Happy Friday!
This week, we tracked 70 tech funding deals worth more than €906 million, as well as 16 M&A transactions and 2 IPOs across Europe, Israel, and Turkey.
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) Amazon must repay €250 million to Luxembourg, according to the European Commission, which found that the US company had received illegal tax benefits.
2) Ireland’s High Court on Tuesday said it would ask the EU’s top court to decide whether to ban the way in which Internet firms such as Facebook transfer users’ data to the United States in a case with major implications for companies.
3) Truphone, a mobile company based out of London that made a name for itself through low-cost international mobile voice and data plans, has raised $339 million in funding that it will use to retire its debt and double down on providing data connectivity for connected devices beyond mobile phones.
4) Germany's controversial online hate-speech law has come into effect, and the government apparently has a multitude of popular Web services in its sights. The Enforcement on Social Networks (NetzDG) law threatens services with fines of up to €50 million if they don't quickly take down posts containing hate speech and misinformation.
5) Uber and Transport for London have decided to hold further peace talks after failing to reach an agreement at a summit where the ride-hailing app’s CEO launched an attempt to win back its licence.
6) Germany’s Dialog Semiconductor is to acquire California-based Silego for up to $306 million, helping to strengthen its position in the market for the so-called Internet of Things.
7) Cloud communications platform MessageBird has raised $60 million in a Series A round led by Accel with participation from Atomico and Y Combinator. Amsterdam-based MessageBird, a rival of Twilio, provides a platform for companies to send and receive voice and text messages through its APIs.
8) Saul Klein, a well-known tech entrepreneur and VC, has launched Zinc, London’s newest company builder. Klein’s new venture will seek to leverage technology in an attempt to solve some of the most pressing problems being faced by society.
9) LogTrust, a Spanish big data analytics company, has raised $35 million in a Series B round led by Insight Venture Partners with participation from Kibo Ventures.
10) One of Europe's largest media companies, Axel Springer, has invested in Luxembourg property portal Immotop.lu.
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