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Today in European Tech: OneWeb secures $550 million, MessageBird extends round to $1 billion to bankroll a US acquisition, and more

Robin Wauters 28 April 2021
Today in European Tech: OneWeb secures $550 million, MessageBird extends round to $1 billion to bankroll a US acquisition, and more
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Hello!

Here's what happened today in European Tech.

Deals

- Through an extension of a previous round, Dutch omnichannel communications platform MessageBird has now raised a whopping $1 billion. Continuing their shopping spree, MessageBird has entered a definitive agreement to purchase Colombia, Maryland-based predictive email platform SparkPost for $600 million.

- London-based bring-the-internet-to-everyone provider OneWeb has secured $550 million in financing from Parisian Eutelset, bringing the rounds’ total funding to $1.9 billion. Eutelsat is one of the world’s leading satellite operators, and with this funding of OneWeb, the company is obtaining an approximate 24% equity stake in the latter.

- Oxford-based Exscientia, a pharmaceutical company that uses artificial intelligence to discover new drugs, has raised a new round of funding worth as much as $525 million to expand its pipeline of drugs and technological capabilities. The investment was led by SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund 2, with participation from previous investors Novo Holdings and BlackRock.

- Endeit Capital has closed its third and largest fund to date at €250 million, with the pledge to support European scale-ups that develop products and services aimed at accelerating the digital transformation of the European society and economy.

- Paris-based edtech company OpenClassrooms has raised $80 million in their third round and saw participation from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a project Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg established with his wife Priscilla Chan in 2015.

- Viva Wallet, a Greek startup building banking services aimed at small and medium merchants, has picked up financing of $80 million.

- Israeli digital construction management Locusview has announced the completion of a $64 million Series A financing round led by Israel Growth Partners (IGP) in participation with existing investors.

- A startup out of Toulouse, France, called EasyMile — which builds shuttles for transporting both people and goods — has closed a Series B of €55 million.

- Connecteam, the Tel Aviv-based all-in-one app for deskless employees has raised $37 million in a Series B round. Led by Insight Partners, OG Tech, and the leadership team at Wix, the raise is expected to be used towards continued growth, particularly in the R&D department.

- IRP Systems, an Israeli maker of innovative powertrains for electric vehicles, has raised a $31 million Series C funding round, bringing its total funding to $57 million.

- Helsinki-based startup Yousician has raised $29 million in Series B funding.

- 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 Reading/Knowing

- The European Parliament gave its final stamp of approval to the Horizon Europe legislation today, but MEPs are already casting for ways to increase the €95.5 billion budget, with many still bitter over the failure to secure €120 billion for the seven year research and innovation programme.

- PitchBook has released a new summary of Q1 2021 European VC numbers, and the results are eye-opening and jaw-dropping. In the first quarter of 2021 alone, VC deal value is higher than years 2011, 2012, and 2013, respectively, clocking in at €17.6 billion.

- In the final (€2.96 billion) step required to get the new-look European Institute of Innovation and Technology off the ground, the European Parliament has voted through its new regulation and strategic agenda.

- Amsterdam’s challenger bank bunq has announced that they’ve reached €1 billion in user deposits. This milestone outlines a steep hockey stick curve, with the amount of money deposited by users more than doubling for the second year in a row.

- Russia’s antitrust authority has fined Apple $12 million over a case first brought against the Silicon Valley giant by Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.

- Intel, the largest private employer in Israel, announced that it plans on recruiting an additional 1,000 new employees in 2021 for its various R&D centers, while hiring another 400 employees for its artificial intelligence operations at Habana Labs, which it acquired in 2019 and is still being run independently.

- Turkey is planning to regulate its cryptocurrency market after two local exchanges crumbled within days.

- The European Investment Fund and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology said they would collaborate on a project to improve access to digital education.

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Today in European Tech: OneWeb secures $550 million, MessageBird extends round to $1 billion to bankroll a US acquisition, and more
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