🌟 QUICK INTRO
Hello and welcome back.
It has been a BIG week for European startups (and a relatively quiet one for funds). Wayve achieved an $8bn+ valuation, the UK got a new unicorn, and Dash0 is rumoured to be raising at $1bn+ valuation.
Let’s get into it.
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💰 BIG ROUNDS
UK-based AV startup Wayve raised $1.2bn in a Series D round at a $8.6bn backed by a range of car-makers, VCs and tech companies. Read more here.
Dutch-based chipmaker startup Axelera AI raised $250m led by Innovation Industries to scale its edge AI inference chips and software. Read more here.
UK-based fintech Allica Bank became a unicorn status following a $155m Series D led by Ventura Capital. Read more here.
UK-based estate agent roll up Dwelly secured £69m in combined equity and debt (equity round led by General Catalyst) to scale its AI-driven rental marketplace across the UK. Read more here.
UK-based AI Startup Encord raised $60m in a Series C to scale its data infrastructure for robotics and physical AI. I interviewed the founder here.
London-based SolveAI raised $50m to help employees build compliant full-stack applications using natural language. Read more here.
French startup Verley raised €32m in a Series A led by Alven to advance its next-generation functional whey ingredients. Read more here.
Estonian Frankenburg Technologies raised €30m in a Series A round led by Plural to build sovereign missile-manufacturing capacity in Europe. Read more here.
German Secfix raised $12m in a Series A round led by Alstin Capital to expand its AI-driven compliance platform. Read more here.
Prague-based generative AI startup ValkaAI raised a €12m pre-seed round led by Rockaway Ventures to build real-time interactive AI avatars for gaming, sports and esports. Read more here.
German voice AI startup VoiceLine raised a €10m Series A round led by Alstin Capital and Peak. Read more here.
💸 SMALLER BUT INTERESTING ROUNDS
Scottish Quantcore raised £2.5m to develop a sovereign supply chain for quantum hardware. Read more here.
Polish FlyFocus, a defence company specialising in unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and avionics, raised €4.5m. Read more here.
UK-based Callosum raised £7.5m in funding led by Plural to challenge single-chip AI systems. I interviewed the founder here.
🇪🇺 THE SCALING EUROPE SHOW
This week I published interviews with:
Mati Staniszewski: Co-Founder at ElevenLabs, on the $11bn valuation and $330m ARR here.
Jarek Kutylowski: CEO and founder at DeepL, here.
Eric Landau: Co-founder and CEO at Encord on their $60m Series C, here.
Luke Harries: Growth at ElevenLabs here.
Karl Gilbert: CEO & Co-Founder of Raylo on raising £150m, generating £50m of revenue and £10m profit, here.
Tom Wehmeier: Partner and Head of Intelligence at Atomico, here.
Danyal Akarca: Founder at Callosum & Suraj Bramhavar, Programme Director at ARIA, here.
Aron Gelbard: Co-founder and CEO at Bloom & Wild, here.
The Scaling Europe show is sponsored by SurrealDB, Omni and Venture Comet LTD and presented by Deel - check them out here.
📰 BIG NEWS
Revolut
The company is considering a new secondary sale at a $100bn+ valuation.
Last year the company achieved a valuation of $75bn in a secondary sale. Now Bloomberg is reporting that investors in the company are pushing for another sale at the end of this year.
It's rumoured to have hit $9bn of revenue in 2025.
The company has been hiring more employees to run secondary sales as Nik Storonsky has publicly stated he has no intention of going public for a number of years. Read more here.
European Micro VCs
Alexandre Dewez from 20VC has ranked the top Micro-Funds in Europe. These funds are all:
Under €50m
Doing pre-seed and seed investments up to €500k
Typical first institutional investments
Solo GPs or small teams
And have an amazing track record. You can see the results below. The ranking is based on a formula combining hit-rate (% of total companies with 3x+, 5x+ and 10x+ TVPI), top 3 investments in TVPI & DPI and factoring time in market.
Read the full report here.
Proxima Fusion
The German company has signed an agreement to build Europe’s first Nuclear Fusion plant.
The startup has signed an MOU securing €400m from its home state of Bavaria to build the €2bn plant.
The rest of the funding is expected to come from the federal government and the company is hoping to get the plant up and running by the early 2030s.
It’s an interesting move for Germany which shut down all of its Nuclear Fission Plants.
Read more here.
Dash0
German Dash0 is rumoured to be raising at a $1bn+ valuation.
The company has built an AI-native observability platform helping developers monitor and troubleshoot problems.
It only raised a Series A back in October last year. At the time it reported that it had acquired more than 270 customers in just 9 months.
That round was $35m and co-led by Accel (Harry Nelis) and Cherry Ventures (Christian Meermann), with participation from DIG Ventures.
Now it's been reported that the company is in talks with Balderton to lead a fresh round of funding, which would value Dash0 at $1bn.
Read more here.
💰 M&A
UK-based AI infrastructure scaleup Radiant merged with Ori Industries to deliver a vertically integrated, sovereign AI cloud platform. Read more here.
Finnish quantum computing company IQM Quantum Computers has announced plans to go public thanks to a merger with US special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Real Asset Acquisition Corp. It’s aiming for a $1.8bn valuation. Read more here.
💶 FUND NEWS
Brussels-based Syndicate One raised €22m first close of its second fund to back Belgian technology startups. Read more here.
🔎 IN OTHER NEWS
Swedish Einride secured $113m in an oversubscribed PIPE financing ahead of its planned listing. Read more here.
OpenAI has chosen London as its largest research hub outside the US. Read more here.
French Unicorn Mirakl announced achieving profitability and surpassing $218m of ARR. Read more here.
Langdock has surpassed $20m of ARR, four months after hitting $10m. Read more here.
Checkout.com achieved full year EBITDA profitability again in 2025, and grew revenue by 30%. Read the full annual letter here.
Founders House launched in Helsinki to build Finland’s next global tech giants. Read more here.
🎪 EVENTS
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Thank you.
Seb