🌟 QUICK INTRO
Hello and welcome back.
This was a big week for new Unicorns (3 - Granola, Dash0 and Huel), as well as for new funds (nearly $1bn announced).
Revolut also released their latest results, and Dealroom their latest report.
Read on.
In April I’ll be moderating a panel at the Capsule Scale-Up 50 London event, which celebrates the 2026 cohort of VC backed scaleups leading the next wave of growth in their industries.
If you want to come along sign up here!
For more of my stuff:
QUICK POLL
I send this newsletter out on Mondays but I read that Mondays have lower engagement but I’m curious to hear what people think (especially since this is a weekly roundup).
Which Day of the week would you like to receive this newsletter?
🇪🇺 BIG NEWS FROM ME
I’m working with Dealroom to launch The Scaling Europe Top 50 - a definitive list of the 50 fastest growing companies in Europe, based on 2025 revenue data.
Check out the site here (which is still a work in progress) to nominate a company. I will then be making A LOT of noise/content about the companies that make it.
The report and list are sponsored by J.P. Morgan and Nebius.
💰 BIG ROUNDS
UK-based Granola raised a $125m Series C at a $1.5bn valuation. I interviewed the founder here.
German Dash0 raised a $110m Series B at a $1bn valuation, for it AI-powered observability platform. I interviewed the founder here.
UK-based Vuelo raised a €64m Seed to build an AI-native travel platform. Read more here.
German Entrix raised €43m to scale its battery optimisation and energy trading platform. Read more here.
Swedish PaperShell secured up to €40.3m from the EU Innovation Fund to scale production of its fossil-free composite material. Read more here.
Swiss PAVE Space raised a $40m Seed to build orbital transfer vehicles that move satellites between orbits in under 24 hours. Read more here.
Swedish Lace Lithography raised a $40m Series A to develop atom-based chip manufacturing technology. Read more here.
UK-based Origin raised a $30m Series A+ to build an AI-native platform helping companies manage and optimise global employee benefits. Read more here.
Italian Subbyx raised a €30m Series A to scale its AI-powered subscription infrastructure platform. Read more here.
Dutch OpenUp raised €20M to expand its employee mental health platform across Europe. Read more here.
Dutch Laigo Bio closed a €17m Seed to advance its protein degradation platform for cancer and autoimmune therapies. Read more here.
Spanish Arkadia Space secured €14.5m from the EIC Accelerator to scale its green propulsion systems. Read more here.
German Interloom raised a $16.5m Seed to build a knowledge infrastructure that captures company expertise and turns it into persistent memory for AI agents. Read more here.
💸 SMALLER BUT INTERESTING ROUNDS
🇪🇺 THE SCALING EUROPE SHOW
This week I published interviews with:
Sam Stephenson: Co-founder at Granola on their $125 million Series C at a $1.5 billion valuation, here.
Mirko Novakovic: CEO at Dash0 after raising a $110M Series B at $1bn valuation. Check it out here.
Maciek Gnutek & Jakub Krikava: Parters at Credo Ventures on announcing their $88m Fund V. Check it out here.
Filip Felician Dames: Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures, here.
Amine Raji: Co-founder & CEO of Spore.Bio on their breakthrough technology that can detect bacteria in 10 minutes, here.
Lena Hackelöer: Founder & CEO at Brite Payments, here.
Sander Verbrugge: Partner at NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), 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 UK Fintech released its 2025 annual report with the following results:
$6.0bn Revenue (+46% YoY)
$2.3bn Profit Before Tax (38% margin)
67.5bn Customer Balances (+66% YoY)
The company now has 11 products with over $100m of annual revenue. It also paid £363m in corporation tax in the UK, which is great to see.
Check out the full report here.
Dealroom Deep Tech
The dealroom team released their latest Deep Tech report which is fantastic. Some highlights include:
Deep Tech investment surpassed $20bn in 2025, its second highest ever.
The UK is the Deep Tech capital of Europe with over $5bn invested
Paris is Europe's leading city (as the UK is spread is across London, Oxford and Cambridge)
2026 is shaping up to be even bigger as billions have already been invested in frontier AI companies, defence companies and robotics.
Download the full report here
📰 SMALLER NEWS
Arm has started producing its own chips. Read more here.
Speedinvest is cutting 10% of its team in a bid to improve efficiency. Read more here
The European Investment Fund (EIF) is launching a new €15bn fund of funds to back growth-stage investors across the continent — the biggest of its kind. Read more here.
The CEO of Mistral has said that AI companies should pay a content levy in Europe. Read his argument why in the FT here.
California-based quantum computing group Rigetti has announced plans to invest up to $100m (£75m) in the UK.
💰 M&A
💶 FUND NEWS
German futurepresent launched a $300m Fund I to back AI startups across infrastructure, enterprise and industrial applications. Read more here.
London-based VC Air Street Capital raised $232m for its third fund to back AI-first startups across Europe and North America, becoming Europe’s largest solo GP venture firm. Read more here.
Spanish VC firm Ysios Capital launched a €100m InceptionBio fund to build and back early-stage BioTech startups across Spain. Read more here.
Credo Ventures raised $88m for its fifth fund to back pre-seed startups across Central and Eastern Europe and its global diaspora. Read more here.
French 360 Capital launched an €85m first close for its Poli360 2 fund to back early-stage DeepTech startups emerging from European research and universities. Read more here.
London-based Cloudberry Ventures launched a €50m fund to back DeepTech startups across industrial, compute and financial infrastructure. Read more here.
Zurich- and San Francisco-based VitaminºC raised €18m first close for its debut fund to back early-stage climate startups across mitigation and adaptation. Read more here.
🎪 EVENTS
EU Startups Summit: Join Europe’s top startups, investors, and innovators for 2 days of networking, inspiration, and learning. The next edition will take place on May 7-8, 2026 in sunny Malta. Sign up with the code SCALING20 to get 20% off.
If you’ve got this far you should DEFINITELY subscribe to my daily newsletter here.
Thank you.
Seb