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 over 90 tech funding deals worth nearly €900 million, along with ten 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) Germany’s solarisBank has raised €60 million in a Series C funding round to boost its Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) aspirations. The round was led by HV Holtzbrinck Ventures with “considerable commitment” from founding investor yabeo. Further new investors are Vulcan Capital, Samsung Catalyst Fund and Storm Ventures.
2) Infarm, a German startup developing indoor farms, has raised an initial $140 million of a planned $200 million Series C funding round, hoping to capitalise on renewed investor appetite for companies that can address food supply problems that arose during the pandemic - at more than double the valuation at which it raised $100m a year ago.
3) The payments by Google to Apple to be the default search engine on Apple’s Safari web browser create “a significant barrier to entry and expansion” for Google’s rivals in the search engine market, the UK markets regulator said in a report released on Wednesday.
4) Investment firm GP Bullhound has announced its fifth fund, €125 million for growth-stage European software companies. The team just closed Fund IV at €113 million last year.
5) The UK government must introduce new measures to check the dominance of tech giants Google and Facebook in digital advertising and help make space for other players, Britain’s competition watchdog said on Wednesday (7 July).
6) TransferWise says it has received permission from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority to deal in investments. The money transfer start-up says it expects to launch its first investing feature in the next 12 months.
7) Garmin has acquired Firstbeat Analytics, a Finland-based provider of physiological analytics and metrics for consumer devices in the health, wellness, fitness and performance markets.
8) Axeleo Capital, a venture arm of the French startup accelerator Axeleo, has announced its second fund, aiming to invest €50 million in seed-stage proptech startups across Europe. So far PropTech 1 has seen a first close at €35 million.
9) Automated recognition technologies in public spaces should be temporarily banned, the EU’s institutional data protection watchdog has said, arguing in favour of a moratorium.
10) Estonian startup Veriff, provider of an identity protection platform, has raised $15.5 million to fuel global growth and sell to more enterprise customers, as the company prepares for an even larger Series B round in the future. Investors include previous backers Y Combinator and Mosaic Ventures as well as new ones, such NordicNinja VC and Change Ventures.
Podcast(s):
Bonus link(s):
Corporate Venture Capital investment: considerations for European tech startups
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