Hello! Here is what happened today in European tech:
Deals
- German business transformation software maker Celonis has acquired Czech online automation startup Integromat. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Celonis co-founder and CEO Alexander Rinke said the deal was over $100 million.
- Israeli AI-based machine monitoring solution provider Augury today announced it has completed a $55 million Series D financing round led by Qumra Capital, and with the participation of Insight Venture Partners, Eclipse Ventures, Munich Re Venture Capital, Qualcomm Ventures and Lerer Hippeau Ventures.
- Finnish food delivery startup Wolt announced a €7.5 million investment from Delivery Hero co-founder Lukasz Gadowski.
- And on the same day, Berlin-based Smunch – which delivers restaurant meals to teams in offices – revealed that it has closed a Series A financing round with the help of Emmanuel Thomassin, Delivery Hero’s longtime CFO and one of the fledgling company’s early angel investors. The funding round brings the total of capital raised by the startup to €18 million since it was founded in 2016.
- Ori Biotech, a British-American company that specialises in cell and gene therapy manufacturing, today announced the close of a $30 million Series A financing round, bringing the company’s total funding to date to $41 million.
- Dataloop, a Tel Aviv-based startup developing a platform for AI data management and annotation, launched today with a total of $16 million in funding.
- Inflexion, a mid-market private equity firm, has made a majority investment in Sparta Global, a UK-based technology and training services provider.
- Israeli 'clinical coding' startup Nym Health announced $16.5 million in Series A funding, led by GV (formerly Google Ventures), with the participation of Bessemer Venture Partners, Dynamic Loop Capital, Lightspeed, Tiger Global, and angel investors including Zach Weinberg and Nat Turner from Flatiron Health.
- Mail.ru, one of the largest Internet companies in the Russian-speaking market, has acquired a controlling stake in Deus Craft, a mobile games development studio, by means of its international gaming division MY.GAMES.
- A cultured meat research program called Meat4All led by a Spanish biotech firm has been awarded a €2.7 million grant under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 R&D funding framework.
- We also tracked a large number of (other) European tech funding rounds and M&A transactions, all of which we are putting in a handy list for you on Friday afternoon in our weekly roundup newsletter (note: the full list is for paying customers only). Also check out our European tech news section for ongoing coverage.
Worth Knowing
- Balderton, one of Europe’s most active venture capital firms, is raising money for a mega growth fund to plug a financing gap in the European market and take early-stage startups through to public listings.
- Nokia and Google today announced a five-year strategic collaboration that will see Nokia migrate its on-premise IT infrastructure onto Google Cloud. The deal will see Nokia migrate its data centers and servers around the world, as well as various software applications, onto the Google Cloud infrastructure.
- The UK government is coming under increasing pressure to convince Brussels regulators that the country’s data protection landscape is fit for EU personal data, amid wider concerns that UK surveillance practices compromise the security of EU standards.
- Five years since its launch, Felix Capital is adding two new senior investors to help handle its $600 million under management, including a $300 million fund announced earlier this year. Angela Chou joins from Facebook and Joseph Pizzolato from Vitruvian Partners.
- A group of prominent members of the European Parliament have singled out Chinese 5G vendors Huawei and ZTE as "high-risk" companies that pose a security threat to network security in Europe, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO.
- Law enforcement agencies have conducted a large-scale raid of the German state malware company group FinFisher last week. The customs authorities are investigating the suspicion "that software may have been exported without the required export license from the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control".
- Israel's tech sector has shown its strength once more by raising $2.74 billion in 151 deals in the third quarter of 2020 according to a new report. However, those figures are misleading regarding the overall state of investment in the sector as through the first three quarters of the year there was an uptrend of later-stage investments and that growth was due mostly to 20 deals, each amounting to over $50 million.
- H-FARM, the Italian innovation hub, has opened the doors of its new Campus, the major expansion project for the company’s headquarters.
- More than 1,000 of UK startups have filed for administration, liquidation or dissolution since lockdown began, according to new research released today by Plexal and Beauhurst.
- Amazon will not have to pay the UK’s new digital services tax on products it sells directly to consumers but small traders who sell products on its site will face increased charges.
- TomTom, the location technology specialist, and Uber have teamed up and will continue integrating TomTom’s maps, traffic data, and Maps APIs across Uber’s global platform.
- Tech Nation has introduced the 32 companies who have been selected to join Applied AI 2.0, its growth programme for tech companies with artificial intelligence at their core.
- PayPal is to take on the likes of Klarna with the launch of a 'buy now, pay later' shopping service that lets UK consumers pay for their purchases in three monthly instalments.
- A group of Revolut’s earliest employees has launched a new investment company focused on tech startups – including those founded by fellow alumni of the digital bank. Expansion Capital, which was incorporated in March 2020, is a seed-stage investor that has already backed around fifteen early-stage start-ups.
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