These were the 10 biggest European tech stories this week

Happy Friday!

This week, tech.eu tracked 16 technology M&A transactions, one IPO and 71 tech funding deals totalling about €1.5 billion in Europe, Turkey and Israel.

Like every week, we listed every single one of them in our free weekly newsletter, along with interesting news regarding fledgling European startups, tech investors old and new, a number of good reads published elsewhere, government and policy news, as well as an overview of interesting lists, facts and figures from a wide variety of sources.

You can subscribe to our newsletter below to receive all this information in your inbox every Friday afternoon for free, but here’s an overview of the 10 biggest European tech news items for this week:

1) Japanese giant Softbank has led an investment of $502 million into UK gaming company Improbable, making it one of the largest VC rounds in a private UK company. The sizeable deal puts the company at a reported valuation of over $1 billion. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and Horizons Ventures also participated in the investment.

2) Apple has acquired the Finnish sleep sensor Beddit, dubbed the "Fitbit for sleep", which helps users control snoring and sleep quality. The amount of the deal was not disclosed.

3) Berlin-based take-away food ordering and delivery service Delivery Hero has raised €387 million (about $423 million) from Naspers, a global Internet and media group.

4) German fintech startup Kreditech has received an investment of €110 million from the payment services provider PayU, which is owned by the Internet and media group Naspers. This investment brings the total raised by the company to €242 million.

5) Uber suffered a setback to its global expansion plans on Thursday when a senior adviser to Europe’s highest court recommended that the ride-hailing company comply with the region’s tough transportation rules.

6) Cabify, the Madrid-based ride-hailing app, has reportedly raised $100 million from previous investors including Rakuten, Seaya Ventures, and AngelList.

7) The European Commission this week published the mid-term review of its Digital Single Market strategy. Politico argues that it barely scraped a pass.

8) MariaDB, an open source database provider, has secured €25 million in funding from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to increase its client base globally.

9) StarLeaf, a cloud-based video conferencing platform, has raised $40 million in its first round of external capital. The funding comes from Highland Europe, Grafton Capital, and the company’s founders.

10) Finnish publicly-listed cybersecurity firm F-Secure has acquired British IT security consultants Digital Assurance to boost its portfolio of UK clients. No terms for the deal were disclosed.

Bonus link: After two years of apathy, the Russian venture market showed signs of revival in 2016, reveals the latest edition of the annual Russian venture report.