Happy Friday!
Our research team tracked 50 tech funding deals worth more than €279 million, as well as 5 M&A transactions and 1 IPO 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 last week:
1) Apple is taking control over the power-management technology at the heart of its iPhones in a $600 million deal with Dialog Semiconductor that also secures the German-listed company’s role as a supplier to the US tech giant.
2) Copenhagen-based visual effects startup Spektral was acquired by Apple for $30 million at the end of 2017 in a deal that was only disclosed this week. The company focused on applying machine learning techniques to image and video editing.
3) Helsinki-based Varjo, founded in 2016, has secured a $31 million Series B investment led by Atomico to bring its technology to market as what it claims is the world’s first VR / XR hardware and software product specifically aimed at industrial use. The round, which brings Varjo’s total funding raised to $46 million, was joined by Next47, the Siemens-backed venture firm, as well as previous backers EQT Ventures and Lifeline Ventures.
4) Israel-based information security company Imperva has entered an acquisition agreement with technology investment firm Thoma Bravo, which will pay $55.75 per share in cash for the Nasdaq-listed, representing a total deal value of around $2.1 billion.
5) An analysis of the impact of Europe’s new data protection framework, GDPR, on the adtech industry suggests the regulation has reduced the numbers of ad trackers that websites are hooking into EU visitors. But it also implies that Google may have slightly increased its marketshare in the region — indicating the adtech giant could be winning at the compliance game at the expense of smaller advertising entities which the study also shows losing reach.
6) It was also revealed that, for the past four months, freshly-EU-fined Google has been encouraging advertising agencies to create price comparison sites, which it presents in the Google Shopping box.
7) Berlin-based startup Pitch announced a $19 million Series A funding round led by Index Ventures and its existing investor BlueYard. Further new investors include Slack Fund, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, Framer CEO Koen Bok, Elastic Co-Founder Simon Willnauer, Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel, Wunderlist-backer Frank Thelen, and Metalab Founder Andrew Wilkinson.
8) Google on Tuesday challenged a record 4.34-billion euro fine imposed by EU antitrust regulators three months ago for using its popular Android mobile OS to thwart rivals.
9) London-based Mosaic Ventures has closed a second fund at $150 million.
10) Microsoft is set to win unconditional EU antitrust approval for its $7.5 billion purchase of privately held coding website GitHub, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday.
Bonus link: The Farfetch journey, 10 years from start-up to IPO (Medium)
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