Hello!
Here's what happened today in European Tech.
Deals
- Swiss medical device company CeQur has raised $115 million in the largest round to date for a privately-held European medtech company.
- Pale Blue Dot, a young Malmö, Sweden-based investment firm focused on backing climate tech innovations, has closed their fund at €87 million after raising an initial €53 million last year.
- Berlin-based smarthome/IoT comparison and shopping platform tink has raised €40 million in a Series D round. The funding round was led by Cadence Growth Capital, Rocket Internet, and ProSieben’s SevenVentures.
- A new fund is emerging on the tiny Russian venture scene. With $50 million in capital, ‘The Games Fund’ is the brainchild of Maria Kochmola and Ilya Eremeev, two former executives from My Games Venture Capital (MGVC).
- Sunday is a new French startup has raised a $24 million seed round at a $140 million post-money valuation to build a fast restaurant checkout flow.
- Berlin-based collaboration platform Wire has closed a $21 million Series B round led by UVC Partners, with participation from existing investors Iconical, Morpheus Ventures, Elysium Venture Capital and One Way Ventures.
- Danish white-label fintech Cardlay has secured €8 million in financing from newly minted Global PayTech Ventures.
- Carbo Culture — a startup that has scaled an industrial process to create large-scale CO2 removal using woody waste from agriculture and forests — has raised $6.2 million in seed a financing round led by True Ventures and Cherry Ventures.
- 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 Reading/Knowing
- The European Commission wants to ban the use of artificial intelligence to track people and rank their behaviour, with fines up to 4% of a company’s turnover for violations as part of draft AI rules to be announced next week.
- Ireland’s data protection watchdog has opened an inquiry into Facebook over a potential breach of European privacy rules.
- Amnesty International, Privacy International and 28 other civil and human rights groups urged EU lawmakers to take a strong stand on privacy rights in proposed rules governing Facebook’s WhatsApp and Microsoft’s Skype.
- The chief executive of THG, the online beauty retailer, is to hand a £100 million stake in the company to a new charitable foundation - establishing him as one of Britain's biggest individual philanthropists.
- Labor activists challenging Uber over what they allege are ‘robo-firings’ of drivers in Europe have trumpeted winning a default judgement in the Netherlands — where the Court of Amsterdam ordered the ride-hailing giant to reinstate six drivers who the litigants claim were unfairly terminated “by algorithmic means.”
- The UK’s competition watchdog has provisionally cleared the proposed £31 billion merger of Virgin Media and Virgin Mobile with O2.
- Italy aims to spend almost 7 billion euros in European recovery funds on ultra-fast networks, up 60% from a previous goal.
- London-based insurtech unicorn Zego has partnered with Dija, a new 10-minute grocery delivery startup in the city.
- The Central Bank of Ireland is seeking industry views about how tightly it should police marketing by crowdfunding companies such as Linked Finance and FundIt.
Today's Top Tweets
🚨The 50 Most Promising Israeli Startups - 2021🚨
We look beyond the blinding valuations to chose the companies that not only survived Covid-19 but thrived and are now best positioned for future success.
#1:@MinuteMediaLTD #2: @TransmitSec #3: @Verbit_
https://t.co/oUIS2HzJ7Y— CTech (@Calcalistech) April 14, 2021
The EU's AI laws are the first of their kind. We got out hands on the leak of the regulation, and here's what we know about the EU's "third way" for AI. https://t.co/C65OIT9WLW
— Melissa Heikkilä (@Melissahei) April 14, 2021
30 human & digital rights organisations push Members of the European Parliament to ban unlawful tracking & surveillance in online advertising.
Here is why @LibertiesEU @OpenRightsGroup @Panoptykon & partners urge MEPs to vote for a strong #ePrivacy. #StopStalkerAds
THREAD/1 pic.twitter.com/mhHGl2wkni— Liberties.EU | follow us (@LibertiesEU) April 14, 2021
Partners from @468Capital will list its €300M SPAC, the largest in Germany, at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Another big one.
These reputable VC investors, looking to identify a target between €1-4B - targeting SaaS, Deep-Tech, AI companies.
What will their target be?— €SPAC 🇪🇺 (@eurospac) April 14, 2021
New hire at Kibo Ventures! Super happy to have @PolFananas joining us to support entrepreneurs and work with the team on building the tech investor of choice in Spain. Pol is a very special person with an unconventional path and will contribute highly to what we do. His story 👇🏼 https://t.co/xniuAr6fdj
— Aquilino Peña (@Aquilino) April 14, 2021
Thanks for the interview @tech_eu and @robinwauters! As @ZeenaQureshi put it, we are on a mission to make the unbelievable, believable. So tune in and hear for yourself! #aivoices #syntheticvoices #entertainment https://t.co/1URkGHpmhK
— SONANTIC (@sonanticlabs) April 14, 2021
🚀 World, meet Cleveron 701. The first driverless semi-autonomous delivery vehicle in public streets in Europe. #cleveronmobility #teamcleveron #cleveronrobots@TechCrunch @TechInsider @TranspoInsider @verge @mashable @ForbesTech @WevolverApp @theinformation @DeloitteOnTech
— Cleveron (@Cleveron_Robots) April 14, 2021
This is both an incredibly well written overview of what @localglobevc have achieved, and a beautiful mission statement. Worth reading for anyone with an interest in European tech ( & beyond ):https://t.co/hDcNLTWCch
— James Wise (@jpwiseuk) April 14, 2021
@tech_eu has picked up on our mission to coin Compensation as a service. They´re not the only ones.
"It would appear that this service has not gone unnoticed. Even at pre-seed stage Coverflex has attracted a notable client base including PwC and Bolt.https://t.co/rbu4gTWo2k— Coverflex (@getcoverflex) April 14, 2021
Thrilled to welcome @SarahNoeckel VC @northzoneVC Founder @femstreet, as a speaker on the Time to Raise Bootcamp, part of @VivaTech X #50inTech's #FemaleFounderChallenge.
Ready to master your #fundraising skills?
Open to all female founders: https://t.co/WJigehtl73 #WomenInTech pic.twitter.com/0uS1j1JbYx— 50inTech (@50inTech) April 14, 2021
🎧Wednesday Podcast Recco! 🎧@tech_eu has just published a fresh special episode of their podcast!
🎤 Elise Moutarlier of alumnus company @LovysInsurance shares her experience of building a digital insurance provider !
Listen up👇https://t.co/PjuiVNrWRp pic.twitter.com/AEKskp41lY— Partech Shaker (@PartechShaker) April 14, 2021
🎂 10 years of @Wayra, 10 years of innovation. Happy birthday, mates!
https://t.co/mcyzt8tRIz #Wayra10Years pic.twitter.com/2E32JQepCE— Telefónica (@Telefonica_En) April 14, 2021
#BREAKING Turkish Competition Board slaps $36.6M fine on Google for market abuse
— ANADOLU AGENCY (ENG) (@anadoluagency) April 14, 2021
Some investment news: https://t.co/KH0CIE0SVn
— Paul Campbell (@paulca) April 14, 2021
Back on twitter after a long time announcing we are building @sundayapp_ , the #fastest way in the world to #pay in #restaurants.
Thx @AliceLascelles https://t.co/o0GnKjVRQG— Victor Lugger (@victorlugger) April 14, 2021
Today, we’re announcing a new experience for our Podcast Charts—one that will help more listeners find new shows and more podcasters get discovered. Take a look. https://t.co/YSuyyfFLZt
— Spotify News (@SpotifyNews) April 14, 2021
We are very excited to be launching @DarkfireHeroes globally tomorrow. Read an exclusive interview with our Head of Studio at Rovio Copenhagen, Rune Vendler on @gameinformer! ✨#newgame #DFH https://t.co/Wi9orkq5TV
— Rovio (@Rovio) April 14, 2021
Earlier this month we held a launch event for The More Than Money Report 🙌
Revisit the highlights from the panel discussion here ➡ https://t.co/1fCTbSNHvU
If you haven't had time to dig into the full report, it's not too late. Read it here ➡ https://t.co/Jf8QwgHMgz pic.twitter.com/uL8arxLqDi— Forward Partners (@ForwardPrt) April 14, 2021
A new report commissioned and created by European Women in VC, Experior VC, and Unconventional Ventures found that in terms of capital productivity, women outperform men by as much as 96% in the CEE region. By @TechEU https://t.co/DICWTOUKjJ
— Francois Formet (@FormetCh) April 14, 2021
We've formed a strategic alliance with @EYnews to help business unlock the power of #5G and accelerate #digitaltransformation. Learn more in today's press release. https://t.co/GZayZ8OtNK pic.twitter.com/8ptTiUsQOf
— Nokia for industries (@nokiaindustries) April 14, 2021
🇳🇱Dutch scaleup and #TechleapRise batch #2 participant Hardt Hyperloop is the 1st European company focusing on the development of the hyperloop. And it is clear that their efforts have not been unseen
Read our interview with co-founder Tim Houter ⤵️https://t.co/jOZBKMnMPC pic.twitter.com/4Oy5VNTfWq— Techleap.nl (@Techleapnl) April 14, 2021
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