Grenoble-based industrial deeptech company TiHive has raised €8 million to commercialise its vision solutions, expand globally across key industries, and advance next-generation terahertz chips with enhanced AI. The round includes the EIC Fund, Karista, and Wind, a €130 million Article 9 fund focused on climate adaptation. TiHive’s platform uses proprietary CMOS terahertz chips for high-speed generation and detection, paired with advanced optics and an AI-driven software stack. Terahertz waves are non-ionising and enable see-through imaging, supporting applications from industrial quality control to sensing and secure communications. Integrating terahertz on CMOS enables miniaturisation, scalable manufacturing, low energy consumption, and high-throughput performance. Deployed directly on production lines, TiHive’s systems provide continuous, inline, non-destructive inspection, detecting internal defects, material distribution issues, residual moisture, and thickness deviations in real time. Adopted by leading hygiene manufacturers, the multi-camera, multi-source setup has demonstrated industrial ROI and supports a large diaper-quality dataset, analysing millions of products each week. The company is expanding beyond absorbent hygiene into regulated sectors that require non-destructive inspection, textiles and leather, recycling, agriculture, aerospace and space, for quality verification and impurity detection across the production lifecycle. TiHive is scaling operations and expanding across Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific while continuing production, assembly, and validation in Europe.

Creator Fund, a pre-seed VC that helps scientific founders turn university research into deeptech startups, has closed an initial $41 million for its first European institutional fund. The fund is anchored by Equation Capital and Denmark’s Export and Investment Fund (EIFO), alongside 60+ limited partners. Building on strong demand, the vehicle is already twice the size of Creator Fund’s 2022 UK fund and targets a final close in early 2026. Creator Fund operates a university-centric model across 24 campuses in eight countries. It recruits student investors, who receive carried interest, to source standout founders and surface lab breakthroughs early, enabling support for PhD teams from day one. The fund focuses on AI, life sciences, robotics, and quantum computing to turn academic research into scalable companies. Early investments include Ovo Labs and Sphotonix. Jamie Macfarlane, founder and CEO, believes that universities should be seen not as museums but as foundries, places that actively produce new ventures, because Europe attracts global talent across robotics, computer science, and genetics at the forefront of research. He said: When we ask: how does Europe remain competitive on the world stage? The answer lies in our universities. Creator Fund helps turn scientific discovery into world-defining businesses. Over the past five years, Creator Fund has backed 55 companies whose founders have raised more than $250 million in follow-on financing from leading venture firms and has recorded two exits. Creator Fund also invests beyond the traditional Golden Triangle. In the UK, it has backed three companies from the University of Glasgow, including robotic laboratory company Chemify, which has raised over $45 million, and one of the new fund’s first investments is in Southampton.

Berlin-based praxipal, the AI receptionist transforming healthcare front desks in Germany, has secured $6.7 million in seed funding. The round was led by HV Capital, with participation from Nebular, Anamcara Capital, HPI Ventures and Angel Invest. Founded in 2024, praxipal develops an AI workforce for healthcare front desks, addressing staffing shortages that affect many industrialised countries, including Germany, where over 80 per cent of medical practices report difficulty hiring medical assistants. Its AI receptionist, Luna, manages end-to-end patient communication, handling calls, scheduling, and inquiries so that core front-desk tasks can be automated. This enables practices to allocate more time to patient care while providing patients with continuous, 24/7 access to their providers. Luna answers incoming phone calls for medical practices in a natural, human-like manner. Using domain-specific knowledge and an understanding of practice workflows, Luna resolves patient requests end-to-end without human intervention, exceeding the capabilities of a basic voice bot. The system is highly configurable, allowing practices to tailor behaviour to their needs and processes. Praxipal integrates with established practice management systems, allowing Luna to interact with existing IT infrastructure much like a human staff member. This support helps address staffing shortages by reducing unanswered calls and shifting routine front-desk tasks away from medical assistants, enabling greater focus on in-person patient care. The new funding will support expansion beyond orthodontics into additional specialities, further development of the AI receptionist’s capabilities, and broader rollouts as staffing constraints continue to pressure healthcare operations.

London-based Lupa, an AI-powered operating system for veterinary clinics, has raised $20 million in Series A funding to expand its AI agents, accelerate international growth, and launch what it describes as a Veterinary AI Lab. The round brings total funding to $25 million and follows a seed round completed five months earlier. Singular led the Series A, with participation from Firstminute Capital and angel investors including Michael Callahan. The global petcare market exceeds $350 billion and is growing, yet technology adoption remains uneven. Many large veterinary groups continue to use legacy systems from the 1990s, limiting clinical and operational performance. Founded in 2023 by Nicolò Frisiani and Matei Bjola (both formerly at BCG) and Raul LozanoMartin (formerly at Meta), Lupa is developing a modern operating system for veterinary clinics. The concept originated during a project to upgrade a major veterinary group’s technology stack, where the founders identified constraints in existing systems and opted to build a dedicated platform. Lupa consolidates more than seven point solutions, such as practice management, pet-owner mobile applications, in-patient tools, and AI scribing, into a single enterprise-grade platform designed for AI. Clinics using Lupa report higher ROI, approximately twice that of deployments based on multiple disconnected tools. The product is supported by customer success resources intended to help clinics realise full value from the system. The platform also includes a mobile app for pet owners that supports appointment booking, secure messaging with veterinarians, payments, and a digital pet-health passport for records, vaccinations, and reminders. An AI-enabled receptionist handles inbound calls and scheduling. By connecting clinics and pet owners in real time, Lupa provides an integrated channel for care and communication. Lupa is establishing a Veterinary AI Lab to develop clinically robust, safety-focused AI tools spanning the care pathway, from reception to diagnosis. The lab will serve as a combined product and research hub, publish peer-reviewed work, collaborate with universities and regulators, and contribute to ethical AI standards in pet care. In parallel, Lupa has signed multi-year agreements with veterinary groups in the UK and Europe, with deployments planned across hundreds of clinics. The new funding will support the expansion of its AI agents, international growth, and the launch of the lab.

Einride, a technology company that provides digital, electric, and autonomous solutions for road freight, has raised about $100 million in funding from a mix of existing and new investors. The capital will power Einride’s next phase of growth as it scales the deployment of its autonomous freight solutions, deepens technology development, and continues its expansion with customers.  Investors include EQT Ventures, one of Einride’s largest shareholders; a global asset management company based on the West Coast of the United States; as well as a strategic investment from IonQ, the leading quantum company, alongside other investors and shareholders. “We believe Einride is building the most complete and forward-looking freight ecosystem on the market today,” said Ted Persson, partner at EQT Ventures. “Nordic tech has a habit of being underestimated, until it quietly rewires an entire industry. That’s exactly what Einride is doing in freight.” Founded in Sweden in 2016, Einride is developing and operating a new freight ecosystem, which includes one of the world’s largest fleets of heavy-duty electric trucks, cutting-edge autonomous technology and the proprietary Saga planning optimization platform. Saga integrates advanced digital planning with electric and autonomous vehicles to address the fragmentation, high emissions, and labor shortages that continue to impact the freight industry. “I am excited and proud for the continued trust our investors have placed in us”, said Roozbeh Charli, CEO of Einride.  “This funding allows us to grow with our customer base and accelerate the deployment of our autonomous freight technology. It’s a strong signal of confidence in both our team and our unique position in the market.” This raise follows a year of sustained growth for Einride with net sales more than doubling in 2024, a successful expansion into Austria and the UAE, and a growing footprint with global shippers across Europe and North America.

London-based Simple Life has closed a $35 million Series B led by Hartbeat Ventures, founded by actor and entrepreneur Kevin Hart, along with Liquidity. The raise follows a year of strong performance in 2024, including $100 million in revenue, 64 per cent year-over-year growth, operating profitability, more than 20 million downloads, and over 17.5 million pounds lost by users. Simple Life provides an AI-powered health app that supports weight loss through personalised plans, on-demand virtual coaching, and real-time nutritional insights. The company targets a large and growing market: global digital health is projected to expand from about $340 billion to roughly $940 billion over the next five years, while many existing solutions remain costly, fragmented, or difficult to scale. The platform’s approach combines evidence-based behaviour change, continuous guidance, and real-time nutrition to deliver durable weight outcomes and healthier metabolic profiles, with or without GLP-1s. Its AI coach, “Avo,” delivered 19 million coaching messages in January 2025. In a peer-reviewed study of 50,000+ users, 42 per cent achieved at least 5 per cent weight loss at one year, with higher engagement associated with improved outcomes. Each new member contributes data that enhances personalisation across the user base, creating a compounding behavioural-intelligence effect. Commenting on the round, Mike Prytkov, founder and CEO of Simple, said the industry often fixates on the outcome, while Simple prioritises the journey, making it adaptive, rewarding, and sustainable. With the company’s data and methodology, he added, users don’t need obsessive calorie counting or extreme restrictions. We’re turning healthy habits into a motivating game, helping people not only see results, but also build a more positive relationship with health and wellness. With the new capital, Simple will advance AI for real-time personalisation, multimodal coaching, scaled content creation, and behaviour–science–based gamification to improve retention. Looking ahead, the company plans to launch a gamified companion experience that, based on early testing, has improved both retention and weight-loss outcomes by using streaks, rewards, and motivational prompts to make habit-building more engaging.

Following Sunday's national elections, the pro-European Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS), led by Moldovan President Maia Sandu, claimed victory and a new parliamentary majority.  While the election process was accused of interference by pro-Russian groups, resulting in the barring of two pro-Russian parties, the result offers powerful pro-Europe momentum as the country aims for European Union membership by 2030 and a boost for the local tech startup ecosystem.  According to  Marina Bzovii, Moldova Innovation Technology Park (MITP)  Director, the result is a positive one for Moldovan startups and innovation.  Founded in 2018 as a quasi-governmental entity — created by government decision but not funded by the state — and a first of its kind, “e-park” within a broader e-governance ecosystem, MITP aims to nurture growth and simplify the entrepreneurial journey.  She contends: “Moldova Innovation Technology Park represents far more than a fiscal platform or a development framework for IT companies. MITP is a genuine link between the Republic of Moldova and the European Digital Single Market.  While only a few years ago wine exports were our economic emblem, IT exports have now surpassed this historic milestone, projected to reach one billion euros in 2025. It is as if Moldova has shifted from exporting the taste of tradition to exporting the future.” Over its eight years of activity, MITP has become a launchpad for startups, promoting Moldova’s tech ecosystem on the global stage, strengthening the local community, and spurring innovation.  Bzovii asserts that startups are the engine of creativity and innovation, and in the context of the Republic of Moldova, they play a vital role in transforming the digital economy into one that is competitive and future-oriented. In the first quarter of 2024 alone, MITP residents generated a turnover of 3.4 billion MDL, 88 per cent of which came from exports — clearly demonstrating that the products and services created here have global relevance.  With over 24,000 IT professionals, the sector already contributes 5.7 per cent of GDP, and its principal investors hail from European countries such as Romania, Germany, and others.  “MITP thus becomes not only a facilitator of economic growth but also a solid bridge integrating Moldova into Europe’s digital architecture, offering local companies the opportunity to compete on equal footing with global players.“   According to Bzovii: “With the launch of a dedicated startup fund, we will open new pathways of support for young innovators, turning their bold ideas into businesses with international impact. Startups are, metaphorically speaking, the seeds planted today that will yield the fruits of a resilient digital economy tomorrow — an economy capable of withstanding international competition, organically connecting to innovation networks worldwide, and continuously boosting sector productivity.” Lead image: Vorota Kishineva.

Many fast-growing importers, wholesalers, and e-commerce businesses struggle with a common cash flow challenge: large amounts of capital are locked up in inventory, shipments, or supplier payment terms for months at a time.  This slows growth, limits flexibility, and makes it harder to seize new opportunities — especially for SMEs that don’t have easy access to traditional bank financing. Waylog tackles this problem by freeing up capital tied up in the supply chain.  I spoke to Oscar Masiello, UK Managing Director,  to learn more.   Founded in 2023, the team saw a gap in the market for SMEs: “The normal banks didn’t quite catch up with the speed and growth of these types of companies,” contends Masiello. “These clients grow fast, buy from the Far East, and lock a lot of their capital in the supply chain — which obviously harms their growth.” Its core offering is simple: Waylog pays a company’s supplier immediately (or within agreed terms), and the company repays Waylog up to 120 days later. By bridging this gap, Waylog enables businesses to maintain a cash reserve for operations and growth, rather than having it sit idle in banks or warehouses. Unlike some financing providers, the company doesn’t take equity stakes — its model is purely capital-based. Clients only pay for the credit limit they use and for the time they need it, offering far more flexibility than traditional lending. Masiello contends that in supply chain importing, traditional banks still rely on PDFs back and forth, long processes, and a lot of manual work on both ends. “We’re digital-first. We work with open banking and offer an online dashboard. Clients do everything themselves, and a lot of it is automated. This reflects the fast pace of our clients. They generally prefer speed over anything else. Speed and simplicity have been the angle that’s moved the needle the most for us.” Since its founding, the company has expanded into Finland and now has a primary UK focus. According to Masiello, the company has deployed around £50 million since we entered, “but there’s still a lot to do.” The trade finance space is inevitably exposed to inflation and global trade disruptions, which can hit importers particularly hard. Yet, according to Masiello, younger companies often prove resilient.  “Of course, inflation affects everyone — especially our clients,” he says. “But younger companies are often doing something right. They know how to pivot. We see a lot of creative ways of solving problems in the short term. So yes, disruptions affect them at the highest level, but many of our clients find ways through it.” Masiello believes the trade finance sector is still in its early stages, but is steadily evolving. Over time, he expects the market to shift further toward digitised processes for areas that were previously manual.  “This is still a fairly new space, especially in banking terms,” he says. “ As companies like us and other lenders get a feel for the market, make mistakes, and learn from them, the foundation will get stronger over time.”

Nscale, the UK-based AI data centre startup, has closed a $433 million funding round, just days after bagging a $1.1 billion funding round, as the vast investment in AI infrastructure shows no signs of abating. Nscale, which pitches itself as a "hyperscaler engineered for AI", was named as a key local AI infrastructure partner for OpenAI, Microsoft and Nvidia, which announced significant investments into the UK AI ecosystem last week, coinciding with the visit of President Trump. The latest $433m funding round in the less-than-two-year-old startup comes in the form of what is called a SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity), where an investor gives capital in exchange for shares at a future date. The pre-series C SAFE financing came from Nvidia, Nokia, Dell, asset management firm Blue Owl, along with other existing Series B and new investors, Nscale said. Josh Payne, CEO, founder, Nscale said: “We’re overwhelmed by the interest we’ve received. It’s incredible to see the passion and confidence we have in Nscale is matched by key investors.  “This commitment to participating in our pre-Series C SAFE, just days after the close of our Series B funding, represents a powerful endorsement of our vision to deliver sovereign, scalable infrastructure for the AI era.” Nscale has now raised over $1.7bn in total, it is understood. The startup is providing AI infrastructure for OpenAI’s AI data centre in Norway, called Stargate Norway, and its UK equivalent, Stargate UK. 

Shared micromobility provider Dott has launched a new generation of e-bikes in Paris, marking the beginning of a four-year contract in the French capital. The new Segway Urban B200 model will be rolled out exclusively in Paris before expanding to other European cities. The deployment includes 6,000 vehicles and follows a successful pilot of 50 units tested on Paris streets since May 2025. The launch cements Dott’s continued focus on France’s largest city, where it recorded over 5.3 million rides in 2025 and counted more than 400,000 active riders in 2024. Dott plans to invest over €10 million in Paris over the course of the new contract, which runs through 2029. “Paris is a global showcase for sustainable urban mobility,” said Henri Moissinac, CEO and co-founder of Dott. “Our continued presence since early 2019 demonstrates our support to the city’s ambitious sustainability goals, which is fully aligned with our own mission to change mobility for good. We’re excited to continue providing Parisians and visitors with a safe, reliable, and affordable service for the next four years. Starting today with the launch of our new Dott e-bike, which we know riders will love.” The move comes at a time when cities across Europe are revising urban transport regulations, often giving preference to fewer but more accountable micromobility providers. Paris, which in 2023 became the first European capital to ban rental e-scooters, has tightened its framework for shared mobility, placing more emphasis on sustainability, reliability, and integration with public transport. Dott, which merged with fellow micromobility firm TIER in early 2024 but retained the Dott name, is among the few operators to have secured long-term agreements in major European cities. The Paris fleet upgrade reinforces the city’s position as a flagship market, both in terms of ride volume and regulatory influence. Dott’s continued expansion also reflects broader growth in the European micromobility sector, which is expected to exceed €15 billion in value by 2030, according to industry forecasts. Dott's new e-bikes are manufactured by Segway, with a particular focus on reducing operational costs and increasing uptime. The Urban B200 features a 918Wh battery with a range of up to 120 km, which is double the lifespan of Dott’s previous model. “Our strategic partnership with Dott is a testament to our shared commitment to sustainability, both in business and service,” said Zack Yan, Vice General Manager of the Commercial Mobility Business Division at Segway. “By providing innovative, high-efficiency solutions, we are helping to create a greener, more sustainable transportation ecosystem in Paris and beyond, responding to the increasing demand for environmentally conscious mobility.” The e-bike has been updated with features aimed at improving comfort and accessibility. These include a lighter frame, anti-puncture tyres, a redesigned basket, and an easier-to-use clamp seat — all intended to make cycling more inclusive for a broader demographic, including women and older riders. Other upgrades focus on ride quality and user experience, such as a smart torque sensor for smoother pedalling, a real-time dashboard, and a no-lock system to speed up usage during peak hours. By reducing battery swaps and maintenance downtime, Dott expects to keep more bikes available during high-demand periods, while promoting cycling as a viable alternative to car use in urban settings. Photo Credit: Dott

Investors don’t understand AI technology and are not being “particularly smart” about investing in it, according to the founder of a UK AI firm that advises OpenAI and other frontier model companies on AI safety. Marc Warner, the founder of UK AI firm Faculty AI and a former government AI adviser, said: “When I talk to investors, it's clear that they don't understand the technology. “It's the same people who were telling me AR and VR were the most important technology of our time two years ago and crypto two years before that. I certainly don't think that investors are being particularly smart about where they put their money and eventually that will cause a bubble.” Warner’s comments come as billions of dollars of investor funds are being deployed into frontier AI model companies, which are attracting sky-high valuations amid concerns of an AI bubble. Despite concerns of an AI bubble, Warner said he was much more bullish on AI than he was five years ago. Speaking on the Tech.eu podcast, he added: “AI will continue to be the most important technology of our time, I think.” Elsewhere on the podcast, Warner talked about the challenges for organisations implementing AI tools. He said: “It’s a huge deal. AI is both a complicated technology that has the normal technology change management difficulties and some that are particular to itself.” He also talked about some of the public and private sector work undertaken by Faculty AI, which came to prominence in the UK during Covid-19 when it helped track hospital admissions. Its client roster includes Anthropic and OpenAI, checking the safety of their models before they are released, as well as working with the UK government on a project to help develop AI to handle teacher lesson plans and mark homework. Warner also talked about some of the defence tech work Faculty AI was undertaking.

French biotech company SeaBeLife has secured €2 million in a pre-Series A funding round to advance its drug development pipeline, with clinical trials expected to begin in 2026. The financing, led by existing investor iXLife and joined by new backers such as INEXT and Femmes Business Angels, will support two core therapeutic programmes targeting dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and severe acute hepatitis. Founded in 2019, SeaBeLife is developing first-in-class small molecules designed to inhibit both necroptosis and ferroptosis, two regulated cell death pathways implicated in tissue damage associated with rare, acute and chronic diseases. This dual-target approach is currently not available on the market and is seen as a potentially transformative strategy in organ protection. “The renewed backing from our longstanding investors, together with the addition of new partners, is a clear signal of confidence in our vision and development strategy, and I am extremely grateful for their support,” said Morgane Rousselot, PhD, CEO and co-founder of SeaBeLife. “This fundraising is a decisive step towards clinical trials and reinforces our ambition to create a new generation of cutting-edge treatments capable of blocking two major pathways for programmed cell death. We are now actively preparing for a Series A funding round to sustain this momentum.” SeaBeLife's lead candidates include SBL03, for dry AMD, and SBL01, for severe acute hepatitis. Both target therapeutic areas with significant unmet need and limited treatment options. The company recently reported positive in vivo efficacy data for SBL03 in geographic atrophy, a severe and advanced form of dry AMD. Alongside iXLife and INEXT, returning investors in the round included Breizh Angels, WeLikeStartup, Angels Santé, and Business Angels des Grandes Ecoles. Femmes Business Angels, a pan-European women-led investment group, also participated, with Marie-Pierre Sbardella joining SeaBeLife’s Strategic Committee as part of the agreement. SeaBeLife has now raised €9 million in total through equity and public funding, including support from Bpifrance, SATT Ouest Valorisation, Biotech Santé Bretagne, and the Région Bretagne. The company was also a winner of the i-Nov Competition 2024, a French national innovation grant aimed at accelerating high-potential startups. While still in the preclinical stage, SeaBeLife’s dual-pathway inhibition strategy reflects a growing interest in multi-target approaches in drug development, particularly in indications with complex pathological mechanisms. If successful, its therapies could unlock new options for conditions currently underserved by the pharmaceutical market, which in the case of dry AMD and hepatitis includes patient populations in the millions and multi-billion-euro potential markets. SeaBeLife is now preparing for a larger Series A round to fund clinical studies and scale up development of its pipeline. The company remains headquartered in Roscoff and is led by a scientific founding team with backgrounds in cellular biology, toxicology and pharmacology.

Building automation software company viboo has secured €3.3 million in seed funding. The round was led by Realyze Ventures, joined by Zürcher Kantonalbank, along with other new and existing investors. Buildings generate over 40 per cent of global CO₂ emissions. Regulatory pressure is increasing, and the EU targets net-zero emissions for existing building stock by 2050. By 2030, 5.38 million commercial buildings must reach at least energy class “E” or risk becoming stranded assets. Low-efficiency buildings are already losing about 4 per cent of value per year. Meanwhile, automation systems are becoming mandatory for many building types. viboo has developed a cloud-based building management system that can be retrofitted easily and wirelessly connects with common IoT devices such as smart thermostats in commercial buildings. Its AI learns heating patterns and controls them proactively, delivering savings without sacrificing comfort, with low upfront costs and fast ROI. The solution is already deployed in more than 100 buildings, producing average energy savings of 27 per cent. viboo’s model is built to scale. Rather than relying on proprietary hardware, it integrates with leading building tech vendors and uses open software interfaces. An installer app enables fast, straightforward deployment by any qualified installer. Beyond direct sales to municipalities and real estate firms, viboo works with installation and facility management partners. The investment from PropTech VC Realyze Ventures reflects confidence in viboo’s approach to improving building energy efficiency with minimal interventions, delivering measurable savings, and contributing to the decarbonization of existing building stock. Felix Bünning, Co-founder of viboo, commented on the seed round: Our solution convinces because it is easy to implement, delivers fast results, and generates immediate savings. Now we are taking the next big step with our entry into our first EU market, where a combination of energy prices and regulation creates a strong pull. The new funding will support expansion into the German market, where demand is rising due to the Building Energy Act (GEG). It will also drive the platform’s evolution from a dedicated energy management solution to a comprehensive building management system, adding features such as individual heating cost billing.

Paris-based Clarifeye, the platform enabling organisations to build expert AI agents at scale, has raised a €4 million pre-seed round led by EQT Ventures. The round also includes participation from Drysdale Ventures, Olivier Pomel (CEO and founder of Datadog), Jean-Luc Robert (ex-CEO of Kyriba), Alexandre Berriche (Fleet) and other prominent angel investors. Clarifeye provides a GenAI-ready data layer that connects raw data, human expertise, and LLMs, enhancing generalist models to reason like an organisation’s best experts and enabling teams of any size to build expert-level AI agents quickly. In complex sectors such as law and regulation, life sciences, and manufacturing, core value often rests with a small group of specialists who hold institutional knowledge, contextual experience, and distinctive reasoning methods. This expertise is scarce, slow to develop, hard to scale, and can create decision bottlenecks. Current generative AI cannot fully address this. RAG and LLMs handle general queries but lack traceability, repeatability, and the ability to capture nuanced expert judgment. As a result, many companies struggle to replicate expert work with GenAI, while proprietary knowledge remains fragmented across documents, databases, and people. Clarifeye addresses this gap with a data layer that links enterprise data to human expertise. The platform enables developers and domain experts to co-design, test, and refine LLM-powered workflows on proprietary, validated data. Experts can encode their reasoning, relationships, and decision patterns, turning informal know-how into operational intelligence that AI agents can use consistently. The result is domain-specific agents with greater reasoning depth, accuracy, and consistency, even on complex tasks, approaching the performance of top experts. Rolled out use case by use case, these agents help establish collective intelligence at scale, freeing experts to focus on collaboration and creating new knowledge. According to CEO Mathieu Grisolia, many GenAI initiatives fail because organisations are pushed to choose between fast but shallow generalist AI and specialised but rigid vertical AI, neither captures the full depth of expertise. Clarifeye takes a different path: we capture what is in your experts’ minds, turning it into an always-on AI that thinks like them, delivering ultra-specialised AI out of the box. This funding enables us to grow our team and accelerate that vision. Clarifeye will use the new funding to support ongoing platform development and the recruitment of top talent.

Austrian deep tech startup Optimuse has raised €4 million Seed funding. Optimuse was founded in Vienna in 2021 by Dominik Pezzei, Fabian Pitscheider, and Felix Maximilian Hofer. Optimuse is an AI platform that shows builders, developers, and planners early on which technical solutions for heating, cooling, ventilation, and building envelopes deliver the best results in terms of costs and emissions – in both new construction and renovation projects. It uses existing plans and documents to create a realistic digital building model, compares thousands of variants, and recommends the most economical, climate-friendly solution – including clear recommendations for action. Early design decisions shape the costs and emissions of buildings for decades. With OPTIMUSE, these decisions are data-driven – with measurable results: 70 per cent faster in preliminary engineering 10 per cent lower construction costs through better selection and dimensioning 20 per cent additional emission savings. These effects are evident across all projects – from residential to commercial to industrial. Optimuse quickly creates a realistic simulation-based digital model of the building from existing plans and documents. Based on this, the platform compares modernization paths (e.g., heating replacement, office to residential, gas to heat pump) and quantifies the effects on CAPEX, OPEX, CO₂, and comfort. The result: technically reliable cost/benefit analyses with transparent assumption documentation and sensitivity analyses, as well as prioritised action plans that focus investments, reduce implementation risks, and accelerate CO₂ savings. Optimuse analyses early designs using simulation, identifies variants with lower energy requirements, and precisely calculates the optimal sizing of the building services equipment. This ensures that systems are neither oversized nor undersized – investment costs are reduced, operating costs are lower from the outset, and the target values for efficiency and comfort are achieved in a technically sound manner. According to Dominik Pezzei, Managing Director and co-founder of Optimuse, buildings are becoming increasingly complex, both technically and in terms of regulations.  “Our AI solution provides clarity: it compares variants in a very short time and recommends the most sustainable and economical solution. This enables our customers to plan, transform, and operate buildings in a future-proof and cost-efficient manner." The capital comes from seed + speed Ventures  and Blum Ventures, as well as existing investors Matterwave Ventures and Gründungsfonds. Alexander Kölpin, Managing Director at seed + speed Ventures, shared:  "What convinces me about Optimuse is the combination of sound technology and practical application: using digital simulations, the team shows early on in the engineering phase which renovation measures are technically feasible and also economically viable. In a market with enormous renovation needs and strict efficiency requirements, this is a real game changer."    According to André Hammerer, Managing Director at Blum Ventures: "Optimuse addresses one of the biggest issues of our time: the sustainable transformation of the building stock. With its combination of AI, building physics, and practical simulation, the team creates real added value for builders, planners, and operators." With the fresh capital, Optimuse is accelerating the internationalisation and distribution of its AI solutions for the engineering, renovation, and operation of buildings. Lead image: Optimuse. Photo: Maximilian Salzer.

Serena, a European venture capital firm, announces the first close of its fourth flagship fund, Serena IV, at €200 million. Commitments come from longstanding LPs as well as new institutional and private investors in France and internationally. In line with prior funds, Serena IV will invest up to €15 million per company, supporting entrepreneurs from the earliest stages who aim to build global businesses. Over the past 15 years, Serena has invested in well-known companies, including Dataiku, Malt, Descartes Underwriting, and Electra. The new fund maintains this approach, emphasising clear investment theses, disciplined execution, and close collaboration with founders. Serena IV focuses on two areas: applied artificial intelligence (AI) and the energy transition. These shifts are reshaping global value chains and present Europe with an opportunity to strengthen its technological, environmental, and economic position. The fund has already made four initial investments, including Formality, an AI-powered contract management platform launched by the founders of TVTY (previously backed by Serena and later acquired by Nielsen). The launch of Serena IV follows a strong 2024 for Serena III. Portfolio companies raised over €600 million during the year, bringing total funding since 2018 to more than €1.5 billion. The 18 portfolio companies have a combined valuation approaching €5 billion, with several building international positions in climate and energy transition or applied AI. Recent activity also reflects the model’s effectiveness: in early 2025, Serena completed two exits, Salsify and Booksy, demonstrating its capacity to support startups from the seed stage to international expansion. An experienced team and a diversified international investor base Alongside co-founders Xavier Lorphelin and Marc Fournier, Serena IV is supported by partners Sébastien Le Roy, Olivier Martret, and Paul Moriou, who have worked together for six years on Serena III and have an established track record in the ecosystem. The team is expanding its sourcing and analysis capabilities with the arrival of its first Associate, Constance Gontier. This collective experience supports Serena’s approach of maintaining close relationships with founders; the team is largely composed of former entrepreneurs familiar with the operational and human challenges of growth. Serena has built a robust investor base of French and European institutions and private investors, many of whom have renewed commitments across successive funds. At the first close, 80 per cent of historical investors recommitted, and the base broadened to include new investors. In under five years, total capital raised has doubled to €1 billion, reflecting sustained LP confidence and the platform’s ability to create value across funds, while contributing to the emergence of European players with meaningful global scale.

Spotify co-founder Daniel Ek is standing down as CEO of the Stockholm-based streaming giant after nearly two decades in the role.Ek has served as Spotify’s CEO since he co-founded the company in 2006 with Martin Lorentzon. Ek is moving to the role of executive chairman of Spotify in January next year and he is being replaced by two internal co-CEOs.Gustav Söderström, co-president, and chief product and technology officer, and Alex Norström, co-president and chief business officer, will become Spotify co-CEOs.Ek said: “Over the last few years, I’ve turned over a large part of the day-to-day management and strategic direction of Spotify to Alex and Gustav–who have shaped the company from our earliest days and are now more than ready to guide our next phase.“This change simply matches titles to how we already operate. In my role as executive chairman, I will focus on the long arc of the company and keep the Board and our co-CEOs deeply connected through my engagement.”In a video post on X, Ek explained the reason for the change, citing that the time was right, highlighting how the co-presidents had scaled Spotify’s video podcasts and other successful products and that Spotify had been profitable for over a year.Ek said he would still be involved in the “big strategic decisions” undertaken by Spotify and would help guide the co-CEOs.

Czech startup Supernova has secured a $9.2 million Series A round to support the launch of Portal, an AI-powered product development tool that enables professional teams to accelerate workflows from ideation through to code. The round was led by Taiwania Capital, with participation from J&T Ventures, Reflex Capital, Kaya, Credo Ventures, EQT Ventures, Wing VC and Y Combinator. The funding will be used to grow the team, expand into Asian markets with the support of Taiwania Capital, and scale product and marketing operations. Built on Supernova’s existing unified platform for design systems and code, Portal introduces a new category the company refers to as vibe-coding: a method of using AI to manage and speed up routine and strategic tasks across product workflows. Unlike prototyping tools such as Lovable and v0, Supernova Portal targets the entire product lifecycle, offering features designed to integrate seamlessly with established enterprise processes. “As an engineer and product leader who's spent years in the trenches building and shipping products, I've seen firsthand how these bottlenecks bring teams to a halt,” said Jiří Třečák, founder and CEO of Supernova. “That's why we're launching this new product – to give individuals the power to ship like an entire team and enable full teams to push 10x faster, so they can focus on creating exceptional products rather than getting bogged down.” Portal is designed to eliminate common pain points in product development such as fragmented documentation, inconsistent handoffs, and resource bottlenecks. By embedding AI agents directly into collaborative product workspaces, Supernova is positioning itself to address what investors see as a major efficiency gap in product organisations.

NoBACZ Healthcare, a University of Cambridge spinout developing novel products that change the way lesions and wounds are treated in livestock and horses, has raised a £4.8 million funding round. Wounds on livestock and horses are typically treated with antibiotics and then covered with cloth bandages. However, this approach is often ineffective in agricultural environments where slurry can contaminate wounds, washing off antibiotics and turning bandages into infection risks. NoBACZ Healthcare was founded by Dr Jonathan Powell and Dr Nuno Faria following their research at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine into how the body naturally builds and utilises mineral structures for its own benefit. Initially developed to solve the problem of digital dermatitis, a disease that is painful for animals and costly for farmers – and affects a quarter of all cows at any given time – their research led to the creation of NoBACZ's patent-protected ‘liquid bandage’. The result is a robust, flexible, and waterproof coating that can be applied as a gel, dip or spray. Unlike antibiotics and cloth bandages, it creates an instant protective barrier that seals out slurry and bacteria, allowing lesions to heal without the risk of infection even in harsh environments. The coating is durable, yet biodegradable, safe in the food chain, intuitive to apply, and antibiotic-free. Independent large-scale studies have validated its effectiveness, including a Flock Health trial on 6,840 lambs, which demonstrated significantly lower mortality rates and higher market weights compared to the current industry standard. NoBACZ is already active in international markets, with an initial focus on the UK, Ireland and Europe, alongside launches in New Zealand, the USA and Australia.  Dr Jonathan Powell, CEO and Co-founder of NoBACZ Healthcare, said: “We founded NoBACZ Healthcare with the goal of transforming healthcare solutions for a more sustainable future whilst reducing antibiotic use. In parallel to the veterinary product roadmap, we are starting to define our human product opportunity. We are at a pivotal and exciting moment in our company’s journey, and we look forward to working with our new and existing investors on the next phase of our growth.” The Yield Lab led the round, with participation from Adjuvo , ACF Investors, the University of Cambridge, Parkwalk, The FSE Group, and Cambridge Enterprise Ventures. Gentiane Gorlier, General Partner at The Yield Lab, said: “At The Yield Lab, we are delighted to deepen our support for NoBACZ, having also backed the company in its previous round. The team has consistently impressed us with their vision, execution, and commitment to transforming animal healthcare with sustainable, antibiotic-free solutions. Leading this round reflects our confidence in NoBACZ’s leadership and technology, and we believe the company is poised for significant global impact.” Mark Foster-Brown, CEO of Adjuvo, said: “For too long, topical antibiotics and bandages have offered inadequate solutions for animal wound care. NoBACZ’s patented platform technology sets a new benchmark, delivering ground-breaking results while aligning with Adjuvo's mission to back innovation in underserved sectors. Led by globally recognised experts from the University of Cambridge, we are proud to support the team as they transform wound management in livestock and beyond.”  The investment will be used to finalise its new pipeline of products and accelerate the commercialisation and global distribution of its existing products. In parallel with the veterinary product roadmap, they are also defining their human product opportunity.

Concept Ventures today announced the close of an $88 million Fund II to back the UK and Europe’s most promising early-stage tech talent.  The fund, the second institutionally-backed raise from the firm, cements Concept Ventures' position as the largest dedicated Pre-Seed fund in Europe. The fund was oversubscribed, with the first close completed in three weeks. The raise was backed by LPs, including Aldea Ventures, Top Tier Capital Partners, Marktlink Capital, Dominus, and Granite Capital Management. 80 per cent of the funds’ institutional investors are US-based. LPs also include one of the world’s largest US investment banking institutions and a leading charitable trust. In addition, over 70 per cent of Concept Ventures' portfolio founders have also joined as LPs in this latest fund, including ElevenLabs CEO and co-founder, Mati Staniszewski  After launching its first institutionally-backed fund ($65m) in 2022, Concept Ventures has invested in over 44 companies at Pre-Seed. With a market-leading record of unearthing and backing exceptional talent at the concept stage, their portfolio includes voice AI giant ElevenLabs as well as physics simulation AI VSim, decarbonisation data platform Treefera, AI avatar generator Anam, and defence software firm Arondite. Concept Ventures now has $200 million in assets under management (AUM) and Fund I is a top 1 per cent performing fund for its vintage globally. 100 per cent of Concept Fund I portfolio companies that have gone to market to fundraise have successfully closed their next round. The Fund I startups backed by Concept at Pre-Seed stage since 2022 have now collectively raised over $450 million. The Concept team takes a people-first approach to decision-making, informed by their ‘outsiders backing outsiders’ mindset. All team members come from non-VC backgrounds, helping them spot unconventional talent and emerging market sectors earlier than other funds. For 90 per cent of portfolio founders, Concept is the first VC conversation they’ve had. With Fund II, Concept will back up to 50 companies at Pre-Seed stage across the UK and Europe. With an average cheque of $1 million, Concept aims to lead over 90 per cent of rounds. A proudly sector-agnostic fund, the investment team is looking for exceptional founders with global ambitions. Their Pre-Seed stage specialism also reduces signalling risk for founders as they look to graduate to Seed and Series A. This avoids the alignment issues that can arise at multi-stage funds. The Fund pledges 1 per cent of the total carry pool to charities of a founder’s choosing. This pledge has already enabled school facilities to be built in India and committed to funding youth mental health provision across the UK, as well as LGBT communities affected by HIV and AIDS. Reece Chowdhry, Founding Partner at Concept Ventures, comments: “As outsiders to VC, we’ve always believed Pre-Seed investing requires true specialists - partners who can spot and support founders before the wider market sees their potential. Raising an oversubscribed $88 million fund from a majority US investor base (as well as achieving first close in just three weeks) is a huge vote of confidence in this thesis and in the European market at large.  To have 70 per cent of our portfolio founders now backing us as LPs is a further validation of the people-centric approach we’ve worked so hard to develop and deploy. This close cements our position as Europe’s largest dedicated Pre-Seed fund and gives us the firepower to keep saying ‘yes’ at the very beginning of a founder’s journey.”