🌟 QUICK INTRO
Hello and welcome back.
Apologies for being late this week - Beehiiv wouldn’t let me into my account which was VERY annoying.
This week I’m in Barcelona for the latest Project Europe hackathon so stay tuned for that.
Read on.
For more of my stuff:
💰 BIG ROUNDS
Spanish Xoople raised a $130m Series B to build AI-ready Earth data infrastructure. Read more here.
UK-based MillTech raised $60m at a $325m valuation to scale its FX hedging and treasury platform. Read more here.
Belgium-based Magnax secured €35.5m to scale production of its axial flux electric motor technology. Read more here.
Spanish PLD Space secured a €30m EIB loan to support the development of its MIURA 5 rocket and scale launch capabilities. Read more here.
UK-based Narwhal Labs secured £20m to launch its autonomous communications platform DeepBlue OS. Read more here.
UK-based Altilium secured £18.5m from the UK government to build a large-scale EV battery recycling plant. Read more here.
German Pixel Photonics raised a €13.5m Seed led by Futury Capital to scale its quantum light detection technology. Read more here.
UK-based startup Trent AI raised an €11m Seed to build a security layer for agentic AI systems. Read more here.
💸 SMALLER BUT INTERESTING ROUNDS
🇪🇺 THE SCALING EUROPE SHOW
This week I published interviews with:
The Scaling Europe show is sponsored by SurrealDB, Omni and Venture Comet LTD and presented by Deel - check them out here.
📰 BIG NEWS
Vinted
Lithuania’s first unicorn announced its financial results.
The company, founded back in 2019 now valued at €8 billion, reported the following:
€1.1bn of revenue
€62m of profit
€10.8bn of GMV
Vinted has grown from €11m of revenue in 2017 to €1.1bn in 2025.
Read more here.
OpenAI
OpenAI has shelved plans to construct a massive data centre in Britain, called Stargate UK, with energy costs and regulatory issues cited as the reason.
The ChatGPT developer has been rolling out its global Stargate project in the past few years, a series of massive data centres in the US, Norway and the UAE that would provide various regions with the compute power needed to adopt AI at a large scale.
Read more here.
📰 SMALLER NEWS
Langdock surpassed $25m ARR just six months after hitting $10m ARR. It’s shaping up to be one of the most exciting startups of 2026.
Isar Aerospace’s second attempt launching its rocket was postponed.
A Neuralink patient with ALS has been given his voice back thanks to ElevenLabs.
Revolut launched its in-app AI assistant in the UK. Read more here.
Just Eat and Starship Technologies have partnered to launch delivery robots to Barnsley, named government’s first ‘tech town’. Read more here.
Verne launches Europe’s first commercial robotaxi service in Zagreb. Read more here.
💰 M&A
Finnish Atol Aviation got acquired by Helsinki-based Sensofusion to expand into airborne surveillance and anti-drone systems. Read more here.
Spanish Keepler got acquired by Accenture to strengthen AI and data capabilities across EMEA. Read more here.
UK-based startup Picnic got acquired by French app publisher MWM to scale its photo-organising platform. Read more here.
💶 FUND NEWS
Lisbon-based Bondstone Ventures launched a €50m DeepTech fund to back early-stage European startups. Read more here.
JIC launched a €16.3m venture fund to back early-stage DeepTech founders across Central and Eastern Europe. Read more here.
Zurich-based Herbert Ventures launched a €32.5m fund to back pre-Seed and Seed founders across Europe. 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