Hello! Here is what happened today in European tech:
Deals
- Israeli insurance industry software solutions provider Sapiens announced today the start of a proposed underwritten public offering of $100 million of its common shares.
- Luxembourg-based Brighteye Ventures, which claims to be Europe’s first and largest edtech VC, has announced the $54 million first close of its second fund, bringing assets under management to above $112 million.
- Israeli enterprise software company BlackSwan Technologies has announced the completion of a $28 million Series A financing round led by Prytek, FinTLV and MS&AD Ventures.
- Savana, a machine learning-based service that turns clinical notes into structured patient information for physicians and pharmacists, has raised $15 million to take its technology from Spain to the US. The investment was led by Cathay Innovation with participation from the Spanish investment firm Seaya Ventures, and new investors like MACSF, a French insurance provider for doctors.
- Global early-stage VC and startup generator Antler has invested in seven startups from its second UK cohort, taking its global investment total to over $30 million.
- RockStart’s portfolio company iClinic has been acquired by Ayfa Limited, which paid €27.9 million for 100 percent of the startup’s total share capital. This exit gives the Amsterdam-based accelerator a 20+ times return on its investment in iClinic from 2013.
- UK-based digital asset exchange Archax has closed an oversubscribed seed round, raising $8 million from a clutch of VC firms including Alameda Research, Amnis Ventures, Bridgetower Capital, CoinFund and 7percent Ventures.
- Realeyes, an "Emotion AI" company, announced that it has closed growth investment from NordicNinja, a Japanese-backed VC fund focused on scaling up deeptech focused technology companies linked with the Nordic and Baltic region.
- Aventura.aero has obtained a six-digit amount from Swiss investors in its second financing round. The start-up is building a multi-purpose aerial platform to bridge the gap between conventional drones and helicopters.
- We also tracked a large number of (other) European tech funding rounds and M&A transactions, all of which we are putting in a handy list for you on Friday afternoon in our weekly roundup newsletter (note: the full list is for paying customers only). Also check out our European tech news section for ongoing coverage.
Worth Knowing
- US tech giants are facing the threat of an EU attempt to break them up after France and the Netherlands jointly issued a call for the bloc’s competition authorities to take pre-emptive measures as they prepare sweeping legislation to curb the companies’ market power.
- The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a 12% decline in VC investment in Europe compared with 2019, a less severe impact than many had feared.
- France will begin collecting tax on big digital companies this year after international talks failed to agree on a global levy, its finance minister said today.
- Global technology giants including Google, Microsoft, and IBM, in addition to Chinese players in the market, are welcome to take part in the EU’s ambitious cloud infrastructure project Gaia-X, German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said today.
- The sale of Tinkoff Bank to Yandex is far from certain, Russian online publication The Bell wrote yesterday, just three weeks after the two companies announced an “agreement in principle” on a $5.5 billion merger. Oleg Tinkov, the owner of the online bank, is also considering other buyers — in particular mobile operator MTS, or its affiliate MTS bank.
- EU antitrust regulators may narrow the scope of their year-long investigation into Amazon to speed up the case against the US online retail giant, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
- Klarna has been reported to the UK’s data regulator for sending “unsolicited” marketing emails.
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