London-based energy tech company Boldr has raised an oversubscribed $3.2 million seed round to advance its mission of turning homes into active grid participants, helping homeowners reduce costs while supporting grid operators amid rising demand. The round included participation from venture capital funds across North America and Europe, including Ada Ventures, Unconventional Ventures, Inclimo Climate Tech Fund, Prosegur, Techstars, S20 Fund, and Viva Holdings, the latter being the owner of a leading HVAC contractor brand and a Boldr customer. Boldr is already backed by leading industry figures, including the former Head of Manufacturing at Tesla and the former Head of Engineering at SpaceX. The US power grid is under pressure as demand rises from the electrification of heating and cooling, the growth of EVs, AI, and data centres. While wind and solar output have expanded, generation often occurs outside peak demand, complicating peak management and raising reliability concerns. Large greenfield projects, such as nuclear or utility-scale renewables, are slow and capital-intensive. Practical technology solutions are required to close this gap. Boldr addresses this need at the household level. The company builds smart heating and cooling products and a companion app that automates climate control, supports grid-connected savings, and helps households manage bills in real time. Rather than waiting for long-lead infrastructure, Boldr leverages the existing installed base of HVAC systems, enhanced by EVs, home batteries, and rooftop solar, to unlock distributed, flexible capacity quickly and at lower cost. Delivered through contractor networks, Boldr’s hardware and software integrate seamlessly into homes to bring energy use under active management. Homeowners can optimise consumption, reduce bills, shift usage away from peak hours, and supply capacity back to the grid when needed. Madi Ablyazov, Boldr’s CEO and co-founder, said the company views each home as a potential power plant: By tapping into everyday energy devices, starting with HVAC, we can provide peak capacity to the grid while helping families lower bills and optimise usage. This round fuels our expansion across the US HVAC market and beyond. The funding will accelerate Boldr’s effort to make homes active grid resources, reducing costs for homeowners and helping operators manage rising demand. The company plans to expand partnerships with HVAC contractors and wholesalers, extend its platform to additional high-load household devices, and scale its residential power-plant model to boost grid flexibility.

The UK Government has announced £4.4 million in funding for a series of aviation technology projects, including drone delivery networks and heavy-lift unmanned aircraft, as part of its wider effort to maintain global leadership in aerospace innovation. The funding, delivered through the Future Flight Programme by Innovate UK, aims to accelerate the commercial adoption of uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) and zero-emission aviation technologies. It is part of the Government’s Plan for Change and its commitment to sustainable transport, with broader economic goals of supporting high-skilled jobs, regional growth, and public sector efficiency. Among the recipients is Apian, a UK-based drone healthcare logistics company, whose London Health Bridge Project will scale operations from 1,000 to 50,000 medical deliveries per month, including blood and pathology samples for the NHS. “This funding will enable Apian and our partners to develop multiple simultaneous operations (MSO) across our NHS network in London,” said Louisa Smith, Chief Aviation Officer at Apian. “MSO is a vital step closer to scaled, low-cost drone delivery operations in the UK, that will support NHS productivity and resilience while reducing emissions.” Another grant recipient is the Beyond Restoration project, which plans to deploy long-range, heavy-lift drones to deliver ecological materials to remote and environmentally sensitive areas across the UK. The project is led by AutoSpray Systems and includes partners such as the National Trust and the Woodland Trust “Our ‘Beyond Restoration’ project will apply innovation to vital conservation schemes: restoring our precious landscapes with efficiency and at scale,” said Andy Sproson, Chief Operating Officer at AutoSpray Systems. “By pioneering large-scale Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations, we are not only redefining how conservation can be achieved, but also building the skilled workforce needed for a new industry.” Also included in the funding round is a Scottish heavy-lift drone pilot for offshore wind farm cargo delivery, which aims to demonstrate cost and time savings in remote industrial logistics. The Government sees such technologies as critical to the future of UK aviation and the broader economy. According to Aviation Minister Keir Mather, the funding is part of a broader push to ensure the UK remains at the forefront of aerospace innovation. “We’re backing the next generation of British aviation businesses whose transformative technologies will reshape how we live and work in the years to come,” Mather said. “Investing in emerging technologies like drones and unmanned aircraft is key to build a greener and more efficient transport system. But this isn’t just good news for the environment; this tech will also save our public sector and businesses valuable time and cash, whilst helping to boost skills and support high quality jobs across the country.” The support for advanced aviation forms part of wider UK Government investments, including a £2.3 billion commitment over 10 years to the Aerospace Technology Institute, and efforts to develop Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) under the forthcoming Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill. The Civil Aviation Authority is working with funded partners to ensure new operations comply with evolving safety, regulatory, and integration standards. As the drone and advanced air mobility sectors continue to grow globally, governments are racing to provide the regulatory clarity and funding support needed to scale these systems. Startups and mid-sized tech firms are now playing a greater role in shaping the future of aviation, particularly in areas such as last-mile delivery, offshore logistics, and rapid-response healthcare.

Notion Capital has today announced the close of its new $130 million growth fund, Notion Capital Opportunities III  The new fund continues Notion’ strategy of supporting its best performing venture portfolio companies longer on their capital journeys. It also has nearly double the allocation to invest in selected external growth stage companies, where Notion believes they have what it takes to build category-leading outcomes. As well as its strong operational heritage and deep subject matter expertise in business software, the firm prides itself on its value-added model, with an extensive Platform team supporting its portfolio companies in areas such as product, go-to-market strategy, talent and pricing. The new fund follows the same proven strategy as its predecessors, where performance has been extremely strong across all metrics. With AI as the platform for the next generation of business software companies, the market has never been more dynamic, with opportunities across four categories:  Knowledge (SaaS accelerated and compounded by AI),  Money (fintech and adjacent industries),  Labour (AI reshaping the services market), and  Machines (AI interacting with and learning from the physical world). Notion has invested across all four categories in the past year with demand also increasingly fuelled by European sovereign resilience strategies spanning cyber security, supply chain and defence tech. The fund has already made several investments including existing venture portfolio companies Aikido, Upvest and Resistant AI plus new investments into Nelly and Kraken Technology Group.  Notion expects to make around a dozen core investments in total from the fund.  Like Notion’s most recent venture fund, Growth Opps III is Euro-denominated and Luxembourg-based, reflecting the firm’s pan-European focus. Notion also announced that Jess Bartos had joined the firm to help drive its growth strategy, Notion’s first-ever external partner hire. An ex-Rothschild investment banker, Jess joins from Salesforce Ventures, where she led or supported numerous investments, including ElevenLabs and Notion portfolio company Protex AI. Jess joins existing Notion partner, Stephanie Opdam, now focused on this fund and strategy.  This is the first time Notion’s growth funds have had dedicated leadership resources, reflecting the firm’s ambition to substantially increase the size and profile of this strategy over the coming cycles. Stephen Chandler, Managing Partner at Notion Capital, said: “Whilst the whole team will continue to support activities for this new fund, it is an important milestone to have dedicated resources focussed on it, which is testament to our ambitions for this strategy going forwards. I am delighted to welcome Jess Bartos to our firm where I am confident she has a profound contribution to make.” Investors in the new fund comprised sovereign wealth funds, fund of funds, pension funds, insurers, family offices and high net worth individuals from across Europe, MENA and the United States. Notion expects to be back in the market with its sixth venture fund in 2026.

Lithuania-based Joiner, a social platform that helps people make real-life friends through shared activities and events, has raised €500,000 in an angel round, bringing total funding to €1.2 million. The company will use the capital to improve product stability, test monetisation features, and lay the groundwork for expansion into new European markets. Loneliness is a growing public health concern. In 2023, the World Health Organisation flagged it as a global issue, and surveys show more than 30 per cent of young adults feel lonely daily. At the same time, reliance on dating apps is waning, with many users reporting “dating app burnout.” Demand is rising for simpler, lower-pressure ways to meet people offline. Joiner addresses this need by connecting people through shared activities. The app helps users, whether new to a city or looking to broaden their social circle, find others with similar interests and form friendships. By emphasising casual, group experiences, Joiner reduces the pressure of one-on-one meetings and supports more natural connections within local communities. Eduard Titov, founder and CEO of Joiner, outlines the mission to tackle loneliness through real-world group activities: We know the model resonates because we have attracted tens of thousands of users on almost no marketing spend. There is a genuine organic demand for genuine, social experiences. Activities on the platform include bar crawls, board-game nights, running clubs, day hikes, and car shows. Both expats and locals often act as informal ambassadors, with word-of-mouth complementing social media. Many dedicated users become hosts, organising activities directly in the app. With the new funding, Joiner plans UX upgrades to chat and event-creation features and will pilot a subscription offering with premium options for attendees and organisers. Expansion is on the roadmap for early 2026, starting with mid-sized European cities with active expat and digital-nomad communities, including Prague, Lisbon, and Málaga.

Arqh, an AI decision intelligence company, has closed a $3.8 million pre-seed financing round to grow its decision intelligence engine powering the most complex logistics operations. The round was led by Founderful, with participation from Merantix Capital. Arqh is a Zurich-based AI company developing a decision intelligence engine that turns business goals into real-time operational decisions. Many supply chains still rely on spreadsheets, phone calls, and legacy systems, resulting in slow responses, limited visibility, and margin pressure. Arqh addresses these challenges by combining language models with a proprietary optimisation engine that continuously re-plans operations, explains its recommendations, and keeps human dispatchers in the loop while meeting real-world constraints. Its platform supports industries including logistics, energy, fuel replenishment, food and beverage, and field services, unifying optimisation and language understanding to help organisations model scenarios, track KPIs, and respond dynamically to disruptions. Launched just 14 weeks ago, Arqh is working with Conrad-Storz and Feldschlösschen as design partners, already demonstrating more than 15 per cent savings in fleet operating costs and around 80 per cent less manual planning. Teams can also run over 1,000 “what-if” simulations in minutes to guide strategic decisions. Antonia Unger, Co-founder and CEO of Arqh, shared: For decades, the industry has been forced back to manual planning as rigid and off-the-shelf optimisers can’t handle the real-world messiness. We built Arqh to do both. Our ‘Hybrid Brain’ translates messy, real-world language into mathematically optimal plans, while keeping the human expert firmly in command. Arqh’s hybrid model combines a “Left Brain” logic engine, which generates optimal and practical plans, with a “Right Brain” language AI that interprets ambiguous requests and disruptions, providing teams with both mathematical accuracy and real-world context. The new funding will support the expansion of Arqh’s engineering and research teams and accelerate software rollout with design partners.

Munich-based industrial AI company Augmented Industries has raised €4.5 million in pre-seed funding led by b2venture, with participation from 1st Kind by Peugeot Family, xdeck, DnA Ventures, and industry angel investors from BMW, Siemens, and the German Mittelstand. The company also secured an EIC Accelerator grant support from the European Union. Globally, 500 million industrial operators work in complex, rapidly changing environments, and full automation will remain impractical for many factories and field service teams. As equipment grows more sophisticated, skilled technicians are a key competitive advantage, given the hands-on skills, contextual judgment, and broad troubleshooting they provide. Augmented Industries develops AI-driven software that enables technicians to rapidly create, manage, and follow work instructions and troubleshooting guides, boosting productivity and reducing downtime. Use cases include automated onboarding in pneumatics, electronics, and robotics, machine-specific changeover instructions, personalised AI troubleshooting for milling machines, and AI-assisted quality checks during wind turbine maintenance. The company’s mission is to empower industrial workers to drive digital and sustainable transformation. Its flagship Flow Tool helps manufacturers and service providers meet quality and uptime targets, providing an end-to-end platform for AI-accelerated (up to 8× faster) creation of step-by-step guides and training from multiple data sources, intuitive knowledge capture, and automated qualification management in regulated environments. Early adopters report a 29 per cent faster time-to-productivity. Originating from the founders’ PhD research at the University of Cambridge, the software applies learning science and instructional design and supports secure deployment across global networks. It is used by organisations such as Siemens, Vestas, BMW, ZF, and Ford, and is valued for AI-driven content creation, personalised technician support, and real-time feedback through MES and QMS integrations. The new funding will be used to advance enterprise-grade AI capabilities, accelerate go-to-market execution toward a technician-excellence platform, and expand the customer base among large manufacturers and industrial service providers across Europe.

Today is the last day to have your say. The European Commission’s consultation on the proposed 28th Regime championed by the EU Inc., closes tonight — if you’re a founder, investor or ecosystem-builder, now is your final chance to submit feedback.  Tell Brussels what you think before it’s too late. Europe’s founders and investors don’t lack ambition. What they lack are legal and regulatory systems built for modern, cross-border scale. Fragmentation, red tape, mismatches across jurisdictions — these are the invisible brakes holding us back.  From Draghi’s warning shot to a founders’ movement When Mario Draghi’s report on European competitiveness landed in September 2024, it pulled no punches: Europe’s innovation gap isn’t due to a lack of talent or capital, but structures that block their free flow.   One year on, that warning still resonates. Without a unified framework, the continent risks “slow agony” as capital and talent continue to gravitate to friendlier jurisdictions. In response, EU Inc. launched in late 2024 — a coalition of founders, investors, and ecosystem builders pushing for a truly pan-European startup entity. Their open letter framed the 28th Regime not as a technical tweak, but a fundamental reset for how we build across borders. By December, they’d released a detailed blueprint for what this could look like: a single legal vehicle, a digital registry for fast incorporation, a standard investment tool inspired by SAFE/BSA, and a unified ESOP regime. Not just vision — execution. European startups: running a marathon with their shoelaces tied Earlier this month, Goed­­ele “G” Mangelaars (founder of Pink Notebook) shared how Europe’s current system handicaps founders. "Startups don't have the luxury of waiting years for decisions. At some point, the EU has to take a risk. Even if the 28th Regime isn't exactly ironed out on all counts, being 80 per cent right and moving quickly is better than standing still." Estonia’s playbook: digital sovereignty in action Before Eu Inc., there was EE-Inc. Estonia’s digital infrastructure has long shown how small, coherent frameworks can leapfrog legacy bureaucracy. Its e-identity, digital registries, and automated admin aren’t theoretical ideals — they work. EU Inc.’s proposal channels that same ethos: interoperable, digital-first, sovereignty-minded. The difference is scale. Angels are hitting structural ceilings Today we reported on why angel investors are rallying behind the 28th Regime. The reality is stark: early-stage investors face notaries, tax ID bottlenecks, mismatched stock option regimes, and AIFMD red tape. Simon Leicht of SDAC put it bluntly: “We need common, streamlined frameworks that let capital flow to innovation. Let us focus on what we do best: backing great founders, not navigating redundant paperwork.” Fixed regulatory costs are often the same for a €10 million fund as for a €100 million one — but the resources aren’t. It’s no wonder micro-funds and angels max out at Europe’s edges. The 28th Regime directly addresses this: harmonised ESOPs, digital incorporation, standardised legal instruments, and shared investor frameworks. It’s not about erasing national sovereignty. It’s about giving startups and investors a legal route designed for scale — not fragmentation. Today is the last day to act The European Commission’s consultation on the 28th Regime closes today. Fill in the questionnaire. It's quick, and it shows that the startup community is engaged and active on this issue.  Or share your experience with an anecdote or two:  Examples to write about: The mental load of juggling multiple legal regimes while trying to build a product. How much money and time you’ve spent on lawyers vs. R&D. How bureaucracy has shaped your strategic decisions (e.g., where to raise, hire, or base HQ). Expanding from one EU country to another but having to re-do incorporation, shareholder agreements, or option plans from scratch. A “we wanted to launch in X, but our lawyers said don’t bother” story. Fragmented VAT, tax, or labour rules that meant months of legal bills before signing a single customer. when setting up cross-border entities turned into a bureaucratic obstacle course. Delays opening a bank account or getting a tax ID that cost you a funding round, grant, or key hire. Having to set up multiple national subsidiaries just to raise from investors in different EU countries. Deals, partnerships, or hires that fell through because timelines in Europe couldn’t keep up with the speed of global competitors. Grants or innovation programs you couldn’t access because your company structure didn’t fit national eligibility quirks. The “we went to Estonia to register because it was faster” story — or worse, “we went to Delaware.” Losing a great candidate because your ESOP terms didn’t translate properly across borders — or because exercising stock options was legally or tax-wise a nightmare. This is the most concrete chance Europe has had in decades to build a truly single market for startups and investors. If Europe wants its next generation of companies to build here and stay here, this is the moment to act. Submit your views now— and make sure Brussels hears from the people building Europe’s future.

Berlin-based FLIZpay, a startup developing a mobile payment method free of fees for 90 per cent of companies, has raised $1 million pre-seed funding round. The investment was led by Antler, with additional support from prominent angels in the German fintech ecosystem, including Johannes Schaback (former CTO of SumUp), Sebastian Seifert, Achim Bönsch, and Andreas Veller (viaFinTech founders), Manuel Sandhofer (EMEA Head of Wise Platform), and Philipp Kreibohm (founder of home24). Founded in 2023, FLIZpay is building a mobile payments platform designed to reduce transaction fees, making payments more affordable for small businesses and easing costs for consumers. It achieves this by removing intermediaries that inflate fees and by offering a European-first solution that operates independently of global payment providers, ensuring user data stays within the EU. The market potential is considerable, with Germany alone representing 50 million potential private customers and around €800 billion in annual card and cash payments. FLIZpay has already gained traction, with over 500 merchants and more than 50,000 users relying on its services, and is rolling out successfully with Trade Republic. “Payment fees are very significant, but hidden from consumers. With FLIZpay, we make payments more accessible for companies and give consumers control over the price of their purchases, said FLIZpay's co-founder, Konrad Holtkamp. FLIZpay was co-founded by Konrad Holtkamp and Roberto Ammirata, who bring strong professional backgrounds in the financial services sector. The funding will help FLIZpay pursue its goal of becoming the mobile payment method of choice in Germany and across the EU.

When big funding rounds grab headlines, it's easy to forget the quiet, powerful force at the base of Europe's startup ecosystem: angel investors.  This large and diverse group often backs founders with anything from a few thousand euros upwards, typically at the riskiest, earliest stages.  Many are former founders (sometimes of unicorns), others are industry specialists in niches like fintech, biotech, or deep tech. Collectively, they fuel innovation, create jobs, generate wealth, and push new ideas forward. It's little surprise, then, that many angels I spoke to — both on and off the record — are enthusiastic supporters of the proposed 28th Regime: an EU-wide legal structure that would allow startups to incorporate once under a single regime, rather than juggling 27 different national company laws. If implemented, it would harmonise company formation, shareholder rights, fundraising, taxation, and reporting — slashing the bureaucratic friction that comes with building and raising across borders. Submissions close on EU Inc's 28th regime today Here's what just a few angel investors had to say: Regulatory headaches in action Carmen Alfonso Rico, founder of Cocoa Ventures — a VC turned angel backing founders at pre-seed and supporting them as their "in-house VC" — knows this bureaucracy all too well.  Before launching Cocoa, she'd already tested the waters of US venture through a small AngelList side fund. When structuring Cocoa, she debated whether to set up in Luxembourg or the UK. At the same time, was working on a German investment — and that's when reality hit. "The complexity of the notary process made it clear: doing everything in-house would have been impossible for a $15–17 million fund," she told me. AngelList, on the other hand, offered a turnkey infrastructure. "AngelList handles state administration and cross-border formalities, allowing us to focus on investment rather than bureaucracy." The result: Cocoa was set up as a US fund, with its management company operating out of the UK under FCA regulation through an appointed representative structure. A classic case of European red tape pushing talent to pick simpler jurisdictions. Fixed costs, slow deals, and irrational admin For small fund managers in Europe, the regulatory load is crushing. "If you're making investment decisions in the UK or Europe, you need to be regulated — and that's expensive," Alfonso Rico explained. "The UK is arguably the most efficient, but fixed regulatory costs are so high that running a fund below $10 million is nearly impossible. A $10 million fund and a $100 million fund face roughly the same fixed costs — but only the latter can spread those costs across a much larger capital base." It's a frustration shared by Simon Leicht, a General Partner at SDAC Ventures, an early-stage venture partner based in Berlin that collaborates closely with deeply technical founding teams right from inception.  Their support spans from helping with first fundraises to recruiting initial commercial talent and securing early customers. They boast a portfolio of over 100 pre-seed and seed investments across sectors such as AI, climate, robotics, space, biotech, and crypto. Some notable names they've backed include Orbem, MarvelFusion, Meatable, Sorare, and Helium. On the role and burden of microfunds and small investment vehicles, he contends that in Europe, microfunds serve as the professional equivalent of the prolific US angel scene, writing the first critical checks that get founders off the ground.  According to Leicht, "the problem is, the system actively works against us." "Administrative and regulatory costs are disproportionately high for funds under €10 million, making the model incredibly challenging." "Since a smaller fund writes smaller checks, these fixed costs create a much heavier proportional burden.  A €10,000 lawyer bill, e.g. because of a legal DD on a foreign companies' documents, barely registers on a multi-million euro investment, but for a €100,000 check, it represents a crippling 10 per cent of the capital— money that vanishes before the founder can even start building. This is especially damaging in the fragile early stages where every single euro is crucial." Significant disincentives to cross-border invest According to Leicht, the administrative burden of investing across Europe is staggering: "We're pan-European investors because incredible talent is everywhere, but that means our lawyers and accountants have to untangle completely different legal and tax documents for every single investment." Further, that cost doesn't just hit once; it compounds over a fund's entire lifecycle.  "There's little standardisation—we lack a simple SAFE note equivalent, and in a major market like Germany, you can't even find one universal standard for a convertible loan. We recently made an investment where part of the documentation wasn't even in English - required by law to be in the national language." Alfonso Rico shared similar frustrations:  "Power of attorney, notary fees, and legal costs can make a €10K angel investment irrational if €3K goes to admin," she said. Deals routinely drag on for months.  "I've seen Spanish deals take months from term sheet to closing, including incorporation — that's normal. t In one Spanish company I invested in — the term sheet was signed before Christmas, legals started in January, and the investment closed in May." — Meanwhile, in Estonia, as a journalist, I've seen angels wire €100,000 on the same day after a quick chat at a conference networking table for a convertible. I spoke to a Ukrainian company that had a €50k raise just like this over the weekend, while here in Lviv, as I write this article.  The disparity is stark. And the reality of European complexity is that investors walk away.  One angel told me she planned to do a €10,000 deal late in one quarter earlier this year, but backed out when she realised it would mean spending a day at a notary's office in another city — right before a long-planned trip abroad. "I just couldn't justify the time and the complexity, as much as I supported the startup and its founders," she said. Leicht also shared an example: "One of our LPs is a Czech citizen living in the UK, investing through an Estonian entity into our German fund, which has its own famous notary requirements.  The process took several months, as you can imagine. We've had potential investors, capital ready to deploy, who simply give up. They don't walk away for lack of belief in the founders; they walk away because the bureaucratic maze is just too intimidating." Stock options: Europe's weak spot It doesn't stop at fundraising. Stock options — a critical tool for attracting talent in ecosystems where salaries lag behind the US — are still a mess. Alfonso Rico shared: "Option schemes are completely different across European countries. Some make little sense — you get taxed on money you haven't got. It makes hiring and incentivising talent much harder for startups. And all this in a world where the competition for talent is fierce." She pointed to Uber as an example: "From what I heard, Uber changed its remuneration strategy in Europe because options weren't as motivating as in the US. If you're Uber, you don't care so much. But if you're a startup, paying someone 120K instead of 80K salary is life or death — at team level, that's months of runway." Founders on planes, funding in San Francisco Many angels told me about founders who simply moved to the US for ease of doing business and fundraising. Alfonso Rico sees it constantly. "I spend three to four months a year in San Francisco," she said. "It's insane — I can be there for a month and just meet European founders all day. They move because it's the best ecosystem to build - it offers the most competitive conditions. The problem for Europe is that the value created and the flywheel effect will stay there." Leicht agrees, asserting: "The absurd result of all this? We're actively pushing our best founders to the US. We're seeing a growing number of European founders incorporating in Delaware from day one — not for the market, but simply to use a standardised SAFE note. We are literally exporting our future unicorns because of our own bureaucracy." The quicksand time suck of bureaucracy And then there's the other hidden cost: time. "Time is a founder's most valuable resource," Alfonso Rico told me. "Yet I see founders spending full days at notaries or struggling with visa and residency paperwork between Europe and the UK — work that could be automated or streamlined. It's not just time lost, it's mental load.  Every week spent on admin is a week spent building elsewhere in the world — progress compounds. If I get one step ahead, my next step compounds — and it gets harder and harder to catch up. Competition is global, but Europe doesn't have a system that supports founders in focusing on what drives advantage and value.. It definitely doesn't. And we need it." Italy: modern incentives, legacy red tape Italy is a perfect example of this push-and-pull. Luigi Amati — co-founder of Italian Angels for Growth and CEO of META,a European company with offices in several countries delivering Investment, Academy and Advisory Services in R&D. We met in Bologna a couple of weeks ago. He has seen the ecosystem evolve from the inside. "I was an angel investor before I knew I was one," he said. He started in 2007 with eight others, pooling €900,000. "We grew like a rotary club: inviting people we knew. We quickly expanded to 40, then 80, and today it's a club with over 300 members — one of the largest early-stage investor groups in Italy." The group operates through a club deal model, pooling €200,000 to €1.5 million per startup, following a US-inspired syndicate structure. Italy's angel market is now roughly 10× bigger than in 2007, and tax incentives are generous: individuals can claim a 65 per cent deduction on investments up to €100,000, and vehicles get 30 per cent. But the processes? Stuck in the 1990s. Capital increases still require in-person notary deeds, slowing rounds by weeks. Foreign investors must obtain Italian tax IDs, translate legal documents, and sometimes appear in person — not exactly a cross-border-friendly process. Amati says the incentives now rival the UK's EIS/SEIS schemes but shared, "the question is whether it will remain stable. The UK's EIS has been in place for over 30 years. We hope Italy has now chosen to stay with a comparable path." Further, cross-border investing remains another story entirely.  "Incentives are national, so you're biased toward investing in your own country. It's harder to invest cross-border unless you have strong personal networks." He shared how in the US, angel clubs invest across states under one legal framework. "In Europe, trying to do the same leads to all kinds of trouble," he said. For him, the 28th Regime "is the push we need." "For over 20 years we've tried to create a European startup passport or a single framework for business angels, but it's always failed against national legislation. Now, momentum is building — it really feels like now or never." AIFMD and the structural drag on funds Stefano Bernardi — founder of Unruly Capital — straddles the line between hands-on angel investing and structured VC, backing everything from climate tech to algae to psychedelics. He treats the fund as a continuation of his angel journey, just with LPs "tagging along." While Unruly has a few investments in Germany and Italy, he's frank: "They are substantially harder and more expensive to manage than the ones in the US and UK. We have more or less stopped investing in Germany also because of this," he said, though he makes exceptions for exceptional founders. "Most portfolio companies eventually flip to the US — a slow, expensive process that puts them at a disadvantage compared to US or UK companies." And then there's the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD). "It makes starting a VC fund MUCH more complicated and costly than what it is in the US," Bernardi said. To be clear, Europe's founders and angels don't lack ambition — they're constrained by structures that haven't kept pace with the reality of building globally competitive companies. Leicht contends that initiatives like the '28th regime' aren't just a 'nice-to-have'—they're absolutely critical for Europe's competitiveness. "We need common, streamlined frameworks that let capital flow to innovation. Let us focus on what we do best: backing great founders, not navigating redundant paperwork." The 28th Regime: Europe’s best shot at leveling the global startup playing field From notary queues and tax IDs to mismatched stock option regimes and AIFMD red tape, these frictions quietly drain time, money, and momentum from the ecosystem. The result is predictable: capital and talent flow to jurisdictions that make it easier to build. The 28th Regime is the most concrete chance Europe has had in decades to create a genuinely single market for startups and investors. If Europe wants its next generation of companies to build here — and stay here — this moment matters. The European Commission's consultation on the 28th Regime is open until close of business today.  If you're a founder, investor, or ecosystem builder, now is the time to speak up. Submit your views here and help shape the future of how we build across Europe.

Madrid-based Reveni, a company transforming global e-commerce logistics, has closed a €7.5 million Series A led by 13books Capital with participation from JME Ventures, BSV, and Bynd Venture Capital. The round brings total funding to €17.3 million. Returns and exchanges remain a major operational and financial burden for brands, especially in cross-border commerce, where shipping, customs, and differing regulations add complexity. Slow refunds, inventory mismatches, and weak returns handling drive dissatisfaction, higher costs, and missed revenue. For cross-border businesses, added layers like international shipping, customs, and differing regulations further complicate the customer experience. Reveni addresses these challenges by unifying sales, logistics, and returns in a single dashboard with deep integrations into major e-commerce platforms. Founded in 2022, its core product streamlines reverse logistics with instant refunds and exchanges. A proprietary risk model approves requests in real time with no client risk, and workflows integrate fully with retailers’ e-commerce and logistics systems. Extending beyond returns, Reveni launched Reveni Atlas in 2025 to automate direct international logistics, from real-time duties and taxes at checkout to customs clearance, fiscal declarations, and end-to-end tracking, aiming to reduce intermediaries and fees, preserve margins, and give brands greater control and visibility. Customers report saving around 25 per cent on logistics and 30 per cent on international sales management costs, alongside increases in repurchase rates, average order values, and retained revenue. Clients include Victoria Beckham, ME+EM, Castore, Ego, Jigsaw, Bella Freud, The Fold, and Hurley. Reveni was co-founded by Fernando Pedraz (CEO), Pablo Molinero (COO), and Gonzalo Martin (CTO), who bring deep experience in enterprise sales, operational strategy, and fintech engineering across product, go-to-market, and technology. We believe the next wave of global commerce won’t be built on legacy systems but on platforms that give brands the power to operate seamlessly across borders.Our goal is to build technology that adapts to an increasingly complex and unpredictable trade environment, helping brands stay resilient where many struggle, said Fernando Pedraz, co-founder and CEO. The new investment will strengthen Reveni’s presence in the UK and EU, accelerate product development, and support team growth.

Paris-based Qovery, a SaaS platform that automates DevOps and simplifies application deployment on any cloud, has raised $13 million in Series A funding. The round was led by IRIS, with participation from Speedinvest, Crane Venture Partners, Techstars, Irregular Expressions, and angels including Datadog co-founders Olivier Pomel and Alexis Le-Quoc, Docker co-founder Sebastian Pahl, and Checkout.com CTO Ott Kaukver (former Twilio CTO), who also joins the board. All seed investors participated in the Series A. Launched in 2020, Qovery helps teams reduce the complexity and cost of infrastructure management so developers can focus on higher-value work. A shortage of experienced DevOps engineers continues to slow delivery. In the UK in 2024, deployments were 26 per cent more likely to be delayed than delivered early. Meanwhile, major public cloud platforms offer thousands of services that are difficult to manage, particularly in multi-cloud or migration scenarios, and Kubernetes, while reliable, can be challenging to operate at scale. Qovery addresses these issues by automating the end-to-end lifecycle of application deployment and infrastructure management across public clouds and on-premises Kubernetes environments. The platform aims to provide full visibility and cost control while avoiding the vendor lock-in common to traditional PaaS solutions. Romaric Philogène, Qovery’s cofounder and CEO, emphasised that software companies often face a choice between building a costly, slow-to-scale in-house DevOps team or relying on external consultants at the expense of autonomy and flexibility. He added: Qovery solves this by enabling organisations to ship products faster, at lower cost, while letting developers spend more time coding and less time managing the cloud infrastructure. Our platform can be installed in just five minutes, delivering the output of four to five DevOps engineers - roles that typically take six to twelve months to hire and onboard. That’s the kind of leverage our customers need in today’s market.” This approach reduces setup from weeks or months to about a day, with installation taking roughly five minutes and requiring minimal DevOps expertise. Customers report roughly 3× DevOps efficiency on average, shorter setup times (from weeks or months to about a day), and release velocities in the hundreds or thousands of deployments per day, accelerating product cycles without compromising compliance or security. The new funding will support regional expansion, team growth, and continued AI-driven product development.

Venture capital investment in defence startups is booming but critical funding gaps remain, according to a new report from Dealroom and Resilience Media. The State of Defence Tech 2025 shows that while Europe is the global leader in VC investment in sectors such as quantum, it lags in space tech, as well as in AI chips and processors, two sectors identified as leading the global investment growth in security and resilience tech in recent years. AI-specialised semiconductors are vital to maintaining supply chain resilience and sovereign compute.  Some of the key findings:  Record-breaking investments  According to the report, venture capital investment in European defence tech has already reached $1.5 billion this year, making it the most active year ever for the sector, with mega rounds, including the €600 million ($698.5 million) funding raised by German defence startup Helsing in June, playing a large part in the rise.  The number of investors drawn to the sector has also increased rapidly in recent years, with the number of unique investors in European defence projected to have risen 4x since 2019 by the end of this year. In addition, the level of VC investment coming from the 27 countries of the EU has risen steadily since 2022, when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine brought intense investor focus to European and global security.  According to Artem Moroz, Head of Investor Relations at Brave1:  “As of today, the total volume of investment in Ukraine’s defence tech sector has reached at least $60 million, and we expect this figure to grow to $100 million by the end of 2025.”  Over the course of 2025, the average investment round has also tripled — from $300,000 to $1 million. He anticipates that the number and size of such deals will continue to grow in the near future.  “This trend is driven both by rising threats from Russia to EU countries, and by the battlefield-proven performance of Ukrainian products and solutions — which in many cases outperform foreign equivalents.” Defence tech now accounts for 6.2 per cent of total European VC funding, up from less than 1 per cent before 2020. For context, overall defence expenditure is expected to reach 2.1 per cent of GDP in the EU in 2025 according to the European Defence Agency. This means it will cross the historical 2 per cent NATO target for the first time but still fall short of the new revised 3.5 per cent target. US dominates NATO defencetech investment Predictably, the US continues to dominate defence VC funding across NATO allies. In 2025, the US contributed 85 per cent of the total VC invested in defence tech. More broadly, funding raised by NATO allies has reached $9.1 billion in 2025, already surpassing the amount raised in the whole of 2024 by more than two billion dollars. Funding blindspots in space launch vehicles, AI chips and processors a potential vulnerability Further, the report highlights AI in defence, robotics and autonomous systems as the main areas fuelling growth in defence tech since 2019. Despite this strong performance by the sector as a whole, critical gaps in Europe’s VC investment are identified.  Just 12 per cent of the total VC investment into space launch vehicles globally between 2022 and 2025 came from Europe, while only 6 per cent of the VC funding into AI chips and processors was from the region over this period. This has been identified by governments, including the UK and France, as a potential vulnerability and both have worked with US semiconductor giants to scale up AI infrastructure.  Furthermore, Europe provides only 25 per cent of the funding for drones, in comparison to the 53 per cent coming from the United States. In contrast, Europe provides 88 per cent of VC funding in quantum cryptography. Europe’s hotspots According to Khaled Helioui, partner at Plural: “Space and applications of AI are new frontiers for defence technology that will define our sovereignty, resilience and ability to compete. The window to act is narrow, and if we do not invest with the ambition and decisiveness that the challenges we are facing require, Europe will remain dependent on others for the technologies that will shape the future of security and pursue its predicted obsolescence.” Jan-Hendrik Boelens, founder and CEO, Alpine Eagle, said: “Europe has the talent, research depth and industrial heritage to lead in the technologies that matter most for security and resilience. However, leadership does not happen by accident; it requires a long-term commitment to both capital and execution. Space, AI chips and advanced systems are not just future markets, they are the backbone of sovereignty. If we want Europe to be secure and competitive, we must turn today’s momentum in defence tech into sustained leadership across the entire innovation chain.” Munich leads growing defencetech clusters While the data shows growing VC investment in Europe, the figures reflect a handful of outsized raises, most notably Helsing’s $600 million round in Germany, as well as major raises for Multiverse Computing, Quantum Systems, Cambridge Aerospace, STARK and ARX Robotics. Germany leads Europe both in absolute terms and relative to total VC activity, thanks largely to Helsing, which helps propel Munich to the top spot among European cities. London and Paris follow behind, with four of the top ten hubs located in the UK - showing the country’s breadth of activity without a single dominant city. But there are also growing defence tech clusters across the rest of the continent, such as Lisbon and Madrid, which are also attracting increasing investment. Europe’s defencetech has a military backbone According to the report, 1 in 7 defence tech founders bring experience from the armed forces or Ministry of Defence, with the UK leading the field at 30 founders.  That influence carries through to the boardroom, with over 12 per cent of C-level executives in European defence startups having military or MoD backgrounds, most often as CSIOs and CSOs. Once again, the UK dominates, with 41 such leaders, more than twice as many as France, the next most represented nation.  Tobias Stone, co-founder of Resilience Media, emphasised the need for private capital to flow into defence and security, sharing:  “Investing in defence is unique because it is both a commercial opportunity and a moral imperative in an era where our democracies are directly under threat.” Investors expect "rapid validation and quick deployment" Further, according to Svitlana Braslavska, CMO, COO, and Co-founder of Falcons, for defencetech startups, traditional metrics like revenue or market share don’t always reflect readiness.  “Instead, they must prove reliability in battlefield conditions, compliance with NATO standards, and a scalable business model under high-risk wartime environments — often with clear dual-use potential.  Typically, a funding round may take 6–12 months, but for Ukrainian defence startups wartime urgency compresses this timeline, as investors expect both rapid validation and quick deployment.” The report is launched at the Resilience Conference in London, which brings together key figures from the defence tech sector to focus on the future of the battlefield, autonomy, VC investment in kinetic weapons, post-quantum cryptography, supply chains and manufacturing. The conference is a unique gathering of leaders from across NATO and Ukraine, representing the military, venture capital, and startup sectors working in defencetech.

Swedish startup Lovable has launched two new platforms designed to dramatically simplify the process of building and launching AI-powered applications. The company claims the tools will unlock a new generation of non-technical founders and could lead to a hundredfold increase in the number of AI startups created annually. The new offerings, Lovable AI and Lovable Cloud, are being rolled out globally today. Together, they allow users to describe their ideas in natural language and receive fully functional AI applications in return, complete with backend infrastructure, authentication, and billing integration. Lovable AI, the core application development interface, is launching in partnership with Google Cloud and powered by its Gemini models. Lovable users will have free access to the platform for the first week following launch, until 6 October. Alongside it, Lovable Cloud manages all the backend complexity typically associated with AI app development, including database setup, file storage, server infrastructure, and model provisioning. This is expected to remove what Lovable sees as one of the last major technical barriers for would-be founders. “The next generation of breakout founders won't be technical, they'll be healthcare professionals building medical AI tools, educators creating personalised learning platforms, and financial experts developing fintech solutions,” said Anton Osika, co-founder and CEO of Lovable. “My challenge to our community is simple: let’s build the next AI unicorn using Lovable AI before the end of next year.” The AI startup landscape has seen rapid growth over the past three years, particularly in Europe, where two-thirds of newly minted unicorns are now AI-first companies. However, the majority of these businesses have been founded by individuals with technical expertise. According to Lovable, 90 percent of Europe’s AI unicorn founders have technical backgrounds, and all of the fastest-growing AI startups globally were founded by engineers. Lovable is positioning itself as a solution to this imbalance, enabling subject matter experts in non-technical fields to build and launch scalable AI products without writing code. Market interest in no-code and AI-assisted development has surged in recent years. Platforms like Bubble, Glide, and Replit have gained popularity among solo founders and small teams looking to move quickly. Lovable differentiates itself by offering AI-generated real code that can later be extended by developers, allowing startups to scale beyond MVP stage. “We’re proud to increasingly support Lovable with our leading AI platform and a choice of models for developers, which can in turn help more startup teams and founders ideate and build the next great product more quickly than ever,” said Darren Mowry, VP of Global Startups at Google Cloud. Lovable claims its tools have the potential to increase the number of new AI startups being launched globally by a factor of 100 over the next year. In 2024, an estimated 2,000 new AI startups were founded worldwide. If Lovable’s projections hold true, that figure could reach 200,000 in 2026, largely driven by non-technical creators using its platform. Founded in Stockholm and now headquartered between Sweden and San Francisco, Lovable joins a growing cohort of European-born startups expanding into the US market to scale operations and tap into venture capital. With the launch of Lovable AI and Lovable Cloud, the company is tapping into a broader movement to democratise access to AI development tools. As enterprises race to integrate AI into their workflows, the opportunity to build vertical-specific AI startups - led by professionals in healthcare, finance, education, and beyond - is rapidly expanding. Lovable’s bet is that the next unicorns will not be built in the traditional mould of Silicon Valley technical co-founders, but instead by those with deep domain knowledge and a clear vision, supported by tools that automate the technical complexity. Whether or not a unicorn emerges from the platform within the next 12 months, as Osika has challenged, remains to be seen. But Lovable’s entry into the increasingly crowded no-code AI space signals a strong belief that the next wave of startup innovation will be powered less by code, and more by conversation.

Online education platform MyEdSpace has raised $15 million in Series A funding. White Star Capital led the round with participation from Educapital, Emerge, Active Partners and Coalition Capital. Founded in 2022 by Sean Hirons and Kharis Yanakidis, MyEdSpace is an online learning platform offering live, interactive lessons for UK students. Lessons are delivered twice a week by experienced teachers, with all sessions recorded and supported by workbooks, homework, and step-by-step video solutions. Teachers are selected through a rigorous process from the top 1 per cent in the UK. They deliver live lessons to thousands of students simultaneously and have built a social media audience of over 4 million, presenting complex topics in familiar formats. The company’s mission is to make a world-class education accessible to all, using top teachers and technology to deliver engaging learning at scale. Sean Hirons, co-founder of MyEdSpace, said: We set out to combine the best teachers, leading technology, and the power of social media to build a platform that delivers the education that young people want and deserve. Our model makes learning affordable and ends the postcode lottery of achievement. The new funding will support hiring more teachers, adding subjects, and advancing AI-powered learning tools to improve the student experience. The company is now scaling its UK model across the Atlantic, with initial US courses launching in October.

Former Sequoia partner Matt Miller has revealed details of his “unique model” VC firm, which has raised over $400m and has already invested in buzzy startups Lovable and n8n as it targets B2B AI investments. Miller, a high-profile figure in VC, left Sequoia last year after 12 years, saying he wanted to start his own fund, with a focus on the “great founders of Europe”. Called Evantic Capital, the new London-based fund will invest in “AI leaders” in Europe, US and Israel. Miller says that Evantic Capital has recruited 140 founders, builders and investors, which he calls " The Legends", who are advising the firm on its investments. In particular, the legends are made up of founders, CEOs, product & engineering leaders, finance and governance experts, among others, with half based in Europe and Israel and half in the US. In a LinkedIn post, Miller said: “The Legends are a community of some of the most exceptional individuals I’ve met throughout my career: top founders and CEOs, senior executives with GTM experience, product and engineering leaders, corporate and governance experts, and fellow investors. "Together, they are a powerful extension of Evantic’s ability to source, win, and build.” According to Bloomberg, an eighth of the $400m plus funding has come from the legends, who will provide marketing, sales and growth support to the startups they invest in. Explaining the “unique business model”, Miller said that the legends will “share directly in the upside of the companies they support”, giving them up to 50 per cent of the carry (a performance-based fee paid out to those who manage VC funds) from each investment. Miller said: “What makes this model unique is how we align incentives: instead of a symbolic or advisory role, our Legends share directly in the upside of the companies they support.  “We allocate up to 50% of the carry from each investment to the specific Legends who actively contribute to helping the founder and company scale.  “This creates a true partnership model: our Legends are not only motivated by goodwill or networking, but by a real alignment of interests. It ensures that when a founder engages with a Legend, they’re interacting with someone who is deeply invested in helping them succeed, both emotionally and economically.” Describing its investment strategy, Miller said it was focusing on B2B AI, adding “most of our investments will be companies that have demonstrated signs of early product-market fit where we feel there is meaningful upside from our entry price". To date, Evantic Capital has invested in Fireworks, the AI inference provider, Listen Labs, AI research platform, Lovable, the vibe coding startup. n8n, the AI workflow startup, and Nexos, the AI governance platform.

Unive, an AI-driven college and career counselling platform, has raised €410,000 to enhance its platform by pairing AI with expert tutor guidance and to broaden access to affordable application support. The total comprises €350,000 from Firstpick VC and a €60,000 grant from EduChallenger. Unive is an AI-powered college and career counselling platform that supports students throughout the admissions journey and beyond. It combines data-driven AI guidance with input from experienced admissions professionals, helping students identify best-fit schools, refine essays, prepare for interviews, and find scholarships. Unive currently serves applicants to US universities and plans to expand to Western Europe. The mission is to make an increasingly complex and costly process more accessible. As applicant volumes rise around 5 per cent annually and acceptance rates fall, private counselling can range from hundreds of dollars per hour to as much as $750,000 overall. Such high costs leave many talented students without access to adequate support, says Jonas Kavaliauskas, Unive’s Co-founder and CEO. As the cost of private admissions counselling has gone up in recent years, we see a clear need for tools that make the application process both efficient and equitable. Our mission is to level the playing field by making high-quality college and career guidance accessible for all students, regardless of their financial circumstances. Unive extends the traditional counselling model by pairing AI-driven support with expert review. Students use AI to handle most tasks, improving essays and profiles and preparing for interviews, while admissions specialists from institutions such as Harvard, MIT, and Stanford provide final checks or additional guidance. The platform emphasises ethical use aligned with college policies, and it supports applicants without doing the work for them. Beyond its student product, Unive is expanding B2B services, partnering with universities to improve recruitment and selection. With new funding, the company will grow its engineering, sales, and marketing teams, enhance AI features, and expand global outreach.

Last week, we tracked more than 80 tech funding deals worth over €2.2 billion, and over 10 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.Click to read the rest of the news.

Willo, the Glasgow-based recruitment technology platform, has secured £3 million from Mimecast co-founder Peter Bauer to accelerate tools that help employers automatically verify candidate credentials amid a surge in AI-generated job applications. The investment is Willo’s largest single round, bringing total funding to more than £5.9 million. Over the past 18 months, Bauer has invested more than £3.7 million and will also support Willo’s US growth strategy. Founded by Scottish entrepreneurs Euan Cameron, Andrew Wood, and Hamish Livingston, Willo is a remote-first candidate screening platform used by thousands of employers to streamline hiring through structured, accessible video and audio interviews that reduce bias and speed up talent discovery. The company is launching Willo Verified Profiles, which aggregates third-party data sources to automatically verify identity, education, work history, and skills, addressing the growing challenge of AI-influenced application fraud. Employers tell us they are inundated with AI-generated CVs that are hard to verify and review. That’s making it increasingly difficult for genuine, qualified candidates to stand out, said Euan Cameron, Willo’s co-founder and CEO. He added that the round, secured on strong terms in a challenging market, is a major vote of confidence in Willo’s direction and opportunity. The new funding will support North American expansion and accelerate the rollout of Willo Verified Profiles, a credential-verification feature designed to cut through AI-generated noise in the hiring process.

Lexroom, an Italian startup using generative AI to transform the legal sector, has closed a $19 million Series A round. Founded in 2023 by Paolo Fois, Martina Domenicali, and Andrea Lonza, Lexroom supports lawyers and corporate legal teams in legal research, drafting, and advisory services, with an approach based on high-quality legal sources tailored to different jurisdictions. In the past six months, the startup has tripled its client base and doubled its team, with expansion already underway in Germany and an imminent launch in Spain. “The legal industry is undergoing a revolution,” said Paolo Fois, CEO and co-founder. “With this round, we will accelerate international growth and build the future of the legal profession with AI at its core.” Just six months after a $2 million Seed round led by Entourage, the Italian startup has already doubled its workforce and tripled its customer base. Today it stands among the fastest-growing startups in Italy and Europe. Silicon Valley VC Base10 Partners. The round also saw participation from Spanish VC Acurio Ventures, View Different founded by Diego Piacentini – who will also take on an advisory role at the company – and Riccardo Zacconi, founder of King (Candy Crush), along with other strategic angel investors. The deal also confirmed the support of existing investors such as Entourage, Verve Ventures, and Joe Zadeh.  Following the investment, RexhiDollaku, General Partner at Base10 Partners and a long-time investor, will join Lexroom’s board, marking a new chapter of international growth for the startup. “Lexroom is transforming one of the largest and most tradition-bound industries with a product that lawyers actually love using. Paolo, Martina, and Andrea bring an impressive mix of deep legal expertise and product vision, and in just a short time have shown how AI can meaningfully change the way legal work gets done," said Rexhi Dollaku, General Partner at Base10 Partners. "We’re proud to be partnering with them as they set a new standard for AI in the legal sect Lead image: Lexroom AI. Photo: uncredited.

GoodFit, a London-based AI-driven go-to-market platform, has raised $13 million Series A led by Notion Capital, with participation from Salica Investments, Inovia Capital, Robin Capital, Common Magic, and Andrena Ventures. Founded in 2020 by Harrison Rose (who previously co-founded Paddle) and Aleksander Bury, GoodFit positions itself as an intelligence layer for modern GTM, combining proprietary market data, first-party performance data, and configurable tooling to help commercial leaders identify, prioritise, and engage customers with precision across both human-led and programmatic strategies. The traditional sales approach, in which leaders managed large teams while having limited interaction with the tools in use, is changing. As AI reshapes go-to-market practice, GoodFit aims to give revenue leaders more direct control. The platform provides a unified view to pinpoint target companies, align representatives to high-propensity accounts, build and run end-to-end campaigns, forecast the most effective channel mix for each customer, and continuously optimise customer acquisition costs based on outcomes. According to CEO and co-founder Harrison Rose, high-quality, specific data is essential for these systems. Without it, ICPs remain shallow and outreach becomes generic. As AI assumes more tasks, data becomes the core input for decisions on segments, channels, resource allocation, and real-time CAC optimisation. This Series A represents GoodFit’s first external funding. The capital will be used to expand access to a broader set of companies and to accelerate development of capabilities that enable revenue leaders to achieve GTM outcomes directly with agents.