🌟 QUICK INTRO
Hello and welcome back.
This week Brevo became a unicorn, Black Forest Labs and ICEYE raised big rounds, and Wayve made an interesting acquisition.
I’ve also partnered with some researchers who are looking into sexism and sexual harassment during fundraising. There’s a survey to fill in below if this feels like something you’d like to voice your opinion on.
On a personal note my X is starting to see good traction - if that’s of interest please follow along here.
💰 BIG ROUNDS
French CRM Brevo became Europe’s newest unicorn in a €500m funding round which included secondaries. The investment was led by General Atlantic and Oakley Capital. Read more here.
German AI startup Black Forest Labs raised a $300m Series B led by AMP and Salesforce, which valued the company at $3.25bn. Read more here.
Finnish satellite company ICEYE raised €150m in primary funding and €50m in secondaries led by General Catalyst. Read more here.
French AI voice startup Gradium came out of stealth mode with a $70m seed round led by US VC Firstmark and French investor Eurazeo. Read more here.
UK-based payments startup Sokin raised a $50m Series B at a $300m valuation. The round was led by Prysm Capital. Read more here.
UK-based Modo Energy announced a $30m Series B led by Molten Ventures. Read more here.
Swiss semiconductor cooling startup Corintis announced a $24 million Series A led by BlueYard Capital. Read more here.
Czech Duvo raised a $15m seed led by Index Ventures for AI platform for retail workers. Read more here.
💸 SMALLER BUT INTERESTING ROUNDS
Dutch orq.ai raised a €5m Seed round to enable companies to build and deploy their own AI agents, led by seed + speed Ventures and Galion.exe. Read more here.
Spanish Alinia AI raised a €2.2m pre-seed funding round led by Speedinvest and Precursor. The company has built a platform that helps companies deploy safe and controlled generative AI. Read more here.
Swedish Lumoo, which helps brands and retailers with product visualisation, virtual try-ons and automated brand modelling, raised a €550k angel round which included Lovable founder Anton Osika. The entire company is built on Lovable. Read more here.
🇪🇺 THE SCALING EUROPE SHOW
This week I published the following interviews:
Nicolas Sharp: Founder and CEO at Attio on building a global business from Europe. Check it out here.
Mark Swan: CEO and Cofounder at Nevis announcing their $35m Series A from Sequoia Capital. Check it out here.
Roman Chernin: Cofounder at Nebius on how they've built Europe's $25bn AI Infrastructure giant. Check it out here.
Nicolas Christiaen and Jonas Deprez: Cofounders of Donna announcing their $4.8m Seed round. Check it out here.
Oliver Thomas: Managing Partner at Expedition Growth Capital as they announced a new €325m fund. Check it out here.
Help Shine a Light on Sexual Harassment in Fundraising
Raising capital is challenging enough without having to navigate sexual harassment. Yet for too many female founders, inappropriate behavior from investors remains an unspoken reality of the fundraising journey. That's why Daring Capital and InChorus are undertaking crucial research to finally quantify this problem and push for meaningful change. If you’ve been affected by harassment while raising money for your venture then please take 2 minutes to complete this anonymous survey.
📰 STARTUP NEWS
Lovable
Two bits of news were released this week for Lovable:
n8n
Jan Oberhauser, the company’s CEO and the sole founder, made it clear that he would like the company to IPO in Europe (and ideally Germany) when the time is right.
He also said he declined YC as the US accelerator wanted him to be Delaware-registered.
Similarly, one of n8n's US investors wanted it to “flip” to being US incorporated, a suggestion Oberhauser rejected.
He obviously loves Europe and wants to see it succeed which is great to see.
Read more here.
Bending Spoons
The Italian tech rollup company has acquired another struggling business.
This time it was Eventbrite - the experiences marketplace which was once one of the fastest growing tech companies and valued at nearly $4bn.
The acquisition price is $500m in cash and is the latest in a long line of acquisitions for Bending Spoons (which includes Meetup, StreamYard and Vimeo).
Read more here.
Wayve
The UK AV startup acquired a German startup (Quality Match) which specialises in analysing AI model training data for automated driving.
The acquisition comes as Wayve looks to bear rivals such as Tesla to prove that its tech can work for carmakers.
Read more here.
💶 FUND NEWS
🔎 IN OTHER NEWS
ElevenLabs signed $14m of ARR in a single day as it continues to dominate text to voice.
Nothing is teaming up with Crowdcube to offer its community the chance to buy shares at the same valuation as its latest $1.3bn round.
Mistral is pushing into robotics here.
Meta’s Chief AI officer is launching his own startup and plans to tap into European talent to build it.
THAT’S ALL. Thank you.
Seb