Europe

After weeks of rumors, Getir has announced that it is acquiring Gorillas. This is a major consolidation deal for the instant grocery delivery space. The Financial Times first reported that Getir has closed the acquisition of its competitor. TechCrunch has confirmed the news with Getir. “Markets go up and down, but consumers love our service

Virgin Orbit is retargeting a launch that was supposed to take place as soon as next week from Cornwall, England — and that was to be the first spaceflight to depart from British soil — due to additional technical to-dos and remaining regulatory hurdles. In a statement, Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart said the company

When Svetlana Kordumova was studying for her doctorate in AI and computer vision, she grew frustrated by the process of looking for items to buy online. Search results were often inaccurate, and she knew the tech she was learning could improve the experience. Pixyle AI was launched in 2019 to improve product discovery on e-commerce

According to Atomico’s new State of European Tech 2022 report, France has taken the UK’s title as the third largest listed tech nation, with Britain moving down to fourth. Nothing to do with Brexit, of course… Meanwhile, Sista, the Paris-based organisation which campaigns for more finds for female founders recently closed €30m of an intended

Startups across Europe are on track to raise $85 billion in funding this year — a drop of $15 billion on 2021 when funding passed $100 billion, according to a new report published today. The figures come from London VC firm Atomico’s annual State of European Tech, which has become a bellwether for the tech

More bad news for Meta in Europe: The tech giant has lost an attempt to annul a binding decision on its messaging app, WhatsApp, taken by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) last summer — under the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — which factored into a final decision (and hefty fine) issued by

Einride today announced a $500 million tranche of financing as it looks to expand its autonomous and electric trucks into new markets globally. The cash injection constitutes an equity-based $200 million Series C portion from backers including Northzone, EQT Ventures, Temasek, Swedish pension fund AMF, Polar Structure, and Norrsken VC. Additionally, the Swedish company said

Fintech was hot in 2021, but looking back on it … maybe too hot? The sector exploded last year, seeing record investment — $132 billion globally, according to CB Insights — with many startups reaching lofty valuations, including Stripe at $95 billion, Klarna at $45 billion and Plaid at $13 billion. While these companies have

Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week the show kicks off a new season and welcomes a new co-host. In this episode, Darrell is joined by Becca Szkutak to chat with Valentina Milanova, the founder of Daye, a gynecological health company creating CBD infused tampons. Valentina talks about

There’s a prevailing logic (or you might say hope) in tech that says there is no better time to invent and invest than when the market appears to be in a bad place. With companies like Google and Apple born out of fallow periods, that way of thinking may be understandable — and it is

Chattermill, a platform that helps companies unlock insights by analyzing customer feedback data from across myriad digital channels, has raised $26 million in a Series B round of funding. Founded out of London in 2015, companies such as Uber and Amazon use Chattermill to unify all their customer data, integrating with social networks, customer feedback

Zenly, the popular social mapping app that Snap acquired five years ago, is going to shut down on February 3, 2023. This is going to be a sad day as there is nothing quite like Zenly. The team based in Paris managed to create an app that was at the intersection of a utility app

The property industry now requires high quality photographs, floor plans and virtual tours, so the industry for software providers in the space is booming. The whole are was accelerated during the pandemic when many property viewings migrated from physical to virtual, and this trend has continued to tick upwards. Players in the space include Walnut,

GoStudent — the Austria-based late-stage Tutor marketplace which has raised $686.3 million (and attained a €3BN valuation) to date — has acquired Germany-based Studienkreis, a traditional tutoring company, founded in 1974, which is focused on the German-speaking ‘DACH’ region. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Studienkreis had previously been owned, since 2017, by the

A new report has shone a light on the impact that European and Israeli unicorns have had on the broader technology ecosystem since the global economic crisis 14 years ago. The report, titled “Europe and Israel’s Startup Founder Factories,” was produced by VC firm Accel with heavy support from startup and VC data platform Dealroom.

Zoe, a startup founded by doctors and researchers out of London and Boston, made its name during the pandemic with a popular — dare we say viral? — self-reporting Covid-19 app. Embraced both by consumers and researchers, it provided early data into how Covid-19 spread and the symptoms associated with the initial infection and its

The U.K. government has completed a major revision to controversial but populist online safety legislation that’s been in the works for years — and was finally introduced to parliament earlier this year — but has been paused since this summer following turmoil in the governing Conservative Party. In September, new secretary of state for digital, Michelle Donelan,

European Union regulators have fired another warning shot at Elon Musk over his erratic piloting of Twitter since his takeover last month — saying he has “huge work” ahead if the social media site is to avoid falling foul of major new governance rules for digital services which entered into force earlier this month. Reminder:

Litigation against Google and its parent entity Alphabet being brought in the U.K. on behalf of thousands of digital publishers — seeking up to £13.6 billion (~$16.3 billion) in damages on their behalf for alleged anti-competitive behavior related to Google’s adtech practices — has been filed with the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT). “The claim alleges

Over the past 11 years, eFounders has refined the startup studio model in Europe. The company has contributed to the launch of more than 30 different startups, including three unicorns — Spendesk, Aircall and Front. While things seem to be doing well for the startup studio, eFounders is pivoting — sort of. As of today, eFounders

Lyst, the U.K. fashion e-commerce site that last year raised funding at a $700 million valuation, is the latest tech startup to rein in spending by cutting staff. TechCrunch has learned that the company is in the process of laying off 25% of its employees, working out to about 50 people, as part of a

Dropbox has announced plans to bring end-to-end encryption to its business users, and it’s doing so through acquiring “key assets” from Germany-based cloud security company Boxcryptor. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Dropbox is well-known for its cloud-based file back-up and sharing services, and while it does offer encryption for files moving between its

You wouldn’t drive a car or fly a plane if the only controls you had available were on/off switches for left and right or up and down, and yet that’s pretty much what gamers are stuck with when they control their virtual avatars with their keyboards. U.K. startup Peratech wants to change that with a

Right on time for its annual post-Thanksgiving re:Invent festivities in Las Vegas, AWS last night announced its “AWS Digital Sovereignty Pledge” — and before you click away, let me just point out that this is definitely more important than the prosaic name implies. As nations across the globe introduce legislation that governs how and where

Denmark-based venture fund BackingMinds, founded in 2016, likes to think it takes a different approach to venture in Europe. Its new €50 million fund will aim to take a road less travelled by most VCs, looking “for the blind spots” traditional venture capital can often miss because of typical VC herd behaviour (such as investing

Amie raised a $7 million seed round led by Spark Capital. The round closed in June 2022 and the startup is disclosing it today. The company is building a productivity app anchored around your calendar. It helps you stay on top of your schedule, connect with your team and manage your upcoming tasks. Other investors

Visa and Mastercard payments are convenient for customers, but can cost merchants high processing fees. Atoa Payments wants to provide a cheaper alternative that is still easy for customers to use. The London-based fintech announced today that it has raised $2.2 million in pre-seed funding. The round was led by Leo Capital and Passion Capital,

The US has had solo VC fund managers for many years but the trend is only just starting to catch on in Europe. One of the newest is Underline Ventures, started this year by Bogdan Iordache in Romania. His career trajectory towards being a Solo GP fits the profile: a former entrepreneur, a key player

Brace for yet another expansion to the UK’s Online Safety Bill: The Ministry of Justice has announced changes to the law which are aimed at protecting victims of revenge porn, pornographic deepfakes and other abuses related to the taking and sharing of intimate imagery without consent — in a crackdown on a type of abuse

Independent legal analysis of a controversial UK government proposal to regulate online speech under a safety-focused framework — aka the Online Safety Bill — says the draft bill contains some of the broadest mass surveillance powers over citizens every proposed in a Western democracy which it also warns pose a risk to the integrity of