Europe

Building usable models to run AI algorithms requires not just adequate data to train systems, but also the right hardware subsequently to run them. But because the theoretical and practical are often not the same thing, there is often a gap between what data scientists may hope to do and what they practically do. Today,

Berlin-based on-demand grocery delivery and dark store operator Gorillas has grabbed “close to” $1 billion in Series C funds, in the latest sign of the searing investor interest driving activity in urban food shopping apps across the continent and beyond. The round is being led by another food-focused on-demand delivery startup — German’s Delivery Hero

John Diener, the CEO of an aquaculture nutrition and genetics company, would visit hundreds of shrimp farms as part of his job. But gradually he became frustrated by some of the environmentally unsustainable practices used in many locations. One night, his wife bought some frozen shrimp to cook for dinner and he realized the industry

The UK’s antitrust watchdog will take a close look at the music streaming market. Today the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced that it will be conducting a market study of music streaming as soon as possible, as its latest piece of work aimed at expanding competition in digital markets. It uses market studies to

Another big infusion of cash from a major investor is making its way to a fintech out of the UK on the heels of strong growth. Today Zopa — a neobank with some 500,000 users in the UK where it provides peer-to-peer lending, savings accounts, credit cards and other services — has raised $300 million,

TechCrunch is embarking on a major new project to survey founders and investors in cities across Europe, Middle East and Africa. Over the next few weeks, we will ask entrepreneurs in MENA cities to talk about their ecosystems, in their own words. This is your chance to put your city on the TechCrunch Map! This

The decentralized reality of office work after the COVID-19 pandemic continues to drive plenty of startup activity. To wit: OfficeRnD, which makes workplace management software that’s increasingly geared toward helping businesses provide a ‘hybrid office’ model — meaning they’re offering flexible work spaces to staff who want to spend some of their time working out

One of the gating factors for getting more homeowners to make the switch to solar energy has been that solar, as a business, is hard one to get right, with many a company failing when they’ve been unable to strike the right balance between the technology working as it should, provisioning services in a cost-effective

Emerging out of Singapore as primarily a “company builder” in 2017, Antler made its name as a runner of a global startup generator program and investing from a very early, pre-seed stage. It tended to throw teams together, mix in a tech stack and spit out startups at a prodigious rate. But things have progressed

A new research paper written by a team of academics and computer scientists from Spain and Austria has demonstrated that it’s possible to use Facebook’s targeting tools to deliver an ad exclusively to a single individual if you know enough about the interests Facebook’s platform assigns them. The paper — entitled “Unique on Facebook: Formulation

The UK government’s post-Brexit appetite to ‘reform’ domestic privacy rules by reducing the level of protections wrapping people’s data is already having wider ramifications for the country’s tech ecosystem. Last month the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) announced a consultation on reducing privacy standards — claiming ‘simplified’ rules would be a boon

Berlin-based Mayd has spied an opportunity to build out a medicine delivery platform in Europe which partners with the small-scale pharmacies that tend to be the norm on the continent, capitializing on how the pandemic has generally accelerated demand for on-demand delivery. The startup, which was only founded at the beginning of this year, has

Farming accounts for 24 percent of Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions, and this is largely due to the intensive, ‘industrial’ farming methods employed in the last few decades, together with the rise in the consumption of meat. However, a new approach has been taking the farming world by storm. ‘Regenerative Farming’ practices hand unproductive land back

UK social audio startup Wisdom has launched a new mentorship marketplace that’s described as a mix between Clubhouse and the celebrity-focused courses platform Masterclass. The app lets users log on to find conversations which they can join live (with the chance to ask questions) or listen back to on-demand (streamed talks are automatically saved to

SumUp, a European-based competitor to Square, PayPal/iZettle and others that provide mobile-powered card readers and other sales technology to merchants and small businesses, has made an acquisition in the U.S. to dig deeper into that market, and to expand the kinds of services that it provides to customers globally. The company has acquired Fivestars, which

Facebook’s lead data protection regulator in the European Union is inching toward making its first decision on a complaint against Facebook itself. And it looks like it’s a doozy. Privacy campaign not-for-profit noyb today published a draft decision by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) on a complaint made under the EU’s General Data Protection

Lunar Ventures, is a a new, technically-oriented VC fund aimed at early-stage DeepTech startups, that is now announcing the closing of its €40M first fund. Lunar was founded in Berlin in 2019 by Dr Elad Verbin, a computer science researcher; Mick Halsband, a CTO and software architect; and Luis Shemtov, a former entrepreneur. The launch

French startup Jow has raised a $20 million funding round led by Eurazeo. Jow wants to make it easier to cook at home by taking care of menu ideas and helping you manage your online orders of groceries. The company has partnered with national food retailers so that your oder is seamlessly processed by your

Paris-based cryptocurrency broker SheeldMarket has raised a $10 million Series A funding round led by Atomico. As a EU-registered broker, the company wants to help institutional investors buy and sell crypto assets in a regulated way. Most cryptocurrency products designed for institutional investors focus on American or Asian investors. SheeldMarket thinks it can convince institutional

Nearly a year after Dott originally announced plans to launch a bike-sharing service, the new offering is going live in Paris. Dott is better known for its scooter-sharing service across dozens of European cities. It is adding electric bikes to complement its service. In addition to Dott, Lime and Tier also have scooters currently available

HR technology has been thrown into the spotlight in the last 20 months: Covid-19 has changed the way we work, and so how we manage people in the world of work has had to change, too. Today, a Munich-based startup called Personio, which has built a big business out of how to address that issue

In the latest sign that that the tech industry is pivoting towards climate and sustainability, Atlantic Food Labs – an offshoot of the Berlin fund Atlantic Labs headed by long-time tech investor Christophe F. Maire – is relaunching as FoodLabs, with a dedicated €100m FoodTech fund to invest in food, health, and sustainability startups. Founded

French startup Swile has raised a $200 million Series D funding round led by SoftBank International Group. With this funding round, the startup has now reached unicorn status, meaning that Swile has a valuation of $1 billion or more. Swile provides a payment card for employee benefits, such as meal vouchers, gift cards and sustainable

Webrazzi, the main tech startup media title in Turkey, has acquired Tech.eu, the long-time tech startup site in Europe. The pooled entity of Webrazzi and Tech.eu will now offer combined editorial, data, and research platforms offering news and market intelligence. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Launched in 2006 by Arda Kutsal, Webrazzi

Four search engine rivals to Google have called on European Union lawmakers to address the tech giant’s continued dominance of the market by setting rules for search engine preference menus, arguing that the tech giant’s ability to set damaging defaults is continuing to limit how easily consumers can switch to a non-Google alternatives. In an

Cord, a startup that offers a single API to add Slack-like collaboration features to any app, has bagged $17.5 million in Series A funding. The round — which is pegged to fund product development, including by hiring engineers, designers and product managers — was led by European VC Index. Other investors participating include NFX and

As we get into our dive into Q3 2021 venture capital numbers, one region in particular has our attention: Europe. While venture capital gains in markets like India, Latin America and the larger African startup ecosystem have proved impressive, Europe has posted strong results of its own. A string of recent exits from European startup

Meet Graneet, a French startup that just raised a $2.8 million seed round (€2.4 million) led by Point Nine and Fondamental. Graneet is a vertical software-as-a-service startup focused on the construction industry and the myriad of small and medium companies in this industry specifically. It wants to build the definitive financial management solution so that

The rise of privacy-oriented financial blockchain projects are going to be crucial if “DeFi” (decentralized finance) is to have any kind of future. We have come to expect privacy in our “normal” financial lives, so we will expect it in the blockchain and Crypto world, whatever some might claim.We saw murmurs of that starting to

Tech giants have gotten worse at removing illegal hate speech from their platforms under a voluntary arrangement in the European Union, according to the Commission’s latest assessment. The sixth evaluation report of the EU’s Code of Conduct on removing illegal hate speech found what the bloc’s executive calls a “mixed picture”, with platforms reviewing 81%