🌟 QUICK INTRO
Hello and welcome back.
In this week’s edition Synthesia is raising at $4bn, Bending Spoons becomes a Decacorn, Monzo eyes a $10bn IPO and lots of promising startups raise decent sized rounds.
On a personal note I am starting to post new content direct to X - if that’s of interest please follow along here.
Harmonic are sponsoring this newsletter - check them out here.
👀 QUICK QUESTION FROM ME
I’ve built a tool which continuously scans the internet for European Tech news so that I’m alerted as soon as there is relevant news.
It doesn’t matter whether the news is broken by the FT, Bloomberg, Forbes, Sifted etc. I find out as soon as the article is published.
I’ve set up a paid whatsapp group so that other people can be alerted as well. At the moment it’s some journalists and a few VCs I know who are testing it out for me.
If you’d be interested in joining / hearing more let me know in the poll below.
Would you be interested in joining the Scaling Europe whatsapp group for £3 a week?
💰 BIG ROUNDS
Italian Bending Spoons raised raised $270m in equity at a pre-money $11bn valuation, a day after the Italian software unicorn announced it had secured $2.8bn in debt financing. Read more here.
Swedish Legora raised $150m at a $1.8bn valuation just five months after its Series B. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round. Read more here.
Bulgarian EnduroSat, which designs, builds, and operates small satellites and satellite modules, raised $104m from Riot Ventures, Google Ventures, Lux Capital, the European Innovation Council Fund, and Shrug Capital. Read more here.
French Neobank FAKTUS raised €56m in debt and equity, with the equity coming from Lakestar and Foundamental. Read more here.
Danish RegTech Formalize raised €30m co-led by Acton Capital and Blackfin Tech. Read more here.
Swedish Cellcolabs, which is focused on the industrial-scale production of mesenchymal stem cells, raised $12m from Titian Capital. Read more here.
Swedish Legal tech Vesence raised a $9m seed round, backed by Emergence Capital, Creandum and Y Combinator. I interviewed the founders here.
💸 SMALLER BUT INTERESTING ROUNDS
UK-based Human Health, a patient-first precision health platform, raised €4.7m from LocalGlobe. Read more here.
Latvian Desktop Commander, the AI desktop automation tool, raised a €1.1 million pre-seed round led by 42CAP. Read more here.
German Scavenger AI raised €2.5m to make company data as easy to access as asking a question. The round was led by BMH. Read more here.
🇪🇺 THE SCALING EUROPE SHOW
This week I published interviews with:
Harry Stebbings (being interviewed by Hector Mason) at the Onstage demo day here.
Mark Fairless: CEO at ClearBank. Check it out here.
Rory O'Neill: CMO at Checkout.com. Check it out here.
Jonny Plein: Cofounder at YASO. Check it out here.
Callum Woodcock: Founder and CEO at WineFi 🍷. Check it out here.
Alexandre Berriche: Founder of Fleet and leading super angel. Check it out here.
Tom Pope: Co-founder & CEO at Adfin. Check it out here.
This edition is brought to you by Harmonic — the startup discovery platform
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📰 STARTUP NEWS
Synthesia
Last week it was reported that the company had rejected a $3bn acquisition offer from Meta. This week it was revealed that the company is raising $200m at a $4bn valuation.
The firm leading the round is said to be Google Ventures.
The company last raised in January when it raised $180 million at a $2.1 billion valuation. In April, Synthesia announced it crossed $100 million in annualised revenue. Last week the company closed $2m ARR in a single day.
Monzo Bank
This week it was announced that CEO TS Anil will be stepping down after five years in charge. During that time he's grown revenue from £40m to over £1bn, achieved profitability and hit a $6bn valuation.
Diana Layfield, an ex-banker who also spent nine years at Google in various senior roles, will replace him.
It was also reported that the company is gearing up for an IPO with London currently being the destination of choice, and $10bn being the target market cap. Read more here.
Poolside
The French AI company is in discussions to raise $2 billion at a pre-money $12 billion valuation.
Nvidia is investing at least $500 million, with the potential to reach $1 billion if the startup meets its fundraising targets.
The company, which offers AI-powered coding assistants, has already secured more than $1 billion in commitments for the latest funding round. Read more here.
Shawbrook
This week Shawbrook IPO'd in one of London's biggest listings in a long time.
It was priced at 370p and finished the day at 397p (+7%) with a market cap of £2bn. £348m shares were sold
Patrick Hosking from The Times reported that the success of the IPO points to a new confidence in London and suggests that it could mean the start of more European IPOs. Read more here.
💶 FUND NEWS
Sequoia launches two early-stage funds, with a total of $950m to invest, as its European team says Europe's founder pool “never been stronger”. Read more here.
Belgian firm Endgame Capital closed its first fund at €8m to back climate-tech startups. Read more here.
Antidote, a new London-based accelerator, has launched to support entrepreneurs in UK which are building on “open technologies”, starting with Bitcoin and fintech. Read more here.
🔎 IN OTHER NEWS
Nvidia is investing $1bn into Nokia as the two firms partner up on leveraging AI into telecoms networks and data centre development. Read more here.
Shawbrook targets a £2bn IPO on the London Stock Exchange.
THAT’S ALL. Thank you.
Seb