Today in European Tech: Accel's fresh $3 billion funds, new CEE data, Jfrog to buy Vdoo for $300 million, Zoom buys Kites, and more

Today in European Tech: Accel's fresh $3 billion funds, new CEE data, Jfrog to buy Vdoo for $300 million, Zoom buys Kites, and more

Hello!

Here's what happened today in European Tech.

Deals

- Accel has closed $3 billion across three new funds: its fifteenth US early-stage fund of $650 million, its seventh early-stage fund for Europe and Israel of $650 million, and its sixth 'growth fund' of $1.75 billion.

- DevOps platform JFrog is to acquire fellow Israeli company Vdoo in a cash and stock-based deal valued at approximately $300 million.

- Berlin-based Urban Sports Club has raised €80 million in growth financing.

- Zoom has acquired Karlsruhe, Germany-based machine translation tech company Kites for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition is meant to assist Zoom’s engineering staff “advance the field of MT to improve meeting productivity and efficiency”.

- Amsterdam-based VC firm Peak is branching out beyond its traditional Benelux region focus with a €66 million fund that specifically focuses on German startups.

- Paris-based proptech startup WeMaintain has raised €30 million in a Series B round, with the ambition of becoming the go-to when it comes to critical building management systems.

- Sony has acquired Housemarque, the Finnish game studio behind recent PS5 exclusive Returnal.

- Israeli startup BreezoMeter, which aims to monitor air quality and improve people’s health by using atmospheric data, has closed a $30 million Series C funding round led by Fortissimo Capital.

- 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

- Invest Europe has released its 2020 Central and Eastern Europe Private Equity Statistics. The report shows that the number of CEE companies receiving private equity investment increased by 15% on the previous year’s record and beat the five-year average by 46%.

- After years of fighting against a “Europe first” approach in research funding, policy makers and lobbyists in Brussels now want to explicitly limit access for scientists in countries that flout academic freedom and intellectual property rights.

- When it comes to technology, Morgan Stanley says it’s “Europe’s time to shine.” Its analysts have named their six favorite stocks across fields like electric cars, drones, 3D-printing and sustainable technologies.

- Late-stage capital is having a ‘cascading effect’ on European VC activity.

- A number of top telco execs have called on the EU to overhaul its regulatory framework.

- Europeans have low trust in technology and this might hamper the uptake of emerging technologies, the European Commission’s Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager has warned.

- Coinbase has received a crypto custody license from Germany’s Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), allowing Coinbase to continue serving the German market.

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