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Today in European Tech: Visa buys Tink for €1.8 billion, EA buys Playdemic in £1 billion deal, Wise IPO on track for July, and more

Robin Wauters 24 June 2021
Today in European Tech: Visa buys Tink for €1.8 billion, EA buys Playdemic in £1 billion deal, Wise IPO on track for July, and more
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Hello!

Here's what happened today in European Tech.

Deals

- Payments giant Visa has announced a definitive agreement to purchase Stockholm’s open banking platform Tink for €1.8 billion, including cash and retention incentives.

- Following Wise’s announcement earlier this month that it planned to go public by way of a direct listing on the LSE, today the company made the news formal with a regulatory filing. The London-based fintech scale-up said it plans to list in “early July 2021” but did not provide further details on pricing of its class A shares, in keeping with how direct listings work. It’s been reported, however, that the plan is for the valuation to be in the range of $6 billion to $7 billion with the listing.

- Videogame giant Electronic Arts has swooped for Cheshire, UK-headquartered Playdemic in a £1 billion deal. Playdemic, founded in 2010 and led by CEO Paul Gouge, is the studio behind hit mobile game Golf Clash.

- Israeli ad delivery and measurement platform for connected TVs Innovid, announced that it has entered into a definitive merger agreement with SPAC ION Acquisition Corp, at a company valuation of $1.3 billion.

- Israel's Firebolt, which has built a new kind of cloud data warehouse that promises much more efficient, and cheaper, analytics around whatever is stored within it, announced a major Series B round of $127 million.

- SmartCraft, a Nordic provider of software solutions to small- and medium-sized enterprises in the construction sector, has listed Oslo Børs, raising roughly €111 million in its IPO.

- Helsinki’s edtech focused firm Sparkmind has closed its fund at €55 million, with the aim of supporting seed to Series B round founders.

- 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 has announced today the second round of direct equity investment through the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund. Since its launch in 2020, the EIC Fund has now approved 111 investments in highly innovative SMEs totalling more than €500 million to scale up breakthrough innovations.

- Shares of British food delivery firm Deliveroo surged over 4% today after a UK court ruled that its couriers are self-employed. It’s a win for the Amazon-backed company, which has been fighting to keep its riders classed as independent contractors for years.

- The European Commission may have been hard at work looking for ways to improve the circulation of knowledge across Europe, but to remove barriers between member states, it needs to set up a binding framework for knowledge sharing, says Karen Maex, rector of the University of Amsterdam.

- Next week, Icelandic video game company Solid Clouds will start their Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq First North stock exchange.

- French postal service company La Poste has launched a new investment fund for startups that have a positive impact. With La Poste Ventures, the French company wants to anticipate changes in important sectors for the Group and explore new business models.

- Future VC, an internship programme launched by Diversity VC, has launched in the United States. On the same day the US programme was launched, Future VC’s third cohort in the UK was announced.

- Welcome back, roaming! Mobile operator EE will charge new customers extra to use their mobile phones in Europe from January.

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Today in European Tech: Visa buys Tink for €1.8 billion, EA buys Playdemic in £1 billion deal, Wise IPO on track for July, and more
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