Europe

Redstone and EnjoyVenture have combined forces to create Human Impact Capital (HIC), Germany’s first dedicated scial impact VC fund. The fund will deploy cash into digital business models focusing on health, education and “living,” and explicitly invests to have an impact along sustainable development goals. To HIC, this means “No Poverty, Good Health and Wellbeing,

While climate tech may be all the rage right now — and for good reasons — new Paris-based VC firm Satgana (which means “a good company” in Sanskrit) is hoping its take on the subject will gain traction. It’s now completed the first closing of a target €30 million fund to back startups in areas

The UK’s privacy watchdog has warned against use of so-called “emotion analysis” technologies for anything more serious than kids’ party games, saying there’s a discrimination risk attached to applying “immature” biometric tech that makes pseudoscientific claims about being able to recognize people’s emotions using AI to interpret biometric data inputs. Such AI systems ‘function’, if

Station F, the iconic startup campus in Paris, is revamping its Founders Program completely to turn it into an acceleration program. Founders who decide to join the accelerator will get many different benefits. They’ll also have to hand out a 1% equity stake to Station F. “We are changing the flagship program of Station F.

Travel is back on the radar for investment, with consumers and business users both on the move again after a long pandemic period of staying in one place. Today, a startup called WeTravel — which builds tech for the specific needs of group travel — has raised $27 million, money that it will be using

Lionel Messi (pictured, right), the Argentine professional soccer/football player who is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, is to make a push into technology investing via a new vehicle that will be shepherded by two Silicon Valley veterans. Play Time is the name given to a new partnership between the

Last month, on International Equal Pay Day, the International Labour (ILO) Organization revealed that on average, women globally are paid about 20% less than men. This pay gap is even bigger for Black and Hispanic women, where Black women were found to earn over 63% less than white men, and Hispanic or Latina women 57.3%

Another antitrust lawsuit is being filed in Europe targeting Big Tech for hefty damages over claims of abusive self-preferencing. This time ecommerce giant Amazon — and its nudge-tastic ‘Buy Box’ — is in the frame for an incoming opt-out representative legal action that’s been announced in the U.K., seeking an estimated £900 million in damages

Sensat, a platform that helps physical infrastructure companies map and visualize all their data, has raised $20.5 million in a Series B round of funding. Founded in 2015, London-based Sensat is one of a number of so-called “digital twin” software companies that serve construction, mining, energy and similar industries with tools to replicate their physical

A new startup is setting out to help companies build and harness communities around their products, enabling them to side-step multiple disparate tools and manage everything in a single platform. Founded out of the Czech Republic in 2021, Talkbase launched out of stealth just a couple of weeks back, backed by $2 million in pre-seed funding

Worker burnout is real. Reports suggest that work-related chronic stress could be costing businesses up to $190 billion annually in reduced output and sick days, not to mention the much-discussed “Great Resignation” where workers are jumping ship in search of a greater work-life balance. In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared burnout an “occupational

Challenger bank N26 is launching a new trading feature in its app — N26 Crypto. Users will be able to easily trade crypto assets using money in their N26 account. Behind the scenes, N26 is partnering with Bitpanda to handle trading and custody. N26 is going to slowly roll out N26 Crypto across Europe. At

The UK’s media watchdog, Ofcom, has published a debut report on its first year regulating a selection of video-sharing platforms (VSPs) — including TikTok, Snapchat, Twitch, Vimeo and OnlyFans — following the introduction of content-handling rules aimed at protecting minors and others from viewing harmful user-generated video content online. As well aiming to shrink the risk

Munich-based software and services vacation rental startup, Holidu, has topped up its coffers with an oversubscribed €104 million (~$102M) Series E funding round of equity and debt, led by existing investor 83North, after seeing its year-over-year revenue grew 100% in 2021. The round saw a mix of other existing and new investors chipping in, including

Quantified health activity is all around us these days, as scores of people use mobile sensing technologies to keep an eye on their well-being by tracking their steps, workouts and even how long and deep they sleep — so why shouldn’t women who cycle (as in menstrual cycle) track monthly changes to their hormone levels?

The European Commission is facing fresh calls to make good on its 2017 antitrust decision against Google Shopping by banning Google from displaying its own shopping comparison ads units in search results — boxes which Google populates with revenue-generating ads — as they argue the self-preferencing units constitute an ongoing competition abuse by the adtech

Meet Revyze, a French startup that is developing a mobile app for iOS and Android at the intersection of education and social. In many ways, Revyze looks just like TikTok. But it is focused specifically on educational content for teenagers. “We talked with kids attending 30 or 35 different high schools,” co-founder Florent Sciberras told

A ‘Prevention of Future Deaths’ report following a U.K. coroner’s inquest into the suicide of British schoolgirl, Molly Russell, who killed herself almost five years ago after viewing content on social media websites that promoted self harm, has recommended the government looks at requiring age verification on sign-up to social platforms to ensure the separation

Members of the European Parliament have lodged complaints against three tech giants, Amazon, Google and Meta, with the EU’s Transparency Register — aka, the oversight process that’s intended to track lobbying activity aimed at the bloc’s lawmakers — accusing the trio of breaching the lobbying transparency rules by using smaller front organizations to press their

Zapier and IFTTT are, today, very large platforms for creating automation rules for texts or getting two apps to “talk” to each other via APIs. However, these are “hammers to crack nuts” when it comes to processing simple tasks needed inside businesses. Furthermore, if you include images or video, or if the text referred to

Katana, an enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform for small- and medium-sized manufacturers, has raised €35 million ($34 million) in a Series B round of funding. ERP is a form of business management software that can serve any number of functions inside a company, from marketing and risk management, to supply chain management and beyond. Integrations

Zen Educate, an online marketplace that algorithmically matches schools with the best available teachers, has raised £19.3 million ($21 million) in a Series A extension round of funding. Founded out of London in 2017, Zen Educate is setting out to supplant the traditional approach to recruiting teachers, a system that typically involves third-party agencies and

There’s a new VC fund in town — at least if you live in Paris. Meet Resonance, a new $150 million fund (€150 million) backed 100% by Otium Capital. You may already be familiar with Otium Capital. It is Pierre-Edouard Stérin’s family office. Back in 2003, Stérin co-founded Smartbox Group, the company behind many popular

The venture capital industry doesn’t have the best track record when you’re talking about ethics. Like most professions involving power and wealth, venture capital also sometimes attracts people for whom doing the right thing isn’t a concern. Limited regulatory oversight and a lack of transparency mean that investors can often get off scot-free for not

It was only in June last year when we reported how Immersive Labs, a platform which teaches cybersecurity skills to employees in a “gamified” way, had closed a $75 million Series C funding round. As of today, the company just pulled in another $66 Million, taking the total raised to $189 million. And it can

Spherics, a UK-based carbon accounting platform for SMEs to understand and reduce their environmental impact, has been acquired by accounting giant Sage. Terms of the deal were not disclosed but it’s understood Spherics had raised £1.25m in equity financing from angel investors and £300,000 in grants. Spherics was a smaller startup playing in a similar

Stellantis on Tuesday launched a plan for its business unit dedicated to circular economics, which, to cut through the jargon, is a segment of the company dedicated to sustainability and recycling. The parent company to brands like Jeep, Dodge, Maserati and Peugeot estimates that the new unit will bring in more than €2 billion in

Electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft startup Joby Aviation is partnering with Delta Airlines to deliver “home-to-airport” transportation services to Delta customers starting in New York and Los Angeles — although it might be more accurate to call it a   “neighborhood-to-airport” service, one that will rely on a network of local vertiports to fly

AgriWebb is on a mission to help livestock producers feed the world efficiently, profitably and sustainably by providing its comprehensive, ground-truth database for beef production worldwide. The Australian startup, which builds a livestock management platform for ranchers and farmers, wants to digitize farm records and the meat production process from the cow to the consumer

Clerkenwell Health, a psychedelic-specialist clinical research organisation, has raised £2.1m in seed funding, bringing the total to date up to £2.5m, which will be used to get the London startup-based fully operational. Investors include Lionheart Ventures, Convergence Partners, and Exceptional Ventures, which was co-founded by Paolo Pio (former MD Europe at Joyance Partners) and Matt