These were the 10 biggest European tech stories this week

Happy Friday!

This week, we tracked 59 tech funding deals worth more than €373 million, as well as 11 transactions 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) London-based virtual reality technology startup Improbable has received new financing from Chinese gaming giant NetEase, which is pumping $50 million into the company and buying a similar amount of stock from shareholders. The investment reportedly values Improbable at about $2 billion.

2) Qualcomm has formally terminated its proposed acquisition of its Netherlands-based chip rival NXP, ending a two-year courtship and paving the way for a $30 billion stock buyback.

3) For its second ever earnings report, Spotify this week said it now has 83 million paid subscribers, up 8 million over its first earnings quarter in May. As a result of this growth, it saw a 12% increase in revenue, earning €1.27 billion compared to €1.14 billion last quarter. It's still not actually making an profit, however, running an operating loss of €90 million and net loss of €394 million this time around, over double that of last quarter.

4) France-based IT firm Atos has struck a $3.4 billion deal to buy Syntel, a U.-based information-technology company, in a move that would give it access to some of the biggest American financial services companies.

5) London-based market research company GlobalWebIndex has announced a $40 million funding round from New York-based Stripes Group. GlobalWebIndex is a market research company that provides consumer insights data in 44 countries to the world’s largest brands, marketing agencies and media organizations, drawing on a base of 22 million consumers.

6) Facebook has acquired Redkix, an Israeli startup that combines e-mail, messaging and calendar features into one app, for an undisclosed sum. Facebook made the purchase in hopes of building out its own communication features inside Workplace, the enterprise version of Facebook that it hopes to compete with Slack.

7) Telegram, the privacy-oriented messaging app, has released version 4.9 of its app for both Android and iOS devices bringing a major new feature: Telegram Passport. With the new update, Telegram is expanding what users can do with the app by allowing them to log into services that require real-world identification.

8) Russia, which American intelligence agencies said spread its fair share of misinformation during the 2016 United States election, says it will crack down on “fake news” at home, with a proposed law that critics say could limit freedom of speech on the Internet.

9) Swiss mobile computer vision startup Scandit, which scans products to incorporate them in the Internet of Things, has raised a $30 million Series B financing round. The investment was led by GV, with participation from NGP Capital and existing investor Atomico, among others.

10) Germany-based investment firm Digital+ Partners has raised a €350 million fund to back European B2B tech startups that are ready to scale up, a healthy €50 million more than initially targeted.

Bonus link: The Story Behind Google's Secret Offer to Settle EU’s Android Probe (Bloomberg)