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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Creative tech in Europe runs on grants. San Sebastián’s finalists prove it
Ten startups pitched at the San Sebastián Film Festival on 24 September. I went through every one of them afterward and couldn’t find a single disclosed…
Ben Costantini
AI replaced 3D printing in composites pitches
In 2019, 3D printing was the loudest thing in composites. Across that year’s JEC Composites Startup Booster applications it ran at 24.7 mentions per 10,000 words…
Ben Costantini
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 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
FRANK
The AI operator for insurance advisors, automating paperwork for insurance brokers and agencies.
Latest
ANote Music raises €2 million to scale royalty investing
Luxembourg's royalty marketplace adds €2 million from Seventure Partners and ScaleFund, with 52,000 accounts and €28 million traded since 2020 – and a $40 billion royalty market behind it.
Cotierra raises €2.6M for on-farm biochar in coffee supply chains
PINC, Paulig's venture arm, and Carbon Removal Partners co-lead €2.6M into Cotierra, whose reactors turn coffee residues into biochar on Colombian farms – carbon removal funded by the coffee trade.
Marble raises €6.5M Series A to automate fraud and AML compliance
Two Shine alumni turned an open-source rules engine into compliance infrastructure for 100+ institutions. Smartfin now leads a €6.5M Series A to make the platform agentic.
Reverion raises €154.2M Series B for carbon-negative power plants
Bavaria's Reverion has closed a €154.2M Series B led by Kembara to lift reversible fuel cell production tenfold. European institutional money is now funding climate hardware at scale.
DOD Solution raises $2.1M pre-seed for GPS-free drone autonomy
Estonian-Ukrainian DOD Solution raised a $2.1M pre-seed from nine backers including Draganfly to scale AURA, its combat-deployed onboard AI for drones flying under GPS jamming.
Latest funding
| Company | Round | Lead | Sector | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FRANK Unclassified · Portugal | Seed | Armilar, Start Ventures | Unclassified | €2.9M |
| AnaCardio Unclassified · Sweden | Series B | Novo Holdings, Ljungström family office | Unclassified | €62.5M |
| Zenithon AI Unclassified · United Kingdom | Seed | Backed VC, Lunar Ventures, MMC Ventures, SOSV, Seraphim | Unclassified | €8.9M |
| Blue Health Intelligence Unclassified · Netherlands | Growth | Knop Investments | Unclassified | €3.4M |
| Kuro Unclassified · Germany | UVC Partners | Unclassified | €10M | |
| NOX Energy Unclassified · Belgium | Seed | Rise PropTech, Volve Capital | Unclassified | €3M |
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Upcoming events
Call for startups
PTCH Awards — Startup OLE 2026
Startup OLE hands out its PTCH Awards in Salamanca, and the winner takes a route through to the Startup World Cup grand finale and…
VINCI Leonard SEED 2027
VINCI’s innovation platform Leonard runs SEED as a six-month corporate accelerator at Leonard:Paris, aimed at climate, mobility and proptech companies working on construction, energy…
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