Hey there,

Welcome to Sunday CET!

It’s been a slow summer in Europe, with a lot of talks and little to show for it. The economy is bad and the Russian war hasn’t end it, in spite of the pan-international theater shows we get to see on TV every now and then. Meanwhile, the startup ecosystem is struggling to adapt and VCs are in the middle of an AI bubble, while folks in the real world deal with more mundane issues such as accelerated inflation, laying offs and a tough job market.

This week’s edition is outlining some of the things that have caught my attention from the European startup world in the past 8-10 weeks, selected from what we have covered for our customers throughout the summer.

Enjoy,
Dragos

Summer in review

Below an outline of what caught my attention this summer:

• deals
  🇸🇪 Tandem $50M series A
  🇹🇷 ​Good Job Games​ $60M series A
  🇪🇸 ​Rillet $70M series B
  🇹🇷 ​Midas​ $80M series B
  🇮🇹 Exein $80M series C
  🇬🇧 Xelix $160M series B
  

• funds
  🇫🇷 Eurazeo ​€650M for AI scaleups
  🇸🇪 SEB launched a defence fund
  🇨🇭 Lakestar $265M continuation fund.

• exits

  🇩🇪 Cognigy (​$955M), 🇪🇸 Wallapop ($700M), ​🇪🇸Onum ($300M), 🇪🇸 CoverManager, 🇬🇧 Humanloop, 🇩🇰 Tola

• defence deals
  🇬🇧 Cambridge Aerospace​ ($100M w/ Spark, Accel, Lakestar),
  🇩🇪 Stark Defence ($62M w/ Sequoia)
  🇬🇧 ​Portal Biotech ($35M w/ NATO, Earlybird)
  🇫🇷 Harmattan ($30M w/ FirstMark)

• Nordics push the AI infrastructure
  🇩🇰 QuNorth 
  🇸🇪 Sferical AI
  🇳🇴 Stargate

• other stuff
  🇺🇸 Accel, GV and Sequoia paid a premium on top of everybody else at early stage in Europe this year.
  🇩🇪 n8n 7X-ed within 3 months to a $2.3B valuation with less than $100M ARR
  🇸🇪 Lovable announced i) series A at $1.8B in June, ii) doing $130M in ARR in August.
  🇳🇱 Framer raised $100M series D at $2B, 40X revenue multiples
  🇬🇧 Fuse Energy produces $90M in annualised revenue out of 50k households.

  🇪🇺 Project Europe’s first five startups + YC’s summer batch of 20+ European startups link 

  🇪🇺 HSG got a Europe CEO, Speedinvest a new chairman and EQT Group has a new CEO.

• some European revenue numbers, their latest
  🇬🇧 OnlyFans - $1.4B (out of $7.2B dealings)
  🇩🇪 DeepL - $200M (last raised at $2B in 2024)
  🇫🇷 Dataiku - $163M (last raised at $3.7B in 2022)
  🇩🇪 Mambu - $165M (last raised $5.5B in 2021)
  🇫🇷 Mirakl - $160M (last raised at $3.5B in 2021)
  🇬🇧 Synthesia - $132M (last raised at $2.1B in 2025)
  🇫🇷 Mistral - $110M (last raised at $6.2B in 2024)
  🇬🇧 Multiverse - $106M (last raised at $1.7B in 2022)
  🇩🇰 Pleo - $105M (last raised at $4.7B in 2021, adjusted to $1.6B this year)
  🇬🇧 Quantexa - $100M (last raised at $2.6B in 2025)

Signals

Interesting deals

🇬🇧 Attio (new-gen CRM) - series B
🇸🇪 Farang (new foundational AI architecture) - seed
🇬🇧 Synkka (AI agents for parcel delivery) - seed

• we add more of those on Linkedin.

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:

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 🇳🇴 Edda AI (Oslo) - data platform for real-time KPIs (25% votes)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🇬🇧 Unison (London) - API for data harmonisation/federation in personalised medicine (37.5% votes)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🇩🇪 Tomorrow Things (Bonn) - digital twins for technical assets. (37.5% votes)

Let’s see your say this week - click on the link of your choice below - we’ll add the result next week.

Cheat sheets

• Seed and series A median numbers, % leads for seed-focused, multistage, American investors in H1 2025.

• Euro deals done by non-local investors in H1 2025 (i.e. non-Nordic in the Nordics etc)

• Active investors in the Nordics summer 2025.

• AI deals made in Europe by Europe's mega funds + American

Intel this summer

• Lovable’s projections on how to get at a $20B valuation

• economics of rails for debt market 

• are roll-ups in the property management business a good idea?

• the VC economics for a drone interceptor startup

Best content on Europe in your inbox - join to stay in the loop along Europe’s top investors.

Euro dealings

• This week, both Synthesia and Bitpanda reps said they won't consider an IPO in London - London IPO fundraising is at 30-year low, with only nine new listings in the first half of 2025.

• Klarna - wants to IPO. Again.

• Private members' club chain Soho House, which runns 46 clubs in US, Europe and Asia, was bought for £2 billion as Ashton Kutcher joins board.

• UniCredit raised its stake in Commerzbank to 26%.

• Telefónica wants to purchase Vodafone Spain.

• Banco Santander is the sole bookrunner of funds raised by Chamat Palihapitiya’s latest SPAC listing → it expects to cash 6% or 15 million, should the SPAC becomes successful i.e. finds and acquires target company.

Policy

• The EU Commission’s €150 billion in loans for defence procurement will fund purchases where 65% of the cost of the end product is made in an EU country, Norway or Ukraine → for non-EU companies access is less straight-forward, as they need to sign a bilateral agreement with the EU. The UK is the first on track to do so.

• The Americans claimed earlier this month that the UK government has dropped its demands to create a backdoor into Apple's encryption → the Brits didn’t confirm it and are yet to comply or rescind though.

• French President Emmanuel Macron vowed a strong response to protect Europe’s digital sovereignty, after earlier this week, US President Donald Trump threatened to impose fresh tariffs and export restrictions on countries that have digital services taxes or regulations that harm American tech companies.

• Poll shows half of Americans think Trump will run again, even though the constitution bans it.

• EU speeds up plans for digital euro after US stablecoin law caught many in Europe off guard.

• UK banks closed a third of branches in last five years - Lloyds, NatWest, Halifax and Bank of Scotland have already lined up another 113 closures by the end of November.

• Company owners in France will now have the option to request that their home addresses no longer be made public - that’s due the the recent kidnappings of people from the French crypto circles.

Closing notes

• Google Cloud is developing its own blockchain for payments and financial products.

• economics of AI subscription pricing + the router as a mean to GPT’s ad monetisation model.

• [In Silicon Valley…] Everyone wears the same clothes, drives the same cars, listens to the same podcasts, follows the same fads. It’s a place born of immense sort of herd-like behaviour. link

• What if kids could learn in two hours a day, test in the top 1% nationally, spend their afternoons mastering other great skills, and love school more than vacation? podcast

• AI companionship robots for seniors are a thing in South Korea. And so are AI avatars of deceased people in the US.

• There’s a certain group of investors and classic business planning to create a new league that would somehow also compete with the NBA - there’s many such alternative private leagues in other sports, funded by VC/PE funds.

• Lamborghini CEO says tariffs are causing even the wealthiest buyers to pause.
  

That’s all folks, have a wonderful week!

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Created every Sunday by @drnovac of Nordic 9 with weekly notes and observations from the European startup ecosystem.

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