These were the 10 biggest European tech stories this week

Happy Friday!

This week, our research team tracked more than 60 tech funding deals worth over €1.2 billion, as well as some 20 M&A transactions and related news stories across Europe, including Russia, Israel, and Turkey.

Meanwhile, here's an overview of the 10 biggest European tech news items for this week:

1) French professional photography platform Meero has landed $230 million in a funding round from Eurazeo, Prime Ventures, Avenir Growth, Global Founders Capital, Aglaé Ventures, Alven, White Star Capital, and Idinvest.

2) Two Nordics-based public companies working on digital services and software, EVRY and Tieto, has announced a merger into a new company, TietoEVRY. The new entity will have combined revenue of some €3 billion and a team of 24,000 people.

3) Finnish good delivery service Wolt has just gobbled up a $130 million funding round led by ICONIQ Capital, with participation from existing investors 83North, EQT Ventures, Highland Europe, and Lifeline Ventures.

4) The UK-based Dawn, a VC firm that’s focusing on B2B software and fintech, has closed its new Opportunities Fund at $125 million. From this fund, Dawn plans to invest in Series C and later rounds of its portfolio startups and other European companies.

5) French HR tech startup PayFit has landed €70 million in a funding round led by Eurazeo and Bpifrance, with participation from prior investors Accel, Frst, and Xavier Niel. This capital injection brings the total amount raised by the company to €83 million.

6) London-based insurtech startup Zego has raised $42 million to boost its European expansion. The financing round was led by Target Global and joined by Balderton Capital and Transferwise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus, who is also joining the company’s board.

7) Publicly-listed Blue Prism has announced that it is buying UK-based Thoughtonomy, which has built a cloud-based AI engine that delivers robotic process automation-based solutions on a SaaS framework, for up up to £80 million ($100 million).

8) Israeli face, body, and object-recognition software computer vision company AnyVision announced it has raised an additional $31 million and completed a $74 million Series A financing round. The latest investment comes from M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, DFJ Growth and OG Technology Partners.

9) Cherry Ventures, the Berlin-based investor that backs European companies predominantly at seed-stage, has raised a third fund. The new “Cherry Ventures III” has closed at €175 million and will continue to be focused on seed.

10) GP Bullhound, the technology advisory and investment firm born (and still very active) in Europe, has announced the final close of its latest tech fund at 113 million euros to continue backing companies with traction in the software, marketplace, fintech and entertainment sectors.

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Bonus link: Ten European cities have demanded more help from the EU in their battle against Airbnb and other holiday rental websites, which they argue are locking locals out of housing and changing the face of neighbourhoods. (The Guardian)