Tech.eu, Author at Crunchbase News

In European Tech: $16.5M For Mental Well-being, Ozon Files To Go Public, And More

Tech.eu — Thu, 05 Nov 2020 16:36:24 +0000

(Editor’s Note: This is an article written for by and shared with Crunchbase News as part of a news-sharing partnership.)

Hello!

Here is what’s happening in European tech:

Deals

–Koa Health, a digital mental health care provider based in the Netherlands, has announced its successful spin out from Alpha, ’s startup factory, along with . The startup’s debut product is Koa Foundations, a mental well-being app designed for the workplace, helping organizations support their teams.

–Ozon, Russia’s leading online retailer, has , in which it aims to raise “at least $500 million.” Ozon is also considering listing its ADS in Moscow along with or shortly after its planned IPO in the United States, Reuters’ sources said.

–German fintech startup Vivid Money has raised a €15 million Series A funding round, . Built on top of for the banking infrastructure, Vivid Money is a challenger bank with a few nifty features.

—, a London-based legacy payments company, will , two card payments and card terminal leasing businesses in the U.K., from a consortium of private investors. The price tag is expected to read around £70 million.

–Irish startup has ��for a sensor technology that prevents road accidents. The Limerick-based company “is applying AI software and a five-dimensional sensory platform to��predict and prevent accidents in real time��and beyond the line-of-sight.”

–Spanish firm has , All Iron Ventures I, with €66.5 million–all from private investors. The firm leads or co-invests in initial rounds, mainly in Series A or before. Initial tickets are typically up to €2 million, with the possibility of follow-on funding.

–U.K.-based 6-month-old fintech startup has ; half of it came through a crowdfunding campaign, and the other half from the . Snoop is a financial management app that claims to always be “watching your spending and spotting smart ways you can save.”

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 ��ǲԱ��). Also check out��for ongoing coverage.

Worth knowing

— French travel startup , which has raised more than $100 million in funding so far, is��by the end of this year. This number represents��more than 20 percent of its total workforce.

–If you haven’t had enough of the Starling vs Monzo drama yet, ��by Yahoo Finance’s Oscar William Grut.

–Speaking of banking, HSBC is about to launch a rival of its own. Global Money Account——is a free mobile-based service that customers can use to hold, manage and send funds in various currencies to HSBC customers in over 20 markets around the clock in real time.

Tell us what you think about the above and how we can improve it! And follow us��.

French Scale-up Odaseva Raises $25M To Continue Global Expansion

Tech.eu — Tue, 27 Oct 2020 17:07:16 +0000

French SaaS company��has raised $25 million in Series B funding to continue growing its data governance platform for enterprise. The round was led by with new investor and included previous backers , 1 and .

“T�� team started their journey focused on a major problem for large-scale Salesforce customers, helping them through their move to the cloud,” explains of Partech.

Since the company launched in 2012, Odaseva has broadened the scope of data protection for large-scale Salesforce customers, “building their trust in the cloud.” Customers use Odaseva’s technology for everything from backing up and archiving data to ensuring data privacy.

The company claims three consecutive years of 100 percent revenue growth, driven by its expansion in North America and other international markets. During that time, the company doubled its headcount and added enterprises such as , and Manulife to a customer list that includes , , and .

“With the market potential, growth profile and unit economics, it is no wonder that Odaseva is one of the very few companies who managed to attract a U.S. investor this year,” commented , partner at Serena.

The Series B brings the French company’s total funding to $40 million. With the fresh funding, the team will pursue a few growth goals: further product development; hiring in San Francisco, Sydney and Paris; and more partnerships.

Photo: Odaseva’s team, courtesy of Odaseva.

Salesforce Ventures is an investor in Crunchbase. They have no say in our editorial process. For more, head here.↩

This Week In European Tech: Allegro’s IPO, Kahoot’s Raise, EU’s Pledge And More

Tech.eu — Fri, 16 Oct 2020 18:07:54 +0000

��, Oct. 16, 2020.

Happy Friday!This week, our�� team tracked more than 70 tech funding deals worth about 1 billion euros, along with a handful of M&A transactions, rumors, 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 Friday afternoon roundup newsletter (note: the full list is for ��ǲԱ��).

Recently, we also started publishing , a daily roundup of deals and news stories that caught our attention. Keeping you updated on all things EU tech is our priority!

Today we give you an overview of the 10 biggest European tech news items for the past week (��to get this roundup in your inbox every Monday morning):

1) Polish e-commerce group went public; its shares shot up more than 60 percent on its trading debut, giving the company ��in Europe’s biggest IPO so far this year.

2)��Norwegian user-generated gamified e-learning startup !—which has clocked 1.3 billion “participating players” since launching in 2013—has ��in a private placement.

3)��ܳ�𳾲��ǳܰ��-�� , which claims to be Europe’s first and largest edtech VC, has announced , bringing assets under management to above $112 million.

4)��The European Union aims to��to help build up a homegrown cloud computing sector that could rival foreign corporations such as , and . There were 25 EU countries that signed a joint declaration on Thursday pledging public money to power up the cloud sector and establishing the “European Alliance on Industrial Data and Cloud,” a partnership geared toward facilitating such projects.

5)��, the U.K. tech company focused on commercial electric vehicles, has ��from funds managed by .

6)��Israel’s artificial intelligence-based machine monitoring solution provider announced ��led by , and with the participation of , , , and .

7)��U.S. tech giants are facing the threat of ��after France and the Netherlands jointly issued a call for the bloc’s competition authorities to take pre-emptive measures as they prepare sweeping legislation to curb the companies’ market power.

8)��France will��this year after international talks failed to agree on a global levy, its finance minister said this week, risking a trade war.

9)��German business transformation software maker��. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but co-founder and CEO said the deal was over $100 million.

10)��More than 1,000 U.K. startups have , according to new research released this week by and .

Podcast:

: Mealworms, unicorns, crowdfunding, and state of Spanish tech with Jaime Novoa

Bonus link:

The Week in European Tech: Europe’s Latest Unicorn, A $2.2B Acquisition, And More Big Deals

Tech.eu — Fri, 09 Oct 2020 18:33:25 +0000

��, Oct. 9, 2020.

Happy Friday!

This week, our�� team tracked almost 70 tech funding deals worth over 1 billion euros, along with 15 M&A transactions, rumors, 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 Friday afternoon roundup newsletter (note: the full list is for ��ǲԱ��).

Recently, we also started publishing a daily roundup 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 roundup we give you an overview of the 10 biggest European tech news items for the past week (��to get this roundup in your inbox every Monday morning):

1)��Another European fintech giant is born: Italian payment technology service providers and have reached an agreement . After nearly two years of negotiations, the all-share deal will see Nexi receive 70 percent of the merged company and SIA around 30 percent, the partners said, adding that the new group will have a market valuation of around 15 billion euros based on current prices.

2) , a French startup farming insects to improve food production,��, bringing its Series C round to $372 million with ’s tech funding initiative joining the round.

3) Amsterdam-based cloud communications platform has become Europe’s newest unicorn after announcing��at a valuation of $3 billion.

4)��Japanese electronics giant ��Swiss banking software developer for $2.2 billion.

5)��British holographic tech company has ��from several automotive companies for its tech used in augmented reality. Among the investors in the Series B round are , General Motors’ , , the venture arm of SAIC Motors, and Van Tuyl Companies.

6)��European crowdfunding leaders�� and have to create “one of the world’s largest private equity marketplaces.” The combined company will be worth £140 million.

7)��The European Parliament plenary approved the deal struck with the Council last December on��and protect investors. The new rules aim to help crowdfunding services to function smoothly in the internal market and to foster cross-border business funding in the EU, by providing for��.

8)��A French appeals court has confirmed the country’s antitrust authority’s order to to��.

9)�� has decided��requiring social media companies to establish a formal presence in the country, setting the stage for a showdown with the government of Erdogan that could culminate in the platform being blocked.

10)��, Europe’s largest technology conference, will be��this year, as the coronavirus pandemic forces scores of major events to go digital.

Podcast:

: raises even more money, wants to go shopping, Jonathan Keane talks about the Irish startup ecosystem.

Bonus link:

You Are Not Alone: time to cancel the ‘hustle culture’ and��

The Week in European Tech: VC Draper Esprit raises £110M in 3 days, Northvolt scores $600M, And More

Tech.eu — Mon, 05 Oct 2020 12:01:37 +0000

By co-founder and editor-in-chief of , with previous stints at The Next Web and TechCrunch under his belt.

Last week, our team tracked 69 funding deals worth about 1.4 billion euros ($1.64 billion) in funding, and around 15 M&A announcements and rumors across Europe, including Russia, Israel and Turkey. As always, we put all of them together for you in a handy list sent in our Friday afternoon roundup newsletter (note: the full list is for ��ǲԱ��).

Recently, we also started publishing a daily roundup of deals and news stories that caught our attention. Keeping you updated on all things EU tech is our priority.

Today we give you an overview of the 10 biggest European tech news items last week (��to get this roundup in your inbox every Monday morning):

— Swedish lithium-ion battery-maker ��in fresh equity funds in a private placement joined by investors such as , Volkswagen, , Norrsken VC and , as well as private backers such as founder and Cristina Stenbeck.

— , the used-car sales platform, reached “unicorn” status after raising a little over $31 million at a $1 billion-plus valuation just three months ago. Last week, the U.K.-based company revealed (265 million euros) of funding at more than double the last valuation. The latest round takes the total funding since Cazoo was founded to a whopping £450 million.

— is��considering a , Free Now, a deal that could boost its market share in Europe and Latin America, people with knowledge of the matter told .

— , the Paris-based digital marketing platform, . The company called its Series B round the “highest fundraising round for any all-in-one marketing platform in the U.S. and Europe” in a news release. Investors included , ��and , with reinvesting from a previous $36 million in Series A in 2017.

— Vienna, Austria-based , which provides a brokering/exchange platform for trading digital assets such as cryptocurrencies and precious metals, . The monster round, which is claimed to be the largest Series A this year so far, was led by ’s and joined by and other investors.

—��Publicly-listed European VC firm ��gross proceeds of £110 million in a private placement to “fund an accelerated investment strategy and capture a greater share of technology investment opportunities.”

—��French warehouse robotics outfit�� in a new round of funding led by alongside existing backers and .

—��Uber won its legal fight to continue operating in London, as a judge��by the city’s transport regulator and granted it a new 18-month license.

—��French fintech startup (formerly Lendix) has raised some fresh capital in a non-equity funding round to invest in small and medium companies on its lending platform. Overall, the company has��that will be deployed over the next few years.

—��Swiss biotech firm , which provides genomic and radiomic analysis for hospitals, ��in an oversubscribed Series F round led by , a health-tech and life sciences venture fund based in Israel, and .

Podcast:��: Daniel Ek pledges €1 billion for European moonshots, Transferwise on the rise, and we talk to Frédéric Mazzella of BlaBlaCar and France Digitale.

Bonus link:

Insurtech Rising: A pan-European overview of��the .

Electric Truck Startup Einride Raises $10M To Continue Push To Autonomous Driving

Tech.eu — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 15:10:19 +0000

(Editor’s Note: This is an article written for by ��and shared with Crunchbase News as part of a news-sharing partnership.)

, a Swedish company that wants to put electric autonomous trucks on the road, has raised $10 million in a round led by Norrsken VC.

The Stockholm-based company is manufacturing electric trucks that it hopes will one day hit the roads as fully autonomous vehicles. Some of its clients include and , which use the trucks for part of their logistics.

, , and others contributed to this latest investment. Founded in 2016, the startup raised a $25 million Series A round last year.

It said the new funds will be invested in its Einride Pods, a driverless vehicle that operates either autonomously or by a remote operation centre. The Pod has been tested at closed facilities and on select public roads since 2019.

, CEO of , said there is a large opportunity to be seized in autonomous trucking despite some uncertainties.

“We have a unique opportunity to make transport both exponentially safer and more sustainable,” he said. “It’s something the vast majority of us want, but many are unsure of how to get there and resort to half-measures. We expect to see the autonomous transport industry expand exponentially in the coming years, especially in the wake of a global pandemic.”

The company added that that fully-electric logistics will aid in reducing emissions among the logistics and road transport industry.

Norrsken VC’s Niklas Adalberth, a Klarna co-founder, will be joining Einride’s advisory board as part of this latest investment.

Blogroll illustration:

Today In European Tech News By Tech.EU

Tech.eu — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 18:50:59 +0000

Written by co-founder and editor-in-chief of Tech.eu, with previous stints at The Next Web and TechCrunch under his belt.

Good afternoon Europe!

Now that summer is over and people have returned to their (home) offices in droves, we figured we might try out a new format to continue keeping you abreast of everything that is going on in European tech.

We already have and and for that, but from now on we’re also going to publish a of all the funding and M&A deals, and other interesting stories we picked up on during the day.

Free of charge, of course, because we’re nice like that.

Daily deals

– 20 years in: EQT has agreed to Spanish online real estate classifieds platform provider from Apax Partners and its management for a whopping €1.3 billion. Apax bought idealista in 2015 at a reported €150 million valuation.

– Rien ne vas plus: Sweden’s Evolution Gaming Group, a company that develops, produces, markets and licenses Live Casino solutions to gaming operators, to the shareholders of digital entertainment company NetEnt to sell all their shares in NetEnt to Evolution. The amount of the deal – whose estimated settlement date is 2 November 2020, is approx. €1.9 billion.

– Notable funding rounds for two Israeli cybersecurity startups: Tel Aviv-based Snyk announced at a valuation of more than $2.6 billion, while has , bringing its total raised to around $40 million.

– Hello sunshine: , a Berlin-based startup that develops solar panel systems for consumers, has to expand internationally, closing its Series B round at €25 million.

– Listen up: London-based , which offers a subscription-based, curated audio content platform, has led by Earlybird, with Draper Esprit, Cherry Ventures and Horizons Ventures chipping in.

– I see you baby, shaking your asset: Wirecard Card Solutions today announced the signing of an asset purchase agreement with PayrNet Limited, a subsidiary of banking-as-a-service platform , to sell its card technology and ‘associated assets’ in the UK. The asset purchase agreement is expected to complete before the end of 2020.

– MOAR FUNDING: (France), (France), (Denmark), (Belgium), (Germany), (Germany), (Switzerland)

Worth knowing

– Ireland’s privacy watchdog has told Facebook that it will soon have to because the social media giant’s current procedures fall foul of EU law.

– Watching the Watchdog: The EU will set up a new college of supervisors, including national and European authorities, to oversee “significant” digital currencies including Facebook’s Libra, according to the European Commission’s cryptocurrency draft proposal .

– EU-ID: European Union leaders will ask the European Commission later this month to develop an EU-wide public electronic identification system (e-ID) to access cross-border digital services, according to the draft summit conclusions – .

Tell us what you think about the above and how we can improve it! And follow us .

The 10 Biggest European Tech Stories This Week

Tech.eu — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 16:29:22 +0000

By , Sept. 4, 2020.

Happy Friday!

This week, our�� team tracked 50 tech funding deals worth over 500 million euros (approximately $591 million), plus 10 M&A transactions, rumors and related news stories across Europe, including Russia, Israel and Turkey.

Meanwhile, here’s an overview of the 10 biggest European tech news items for this week (��to get this roundup in your inbox every Monday morning):

1)��Rocket Internet, the Berlin-based startup factory that held an IPO back in 2014, is��. As rationale for the delisting, a press release says private capital, specifically growth capital, is much more available these days—and “could not have been anticipated at the time of the company’s IPO”—so the need for public trading on capital markets simply isn’t there anymore.

2)��Auxmoney, a German credit marketplace that claims to be the largest in continental Europe,��in a round led by Centerbridge Partners, a private equity firm with a history of taking majority stakes.

3)��The London stock market is set for its largest technology takeover as two leading British translation companies agreed to merge.�� that they claim will enable them to create a combined language software service with a “truly global presence,” serving some of the world’s largest businesses.

4) Yandex—the publicly traded Russian tech giant that started as a search engine but has expanded into a number of other areas—has announced —a ride-hailing and food delivery joint venture it operates in partnership with Uber. As part of the spin-out, Yandex is investing $150 million into the business. That will include $100 million in equity, plus $50 million in the form of a convertible loan.

5) The French government unveiled a massive €100 billion stimulus package to recover from the economic downturn—it represents 4 percent of the country’s GDP. As part of this support plan, the government plans to spend a significant chunk of money on all things digital–startup investment, infrastructure investment and digital transformation. .

6) Mail.ru Group, the LSE-listed Russian internet major, and Sberbank, the state-controlled financial and technology giant,�� to develop their “O2O” joint venture. Agreed to in June last year, this JV combines the businesses of the two groups across a variety of fields, from ride-hailing and car sharing, to restaurant delivery and e-grocery, to dark kitchens and dark stores.

7)��Danish tax authorities have��to determine whether the tech giant has any outstanding tax obligation.

8) Kooth, a U.K. startup offering online mental health care, . The company raised £16 million through the issue of new shares, and a further £10 million was raised from existing shares held by Root Capital, which backed the business in 2015.

9)��Stockholm-headquartered live video shopping company��, with $34.5 million of that amount raised during the pandemic.

10) Tesla CEO ��in Berlin on Tuesday afternoon on the sidelines of their parliamentary group meeting. They told the electric-car pioneer that the German government “will help in whatever way needed to get Tesla’s Berlin plant up and running.”

Podcast:

: New Fairphone, Napster bought by European startup, and we talk to the CEO of Coursera and Sherry Coutu of Digital Boost.

Bonus link:

Atomico is back with its survey for the annual “State of European Tech” report, which will be released on Dec. 8 in partnership with Slush and Orrick, and with support from Silicon Valley Bank.

As they say, your input is more important than ever in this turbulent year as they will assess the impact of COVID-19 on the EU tech ecosystem.��!

The 10 Biggest European Tech Stories

Tech.eu — Fri, 28 Aug 2020 20:10:29 +0000

��,��August 28, 2020.

Our team tracked about 40 tech funding deals worth nearly €550 million ($654.2 million), plus over 15 M&A transactions, rumors, and related news stories across Europe, including Russia, Israel, and Turkey.

Meanwhile, here’s an overview of the 10 biggest European tech news items for the week (��to get this roundup in your inbox every Monday morning):

1)��E-commerce retailer��that would value it at around 4.5 billion pounds ($5.95 billion), potentially the biggest listing of a British company since 2013.

2)��Berlin-based��, an online grocery marketplace in the Middle East and North Africa. In a press release, the German company says the acquisition is another step in its “quest to pioneer q-commerce”, or quick commerce. Valued at $360 million, Instashop’s initial purchase price was about $270 million.

3)��Auto1 Group, the German online used-car marketplace, is��. The Berlin-based company was valued at about €2.9 billion when SoftBank’s Vision Fund invested in 2018.

4)��Facebook’s French subsidiary��, including a penalty, after a 10-year audit of its accounts by French tax authorities.

5) WorldRemit, a U.K. online money transfer company, has ��as the global pandemic intensifies demand for digital banking. The cash and stock deal is worth more than $500 million, and the combined company will be valued at more than $1.5 billion, according to Bloomberg sources.

6) U.K. challenger Atom Bank is ��in a shareholder injection – its largest equity raise to date.

7)��Israeli open source database company��at a company valuation of more than $1 billion. The financing round was co-led by Bain Capital Ventures and TCV.

8)��BITKRAFT Ventures, a Berlin-based VC with offices in London, Los Angeles and San Francisco,��for esports, gaming and interactive media. Cheques will go to seed and Series A rounds in startups that match the firm’s trademarked investment vision of ‘Synthetic Realities’, where the physical and digital worlds converge and consumers flock for entertainment or play.

9) Napster, the pioneering digital music brand from way back when, is changing hands once more. A publicly-listed U.K. startup called MelodyVR, which creates immersive live music experiences that you watch either through VR headsets or phones, announced that ��— for $70 million.

10)��Checkout lender Klarna has seen “significant changes” over the past six months, with the huge shift from offline to online spending bolstering its pay-later model. The result was�� in the first half of 2020, with a resulting net operating income up 36 percent to $517 million. Net losses grew to $63.1 million.

Podcast(s):

: German startups against Google, funding for Omio and Voodoo, and we talk to Elizabeth Varley about TechHub

Bonus link(s):

Berlin-based Candis Closes $14M Series B To Expand Automated Accounting Platform For SMBs

Tech.eu — Thu, 30 Jul 2020 14:27:34 +0000

(Editor’s Note: This is an article written for ��by�� and shared with Crunchbase News as part of a news-sharing partnership.)

, a Berlin-based automated accounting platform, has raised a 12 million euro Series B round led by and , the investment arm of . Existing investors , , and also participated. The fresh capital will help develop the startup’s machine-learning engine and fuel expansion within Europe.

“SMBs in Central Europe have a void when it comes to efficient and effective accounting and financial processes,” said Omry Ben David, partner at Viola Ventures.

That’s where steps in. The fintech platform automates manual bookkeeping, accounting processes and B2B payments for mid-market companies and their tax advisers.

“Our machine-learning based technology disrupts a whole industry, in which the majority of tasks are still very manual,” adds Christian Ritosek, the startup’s co-founder and managing director. “T�� pattern recognition engine automates accounting workflows and empowers companies with real-time data and insights to make better financial decisions.”

Founded in 2015, the German company claims its business has grown 500 percent since its last funding round, an undisclosed Series A at the end of 2018.

Photo: Candis founders

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