Europe

In another move that’s being frowned upon by European Union regulators, Elon Musk-owned Twitter has closed its Brussels office per a report in the Financial Times — citing sources with knowledge of the departures. Staffers in the office were focused on European Union digital policy, working in close proximity to the seat of power of

How many VC funds can you name where the three partners all had babies whilst raising the fund, have deep connections in Asia as well as Europe and the US, and include actress Anne Hathaway as an LP? Not many I’d hazard. But that’s the profile of Pact, a new Seed VC fund launched with

Shadow is now officially a tech company with two different products. In addition to its cloud computing service that works particularly well for games, the company is launching Shadow Drive, a cloud storage service based on Nextcloud. “It’s now been a year and a half since Octave Klaba acquired Blade with a vision: take down

UK-based electric two-wheeler manufacturer Zapp Electric Vehicles is merging with a blank-check company to become publicly traded on the Nasdaq at a post-money valuation of $573 million. Zapp says it will use the proceeds from the merger to bring its long-awaited i300 high performance, seated city scooter to market. The i300 was initially revealed back

Meta’s surveillance-based business model is facing an interesting legal challenge in the U.K. from an individual who’s suing over its continued processing of her data for ad targeting — despite her objection. The legal challenge — which is being brought by human rights campaigner Tanya O’Carroll — is seeking a declaration that Meta is in

Ukio, a short-term furnished apartment rental platform aimed at the “flexible workforce,” has raised €27 million ($28 million) in a Series A round of funding. The cash injection constitutes €17 million in equity and €10 million in debt, and follows some 14 months after the Spanish company announced a €9 million seed round of funding.

The UK’s antitrust watchdog has moved to deepen its scrutiny of the Apple and Google mobile duopoly — kicking off an in-depth investigation into elements of the pair’s mobile ecosystem dominance by probing their approach toward rival mobile browsers and cloud gaming services which it’s concerned could be restricting competition and harming consumers. The move

All eyes are currently on the collapse of FTX in the crypto industry. That’s why today’s news from Bitpanda is an important signal for the Austrian unicorn company. Bitpanda has received a crypto license from Germany’s financial regulator (BaFin). Its German subsidiary is now officially allowed to process cryptocurrencies for German customers under its Crypto

This post was published (November 21, 2022 @ 08:37:07) and was updated with new information at (November 21, 2022 @ 11:54:08) San Francisco time. Immigram — a talent immigration platform founded by two Russian passport holders — has been removed from a $1 million startup competition that it won last week at the high-profile Slush

A German law requiring social media platforms to promptly respond to reports of hate speech — and in some cases remove illegal speech within 24 hours of it being brought to their attention — looks like it will provide an early test for whether Elon Musk-owned Twitter will face meaningful legal consequences over how recklessly

French startup Fairmat closed a $35 million Series A funding round (€34 million) last month. It wants to turn carbon fiber composite that is no longer in use into a new material that can be used in new products. Temasek and CNP (Compagnie Nationale à Portefeuille) are leading the round with Pictet Group, Singular, The

Swedish startup Einride was founded in 2016 with a mission to electrify freight transport. Today, that means designing electric trucks and an underlying operating system to help overland shippers make the transition to electric. In the future, it will mean deploying electric autonomous freight — more specifically, Einride’s autonomous pods, which are purpose-built for self-driving

While the Sequoias and the Andreessen Horowitzes of the world continue to swell in size, their influence on venture capital may be heading in the opposite direction as micro funds increase their impact on the industry. Whether you define micro funds as below $50 million or sub-$25 million, these are truly the funds that power

Electric vehicle startup Nio is accelerating its expansion in Europe. The premium EV maker just launched its first power-swapping station in Varberg, Sweden, the company said in a LinkedIn post. When it comes to charging, Nio differentiates itself from its rivals by offering swappable batteries, which are upgradable and charge a monthly subscription fee, on

Back on April 8, 2021, Index Ventures, one of the very few “original gangsters” of the European VC scene, said it was kind’ve going “back to its roots.” It announced the launch of a new $200 million dedicated seed investing vehicle dubbed “Index Origin.” Now, if you cast your minds back, this was during the

As the world moves into economic headwinds and geopolitical uncertainty, European founders must get used to taking tough decisions to ensure the survival of their startups. This will include getting used to “flat” or “down rounds” of funding, after experiencing the high valuations of the last couple of years. That was the message today at

Venture-backed startups have had to make myriad spending cuts this year in an attempt to either live up to a high valuation, minimize their burn rate or both. But new data from fintech Capchase shows that many startups — especially venture-backed ones — seem to be getting the wrong advice concerning where to downsize. Capchase,

French startup Virgil has raised a $15.6 million funding round (€15 million). The company invests in apartments alongside home buyers before they even get the keys for their new home. This way, future homeowners can buy a bigger place in exchange for an equity stake in their apartment. Home equity is a much more fluid

Germany’s antitrust watchdog has moved to widen an existing investigation of Amazon’s business in the market in light of special abuse powers it confirmed are applicable to the ecommerce giant’s business in the country this summer. The Federal Cartel Office (FCO) said yesterday it is extending two ongoing “abuse control proceedings” against Amazon to include

The European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA) enters into force today — setting the clock ticking on designations that will determine which larger Internet platforms face an extra layer of rules in areas likes algorithmic transparency and risk assessment. Larger platforms will also face centralized oversight by the European Commission in a marked change to

Algorithmiq, a Helsinki-based quantum computing startup, has pulled in a deal with IBM to super-charge its exploration of quantum algorithms applied to the life sciences. The collaboration will attempt to dramatically cut the time and cost of drug discovery and development. The widely accepted maxim is that it takes around a decade and $1 billion

The Linux Foundation Europe (LF Europe) — the recently launched European offshoot of the open source Linux Foundation — today announced the launch of Project Sylva, which aims to create an open source telco cloud framework for European telcos and vendors. This is the first project hosted by LF Europe and is a good example

Nothing less than a war has broken out between an influential swathe of the U.K. tech startup community and the British government, after the latter has allegedly sought to hand the curation and promotion of British startups — both inside the U.K. and abroad — over to a single U.K. bank. As we covered previously,

Indico Capital Partners, the Lisbon, Portugal based VC, has launched a €25 million ‘Opportunity Fund’, with the help of previous LPs, to invest up to an additional €5 million in the most promising four or five companies from its first fund. Indico says this would double the maximum investment per startup from €5-10 million. Indico

Helmed by erratic new owner Elon Musk, Twitter is no longer fulfilling key obligations required for it to claim Ireland as its so-called main establishment under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a source familiar with the matter has told TechCrunch. Our source, who is well placed, requested and was granted anonymity owing

The complexity of streaming data technologies – not just streaming video but any kind of streaming data – has created a headache around dealing with that high speed data processing. Accordingly, companies like Spark, Flink have spring up to address this ksqlDB. Many are either either java-based solutions or SQL-based analytics solutions. However, UK startup

In parallel with the FTC’s ominous warning to Elon Musk’s Twitter yesterday — that ‘no CEO or company is above the law‘ — the microblogging platform’s lead regulator in the European Union is on its case in the wake of senior staffers in charge of security and privacy compliance walking out the door. Graham Doyle,

Walk through any public park these days and you will see a hell of a lot more dogs than you might have done three years ago. The loneliness of the pandemic lockdowns led to an explosion in pet ownership. Plus, The demographic of pet ownership has shifted. Whereas previously it was Granny or Grandpa who

Kuda, the London-based and Nigerian-operating startup taking on incumbents in the country with a mobile-first and personalized set of banking services, is expanding to the U.K. by offering a remittance product to Nigerians in the diaspora.  The digital bank has seen some success since launching in Nigeria in 2019. Kuda claims to have up to

Mental health problems — and the tech products which aim at them — come in all shapes and sizes. There are “mental wellness” products like Calm and Headspace. On the more severe side of things there is Cerebral, Betterhelp and, of course, marketplaces for actual, card-carrying therapists. If you have more moderate mental health problems