Happy Friday!
This week, our research team tracked almost 90 tech funding deals worth more than €600 million, as well as around 20 M&A transactions, rumours, 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) Glovo, the fast-growing on-demand delivery company from Spain, has raised €150 million in Series E funding. The latest round was led by Mubadala, with further support from previous investors Drake Enterprises, Idinvest and Lakestar. With the Series E, Glovo has become a unicorn, Spain’s second company to surpass a $1 billion valuation.
2) France’s competition authority has fined Google €150 million for unfairly suspending advertisers that placed allegedly deceptive ads, the latest in a series of antitrust probes and decisions against big tech firms in both Europe and the US.
3) German classifieds group Scout24 said on Tuesday it had agreed to sell automotive digital marketplace AutoScout24 to private equity investor Hellman & Friedman for 2.9 billion euros.
4) A German court on Thursday banned Uber ride-hailing services in Germany, arguing the US company lacks a necessary licence to offer passenger transport services using rental cars.
5) Airbnb has secured a victory in its fight to avoid more regulation by city authorities after the European court of justice ruled that it acted as an “information society service” rather than a real estate agency.
6) HERE Technologies, the Amsterdam-based provider of a location data and technology platform, announced that Mitsubishi Corporation and NTT will jointly acquire a 30 percent ownership stake in the company.
7) Smartly.io, a Helsinki-based company helping advertisers automate their campaigns across Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, has sold a majority stake to Providence Equity Partners for €200 million.
8) Odoo, the Belgian provider of open source all-in-one business software, has raised a $90 million round, led by Summit Partners, to fund its fast-paced product development and continued global expansion.
9) Facebook is pushing further into the video gaming market with the acquisition of PlayGiga, a Madrid-based company that specializes in cloud gaming. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed the deal to CNBC on Wednesday, after Spanish business newspaper Cinco Dias reported that the price was approximately 70 million euros.
10) Intel has snapped up an Israeli artificial intelligence startup for $2 billion, just weeks after flogging its mobile modem business to Apple. Intel has bought Habana Labs in a bid to expand its AI portfolio on the data centre arm of its business, likely by making use of the startup's programmable deep learning accelerators.
Podcast:
tech.eu Podcast #147: State funding for battery tech, future foods in Europe, new VC kids on the block, interview with SVB’s Sonya Iovieno + Interview Special: Robert Falck (Einride) and Rudi Skogman (Blok)
Bonus link: The UK government will create a technology regulator next year to police companies such as Facebook and Google after Brexit.
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