Zilch nets $175M, Backed VC closes $100M Fund III, and nd Ukraine’s LIFT99 emerges even stronger after a missile attack

This week, we tracked more than 60 tech funding deals worth over €736 million and over 10 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.
Zilch nets $175M, Backed VC closes $100M Fund III, and nd Ukraine’s LIFT99 emerges even stronger after a missile attack

This week, we tracked more than 60 tech funding deals worth over €736 million and over 10 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe. In addition to this week's top financials, we've also indexed the most important/industry-related news items you need to know about.

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💸  Notable and. big funding rounds

🇬🇧 Zilch nets $175M as eyes "strategic" M&A

🇩🇪 FMC raises €100M as it unveils new class of memory chips for the AI era

🇩🇪 Aily Labs grabs $80 million in one of 2025’s biggest Series B rounds for female-led AI startups

🇩🇪  Uber competitor Grab invests up to $60M in Vay



🫱🏽‍🫲🏻 Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers 

🇬🇧 Purple announces merger with Splash Access


🇧🇪 DataCamp acquires Optima to power the next-gen AI learning engine


🇪🇸 Barcelona’s EU-Startups acquired by MeOut Group


🇫🇷 Reekom acquires Paris-based textile repair company Tilli



🚀 Interesting moves from investors


💲Backed VC closes $100M Fund III and marks 100th investment milestone


💰 Oyster Bay closes €100M Fund II for next-gen food startups


💸 Vendep Capital raises €80M to back the next wave of AI-era SaaS founders


💵 Ada Ventures unveils Deck Genius to give founders VC-level feedback powered by AI

💲Erin Hallock joins NATO Innovation Fund to advance alliance-critical frontier tech




🗞️ In other (important) news


💊 Healthtech dominates European VC in a €8.3B October


🤖 Locai Labs launches the UK’s first foundational LLM to rival GPT-5 and Claude


🇬🇧 Founders and investors slam UK “exit tax"


🇬🇧 "Exit tax" on founders axed, according to reports


🇱🇹 Lithuania’s Sentante achieves transatlantic first in remote robotic stroke intervention


🇫🇮 Finland’s first EV virtual power plant goes live



📡 Recommended reads and listens

🇺🇦 Missiles hit Kyiv startup hub LIFT99 — it only made Ukraine's tech community more determined

🇯🇵 Japan’s €33B bet on Europe: deeptech & AI lead as cross-border investment surges

🎵 Epidemic Sound launches Studio, an AI tool that auto-soundtracks creator videos in seconds

🇪🇺 Europe’s biggest landlords team up to build a proptech scaling machine



🔭 European tech startups to watch 

🇪🇸 Edtech company Nuela closes a €620,000 investment round

🇸🇪 Spiich Labs gets €600,000 backing from Tandem Health and Creandum founders

🇬🇧 Enteral Access Technologies secures £500,000 to scale DoubleCHEK

🇨🇭 Quantum receives €161,000 to build scalable next-gen quantum hardware

🇬🇧 Journalist to founder: Monty Munford’s HomeTruth emerges from stealth to solve a £60B problem

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