Happy Friday!
This week, tech.eu tracked 8 technology M&A transactions and 71 tech funding deals totalling €503.6 million in Europe, Turkey and Israel.
Like every week, we listed every single one of them in our free weekly newsletter, along with interesting news regarding fledgling European startups, tech investors old and new, a number of good reads published elsewhere, government and policy news, as well as an overview of interesting lists, facts and figures from a wide variety of sources.
You can subscribe to our newsletter below to receive all this information in your inbox every Friday afternoon for free, but here’s an overview of the 10 biggest European tech news items for this week:
1) UK-based lending platform Funding Circle has raised $100 million (£82 million) in a fresh funding round led by Accel along with several other investors.
Investors in the round include Baillie Gifford, DST Global, Index Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Rocket Internet, Sands Capital Ventures, Temasek, and Union Square Ventures – all previous investors.
2) Karhoo — a failed on-demand offering that aggregated drivers and ride options from hundreds of existing fleets of car services in an Uber-like app — has been brought out of administration by RCI Bank and Services, the financial services division of the car giant Renault.
3) Members of the European Parliament have called for the adoption of comprehensive rules for how humans will interact with artificial intelligence and robots.
4) Starship Technologies, a London company that’s building autonomous robots for deliveries, has raised $17.2 million (€16.5 million) in a seed round led by automotive giant Daimler.
5) Messaging services such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Gmail will face tough new rules on the tracking of users under a revision to the ePrivacy Directive proposed by the European Commission on Tuesday.
6) Snap, the company behind the messaging app Snapchat, has established international headquarters in London.
7) Swedish fintech company iZettle has raised €60 million in new funding and appointed Maria Hedengren as its new CFO.
8) Smartphone users in Russia can no longer download the LinkedIn app on iPhone or Android devices, weeks after a court blocked the professional networking service for flouting local laws.
9) UK-based Vector Watch has been acquired by Fitbit, a San Francisco-based company specializing in fitness wearables. The amount of the deal has not been disclosed.
10) Israeli cybersecurity startup builder Team8 gains $23 million and new investors in Microsoft and Qualcomm.
Bonus link: Language learning app busuu has announced a partnership with Uber to offer free English language lessons for its drivers in London.
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