Hello - welcome to Sunday CET!
Busy week, feels like finally Europeans got to business after one of the drier summers in a decade, startup deals wise.
There were three notable events gathering high profile folks from the startups and investors circles - Resilience, Italian Tech Week and Bitz & Pretzels - lots of familiar faces and good content, though some of the stage conversations couldn’t go beyond the usual bland chats seeming important yet meaning nothing but a PR checkbox. The Italians already put the content online and Resilience also has a good coverage.
In spite of the bad macro and everything else, this week gave me hope and I think we should be positive about what’s going on in Europe, as many top tech people as there’s left here - and there is a full glass side to the Russians getting us into ww3.
Firstly, it created a sense of unity Europe needs more than ever, and that’s in spite of all the racists and hemophobic events you see daily in the news happening in any major European city. When it comes to tech business, related to defense or not, there’s an augmented sense of camaraderie and working together, irrespective of where you’re coming from.
Secondly, there’s still a lot of capital looking for good tech in spite of the venture industry going through a rough cycle - money is not a problem in Europe. Besides the money, the EU leadership seems declaratively fully aware that i) there’s a huge tech gap between Europe and US/China and ii) this gap is a low hanging fruit in order to produce growth drivers on the macro on the long term.
This translates into all of us hoping they won’t break too many things while trying to help, like they have done until now. Let’s be real, articulated tech-related decisions are too much to expect from people setting rules before things go wrong, rather than reacting afterward, and perceiving tech like industrial policy - managing competition, fairness, and consumer rights - rather than fostering risk-taking startups. EU officials aren’t necessarily wrong about tech - they just operate from a different set of values and timelines, in a clear disconnect with the value creators. And this very gap between values and how tech actually develops (fast, experimental, global) makes it look like they don’t get it. Now, the need for immediate impact from the local tech sector may soften the rigidness, as even the war involves dealing with high tech, so this gap is hopefully narrowing - we will see, actions trump words and keep in mind we’re in the middle of a bloody conflict that creates or alters the economic realities and their related decisions.
Three, the defense spending is a trend the tech ecosystem will benefit tremendously from in the next cycles. That’s because the defense tech development creates a specific healthy mindset pretty much aligned to startups PMF process - test, fail, learn, iterate super fast. The reality of war requires this cycle to be within a week, backed by quickness, focus, efficiency and adaptability, a combo usually European tech startup people learn about as soon as they travel to the Bay Area.
They can go to Ukraine for that now - the war not only requires this quick iteration but also makes for a rather homogenous market (which is not Europe’s default forte), and the coming years will see spill-overs into hybrid verticals i.e. health defense, logistics defense etc. Bref - it’s a context that hopefully will force startup people into a market-oriented mindset instead of blindly copying whatever shiny startup they see in the US, which is the traditional German/French school of doing startups.
And just like Silicon Valley turned into a tech money machine because of the American defense industry in the 1970, the Russians forcing Europe into war can become a similar moment for the continent. It’s uncomfortable but an opportunity nonetheless, changes won’t come over night, they’ll come at a cost and are rather generational impact wise - but it is inevitable. We just need to stand tall, as Brits would say.
Dragos
PS no time for the usual curation this week - instead, you can find below, as a gift, our latest intel piece we have sent to Sunday CET customers this week. Which, I am biased, but highly recommend subscribing to if you’re into VC intel in Europe, we have pretty good stuff, I’m told. :-).
Enterprise AI is where's at
This week, Blossom Capital announced closing a new fund at $400 million, its fourth. For those who don't know already, the company was founded in London in 2018 by Ophelia Brown and Imran Ghory, doing high conviction investments in series A startups.
I shot Ophelia an email asking her for some quick thoughts on what she sees in the market.
What's different with this new fund?
More of the same! Partnering with the most ambitious founders in Europe at Series A.
What about the market - what's it like today vs. the last time you raised?
AI :) and even more brilliant new seed managers/solo GPs - it means seed volumes are holding strong across all geos.
What’s one theme or sector that’s been top of mind for you recently?
True enterprise adoption of AI - we're still so early innings, excited for new companies to be built and adopted in the years to come.
What are some interesting companies you’ve come across this week?
Seapoint building the financial stack for startups, solving all the pains of finance and banking for startups in Europe.
Also shout out to all the defense tech startups at Resilience Conference and Italian founders at ITW. Such a great buzz at both!
If you had to bet on one market behaviour that will be bigger than people expect in the next 12 months, what would it be?
Alternative investments.
For a significant % of investors, yes.
What’s a surprising insight you’ve taken away from a conversation this week?
People using GPT to manage family debate/conflict.
What’s something outside of investing that’s inspiring your thinking right now?
Every interaction can inform or lead to an investment opportunity, the investment brain never switches off!
September VC pulse
We have tracked the activity of more than 1100 investors involved in roughly 400 VC European deals worth $8.4 billion for the month of September.
that's about the same numbers for investors/transactions as we have for September last year - except for the money spent, which this month is almost 2X the $4.8B equity transactions we have in the books of September 2024.
$1.5B+ of this money comes from two deals closed by the same company within a week - a $1.1B series B, followed a mere couple of days after by a pre-emptive $433M pre-series C.
top of the list though is the $2B series C announced by Mistral last month.
other mega $100M+ deals:
Oura (875M), Nothing (200M), Fnality ($134M), Tide (120M), Waat (116.5M), and Auterion ($105M)
As a reminder, you have full access to all our data over at N9.
Below the list with notable active investors from last month:
VC
🇫🇷 Kima Ventures
🇫🇷 Axeleo Capital
🇫🇷 Raise Capital
🇫🇷 Ring Capital
🇸🇪 EQT Ventures
🇩🇰 byFounders
🇫🇮 NGP Capital
🇫🇮 Inventure
🇦🇹 Speedinvest
🇨🇭 Verve Ventures
🇳🇱 Peak Capital
Americans
🇺🇸 a16z
🇺🇸 Accel
🇺🇸 Bessemer
🇺🇸 Blue Owl
🇺🇸 GC
🇺🇸 Headline
🇺🇸 Khosla Ventures
🇺🇸 Lightspeed
🇺🇸 Nvidia
🇺🇸 Pear VC
🇺🇸 Raine Group
Angel investors
🇺🇸 Marc Benioff
🇺🇸 Jeff Dean
🇺🇸 Dan Scheinman
🇩🇪 Mario Götze
🇩🇪 Rubin Ritter
🇩🇪 Jens Begemann
🇧🇪 Alex Brabers
🇪🇸 Carles Reina
Investors on the move
🇬🇧 Vidu Shanmugarajah was promoted to a general partner position at GV, after more than ten years in the London office.
🇬🇧 Maxim Frenkel re-joined Blossom Capital on a partner position in London, after a six months hiatus - he had spent 18 months with them as an investor, prior to.
🇬🇧 Madelene Larsson was promoted to a partner position at Giant Ventures, after she'd spent 4 years in the London office.
🇬🇧 Imke Koberg joined Evantic Capital as partner, after having spent more than four years with Silver Lake in London.
🇬🇧 Greg Brown is the new MD and head of VC for NatWest, after leading the investor coverage practice as an MD for HSBC for almost three years.
🇬🇧 Julie Kainz stepped down from her partner position at Lightspeed in London after almost four years - she will relocate to Riyadh and do business development for Lean Tech, a fintech rails developer in the Middle East.
🇬🇧 Fiona Murray was promoted to chairman at NATO Innovation Fund, as she replaces Klaus Hommels.
🇳🇴 Karl-Christian Agerup will become deputy chairman of the board at the same NATO Innovation Fund, after being with them for almost three years.
🇩🇪 Jessica Lieber made partner with 10x Founders after almost two years with the company in Munich.
🇧🇪 Patrick Vandenameele was promoted to a CEO position at imec, after eight years with the company, past 18 months as co-COO - he will assume full leadership responsibilities in April 2026.
Powder
🇬🇧 CVC Capital Partners raised €10.4 billion for a direct lending fund, their fourth.
🇳🇴 Verdane announced the closing of their Freya XII at a €2 billion hard cap.
🇸🇪 Monterro closed two new funds, M5 and G2, totalling €1.725 billion.
🇬🇧 Blossom Capital announced a new $400 million series A VC investment fund, its fourth.
🇫🇷 Serena raised €200 million to finance startups in applied AI and the energy transition.
🇬🇧 Salica Investments made a first close for a £150 million growth vehicle, its second, for investing via equity and debt at multi-stage levels.
🇩🇰 55 North Ventures Fund announced a first close of €134 million for its debut fund targeting quantum tech developers.
led by Owen Lozman, a Brit who's held a similar role with M Ventures in The Netherlands for the past four years.
🇬🇧 Notion Capital also closed a $130 million growth fund - led by Stephanie Opdam and Jess Bartos.
🇵🇱 Expeditions announced €100 million committed for their second fund targeting a €150 million final close.
🇪🇸 4Founders announced the closing of their third fund at €70 million for doing pre-seed transactions in Spain.
🇬🇧 Creator Fund made a first close of $41 million for its first institutional fund targeting PhD founders across Europe.
part of Brent Hobberman's Founders Fund, managed by ex-WPP Jamie Macfarlane.
not to be mistaken to Creator Ventures, run also from London by Sasha Kaletsky and Caspar Lee, at a second fund closed at $45 million this year.
New funds
🇩🇪 Verne Capital is a newly announced €100 million investment company founded by Benjamin Krahmer and Michael Singer for backing European startups doing resilience, a quarter of which specifically defence ones out of Ukraine.
the two are also associated with Futury Ventures, a multi-stage VC from Frankfurt funded by the local state government of Hesse.
🇩🇪 Maximilian Derpa announced May Ventures, a newly minted €30 million fund out of Münster to fund DACH early stage startups.
🇳🇴 Polarion is a new fund launched by Thomas Falck and Oslo Family Office to invest in defence growth companies in the Nordics.
🇪🇸 Hyperion Fund announced kicking off the fundraising process for a new €500 million fund, its second, focused on defense - follows the €150 million debut one closed last year and already 40% deployed.
🇫🇷 Supernova Invest is also in the market for raising a €300 million late-stage fund to invest in scaling European deeptech.
🇬🇧 Mark Williams (ex-Inflexion) and Leon Gillespie (Houlihan Lokey) are raising for a mid-market buyout shop called Goldenpeak.
🇬🇧 Evantic Capital was officially unveiled by ex-Sequoia's partner Matt Miller along its team (see above) and five of their deals:
ICYMI - they did a $355 million closing earlier this year for dealing with B2B companies at the Series B and growth stages.
Exits
🇧🇪 Volta Ventures, Merus Capital and YC exited from Segments, a Leuven, Belgium-based labelling platform for robotics and autonomous driving acquired by Uber for an undisclosed amount.
first Belgian startup to be incubated at YC in 2021, post which it raised a million round.
Europeans abroad
🇦🇹 Speedinvest co-led a $3 million pre-seed raised by an American crew doing applications using cryptographic hashes to provide on-demand, comprehensive maps.
🇬🇧 Index Ventures chipped in to a $50 million in Series B funding round closed with Phaidra, a Seattle-based provider of AI agents that help manage data centers.
Elsewhere
Cole Pergament joined Sequoia Capital as a partner in San Francisco, after more than four years with Bond Capital.
Bain Capital raised $400 million in an IPO for a SPAC vehicle.
B Capital, Greycroft, Madrona, and Menlo Ventures funded a $64 million seed round raised by Axiom Math, a San Francisco startup founded this year that is building an AI mathematician to solve and generate complex math problems.
Andreessen Horowitz, DST, Accel et al have backed a $300 million seed round closed with Periodic Labs, American seasoned crew (ex-Google and OpenAI) working on creating AI scientists.
Lightspeed and Khosla Ventures co-led a $90 million series A at $415 million post done by DualEntry, Americans building an new gen ERP using AI.
Lux Capital led a $87 million series B deal at $1.1B valuation raised by Modal Labs, a New York-based serverless cloud platform.
Spark Capital led, joined by a16z, Lightspeed, and Menlo Ventures, a $103 million Series B round at a $1B+ valuation closed by Eve, an AI platform for plaintiff law firms.
PIF (Saudi Arabia 's sovereign wealth fund) and Silver Lake took Electronic Arts private in a $55B deal.
Other signals
Interesting deals
🇩🇪 Emblematic (AI agents automating AR/AP collection) - seed
🇬🇧 Nozomio (AI agent that helps developers understand their codebase) - seed
🇫🇷 Popsink (next gen enterprise-grade data replication platform) - seed
What would you invest in?
I have picked three early stage, seed level startups from Europe with intriguing odds for growing. You're the VC - who gets your term sheet?
Last week’s results:
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🇬🇧 Danu Insights - AI-driven simulations used for clinical trials (61%)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🇪🇸 Pensero AI - AI tool designed to improve Engineering Management KPIs. (17%)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🇩🇪 Zentur - digital twin SAAS for heating network operators. (22%)
Let’s see your say this week - click on the link of your choice below - we’ll add the result next week.
Which startup would you invest in?
That’s all folks, have a wonderful week!
Did you find this email useful?
Thanks for reading! Please send me feedback by hitting reply.
To support my work, upgrade to one of the subscription options.
If this email was forwarded to you, please subscribe, it’s free!
Created every Sunday by @drnovac of Nordic 9 with weekly notes and observations from the European startup ecosystem.
You have received this email as you signed up at Sunday CET or are a Nordic 9 registered user.