Happy Friday!
This week, the Tech.eu research team tracked more than 105 tech funding deals worth over €1.5 billion, and over 35 exits, M&A transactions, and rumours, and related news stories across Europe, including Russia, and Turkey.
As always, we are putting all of them together for you in a handy list sent in our round-up newsletter (note: the full list is for paying customers only).
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Here's an overview of the biggest European tech news items for the past week (subscribe to our free newsletter to get this round-up in your inbox every Monday morning).
This week:
1) DoorDash is acquiring Finland-based on-demand delivery company Wolt in an all-stock transaction valued at roughly €7 billion. Wolt was founded in 2014, and boasts a team of over 4,000 employees operating a local commerce platform across 23 countries. The company raised a little over $820 million in funding to date.
2) The EU’s second-most senior court, the General Court, has upheld a 2017 ruling by the European Commission which found that Google broke antitrust law in how it used its search engine to promote its shopping comparison service and demote those of its rivals. Google and its parent company Alphabet appealed the decision, but the General Court this week dismissed that appeal and upheld a fine of €2.4 billion.
3) Brussels-based data intelligence company Collibra has raised a sizeable $250 million in a Series G funding round. The company has built a suite of services that help enterprise companies manage a variety of issues: data privacy and protection, compliance and risk mitigation, operational efficiency, and cost reduction.
4) Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has invested €100 million in AI-powered defense company Helsing. Munich-headquartered Helsing was founded in 2021 and bills itself as “a new type of security and artificial intelligence company” that aims to turn “unstructured sensor data into information advantage for democratic governments.”
5) London-based venture fund and venture builder Digital Horizon has announced the launch of its second fund with a target volume of $200 million. The firm specifically targets European, American, and Israeli fintech and enterprise software startups, and invests across all stages of the startup cycle.
6) Berlin’s Razor Group — one of the more ambitious of the Amazon merchant aggregators out of Europe — has raised $125 million of equity funding in a Series B round that CEO and co-founder Tushar Ahluwalia said pushes the company past a $1 billion valuation.
7) FuboTV, the US-based live TV streaming platform provider focused primarily on sports, has agreed to acquire French TV streaming and video-on-demand advertising company Molotov for approximately $190 million (roughly €165 million) in a combination of cash and equity.
8) London-based fintech company Zilch, this week announced that they have secured €95 million in a Series C funding round, at a valuation of €1.7 billion.
9) Swedish audiobook streaming group Storytel has agreed to buy Audiobooks.com from investment firm KKR, marking its entry into the US market. The acquisition will be financed through existing funds and a newly issued 500 million crown ($57.3 million) loan facility, Storytel said in a statement.
10) London-based JUMO, a fintech company that builds next-generation financial services for emerging market entrepreneurs. has announced a successful raise of $120 million in funding from new and existing investors.
Podcast:
🎧 We need more university spin-outs — with Sara Wallin, Chalmers Ventures
🎧 The rocky road towards net zero — with Michelle You, Supercritical
Bonus links:
- One month after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen rocked the tech industry with her scathing revelations about the company to the U.S. Congress, she told the European Parliament on Monday that the European Union’s 27 countries had a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to create new rules.”
- Amazon is seeking to settle two EU antitrust investigations to stave off potential hefty fines and orders to change its business practices, 'people familiar with the matter' told Reuters.
- The Portuguese government, in partnership with 26 EU member states, Iceland, and the European Commission, this week launched the European Startup Nations Alliance (ESNA) in order to ensure homegrown startups have the best conditions to grow at every stage of their lifecycle.
- Eutopia has published a curated list of 120+ climate accelerators and incubator programmes in Europe.
- Representatives from EU countries have agreed that the European Commission will be the sole enforcer of new tech rules, with a limited role for national antitrust watchdogs instead of the wider powers sought for them.
- A £3 billion legal action against Google over claims it secretly tracked the Internet activity of millions of iPhone users has been blocked by the UK supreme court.
- French tech policy wants to scale down US tech companies in the vain hope of scaling up French tech companies, a misunderstanding that what hurts US tech companies hurts not only French consumers but also French tech entrepreneurs, argues Dr. Aurelien Portuese, Director of The Schumpeter Project on Competition Policy at the ITIF.
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