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Today in European Tech: EU to launch antitrust probe into Facebook, Contentsquare lands $500 million, and more

Robin Wauters 26 May 2021
Today in European Tech: EU to launch antitrust probe into Facebook, Contentsquare lands $500 million, and more
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Hello!

Here's what happened today in European Tech.

Deals

- Parisian customer experience platform Contentsquare has raised $500 million in a Series E round led by SoftBank Vision Fund. Existing investors Bpifrance, Canaan, BlackRock, Eurazeo, Highland Europe and KKR all participated in the round.

- Moscow-based video-on-demand company IVI has raised $250 million in a Series D round led by VTB. Invest AG, and Millhouse also participated in the round, and existing investors Flashpoint Venture Capital, Baring Vostok, and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) also followed on.

- Spanish mutli-category delivery platform Glovo has acquired two of Berlin-based Delivery Hero’s brands for €170 million. Ownership in Romania and Bulgaria’s foodpanda and Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Donesi, and Croatia’s Pauza will all soon change hands.

- Paysend, a London-based fintech scale-up that has built a mobile-based payments platform has closed a round of $125 million in a Series B round.

- Dublin-based The Yield Lab Europe has announced almost €50 million at the second close of its agrifood tech fund. The fund, which focuses on seed and Series A startup investments in Ireland and Europe, welcomes new investors including the European Investment Fund.

- Austria-based pet tracking tech company Tractive has announced a $35 million Series A round led by Guidepost Growth Equity.

- 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 Commission is set to open a formal probe into Facebook’s alleged anti-competitive practices as it seeks to understand whether the company is undermining rivals in classified advertising.

- The European Commission is expected to demand that Facebook, Google and Twitter alter their algorithms — and prove that they have done so — to stop the spread of online falsehoods.

- Know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em: Glovo CEO Oscar Pierre talks about their expansion hits and misses.

- New podcast episode alert: we interviewed Fred Lardieg, a partner at Mubadala Ventures Europe, which is a €450 million fund investing in European startups from Series B onwards.

- Klarna is launching a new tech hub in Madrid with plans to hire 500 new jobs, a large proportion of which will be focused on engineering.

- British chipmaker Arm has entered an engineering hiring freeze that may last until April 2022 when it expects its acquisition by Nvidia to complete.

- Uber plans to formally recognize a trade union in the UK that will give drivers increased powers to collectively bargain while also preserving the company’s worker model.

- US investment firm Tiger Global is on a spending spree in Europe while capital is cheap. It may not last.

- Europe's second-top court on Wednesday rejected a request by OHB to suspend a decision by the European Space Agency to exclude the German satellite company from a Galileo public contract, which went to its rivals Airbus and Thales Alenia Space.

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Today in European Tech: EU to launch antitrust probe into Facebook, Contentsquare lands $500 million, and more
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