Hello!
Here is what happened today in European tech:
Deals
- Global Fashion Group, the Europe-based, publicly-listed online fashion and lifestyle platform company, has raised approximately €120 million in gross proceeds by means of a placement of 16.5 million new shares at a price of €7.30 apiece.
- Buying up Amazon FBA stores and scaling them in-house is a hot business model right now. Last week Heroes launched in the UK with a $65 million seed round and Berlin-based Razor Group raised €25 million. Today, fellow Berlin business SellerX announced it has secured €100 million of financing.
- Milan, Italy-based mobile digital payment platform Satispay has secured €93 million euros in funding in a Series C round co-led by Tencent, Square, Telecom Italia’s TIM Ventures, LGT Lightstone and other investors. Square, the payments company run by Jack Dorsey, has reportedly invested about €15 million in the round.
- Japanese financial services group ORIX has announced that it has invested a strategic $60 million in OurCrowd, Israel’s most active venture investing platform, which boasts close to 60,000 registered investors from over 183 countries.
- Verbit, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based AI-powered transcription and captioning platform, has closed a $60 million Series C round led by Sapphire Ventures with participation from existing investors Vertex Ventures, Stripes, HV Ventures and ClalTech, as well as new investor Vertex Growth.
- Marathon Venture Capital in Athens, Greece has completed the first closing of its second fund, reaching the €40 million mark. Backing the new fund is the European Investment Fund, HDBI, as well as corporates, family offices and HNWIs around the world (plus many Greek founders).
- Stockholm-based Firstvet has closed a $35 million funding round, just a year after raising €18.5 million in a Series B. Mubadala Capital led the round, with participation from Cathay Innovation alongside existing backers, OMERS Ventures and Creandum. The digital veterinary platform will use the capital to launch in the US.
- Min Doktor, a Malmö, Sweden-based digital healthcare provider, announced getting into an investment agreement of $32.4 million. The money was raised from local investor from Sweden Swedbank Robur, which will control a major part of the equity.
- BondIT, an Israeli fintech company that develops a portfolio management system for investors, announced that it is acquiring Berlin-based company Scorable that provides AI-driven investment analysis and research as a service. The acquisition will be carried out as a shares exchange, estimated to be worth $12 million to $16 million.
- Israeli AI-as-a-service startup BeyondMinds has completed a $15 million series A round led by Israeli venture capital fund Grove Ventures.
- Two companies in the data business are teaming up, with Singapore's Near announcing that it has acquired French location intelligence startup Teemo.
- Finnish deep tech startup Unikie has closed a €12 million funding round to scale its automatic driving software around the world. The growth capital came from two Finnish investment firms, CapMan Growth and Tesi.
- UK/Germany-based payments service provider SumUp has acquired POS software provider Goodtill for an undisclosed amount.
- Peter Thiel has reportedly participated in a "double-digit million" round for the Saarland, Germany-based insurtech startup Neodigital.
- 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
- The UK military is to receive an extra £4 billion a year over the next four years, the government has said. The money will fund space and cyber defence projects such as an artificial intelligence agency, and could create 40,000 new jobs.
- Global telecommunications company Telefónica announced the launch of two new projects aiming to strengthen tech startup innovation for the future. The company launched Wayra X, a "100% digital innovation hub for startups tackling emerging problems related to 5G, e-health, e-learning, home automation, entertainment, mobility, and the future of work". Telefónica also debuted Wayra Builder, a corporate venture builder to create "new startups innovating Telefónica's own internal technology".
- The 'Tech Nation Visa' in the UK has seen applications increase significantly over the past two years, with 45% and 48% increases respectively.
- Amazon has laid off dozens of R&D and manufacturing staff from its delivery drone project, Amazon Prime Air, the Financial Times reported today. The company has reached tentative deals with two European external manufacturers - Austria's FACC Aerospace and Spain's Aernnova Aerospace - to build component parts of its long-awaited drone.
- How upskilling in tech can help female entrepreneurs thrive post-pandemic (a tech.eu guest post from Code First Girl CEO Anna Brailsford).
- The EU’s proposed Online Terrorist Content Regulation and the Intertim Regulation on child abuse materials raise serious fundamental rights concerns, writes Eliška Pírková, a Europe policy analyst at digital rights group Access Now.
- STATION F has unveiled the 2020 edition of Future 40, the 40 most promising companies on its campus, during a full online demo day.
- Wirecard’s former boss Markus Braun is due to appear before a German parliamentary committee on Thursday, temporarily leaving jail to testify over the collapse of what was once hailed as Germany’s leading financial technology firm.
- Polish Prime Minister Morawiecki has been attempting to make the case for his country to host the new European Cybersecurity Industrial, Technology and Research Competence Center (ECCC).
- An investigation by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority has concluded that, between price comparison website ComparetheMarket breached competition law by imposing wide ‘most favoured nation’ clauses on providers of home insurance selling through its platform.
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