🌟 QUICK INTRO
Hello and welcome back.
Another big week. Nothing became a unicorn, Sana got acquired at a unicorn valuation, and Trump visited the UK.
Last week on The Scaling Europe Show I spoke to:
Tom Neill-Eagle, CEO/Co-Founder at Plinth
Dimi Nikolaou, CEO/Co-Founder at Wondercraft
Gauthier Van Malderen, Founder & CEO @ Perlego
Sabba Keynejad, CEO & Co-founder at VEED.IO
Maximilian Kufner, Co-founder & CEO @ Again
I’d be very grateful if you could check out my referral scheme (see below). Share this newsletter and get a free Scaling Europe hat (+ my undying gratitude).
💰 BIG ROUNDS
UK-based Wayve is set to receive $500m from Nvidia as part of its wave of investments in UK startups (see more below).
UK-based Nothing raised $200m at a $1.3bn valuation led by Tiger Global, officially becoming a unicorn. See more here.
German Terra One raised €150m from asset manager Aviva Investors to finance its grid-scale battery storage facilities. See more here.
UK-based Omnea raised a $50 million Series B funding led by Insight Partners and Khosla Ventures. See more here.
French Genomines raised $45m to ‘farm’ metal from plants. The round was led by Engine Ventures and Forbion BioEconomy. See more here.
French Defacto raised €16m led by Citi Ventures and La Maison to increase its lending volume. See more here.
Irish / English Nory, the AI-native restaurant management platform, raised a $37m Series B led by Kinnevik. See more here.
UK-based Conduct raised a $12m Seed led by Creandum to roll outs it agents for enterprises. See more here.
💸 SMALLER BUT INTERESTING ROUNDS
Spanish space-tech Kreios Space secured €8 million led by the NATO Innovation Fund and Berlin-based JOIN Capital. See more here.
Spanish Lightbase, the AI-powered developer tools platform, raised a €2.2m pre-seed led by Picus Capital. See more here.
Belgian Eagl raised €825k from angels to accelerate the development of its AI-native financial agentic platform. See more here.
📰 STARTUP NEWS
Sana / Workday
The AI-powered knowledge management platform was founded by Joel Hellermark in 2016 when he was still in school.
It went on to raise $138m from investors including New Enterprise Associates, Menlo Ventures and EQT Ventures, most recently last October when it was valued at $500m.
It's another one of Stockholm's leading tech companies (Lovable founder Anton Osika was its first employee).
It's now been announced that the company is being acquired for $1.1bn cash by Workday.
The transaction is set to finalise on January 31st 2026. Real the full announcement here.
Donald Trump / UK Government
The US President Donald Trump has just concluded his second state visit to the UK which included a bunch of major announcements from American tech companies piling cash into the UK:
NVIDIA committed £11bn, including £2bn for leading UK startups such as Revolut, Wayve, PolyAI and Synthesia. See more here.
Microsoft committed to invest $30bn in the UK’s AI infrastructure. See more here.
CoreWeave committed to invest another £1.5bn investment in UK AI data centre capacity. See more here.
Google opened a data centre in Hertfordshire as part of a two-year £5bn investment in the UK. See more here.
Nothing
The UK-headquartered smartphone company has become a unicorn after raising $200m at a $1.3bn valuation.
Nothing was founded by serial entrepreneur Carl Pei in 2020. Its aim is to disrupt the world of tech devices, take on the giants such as Apple and Samsung, and to “bring back optimism and make tech feel exciting again”.
It's announced raising $200m at a $1.3bn valuation led by Tiger Global off the back of some extraordinary results:
$500m in sales last year
150% YoY growth
On track to do $1bn in revenue this year
Revolut
The company is fundraising at the moment at a $75bn valuation, and in the investment documents they reveal recent financial results:
$1.4 billion (£1bn) in revenue in Q2
46% growth YoY
Last month the company did £410m of revenue.
Octopus Energy / Kraken
Octopus Energy will spin off Kraken into a standalone company. Kraken is an end-to-end platform that automates much of the energy supply chain.
At the time of the spin off announcement, Kraken has reached $500m in committed annual revenue through its licensing deals.
It's looking to IPO next year (at a potential valuation of $15bn) and could choose either New York or London as its IPO destination.
Read more here.
💶 FUND NEWS
Shapers announced the launch of its first fund ($75m) which will be focused solely on early stage investing in European Fintech. Read more here.
Outlast closed its first fund of €21m to back early-stage founders across the Baltics and the Nordics. The VC plans to make 30–40 investments from the fund, ranging from €250k - €1.5m. Read more here.
Aspire11, a new Prague-based investment firm backed by pension funds, has raised a €500m fund to invest in VC funds and growth companies, primarily in Europe. Read more here.
Vastpoint, a new polish VC set up by ex-employees from ElevenLabs, has reached a $22m first close on its fund. Read more here.
📰 IN OTHER NEWS
Donald Trump signed a proclamation on Friday that would impose an annual $100k fee on H-1B visa applications. These visas are used a lot by the US tech industry to hire workers from India and China. There’s been a lot of noise from tech figures across Europe that this presents a massive opportunity for Europe to attract international talent.
Will Shu is stepping down as the CEO of Deliveroo after the DoorDash agreement is finalised. This is expected to happen in the first week of October.
I’ve launched a paid version of this newsletter that will include extra articles that go in a lot more depth on specific issues. Sign up here: https://scaling-europe.beehiiv.com/upgrade
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