These were the 10 biggest European tech stories this week

Happy Friday, and enjoy the weekend/NYE!

This week, we tracked 23 tech funding deals worth more than €73 million, as well as 3 M&A transactions across Europe, Israel, and Turkey.

We listed every single deal in our weekly newsletter (note: the full newsletter is now available to paying subscribers only), and here’s an extra overview of the 10 biggest European tech news items for this week:

1) Russian mobile operator Megafon has agreed to pay $740 million to buy a controlling stake in internet group Mail.ru from billionaire Alisher Usmanov, who is an investor in both companies.

2) Belgian data governance company Collibra has reportedly raised €40 million in a funding round led by ICONIQ Capital, the investment firm linked with Mark Zuckerberg and several other Silicon Valley elites.

3) Smartphone maker Apple and Japanese printer company Epson are facing legal complaints in France over allegedly speeding up the aging process of their products to stimulate demand.

4) Estonia have begun plans to launch its own state-backed cryptocurrency called “estcoin” via an Initial Coin Offering (ICO), a crowdfunding platform adjusted for the digital coin community. The move will make Estonia the first country to develop an ICO.

5) Yandex.Taxi, a subsidiary of Russian internet group Yandex, said on Monday it is buying Russian food delivery service Foodfox for an undisclosed amount.

6) Israeli predictive care startup Clew Medical (formerly Intensix) announced Wednesday the completion of a $10.5 million investment round. The round was led by Israeli venture capital firm Pitango.

7) President Vladimir Putin said on Monday the Russian authorities should monitor the activity of “some companies” on social media during next year’s presidential election and assess the extent of their involvement in domestic politics.

8) Danish Bitcoin payment startup Coinify has raised €3.9 million.

9) In Norway, VideoNor has acquired Telenor’s Appear.in.

10) Geosplit, a Russian startup making technology for monitoring oil and gas wells, has raised $1.5 million from Rusnano Sistema Sicar, the private equity fund co-run by Russian conglomerate Sistema and government-backed fund Rusnano.

Bonus link: Inside Estonia's Bold Plan to Build a Digital Country on the Blockchain. (Inverse)