🌟 QUICK INTRO
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The European Commission launched its call for tenders to build up to seven AI Gigafactories in a €30bn push, Spain's Multiverse Computing became a €1.5bn unicorn, and UK pension providers teamed up with the British Business Bank to launch a £1bn UK Scale-Up Fund.
Check out the Scaling Europe instagram page here.
💰 BIG ROUNDS
San Sebastián-based Multiverse Computing raised a €500m Series C at a €1.5bn valuation to compress large language models for cloud, edge and on-device deployment. Spain's newest unicorn. Read more here.
London-based Dwelly raised $170m in Series B led by EQT Growth to buy and automate UK letting agencies with AI. Read more here.
London-based Plend secured up to €58.3m in a funding facility to provide affordable credit using Open Banking data. Read more here.
London-based Inforcer raised a $50m Series C led by Insight Partners to scale its Microsoft security and AI management platform for MSPs. Read more here.
Rome-based Drivalia secured €48m in EIB financing to accelerate electric vehicle deployment across Italy and Finland. Read more here.
London-based Agon raised a $30m Seed to build AI training models for European defence infrastructure and counter-drone capabilities. Read more here.
London-based Greyparrot raised a $27m Series B to scale its AI waste intelligence platform for recycling and material recovery. Read more here.
Zürich-based ZuriQ raised a €22.4m Seed to scale its 2D trapped-ion quantum processors. Read more here.
Dutch Xeltis raised €20.5m to develop artificial vessels and valves that are replaced by patients' own living tissue. Read more here.
Budapest-based Ominimo raised a €20.1m Series B at a €1.4bn valuation to scale AI-powered motor insurance. Profitable, two years post-launch, and Europe's newest InsurTech unicorn. Read more here.
Manchester-based Nuclear Turbines raised €17.5m led by IQ Capital to develop compact nuclear power systems using jet-engine-style gas turbines. Read more here.
Swiss AI Infrastructure Capital AG raised €16m to buy servers, run them at renewable-power sites and rent out compute capacity for AI workloads. Read more here.
💰 SLIGHTLY SMALLER ROUNDS
UK-based Perceptual Robotics secured £4m+ to scale AI-powered wind turbine inspections. Read more here.
Italian Beelzebub raised €3m to strengthen enterprise cyber defence with AI. Read more here.
UK-based Kinematic Trees raised £585k to scale nature-inspired robotics software. Small round, genuinely fascinating category. Read more here.
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📰 BIG NEWS
Index Ventures
The VC firm just announced $3.5bn to back the world's greatest founders at every stage of their journey:
A $400m seed fund
A $900m venture fund
A $2.2bn growth fund
The firm is on a generational run having been through a period of insane liquidity. These are just some examples of how much cash they've made from recent exits:
Wiz acquisition to Google: $4.1 billion
Dream Games buy out from CVC: $560 million
Scale AI semi-acquisition by Meta: $1.8 billion
Figma IPO: >$1bn
With more here.
EU launches €30bn AI Gigafactories tender
The European Commission launched a call for proposals on 30 July to set up up to seven AI Gigafactories across the EU, mobilising a total of over €30bn in combined public and private investment. Up to €10bn will come from EU and member-state funding, with at least €20bn expected from private investors.
Consortia bids close on 12 November, with award decisions expected by early 2027 and construction starting the same year. The gigafactories will combine advanced AI processors, software and cloud stacks, high-speed connectivity and energy-efficient data centres.
The Commission has already signed letters of intent with AMD, NVIDIA and Qualcomm to secure hardware access for winning consortia.
Read more here.
UK Scale Up Fund
A Consortium of Railpen, Nest, LPPI, LGPS Central and Border to Coast has committed to exploring a UK Scale-up Fund of over £1bn, working alongside the British Business Bank and the Office for Investment.
Recent conversations that surrounded the UK joining the scale-up EU fund have stalled, leading to the UK setting up its own.
It's the first bit of major tech policy to come out of the new Burnham government and Government ministers are fronting the initiative
Read more here.
📰 SMALLER NEWS
Europe has minted 53 unicorns so far this year, including $1 billion-plus exits. see the full list, from Dealroom, here.
Alex Kendall, the CEO of Wayve, wrote a long article about how the current AI sovereignty and ecosystem debate applies to embodied AI. Read it here.
Vinted has expanded into the US ahead of a potential US IPO.
A new report has outlined how and why Revolut will become Europe’s first trillion dollar company by 2035.
💰 M&A
Swedish AI legal-tech Legora acquired London-based Wexler in its fifth acquisition of 2026. Read more here.
Swedish vibe-coding scale-up Lovable acquired Nalvin, the Swedish AI agent startup, to expand its platform. Read more here.
Oxford-based Wild Bio acquired Suffolk-based F1 Seed to create the UK's first independent precision-breeding wheat business. Read more here.
Zurich-based Gravis Robotics is reportedly in talks with SoftBank for a potential acquisition at over $500m valuation. Follows SoftBank's completed Boston Dynamics exit. Read more here.
French Clean Cells acquired Lyon-based Anaquant to expand its biopharma quality control with mass spectrometry expertise. Read more here.
💶 FUND NEWS
🎪 EVENTS
Tickets are available for Wave, the leading tech conference in Turin. Confirmed speakers include Dario Amodei, Jony Ive, Charlie Songhurst, and many more. Get 10% off using discount code SCALINGEUROPE-WAVE10 at checkout here.
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Seb