Articles written by
Stéphane Paillard

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

The creator economy meets artificial intelligence as expert monetisation platforms attract investor attention The convergence of artificial intelligence and the knowledge economy is opening new pathways for professionals and public figures to scale their expertise beyond the constraints of time and physical availability. As AI capabilities mature, a growing cohort of startups is building platforms that transform individual knowledge into persistent, interactive digital assets — creating what some in the industry are calling the “expert economy.” Tallinn-based Pickmybrain has raised $2.1 million (€1.8 million) in pre-seed funding to scale its platform that enables professionals, celebrities, and domain experts to create AI-powered “Digital Brains” — personalised AI advisors trained on their specific knowledge and expertise. The round was led by a group of business angels positioning the Estonian startup to expand into new markets and deepen its product capabilities. Angel investors back vision for AI-powered expertise at scale The pre-seed round attracted investment from Garri Zmudze, a longevity and biotech investor who was an early backer of Insilico Medicine, alongside Raison.app and a number of non-disclosed private investors. The capital will be deployed to grow the team, scale into new geographic markets, and accelerate product development. Pickmybrain’s platform works by training AI models on an expert’s structured knowledge — interviews, articles, books, and recorded responses — to create interactive Digital Brains that users can query for practical, domain-specific guidance. Crucially, experts retain full control over the content their AI is trained on, uploading their own media and consenting to the use of any third-party resources. For individuals with limited digital footprints, the platform provides tools to record thoughts directly, which the AI then uses as training material. The model introduces a hybrid approach to knowledge delivery: users can ask Digital Brains questions based on an expert’s insights for immediate AI-generated responses, while more complex or sensitive queries are routed directly to the expert through asynchronous one-to-one video, creating a tiered engagement model. From Paul Pogba to Peter Vesterbacka: building a premium expert roster Founded in 2022, Pickmybrain has assembled a roster of more than 1,000 professionals spanning sports, entertainment, and business. Notable names on the platform include Peter Vesterbacka, the co-founder of Rovio (the studio behind Angry Birds) and founder of Slush, one of Europe’s most prominent startup events; World Cup winner Paul Pogba; and Bozoma Saint John, the former chief marketing officer at Netflix and Uber. The calibre of these early adopters signals the platform’s positioning at the premium end of the expert economy, targeting professionals whose knowledge carries sufficient commercial value to justify the creation of a persistent digital presence. For experts, the appeal lies in the ability to monetise their expertise passively and at scale, without the scheduling constraints of traditional consulting or speaking engagements. Estonia’s AI ecosystem continues to punch above its weight Pickmybrain’s fundraise adds to Estonia’s growing reputation as a disproportionately productive hub for AI-focused startups. The Baltic nation, which has produced more unicorns per capita than almost any other European country, continues to attract founders building at the intersection of artificial intelligence and consumer-facing platforms. With a strong digital infrastructure and a regulatory environment that has historically encouraged technology entrepreneurship, Estonia offers a competitive base from which to scale into broader European and global markets. As AI reshapes how knowledge is packaged, distributed, and monetised, platforms like Pickmybrain represent an emerging category that sits between the creator economy and enterprise AI — one where the value lies not in the model itself, but in the curated expertise it delivers. Company: Pickmybrain HQ: Tallinn, Estonia Founded: 2022 Round: $2.1 million (€1.8 million) Pre-seed Key Investors: Garri Zmudze, Raison.app, private angel investors Use of Funds: Team growth, market expansion, product development Website: pickmybrain.com

Freiburg-based TrustTech startup expands multilingual content moderation platform to 89 languages The regulatory landscape for online content moderation across Europe is shifting rapidly, with the EU Digital Services Act now mandating that platforms and organisations implement protective measures against harmful content. For the growing number of public figures, sports clubs, and media organisations facing a surge in online abuse, the compliance requirement has created an urgent demand for technology that can identify threats in real time — across languages, dialects, and the ever-evolving lexicon of coded hate speech. Freiburg-based Penemue has raised more than €1.7 million to scale its artificial intelligence platform for detecting and countering online hate speech, digital violence, and disinformation. The round attracted a diverse investor base including TION Health, Beyond Tomorrow, 4seedimpact, zigzag, Berlin Angel Fund, CGS Consulting and Beteiligungs GmbH, RLM Beteiligungs GmbH, and ILG Group, alongside prominent business angels from encourageventures e.V., Black Forest Business Angels, and Business Angels Mitteldeutschland. Beyond keyword filters: understanding context at scale What distinguishes Penemue from conventional content moderation tools is the depth of its linguistic analysis. Rather than relying on basic keyword matching, the platform analyses complex linguistic cues to identify harmful content across 89 languages in real time. The system recognises coded language, slang, regional dialects, and even emoji-based communication patterns, continuously updating its models to reflect emerging terms, cultural shifts, and new forms of digital abuse. The platform functions as a live monitoring layer for social media comments and direct messages, enabling organisations to hide or delete harmful content with a single click — or escalate cases directly to law enforcement through integrated legal complaint filing. “It is not just the people affected who are victims, but everyone who reads along,” said Sara Egetemeyr, co-founder and managing director of Penemue. The company was founded alongside Jonas Navid Mehrabanian Al-Nemri and Marlon Lückert, with a mission to make digital spaces safer through technology rather than manual moderation alone. Bundesliga clubs and federal politicians among early adopters Penemue has already built a notable client base across Germany and Europe. Bundesliga clubs in both the first and second divisions use the platform to monitor fan interactions and protect players from online abuse. Federal-level politicians, media houses, artists, and influencers also rely on the service, as do public prosecutors and police authorities investigating criminal online communication. The company’s effectiveness has been independently validated through an impact evaluation conducted by the University of Mannheim, which documented measurable positive effects in reducing digital violence — providing third-party academic credibility that strengthens Penemue’s positioning in a market where claims of AI effectiveness are often difficult to verify. European regulatory tailwind drives demand The fresh capital will fund further AI development, new European and international partnerships, and deeper cooperation with public institutions. Penemue’s timing aligns with a regulatory environment that is increasingly favourable to content moderation technology providers. The EU Digital Services Act creates compliance-driven demand across the bloc, while individual member states are introducing their own frameworks for combating online hate speech. The German startup has already earned recognition as AI Champion of Baden-Württemberg and is a member of Deutsche Telekom’s TechBoost programme. Its partnership with the #NoHateSpeech initiative further anchors it within the broader European movement to address digital abuse systematically rather than reactively. For Penemue, the challenge ahead lies in scaling a linguistically complex product across new markets while maintaining the detection accuracy that has earned it the trust of some of Germany’s most prominent institutions. Company: Penemue HQ: Freiburg, Germany Round: Funding round Amount: €1.7 million+ Key Investors: TION Health, Beyond Tomorrow, 4seedimpact, zigzag, Berlin Angel Fund Use of Funds: AI development, European and international expansion, public institution partnerships