This Week in European Tech: GRIDSERVE nabs £200 million, Deliveroo leaves The Netherlands, several European tech startups are starting to collapse, and more

Here's a roundup of this week's biggest European Tech funding rounds, exits, 'other news' that you might have missed, and a compendium of must-read articles on all things #EUtech.
This Week in European Tech: GRIDSERVE nabs £200 million, Deliveroo leaves The Netherlands, several European tech startups are starting to collapse, and more

This week, our research team tracked more than 75 tech funding deals worth over €690 million, and over 20 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.

As always, we are putting all of them together for you in a list sent in our round-up newsletter next Monday (note: the full list is for paying customers only, and also comes in the form of a handy downloadable spreadsheet).

We've also got some news for you: we're already gearing up for the second edition of the Tech.eu Summit! Save the date:

24 May in Brussels.

Tickets are now on sale.

If you haven't seen them yet, we've made all the videos from the Tech.eu Summit last May available as a playlist on our YouTube channel - enjoy!

With that said, let's get down to business with the biggest European tech news items for the past couple of days (subscribe to our free newsletter to get this round-up in your inbox).

What happened this week in European Tech?

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>> Notable and big funding rounds

UK-based tech-enabled sustainable energy business GRIDSERVE has raised £200 million in funding from Infracapital, the infrastructure equity investment arm of M&G, to decarbonise transport through electric vehicle infrastructure.

Frankfurt-based AAA games developer Gunzilla Games has brought in $46 million in funding. The round was led by Republic Capital.

On the back of its acquisition of Berlin-based neo-bank Kontist, Danish fintech startup Ageras Group has secured €35 million in growth capital financing from CIBC Innovation Banking.

Wire, the enterprise-focused messaging platform closed a €24 million Series C round of funding led by growth equity firm Cipio Partners and Iconical, the investment vehicle of Skype co-founder Janus Friis.

Grizzly.fi, a Zurich, Switzerland-based provider of a crypto platform that simplifies investing in the best opportunities in DeFi, raised $26 million in funding.

London-based Patchwork Health, a healthcare workforce platform built by NHS doctors, has raised £20 million in funding to tackle the NHS staffing crisis.

The Netherlands-based clinical-stage medical device company Xeltis has raised €15 million in funding from China-based Grand Pharmaceutical Group.

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>> Noteworthy acquisitions, mergers, IPOs and SPAC deals

Wallbox, a Barcelona, Spain-based provider of electric vehicle (EV) charging and energy management solutions, has acquired Coil, an EV charging installation service in the US.

Investment manager abrdn has become the largest external shareholder in the UK’s first regulated digital securities exchange, Archax.

Open document and data platform specialist Legado has acquired the consumer and B2B bill management technology from WonderBill, based in London.

Headquartered in Stockholm, Swedish digital game studio founded by Candy Crush veterans Nørdlight is acquired by Spin Master, a Canadian multinational toy and entertainment company.

UPSKLS, a Colorado-based on-demand work sourcing platform, has acquired UK-based Work Simplr, a startup that built a virtual internship hosting and management solution for the future of work.

London-based AI-powered quality engineering company, Qualitest has acquired ZenQ, an India-based software testing company.

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>> Interesting moves from investors

Lord Hammond, the former UK chancellor, is among a host of heavyweight figures being enlisted to back a new £1 billion fund aimed at accelerating the expansion of some of Britain's most promising fintech companies.

London venture capital firm Balderton Capital has recorded a bumper year of profits and its partners are profiting from the new fund to the tune of £12 million.

In other Balderton news, the investment company has appointed Elodie Broad as its first 'Head of Impact and Sustainable Future Goals'.

London-based investment firm Portfolio Ventures has closed its second angel fund, with over £5 million to invest in early-stage UK startups.

Capify, the specialist SME lender, has launched a £40 million fund for UK smaller businesses to help manage operations through difficult trading conditions.

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>> In other (important) news

Last spring, French scale-up BeReal raised a Series B funding at a pre-money valuation of $600 million in a round led by DST Global, The Information reports.

The former chair of the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has filed a £10 billion lawsuit against crypto companies, including Binance and Kraken, which are being accused of “anti-competitive behaviour”.

Germany's competition watchdog is set to look into whether Microsoft should come under the scope of new rules that allow the country to rapidly prohibit anti-competitive conduct.

Revolut has been awarded the first crypto authorisation from the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission, which will form a new European crypto-asset hub to provide additional crypto services to its 17 million European customers.

London-based food delivery service Deliveroo has released its half-yearly financial update to investors and there's good news and bad news. The good news is that revenues are up, the bad news is, so are the losses. Deliveroo will begin winding down operations in The Netherlands.

Amazon has been fined again for breaching labor laws in Catalonia, Spain. The e-commerce giant has been under investigation by regional labor authorities over its subcontracting practices for a number of years.

London-based events company Pollen is on the brink of collapse; it has sent an email to employees confirming it is restructuring after failing to find a buyer. The announcement comes just a few months after the company announced $150 million in fresh VC funding.

Fast grocery delivery startup Gorillas is about to close a funding round, but at a significantly lower valuation (for reasons we no longer need to explain).

Some startups are starting to falter: German crypto-focused digital bank Nuri has filed for insolvency, as did Saiga, a digital personal assistant, and UK neobank Dozens.

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>> Recommended reads and listens

Big Deal: Inside German fintech Auxmoney's €500 million haul

UK’s government investment fund largely backed ‘zombie businesses’.

Dreaded 'down rounds' shave billions off startup valuations.

Tech.eu Summit: Exploring the metaverse together with The Sandbox, Decentraland and Metav.rs

Venture capital deal activity in European pet tech has dropped after a surge in investment fueled by the pandemic.

5 reasons why Ukraine’s fintech sector is growing despite the war.

New data from Tech Nation reveals that nearly a quarter of UK tech companies are making it to Series C or an exit in 2022, but warns that these large liquidity events must not detract from the need to support the majority (50%) of tech companies who are in earlier stages of growth, especially those R&D intensive firms who tend to have longer product development cycles and time to market.

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