Happy Friday!
This week, tech.eu tracked 20 technology M&A transactions and 79 tech funding deals totalling €325 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) European VC firm Atomico has announced the close of its latest fund at $765 million.
2) European lawmakers on Thursday called for EU-wide legislation to regulate the rise of robots, including an ethical framework for their development and deployment and the establishment of liability for the actions of robots including self-driving cars. But they rejected a proposal to impose a so-called robot tax on owners to fund support for or retraining of workers put out of a job by robots.
3) Greek taxi hailing app Taxibeat has been acquired by German competitor MyTaxi, which is owned by Daimler. No financials have been disclosed.
4) Soundtrack Your Brand, a Spotify-backed Swedish startup that’s setting out to “kill bad background music,” has raised $22 million in a fresh funding round led by Nordic VC fund Industrifonden and Balderton Capital.
5) The COO and finance director of Berlin-based music streaming company SoundCloud have both left.
6) Barcelona-based fintech company ID Finance has raised $50 million in debt financing.
7) Europe’s press barons thought they’d scored a major victory last fall when the European Commission threw its weight behind their idea to create a special protection for digital journalism, the linchpin of their strategy for long-term survival. But now the plan threatens to come undone.
8) Irish media content analytics firm NewsWhip has raised $6.4 million in a Series A round from Tribal Ventures, The Associated Press and others.
9) Danish fintech startup Pleo has raised an additional $3.25 million for its seed round, which was led by Creandum along with Seedcamp and Founders.
10) Supercell, the Finnish maker of hit mobile game Clash of Clans, said on Wednesday sales growth stalled last year due to competition from new challengers such as Pokemon GO, though earnings rose.
Bonus link: A selection of technology giants who bought at least one European tech firm in 2016.
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