European startup news, funding rounds and events
Fundraising intelligence, founder interviews and the events that actually move the ecosystem.
Agenda – next 30 days
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IFA 2026: the twenty startups who pitched, and the one who won
A company that prints implantable human tissue won a pitch competition at a consumer electronics fair. Cellbricks Therapeutics took the IFA Pitch Battle 2026 on the…
Ben Costantini
Composites Are About High Performance. So Are Events.
A startup event strategy needs the same discipline. Spend enough time around (deep-tech) startups and you start noticing a familiar pattern. The same founders appear at…
The most digital companies in the world are opening coffee shops
The AI industry runs on GPUs, APIs and Discord servers. So why is an AI insurance startup valued at $4 billion signing a lease for a…
Ben CostantiniThe Selected podcast
Tips & advice
The empty startup area: why tradeshows fail at startup sales
Picture this. A strategy director at a major exhibition calls with six weeks to go before the show. The brand new startup area has sold exactly…
Ben Costantini
Why events are lying about their metrics
This week I read about a hackathon claiming 6,000 attendees over a single weekend. The venues hosting it can’t accommodate more than 1,000 people. Nobody in…
Ben Costantini
The hidden costs of events: Why founders get the math wrong
Most startup founders treat events like they’re going travelling: count the days, block the calendar, done. But event tickets don’t come cheap, and the actual affair…
Ben CostantiniSpotlight
Biolevate
The evidence-grade AI platform helping life sciences teams scale trusted, auditable AI collaboration across regulated operations
Latest
Metris Energy raises $5M seed for AI-run solar asset management
London's Metris Energy has raised a $5M seed led by Berlin's PT1 to put more than 10,000 solar plants under AI management, with Octopus Ventures and AENU returning.
Sprive raises $10M Series A to shop away UK mortgages
Sprive turned 567,000 shoppers' cashback into £26m of UK mortgage overpayments. Now a $10M Series A led by Ascension funds the push to make debt paydown a daily habit.
Arcos raises €5.5M seed for Europe’s civil security infrastructure
A Munich seed for the unglamorous layer of European resilience: Arcos raised €5.5M from HTGF, Bayern Kapital, Pact, Haufe and Robin Capital to build and run the control rooms watching…
Unit1 Studio raises £20M to take avatar concerts on tour
Balderton leads a £20M round into Unit1 Studio, the London team promising avatar concerts that move between venues in days rather than the years and £140M ABBA Voyage needed.
Penelope Health raises $100M for real-time payer policy intelligence
A one-year-old founded out of London now holds a $100 million commitment led by Thoreau to turn the coverage rules of American health insurers into structured data for both sides…
Latest funding
| Company | Round | Lead | Sector | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Biolevate AI · France | Series A | RAISE France, Orange Ventures (co-leads) | AI | €30M |
| Verda AI · Finland | Series B | Emergence Capital | AI | €164.8M |
| Benford Unclassified · Norway | Pre-seed | Firstminute Capital, Global Founders Capital | Unclassified | €5M |
| Gamindo Unclassified · Unclassified | Seed | Club degli Investitori, Vento, Doorway, Zanichelli Venture | Unclassified | €1.4M |
| Spott Unclassified · Belgium | Series A | Balderton Capital | Unclassified | €18.3M |
| Metris Energy Climate · United Kingdom | Seed | PT1 Ventures | Climate | €4.4M |
Browse the ecosystem
Call for startups
Ultra Long Duration Energy Storage Project Development Studies (Relaunch) 2026
Innovate UK and UKRI relaunched this grant competition to fund project development studies for ultra long duration electrochemical energy storage – technology built to…
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