This Week in European Tech: Madrid's Clikalia secures €460 million, Spotify buys Whooshkaa, new unicorn Infarm raises $200 million, and more

Happy Friday!

This week, the Tech.eu research team tracked 172 funding rounds totalling more than €2.6 billion, and 34 exits 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).

We are currently looking for two full-time business journalists to help us cover the European startup and venture capital ecosystems the way they deserve to. This is your chance to join our editorial team!

When you're done applying for the job, 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) Guaranteeing sellers an offer for their property in as fast as 24 hours and if accepted, a sale in 7 days, Madrid’s Clikalia has raised €460 million in a Series B financing round. In addition to snapping up well-established property management and rental management company Inmho, the new funding will be used to further expand the company’s pan-European footprint, beginning with an entry into the Portuguese market during the first quarter of 2022.

2) Berlin-founded indoor/vertical farming company Infarm has raised $200 million in a Series D round, now giving the startup a valuation of over $1 billion. The fresh capital will be used to support the company’s ongoing global growth strategy, with a particular emphasis on new market entries in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions.

3) Asian food delivery startup HungryPanda has raised $130 million in new funding to expand its business delivering meals and groceries. The London-based firm, founded in 2017, raised its new financing in a round led by investment firm Perwyn.

4) Berlin-based fintech re:cap has raised $111.5 million in a seed funding round. In a nutshell, re:cap provides companies with a demonstrable annual recurring revenue stream the ability to convert up to 50% of this ARR into instant upfront cash, all without dilution.

5) Berlin-based Vay has raised $95 million in a Series B funding round. The company currently specialises in teledriven services, but this is only part of a much bigger picture. The funding will help Vay launch its first fleet in Hamburg in 2022, as well as triple the team size, with a heavy focus on engineering roles.

6) Spotify on Thursday said it acquired Whooshkaa, an Australian podcast technology platform that specializes in technology for radio broadcasters to turn existing content into podcasts.

7) Madrid/London venture capital firm Samaipata has announced the close of its second fund at an oversubscribed €107 million. The new capital is aimed at supporting approximately 30 European startups, with pre-seed and seed ticket sizes ranging between €500,000 to €3 million, and follow-on support topping out at €15 million.

8) With e-commerce becoming increasingly globalized, a company called Taxdoo, which builds API-based tools to help e-commerce companies with tax compliance and other accounting needs, is announcing a round of funding: $64 million, a Series B that the Hamburg-based startup will be using to expand further across Europe and to build what it describes as the financial operating system for e-commerce businesses.

9) London-based, but with deep roots in Poland, crypto payments infrastructure startup Ramp has raised $52.7 million in a Series A funding round. The platform provides developers with a non-custodial payment infrastructure that allows for the collection of digital assets from exchanges and then embedding them into other platforms.

10) Munich-based Apex.ai has raised $56.5 million in a Series B funding round. The software maker provides solutions for mobility and autonomous applications, essentially uniting a variety of interdependent systems. The company intends to use the new capital to expand into automotive-related verticals including agriculture, mining, industrial automation and IoT.

Honourable mentions:

• Brussels-based Tioga Capital has announced the final close of its inaugural fund at $70 million, a figure up $53 million since the firms’ first close, announced almost a year ago to date. Tioga is targeting promising blockchain-technology-focused European startups, primarily in the infrastructure and open finance sectors (for now), and wants in on seed and Series A deals with an average ticket size of €1.5 million.
• Madrid-based tennis and padel social and booking app Playtomic has raised €56 million in investment led by GP Bullhound, with participation from Playtomic co-founder and investor Félix Ruiz, the UK’s Claret Capital Partners and Sweden’s Optimizer Invest.
• Riga-founded/remote-first startup Lokalise has raised $50 million in a Series B funding round. The platform provides a series of integrations that plug into an organisations’ existing processes to reduce the time it takes to localise by up to 90%. The new funding will be used to further fuel the company’s hiring, product development, and expansion of partnerships.
• London’s Signal AI has raised $50 million in a Series D funding round. The company uses the power of artificial intelligence to monitor over 5 million digital, print, and broadcast media sources and compiles detailed reports that track clients’ competitive landscape, changes to industry-specific regulations, and reputation.
• Dutch short-form gaming video clips platform Medal has raised a respectable $45 million in a Series C funding round in addition to a previously unannounced $15 million Series B round. This $15 million Series B round provides a bit more context behind the company’s acquisitions of livestreaming platform Rawa.tv back in August, and Gif Your Game and Fuze.tv in early November of this year.
• Amsterdam’s power skills training provider Lepaya has raised $40 million in a Series B round. With its upskilling offer, the company aims to provide enterprise and fast-growing companies with a more productive workforce.
• London’s, “online ethical supermarket delivering locally produced, organic groceries and ethical home essentials directly to your door,” startup Farmdrop has called it a day, and in an email to customers, announced that its final day of deliveries concluded as of yesterday. Meaning, Farmdrop customers who’d placed orders for the Christmas feast are, literally, out in the cold.

Latest podcast(s):

🎧 From startup accelerator to remote-first global accelerator VC — with Rune Theill, Rockstart

🎧 Fintech scale-up Mollie places bid to become Europe’s largest payment service provider — with Shane Happach, CEO of Mollie

Bonus links:

• The EU published a list of the 39 companies signed up to become part of the its Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud, after the region moves to lessen its reliance on US technology firms.
• The UK's antitrust watchdog has given the clearest signal yet that interventions under an upcoming reform of the country’s competition rules will target tech giants Apple and Google — including their duopolistic command of the mobile market, via iOS and Android; their respective app stores; and the browsers and services bundled with mobile devices running their OSes.
• Horizon Europe: bigger and more complex than ever – in some cases
• Google has submitted proposals to the French antitrust watchdog about how it would deal with news agencies and publishers in a dispute about paying for news content, Google and the watchdog said on Wednesday.
• Innovators, lawmakers, and standard-setters laid the foundation for future stakeholder dialogue on how the upcoming AI regulation should result in innovation and technological uptake.
• Sapphire Ventures, a leading venture capital firm, has announced that it will significantly expand its European investment activities over the coming year.
• Forrester’s Laura Koetzle outlined three major challenges European tech executives will have to address as they face the new year.