These were the 10 biggest European tech stories this week

These were the 10 European tech stories this week
These were the 10 biggest European tech stories this week

Happy Friday!

We sincerely hope you and yours are keeping healthy and safe. Please take care of yourself and others.

This week, our research team tracked 70 tech funding deals worth more than €600 million, as well as under 10 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 (subscribe to our free newsletter to get this roundup in your inbox every Monday morning):

1) Intel is set to acquire Israeli company Moovit for about $1 billion. The company has developed a public transport and mobility journey planner app. Intel Capital, the venture capital investment arm of Intel, is one of the shareholders in Moovit.

2) Amazon is circling crashed satellite company OneWeb, the British firm backed by Sir Richard Branson and SoftBank which filed for bankruptcy in late March 2020, joining SpaceX and France's Eutelsat as interested party.

3) Israeli smart dashcam company Nexar announced the completion of a $52 million Series C financing round led by Corner Ventures with participation from Samsung NEXT, La Maison, Micron Ventures, Sompo, Atreides Management, and previous investors Aleph, Mosaic Ventures, Ibex Investors, and Nationwide. This brings the vision-based software company's total funds raised to date to nearly $100 million.

4) Paris-based VC Partech has announced a new $100 million fund, Partech Entrepreneur III, for seed-stage investments in post-COVID trends in health, work, commerce, finance, mobility and computing. Forty investments have already been made, including ten since the start of the pandemic.

5) Compass Pathways’ work on treatment-resistant depression received a big backing from investors. The London-based mental health care company closed a funding infusion of $80 million as part of a Series B investment round that included participation from existing investor ATAI Life Sciences, as well as new investors.

6) Norwegian videoconferencing company Pexip, whose technology is used by the US government, Spotify and PayPal is seeking to raise $200 million in what could be the largest software IPO in Scandinavia.

7) SkyCell, the Swiss manufacturer of data-driven temperature-controlled smart containers for the pharmaceutical industry, has raised $62 million in an oversubscribed growth funding round.

8) Deliveroo is letting go of 367 of its employees as it struggles with demand during coronavirus lockdown. Fifty Deliveroo employees have also been furloughed as part of the decision.

9) Hungarian competition watchdog GVH has fined online reservation operator Booking.com 2.5 billion forints (€7 million) for unfair business practices, including misleading advertisements and psychological pressure on consumers.

10) Deliverect, a Ghent-based software that manages online food orders for restaurants, has raised €16.25 million in a Series B round led by OMERS Ventures, with contributions from Newion, SmartFin, and the company’s own founders.

Podcast:

tech.eu Podcast #166: Fred Destin (Stride) on VC’s role in crisis; Richard Muirhead (Fabric) on governmental support for startups

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Interview special: From legal tech and online learning to brain stimulation and depression treatment; Check out the conversations with Anthony Rose of SeedLegals, Gauthier Van Malderen of Perlego, and Daniel Månsson of Flow Neuroscience.

Bonus link:

"When Europe enacted the world’s toughest online privacy law nearly two years ago, it was heralded as a model to crack down on the invasive, data-hungry practices of the world’s largest technology companies. Now, the law is struggling to fulfill its promise. Europe’s rules have been a victim of a lack of enforcement, poor funding, limited staff resources and stalling tactics by the tech companies." (The New York Times)

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