🌟 QUICK INTRO
Hello and welcome back.
Turkey minted a new unicorn, France is rumoured to be getting a new quantum unicorn soon, and a new AI company is raising $1bn at a $4bn valuation!
Overall, a BIG week. Let’s get into it.
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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.
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💰 BIG ROUNDS
UK-based mea Platform raised $50m in a minority growth equity investment led by SEP for its AI-native automation platform for insurers. Read more here.
UK-based SpaceTech startup SatVu raised £30m led by the NATO Innovation Fund. Read more here.
UK-based AI-powered worksite safety startup Fyld raised £32m in a Series B funding round led by Energy Impact Partners. Read more here.
French video surveillance startup Vizzia raised €30m in a Series B round. Read more here.
UK-based Stacks, an agentic platform for enterprise finance, raised a $23m Series A funding round, led by Lightspeed. I interviewed the founder here.
Austrian AI medtech startup Flinn raised $20m led by HV Capital to expand its AI-powered regulatory and quality automation platform. Read more here.
UK-based database startup SurrealDB raised an additional £17m in a Series A extension led by Chalfen Ventures and Begin Capital. I interviewed the founders here.
German AI startup Plato raised $14.5m in a Seed round led by Atomico to scale its AI operating system for wholesale distributors globally. I interviewed the founders here.
💸 SMALLER BUT INTERESTING ROUNDS
German robotics startup Sitegeist raised €4m to build AI modular robots in construction. Read more here.
German Cognee raised €7.5m to build long term memory for AI systems and agents. Read more here.
UK-based Toyo, raised $4m to build “OpenClaw for Founders” - AI agents designed to run day-to-day business operations autonomously. Read more here.
🇪🇺 THE SCALING EUROPE SHOW
This week I published interviews with:
Euan Blair: Founder and CEO at Multiverse. Check it out here.
Ruben Miessen: Co-founder and CEO at LegalFly, discussing their 8x ARR Growth in One Year. Check it out here.
Jaime Morgan Hitchcock and Tobie Morgan Hitchcock announcing their $23m Series A boost. Check it out here.
Benedikt Nolte: Co-founder and CEO at Plato: Announcing their $14.5m seed after 10x growth last year. Check it out here.
Eric Queathem: Co-founder at Velocity: Building the first platform for global CFOs and treasurers. Check it out here.
Albert Malikov: CEO of Stacks, announcing their $23m Series A. Check it out here.
Richard Anton: General Partner at Oxx: Europe has everything but capital. Check it out here.
📰 BIG NEWS
Ineffable intelligence
The big story this week was about Ineffable Intelligence - the creation of David Silver, one of Google DeepMind's earliest, and most impressive researchers.
He left the company to build his own AI startup that is aiming to go beyond what LLMs have achieved.
Ineffable Intelligence is aiming to build “an endlessly learning superintelligence that self-discovers the foundations of all knowledge,”.
This type of AI overcomes a constraint of LLMs - that they are limited by our own knowledge and data that we feed them. Silver wants to build AI that can figure things out on its own.
It's now been reported that the company is raising a $1bn Seed (Europe's largest ever) at a $4bn valuation.
The round is being led by Sequoia Capital but there are lots of parties interested and lots can still change.
Read more here.
Pasqal
The French company was founded in 2019 and is aiming to turn neutral-atom tech into quantum computers that can beat classical machines.
In 2023 it raised a €100m Series B round led by Temasek, and now Bloomberg is reporting that the company is raising €200m at a $1bn+ valuation.
This would make it Europe's latest Quantum unicorn, which seems to be an area where Europe can truly lead compared to other regions.
Read more here.
Klarna
This week the listed Fintech released its latest quarterly results:
Quarterly revenue up 38% to $1.08 billion
Net loss of $26m against a profit of $40 million the year before
It also recorded $273m net losses in 2025 and increased its provisions for loans it expects customers will be unable to repay.
As a result its market cap sunk to $5bn, a long way down from its height of $17bn when it IPO'ed.
It is now valued lower than Lovable - another much younger Swedish tech darling.
This is particularly rough for investors and employees whose shares are still locked up.
Read more here.
💰 M&A
Mistral made its first acquisition (Koyeb) as it looks to strengthen its compute capabilities and build out its full-stack AI Cloud. Read more here.
Istanbul-based gaming studio behind Pixel Flow! got partly acquired by Scopely, which took a majority stake in a deal reportedly valuing the company at over $1B, creating a new unicorn from Turkey. Read more here.
💶 FUND NEWS
Paris-based VC firm Quantonation Ventures closed its second flagship fund at €220m, becoming the largest dedicated quantum investment firm globally by AUM. Read more here.
The British Business Bank committed up to £45m to Redrice Ventures’ £75m Fund II as a cornerstone investor, backing seed-stage consumer brand startups and B2B tech companies supporting them. Read more here.
Swiss firm Emerald Technology Ventures launched a €52m investment platform targeting Physical AI technologies. Read more here.
German Tenet emerged out of stealth with an €80m debut fund target to back AI roll-ups across Europe at inception stage. Read more here.
French venture studio OSS Ventures secured a €40m first close for its new €75m fund. Read more here.
🔎 IN OTHER NEWS
eBay agreed a £890m deal to buy Depop. Read more here.
Fuse Energy has created 12 employee-millionaires, 5 of whom are under 30, since being launched 3 years ago.
TrueLayer has partnered with eBay to offer Pay by Bank at checkout AND eBay has invested in to the Fintech.
ClearBank has appointed Uber executive Tristan Kirchner as its European CEO.
Deel has launched The Pitch, a global startup competition offering up to $1m in investment. Founders submit a 2-minute pitch for a chance to win funding, exposure, and access to exclusive perks. Apply here.
Klarna saw its market cap drop to $5bn after swinging to a loss in its latest results.
🎪 EVENTS
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Thank you.
Seb