Happy Monday!
Our research team tracked over 70 tech funding deals worth more than €1 billion, 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) BlaBlaCar, a French-founded carpooling platform, has announced its plans to move beyond ridesharing towards becoming a road travel platform. The company has offered to acquire the bus operator Ouibus from SNCF, the French national railway company. At the same time, BlaBlaCar announced a €101 million funding round from SNCF itself with participation from existing investors.
2) Nested, the London-based data-driven estate agency that provides a cash advance to help you buy a new home before you’ve sold your old one, has raised a further £120 million in funding. The new round is a mixture of equity and debt: £20 million and £100 million, respectively. Leading the equity round is Northzone, and Balderton Capital, while the debt finance comes from an unnamed institutional investor.
3) It only took two weeks after Amsterdam-based TravelBird officially filed for insolvency for its assets to get acquired, the Financieele Dagblad reports. The UK-based Secret Escapes, a competing travel booking platform with a luxury focus, has made the largest bid “by far,” according to the bankruptcy curator Jan Padberg. The British company will receive the intellectual property, the IT platform, the Travelbird brand, the logos, and the customer base.
4) German semiconductor manufacturer Infineon has acquired Dresden-based startup Siltectra for €124 million. Founded in 2010, Siltectra is an R&D-heavy startup that has developed the “cold split” technology that allows processing of crystal material efficiently and with minimal loss.
5) LocalGlobe, a London, UK-based VC firm that focused on seed investments, is raising a new fund aimed at Series B rounds and beyond. Founded by father and son Robin Klein and Saul Klein, LocalGlobe aims to (reportedly) raise a $200 million fund to support the growth of startups in its portfolio.
6) British startup Pirate Studios, which operates 24/7 self-service recording studios across the UK, Germany, and the US, has raised $20 million from Talis Capital, a London-based VC family office.
7) French hardware startup Netatmo has been acquired by the biggest manufacturer of switches and sockets in the world, Legrand. Terms of the deal are undisclosed.
8) Lesara, a well-funded Berlin-based startup that raised its last funding round of €30 million in July, filed for insolvency last week together with its logistics subsidiary. The company has attracted a total of €85 million, and currently employs more than 300 people in Berlin, Erfurt, and Guangzhou, China.
9) Dutch ticketing startup Tiqets has landed a $23 million in a Series B funding round led by HPE Growth Capital with participation from existing shareholders. The fresh funding brings the total amount raised by the company to $55.5 million.
10) Intel Capital has led a $75 million investment in Israeli artificial intelligence chipmaker Habana Labs.
Podcast: tech.eu Podcast #95: Lesara and Travelbird go under; Facebook cooperates with Macron; interview with Paddle’s Christian Owens; and much more
Bonus link: Inside the British Army's secret information warfare machine (Wired)
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