Europe

As crazy as the NFT market has become, there’s been an increasing range of other things to do with NFTs other than pimp images of apes and punks – even if they have become enormously valuable. We’ve seen the auction of apartments as NFTs, for instance. And now we’re seeing charities starting to benefit from

Stenon, an AgTech company that has a real-time soil-sensing solution, has raised a $20 million Series A funding round from Founders Fund, David Friedberg’s The Production Board, and existing investors including Cherry Ventures and Atlantic Labs. Founded in 2018 in Potsdam, Germany, Stenon’s digital soil data is produced without the need for a laboratory, making it faster

The European e-scooter market is currently the main battleground for companies playing in the micromobility space, taking advantage as they are of Europe’s relatively compact cities and the desire of populations to move to more sustainable transportation. In 2021, players like Tier, Voi and Dott continued to raise VC backing. But the war for funding

In its latest (and last) pre-Christmas document reveal, European privacy advocacy group, noyb, has published details of an 86-page internal assessment by Facebook of its (continued) transfers of European’s personal data to the US — and the resulting conclusion can be best summed up as ‘The Emperor, Mark Zuckerberg, Has No Clothes’. The convoluted back

Re:cap, a non-dilutive funding platform in a similar vein to Pipe.com and Capchase but based in Europe, has closed a Seed financing round of $111.5 million, in a mix of growth capital and liquidity for the revenue-based financing platform. re:cap’s first product is now officially going live, following a pre-seed funding in May of this

With e-commerce becoming increasingly globalized, a company called Taxdoo, which builds API-based tools to help e-commerce companies with tax compliance and other accounting needs, is announcing a round of funding: $64 million, a Series B that the Hamburg-based startup will be using to expand further across Europe and to build what it describes as the

The European Parliament has agreed its negotiating position on draft legislation to put limits on how Big Tech can operate with the aim of rebooting competition and fair dealing in digital markets. The proposal also takes aim at so-called ‘killer acquisitions’ where powerful platforms buy up smaller rivals or startups to choke off alternative services

New research examining what happens after Internet users in Europe land on an ad-supported website and express their “privacy choices” — using a flagship ad industry consent management platform which is supposed to allow them to control the types of ads they receive (i.e. non-tracking vs “personalized”) — has raised fresh questions over the IAB

Enterprise SaaS for measuring company carbon emission is hot. Only recently Planetly was acquired by OneTrust for an undisclosed amount. And there are plenty of other startups in the space such as Plan A, Watershed, and Emitwise, all with their own take on the market. Now France-based Sweep, which targets carbon management in large enterprises

French startup Voodoo has announced that it plans to make a significant investment in blockchain-powered mobile games. The company estimates that it represents a $200 million investment over the coming years. 2021 has been an important year for crypto gaming, with Axie Infinity popularizing the play-to-earn model. Some companies, such as Mythical Games, raised massive

Controversial facial recognition company, Clearview AI, which has amassed a database of some 10 billion images by scraping selfies off the Internet so it can sell an identity-matching service to law enforcement, has been hit with another order to delete people’s data. France’s privacy watchdog said today that Clearview has breached Europe’s General Data Protection

UBQ Materials, which claims it has developed a plastic-like material made from 100% unsorted household waste, has raised a $170 million funding round led by TPG Rise, TPG’s global impact investing platform, made through TPG Rise Climate, the firm’s dedicated climate investing fund, and The Rise Funds, its multisector impact investing fund. The financing round

In its latest move to placate European competition regulators, Google has offered a set of commitments to France’s antitrust watchdog — in the hopes of settling a costly (for it) intervention over legally mandated payments for displaying snippets of news publishers’ content. Back in July, France’s Autorité de la Concurrence slapped the tech giant with

Signal AI, an artificial intelligence startup that trawls the vast sea of internet and other publicly available data to provide organizations with sentiment insights and other information to make better business decisions, has raised $50 million. It plans to use the funds to continue building out its AI platform to bring in more diversified data

Sophie Dembinski Contributor Sophie Dembinski is head of Public Policy and U.K. lead at Ecosia, which uses advertising revenues from its search engine to fund tree-planting projects across the world. To date, Ecosia has planted more than 139 million trees in countries such as Brazil, Australia, Burkina Faso, Indonesia, Spain and the U.K. Europe has

The UK’s antitrust watchdog has given the clearest signal yet that interventions under an upcoming reform of the country’s competition rules will target tech giants Apple and Google — including their duopolistic command of the mobile market, via iOS and Android; their respective app stores; and the browsers and services bundled with mobile devices running

As advertising and marketing become increasingly automated and thus commoditized, design has emerged as a savior to help brands stand out. And today, a startup that’s helping companies connect with a wider range of designers and other creatives to meet that demand is announcing a round of funding to fuel its business growth. Superside, which

Unique, a video calls platform that uses AI to teach sales teams how to improve their pitches, has closed a $6 million Seed round from a bunch of Angel investors. These include Phillip Stauffer, U.S based founder and general partner of Fyrfly Venture Partners, and Daniel Gutenberg. Unique uses AI to analyse customer conversations. The

StudyFree — which connects students with international educational opportunities via a community-driven B2C SaaS model — has raised a $3 million seed investment round led by I2BF Global Ventures, TMT Investments, and TechStars. Also participating was PandaDoc CEO Mikita Mikado and Google’s ex-director of product Andrey Doronichev. StudyFree has now received a total of $3.6

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is facing the prospect of imminent extradition to the US after the UK High Court granted an appeal by the US government against an earlier (January) refusal by a UK judge to extradite him on mental health grounds. A final decision on whether or not to grant the extradition will be

HURR — a “RentTheRunway” style UK fashion rental marketplace – has raised $5.4M in a seed funding round led by European VC firm, Octopus Ventures. Also participating was Ascension and D4 Ventures, among others. HURR launched in 2019 and has a hybrid business model combining peer-to-peer fashion rentals, direct partnerships with fashion outlets, and a

Spain’s government has agreed on the details of a draft startup law — passing the baton to the parliament to debate and potentially amend the plan ahead of a vote to turn it into actual law. The Council of Ministers announced adoption of the draft text today which it said contains important measures to cut

Roger Gothmann Contributor Roger Gothmann, Ph.D., is co-founder and CEO at Taxdoo, an automated platform for financial compliance in e-commerce. Electronic interfaces, platforms and marketplaces form a key layer in the digital infrastructure behind e-commerce, serving as gatekeepers between consumers and producers of digital content or digitally sold products. These gatekeepers offer third-party companies access

Earnr is a new finance and tax service aimed at the UK creator economy and people doing ‘side-hustle’ businesses. It’s now secured £650,000 to launch an app aimed at ‘solopreneurs’. The round was led by 7percent Ventures, and was joined by Antler and FJ Labs. The startup deals with the financial and tax admin side

EU lawmakers have formally proposed legislation for the gig economy they hope will improve conditions for platform workers across the bloc — including by establishing a framework to tackle the problem of bogus self-employment. The Commission’s overarching goal is to a create a level playing field between traditional businesses and gig platforms, as well as

Tradeshift — the late-stage startup tackling supply chain financing — has announced a $200 million funding round in equity and debt from a combination of existing and new investors, including Koch Industries, the giant industrial conglomerate. Also participating were IDC Ventures, LUN Partners, Private Shares, and Fuel Capital who increased their existing stakes in the

Italy’s competition authority announced that it had fined Amazon €1.129 billion, or roughly $1.3 billion at today’s exchange rate. According to the antitrust watchdog, Amazon has abused its dominant market position and pushed third-party sellers to use the company’s logistics service ‘Fulfillment by Amazon’ (FBA). The Italian authority, the Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del

Felix Capital, the London VC firm that has built a portfolio emphasizing investments in startups in the ecosystem that supports the creative class, is bringing on two more partners, Julien Codorniou and Susan Lin, as it continues to expand into a wider range of categories. Codorniou had been a longtime executive at Meta (formerly Facebook),

Just a few weeks after announcing stock and crypto trading, French fintech startup Lydia is announcing that it has raised a $100 million Series C round. With this funding round, the startup has reached a unicorn valuation, which means that it is currently valued at more than $1 billion. Dragoneer and Echo Street are investing

The gradual return of tourism and travel in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic continues to see a wave of startups raising rounds of funding to meet new opportunities in the market. In the latest development, Easol, which has built event and experiences software that third-party companies can use to market and sell bookings —