🌟 QUICK INTRO
Hello and welcome back.
This week Fuse Energy, Lovable and Trade Republic all saw big valuation uplifts, Doctolib is rumoured to be doing a large Secondary Sale, and Monzo is in turmoil and it looks to expand across Europe.
On a personal note my X is starting to see good traction - if that’s of interest please follow along here.
💰 BIG ROUNDS
Swedish Lovable raised $330m at $6.6bn valuation. The round was led by CapitalG and Melo Ventures’ Anthology fund, and is the company’s third fundraise this year. Read more here.
Italian Exein raised €100m in a debt and equity round to finance ambitious M&A plans. The round was led by J.P. Morgan. Read more here.
Swiss Neural Concept raised a $100m Series C round led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives for its AI-focused engineering platform. Read more here.
UK-based PolyAI raised an $86m Series D co-led by Georgian, Hedosophia and Khosla Ventures to expand its enterprise conversational AI platform. Read more here.
UK-based Fuse Energy raised $70m from Balderton and Lowercarbon Capital at a $5bn valuation after hitting $400m ARR. Read more here.
Dutch aerospace and defencetech company Destinus secured a €50m financing facility from Commerzbank. Read more here.
German Mirelo AI raised a $41m seed round led by Index Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz for its AI sound platform. I Interviewed the founder here.
UK-based Ben raised a $27m Series B for enterprise benefits platform. I interviewed the CEO here.
UK-based Ankar AI raised a $20m Series A for its patent and innovation platform. I interview the founders here.
Swedish Endra raised a $20m seed round led by Notion Capital for its AI-powered mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) platform. Read more here.
UK-based Sequence raised a $20m Series A led by 645 Ventures for its finance platform. Read more here.
UK-based Iconic raised a £10m seed round co-led by Kindred Capital VC and Northzone to help build voice-driven, interactive gaming worlds. Read more here.
💸 SMALLER BUT INTERESTING ROUNDS
Italian Haptena Therapeutics, which is developing biotech that targets genetically defined cancers, raised €3m. Read more here.
Belgium-based Wodan AI, which specialises in running AI models directly on fully encrypted data, raised a €2m pre-seed round. Read more here.
Swedish NobodyWho, which is building inference engines that run LLMs directly on users’ devices, raised €2m. Read more here.
🇪🇺 THE SCALING EUROPE SHOW
This week I published interviews with:
Judith Dada: Partner at Visionaries Club. Check it out here.
Itxaso del Palacio: General Partner at Notion Capital who announced her new report into Founder Endurance. Check it out here.
Peter Wood: Founder and CEO of The Graduate Guide and Calibr. Check it out here.
Tamar Gomez and Wiem Gharbi: Cofounders at Ankar AI on their $20m raise. Check it out here.
Sebastian Fallert: Co-founder and CEO of Ben announcing their $27m Series B. Check it out here.
Carl Johann Simon-Gabriel: CEO and Co-founder of Mirelo AI announcing their $41m Seed from Index and a16z. Check it out here.
Georgia Stevenson: Partner at Index Ventures on investing in Mirelo. Check it out here.
The Scaling Europe show is sponsored by Checkout.com and SurrealDB.
📰 STARTUP NEWS
Trade Republic
The company has run a secondary sale which saw over €1bn worth of shares sold by early investors to the likes of: Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, and many more.
This is a big markup from its latest valuation (which was €5bn back in 2022), and comes off the back of hitting 10 million customers.
The company has now been profitable for three years.
Early investors, such as Project A and Creandum, are said to have sold some of their shares.
Read more here.
Monzo Bank
There's been a lot news about Monzo this week.
Rumours have been circulating about the the departure of CEO TS Anil. It's been reported by the FT that he was pushed out by the board due to concerns over his long-term commitment to the company.
Major shareholders are now trying to get him re-instated and push out the Board chair. This story is far from over and likely we will hear more in the new year.
On a more positive note the company received its full banking licence from the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI) and European Central Bank (ECB).
This will enable it to expand its products and services across Europe, with the company setting up its official EU headquarters in Dublin and marking Ireland as its first target market.
The company also made its first acquisition - the digital mortgage broker Habito. The move will see Monzo integrate Habito’s mortgage offering into its platform as it looks to expand its UK product offering.
Doctlolib
French health tech Doctolib is in talks to raise a large secondary investment, in the range of a few hundred million dollars.
The company reached a valuation of $6.4 billion at its most recent venture funding in March 2022, making it the highest valued French startup at the time. Its annualized revenue is now over $400m.
The Forbes article below is well worth a read on the dominance Docotlib has and how the French Government is responding:
“The Paris-based startup has been so successful that France’s competition regulator noted in November that its market share exceeded 90% of online medical appointment bookings in recent years. The French antitrust watchdog, l’Autorité de la Concurrence, shared that finding in a report where it fined Doctolib $5.4 million for abusing its market dominance”
Read more here.
Revolut
Four major bits of news this week. The first two are from a great interview which you can find here.
The company is expecting to generate $9bn of revenue and $3.5bn of profit in 2026, and is on track to report $6bn of revenue this year and $2bn of profit.
It was revealed that founder and CEO Nik Storonsky now owns 29% of Revolut. That stake is worth now worth $22bn.
It's in discussions with Blackstone about a potential partnership to make the firms' funds available to Revolut's customers as part of its Private Banking offering. Read more here.
It released Revolut Mobile across the UK and Poland. In the UK it costs £12.50 a month and includes unlimited data / calls / sms at home as well as 20gb EU & US data roaming.
💶 FUND NEWS
Creandum had an amazing week - Fuse, Trade Republic and Lovable are all portfolio companies so there was lots for them to celebrate.
Danish deeptech spinout fund PSV Hafnium closed its first fund at €60m. Read more here.
Norwegian StartupLab closed its fifth fund (this one of €32m). It plans to deploy $250k–$500k checks to 20–25 startups a year. Read more here.
Spanish Kibo Ventures has hit a first close of €80m for its fourth fund with a hard cap of €150m. Read more here.
🔎 IN OTHER NEWS
Legora had a big day this week - it signed over $7m of ARR in a single day.
George Osborne, the former Conservative UK chancellor has been appointed as head of countries by US giant OpenAI.
Quantum Systems expands defence autonomy stack with FERNRIDE acquisition. Read more here.
AI scientist Yann LeCun he had launched a new startup called Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI). AMI Labs is reportedly seeking to raise €500 million (about $586 million) at a €3 billion valuation. Read more here.
THAT’S ALL. Thank you.
Seb