrastructure designed for global compliance from day one. "We're not competing with the US on model size or fundraising headlines," he says. "We're building the infrastructure layer that makes voice agents actually work in production, globally. AWS democratised compute, Stripe democratised payments, Vercel democratised web deployment. The execution layer will do the same for voice agents." Looking ahead, Miller sees SLNG's role expanding with the emerging agentic economy — where AI agents increasingly build and deploy other agents, and voice becomes the default human interface. "We're positioning SLNG as the default environment for creating voice agents — whether it's a human building one or an agent spinning one up on the fly," says Miller. "Voice is how humans interact, and the execution layer needs to be ready for agents to create that interface on demand."

Energy SaaS startup Greenpixie has closed a £4.7 million pre-Series A round to help the world's largest companies cut millions of dollars in wasted IT spend. Created to provide a crucial layer of sustainability intelligence to decarbonise cloud and AI infrastructure usage, the investment in the UK-based company is led by VERBUND X Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of one of Europe’s largest renewable electricity producers. Octopus Ventures, Armajaro Holdings, and Green Angel Ventures have also participated in the round. Data centres are responsible for up to 6 per cent of electricity consumption in the UK and US, according to the International Data Centre Authority (IDCA), with demand soaring as a result of the accelerated uptake in AI. It is estimated that close to a third  (29 per cent) of enterprise cloud use is wasted each year due to a lack of visibility for decision-makers – with global spend forecasted to rise to over $1trillion imminently, demand for ‘FinOps’ and ‘GreenOps' solutions is rising fast. Greenpixie works with Fortune 1000 companies such as Mastercard to enable them to make sustainable decisions around cloud infrastructure and large-scale AI deployment – resulting in huge savings in carbon, water and cost while still pursuing growth.   By integrating with major cloud providers, Greenpixie's proprietary technology helps IT teams terminate 'zombie' resources, optimise for purpose, including AI model use and select low-carbon regions, effectively resulting in software engineers being able to significantly reduce emissions from behind their laptops. John Ridd, CEO and Co-Founder, says: “Efficient use of cloud and AI is possible when the right culture and tooling is embraced. With Greenpixie’s high fidelity sustainability data enterprises can maximise the full potential of their intelligence. This funding will enable us to accelerate our mission and continue our global reach in these pivotal times.”  According to Michael Strugl, CEO of VERBUND AG, Greenpixie addresses a structural customer problem in a high-growth market. “The rapid validation among international customers and the savings achieved underscore the solution’s scaling potential.” Luke Edis, Partner at Octopus Ventures, adds: “Greenpixie sits at the intersection of rapid AI growth and the urgent need to decrease the energy usage and environmental impact of cloud computing. By giving enterprises real-time visibility, the team is turning sustainability into a driver of performance and cost efficiency.”

Berlin-based legaltech LawX has raised €7.5 million in seed funding in a round led by Motive Partners, with participation from WENVEST Capital, xdeck and SIVentures, alongside several angel investors from the technology and legal sectors, including Christoph Cordes and Ralph Müller. LawX is developing an AI-driven platform for law firms and notaries that automates operational processes, including data capture, workflow management, document handling, contact and calendar management, and billing. The company aims to address growing operational challenges in the legal sector, where rising demand for legal services coincides with labour shortages and outdated software infrastructure. The legal market is undergoing significant structural change. Although demand for legal services continues to rise, many firms still rely on fragmented legacy systems and manual administrative workflows. A substantial share of operational work within law firms remains administrative, creating inefficiencies that affect productivity and scalability across the sector. While many existing AI tools for legal services focus on research and drafting support, operational workflows have largely remained manual. LawX is positioning itself within a new category of AI-driven legal operations platforms designed to automate and structure these workflows end-to-end. Its platform combines case management, workflow automation, document processing, communication management and billing within a single system. According to Dr Norman Koschmieder, the legal sector is facing increasing structural pressure as essential processes continue to depend on manual work despite a growing shortage of qualified personnel. We are building the technological infrastructure to automate these processes end-to-end for the first time and secure the long-term operational capability of law firms. As a next step, LawX plans to expand its product offering into the broader law firm market. The new funding will primarily support continued product development, platform expansion, and the scaling of sales and customer support operations. In the long term, the company aims to establish itself as a leading operating system for legal work across Europe.

Danish biotech startup Alcolase has raised €1.5 million with investment from Ada Ventures, Delphinus Venture Capital, Antler, Manigoff Invest and a group of business angels.   Alcolase is developing an enzyme-based technology designed to break down alcohol in the stomach before it is absorbed into the bloodstream.  The technology is aimed at approximately 540 million people in East Asia living with ALDH2 deficiency, a genetic variant that makes it difficult for the body to break down alcohol effectively and can lead to flushing, nausea and discomfort, as well as increased health risks associated with alcohol consumption. The idea began as a conversation in a student dorm during the coronavirus pandemic.  Mikkel Precht and his co-founders wanted to use their knowledge of biotechnology to solve a real-world problem. After exploring a wide range of global health challenges, they kept returning to one issue: alcohol intolerance. For many people, alcohol intolerance is not a matter of choosing not to drink. In cultures where social drinking is woven into business meetings, networking and family life, people with ALDH2 deficiency are physiologically excluded from settings that shape professional opportunity and social belonging. It was meeting people living with alcohol intolerance that made the problem clear to Mikkel Precht, CEO and Co-founder of Alcolase. “When you speak to people with alcohol intolerance, you realise this is not about wanting to drink more. It is about not being shut out of dinners, work events and family gatherings because of a genetic difference. We want to give people a real choice they are currently denied,” says Mikkel Precht. “What drives me is the idea that biotechnology can solve problems that affect people’s everyday lives. If we succeed, we can create a healthier alternative for a very large number of people.” Alcolase has developed a new way to protect enzymes from stomach acid and keep them active in the stomach; a technology based on encapsulation in liposomes. The aim is to develop a solution that can create healthier alternatives in a global drinking culture. The company plans to initially enter the market in Singapore and subsequently South Korea, where alcohol intolerance is particularly common.  To support the development of the delivery platform for therapeutic use-cases, Alcolase has established a UK subsidiary, with Ada Ventures supporting the team's expansion into the UK life sciences ecosystem. According to Check Warner, Co-founding Partner at Ada Ventures: “Alcolase is exactly the kind of company we look for: a science-led team tackling a problem that affects hundreds of millions of people.  We're delighted to support the team as they establish their UK therapeutic subsidiary to develop the wider drug delivery opportunity, and that Alasdair Thong, Venture Partner at Ada Ventures, will be joining the board to support them in this next phase.”  With the investment, Alcolase will reach several key milestones in the next phase of the company’s development. These include an in vivo study, further development of the technology, strengthening of the company’s IP position and the first commercial steps towards partnerships in leading markets. Michael Wiatr Aagaard, Partner at Antler, comments: "Mikkel and his co-founders have the ambition, scientific expertise and determination required to find a solution to a major health and social issue. This funding is a testament to the commitment of the team as they take their product from Denmark to the rest of the world. We've backed Alcolase from an early stage and are proud to continue supporting them as they turn their vision into global impact."

This week, we tracked more than 65 tech funding deals worth over €1.4 billion and over 5 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe. 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 secures $790M financing to underscore commitment to Norway data centre ??  Recursive Superintelligence emerges from stealth with $650M raise ?? N8N's valuation doubles to $5.2B following SAP strategic investment ??‍?? Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers ?? Glocalzone acquired by MovitOn to expand decentralised logistics network ?? Blackstone acquires Greek market leader Skroutz ??  Superprof acquires its Italian rival ? Interesting moves from investors ?  BioInnovation Institute launches AI Lab with €7M from Danish Industry Foundation ?  New Arāya Sie Fund closes at £7.5m to back female-led startups ?. Ofgem and Innovate UK launch £500m energy fund ?️ In other (important) news ?  Corti launches no-equity accelerator for healthcare AI startups ?  Nordic Compass launches to fast-track Nordic resilience and industrial competitiveness ? Keel unveils fintech infrastructure business after pivot from neobank ? Startup nsave is bringing international banking access to Syrians shut out of the financial system ?  Meet the startup taking on gaming's cheating problem ??  From outsourcing to AI-native delivery: Poland’s software evolution ? European tech startups to watch  ??  Gyver scores €1.4M to help power Europe’s industrial workforce ??  Regulate raises €1.4M seed to bring science-backed breathwork into the workplace ?? DDD Invoices raises €1.31M to simplify global e-invoicing compliance ??  Holmes launches with €1.1M pre-seed for autonomous software testing ?? Minima secured £780,000 in the form of a convertible loan

Today YEP Accelerator announced that it is opening a new office in California and launching an international track for growth-stage Ukrainian startups looking to enter the US market.  The new track is designed for Ukrainian startups that already have a live product, paying customers, and ambitions to scale in the US. Unlike traditional accelerator programs, this program focuses on hands-on market-entry preparation rather than theory. The San Francisco residency includes a five-week immersion into the local startup ecosystem. Founders will live and work together through a coliving and coworking setup designed to help them stay fully focused on growth, fundraising, and networking. Participants get access to major tech events, including San Francisco Tech Week. At a final Demo Day, startups will pitch for access to up to $1.8 million in potential investment from partner venture funds, including u.ventures, ZAS Ventures, Geek Ventures, Angel One Fund, Vesna Capital, Green Flag Ventures, Network VC, Dnipro VC, and Flyer One Ventures. The European startup ecosystem has increasingly focused on building stronger international support networks for founders expanding abroad. It joins initiatives such as the European Startup Embassy, a shared landing pad and community hub for startups and VCs from Central and Eastern Europe expanding into the US, and Entrepreneur First, which has also created The Bridge for startups operating in Silicon Valley. The program is open to startups that: Have a product on the market and paying customers. Operate in B2B SaaS or other scalable business models. Are planning to enter the US market within the next 12 months. Are preparing to raise venture funding in Silicon Valley. Throughout the program, founders will work on: Building a US sales pipeline; Developing a scalable go-to-market strategy; Expanding their network in Silicon Valley; Preparing for meetings with potential customers and investors. The YEP acceleration program is supported by the Ukraine-Moldova American Enterprise Fund, which invests in building a competitive economy and creating strong, sustainable business opportunities across the region. The program is also implemented with support from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development as part of its Star Venture Programme in Ukraine, funded by Switzerland through the EBRD Small Business Impact Fund. YEP’s broader development and acceleration capacity expansion are additionally backed through the same initiative, supported by an international group of fund donors including Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the Taiwan Business–EBRD Technical Cooperation Fund, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Applications are open through May 31.

Finding information is no longer the main challenge, as most companies today have access to more market data than ever before. Identifying the right signals early enough to act on them is another story. That is the gap Bounce Watch aims to address. Founded in 2023 by Cem Otkun (CEO) and Sedat Yusuf Ergunes (CTO), Bounce Watch is a signal-based AI platform for private market intelligence. The platform continuously monitors company activity, detects emerging signals, and generates actionable insights and workflows for users. The idea for the company emerged from the founders’ experience with traditional market intelligence processes after spending significant time manually tracking companies across LinkedIn, news sources, and databases while still working with fragmented or delayed information. That led the founders to realise that by the time information becomes widely visible, the opportunity to act is often already gone. Initially, the founders believed the solution lay in improving access to data. Over time, however, the company shifted its focus toward signal detection, interpretation, and real-time intelligence. So, how does it work? In practice, Bounce Watch focuses on identifying real-time company signals and translating them into prioritised actions. Rather than functioning as a static database, the platform aims to help users detect market developments in real time and respond more quickly based on predefined interests and workflows. The platform provides more than 100 continuously updated data points per company, including funding activity, investors, hiring trends, team growth, web traffic, technology stack, competitors, social signals, domains, and market classifications. Bounce Watch operates continuously in the background, monitoring activity, surfacing signals, and generating tasks and action boards automatically. To maintain data accuracy, the platform combines real-time enrichment, AI-based classification, and continuous monitoring across millions of company sources. Signals are cross-checked across multiple inputs and updated automatically over time. The broader goal is to reduce manual research workflows and help teams make faster, more informed decisions. Bounce Watch is used by investors, corporate venture and M&A teams, sales and partnership departments, consultants, and innovation teams looking to monitor markets, competitors, portfolios, and emerging companies more efficiently. Since its founding, Bounce Watch has evolved from a single product into a three-product ecosystem consisting of its core platform, Signal Tracker, and an API module. Among them, Signal Tracker has become the company’s fastest-growing and most widely adopted offering. So far, the company has reached more than 50 customers across Europe and surpassed 5,000 freemium users within its first year. Bounce Watch also completed a pre-seed funding round at a €2.5 million valuation, which helped support product development, attract early customers, and refine the company’s positioning around real-time intelligence. More recently, the company completed a bridge round with existing investors using a SAFE structure and says it is currently in discussions with strategic investors for its next funding round. Over the next 12 to 24 months, Bounce Watch plans to scale Signal Tracker globally, expand further across European, UK, and US markets, and strengthen its AI capabilities to move beyond signal detection toward automated recommendations and workflow-triggered execution. The goal is to help teams respond faster and make more informed decisions.

Euan Blair’s Multiverse has raised £70m in fresh funding, as it looks to expand across Europe and take a chunk of the enterprise AI training market. The funding round in the edtech, which originally specialised in digital apprenticeships at tech firms, was led by new investor Schroders Capital. Existing investors, including General Catalyst, Lightspeed, D1 Capital Partners, Index Ventures, Bond, and StepStone group also participated. It raised the funding at a $2.1bn valuation, a $400m increase on its last funding round in 2022. Multiverse, founded by Blair, the son of former UK prime minister Tony Blair in 2016, has raised around $570m in total. Multiverse, which has mainly focused on the UK market, said the new funds would be used to expand across Europe, as it looks to offer AI training services and capitalise on enterprise adoption of AI. The edtech has moved into the German market following its acquisition of Berlin-based data and AI training company StackFuel in January this year. It said its goal was to ensure that AI benefits the workforce, rather than displacing it. It said the last year has seen it focus on strategic tie-ups, with the likes of Palantir and Databricks. Blair said: “There are companies who desperately need the benefits AI can bring. There are AI companies. What has been missing is the layer that bridges the two. "This investment marks the moment Multiverse defines that category, and takes it across Europe. Getting outcomes from AI and unlocking productivity is not just a technology problem. It is a people problem. We exist to solve it." Alongside this raise, Multiverse said all employees regardless of seniority, have been offered equity and a long-term stake in the company as a result of the funding round. In the year ending 2025, Multiverse reported widening year-on-year losses from £60.3m to £63.3m and cut staff numbers from 822 to 813. Multiverse today said that for the first time, it had a cash-positive quarter from January to March 2026. Chancellor of the exchequer Rachel Reeves said: “Multiverse is a fantastic example of a British company helping turn that ambition into reality. “This investment will support its expansion across Europe, strengthening a UK firm that is competing globally and equipping people with the skills to make AI work in practice.”

In 2019, the Portugal-based startup Anybrain filed a patent application claiming its AI could detect game cheating solely from player inputs such as keyboards, controllers, and joysticks. It was met with disbelief. At the time, anti-cheat systems relied heavily on invasive software monitoring. Behavioural input detection was seen as too abstract, too ambitious and too difficult to prove. Just a few years later, Anybrain, based in Braga in northern Portugal, has secured a European patent granted after international filing and is working with AAA studios on some of the world's largest titles. What began as a research thesis has become a commercially deployed, game-agnostic infrastructure across PC, console, and mobile gaming. I spoke to André Pimenta Ribeiro, Anybrain’s CEO, to learn all about it.  Anybrain is a platform designed to protect gamers from toxic behaviours such as fraud, hacking, and cheating in multiplayer games and esports events. It aims to ensure everyone can have a safe, secure, and fair environment to play games by building a strong gaming defence. From AI fatigue detection to esports fraud prevention Ribeiro has a background in computer science, completing both a master’s and a PhD focused on artificial intelligence. During his  PhD, he worked on an algorithm to detect mental fatigue based on how people use a mouse and keyboard.  “The idea was to understand when someone becomes tired while using a computer, since interacting with machines requires a lot of cognitive effort — visual processing, hand-eye coordination, and so on,”  During his studies, he joined a startup programme in Braga and decided to explore how these techniques could be applied in real-world scenarios. He explained: “We knew everyone gets tired, and we had a strong technical background. The team also had some business background, so we went to the market to explore.” Initially operating across several industries, including call centres focused on corporate wellness, the company pivoted to esports.  He recalled: “The industry was growing quickly, and performance in gaming is heavily tied to mental focus. We worked with teams and learned a lot, and about a year later, we began focusing more directly on fraud and cheating detection.” Why cheating has become a major business problem for gaming companies Cheating can take different forms in gaming, but according to Ribeiro, it broadly means gaining an unfair advantage over other players. “In casual games, that could mean manipulating a leaderboard. In competitive games, it becomes more serious — for example, using software that automatically aims or reacts faster than a human can. From a player’s perspective, it’s frustrating because it removes fairness and destroys the experience. Whether it’s casual or competitive, cheating undermines the integrity of the game.” I wanted to understand who cares most about this problem — players, developers, or publishers? Ribeiro contends that players want a fair experience.  “Gaming communities are very vocal. If cheating becomes widespread, players will complain and often move to another game.” Developers and publishers care because it directly impacts retention and reputation.  “If a game is perceived as unfair, it loses players. In entertainment, people only have time for one game at a time, so fairness is critical.” He contends that initially, hacking was more about curiosity or fun, especially in single-player games. But today, it’s become an industry. There are people making significant money selling cheats — some users even pay thousands per week for tools like aimbots (cheating software used mainly in shooting games that helps a player aim at opponents with unnatural speed and precision). “Developers are improving their defences, but attackers are also becoming more sophisticated. It’s an ongoing battle, and increasingly, companies see anti-cheat as a strategic priority.” How Anybrain’s tech works Anybrain’s anti-cheat analysis is based on player behaviour analysis. Its platform focuses on the HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) approach — how people use input devices such as a mouse, keyboard, gamepad, or touchscreen. Using machine learning algorithms, it can learn from the game and players, understanding gameplay and detecting fraud by interpreting abnormal behaviours. Ribeiro explained:  "We analyse these inputs and determine whether they come from a human or something synthetic.  For example, bots behave very differently from humans when typing or moving. In games like first-person shooters, some players inject artificial inputs to create extremely precise or fast movements. We process this data in real time and use proprietary algorithms to analyse it at a very granular level — millisecond timing, even down to pixel-level behaviour. We look at whether an action is physically plausible for a human." Anybrain can also analyse behavioural patterns to verify whether someone is actually the account owner based on how they typically interact.  “Each person has a unique interaction pattern, so we can detect if behaviour changes or if multiple accounts are being used.”   In short, Anybrain turns raw input data into meaningful signals that help detect fraud or abnormal behaviour. Anybrain is notable for its decision not to use a camera-based approach, which Ribeiro attributes to privacy and accessibility.  “By focusing on input behaviour, we can provide a solution that works across all devices without raising privacy concerns.” Most traditional solutions focus on the client side: “They analyse the game’s memory to detect if someone is modifying it by changing enemy positions or extracting hidden information. It’s similar to antivirus software, you look for known cheat signatures.” But there are always ways to bypass these methods as AI makes it easier to build new hacks. By comparison, Anybrain doesn’t focus on how cheats are built; it focuses on behaviour.  “Even if someone creates a new type of hack, the behaviour it produces will still look unnatural. That makes our approach more proactive and harder to bypass,” shared Ribeiro. How cheating impacts revenue and reputation As cheating has become more sophisticated and widespread, anti-cheat systems are increasingly viewed as a business necessity rather than a moderation tool. In terms of measuring ROI for anti-cheat solutions, standards vary by game. Ribeiro explained that in games with internal economies — like MMOs — cheating can directly impact revenue. For example, bots can farm resources and sell them on secondary markets, which reduces in-game purchases. “But more broadly, it’s about player retention and brand reputation. If players feel the game is fair, they stay longer. If not, they leave. Some companies, like Riot Games with its Vanguard system, have built strong reputations for fairness, which contributes to player trust and long-term success.” In extreme cases, games have shut down because cheating became too widespread. Combating false positives  Anybrain’s platform is designed to minimise false positives by combining continuous behavioural monitoring with full contextual visibility into player activity rather than relying on isolated detection events.   The system provides visual references and detailed metrics that support each flagged moment of suspected fraud. Detections are continuously reviewed and refined, helping quickly address inaccuracies and reduce erroneous bans. In more complex or contested cases, the Anybrain team also supports operators during ban appeals with deeper investigations and additional technical explanations. As AI cheats evolve, anti-cheat systems must adapt According to Ribeiro, cheating has already increased significantly, and AI will make it even easier to develop hacks.  “Technologies like computer vision can analyse gameplay in real time and automatically assist players. We expect cheating to become more widespread and more accessible.” To keep up with new cheating methods, Anybrain’s system can detect new hacks even if the team has never seen them before, as it adapts and learns the most effective detection methods. Recently, the team has seen more advanced techniques, like using a second PC or AI-based computer vision to analyse the screen and inject inputs without modifying the game itself. “But regardless of how the cheat is implemented, the interaction still needs to happen — and that’s where we detect it.” From AAA game integrations to broader digital safety ambitions Over the past year, Anybrain has focused on integrating with major AAA titles, such as Arc Raiders from Embark Studios. Now, its focus is on scaling by onboarding more customers, improving its algorithms, and expanding detection capabilities. It's also exploring other applications of human-computer interaction, such as age prediction based on input behaviour, which could help protect younger users in online environments. It recently received a patent for detecting abnormal behaviour based on input data, granted in the US, Europe, and South Korea.  According to Ribeiro: “For now, gaming remains our core focus, but long term, we see opportunities anywhere we can help make digital environments safer and more secure.”

Nsave , a UK-founded offshore banking platform built for people from distressed economies, today announced the launch of financial services for Syrians in two phases: inbound transfers into Syria and international accounts for residents inside Syria.  For the first time, Syrians will have access to a stable foreign currency account, providing a hedge against local economic instability. I spoke to the founder and CEO, Amer Baroudi, to learn more. For millions of Syrians, access to basic financial services has been out of reach for generations. Baroudi started the company after experiencing firsthand the challenges Syrians face in accessing reliable financial services. He shared that as a Syrian, he spent most of his adult life effectively unbanked. Despite studying at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and later building companies internationally, accessing financial services remained one of the biggest barriers he faced: “Not because of anything I did, but because of where I was from. nsave exists because I know firsthand what it costs: in dignity, in opportunity, in the exhaustion of navigating a financial system that treats your nationality as a disqualifier.  Over 700 million people globally come from distressed economies where inflation is high, and banking is broken — they face similar challenges as I did simply because of where they are from.” According to Baroudi, legacy banks have deliberately adopted blanket compliance frameworks that treat entire nationalities as too risky to serve.  Now sanctions on Syria have been lifted, and that has contributed to nsave being able to launch.  “At nsave, we've built technology specifically designed to assess individual risk accurately, not to write off populations by virtue of their passport.  The gap is the willingness to do the work required to serve people responsibly.” However, the main challenge for Syria, like some of the other markets it serves, is building a platform that is both accessible and fully compliant with international standards.  The Syria transfer corridor has been built with a strong compliance-first approach by leveraging technology and building enhanced onboarding, sanctions screening, AML monitoring, and risk controls from day one to ensure the corridor operates safely and responsibly.  It is structured in complete separation from partner financial institutions, allowing nsave to serve Syrians without exposing partners to country risk they are not yet ready to take on. “This didn't happen by accident. It took deep regulatory work and a team that refused to give up”, Baroudi added. “We've structured these services carefully –– fully separated from partners still finding their footing in Syria –– because we weren't prepared to wait. Syrians have waited long enough. They deserve modern, safe and affordable financial services, and today we start delivering that.” Through nsave, users can access international USD, EUR and GBP accounts, international cards, global transfers and savings products. nsave’s addition of transfers to Syria, alongside its existing markets across North Africa and Asia, expands its mission to serve people from countries where inflation is high, and access to safe financial services is difficult or impossible, whether due to instability, sanctions complexity or weak banking infrastructure.  The launch comes at a significant moment for Syria’s financial future, as renewed focus on economic reconstruction, financial inclusion, and the rebuilding of trusted financial infrastructure creates an opportunity to reconnect Syrian families, businesses, and the diaspora. nsave will continue expanding its product and transfer capabilities for underserved communities globally, with a focus on building compliant financial infrastructure for people historically excluded from the international banking system. According to Baroudi:   “Our long-term ambition is to become the default, compliant gateway between distressed economies and the global financial system: providing the full stack of financial services that people in stable economies take for granted. There are hundreds of millions of people who deserve that access. We're building for them.” The company raised $18 million in January 2025.

Frontier AI lab for defence and security Twin Prime has raised have $10 million in pre-seed funding led by Expeditions, with additional investment from American and European VCs, Theon, family offices, and angels from within Palantir, Anduril, Quorum, and more.  Twin Prime is developing AI models that natively reason on data from a large number of sensor modalities in the physical world, notably across the national security landscape, compressing the perception-to-decision layer to enable smart, real-time action against threats.  The company was founded in 2025 by George Lentzas, Stephane Sezer, Drew Calcagno, and Michael Leite-Garcia, a multinational team of researchers in frontier AI, quantitative finance, and national security.  Collectively, they have extensive experience at top institutions, including Hudson River Trading, Google Research, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Columbia University, the White House, the Pentagon, and various branches of both the US and European armed forces.  Mikolaj Firlej, Co-founder and GP of Expeditions, said:  “Current AI models are not specialised enough to capture the complexity of modern war and wider security challenges. They usually have limited applicability at the edge and often overlook sensor integration and critical data feeds.  Twin Prime is developing models purpose-built for high-stakes environments where size, fusion and speed are critical. At a time when most defence prime contractors struggle to integrate advanced AI models, the Twin Prime team presents a clear commercial value not just by retrofitting legacy systems, but by transforming their operations.” Twin Prime and Theon, a large European defence prime, also intend to form a Joint Venture to develop, commercialise, and deploy bespoke AI solutions built upon Twin Prime's proprietary models. The JV will augment Theon’s extensive deployment of sensors and other defence product offerings, particularly as a continuation of its Theon Next initiative.