Happy Friday!
This week, our research team tracked 70 tech funding deals worth over €800 million, as well as some 10 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) Following a previously undisclosed $30 million Series B led by Accel earlier this year, Berlin-based sennder announced closing a $70 million Series C funding round, led by Lakestar. This brings the funding raised by the startup, which aims at solving pain points in the full truckload (FTL) market, to a total of $100 million in 2019.
2) Pioneers, a conference that has brought together European tech startups, investors and corporates at the beautiful Hofburg Palace in Vienna since 2012, is closing doors – at least for now. The current owner of Pioneers – startup300 – has decided to shut down the event activities of Pioneers, effectively cancelling next year’s main conference and associated side events.
3) Atom bank, the UK’s challenger bank built exclusively for mobile, has raised £50 million in a fundraising round with participation from BBVA, Toscafund, Woodford Patient Capital Trust and funds advised by Perscitus LLP. Today’s round takes the fintech startup’s total funding to £450 million.
4) Deliveroo, a major player of the food delivery industry, has gotten into supply chain management by offering restaurants to buy ingredients and kit through “discount deals.” The model is certainly viable in economic terms, however, it there's a fear that this way Deliveroo will become more of a monopoly and increase restaurants' dependency on its platform.
5) In other Deliveroo news, a court in Madrid has ruled that the company's couriers are in fact employees and not just freelancers. Armed by this ruling, the local delivery workers can now demand a formal contract and benefits.
6) Just Eat, the publicly listed takeout marketplace that has faced fierce competition from UberEats and Deliveroo in recent years, has made a round of layoffs in the UK and Ireland.
7) Warsaw-based Cogito Capital has reached the first closing of its Cogito Fund I with €55 million in commitments. The fund is focused on late- and growth-stage enterprise software, fintech, insurtech, and mobility companies operating mainly in Central Europe.
8) UVeye, a Tel Aviv-based company that has built a set of drive-through external scanners that can take images of the exterior of a vehicle and then — using computer vision and AI — instantly read those scans to detect for anomalies, has raised $31 million in funding.
9) vCita, an Israeli startup offering a cloud-based management solution for small businesses, has closed a $15 million growth funding round led by Forestay Capital, part of Waypoint Capital. The newly raised capital will be used to support the startup’s growth in the global market, form additional strategic partnerships and accelerate product development.
10) In Bulgaria, a mysterious hacker has stolen the personal details of millions of people and e-mailed download links to local news publications. The leaked databases contain names, personal identification numbers (PINs), home addresses, and financial earnings of Bulgarian citizens, though most of the data is years old.
Bonus link: Pitch + Plant highlights latest innovations and opportunity in European foodtech
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