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This Week in European Tech: Sinch raises $1.1B for M&A push, About You and Made.com prep IPOs, Contentsquare nabs $500 million

Robin Wauters 28 May 2021
This Week in European Tech: Sinch raises $1.1B for M&A push, About You and Made.com prep IPOs, Contentsquare nabs $500 million
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Happy Friday!

This week, our research team tracked more than 90 tech funding deals worth more than €3.9 billion, and about 19 exits, M&A transactions, and rumours, and related news stories across Europe, including Russia, Israel, and Turkey.

As always, we are putting all of them together for you in a handy list sent in our round-up newsletter (note: the full list is for paying customers only).

Recently, we also started publishing 'Today in European Tech', a daily round-up of deals and news stories that caught our attention. Keeping you updated on all things EU tech is our priority!

Today, instead of a daily round-up we give you an overview of the 10 biggest European tech news items for the past week (subscribe to our free newsletter to get this round-up in your inbox every Monday morning).

1) Sinch clinches $1.1 billion in fresh capital

Stockholm-based communications platform Sinch has raised $1.1 billion in a new share issue. Previous investors Temasek and SoftBank (via SB Northstar) re-upped on their commitment and subscribed to a large portion of the issue.

2) French SaaS scale-up Contentsquare raises $500 million

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.

3) About You is about to go public

Hamburg-based fashion e-tailer About You has announced its intention to list on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange as of Q2 of this year. With the listing, About You will also file an accompanying private placement reserved for institutional investors with which it intends to raise at least €600 million in gross proceeds.

4) Russian video-on-demand firm IVI scores $250 million growth 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.

5) Online furniture retailer Made.com preps for a London IPO

Britain's Made.com, an online furniture seller, has announced plans to list at least 25% of its shares in London. Made.com, which has seen sales surge over the COVID-19 pandemic, said it planned to sell about $142 million of new shares, while existing shareholders will also offload some of their stakes.

6) A unicorn sighting in Riga: Printful raises $130 million

Latvia-born Printful has landed $130 million in fresh funds via private equity firm Bregal Sagemount. With this funding, the print-on-demand company becomes Latvia’s first unicorn with a valuation of over $1 billion.

7) French fintech scale-up Agicap lands $100 million round

French startup Agicap has raised a new $100 million funding round led by Greenoaks, at a $500 million valuation. Agicap is building a service that lets you track your cash flow in real time, build reports and get forecasts.

8) Big Tech acquisitions of European startups under scrutiny (again)

Germany, France and the Netherlands have complained that the EU is not tough enough on Big Tech and called on regulators to make it harder for the likes of Google and Facebook to pursue killer acquisitions.

9) German health tech startup Ada nabs $90 million in funding

Berlin-based digital healthcare provider Ada has raised $90 million in a Series B round led by the investment arm of pharmaceutical giant Bayer, Leaps by Bayer. Samsung Catalyst Fund, Vitruvian Partners, Inteligo Bank, F4 and Mutschler Ventures also participated in the round.

10) Glovo makes a big expansion splash in Eastern Europe

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.

Podcast(s):

“We're in the Golden Age of tech in Europe” — Fred Lardieg, Mubadala Ventures Europe

We talk with Mark Durno, managing partner at Rockstart Agrifood, which recently raised a €22+ million fund. Rockstart has spent most of its existence as an accelerator, but for the past couple of years it’s been transforming into an accelerator-VC. We asked Mark what it actually means in practice, what kind of agrifood companies he’s looking for, and much more.

Putting startups in a bubble that's not really a bubble with Dominique Piotet

Bonus link(s):

- A close look at the fractured regulatory landscape for micro-mobility across Europe.

- 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.

- The UK spy agency GCHQ’s methods for bulk interception of online communications violated the right to privacy and the regime for collection of data was unlawful, the grand chamber of the European court of human rights has ruled.

- Germany’s national competition regulator, the Bundeskartellamt, has continued its investigative charge against big tech — announcing that it’s opened two proceedings into Google.

This Week in European Tech: Sinch raises $1.1B for M&A push, About You and Made.com prep IPOs, Contentsquare nabs $500 million
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