Europe

The European Parliament formally approved a law to ban the sale of new gas and diesel cars in the European Union starting in 2035 in a move designed to speed up the transition to electric vehicles. The new legislation, which is part of a broader effort by the EU to combat climate change, says that

French startup Bibak (formerly known as La Consigne GreenGo) has amassed $6.4 million (€6 million) in an equity funding round and debt. The company wants to put an end to single-use plastic food packaging and replace those with reusable food containers. Founders Future, MAIF Impact, Seed One, Notus Technologies SWEN Capital Partners’ Blue Ocean fund

A joint venture (JV) between four big European carriers to build cross-network ad-targeting infrastructure — which they claim will rely on “affirmative” consent to target mobile and/or fixed network subscribers with “personalized” ads across participating brands/publishers’ sites — has been given the green light to proceed by the European Commission’s antitrust division in a decision

Fintech startup Atlantic Money is rolling out its international money transfer service to more markets and more platforms. The company originally started in the U.K. with GBP as the base currency and nine different currencies on the recipient’s side. Since then, the company has expanded and is now live across 29 European countries. Users can

Lunar, a neobank out of Denmark, last year raised money at a $2.2 billion valuation from a splashy set of investors that included Heartland, Kinnevik, Tencent, IDC Ventures and comedian Will Ferrell, to fill out its ambition to build a financial “super app.” Times being tough for startups right now, Lunar has raised yet again,

Meet Wikifarmer, an agriculture-focused startup based in Athens that has an interesting two-sided strategy. On the one hand, Wikifarmer is a source of knowledge with high-quality content translated into 16 languages to help farmers all around the world. On the other hand, Wikifarmer is a B2B marketplace to buy and sell agricultural products. And this

Meet Dotfile, a new startup backed by eFounders that just raised a $2.7 million funding round (€2.5 million) to help companies verify users and other companies with a single application programming interface (API). Serena is leading the funding round through its V13 Invest fund (backed by FDJ). Kima Ventures, Pareto Holdings, Super Capital, Upscalers, Polymatter

These days climate investing is hot – if you will pardon the awful pun – but the days of just raising a fund and calling it “climate focused” are well and truly over. The market is sorting out the “wheat from the chaff” and if a VC fund can’t prove that it can back-up its

European data protection regulators are “engaging” with Twitter following a series of complaints from users that it’s ignoring requests to delete their direct messages, TechCrunch has learned. Concerns over the privacy and security of Twitter DMs — which are not end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) — has grown since Elon Musk’s takeover of the company last fall,

French startup Riot has raised a $12 million Series A round to iterate on its all-in-one cybersecurity awareness platform for businesses and their employees. The startup originally focused on fake phishing campaigns. It now also offers customized educational content that can help grow the cybersecurity culture in your team. While it is still quite difficult

Startups are raising less, and less often, right now, and some portfolios are buckling under the weight of write-downs from lower valuations and startups closing for business. But the venture industry continues to swim, and a number of firms are setting up to invest more, even as we swing through the downcycle. In the latest

A controversial move by Twitter-owner Elon Musk to end free access to its APIs by February 9 has attracted criticism from the European Union’s top diplomat who has warned it could threaten the ability of researchers to study disinformation at a critical time — with Russia aggressively weaponizing disinformation to try to provide cover for

If you’re a French entrepreneur, there’s a new venture capital firm in town. Ovni Capital is announcing a first closing of its €50 million fund ($54 million at today’s exchange rate) focused on early-stage investments. The firm’s two general partners Arnaud Laurent and Augustin Sayer have already invested in several companies in their previous jobs.

Make room for yet another preventative health play: Spotify founder Daniel Ek officially confirmed rumors of his new “health tech” startup, Neko, Friday by quietly kicking off a body scanning service in Sweden (via Tech EU) after four years of stealthy development. Ek has long expressed a personal interest in tackling a “screwed up” healthcare

Budapest-based SEON, — an anti-fraud platform which looks at a customer’s ‘digital footprint’ to weed out false accounts and thus prevent fraudulent transactions —  has acquired compliance and AML specialist firm,  Complytron, also based out of Budapest. Terms of the deal were not officially released, but Techcrunch sources said the deal was in the region

The U.K. government is seemingly backtracking on plans that would have allowed text and data mining “for any purpose,” plans designed to position the U.K. as a “global AI superpower.” The news emerges following months of blowback from creative industries concerned about what impact the rules might have on protected works. Background Text and data

Marketo, which was developed — among other things — to enhance marketing around social media users, ended up being acquired by Adobe. Now a new startup hopes to do what Marketo did in Web 2.0, but this time in web3. Addressable has a digital fingerprinting startup that claims to be able to match anonymous crypto

Given our general reliance on something called “food” you’d think the issue of pollination — and its general decline — might be higher up the world’s agenda. Over 80% of crops require insect pollination, but growers can no longer rely on the dwindling wild bee population. But it’s a complex problem. Pollinating crops with honey

Europe has moved a step closer to having dedicated rules on online political ad targeting and transparency after the European Parliament fixed its negotiating position — paving the way for talks to start between MEPs and Member States to agree a final compromise text that can be passed into pan-EU law. MEPs said they hope

‘Astroturfing’ and other non-transparent lobbying tactics used to target digital policymakers in the European Union in recent years — including during a blitz of spending aimed at influencing major new pan-EU rules like the Digital Services Act (DSA) — have inspired a group of MEPs and NGOs to fight back by launching a hotline for

After raising $300 million in a round led by SoftBank back in 2021, U.K. neobank Zopa has closed a deal to put more funding in its coffers. The company — which provides consumers with lending services, credit cards and savings accounts and has some 850,000 customers — has raised £75 million (around $93 million), an

In the current environment, Start-ups are having to do a couple of seemingly contradictory things at the same time. Firstly, they have to keep employees (the ones they want to keep, at least) happy. The other is attract new employees in a market where there remains fierce competition for talent. In their armoury to address

If you’ve ever made an Amazon order with a particular seller because the estimated delivery for the item appears to match when you need it, only to be frustrated when a different (later) delivery estimate appears after you’ve completed the payment process, this action by Poland’s competition and consumer watchdog may be of interest: It’s

Two quantum-adjacent technologies — quantum sensing (QS) and quantum communication (Qcomm) — are as important as quantum computing hardware itself since they help make quantum computers function more accurately.  A Sydney-based startup called Q-CTRL has built quantum-sensing software that helps reduce errors on quantum computers. Today, the company announced that it has raised another $27.4

Big Tech take note: In what looks like a meaningful — and long overdue — reforming step, the European Commission has committed to dial up its monitoring of how data protection authorities at the EU Member State level enforce the bloc’s flagship data protection rules — committing to regular checks on “large scale” General Data

Even if insects don’t sound appealing to you, black soldier flies could play an essential role in the food chain in the coming years. In particular, these flies’ larvae can become an important source of proteins for livestock and fish. That’s why Entocycle is raising another $5 million in a Series A funding round led

French startup Sorare has signed a four-year licensing partnership with the Premier League. This is an important move for the company as the English football league is one of the most-watched sports leagues in the world. Sorare is a fantasy sports gaming experience based on NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. In particular, Sorare has partnered with

French startup Welcome to the Jungle has raised a new $54 million (€50 million) Series C round. The startup helps other companies recruit new employees more easily by creating sophisticated profiles packed with a ton of information. In particular, Welcome to the Jungle sends a photo and video crew to your office so that they

Despite Canva being worth in the region of $26 billion, it appears startups feel there is still plenty to be mined from this “easy-to-use design platform” arena. Admittedly, Professional Adobe tools remain fiddly for most people. Perhaps that’s why Berlin-based startup Kittl has now raised a €10.8 million ($11.6 million) Series A for its design

Seen through the lens of His Royal Highness, Prince Constantijn Haje Jan Kamps 9 hours I find something very intriguing about members of a royal family working to further the startup scene for a particular country. In a magnificently frank conversation, I spoke with HRH Prince Constantijn, fourth in line to the throne of the