Happy Friday! This week, tech.eu tracked 12 technology M&A transactions, three IPOs and 76 funding deals (totalling €348 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) Spotify has hit 40 million paying subscribers, securing its lead over Apple Music and accelerating its growth. Investment bank GP Bullhound says if Spotify can reach 100 million paying users, the best-case scenario would value the company at around $53 billion.
2) Eyeo, the German company that makes the popular Adblock Plus software, started selling the very thing many of its users hate: advertisements.
3) The European Commission has proposed directives and regulations to adapt the EU copyright rules and 'modernise' them, but they have been harshly criticised by tech companies and digital rights groups as regressive instead.
4) The Amazon Echo is finally being released in the UK and Germany.
5) London fintech star Transferwise doubles revenue as losses grow.
6) Israeli unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) manufacturer Roboteam has secured an additional $50 million in funding.
7) Teads, the video ad company that just raised $47 million in debt financing, has acquired UK and Romania-based Brainient, the interactive video ad startup founded by Emi Gal.
8) Volkswagen have signed a deal for a joint venture with the newly-founded Israeli startup CyMotive Technologies; they will work together to develop security solutions for connected and autonomous vehicles.
9) Greek deals: Athens-based native mobile advertising startup Avocarrot was acquired by Berlin adtech company Glispa, and US company Altair has acquired Solid Iris Technologies, a Greece-based tech startup specialising in photorealistic rendering and visualisation.
10) Collaboration: 16 national startup associations have joined forces in the European Startup Network (ESN).
Bonus link: Last year, Slush and Atomico partnered to survey nearly 1,000 people about the State of European Tech, and now they're doing it again with high hopes of reaching way more people.
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