Europe

Embedded finance continues to be the engine driving the growth of fintech, with one group of companies building core banking, payments and other financial technology, and a much bigger group tapping that technology through APIs to build customer-facing businesses. Today, one of the bigger players on the core technology side — Global Processing Services —

EV charging continues to be a high-growth business, for obvious reasons. Since 2007, one of the largest players has been ChargePoint, the floated US company which with a widespread EV charging network. But plenty of startups are snapping at its heels. One of them is Germany-based HeyCharge, which realised there was a problem with how

Over 30 civil society organizations, pro-privacy tech businesses and European startups are making a last ditch pitch to try to convince EU lawmakers to put stricter limits on surveillance advertising as a major vote looms on an update to the bloc’s digital rules. The European Parliament will vote shortly to confirm its negotiating position on

As we’ve learned in the last few years, ‘human error’-led cyber security breaches are the ones companies often find it hardest to guard against. Surveys suggest some 85% of attacks can be traced back to the human factor. Thus startups built to alleviate this gap — such as the UK’s Cybsafe which raises $7-9m last

Meet Stoïk, a new French startup that wants to protect small and medium companies against cybersecurity incidents. The company offers an insurance product as well as a service that monitors your attack surface. The startup recently raised a $4.3 million (€3.8 million) seed round from Alven Capital, Anthemis Group, Kima Ventures as well as several

The success of Roblox and other user-created gaming experiences like Overwolf have democratized the concept of making games and have taken it into the mainstream. Now, a startup founded by veterans from Unity, Microsoft and EA that is building a new platform for creators to build immersive games, and related communities around like-minded people, is

A decision by Austria’s data protection watchdog upholding a complaint against a website related to its use of Google Analytics does not bode well for use of US cloud services in Europe. The decision raises a big red flag over routine use of tools that require transferring Europeans’ personal data to the US for processing

While last year’s WhatsApp outage is still sending shivers down the spine of its 2 billion users, the same is also true for the millions of businesses now using it to connect with their customers. As we now know, messaging across all platforms is a new area from which many startups are emerging. One of

It’s now 2022 and there are many, many apps out there that allow you to do cardio or build muscle by taking classes inside smartphone apps. We are all familiar with the success of platforms like Peloton (IPO’d), but there are of course new upstarts such as FiiT (raised £9M) or Fitplan (raised $9.9M). Plus

French startup Doctolib is expected to close the acquisition of Tanker today based on regulatory filings. Doctolib is a French unicorn that develops a software-as-a-service product to help doctors and medical workers with admin tasks. In particular, Doctolib acts as a booking platform that connects doctors with patients. 300,000 health professionals pay for the service

Twig, a London-based fintech targeting Gen Z and younger Millennial consumers with an e-money account that gives them instant cash-outs on fashion and electronics they want to sell, has closed a $35 million Series A round of funding. The investment is led by UK-based fintech specialist, Fasanara Capital, with additional backing from a number of

“Deskless” workers have become a big focus for tech companies looking for new opportunities in the B2B market, and today a startup targeting this segment with e-learning tools is announcing a round of funding to fuel its own growth. EduMe, a London startup that provides online corporate training and education in the form of “microlearning”

Economies of scale are an essential cornerstone for on-demand companies, and to that end one of the hopefuls in the space has raised a big round to grow its business. Bolt — the startup and app of the same name that operates on-demand ride hailing, shared cars and scooters; and restaurant and grocery delivery —

London-based Kodland, which started out back in 2018 offering in-person courses for children to learn digital skills like computer programming before switching focus to online learning from early 2020, has closed a $9M Series A funding round to scale into more markets. The round is led by Redseed Ventures, with participation from Baring Vostok, Kismet,

French startup Doctolib held a (virtual) press conference this morning to share some metrics, look back at the company’s recent product launches and give a hint about future investments. Doctolib started as a booking platform for doctors and has expanded to other services for doctors and medical workers in general. With its software-as-a-service strategy, medical

French startup Ankorstore has raised a $283 million Series C funding round (€250 million). Founded in November 2019, it took Ankorstore around two years to reach a post-money valuation of $2 billion (€1.75 billion). The company operates a wholesale marketplace for independent retailers across Europe. Ankorstore lets independent brands sell their products to independent retailers.

In a decision as significant as it is unexpected, German’s antitrust regulator has concluded that Google’s business meets the threshold for special abuse control which was established under an update to competition law targeted at digital giants and passed at the start of last year. The finding that Google has “paramount significance across markets” is

Biometrics, and specifically facial recognition, have seen a surge of usage in the last several years, first as a tool to help organizations verify identities digitally against rising waves of fraud and cybercrime; and second as a way to help enable that process even further in our socially-distanced, pandemic-punctuated times. Today, a startup called iProov,

Chalk another one up for decentralized enforcement: France’s data protection watchdog has slapped headline-grabbing fines on Facebook and Google for failing to respect local (and pan-EU) cookie consent rules. Today, the CNIL said it’s fined Google €150M (~$170M) and Facebook €60M (~$68M) for breaching French law, following investigations of how they present tracking choices to

As more and more people are wanting to leave a smaller footprint on the earth, many of us are living in smaller spaces. Daan Tech is a startup we found at CES 2022 that is taking a fresh new look at tech aimed specifically at small households of one or two people. I rarely cover

Italian startup Filo — better known in Europe for its Tile-like Bluetooth tracking devices — is showing off its shiny new product Tata Pad, a cushion that goes on top of a child seat, and can notify you if you’ve left your pride and joy strapped into the back seat as you saunter into the

Most artificial intelligence models are trained through supervised learning, meaning that humans must label raw data. Data labeling is a critical part of automating artificial intelligence and machine learning model, but at the same time, it can be time-consuming and tedious work. A Korean startup called AIMMO, which uses software and humans to label and

Carisa Nietsche Contributor Carisa Nietsche is an associate fellow for the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. The TechCrunch Global Affairs Project examines the increasingly intertwined relationship between the tech sector and global politics. Europe has a well-earned reputation for regulating Big Tech, taking the lead on privacy, data protection and especially

Because of the unpredictable nature of the fashion industry, fashion brands often have to ‘guestimate’ demand for their products, and if they get that demand wrong, they have to deal with the wasted inventory. All too often clothes end up being incinerated unnecessarily, adding to their environmental impact. UK startup Purple Dot has an ecommerce

So-called ‘Deep Tech’ venture capital has been experiencing a wave of interest in the couple last years with several new funds launching. Many are focused on the European market, which has a deep bench (no pun intended) of talent and innovation, thanks in part to its many excellent universities. The latest is Outsized Ventures, a

Some 55 billion parcels are shipped in bubble wrap every year. Plastic bubble wrap is reliant on fossil fuels and 98% of plastic packaging is single-use. You can imagine the adverse environmental impact of all this plastic. The founders of Woola were running an online e-commerce store and saw the packaging problem first-hand. The lack

German on-demand delivery giant Delivery Hero is pulling its food delivery service out of Germany again. At the same time it has announced it will exit the Japanese market, by divesting Foodpanda Japan, starting in Q1 next year. In a statement accompanying the pre-Christmas exit news, the company’s CEO and co-founder, Niklas Östberg, said: “Scaling

Enterprise software giant Sage has acquired the remaining stake in Brightpearl, originally a UK-based startup in cloud retail management, for $340m. Brightpearl provides a SaaS-based retail operating system, enabling real-time business insights. Sage previously owned 17% of the Bristol, UK-based startup, which MMC Ventures, a UK Series A investor, backed in 2014. The startup had

Fintech startup LiveFlow has raised a $3.5M Seed round which was led by Moonfire Ventures with backing from Y Combinator, Seedcamp and WndrCo.  Also participating was Victor Jacobsson, co-founder of Klarna; Bradley Horowitz, former VP Product at Google; Oliver Jung, former VP International Expansion at AirBnB, Phillip Chambers, Peakon founder & CEO, and others. LiveFlow

The European Union’s competition regulator has given the all-clear to Microsoft’s $19.7 billion purchase of transcription tech firm Nuance, which was announced earlier this year. The EU said today it has concluded there are no competition concerns for the region if the acquisition goes ahead, clearing it without conditions. The deal was notified to the