These were the 10 biggest European tech stories last week

These were the 10 biggest European tech stories this week

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Happy Friday!

Last week, we tracked 95 tech funding deals worth more than €562 million, as well as 8 M&A transactions and 2 IPOs across Europe, including Russia, Israel, and Turkey.

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) Adyen, a Dutch payments processor whose clients include Netflix and Spotify, more than doubled in its trading debut in Amsterdam. The shares, which priced at 240 euros apiece in Europe’s biggest technology IPO of the year, reached up to 503.90 euros early Wednesday, giving Adyen a market value of about 12.8 billion euros ($15.1 billion).

2) Swedish digital healthcare startup KRY has secured a €53 million Series B funding round led by Index Ventures with participation from existing investors: Accel, Creandum, and Project A. The company, which has raised a total of €79 million to date, is planning to use the money to fuel the expansion of its video consultation app to France and the UK.

3) Home24 rose as much as 35 percent on the online furniture retailer’s first day of trading in Frankfurt, the best ever share debut for a startup backed by Rocket Internet, giving the company a market capitalisation of 782 million euros.

4) As Europe's latest copyright proposal heads to a critical vote on June 20-21, more than 70 Internet and computing luminaries have spoken out against a dangerous provision, Article 13, that would require Internet platforms to automatically filter uploaded content. The group, which includes Internet pioneer Vint Cerf, WWW inventor Tim Berners-Lee, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, co-founder of the Mozilla Project Mitchell Baker, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, cryptography expert Bruce Schneier, and net neutrality expert Tim Wu, has written a joint letter to oppose the proposal.

5) Sales CRM startup Pipedrive has secured a $50 million Series C round led by Insight Venture Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors, Rembrandt Venture Partners and Atomico. Pipedrive plans to use the money to further scale and develop its product, as well as “explore strategic acquisitions,” the company stated in a press release.

6) French startup Back Market has secured a funding round of $48 million from Groupe Arnault, Eurazeo, Aglaé Ventures, and Daphni. The company intends to use the money to grow its refurbished electronics marketplace globally, with a particular focus on the North American markets.

7) Firstminute capital, the London-based pan-European seed fund founded by Brent Hoberman and Spencer Crawley, has announced a final close of $100 million, as well as details around its first batch of early-stage investments made since September.

8) Memrise, a UK startup whose language-learning app employs machine learning and localised content to adapt to users’ needs as they progress through their lessons, has raised $15.5 million in funding from Octopus Ventures, Korelya Capital, Avalon Ventures and Balderton Capital to expand its product.

9) Google has entered into a deal with Carrefour to sell groceries online in France in what the retailer said was the first time fresh food will be marketed through the Internet giant’s platforms. By early 2019, French shoppers will be able to buy Carrefour’s products through Google platforms including Home, Assistant and the Google shopping destination in France.

10) Eyeo, the company behind the popular browser-based ad block product Adblock Plus, has launched a Chrome browser add-on called Trusted News that aims to help Internet users spot sources of fake news when they’re exposed to content online.

Bonus link: Inside Yandex self-driving car: Here's what it's like to ride on Moscow's crazy roads (ZDNet)

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