Startup News, Fundraising & Events in Europe

Munich-based quantum computing startup Peak Quantum has raised €2.2 million in pre-seed funding to advance a new generation of superconducting quantum processors designed to reduce the overhead of error correction. The round, led by UK-based Cloudberry Ventures, brings the company’s total backing to more than €5 million when combined with non-dilutive public support, and positions the 2024-founded spin-off as one of the European deep-tech names to watch as the continent accelerates its sovereign quantum hardware agenda. Alongside Cloudberry Ventures, the financing drew participation from United Founders, QAI Ventures, and Golden Egg Check, together with a group of business angels with operational backgrounds in semiconductors and deep tech. The capital will be used to scale the engineering team, push the technology through its next experimental milestones, and support the company’s operational role in a European pilot manufacturing programme for quantum chips. A spin-off built around error resilience Peak Quantum is a spin-off from the Walther-Meißner-Institute (WMI) in Garching, one of Europe’s most established research centres for superconducting quantum devices. The founding team combines academic pedigree with production know-how: Leon Koch (CEO), Alexander Schult (CFO), Dr Thomas Luschmann (COO), Dr Max Werninghaus (CSO), Ivan Tsitsilin (Head of Design) and Kedar Honasoge (Head of Production). The company is also embedded in Munich Quantum Valley and has drawn support from UnternehmerTUM, anchoring it within the city’s deep-tech cluster. The thesis behind the company is straightforward but technically demanding. Most superconducting quantum processors today rely on aggressive error-correction schemes, in which large numbers of physical qubits are grouped to form a single, more reliable “logical” qubit. The approach works in principle, but it explodes hardware requirements and energy consumption long before the systems reach industrially useful scale. Peak Quantum is instead developing qubits whose error resilience is built into the physics of the device itself. “More qubits do not help if each individual one is unreliable. We are developing processors where error resilience is an intrinsic physical property,” said CEO Leon Koch. If the architecture performs at scale, it could materially reduce the number of physical qubits needed per logical qubit, simplifying both fabrication and control electronics. Operating SUPREME: the EU Chips Act angle The timing of the round is closely tied to Europe’s industrial policy on advanced semiconductors. Peak Quantum has been selected as the operator of SUPREME, a planned pan-European pilot line for quantum chips funded under the EU Chips Act. Operations are scheduled to begin in April 2026, with the goal of establishing a shared industrial infrastructure for designing and manufacturing quantum processors inside the EU. For a pre-seed company, taking on a pilot-line mandate is unusual, and it reflects both the scarcity of European actors with the relevant fabrication experience and Brussels’ willingness to channel strategic hardware programmes through specialist start-ups rather than incumbents. For Peak Quantum, SUPREME provides privileged access to fabrication capacity and collaboration with research partners across the bloc — a structural advantage that complements the new private capital. Investor view “Europe has a real opportunity to be at the forefront of quantum hardware development. Peak Quantum is making a crucial contribution to this,” said Mahir Sahin, General Partner at Cloudberry Ventures, framing the investment in the broader context of Europe’s sovereignty ambitions in compute. The round also aligns with a wider pattern visible in recent European fundraising activity, in which quantum and photonics-adjacent start-ups have continued to attract capital even as generalist venture budgets tighten. Earlier this week, fellow quantum-photonics specialist Pixel Photonics closed €13.5 million to scale its single-photon detectors, and Qoro Quantum recently secured $750,000 to bridge classical and quantum workloads — evidence that investors remain willing to underwrite hardware-heavy quantum theses when they come attached to credible science and clear industrial roadmaps. What to watch next Three milestones will define whether Peak Quantum can convert scientific promise into industrial traction. The first is execution on SUPREME, where the company’s ability to hit throughput and yield targets will be closely scrutinised by EU stakeholders and future co-investors. The second is experimental validation of its error-resilient qubit designs at increasing qubit counts, which will determine whether the architectural bet translates into a defensible performance advantage. The third is commercial engagement: quantum processors ultimately need customers — from national labs to cloud providers and end users in chemistry, materials and optimisation — and the next twelve months will reveal how quickly Peak Quantum can build that pipeline. With €5 million in total funding, a pilot-line mandate, and a technical bet that sidesteps one of the field’s most stubborn bottlenecks, Peak Quantum enters the next phase of Europe’s quantum race with an unusually concentrated set of assets for a company barely two years old. Source: Tech.eu

Paris- and London-based Convelio has closed a Series C funding round to accelerate the automation of global fine art logistics and expand its storage footprint into the United States. The company, which has shipped an estimated $1.84 billion of art for major auction houses including Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips, intends to use the capital to deepen its AI-driven operations platform and open a flagship warehouse in New York. The round is led by a prominent French entrepreneurial family, with participation from existing backers Forestay, Mundi Ventures and Acton Capital. Terms have not been publicly disclosed. Founded in 2017 by chief executive Edouard Gouin and Clément Ouizille, Convelio set out to modernise a sector long dominated by legacy freight forwarders and bespoke, manual processes. Its proprietary algorithms generate instant quotes for the transport of paintings, sculptures and other high-value objects, while its in-house operations team manages packing, shipping, customs and installation. The company now serves around 3,000 art businesses worldwide. Building the software layer for the art market The global art market moves tens of billions of euros of objects each year, yet logistics remains one of its least digitised functions. Quotes are frequently produced by hand, condition reports live in email threads, and transport coordination happens across dozens of specialist carriers. Convelio’s pitch — and the thesis behind its Series C — is that this fragmentation can be resolved through a single software and operations stack. The company recently became the primary global logistics provider for Phillips, covering shipping, storage and release services in London, New York and Hong Kong. Phillips reported $927 million in global sales in 2025, making the partnership one of the most significant operational mandates awarded in the sector in recent years. According to chief executive Edouard Gouin, the Series C will help Convelio scale storage infrastructure, invest in automation across operations and serve clients with the same precision at global scale as it does locally. Why New York matters Convelio’s planned New York flagship warehouse is a strategic rather than incidental investment. The United States remains the single largest art market, and storage alongside fulfilment services carries significantly higher margins than pure transport. By anchoring a hub in Manhattan or the surrounding boroughs, Convelio positions itself to serve auction houses, galleries and private collectors with release-on-demand services — a capability previously concentrated among a small number of legacy operators. The company also plans to continue investing in its AI-powered collections management product, which helps institutional clients track provenance, condition and location across distributed holdings. A familiar cap table with a new anchor Forestay, Mundi Ventures and Acton Capital have all backed Convelio through previous rounds, including its €30 million Series B in 2022. The introduction of a French entrepreneurial family office as lead investor signals a shift toward longer-horizon capital — a pattern increasingly common among European scale-ups seeking to avoid premature exit pressure. European competitors in adjacent categories include Gander and ArtHaus, while US-listed Cadogan Tate remains a dominant legacy provider. Convelio’s positioning — software-first, vertically integrated, global — gives it room to differentiate even as the sector consolidates. What comes next Beyond the New York expansion, Convelio is expected to continue hiring in engineering and operations, with particular focus on automation of condition reporting, computer-vision-based damage detection and integration with auction house bidding platforms. For a company that began life as a marketplace connecting galleries with art shippers, the evolution into a software-and-services platform for global fine art logistics reflects a broader pattern in European vertical SaaS: starting with a narrow workflow and growing into the infrastructure layer of an entire industry. For more on European fundraising and scale-up stories, visit our fundraising hub. You can also read our recent coverage of Kelluu’s €15M Series A.

Finnish deeptech company Kelluu has secured €15 million in a Series A round led by the NATO Innovation Fund, marking the fund’s first investment in a Finnish startup. The round includes participation from Keen Venture Partners, Gungnir Capital and Finnish state investor Tesi, and will accelerate the commercial deployment of Kelluu’s autonomous hydrogen-powered airships across defence and civil markets. Headquartered in Joensuu and operating what it describes as the world’s northernmost airship factory, Kelluu builds 12-metre unmanned airships that combine the resolution of drones with the persistence of satellites. The aircraft use hydrogen for both lift and propulsion, allowing missions of more than 12 hours while carrying payload modules of up to six kilograms. Typical configurations include LiDAR, hyperspectral cameras and thermal imagers — enabling high-frequency monitoring of industrial sites, borders and critical infrastructure. A different kind of airborne intelligence Where conventional drones struggle with endurance and satellites lack resolution, Kelluu’s airships are designed for persistent, low-altitude coverage. The company sells the capability as a service: customers commission missions and receive processed data rather than purchasing hardware. The model has gained traction among mining operators, border authorities and NATO planners. Finnish mining company Terrafame already uses Kelluu’s fleet to generate 3D digital models of a 60-square-kilometre industrial site, helping monitor slope stability and optimise operations. On the defence side, Kelluu was recently integrated into NATO’s AI-driven command system and participated in REPMUS — one of the alliance’s largest exercises for unmanned maritime and aerial systems. According to chief executive Janne Hietala, the Series A will enable Kelluu to scale deployments, deepen its geospatial AI capabilities and meet demand from both civil and defence partners. NATO Innovation Fund makes its first Finnish bet The NATO Innovation Fund — the €1 billion multi-sovereign vehicle backed by 24 allied nations — has been steadily investing in dual-use deeptech companies across Europe. Its decision to lead Kelluu’s round signals continued appetite for autonomous systems with defence applications, particularly those offering sovereign alternatives to US and Chinese hardware. The fund’s participation also reflects Europe’s broader push to strengthen its defence-industrial base. Kelluu joins a growing roster of European unmanned-systems companies — from Tekever in Portugal to Helsing in Germany — attracting significant capital as governments rebuild strategic capabilities. Keen Venture Partners and Gungnir Capital both bring deeptech investment experience, while Tesi, Finland’s state-backed investor, continues its pattern of supporting domestic champions in critical industries. What the capital will fund Kelluu plans to use the proceeds to expand its autonomous airship fleet and commercial deployments, further develop its geospatial AI platform through Kelluu AI Labs, broaden its defence-sector partnerships across NATO member states, and scale manufacturing capacity at its Joensuu facility. The company positions itself not as a hardware vendor but as an aerial-data provider, and the investment will help it move further along that axis — investing in the software layer that turns raw sensor output into operational intelligence. A maturing European deeptech play Kelluu’s raise lands at a moment of renewed European focus on sovereign aerospace capability. With NATO exercises increasingly featuring unmanned systems and European governments raising defence budgets, persistent aerial monitoring is becoming a strategic requirement rather than a niche capability. For a company founded in a city closer to the Arctic Circle than to any major capital, Kelluu has carved out an unusually distinctive position: part airship manufacturer, part geospatial AI company, and now a NATO-backed European deeptech scaleup. For more coverage of European fundraising and deeptech, visit our fundraising hub.

Warsaw-based retail artificial intelligence startup Replenit has closed a $2.5 million pre-seed round, aiming to shift commerce platforms from predicting customer behaviour to reasoning about it in real time. The round was co-led by Polish venture firm Movens Capital and Vastpoint, with additional participation from Logo Ventures, DigitalOcean Ventures, Finberg and Caucasus Ventures. Angel capital came from Mati Staniszewski, co-founder and chief executive of the London-based voice artificial intelligence company ElevenLabs. Founded roughly a year ago by a team of six Turkish entrepreneurs — Ilyas Kurklu, Alp Karacaev, Omer Ozden, Caner Demir, Egemen Akdan and Cenk Karacaev — Replenit positions itself as a reasoning layer that sits on top of a retailer’s existing data and orchestration stack. Rather than issuing a forecast and leaving humans to translate it into action, the system interprets behavioural signals as indicators of intent and decides what to offer each shopper at a given moment. Ilyas Kurklu, co-founder and chief executive, framed the problem plainly when the round was announced: “Retailers can no longer rely on prediction alone. They need to understand intent, reason in context, and decide what to do next for each individual customer.” From prediction to decision The language matters. Much of the first wave of retail AI has focused on recommendation engines and propensity scores — outputs that still require a marketer or merchandiser to act on them. Replenit argues that the next step for commerce teams is an automated layer that moves from insight to action, triggering the right offer, message or replenishment prompt at the point of intent. The platform ingests signals such as browsing patterns, purchase timing, replenishment cycles and engagement history, and then draws on large-scale behavioural data to infer lifecycle needs. According to the company, early customers include L’Occitane en Provence and the flash-deal retailer iBOOD. L’Occitane reported a 235 per cent increase in post-purchase revenue after deploying Replenit’s engine, while iBOOD attributes 6.3 per cent of total company revenue to Replenit-driven decisions. Those figures are self-reported, and Replenit has yet to be tested at the scale of larger incumbents. They nonetheless point to the commercial logic behind the bet: decision automation is harder to replicate than dashboards, and retailers are under pressure to extract more margin from existing traffic as acquisition costs remain stubbornly high. A martech team with scale experience Replenit’s founding team brings more than 40 years of combined experience in business-to-business software and martech, having previously helped build and scale companies to unicorn status. The group is based across Warsaw, with technical operations in the Netherlands, and plans to open a presence in the United States by the end of 2026. Movens Capital and Vastpoint are familiar backers of early-stage Central and Eastern European software plays. The presence of Mati Staniszewski as an angel is notable: ElevenLabs has become one of the highest-valued artificial intelligence companies to emerge from Europe, and his participation signals continued interest from operators in backing reasoning-layer infrastructure rather than purely generative consumer tools. What the money will do The capital will be used to expand Replenit’s product and AI research teams in Poland and the Netherlands, deepen integrations with commerce platforms, and establish an initial commercial footprint in the United States. The company has indicated that hiring will focus on senior engineering roles and applied research, reflecting the computational demands of running decisioning in real time against live customer data. European retail technology has seen a resurgence of interest from venture investors over the past year, with several pre-seed and seed rounds closing for companies operating at the intersection of commerce data and generative artificial intelligence. Replenit joins a cluster of startups arguing that the value in this stack is moving from prediction accuracy to decision quality — a distinction that will matter more as retailers embed large language models deeper into customer-facing workflows. For a one-year-old company, a $2.5 million pre-seed is a measured cheque: enough to buy twelve to eighteen months of runway to prove that the reasoning-layer thesis translates into repeatable commercial outcomes. The next test will be whether Replenit can replicate its early customer results across a broader set of categories and geographies without the hands-on founder attention that early deployments typically attract. For more coverage of European funding rounds, visit our fundraising hub.

Europe’s quantum technology sector is attracting increasing attention from both private investors and public institutions, as governments across the continent position photonics and quantum computing as strategic priorities in the global technology race. With the United States and China accelerating their quantum investment programmes, European deeptech startups are now securing the capital needed to move breakthrough research out of the laboratory and into commercial applications. Münster-based Pixel Photonics has secured €13.5 million in combined funding to accelerate the commercialisation of its superconducting single-photon detector technology. The total comprises a €5 million seed round, led by Futury Capital, alongside €8.5 million from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator — split between €2.5 million in grants and €6 million in equity investment. Additional seed investors include the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation (SPRIND), Kensho Ventures, and High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF). EIC Accelerator validates European quantum ambitions The EIC Accelerator selection represents a significant endorsement of Pixel Photonics’ commercial potential. The company was chosen as one of just 61 recipients from approximately 1,000 applicants — the European Union’s most competitive funding instrument for breakthrough innovation. The dual structure of the funding, combining private venture capital with public institutional backing, reflects a growing pattern in European deeptech where blended financing models are enabling capital-intensive hardware startups to bridge the gap between research and market entry. “This funding enables us to transform what has so far been a highly specialised quantum technology into robust, scalable industrial products,” said Nicolai Walter, CEO of Pixel Photonics. The investment follows a trajectory of increasing institutional confidence in photonic quantum technologies. Futury Capital’s decision to lead the seed round positions the firm alongside established deeptech backers HTGF and SPRIND, both of which have track records supporting German hardware innovation from early-stage through to commercial scale. From university spin-off to quantum hardware contender Founded in 2021 as a spin-off from the University of Münster, Pixel Photonics develops waveguide-integrated superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (WI-SNSPDs) through its proprietary ARCTIC platform. The technology transforms what has traditionally been bulky, laboratory-scale equipment into compact, chip-based solutions capable of detecting individual photons with exceptional sensitivity and speed. The applications span several high-value sectors, including quantum computing, quantum key distribution (QKD) for secure communications, medical diagnostics, defence, and advanced microscopy. The company has already established strategic partnerships with notable quantum computing firms, including QuiX Quantum, PASQAL, and ORCA Computing, and has delivered detector systems for photonic quantum computer development alongside the German Aerospace Centre (DLR). The European quantum technology market continues to expand rapidly, supported by the EU’s Quantum Technologies Flagship programme and national initiatives across Germany, France, and the Netherlands. As quantum computing architectures mature and demand for high-performance single-photon detection grows, companies like Pixel Photonics occupy a critical position in the hardware supply chain — providing the detection infrastructure upon which quantum networks and computing systems depend. With the new capital, the company plans to scale production, expand its product portfolio — which includes the Dena rack-format and desktop detector systems — and accelerate international market entry. The team, led by CEO Nicolai Walter and CTO Dr Wladick Hartmann, is also preparing for its next funding round as it transitions from development-stage to full commercial operations. Summary Company Pixel Photonics Headquarters Münster, Germany Founded 2021 (University of Münster spin-off) Round Seed + EIC Accelerator Amount €13.5 million (€5M seed + €8.5M EIC) Lead Investor Futury Capital Other Investors SPRIND, Kensho Ventures, HTGF Use of Funds Scale production, expand product portfolio, accelerate market entry Also read: Latest European startup fundraising news ned funding to accelerate the commercialisation of its superconducting single-photon detector technology. The€5 million seed round, led by Futury Capital, alongside €8.5 million from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator — split between €2.5 million in grants and €6 mill

The European sales technology landscape is gaining momentum as artificial intelligence reshapes how companies train, manage, and optimise their commercial teams. From automated call analysis to personalised coaching workflows, a new generation of startups is building intelligent tools that promise to transform sales performance — and early-stage investors are taking notice. Berlin-based Zell has raised €500,000 in early-stage funding to scale its AI-powered sales management platform, which analyses sales conversations, identifies behavioural signals, and generates personalised coaching plans for sales teams. The round was backed by P3 Ventures and SkyDeck Europe, alongside UC Berkeley’s SkyDeck accelerator programme, Lendlease, and Cariplo Factory. Several angel investors also participated, including Nicola Pivaro, Flavio Di Palo, Pietro Tansini, Thomas Hunziker, Gabriele Sidoti, and Ricardo Waller. P3 Ventures and SkyDeck Europe back AI sales coaching vision The investment reflects growing investor appetite for AI-native tools that address the persistent challenge of sales team performance. Traditional coaching methods — manual call reviews, subjective assessments, and one-size-fits-all training — are increasingly viewed as inadequate for fast-scaling commercial organisations. Zell’s platform aims to replace these with data-driven, automated workflows. Founded by Alberto Garagnani (CEO) and Moritz Beck (CTO), Zell has developed an AI operator that listens to sales calls in real time, identifies key behavioural patterns, and delivers actionable feedback to both individual sales representatives and team managers. The platform goes beyond simple transcription by analysing tone, objection handling, and engagement signals to produce tailored coaching recommendations. The startup has already secured early customers across multiple markets, including Pack, Revenue Excellence Partners, Commerciali Digitali, Ladle, and HomeTown, with commercial traction spanning the United States, Germany, Italy, and Spain. This geographic breadth at such an early stage signals strong product-market fit for AI sales coaching solutions across diverse sales cultures and languages. Zell’s participation in the UC Berkeley SkyDeck accelerator programme and Cariplo Factory has provided the founding team with access to a global network of mentors, investors, and potential enterprise customers — a significant advantage for a Berlin-based startup targeting international expansion from day one. European AI sales technology market builds momentum The raise comes amid a broader wave of investment in AI-driven sales and revenue intelligence tools across Europe. The global sales enablement market is projected to grow significantly over the coming years, driven by demand for tools that improve conversion rates, reduce ramp-up time for new hires, and provide real-time performance insights. Zell’s approach — combining conversational AI analysis with automated coaching plan generation — positions it in a growing segment that sits at the intersection of sales enablement and workforce development. While established players in the conversation intelligence space focus primarily on recording and transcription, Zell differentiates by closing the loop with personalised, actionable coaching outputs. The fresh capital will be deployed towards product development, expanding the platform’s language and market coverage, and growing the engineering team. With operations already spanning four countries and backing from both European and US-based investors, Zell is well-positioned to capture early-mover advantage in the AI sales coaching category as European enterprises increasingly seek intelligent alternatives to manual sales management processes. Summary Company Zell Headquarters Berlin, Germany Founded 2024 Founders Alberto Garagnani (CEO), Moritz Beck (CTO) Round Pre-Seed Amount €500,000 Key Investors P3 Ventures, SkyDeck Europe, UC Berkeley SkyDeck, Lendlease, Cariplo Factory Angel Investors Nicola Pivaro, Flavio Di Palo, Pietro Tansini, Thomas Hunziker, Gabriele Sidoti, Ricardo Waller Use of Funds Product development, market expansion, engineering team growth

The European fintech sector continues to attract significant investor attention as AI-powered solutions reshape how finance teams operate. From treasury management to accounts payable and payroll, startups are racing to automate the operational backbone of corporate finance — and investors are backing the most promising platforms with conviction. London-based Round has secured $6 million in seed funding to scale its AI-powered finance automation platform, which streamlines treasury management, accounts payable, and payroll for growing businesses. The round was led by Alstin Capital, with participation from Backed VC, Love Ventures, and existing investor Passion Capital, which led the company’s $2.1 million pre-seed round in October 2024. Notably, approximately 10 per cent of Round’s existing customers also invested in the round, alongside angel investors including Paul Forster, founder of Indeed. Alstin Capital leads seed round as AI finance tools gain traction The investment signals growing confidence in AI-native finance infrastructure. Alstin Capital, an early-stage venture fund focused on B2B software, led the round as Round demonstrated strong product-market fit among fast-growing companies. The platform is already used by notable clients including Cleo, the AI-powered financial assistant, and PostHog, the open-source product analytics company. Founded in 2023 by Pac O’Shea and Hayyaan Ahmad, Round has built a platform that functions as an AI operator for finance teams. The technology automates invoice processing, approval routing, and payment execution for accounts payable, while its AI Treasury Manager agent automatically identifies optimal rates and sweeps funds across connected accounts. The platform integrates with more than 2,000 UK and EU bank accounts and offers access to BlackRock Money Market Funds yielding above 4.2 per cent on idle cash. “We are building for the finance team of the future, one that understands the importance of automation,” said Hayyaan Ahmad, co-founder of Round. The company reports that customers achieve a 75 per cent reduction in invoice processing time and a fourfold improvement in yield on idle cash, with full onboarding completed in as little as five days. Alongside the funding, Round announced two new products: an Agentic Workflow Builder that converts natural language descriptions into automated financial processes, and Autonomous Payroll, which streamlines the complete payroll cycle from file upload to payment execution. European AI finance automation market gathers momentum The raise comes at a time of accelerating investment in AI-powered finance tools across Europe. Accounts payable automation and treasury management represent a combined addressable market worth tens of billions of dollars globally, yet the majority of mid-market finance teams still rely heavily on manual processes, spreadsheets, and fragmented software stacks. Round’s approach — combining treasury, AP, and payroll into a single AI-native platform — positions it against a fragmented competitive landscape of point solutions. The company’s ISO 27001 certification and FCA-regulated custodian partnerships with Wealthkernel, BlackRock, and Barclays provide the compliance framework that enterprise finance teams require. The fresh capital will be deployed towards product development, expanding the engineering and go-to-market teams, deepening integrations with banking and financial systems, and scaling infrastructure. Round also plans to invest in community initiatives, including finance-focused hackathons and workshops designed to build its presence among CFOs and finance leaders. With total funding now exceeding $8 million, Round is well-positioned to capture a meaningful share of the AI finance automation market as European businesses increasingly seek intelligent, end-to-end platforms to replace legacy financial workflows. Summary Company Round (Round Treasury) Headquarters London, United Kingdom Founded 2023 Founders Pac O’Shea, Hayyaan Ahmad Round Seed Amount $6 million Lead Investor Alstin Capital Other Investors Backed VC, Love Ventures, Passion Capital, Paul Forster (Indeed founder) Total Funding ~$8.1 million Use of Funds Product development, team expansion, banking integrations, infrastructure scaling

Plymouth-based Altilium has secured £18.5 million from the UK government's DRIVE35 Scale-Up Fund to build Britain's first commercial refinery recovering lithium, nickel and graphite from end-of-life EV batteries.

Dutch circular-construction startup MAECONOMY has raised €1.5 million in fresh funding to scale a platform that treats building materials as auditable, financeable and tradable assets. The round was led by Eindhoven-based impact investor LUMO Labs alongside LIOF, the regional development agency of the Dutch province of Limburg. Headquartered in Heerlen and led by founder and chief executive Vince Meens, MAECONOMY is tackling one of the heaviest footprints in the European economy. Construction and demolition account for more than a third of all waste generated in the European Union, and the sector remains among the most resource-intensive in the bloc. MAECONOMY’s thesis is that most of that waste is not waste at all — it is future inventory that has never been properly catalogued, valued or traded. A financial layer for the built environment The startup’s platform digitises building- and material-level data and applies algorithmic models to turn raw construction inputs into commercially actionable intelligence. In practice, it generates digital material passports for steel, concrete, wood and copper embedded in buildings, then attaches a financial value to those records. Owners can use the resulting data to report on embodied carbon, plan end-of-life recovery and, increasingly, sell or pledge materials that have not yet been extracted from a standing structure. That last piece is where MAECONOMY is trying to carve out a defensible position. A growing number of software vendors already offer material passports as a compliance or ESG reporting tool. MAECONOMY is going a step further by building the financial layer that turns those passports into instruments institutional owners can actually trade, finance or collateralise. If it works, a building is no longer simply a cost centre at end of life — it becomes a material bank with a quantifiable residual value. Regulation is doing part of the selling The timing reflects a broader regulatory shift. Material passports are moving from voluntary best practice toward mandated documentation in a number of European jurisdictions, and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and EU Taxonomy are forcing large asset owners to produce far more granular data on embodied carbon and circularity than they have historically maintained. For real estate investors, municipalities and developers, that creates a compliance burden and a market opportunity in the same motion. MAECONOMY is positioning itself at the intersection of the two, pitching its platform as both an audit-ready reporting layer and a route to monetising materials that previously sat on balance sheets as a future liability. The company is already working with Dutch municipalities and institutional asset owners, and plans to use the new capital to deepen those relationships before expanding across Europe. Why LUMO Labs and LIOF wrote the cheque The investor syndicate is telling in its own right. LUMO Labs runs a €100 million impact fund that recently drew a €6 million commitment from Spain’s state-owned investment arm SETT, and its mandate leans heavily towards early-stage deep tech and sustainability bets with measurable outcomes. LIOF, meanwhile, is one of the most active regional development agencies in the Netherlands and has been increasingly visible in circular-economy deals in the south of the country. Together they bring the kind of patient, mission-aligned capital that a category-defining play like MAECONOMY requires. Building the financial infrastructure for the circular built environment is not a quick flip — it demands the slow work of standards-setting, integration with real estate software stacks and credibility with regulators and asset owners. A regional impact syndicate is often better suited to that pace than a generalist venture fund. The bigger picture MAECONOMY joins a small but growing cohort of European startups attempting to re-engineer the economics of construction, from digital twins of existing buildings to marketplaces for reclaimed components. Very few have tried to build the missing financial layer underneath all of it. With €1.5 million in the bank and a regulatory tailwind that is only strengthening, the Heerlen-based company now has a window to prove that digital material passports can carry real monetary weight — and that the walls of Europe’s existing buildings are, quite literally, assets waiting to be priced. Related reading on Sesamers: Fundraising news · TeiaCare raises €7M to scale AI-powered care monitoring · Serve First raises £5M follow-on for AI customer experience platform

European venture funding held up decisively this week, with more than €280 million flowing into a mix of AI-native, defence-tech, deeptech and fintech companies. The pattern is familiar — AI continues to dominate headlines — but the spread of stages and sectors this week gives a clearer picture of where capital is actually moving in 2026. From a $130M late-stage deeptech round for a space-to-AI infrastructure company to a scrappy €1.7M pre-seed for an AI moderation startup, Week 15 was a reminder that European venture is still placing bets across the full maturity curve. Two themes stand out. First, AI is no longer a category — it is infrastructure across construction, security, diagnostics, personal care and enterprise workflows. Second, sovereign and defence-adjacent tech is quietly racking up serious funding momentum, with European LPs and funds increasingly comfortable backing dual-use technologies. Here are the deals that mattered. The Deals AirHub closed a €4.4M Series A to scale its mission-critical drone operations software for Europe’s defence and security sector. The Dutch company builds the fleet-management and counter-drone infrastructure that European public-safety and defence buyers are scrambling to deploy in 2026. Read the full AirHub story. Trent AI raised a $13M seed to bring agentic AI security to enterprise workflows — a category that barely existed 18 months ago but is now attracting some of the largest seed cheques in Europe. As companies roll out autonomous agents, the attack surface multiplies, and Trent AI is betting that securing agents will be a standalone market. More in our Trent AI deep dive. Handhold secured €3M in seed funding to automate B2B software sales with AI account managers — attacking the fragmented buying journeys that make enterprise procurement so painful for both vendors and buyers. Read more on Handhold. Audicin picked up $1.9M to scale its brainwave-based nervous system regulation technology, pushing the boundary of consumer neurowellness beyond meditation apps. Full story on Audicin’s raise. Pickmybrain raised $2.1M to let domain experts monetise their knowledge through AI-powered “Digital Brains” — a creator-economy play that sits at the intersection of expertise marketplaces and generative AI. Details in the Pickmybrain article. Penemue closed €1.7M to scale AI-powered hate speech detection across European languages — a timely raise given tightening EU regulation around online harms and platform accountability. See the Penemue announcement. Xoople delivered the week’s largest deep-tech headline with a $130M raise to build Earth’s AI data infrastructure from space. The company is positioning itself as a foundational layer for Earth-observation intelligence, with applications from climate monitoring to defence. Full coverage in our Xoople Series B piece. Covalo raised €3.5M to build the data backbone for the personal-care industry — a B2B ingredients and formulation platform that has quietly become critical infrastructure for beauty and skincare brands. More in our Covalo story. Octostar closed €6.1M to scale its sovereign AI intelligence platform across Europe — a clear vote of confidence in the “European stack” narrative that is driving procurement decisions in the public sector. Read the full Octostar coverage. Finally, Upvest closed a landmark $125M Series D to modernise Europe’s investment banking infrastructure — one of the biggest European fintech rounds of the year so far, and a signal that investor appetite for embedded-finance infrastructure has not cooled. Full analysis in our Upvest Series D article. Sector Themes Three patterns jump out from Week 15’s activity. AI has become horizontal infrastructure. The AI label applies to seven of this week’s ten deals, but the use cases are strikingly diverse: drone operations, enterprise security, B2B sales, neurowellness, knowledge monetisation, content moderation, and sovereign intelligence. This is the maturation curve we have been watching for the past year — AI is no longer a destination sector but the default architecture for new companies across every vertical. Defence and sovereignty are structural, not cyclical. AirHub, Octostar and arguably Xoople all touch dual-use or sovereignty-adjacent markets. The investor base for these rounds is expanding beyond specialist defence funds — generalist European VCs are now comfortable writing cheques in a space that would have been off-limits three years ago. Fintech infrastructure is back. Upvest’s $125M round is the headline, but the broader message is that the “picks and shovels” layer of European finance — custody, clearing, embedded infrastructure — is once again a priority area for growth capital. That is a meaningful shift from the 2024-25 fintech winter. Looking Ahead Week 16 will be the first real post-Q1 reporting period, and we expect a cluster of follow-on raises from companies closing out Q1 milestones. Watch in particular for more activity in climate-tech and energy-transition deals — two spaces that were relatively quiet this week but have strong pipelines heading into Q2. Expect at least one European unicorn crowning by month-end. Week 15 Summary Table Startup Amount Stage Sector Xoople $130M Series B Space / Earth AI Upvest $125M Series D Fintech infrastructure Trent AI $13M Seed AI security Octostar €6.1M Growth Sovereign AI / intelligence AirHub €4.4M Series A Drone / defence software Covalo €3.5M Growth Personal-care data Handhold €3M Seed AI B2B sales Pickmybrain $2.1M Seed AI knowledge / creator Audicin $1.9M Seed Neurowellness Penemue €1.7M Pre-seed AI content moderation Want to stay on top of every European fundraise? Bookmark the Sesamers fundraising hub — we cover every meaningful round, every week.

Milton Keynes-based Serve First has secured £5 million (€5.7 million) in follow-on funding to accelerate the growth of its AI-driven customer experience platform, less than a year after closing its initial £4.5 million round in June 2025. The round was led by existing backers Pembroke VCT and the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II, managed by Mercia Ventures. Both investors first wrote cheques in June 2025, and have now doubled down following a period of rapid commercial traction. Annual recurring revenue at the company has nearly doubled since that initial raise, surpassing £2 million. Founded in 2023 by Erol Ayvaz, a former Asana and Market Force Information executive, Serve First helps multi-site operators measure and improve the experience their customers receive on the ground. Its platform ingests feedback from in-store surveys, online reviews and mystery shopping programmes, then applies machine learning to surface the operational issues that matter most — the broken journeys, the under-performing locations, the frontline teams that need support. For organisations running hundreds or thousands of venues, that analysis is notoriously hard to do manually. Serve First’s pitch is that AI can finally close the gap between what customers are telling brands and what head-office teams actually act on. Rapid growth across retail, hospitality and facilities management The company’s customer list reads like a map of the UK consumer economy. Brentford FC, Topps Tiles, The Body Shop, The Sushi Co and Spud Bros all sit alongside a European pharmacy group operating more than 2,500 locations across seven countries. Aramark, Elior and Alphega Pharmacy are also on the roster. That breadth reflects a deliberate strategy. Rather than narrowing to a single vertical, Serve First has positioned its platform as a horizontal customer experience layer for any business that runs physical sites at scale. Retail, hospitality, health and wellness, franchise networks, facilities management and venue operators are the core markets, and the company is leaning into new compliance demands — notably Martyn’s Law, the UK legislation requiring public venues to improve safety and crowd management — as an additional wedge. The team has grown to 25 employees, still lean by scale-up standards but a meaningful jump from the handful of people in place a year ago. Where the money is going Serve First will use the fresh capital in two areas. The first is commercial expansion: the company intends to recruit a Chief Revenue Officer and materially increase the size of its sales and marketing function. With ARR already past £2 million and a pipeline that spans multi-site enterprises in the UK and Europe, the leadership team clearly sees room to convert category interest into revenue faster. The second priority is product development, and specifically AI. Customer experience software is in the middle of a generational shift as large language models make it possible to extract structured insight from unstructured feedback at a cost that would have been unthinkable two years ago. Serve First plans to push further into that territory — automating root-cause analysis, surfacing site-level recommendations and giving operators a more predictive view of where problems are about to surface. A vote of confidence from existing backers Follow-on rounds from the same investor syndicate are often read as the strongest signal in venture capital. Pembroke VCT, a London-based tax-advantaged venture fund with a portfolio spanning consumer, SaaS and healthcare, and the Midlands Engine Investment Fund II, the British Business Bank–backed regional fund managed by Mercia Ventures, clearly see enough progress to justify putting more capital to work roughly ten months after their initial commitment. For the Midlands tech ecosystem, Serve First is a useful case study. Milton Keynes is not typically in the same conversation as London or Manchester when founders map where to build a SaaS company, but the combination of regional capital, proximity to corporate HQs in the home counties and a workforce willing to move there is producing a steady trickle of later-stage software businesses. The bigger picture for European CX software Serve First’s round arrives at an interesting moment for the customer experience software market. The incumbents — Qualtrics, Medallia, InMoment — built their businesses on survey infrastructure and dashboards. The next wave of challengers argues that the real value now lies in operational action, not measurement. Whoever can translate customer signal into frontline behaviour change, at scale, owns the category. European founders have a credible shot at that prize. The regulatory environment around consumer data is tighter, multi-site operators are more fragmented, and local-language feedback is harder for US-built tools to handle well. Serve First is one of several UK and European players now trying to turn those structural advantages into durable businesses. With £9.5 million raised in total and a growing footprint across retail, hospitality and facilities management, the company has given itself enough runway to find out whether that bet pays off. For more on European funding, see our full fundraising news coverage.

As geopolitical instability, hybrid threats, and the proliferation of disinformation reshape the global risk landscape, the demand for sophisticated intelligence tools that can cut through information overload is intensifying across both public and private sectors. Alicante-based deeptech startup Golden Owl has closed a €1.4 million seed round to scale its AI-powered anticipatory intelligence platform, which fuses open source intelligence with advanced analytics to detect complex risks in real time. The round was led by venture capital firm First Drop, with additional support from business angels and public funding through Spain’s ENISA programme and a NEOTEC grant from CDTI. The investment will accelerate the company’s technical development, expand access to non-indexed sources across the open, deep, and dark web, and fund commercial rollout across sectors including energy, logistics, security, and government. First Drop backs intelligence-as-a-service model Golden Owl, legally registered as Datintel S.L. and headquartered at the Alicante Science Park within the University of Alicante campus, was founded by CEO Ana Beik and CTO Sabi Soltani. The company has built what it describes as an external intelligence operating system that goes beyond traditional data analysis, fusing dispersed signals to anticipate dynamics and scenarios before they fully materialise. The platform operates through a modular Intelligence-as-a-Service architecture comprising three core products. Noctua is a research and analysis platform combining OSINT modules with advanced search capabilities and multi-source data fusion for forensic intelligence work. Strix provides continuous strategic intelligence through configurable monitoring systems designed for early detection and dynamic tracking of actors, risks, and complex environments. A third product, Otus, is planned for launch as a global human intelligence marketplace for deep analysis in high-complexity scenarios. The technology stack draws on advanced AI, neural networks, and high-performance computing infrastructure, processing data from more than 10,000 premium sources and billions of data points across the open, deep, and dark web. European intelligence technology market expands The seed round arrives as European governments and enterprises are significantly increasing their investment in intelligence and security technologies, driven by the evolving threat landscape. The market for OSINT solutions has been expanding steadily, fuelled by the growing recognition that traditional intelligence methods cannot keep pace with the volume and velocity of information generated across digital channels. Golden Owl holds ENISA Certified Startup status and AENOR Young Innovative Company certification, lending institutional credibility to its operations. The company collaborates with the Enterprise Europe Network, the University of Alicante, and participates in Horizon Europe-funded innovation projects, embedding it within the European research and innovation ecosystem. The company’s focus on anticipatory intelligence — identifying emerging risks before they crystallise — distinguishes it from more conventional OSINT tools that primarily serve reactive investigation workflows. By targeting sectors such as energy, logistics, insurance, and government, Golden Owl is pursuing markets where the cost of failing to detect risks early can be substantial, creating a compelling value proposition for its intelligence platform. With hybrid threats, disinformation campaigns, and supply chain vulnerabilities continuing to dominate the European security agenda, Golden Owl’s seed funding positions it to capture early-mover advantage in a market where demand is growing faster than the supply of credible, AI-powered solutions. Summary Company Golden Owl (Datintel S.L.) HQ Alicante, Spain Founders Ana Beik (CEO), Sabi Soltani (CTO) Round Seed Amount €1.4 million Lead Investor First Drop Other Backers Business angels, ENISA, CDTI NEOTEC Use of Funds Technical development, source expansion, commercial rollout rcial rollout across sectors including energy, logistics, security, and government. First Drop backs intelligence-as-a-service model Golden Owl, l— identifying emerging risks before they

The European Union’s eIDAS2 regulation is reshaping how organisations manage digital identity, creating a new market for enterprise-grade identity wallets that can issue, verify, and manage credentials at scale. Spanish startup Sybol has raised over €1 million in combined public and private investment to accelerate the rollout of its corporate digital identity platform, positioning itself at the forefront of Europe’s emerging Business Wallet framework. The round was led by the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT), with participation from energy major Repsol, Grupo Synaptia, Bolboreta Innova Group, Tritemius, Venturade, and Chromata Invest. The capital will fund the expansion of Sybol’s enterprise verification platform and the development of its corporate wallet built on decentralised identity principles. Repsol-backed venture targets enterprise verification Sybol emerged from an intrapreneurship initiative within Repsol Digital, the energy company’s digital transformation unit. Repsol retains a 15 per cent stake in the company and contributed its proprietary decentralised authentication technology to the venture, giving Sybol an unusual head start in enterprise adoption. Led by CEO Raúl López, CTO Iñigo Garcia, and COO Alfredo Abad, the team has built a platform that enables organisations to issue, manage, and verify digital certificates using blockchain-based verifiable credentials. The technology replaces traditional document-based workflows with standardised, reusable credentials linked to verified identities of both issuers and recipients. The platform is already operational at scale within Repsol’s own ecosystem. Repsol Electricidad y Gas currently uses Sybol’s technology to issue more than 2,500 verifiable credentials per month for 500 corporate clients, demonstrating the platform’s readiness for enterprise-grade deployment. eIDAS2 creates a regulatory tailwind for digital identity Sybol’s initial focus on sustainability-related certifications is strategically astute. As ESG reporting requirements tighten across Europe, the demand for verifiable, traceable certification data is growing rapidly. Automated validation of sustainability credentials addresses a genuine pain point for auditors, regulators, and corporate compliance teams. The broader opportunity, however, lies in the eIDAS2 regulation itself. The European framework for electronic identification is establishing standards for both personal and organisational digital wallets, and companies that build compliant infrastructure early stand to capture significant market share as adoption accelerates across the bloc. Spain has signalled its commitment to this digital identity infrastructure through SETT’s public investment in Sybol, reflecting a broader governmental push to position Spanish companies at the leading edge of European digital transformation. The combination of public backing, corporate parentage through Repsol, and alignment with incoming EU regulation gives Sybol a distinctive competitive position in what is expected to become a substantial market. With the European Commission targeting full eIDAS2 implementation by 2027, Sybol’s focus on building enterprise-ready infrastructure now could prove well-timed as organisations across the continent prepare for the transition to verifiable digital credentials. For more startup fundraising news and insights into Europe’s innovation ecosystem, explore our coverage of the latest funding rounds. Summary Company Sybol HQ Spain Founded by Repsol Digital intrapreneurship programme Leadership Raúl López (CEO), Iñigo Garcia (CTO), Alfredo Abad (COO) Round Mixed (public + private) Amount €1 million+ Lead Investor SETT (Spanish Society for Technological Transformation) Other Investors Repsol, Grupo Synaptia, Bolboreta Innova Group, Tritemius, Venturade, Chromata Invest Use of Funds Platform rollout, corporate wallet development, eIDAS2 alignment

Europe’s ageing population is placing unprecedented strain on residential care infrastructure, with demand for intelligent monitoring solutions accelerating as facilities struggle to balance operational efficiency with quality of care. Italian healthtech startup TeiaCare has secured €7 million in fresh funding to expand its AI-powered care monitoring platform across new European markets and into broader healthcare settings. The investment, led by returning backer P101 SGR with participation from existing shareholders and new investors including Spanish family offices Namarel and Inderhabs, will fund TeiaCare’s international expansion into France and Spain whilst supporting the development of advanced Data, Spatial, and Care Intelligence capabilities. P101 SGR leads expansion-stage investment P101 SGR, one of Italy’s most active venture capital firms, led the round as a returning investor, signalling continued confidence in TeiaCare’s growth trajectory. The participation of Namarel and Inderhabs, both Spanish family offices, is strategically significant as it coincides with TeiaCare’s planned entry into the Spanish market alongside France. Founded in 2018 by Guido Magrin and Luca Iozzia, TeiaCare has developed Ancelia, a proprietary platform that combines optical sensors and artificial intelligence to monitor care environments in real time. The system generates actionable insights for care staff in nursing homes, rehabilitation centres, and dementia care units, enabling faster response times and more informed clinical decision-making without intrusive wearable devices. The company has built considerable traction across Italy, serving more than 150 clients across over 200 facilities and covering approximately 75,000 residents. This footprint, concentrated across key Italian regions including Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, and Tuscany, provides a solid foundation for the planned European expansion. European care technology market gains momentum The investment comes at a time when European governments are increasingly recognising the need for technology-driven solutions in eldercare. With the continent’s over-65 population projected to reach 130 million by 2050, the pressure on residential care facilities to deliver better outcomes with constrained resources is only intensifying. TeiaCare’s approach — using ambient optical sensors rather than wearable devices — addresses a critical adoption barrier in care settings, where residents may resist or be unable to use wearable technology. The non-invasive nature of the Ancelia platform has been a key differentiator in securing facility-level adoption across Italy. Beyond its core residential care market, TeiaCare plans to extend its solutions into broader healthcare and home care settings, potentially opening significantly larger addressable markets. The development of Spatial Intelligence and Care Intelligence modules suggests the company is building toward a comprehensive data platform for care environments, rather than remaining a point solution for monitoring. The €7 million round positions TeiaCare to compete in a European healthtech landscape that has seen growing investor interest in AI-powered care solutions, as demographic pressures and workforce shortages make technology adoption in care settings not merely desirable but essential. For more startup fundraising news and insights into Europe’s innovation ecosystem, explore our coverage of the latest funding rounds. Summary Company TeiaCare HQ Italy Founded 2018 Founders Guido Magrin, Luca Iozzia Round Growth Amount €7 million Lead Investor P101 SGR Other Investors Namarel, Inderhabs Use of Funds European expansion (France, Spain), platform development, broader healthcare settings

Dutch drone operations startup AirHub has raised €4.4 million in Series A funding led by Keen Venture Partners to develop dedicated defence and security products, building on a client base that includes Dubai Police, Belgian Federal Police, and Shell.

The rapid adoption of autonomous AI agents across enterprise environments has created a significant and largely unaddressed cybersecurity gap. According to Deloitte’s 2026 State of AI report, nearly three in four companies plan to deploy agentic AI within two years, yet only one in five has a mature governance model for autonomous agents. London-based Trent AI has emerged from stealth with a $13 million seed round to tackle this structural vulnerability head-on, offering what it describes as the first multi-agent security solution purpose-built for the agentic era. The seed round was co-led by LocalGlobe and Cambridge Innovation Capital, with participation from senior figures at OpenAI, Spotify, Databricks, AWS, and Stripe. The capital will be deployed to expand the engineering team, accelerate product development, and grow Trent AI’s early customer base across Europe and the United States. LocalGlobe and Cambridge Innovation Capital back agentic AI security play The calibre of Trent AI’s investor roster reflects the seriousness with which the industry views the agentic security challenge. LocalGlobe, one of Europe’s most prominent early-stage venture firms, co-led the round alongside Cambridge Innovation Capital, the University of Cambridge’s venture arm. The angel investor list reads as a who’s who of senior AI leadership: Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, a member of technical staff at OpenAI; Tony Jebara, former Vice President of Engineering and Head of AI/ML at Spotify; Ippokratis Pandis, a Distinguished Engineer at Databricks; and Avinash Bhat, a Director at AWS. The founding team brings deep technical credibility to the challenge. CEO Eno Thereska previously served as Distinguished Engineer at Alcion, AWS, and Confluent. Chief Scientist Neil Lawrence holds the DeepMind Professorship of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge and previously served as Director of Machine Learning at Amazon. CTO Zhenwen Dai brings experience as a machine learning scientist at AWS and Senior Research Manager at Spotify. A platform built to secure autonomous AI agents Unlike conventional cybersecurity tools retrofitted for AI environments, Trent AI’s platform deploys specialised AI security agents that continuously scan customer environments, assess risk, mitigate vulnerabilities, and evaluate overall security posture. The system operates through four distinct agent groups handling vulnerability detection, severity ranking, remediation recommendations, and security trend analysis. The platform’s proprietary judgement layer and reinforcement learning technology orchestrate these security agents across customer workflows, transforming agentic AI security from a manual audit exercise into a continuous, automated process. Trent AI’s agents can simulate complex attack chains, detect overly broad access permissions, and generate actionable code improvement suggestions — capabilities that static rule-based security tools fundamentally lack. The platform already integrates with popular AI development tools including Claude Code and Lovable, and supports CI/CD pipeline integration for continuous security monitoring. Trent AI has been adopted by several technology firms during its stealth period, with early design partners including Canopy and Weblogic. European agentic AI security market gains momentum Trent AI’s emergence comes at a time when the European cybersecurity market is experiencing substantial investment momentum, driven in part by regulatory frameworks such as the EU AI Act that place increasing obligations on organisations deploying autonomous AI systems. The gap between agentic AI adoption and adequate security infrastructure represents a significant market opportunity, particularly as enterprises move beyond experimental deployments toward production-grade autonomous workflows. The $13 million seed round positions Trent AI among the better-capitalised European cybersecurity startups at the pre-Series A stage. With AI agent deployment accelerating across sectors from financial services to healthcare, the demand for purpose-built agentic security solutions is expected to grow substantially in the coming years. For more on European startup fundraising, visit our fundraising coverage. Summary Company Trent AI Headquarters London, United Kingdom Founded 2025 Round Seed Amount $13 million Lead Investors LocalGlobe, Cambridge Innovation Capital Notable Angels Leaders from OpenAI, Spotify, Databricks, AWS, Stripe Use of Funds Engineering expansion, product development, customer growth

The market for AI sales agents targeting B2B software companies is attracting serious capital as investor conviction grows around the displacement of traditional sales development representative roles. Tallinn-based startup Handhold has raised a €3 million seed round to deploy AI agents across the full software buying journey — from first contact through to customer onboarding — positioning itself at the intersection of two of the fastest-growing categories in enterprise software. The round was led by Entourage Capital, with participation from Inovia Capital and e2vc. The raise also drew a notable cohort of angel investors from within the European tech ecosystem, including Markus Villig, the founder and chief executive of Bolt, Harsh Sinha, chief technology officer at Wise, Janer Gorohhov, co-founder of Veriff, and Ott Kaukver, former chief technology officer of Twilio. The calibre of individual backers reflects growing confidence that AI-driven sales automation is moving beyond experimentation into mainstream enterprise adoption. A platform built to unify the fragmented buying experience Handhold was founded in 2025 by Georg Vooglaid and Uku Tammet. The company’s central thesis is that B2B software purchasing has become structurally inefficient — vendors rely on human sales teams that cannot operate at the scale or speed that modern buyers expect, while buyers receive inconsistent, fragmented experiences that rarely reflect the actual product. Handhold’s answer is a suite of three coordinated AI agents that operate continuously and in sequence. The first agent handles inbound qualification, engaging website visitors in real time, answering product questions, and assessing lead quality without requiring a human sales representative. The second delivers personalised, voice-driven product demonstrations — including live interaction with the actual product interface — at any hour and in over 50 languages. The third guides newly converted customers through onboarding, maintaining context from every prior interaction to ensure continuity across the entire buyer journey. The system is designed to be operational within one to three days of deployment, significantly faster than the six-week average the company cites for comparable enterprise implementations. One early customer, Parim, reported a 60 per cent reduction in poor-fit sales calls alongside a 20 per cent month-on-month increase in qualified leads — metrics that suggest the platform is improving both the efficiency and selectivity of inbound pipelines. Handhold soft-launched in September 2025 and reached a six-figure annual recurring revenue run rate by year end, serving more than 15 customers across sectors including logistics and financial services. The four-person team plans to use the seed capital to accelerate go-to-market execution and scale towards enterprise-grade deployments. Strong operator backing reflects confidence in the AI agent opportunity The involvement of Markus Villig and Harsh Sinha is particularly instructive. Both built or scaled companies that faced the challenge of managing complex, high-volume customer interactions at scale — Bolt across ride-hailing and Wise across international payments. Their backing suggests firsthand recognition of the operational leverage that well-designed AI agents can deliver. Georg Vooglaid, chief executive of Handhold, framed the company’s approach around the economics of personalisation at scale: “With AI agents, we can now replicate that one-to-one experience at scale because the economics work.” The comment points to a structural shift in what is now achievable. Historically, highly personalised selling was reserved for large enterprise deals where the margin justified the headcount. Handhold’s platform is designed to make that level of engagement commercially viable across a much broader customer base. The company identifies a total addressable market of approximately $60 billion in combined sales development representative and customer success manager labour costs across the United States and European Union — a figure that, even partially captured, represents a substantial commercial opportunity. European AI sales automation attracting growing investor attention Handhold enters a competitive but expanding market. Direct competitors include Spara, 1mind, Supersonik, Quarterzip and Trig, each of which focuses on specific segments of the sales funnel. Handhold’s differentiation lies in its integrated approach: a single platform that maintains contextual continuity from initial prospect engagement through post-sale activation, rather than addressing discrete stages in isolation. The broader AI agent market is expanding rapidly, with analyst estimates suggesting the sector will grow from approximately $7.8 billion in 2025 to over $52 billion by 2030. Within that trajectory, sales and customer engagement represent one of the largest near-term deployment opportunities, given the direct impact on revenue generation and the measurability of outcomes. European investors, long cautious about AI infrastructure plays concentrated in US markets, are increasingly backing applied AI companies that can demonstrate unit economics within months rather than years. For Handhold, the seed raise provides the runway to prove that its integrated AI sales agent model can scale beyond early adopters and into the mid-market and enterprise segments where the commercial returns are most significant. The company’s trajectory — six-figure ARR within three months of soft launch, backed by some of the most operationally credible angel investors in European tech — positions it as one to watch in the rapidly consolidating AI sales automation space. More information: handhold.io | Source: Tech.eu | Related: European Startup Fundraising News

European neurotechnology attracts growing investor interest as wellness meets wearables The intersection of neuroscience and consumer technology is emerging as one of Europe’s more compelling deep tech investment themes, as advances in brainwave entrainment, biometric integration, and auditory engineering create new commercial pathways for technologies that were previously confined to clinical research settings. With the global wellness technology market expanding rapidly, startups that can bridge the gap between peer-reviewed neuroscience and scalable consumer products are drawing increasing attention from strategic and institutional investors. Helsinki-based Audicin has raised $1.9 million (€1.6 million) to scale its real-time nervous system regulation technology across defence, healthcare, and enterprise applications. The round includes private investment, follow-on backing from Petteri Lahtela and Virpi Tuomivaara — the co-founders of Oura Health, one of Finland’s most successful consumer health companies — and a grant from Business Finland through its Deep Tech Accelerator programme. The capital brings Audicin’s total funding to approximately $3 million. Oura Health co-founders double down on brainwave entrainment technology The continued involvement of the Oura Health co-founders is a notable signal for Audicin’s commercial trajectory. Oura, which pioneered the smart ring category and has become a global standard in passive health monitoring, provides both a strategic reference point and a potential integration pathway for Audicin’s technology. The follow-on investment suggests that the Oura founders see material alignment between Audicin’s nervous system regulation capabilities and the broader ecosystem of wearable health devices. Audicin’s technology draws on brainwave entrainment, music neuroscience, and auditory engineering to deliver audio-based interventions that support nervous system regulation. Unlike mindfulness applications that require active user engagement, Audicin’s approach works through passive background listening — audio sessions adapted to a user’s physiological signals play in the background while they work, commute, or rest, requiring no conscious effort from the user. The company’s SDK, Audicin for Apps, enables third-party digital health, performance, and consumer platforms to integrate the technology directly, triggered by biometric data, time of day, or in-app events. The SDK supports integration with leading wearables including Oura, Apple Watch, Garmin, and Whoop, positioning Audicin as an infrastructure-level technology rather than a standalone consumer application. From wearables to defence: a dual-use commercial strategy Founded in 2022 by an all-female team — Laura Avonius (CEO), Victoria Williamson, and Mariana Sousa Aguiar — Audicin is pursuing a dual-track commercial strategy that spans consumer wellness and restricted-access environments. A new product in development, a standalone offline Sleep Headband, targets healthcare facilities and defence settings where mobile devices are not permitted. The device delivers pre-configured recovery programmes based on low-frequency brainwave protocols without requiring a connected phone, opening addressable markets that most consumer wellness companies cannot reach. The company reports strong early commercial traction, with a €6.9 million ($8 million) sales pipeline spanning defence, athletic performance, and wellness clinic sectors. This pipeline figure, notably large relative to the company’s current funding stage, suggests that Audicin’s dual-use approach is resonating with institutional buyers who value evidence-based nervous system interventions delivered through scalable, passive technology. Finland’s deep tech ecosystem supports neuroscience commercialisation Audicin’s fundraise is emblematic of a broader trend within Finland’s deep tech ecosystem, where companies are increasingly commercialising technologies rooted in peer-reviewed scientific research. The backing from Business Finland’s Deep Tech Accelerator programme underscores the institutional support available to Finnish startups operating at the frontier of applied neuroscience. For a female-founded company operating in a sector where the gap between scientific capability and commercial product has traditionally been wide, Audicin’s progress from laboratory science to a multi-million-dollar sales pipeline in under four years represents a notable trajectory. Company: Audicin HQ: Helsinki, Finland Founded: 2022 Round: $1.9 million (€1.6 million) Key Investors: Petteri Lahtela and Virpi Tuomivaara (Oura Health co-founders), Business Finland Deep Tech Accelerator Total Funding: ~$3 million Use of Funds: Scaling technology across defence, healthcare, and enterprise applications Website: audicin.com