🌟 QUICK INTRO
Hello and welcome back.
Lots of news this week. Jude law is, rather bizarrely, the new face of Legora, Europe may have just got a new $4bn AI startup, the UK launched its Sovereign AI Fund, Anthropic is coming for Lovable, and MUCH MORE.
Read on.
For more of my stuff:
💰 BIG ROUNDS
Italian CamGraPhIC secured €211m in public funding to build graphene-based optical technology for next-generation AI infrastructure. Read more here.
UK-based Wayve raised an additional $60m following its $1.2bn Series D, led by prominent chipmakers. Read more here.
UK-based STORM Therapeutics raised $56m to advance its RNA-targeting cancer therapies into Phase 2 trials. Read more here.
Danish Subra raised a €40m Series A round led by Novo Holdings to scale its superconducting cable technology. Read more here.
UK-based Zego raised $28m from strategic investor Japanese insurance giant Sompo Holdings. Read more here.
Irish Solidroad raised $25m to scale its AI platform for analysing and improving customer support interactions. Read more here.
UK-based startup Gizmo raised $22m to scale its AI-powered learning platform globally. Read more here.
Danish spektr raised $20m to automate financial compliance workflows with AI agents. Read more here.
Swedish BioLamina secured €20m from the European Investment Bank to scale its cell therapy technology. Read more here.
Swedish AlixLabs raised €15m to scale its atomic-level semiconductor manufacturing technology. Read more here.
Finnish Kelluu raised €15m to scale its autonomous airship fleet and expand internationally. Read more here.
German Nesto raised €11m from Expedition Growth Capital to scale its AI workforce management platform for hospitality across Europe. Read more here.
UK-based wamo raised €10m Series A to expand across Europe and scale its AI-driven SME finance platform. Read more here.
💸 SMALLER BUT INTERESTING ROUNDS
🇪🇺 THE SCALING EUROPE SHOW
This week I published interviews with:
Roxanne VARZA: Director at STATION F, here.
Jon Coker: Founding Partner at Eka Ventures, announcing their new fund, here.
Jonathan Sanders: CEO at Light, here.
Dan Lifshits & Ilia Drozdov: Co-founders of Dwelly announcing their first london acquisiton, here.
Roei Samuel: CEO of Connectd on hitting $17m ARR, here.
Constantin Schröder: Cofounder of Arbio on its AI enabled rollup machine
Sarah Fleischer & Ksenija Milicevic Neumann: Cofounders of tozero on building Europe's first battery recycling plant, here.
The Scaling Europe show is sponsored by SurrealDB, Airwallex and Chargebee and presented by Deel - check them out here.
📰 BIG NEWS
Recursive Superintelligence
The 4-month old secretive startup is building a new kind of AI that teaches itself.
The team is remarkably impressive and includes researchers from Meta, OpenAI and Google.
The FT has reported that the company has raised $500m at a $4bn valuation led by GV. The round was so oversubscribed that it could end up raising $1bn.
According to the FT:
"Recursive has not yet officially announced its existence, but a filing at the UK’s Companies House register shows that it was incorporated in London at the end of last year"
If true it would be instantly become one of Europe’s most valuable AI startups.
Read more here.
London AI Expansion
Both Anthropic and OpenAI announced large expansions in London.
OpenAI announced its first permanent office in London which will house up to 500 employees. It has signed a lease for an 88,500 square foot property in King's Cross.
Anthropic secured a new office in the capital for 800 people - current office capacity is 200 so this is a big expansion.
The company has secured a new, 158,000 square foot office in the Knowledge Quarter at Regent’s Place.
The UK government has been courting the Anthropic team in an attempt to get them to expand here given the ongoing feud the company is having with the US government.
A big vote of confidence for London.
Lovable / Anthropic
A leak from Anthropic suggests that it is building a very similar tool to Lovable that will enable users to knock up an app in seconds.
Anthropic is Lovable’s largest model provider.
Commentators on X are pointing out that:
This is what Claude did to Cursor (essentially re-created it completely outperformed it)
Anthropic has huge distribution. This could be the slack vs teams moment for vibe-coding.
📰 SMALLER NEWS
Swedish Stegra secured a rescue funding package of €1.4bn to complete construction of its green steel plant in Sweden. Read more here.
Legora hired Jude Law to become its public face. Read more here.
UK Fintech unicorn Allica Bank released its latest financial results, and recorded a £371m of revenue and £44m of profit. Read more here.
Monzo Bank launched in Ireland to its 100k+ waitlist as the Fintech embarks on its European expansion plan.
ElevenLabs added $100m of new ARR in Q1.
Europe launched its first “kill-switch proof” cloud recovery stack in case foreign providers turn off access. Read more here.
Accenture and Google Cloud unveil Brussels centre to accelerate sovereign AI adoption, here.
💰 M&A
Nothing relevant this week!
💶 FUND NEWS
The UK has officially launched its £500m Sovereign AI Fund and announced the first 7 startups it's supporting. Read more here.
Copenhagen-based Unconventional Ventures announced the second close of its Fund II, backing underrepresented founders across Europe. Read more here.
UK-based ET Capital launched its Cambridge Venture Index Fund II to back early-stage science startups from the Cambridge and Oxford ecosystems. Read more here.
London-based Eka Ventures closed a $107 million Fund II to back UK startups across health, wellbeing and sustainability at pre-Seed and Seed stage. Read more here.
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Thank you.
Seb