Europe

As of late Thursday night and Friday morning, the fallout from the shutdown of Silicon Valley Bank in the US had reached the shores of the UK and Europe. Yesterday afternoon, the Bank of England sought a court order to place Silicon Valley Bank UK Limited — the UK arm of the US institution —

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) won’t be pursuing an anticompetition collusion case against Google and Facebook’s parent Meta, following a similar decision made by its counterparts in the Europe Union. However, Google will remain under the CMA’s spotlight, with parts of the Google-Meta case now being bundled with a separate ongoing antitrust against

Secure messaging apps are lining up to oppose measures in the U.K. government’s Online Safety Bill (OSB) they argue will do the opposite of promoting online safety by undermining the robust encryption web users rely upon to safeguard their communications. Meta-owned WhatsApp, the not-for-profit Signal Foundation behind the Signal app, and Element, which operates the

QuantWare, the Dutch startup that builds quantum processors for research and commercial usage, today announced that it has raised a €6 million seed round (that’s about $6.33 million) led by Dutch deep tech investor Forward.One, with participation from QDNL Participations and Graduate Entrepreneur, among others. The company says it will use this new funding to

Brussels-based startup Cowboy has been in the news lately for its cash burn rate. But the company wants to control its narrative again with some product and business news. Cowboy is launching a new feature called ‘AdaptivePower’, which automatically adjusts the power of the motor depending on the current slope and weather conditions. Cowboy’s electric

Turns out the UK government, under current prime minister Rishi Sunak, is not replacing the GDPR, as Michelle Donelan, his secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, implied last October — when as a fresh-in-post digital secretary under a different PM, she paused the flagship data protection reform, saying the government wanted to rethink its

TikTok is doubling down on its European charm offensive today as it looks to counter a rising tide of political discontent with the popular short-form video-hosting platform. A new program called Project Clover will serve to create “a secure enclave for European TikTok user data,” wrote Theo Bertram, TikTok’s European VP of government relations and

La Famiglia, a Berlin-based VC fund (no, not the Mafia organization, in case there is any confusion) has raised €250 million for its combined third seed fund (which is €165 million) and its first growth co-investment fund (€90 million). The fund has a vertical focus on ML and AI, data, logistics, and supply chains, consumerization

Upway, the French startup that refurbishes and resells electric bikes across a range of brands, launched in the U.S. Tuesday. The company will focus its efforts on the Northeast region of the country, but its bikes will be available for shipping across the continental U.S. Upway has already made a name for itself in Europe,

Twitter has ruffled more regulatory feathers in the European Union by going ahead with a rollout of a much criticized paid verification feature without informing its lead data protection watchdog ahead of time — despite previously saying it would. The product, known as Twitter Blue, lets users pay to get a blue check market on

It’s taken rather longer than a month for Meta-owned WhatsApp to commit to address complaints swirling around how it imposes terms of service on users but the European Commission has just announced that the messaging platform has agreed to improve how it communicates to users and presents future ToS updates. Early in 2021, WhatsApp triggered

Metaverse hype was hanging like a multicolored fog over the Mobile World Congress (MWC) connectivity trade show in Barcelona this week. Conference organizer, the GSMA’s, program pitched attendees into a smorgasbord of metaverse-themed discussions — most of which seemed designed to generate maximum FOMO, as a parade of tech evangelists took to the stage in

Sesamm, a French startup that helps financial firms and corporates adhere to their ESG goals by using natural language processing (NLP) to generate insights from digital content, has raised €35 million ($37 million) in a round of funding to expand internationally. Despite a growing backlash against ESG efforts from some politicians and vocal executives, companies

The all-in-one fintech app Revolut has released its annual report for 2021. While 2021 ended more than a year ago, this report includes some significant figures as the company nearly tripled its revenue between 2020 and 2021. Because of this explosive growth trajectory, the company reached profitability for the first time. Revolut’s financial success starts

Meet Cycle, a French startup that is building a collaboration tool for product managers where they can collect data from various tools, work on the next product iterations and close the feedback loop with the most engaged customers. The company raised a total of $6 million across two funding rounds, including a recent funding round

Do you have the desire, the expertise and the followers it takes to be a speaker at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 on September 19–21 in San Francisco? Then heed this call for content, because we want to hear from you. How to become a speaker at TechCrunch Disrupt If you’re a trendsetting, game-changing startup founder, VC

It’s only human nature. If you tell a driver their insurance premium will go down if they drive more safely, then – it turns out – they will probably drive more safely. Scale that up to entire commercial fleets and the costs saving can become extremely significant. However, the trick is to do the tracking

The first thing we ask Voicemod‘s CEO and co-founder, Jamie Bosch, when he picks up the phone to talk about a new funding round is not something we’re accustomed to asking — but our question may become the norm in the generative AI future that’s fast-flying at us: Is this your real voice? Bosch’s startup

Today marks exactly one year since Russia’s illegal, unprovoked, and brutal of Ukraine. This week, a majority of the members of the United Nations reiterated its demand that Russia “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine and called for a cessation of hostilities”. It would be fair

It’s still pretty early in the year but the disruptive power of general purpose AI (GPAI) already looks cemented as the big tech story of 2023, with tech giants including Microsoft and Google duking it out to fast-follow OpenAI’s viral conversational chatbot, ChatGPT by productizing large language models (LLM) in interfaces of their own —

It’s that time of the year. The French government and the government-backed initiative La French Tech gathered applications, processed the numbers and ranked the 120 top-performing startups in France right now, with a special category for the top 40 ones. The result is two rankings that are based on objective criteria — the Next40 and

Meet Carbon Maps, a new French startup that raised $4.3 million (€4 million) just a few weeks after its inception. The company is building a software-as-a-service platform for the food industry so that they can track the environmental impact of each of their products in their lineup. The platform can be used as a basis

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This week, Natasha Mascarenhas, Mary Ann Azevedo and Rebecca Szkutak got on the mic to talk startups, pet peeves and focaccia. What else did you expect? Here’s what we got into: Descope landed a $53 million (!)

Autonomous aircraft have long been thought of as having the most potential, though not in the realm of glitzy people-carrying drones so much as the more sedate world of cargo. It’s here where the economic savings could be most significant. Large, long-range drones built specifically for cargo have the potential to be faster, cheaper and

French startup Brigad just raised a new $30 million funding round (€28 million) as well as more than $5 million in debt. The company operates a marketplace for restaurants, caterers, private clinics, retirement homes and hospitals so that they can find freelancers for short-term missions. Balderton Capital is leading the round, with Wendel Group, Serena

After two years of seeking regulatory approval, Wefunder has officially received the green light to operate its investment crowdfunding services within the European Union. This marks Wefunder’s first time expanding outside of the United States, and according to CEO and founder Nick Tommarello, the business is the first U.S. investment platform to gain operational approval.

Micro-EV subscription startup Dance, which launched in 2020, has raised an additional €12 million in an equity and debt round led by existing investors HV Capital, Eurazeo and BlueYard. Dance was launched out of Berlin by former Soundloud and Jimdo founders, but since last year is now also available in Paris, Hamburg, Munich and Vienna.

The LockBit ransomware gang has published what it claims is the full transcript of its negotiations with Royal Mail, which continues to experience disruption due to last month’s cyberattack. The chat logs negotiating the ransom is the first data that LockBit has published following the cyberattack on Royal Mail, which left the British postal service

It would appear that OpenAI’s Chat GPT allying with Bing will not going to be the only threat to Google’s search business model in the future. With its release of WhatsApp Business app (WAB), Meta are effectively building a sort of rival search engine to Google to keep us all inside the app. While this

In 2024, a number of new EU regulations are expected to come into force, which will tighten the obligation of electric vehicle manufacturers and resellers to recycle batteries at the end of their natural lifespan. German battery recycling startup Cylib leapt at the opportunity, raising a total of €11.6 million ($12.6 million) to build a