Europe

Germany’s federal information commissioner has run out of patience with Facebook. Last month, Ulrich Kelber wrote to government agencies “strongly recommend[ing]” they to close down their official Facebook Pages because of ongoing data protection compliance problems and the tech giant’s failure to fix the issue. In the letter, Kelber warns the government bodies that he

Hepsiburada — Turkey’s giant online shopping platform considered the Amazon of its country — floats on the Nasdaq today, for a valuation likely to exceed $3.9 billion on current projections, especially with shares being marked up to $14 apiece (up from the previously predicted $12 pricing). Bu this isn’t the end of the journey for this break-out Turkish tech and e-commerce

Privacy litigation that’s being brought against Facebook by two not-for-profits in the Netherlands can go ahead, an Amsterdam court has ruled. The case will be heard in October. Since 2019, the Amsterdam-based Data Privacy Foundation (DPS) has been seeking to bring a case against Facebook over its rampant collection of Internet users’ data — arguing

A court in Paris has fined Airbnb, the popular marketplace for vacation rentals. According to the court, the tech company has failed to comply with local regulation when it comes to listing your apartment on the platform. Airbnb should pay $9.6 million (€8.08 million) to the city of Paris. This decision has been years in

Shares of American cybersecurity unicorn SentinelOne began to trade yesterday on the New York Stock Exchange. The former startup had raised nearly $700 million before its IPO. And it priced its public debut above a raised price interval. But even its higher-than-anticipated valuation didn’t stop shares of the company from closing around 20% higher. The

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. Last week was a good one for edtech in Europe. GoStudent became Europe’s first edtech unicorn (IPO’d companies aside), raising its third round in

A regulation underpinning a digital certification system for individuals in the European Union to verify their COVID-19 status via a common credential has gone into application today — on schedule. From today, almost all EU Member States are now able to issue and verify digital certificates, per the Commission — with only a handful of

Getir, the startup based out of Turkey that has built a $7.5 billion business out a mobile app that lets consumers buy groceries and get them delivered in minutes, has grown its business up to now organically: targeting urban markets across Europe (and soon the U.S.) where it is disrupting the well-stocked cornershop with a

Nodes & Links is a scheduling platform for large-scale infrastructure projects which works out when the nuts and bolts for the bridge (for example) should be delivered, and in what order. Unsurprisingly, complex infrastructure projects often get this wrong. The company has now raised an $11 million Series A funding round led by urban sustainability-focused

For a glimpse of the security and privacy dystopia the UK government has in store for its highly regulated ‘British Internet’, look no further than guidance put out by the Department of Digital, Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) yesterday — aimed at social media platforms and private messaging services — which includes the suggestion that

Ably is a Pub/Sub messaging platform that companies can use to develop realtime features in their products. The company just raised a $70 million Series B funding round co-led by Insight Partners and Dawn Capital. Every day, you use various apps that push and fetch data in realtime. When you send a message in your

Mate Rimac’s founder story has the makings of automotive folklore. He started Rimac Automobili in his garage in 2009 as a literal one-person operation that has grown to a company with more than 1,000 employees, supply contracts with automakers like Porsche and a new electric hypercar moving into production. What might not be known is

Accel announced Tuesday the close of three new funds totaling $3.05 billion, money that it will be using to back early-stage startups, as well as growth rounds for more mature companies. Notably, the 38-year-old Silicon Valley-based venture firm is doubling down on global investing. The announcement underscores both the robust confidence investors continue to have

The UK’s digital businesses can breathe a sign of relief today as the European Commission has officially signed off on data adequacy for the (now) third country, post-Brexit. It’s a big deal for UK businesses as it means the country will be treated by Brussels as having essentially equivalent data protection rules as markets within

US/Israeli startup, Sorbet – which helps companies de-risk themselves against accrued paid time off (PTO) by employees — has raised another $15M, in a round led By Dovi Frances’ Group 11, not long after a $6 million seed round only last April. Sorbet says it removes the burden of PTO from employers, allowing employees to

The U.K. is gaining in popularity as a great place to start a tech firm. The country is quickly catching up to China on the tech investment front, with VC investments reaching a record of $15 billion in 2020, according to TechNation. A global health crisis notwithstanding, London remained a favorite for investors. U.K. cities

The UK’s competition watchdog, the CMA, has opened another investigation into Big Tech — this one targeted at Amazon and Google over how well they handle (or, well, don’t) fake reviews. The Competition and Markets Authority has taken an interest in online reviews for several years, as far back as 2015. It also went after

The EU for all its lethargy, faults and fetishization of bureaucracy, is, ultimately, a good idea. It might be 64 years from the formation of the European Common Market, but it is 29 years since the EU’s formation in the Maastricht Treaty, and this international entity is definitely still acting like an indecisive millennial, happy

Deliveroo has had another win in the UK courts, beating back an appeal by the IWGB union which has sought for years to challenge the gig platform over couriers’ rights but has continued to fail to overturn the company’s classification of riders as self-employed. The latest appeals court ruling is the fourth judgment in the

Content is king, as the saying goes. But in actual fact, a lot of what companies do today with content, and thus the power of that content, is relatively limited by the tools that exist to present it. That is slowly changing, and now a startup called Sanity, which has built a system to make

As we become more and more aware of the kind of impact we are having on this planet we call our home, just about everything is having its CO2 impact measured. Who knew, until recently, that streaming Netflix might have a measurable impact on the environment, for instance. But given vast swathes of the internet

It’s become increasingly obvious over the last few years, as Vladimir Putin has tightened his grip on his country, that Russian entrepreneurs who want to engage properly with the rest of the world have had to leave their mother country. Gone are the days when a startup in Russia might attract attention from many Western

Industries like real estate, automotive, and financial services have long and offline sales cycles and digital advertising tends not to perform well in these areas. The conversion rates are low and because the real-world assets are offline the temptation of advertisers is to buy leads and clicks, which can inflate customer acquisition costs. People are

Frumtak Ventures, one of the few VCs in Iceland, has raised its third fund, Frumtak III. The $57 million (ISK 7b, €48m) fund will focus on post-seed and Series A startups. The firm says its typical ticket size will range from $1-5 million (€850k-4.2m). Frumtak was a somewhat lesser-known European VC until it popped up

You might well have a sleep app that tracks your sleep. I use Sleep Cycle, and have found it has started to even tell me when I cough during the night. It turns out you can run machine learning over how you might cough in the night, to detect changes in the way you cough.

Meet Airbank, a startup that is taking advantage of open banking regulation and related APIs to aggregate all your bank accounts. Focused on startups and small and medium companies, the company wants to build an all-in-one banking interface to access financial data, initiate payments, manage cash flow and more. Airbank just raised a $3 million

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) published its final recommendations yesterday setting on guidance for making transfers of personal data to third countries to comply with EU data protection rules in light of last summer’s landmark CJEU ruling (aka Schrems II). The long and short of these recommendations — which are fairly long; running to

Fintech startup Revolut has filed some financial results and is sharing details with the press. In 2020, the company reported $361 million in revenue (£261 million) — that’s a 57% increase compared to 2019 revenue of $229 million (£166 million). Interestingly, those revenue figures have been adjusted to include fair value gains on cryptocurrency assets

There have been further calls from EU institutions to outlaw biometric surveillance in public. In a joint opinion published today, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) and the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Wojciech Wiewiórowski, have called for draft EU regulations on the use of artificial intelligence technologies to go further than the Commission’s proposal

Automating insurance claims is a big business, and the world of AI is coming at it ‘full pelt’. The latest is Akur8, an insurtech automating insurance platform whose ‘Transparent AI’ product is trying to eat into the incumbent large business of Willis Towers watson, among others. It’s now closed a Series B funding round of