🌟 QUICK INTRO
Hello and welcome back. Apologies for the slight delay in getting this week’s edition out, my daughter was born last week!
It’s been a wild week for European Tech. There have been three new unicorns, Parloa raised at $3bn and ElevenLabs is rumoured to be raising at $11bn.
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
Last week I launched my new daily newsletter covering European Tech. It’s got 400 followers already and covers:
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
German AI voice startup Parloa raised a $350m Series D round led by General Catalyst at a $3 billion valuation. Read more here
French defence startup Harmattan AI raised a $200m Series B at a $1.4bn valuation, led by Dassault Aviation. Read more here.
German sustainability company osapiens raised $100m led by Decarbonization Partners, reaching unicorn status. Read more here.
Belgium-based cybersecurity startup Aikido Security raised a $60m Series B round led by DST Global, reaching a $1bn valuation. I interviewed their CGO here.
Irish quantum computing startup Equal1 raised €60m led by Atlantic Bridge. Read more here.
UK-based Midnite raised a €30m Series B round led by Discerning Capital. Read more here.
UK-based creator economy startup Fanvue raised a $22m Series A led by Inner Circle. Read more here.
Dutch fintech Klearly raised a €12m Series A round led by PayPal Ventures. Read more here.
US- and UK-based quantum startup Haiqu raised an $11m Seed round led by Primary Venture Partners. Read more here:
Spanish security startup Zepo Intelligence raised a $15m Seed round led by Kibo Ventures. Read more here.
💸 SMALLER BUT INTERESTING ROUNDS
Czech Modeinspect raised $3.4 million in a seed round led by Partech and Credo Ventures to bring live design into production software. Read more here.
Finnish Skene raised €800,000 in a pre-seed round led by Superhero Capital to scale AI agents that help SaaS companies drive product adoption and growth. Read more here.
Belgian Feedelity raised €510,000 in round led by Newschool VC and Scalefund to scale its AI-powered customer feedback platform that turns reviews into actionable insights for businesses. Read more here.
I’ve partnered with blu. to bring my readers an exclusive offer on their Pan-European recruitment services.
blu. is on a mission to build a stronger, more connected Europe by empowering companies to access and unite the continent's best talent. Since 2013, they have helped 150+ companies scale faster by hiring high-impact, multilingual talent across 15+ EU countries. As your cross-border HR extension, they handle everything from salary benchmarks to cultural calibration and regulatory de-risking.
Exclusive Scaling Europe Offer:
Free "European Scaling Roadmap": A 45-minute strategic audit to de-risk your next market entry.
Up to €5,000 Scaling Credit: Get a 10% discount on each of your first 3 cross-border hires.
Fill out this form mentioning SCALINGEUROPE promo-code to redeem the exclusive offer!
📰 BIG NEWS
ElevenLabs
The AI voice company had two big bits of news this week:
The discussions just four months after the company was valued at $6.6bn in a secondary sale. Discussions are early but if the deal goes through the company would almost be as valuable as Mistral - Europe’s most valuable AI company.
Revolut
The company has printing money by buying its own shares at a discount and then selling them on for a mark up.
According to documents on Companies House the company bought bought back 2.8m shares at $966.74 a share ($45bn valuation) which cost them $2.71bn.
The company then sold 1.9m shares at $1381.06 a share ($75bn valuation) which netted $2.66bn. Those 1.9m shares they sold only cost them $1.4bn meaning they made close to $1.2bn in profit.
The demand for Revolut shares is high. The demand for investor liquidity is high. Revolut is able to sit in the middle and make money satisfying both.
Balderton Capital
On the topic of Revolut the FT wrote a great piece highlight that Balderton, the UK firm which invested in Revolut, has cashed out over $2bn from its Revolut shares and has returned 25x on its fifth fund.
It first invested $1m into Revolut at a $6.7m valuation - it's now valued at $75bn. Fund 5 was a $305m fund and is on track to return more than 25x. Not only does this fund have Revolut it also includes:
Depop: acquired for $1.6bn
GoCardless: acquired for $1bn
Aircall: valued at over $1bn and doing $175m ARR
Contentful: valued at $3bn
Nutmeg: acquired for £700m
Read the full FT article here.
💰 M&A
Human Native was acquired by Cloudflare to strengthen Cloudflare’s bot management and human verification capabilities. Read more here.
Faculty’s acquisition by Accenture is set to return capital to shareholders including LocalGlobe, Metaplanet and the Guardian Media Group, with the deal reported to value the company at around $1bn. Read more here.
Lisbon-based impact investment platform Goparity acquired Spain’s Bolsa Social, the first impact crowdfunding platform authorised by the Spanish regulator, to add equity crowdfunding to its offerings and strengthen its Iberian presence. Read more here.
Spain-based recruitment company Qamyno has been acquired by recruitment agency Blu Selection to build a continent-wide recruitment platform focused on placing tech talent across Europe’s leading tech hubs.
💶 FUND NEWS
DTCP launched Project Liberty, its eighth fund dedicated to defence, security and resilience technologies. It raised €300m with up to €20 million per deal to invest across Europe, the US and Israel. Read more here.
Novo Nordisk Foundation committed €736 million to scale the BioInnovation Institute as a European hub for life science and deep tech innovation. Read more here.
Ukraine-based TA Ventures’ portfolio has reached 17 unicorns. Read more here.
UK-based venture capital firm E2VC secured a first close of its €100 million Fund III to back early-stage founders across Europe. Read more here.
Rosberg Ventures has closed its third fund at $100m, led by former Formula 1 world champion Nico Rosberg, to back early-stage European startups with a focus on climate and mobility. Read more here.
🔎 IN OTHER NEWS
Synthesia got 62,910 applications for 205 roles last year - that's 306 applications per role.
Checkout.com has secured approval for its Georgia Bank charter, accelerating US expansion meaning that the Fintech will have DIRECT access to US card networks.
Jack & Jill hit $1m ARR after 9 months - the fastest of any Entrepreneurs First company ever.
Monzo plans to give outgoing CEO TS Anil an expanded role following backlash from shareholders over leadership changes, according to reports. Read more here.
THAT’S ALL. Thank you.
Seb