These were the 10 biggest European tech stories this week

Happy Friday!

This week, we tracked 84 tech funding deals worth more than €720 million, as well as 8 M&A transactions and 2 IPOs across Europe (including Turkey, Russia and Israel).

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

1) Revolut, a digital banking company, has announced a $250 million funding round at a $1.7 billion valuation led by Chinese firm DST Global. Other participants in the Series C round include Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital, bring the fintech company’s total funding to $340 million. The London company develops a mobile-based current account for transferring funds globally and exchanging currencies.

2) Apple will start paying €13 billion in back taxes to the Irish government from May in a move that comes 19 months after Brussels ruled that the tech giant received a quarter-century of illegal aid from Dublin through a tax scheme unavailable to other groups.

3) Tech giants such as Facebook and Google must step up efforts to tackle the spread of fake news online in the next few months or potentially face further EU regulation, as concerns mount over election interference.

4) Apple’s takeover of music-identification service Shazam faces an extended European Union probe as antitrust regulators raised concerns that the iPhone maker could use the app’s data to lure customers to its own music service.

5) Tech giants including Google, Apple and Amazon will for the first time face rules governing their commercial relations with smaller businesses under a law proposed by the European Union on Thursday.

6) Czech private equity-backed cyber security firm Avast is targeting a market capitalization of between $3.5 billion and 4.5 billion in its initial public offering (IPO), potentially the biggest London listing since July.

7) Britain announced on Thursday a $1.4 billion joint investment in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry to capitalize on what the government sees as a competitive advantage in the sector as it prepares for life after Brexit. Also, the European Commission will boost its investment in AI by about 70% to $1.83 billion by 2020 to catch up with Asia and the United States, which are each investing at least three times more than Europe.

8) French ride-sharing giant BlaBlaCar has acquired Less, a Paris-headquartered carpooling app that launched in beta just four months ago. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

9) The European cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp is up for sale, and South Korean gaming company Nexon is said to be in pole position to acquire it. The price is said to be about $350 million.

10) Opera released a new Android web browser with a couple of clever interface choices meant to make it easier to use than other mobile browsers. It’s called Opera Touch, and the interface is designed around one-handed use.

Bonus link: The UK is becoming a global hotbed for VR and AR (Venturebeat)