Europe

The EU has cleared Meta/Facebook’s acquisition of CRM maker, Kustomer — accepting a set of commitments from the tech giant to allay competition concerns linked to the fact it also owns a suite of popular messaging apps frequently used by small businesses for customer outreach (aka Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp).  The Commission said Meta

Rhys Spence Contributor Rhys Spence is head of research at Brighteye Ventures, a European edtech-focused fund, where he works with portfolio companies to help address priorities, with a focus on internationalization and HR. More posts by this contributor The unbundling of professional learning and entrepreneurship education What we can learn from edtech startups’ expansion efforts

With post-pandemic burnout on the rise, the shift to remote working, and the ‘Great Resignation’ now passing into the lexicon, companies are struggling to hold onto talent. Culture platforms like Culture Amp and Glint were built for a different era, offering insights and reports to HR, but many are less tailored to 2022. And employee

The creative community has been a ripe target for startups building tools and services to serve their interests and needs as they transition from their traditionally offline practices into a digital present and future. In one of the latest developments, Domestika — a popular site that creates and sells online video tutorials and courses covering

The pandemic spurred a boom in electric bikes and other alternative urban transportation modes as city dwellers looked for less-crowded ways to get around their streets quickly and easily without resorting to cars. Now, one of the companies that benefitted from that trend is announcing a big round of funding to expand its business. Cowboy,

Pimloc, a UK computer vision startup that’s sharpened its business pitch to sell an AI service for quickly anonymizing video — automating the blurring of faces or licence plates, along with a suite of other visual search services — has grabbed another chunk of seed funding: Announcing a raise of $7.5M, led by Zetta Venture

French startup Resilience announced yesterday that it has raised a $45 million (€40 million) Series A round led by Cathay Innovation. The startup wants to improve the treatment journey when you’re diagnosed with cancer so that you live a healthier and longer life. In addition to Cathay Innovation, existing investor Singular is also participating. Other

Bulgarian venture capital is experiencing something of a renaissance. Last year LAUNCHub Ventures raised a €70 million find aimed at South Eastern Europe, while Vitosha Venture Partners raised a €26 million ($30 million) fund for startup out of Bulgaria. Now Eleven Ventures, another Bulgarian VC focused on pre-seed and seed investing in South-Eastern Europe (SEE)

Sylvera, a UK-based startup which uses machine learning technology to analyze a variety of visual data like satellite imagery and Lidar with the goal of boosting accountability and credibility around carbon offsetting projects, has fast followed a $5.8 million seed round in May last year by closing a $32M Series A. The round was co-led

Starship Technologies, one of the bigger names in the world of autonomous delivery robots — those little caboose-like, boxy delivery vehicles that self-drive around cities — has been on a roll during Covid-19, providing extra (unmanned) horsepower to distribute food and other goods between stores or restaurants and consumers, at a time when consumers were

As we have started to see the light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel, food delivery has shaped up to continue to be a major business. In England, for example, some 76% of people order at least one takeaway a week, whereas it was 60% pre-pandemic. Now, a startup called Deliverect that has built a

The Netherlands’ competition authority has fined Apple €5 million (~$5.6M) for failing to comply with conditions in an order requiring it to allow local dating apps to make user of third party payment technology in their apps. The tech giant could be on the hook for another €5M fine next week if it doesn’t meet

French startup Luko is acquiring German startup Coya in order to grow its European presence and get an insurance license from German regulator. While Luko isn’t disclosing terms of the deal, the company says it’s a 100% share deal, which means that Coya investors are now Luko investors. Those investors include Valar Ventures, Headline and

Back in March Vienna-based PlanRadar snapped up a €30 million Series A to digitize construction and real estate. The Austrian startup – a platform for documentation and communication in construction and real estate projects – is continuing its funding roll with a $70 million fundraising round co-led by Insight Partners and Quadrille Capital. The round

Mention Me, a platform to generate customer referrals, has raised a $25m Series B round, led by London’s Octopus Ventures. Eight Roads Ventures, the lead investor from the prior round, a $7 million Series A in a 2018, also participated. The London-based startup helps businesses turn referrals into a channel for acquiring customers, while also gathering data

The European Union’s chief privacy and data protection regulator has urged EU policymakers to strengthen proposed ‘transparency’ rules for political ads — calling instead for meaningful limits that would fully ban microtargeting for political purposes. The Commission proposal to regulate political ads, last fall, fell very far short of that — offering what this publication

The Israeli VC scene seems to be on a bit of a New Year roll. Hot on the heels of the news that Viola Ventures, an Israeli VC, has closed its sixth fund of $250 million, comes news from  Entrée Capital, another firm in the country, that has closed its fourth Israel-focused early-stage fund and its second

The European Parliament has definitively backed major limits on behavioral advertising during a plenary vote on amendments to the pan-EU Digital Services Act (DSA). The move looks set to crank up pressure on Big Tech business models that rely on pervasive tracking and profiling of users to target ads — with adtech duopoly Facebook and

Berlin-based Cherry Ventures has launched its fourth fund, a €300 million ($340 million) early-stage tech fund. The Cherry IV fund will also feature a dedicated crypto and web3 strategy, building off Cherry’s existing portfolio in the space. Cherry’s portfolio includes unicorns Flink and SellerX, Infarm, as well as AUTO1 Group, FlixBus, flaschenpost, Forto, Xometry and

By adding some electrodes and some electronics to your earbuds, Wisear can make your music experience a lot more hands-free than before. Bite down on your own teeth twice to pause a track, or three times to skip to the next tune — without making a noise, hand gesture or much visible movement at all,

As the legal uncertainty in Europe clouding use of US cloud services cranks up, Google has responded by firing up its lobbying engines to call for US and European lawmakers to get a move on and come up a new rubberstamp to grease transatlantic data flows as usual as the bloc’s regulators finally start to

There are many ways of spinning up a startup, but it takes a particularly brave set of founders to take on a deeply entrenched industry with a small number of incumbents who have the market all sown up. You’d have to be a special flavor of bold to take on internet search for example —

The UK’s ad-fuelled boom in crypto trading looks to be headed for major speed restrictions: The country’s financial watchdog said it will beef up rules around marketing of crypto assets and could even put limits on who can invest, following government confirmation yesterday that it will extend the regulator’s remit to cover crypto. In recent

Yoga, personal trainers and other kinds of online coaches have a bewildering array of platforms on which they can launch their class, either in platforms specializing in verticals (PTs) or more general ones. A new UK player hopes – perhaps a little optimistically – hopes to make inroads into this market with a ‘one stop

European startups collectively raised a record $100 billion+ in funding in 2021, a sign of their swelling ranks, ambitions and stature. Now, a VC in London has closed a record round of funding to cater specifically to that opportunity. Blossom Capital, which makes investments in European startups at the Series A stage, has raised $432

British autonomous vehicle startup Wayve has raised a $200 million Series B funding round from investors to scale its technology and expand its partnerships with commercial fleets. Wayve is aiming to be a major player in the arena of Robo-deliveries and logistics. It’s now raised a total of $258 million to date, for its technology,

Amazon appears to have rowed back from a public threat to end support for Visa payments in the UK in a dispute over payment fees. The ecommerce giant sent an email to users of Amazon.co.uk today informing them that the “expected change” — which was due to take place on January 19 — will not

Burnt Finance is a crypto startup which, as a stunt, burnt a Banksy artwork and but then the NFT they’d minted for it for $400,000, double what it cost on the ‘normal’ open art market. Based on the idea that auctions for NFTs could be improved, it went on to raise $3 million for a

Another regulatory brick in the wall for Apple: The iPhone maker agreed this weekend to changes to its App Store in the Netherlands focused on dating apps, agreeing to allow local developers of dating apps to be able to offer non-Apple based payments (via Reuters). In December, the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM)

Payments company Checkout.com isn’t just a unicorn — it has closed a $1 billion Series D founding round. Following today’s round, the company is now valued at $40 billion. That’s a stark increase compared to last year’s valuation. With its Series C round, the company raised $450 million at a $15 billion valuation — it represents