🌟 QUICK INTRO
Hello and welcome back. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year.
The year is off to a strong start. There's already been a new unicorn, a few acquisitions announced, and Index reportedly netting a whopping $9bn from its 2025 exits.
Let’s get into it.
On a personal note, follow me on X for thoughts/opinions/news on European Tech here.
🇪🇺 Introducing Scaling Europe Daily
Tomorrow I’m launching a new daily version of this newsletter. It will cover:
Funding news
Fund / firm news
What media (podcasts, events etc.) have been published that you should tune in to
Financial results
M&A
All other news…
A lot of this news will come from my relationships with VCs and founders, as well as social media (e.g. founders building in public). The aim is to cover the news that mainstream publications aren’t covering as well as the big stories.
Sign up here.
💰 BIG ROUNDS
UK-based Swap raised a $100m Series C led by ICONIQ and DST Global to scale its e-commerce logistics platform. Read more here.
French medical device company FineHeart raised €35m in a first closing of its Series C as well as €48m in grants for its clinical-stage cardiovascular medical device. Read more here.
UK-based Engitix raised a £20m Series A extension from Netherton to develop therapies for cancer and fibrosis. Read more here.
Spanish AI voice startup Tucuvi raised a $20m Series A from VC firm Cathay Innovation and Madrid-based Kfund. Read more here.
Dutch semiconductor company Qualinx raised €20m led by Invest‑NL. Read more here.
Belgian startup Aidoptation raised €20m for its AI-driven autonomous systems led by SFPIM. Read more here.
Dutch ShanX Medtech raised a €15m Seed led by the Borski Fund. Read more here.
French BrightHeart, which develops tech for prenatal ultrasound, raised an €11m Series A co-led by Odyssée Venture and GO Capitals. Read more here.
💸 SMALLER BUT INTERESTING ROUNDS
German United Manufacturing Hub (UMH), raised a €5m funding round for its foundational data layer for global manufacturing. The round was led by KOMPAS VC. Read more here.
UK-based CLIQ raised a "seven-figure funding round" led by Artesian to scale their real-world social media platform. Read more here.
Belgian Alice, an AI platform developed for lawyers and legal teams, has raised a €1m pre-seed to support the development of its end-to-end legal casework solution. The round was led by NewSchool and Seeder Fund. Read more here.
🇪🇺 PERSONAL NEWS
Two updates:
I'm joining Revolut for one of their first 2026 Masterclasses. The theme is "Scaling in 2026", which will be a great session for anyone looking to grow, hire and expand in 2026. Sign up here.
I've just launched Scaling MENA with Sam Marchant where we're going to be shining a light on the Middle Eastern Tech scene. We've launched a new weekly newsletter which you can subscribe to here.
📰 BIG NEWS
Index Ventures
Mark Bergen has written an amazing piece in Bloomberg about the firm's performance as well as its potential succession plan.
In it he breaks down some of the firm's exits from 2025 and how much Index got from it:
Wiz acquisition to Google: $4.1 billion
Dream Games buy out from CVC: $560 million
Scale AI semi-acquisition by Meta: $1.8 billion
Figma IPO: $2.1 billion
Another portfolio company, Revolut, hit a valuation of $75bn which could end up returning even more than Wiz.
In total the firm $9bn from its 2025 exits.
Check out the full article here.
Nscale
AI infrastructure startup Nscale is in talks to raise $2bn after raising $1.1bn in September last year.
UK-based Nscale is working with Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase to secure the funds, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
Nscale, which was founded less than two years ago, is working on projects in the UK, Portugal, the US, Iceland and Norway.
Read more here.
Faculty
Europe got its first new unicorn of 2026 as AI company Faculty got acquired by Accenture.
The company, founded in 2014 and headed up CEO Marc Warner, helps public and private sector clients to deploy AI solutions in the UK and other markets. Its clients range from OpenAI and Anthropic to the NHS.
Faculty's 400-person team will join Accenture with CEO Marc Warner becoming CTO.
Terms of the deal have not been officially disclosed however investors close to the deal have publicly called it a unicorn, and some have suggested it was valued at $1bn exactly.
Read more here.
Blu / Qamyno
Blu Selection, an international recruitment company headquartered in Barcelona, has acquired Qamyno to create the first “truly pan-European recruitment firm.”
The new, combined firm will scale Qamyno’s tech expertise across European Capital cities.
💶 FUND NEWS
Antler raised $510m in new funds, half of which will be for US startups, the rest for Asia and Europe. Read more here.
Future Tech Poland, a new €350m fund of funds, has been launched by the EIF and Poland’s national promotion bank Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego (BGK) to boost innovation in the country. Read more here.
🔎 IN OTHER NEWS
Vestaire cofounder Fanny Moizant has been pushed out of the company after 16 years. Read more here.
London-based Multiverse cut dozens of jobs amid widening losses according to company accounts. Read more here.
Berlin-based Plan A, a carbon accounting startup, has been acquired by Diginex, a London-based sustainability regulation tech provider, for €55m. Read more here.
THAT’S ALL. Thank you.
Seb