These were the 10 biggest European tech stories this week

Happy Friday!

This week, our research team tracked over 80 tech funding deals worth more than €740 million, as well as a bunch of M&A transactions across Europe, including Russia, Israel, and Turkey.

We listed every single deal in our weekly newsletter. Here’s an extra overview of the 10 biggest European tech news items for this week:

1) France's data watchdog announced Monday a fine of 50 million euros for Google, using the EU's strict GDPR for the first time.

2) Bridgestone Europe has paid €910 million for the telematics business of TomTom, the Amsterdam-based location technology company known for its satnav devices and map services.

3) London-based publicly listed VC Draper Esprit has announced its intention to acquire additional stakes in the previous funds of Earlybird VC, a German early-stage investor. In addition to that, Draper Esprit has announced an additional placing on London Stock Exchange aiming to raise £100 million in gross proceeds “to fund the cquisitions as well as financing further direct and secondary investment opportunities,” it stated in a news release.

4) Google's parent company Alphabet has hired veteran British technology entrepreneur Wendy Tan White to help run its X “moonshot” division in California. She will join Google as a vice president and will help to run the technology business’ ambitious division which works on futuristic technologies.

5) Delft-founded AI proptech startup GeoPhy has landed a $33 million funding round led by Index Ventures, with participation from existing investors Inkef Capital and Hearst Ventures. The startup, founded by two architects, applies supervised machine learning methods to commercial property valuation by capturing “thousands of data-points from public and private sources, including satellite images and sales data.”

6) The intellectual property of Blippar, the UK-based overhyped AR startup that once boasted a valuation of $1.5 billion but went into administration last month, has been acquired by one of its investors, Candy Ventures. The firm will also hire “a number of former key Blippar team members” to launch a new business soon, it stated in a press release. The co-founder and CEO of Blippar, Ambarish Mitra will lead the new company.

7) UK-based invoice trading and business lending startup MarketInvoice has raised £26 million in a funding round led by Barclays and fintech fund Santander InnoVentures. In addition to that, it’s secured a debt facility of up to £30 million from Viola Credit, which also participated in the equity round.

8) Just Eat, the takeout marketplace and food delivery service, has acquired Flyt, a startup that offers software for restaurants and restaurant suppliers. The acquisition price is £22 million.

9) Munich-founded startup Kaia Health that develops solutions for treating chronic pains, has raised a $10 million funding round led by Balderton Capital. The company plans to use the capital to fuel its rollout in the US that starts with an office in New York and fund further clinical studies.

10) AXA Venture Partners, the venture arm of the insurance behemoth AXA Group, has raised its second fund of $150 million to invest in early-stage startups. The new fund will invest tech startups at the pre-revenue and early revenue stages in Europe, Israel, and North America.

Podcast: tech.eu Podcast #102: E-scooters again, Chinese investment in Europe, history of RSS, interview with FishBrain, and more

Bonus link: What’s cooking in Europe’s lab-grown meat startups? (Sifted)