These were the 10 biggest European tech stories this week

Happy Friday!

Our research team tracked tech funding deals worth more than €430 million, as well as 9 M&A 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 last week:

1) Google is changing the way it licenses its suite of Android apps in Europe, leading the company to charge a licensing fee for the Play Store and other Google apps for the first time. The changes come in response to a July ruling by the European Commission, which fined the company $5 billion for antitrust violations.

2) Only six months after Barcelona-based TravelPerk raised a $21 million Series B round, the company has announced a $44 million Series C to keep stoking growth that’s seen it grow from around 20 customers two years ago to almost 1,500 now. Investors in the new round include Sweden’s Kinnevik, Russian billionaire and DST Global founder Yuri Milner and Tom Stafford, also of DST. Prior investors include the likes of Target Global, Felix Capital, Spark Capital, Sunstone, LocalGlobe and Amplo.

3) The UK government has released new guidelines for its upcoming age verification law, which will require pornography sites and apps to verify that visitors are 18 or older. The guidelines contain a number of important provisions, including the promise of new voluntary data standards and explicit exclusions for social media sites.

4) Truphone — a UK startup that provides global mobile voice and data services by way of an eSIM model for phones, tablets and IoT devices — has raised another £18 million in funding; plus it said it has secured £36 million more “on a conditional basis” to expand its business after signing “a number of high-value deals.”

5) Israeli-founded open source security management company WhiteSource has raised $35 million in a funding round led by Susquehanna Growth Equity, with participation by existing investors 83North and M12 (formerly known as Microsoft Ventures). This capital injection brings the total amount attracted by the company to $46 million.

6) Stride.VC, the new London-based VC fund from Fred Destin, formerly a partner at Accel, and Harry Stebbings, producer of the “The Twenty Minute VC” podcast and ex-EIR at Atomico, has closed at just over its £50 million target and will be used to do seed investments exclusively in UK startups (at least for now).

7) Barcelona-based Zhilabs, an AI-based network analytics and customer experience management startup, has been acquired by Samsung Electronics for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition will help Samsung to expand its 5G offerings in automation and network analytics.

8) British menswear suggestion and matching startup Thread has raised $22 million in a Series B funding round from Balderton Capital, Beringea, Forward Partners, and H&M group’s investment arm H&M CO:LAB, with participation from Maurice Helfgott and Sebastian Picardo. The company plans to use the funding to hire more AI specialists and ramp up its brand marketing efforts.

9) Amsterdam-based communication platform with advanced security features ZIVVER has landed $12 million in a funding round led by Dawn Capital with participation from DN Capital and the existing investor henQ Capital Partners.

10) The European Commission approved on Friday the acquisition of software development tool maker GitHub by Microsoft without conditions saying the purchase would not damage competition in the sector.

Bonus link: tech.eu Podcast #91 - Apple continues to shop in Europe; HelloFresh and subscription marketing; $19 million for Pitch; interview with Semyon Dukach, managing partner at One Way Ventures; and much more!