Hey there,
Writing this from somewhere at the edge of Europe as I took a few days off to recharge batteries. I love summer - having lived in Sweden for a long time makes you appreciate every single day of sun and warm.
Trying to stay away as much as possible from the lil’ European startup ecosystem and hence the Sunday hiatus. Shouldn’t take too long since I get bored easily - alas there’s not too much going on, though I expect to see some interesting stuff announced this month.
Until we resume the usual cadence, thought it’d be nice to send you the latest intel piece that our customers got earlier this morning - below, hope you find it useful. As a reminder, you can signup for it from here.
Enjoy and stay cool,
Dragos
Highlights
Europe's next industrial champions
Quantum Systems - German manufacturer of UAVs closed a $1.2 billion Series D funding led by Blackstone, Noteus, Airbus and Advent International, joined by Bond, Fidelity, Balderton and HV Capital.
QS has its business levered to the war in Ukraine, with 19,000 drone missions in Ukraine in 2025 alone - expecting €700m in revenue for 2026, a 10-11X forward.
This is one of the largest private defense-tech rounds in European history priced at $8b - 2.3X higher than a year ago when Balderton extended the C.
For context, Helsing was priced at $18b and Stark Defense at $3.9b earlier this year - together with QS, they account for more than half of this year's mega-rounds.
Note that Stark was spun off of QS in 2024 since their investors wouldn't invest in weapons systems.
Prior to the war, QS was initially focused on drones for local farmers and a German-only investors affair - conducted by 10x group at seed, Bayern Kapital at series A and HV Capital, Project A and Peter Thiel at B (done at around $400m in 2023).
Balderton did the C at $1b in 2025.
The money in defense is in SAAS not in hardware though it doesn't behave like SAAS - most military drones are ammunition more than aircraft since they're disposable i.e many FPV drones have expected lives measured in one mission.
This makes the drone the delivery mechanism for software delivered via OS platforms - winners create software-driven infra platforms that need to be continuously updated and upgraded. And charge recurrently for it, which makes for predictable free cash flow into a spreadsheet.
Ukraine loses on the order of 10k drones/month, and also makes millions of FPVs domestically, so the foreign opportunity skews to higher-end systems, not cheap FPVs.
This leads to an adjacent picks and shovels economy developing down the value chain for components production i.e. batteries, radios, camera nav, flight computers - the drones have become very sophisticated machines, in spite of their limited lifecycle.
The real bottleneck in defense tech today however is not tech but manufacturing throughput.
it's not whether you can deliver but rather how fast and this makes for premium pricing because supply is constrained - evidence of an emerging market hardly at an equilibrium.
The investors narrative has changed dramatically within 18-24 months - VCs started to get a grip on the market traditionally in the hands of governments, which funded defense R&D and large contractors invested from retained earnings.
While private capital taking over is a significant structural change impacting the entire European ecosystem - Europe is still missing growth capital, badly.
It is a very concentrated market, with a small number of startups able to make the transition from a tech company to a next-gen defense prime.
Those bets are transformational as what today looks like a drone startup will translate into Europe's industrial champions in the next decades.
All Ukraine's defence tech companies have fundraised roughly $150 million in the last few years - a tenth of QS's current round, which is also larger than what Euro defence was able to raise for the entire 2024.
Fwiw, Euro defence tech companies fundraised about $1b in 2024 and $2.5b in 2025 in Europe, per an industry insider - with the caveat of a not transparent industry with numbers thrown in public varying significantly i.e Dealroom's have a 4X delta to the above and are sketchy at best since they count apples to bananas in order to sell a rosy picture.
Fact is, Ukraine's total defense spending reached roughly $84b in 2025; assume a third was spent on equipment and munitions, 30% of which with non-Ukrainian suppliers - that's an $8.4b piece of market for outsiders, most of which probably spent with established defense contractors, not startups, all depending on how broadly you define startup i.e. Helsing, Tekever etc.
Extended TAM is larger than the war appetite though - on one hand, the 84b above doesn't account for purchases via other financing schemes i.e aid, donations, government-to-government assistance etc.
On the other, all NATO countries are re-arming, with the side benefit that once you've built a combat-proven platform, the incremental cost of selling it to another NATO customer is much lower than developing it from scratch.
That is to say, Ukraine was never the market - it's the qualification test. Which is also why the concentration matters - only a handful of companies get to qualify their product that no procurement office can replicate in peacetime. And at the end of the day what makes a startup turn into an industrial champion.
Germans doing rare seed check in the Nordics
More defense highlights - Six Robotics of Norway selling collaborative swarm autonomy systems for defense, raised a $14 million seed round led by DTCP, with EIFO and Scale Capital joining as investors.
It's not often you see in Norway a 14M seed led by a German fund, with participation from non-Norwegians (both EIFO and Scale are Danish). Did the Germans invest outside their German comfort zone just for a strong team and a promising product?
Of course not, here's the background context:
Founder Christian Eggesbø was approached by FFI (the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment) in 2023 and asked whether he would establish a company to commercialize an autonomous drone swarm technology that had been part of research programs funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Defence
He spun the tech into a business and built a commercial product closely with the Norwegian Armed Forces to target practical, operational battlefield requirements. They also became customers, via a $2.8M (NOK 28M) public contract plus others exempt from public disclosure because of national security considerations.
This contract book explains writing a 10m check alone and leading at a likely 30-40m seed valuation.
Also worth noting that Christian Eggesbø had served in the Norwegian Special Forces prior to this startup.
The lead on behalf of DTCP is a Norwegian who previously has worked with the Norwegian Intelligence Service and Special Forces for more than a decade - joined the Germans in 2025 as principal.
This explains the Germans venturing up North for leading a 14m seed - out of a €500M defence fund announced earlier this winter.
Polish under radar
Got a little something else worth your attention.
There is a Polish company called Liftero that did €390k in sales in 2025, and now, six months later, has an active sales pipeline in excess of €100 million.
Liftero is manufacturing propulsion systems for small satellites used to change orbits, dodge space debris, and perform complex dockings. Their output is both individual thrusters as well as Booster, a customizable kit that bundles thrusters with fuel tanks and electronics into a single, ready-to-use module.
The Poles contribute to a competitive European environment - D-Orbit ($53m series D), Exotrail ($58m B) or Exploration Company ($160m B) all develop integrated propulsion systems while ThrustMe (2m seed), Morpheus Space ($42m A) or Enpulsion ($27m B) are in the thrusters manufacturing business.
Liftero just listed on the local stock exchange in Warsaw - raised €4.1M (PLN 17.5M) at €30M in an event that was 20 times oversubscribed. Closing on Friday was at a €67M capitalization.
Per the IPO prospectus, Liftero has in the works 20 thrusters distributed across three Booster propulsion systems under active contract slated for delivery by the end of 2026 - two for OrbitAID from India for an in-orbit satellite servicing and refueling mission, and a third for an undisclosed Asian orbital servicing company launching aboard SpaceX Falcon 9 in the first half of 2027.
Those guys are on a roll and completely off the VC reservation.
Top grades this week
Each week we select the deals we found most interesting and grade them based on our proprietary methodology for evaluating one question - 'does this deal matter, and why?'.
Number of relevant deals this week: 28 (out of 114 added to the DB)
Grade distribution:
10 x Ⓐ - deals that matter
18 x Ⓑ - deals that are notable
Geo distribution
Nordics (9 deals): 2 x Ⓐ | 7 x Ⓑ
UK (8 deals): 4 x Ⓐ | 4 x Ⓑ
France (5 deals): 1 x Ⓐ | 4 x Ⓑ
DACH (3 deals): 1 x Ⓐ | 2 x Ⓑ
NL (2 deals): 1 x Ⓐ | 1 x Ⓑ
Czech Republic (1 deal): 1 x Ⓐ
A grades:
Ⓐ 🇪🇪 Vegvisir - unified command-and-control software layer for warfare
Ⓐ 🇫🇷 Macrodata Labs - foundational data infrastructure for robotics and embodied AI
Ⓐ 🇬🇧 Build Inc - AI-powered development agency that automates the slow, manual process of real estate and data center due diligence.
Ⓐ 🇬🇧 geoSurge - GEO optimisation software
Ⓐ 🇳🇴 Six Robotics - collaborative swarm autonomy system for defense.
Ⓐ 🇬🇧 StirlingX - operator of drone and sovereign data intelligence platforms
Ⓐ 🇩🇪 hallo theo - AI-powered digital tools with a human network to handle residential building administration
Ⓐ 🇬🇧 Gaussion - developers of magnetic battery-control technology
Ⓐ 🇨🇿 EquiLibre Technologies - algo-based system for hedge fund trading transactions.
Ⓐ 🇳🇱 Eye Security - operators of a cybersecurity and insurtech combo.
The reasoning for each further below in the deal curation section. You can consult the archive with all the graded deals here.
Nordics
Defense autonomy and AI compute are the name of the game - swarm-robotics seed (Six Robotics), a warfare-C2 pre-seed (Vegvisir), and two sovereign AI data-center plays (Fossefall, Airon).
pre-seed funding round with Iron Wolf Capital.
used for active deployment to Ukraine, works with the Australian Army and part of the EU's pan-European Vantage Project, developing next-generation tactical drones alongside partners from France, Spain, Romania, and Belgium.
raised an equity round led by Borderless, with participation from Likeminded.
that would be a fourth seed extension per our tracking - topping an initial 6m led by Element Ventures in 2022.
their captable includes byfounders, Skyfall and Angular Ventures.
active in a market with BVNK as starlight (acq by Mastercard for 1.8b) and a dozen or so serious players in Europe competing for the same customers - likely on the way to transition from a regulated crypto businesses to a stablecoin payments infrastructure for global companies.
they have a Danish Payment Institution licence (under PSD2) and just announced securing an EU MiCA authorisation.
$1.5 million pre-seed led by Maki vc, with Wave Ventures, Failup Ventures, and Founders House
market proof with the automotive customer service
Ⓑ 🇸🇪 Nordic Forestry Automation - advanced operator-support systems and autonomous software for forest machinery.
$5.3 million in a seed financing round led by Navigare Ventures and Almi Invest.
spun off of Wallenberg Autonomous Systems in 2021 - Navigare is a VC part of an investment ecosystem controlled by Wallenberg's family in Sweden.
$6.8 million seed funding round led by DIG Ventures, joined by Crane Venture Partners, Acequia Capital, Third Kind Venture Capital, Essence Venture Capital and Alliance VC.
follows a 3m pre-seed led by Crane in 2022 and extended in 2023.
200 production teams using their open source platform, logo customers include Groupon, Bookshop or Carla.
Dig Ventures is the family office of Ross Mason, known as founder at MuleSoft, turned into a 100m VC fund.
Ⓐ 🇳🇴 Six Robotics - collaborative swarm autonomy system for defense.
$14 million seed round led by DTCP, with EIFO and Scale Capital joining as investors.
Ⓑ 🇫🇮 SemiQon - developer of silicon-based quantum processors (QPUs) and cryogenic CMOS (cryo-CMOS) chips.
closed a series A extension deal with Post Scriptum.
series A was led by EIC Fund, resumed at $15.5 million in 2025. Other seed investors include Voima Ventures and Lunar Ventures.
still early stage, as they started shipping their first commercial customer orders of quantum hardware in Q1 2026.
$50 million series A round
$250m post
engineered from the ground up for high-performance computing and next-generation AI model training
notably no institutional funds in the captable - rather a family office based in the US, an American AI startup valued at $1.2b, and a Norwegian entrepreneur.
Also notable
Ⓑ 🇸🇪 Airon, operating purpose-built data centers for AI, sold a majority stake to Meanings Capital Partners, a French PE active in the lower-end buyout market.
the Swedes are running two vertically-integrated sites (one operational, the other one in the works), energy efficient and able to deliver isolated AI compute to customers.
aim to scale toward 24 MW of operational capacity, expecting $73m in revenue in 2026.
The UK
The week's broadest and highest-graded slate: AI for government, real-estate due diligence and search + defense-intel and battery deep-tech - with a recurring Palantir-alumni and US-expansion thread.
$2.5 million pre-seed round co-led by 20vc and Acadia Ventures
$2.8 million pre-seed funding round led by Emerge VC and joined by Portfolion, Entrepreneurs First, and angel investors.
USP: a single MCP endpoint connecting to data warehouses or directly to SAAS apps for automatically building a semantic/context layer so AI understands company data.
strong team - a serial tech founder and a Palantir engineer that hooked up at EF in London in 2024.
$3.7 million pre-seed round led by CapitalT with participation from Sure Valley Ventures, Common Magic, Tiny VC, Endurance Ventures, and angel investors.
traction: they claim 300+ hours embedded with planning officers + have an ongoing project with Leeds City Council + won a £1.2m PropTech Innovation Challenge for its AI planning tool.
notable the Dutch from CapitalT leading the deal - two female founders deploying out of a €50M second fund announced in 2025.
Ⓐ 🇬🇧 Build Inc - AI-powered development agency that automates the slow, manual process of real estate and data center due diligence
$8.5 million seed led by Index Ventures, with F4 Fund, Pebblebed, Puzzle Ventures and Tiny vc.
USP: multi-agent AI system, which evaluates over 1,600 data sources at once, compressing traditional four-week site due diligence down to just 75 minutes.
founded by an ex-Palantir executive with an US-first built attitude - nine-person team split across New York, San Francisco, and London.
fwiw, lead investor Martin Mignot is also running Index's bridge program to help companies with British or European roots scale into the American market.
$12 million seed round led by AlbionVC, joined by Play Ventures, Octopus Ventures, Celero Ventures, Boost Capital, Passion Capital and Tuesday Capital
pre-seeded by Passion and Tuesday in the summer of 2025
their thing is corpus engineering - a tool that goes beyond monitoring or prompt optimization, and claiming to be able to change a model's memory.
a bold claim in need of an equally strong measuring tech - yet a good sales hook for another software startup invested in LLMs as a new distribution channel.
claim of multi-million ARR business within its first year but no mention of customers name or how they fit against the above differentiator.
$20 million Series A led by Ventura Capital, joined by existing backer RCM Private Markets Master Fund and Gallos Technologies.
follows a $11M seed in late 2025 co-led by a British hedge fund and a Canadian dual-use VC firm.
they have commercial ties with UK Ministry of Defence, NATO and UK's Five Eyes partners.
series A led by Ventura's founder Mo El Husseiny, who also led Tekever's 20m A round back in 2022 and up-marked by NATO, NSSIF and Baillie Gifford.
Ⓑ 🇬🇧 MDOTM - institutional AI platform designed to help asset and wealth managers scale, customize, and automate their investment workflows
$27 million growth equity round led by Expedition Growth Capital.
60+ major financial institutions including Morgan Stanley, Amundi, and Zurich Bank
the startup was notably kicked off in Italy and funded mostly with angel and startup accelerators money.
$28 million in a series B round led by BGF and AlbionVC,
follows a $12m Series A led by Autotech Ventures in 2024.
their tech is able to retrofit lithium-based batteries - initially designed for EV makers, post series A they found pockets of value within AI data centers in need for backup battery banks to absorb and discharge power faster during grid spikes without degrading the expensive batteries.
this is translated into demand from 14 pilot customers Gaussion needs to fulfil.
also interesting to note Gaussion's being designated as a critical asset for the British economic growth, culminating in the CEO joining an official UK trade mission to the United States in the spring of 2026 - which resulted in new biz and Future Ventures of Steve Jurvetson fame among those chipping in to the current B round.
France
Small, early and unmistakably AI-native: conviction bets on live media-buying, legaltech and ex-Hugging Face robotics data infrastructure + Nvidia alts made in France + plane manufacturer building a solid leg in the US
Ⓑ 🇫🇷 Concord Ad - AI agent for live media buying.
$3 million pre-seed funding with A16Z Scout, Drysdale, Motier Ventures, Better Angle and angel investors.
clients include WPP and Havas
$3.5 million seed round led by Newfund Capital, joined by M Capital.
founded (and operated) by PhD students in Bordeaux in 2023 and serving 5,000 customers including 2,000 independent lawyers, 200 law firms and 8 institutional bar associations - ARPU is €105.
$4 million pre-seed funding led by Air Street Capital and joined by angel investors.
founded by seasoned ex-Hugging Face engineers over the winter, when they also closed the capital round.
series B funding extension round led by Ardian, and joined by Omnes Capital, Otium Capital, and XAnge
the French are building cheaper, highly specialized alternatives chips to Nvidia's, but specifically for AI inference
deal made to accommodate Ardian in the captable - initial 43m series B was led by Otium in 2025, and also joined by EIC Fund and Germany's agency Sprind.
the latter indicate a sovereign play, combined with the completion of a physical tape-out using TSMC’s advanced manufacturing process, meaning designed's sealed and the chips got into scale manufacturing for commercial rollout.
Ⓑ 🇫🇷 Elixir Aircraft - producer of light aircraft designed for pilot training and general aviation
$51 million series C led by Bpifrance, joined by Odyssée Venture, Innovacom
follows a $14m B done with the same investors in 2024 - note the French only captable composition.
production will jump from 13 aircrafts in 2025 to a targeted 60 planes per year by 2027 to break even + a brand new assembly plant and support facility based in USA and designed to make 70% of their output.
Other geo
Outsized bet at the edges (500M series A in the Czech Republic) + Dutch AI security-architecture automation + German unglamorous back office AI (property admin and fund management) + defense heavyweight up top.
$2 million in a pre-seed funding round led by 14Peaks Capital, with participation from Redstone and angel investors.
conviction bet on a fairly competitive market where, as always, distribution may be more important than technology.
$3.3 million pre-seed extension round with Curiosity VC, eCAPITAL and BNVT Capital.
BNVT led the 3m pre-seed in the summer of 2025.
since then they launched the product and opened an NYC office.
BNVT fka 9900 Capital is a British $150m multistage investment fund operated by Chris Corbishley (ex-Hedosophia and Forward Partners) and Rory Mounsey-Heysham (ex- Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)
$7.8 million seed led by QBIT Capital, joined by Zürcher, Apprecia Capital, Spacewalk VC and Blue Wonder Ventures.
academic research project turned into a merchant foundry - namely selling on-demand manufacturing for customers who design TFLN photonic chips (i.e. quantum developers, telecoms).
still very early stage in an emerging niche - the TFLN manufacturing market is estimated at to grow from $1.8b today to 8.4b over the next decade. Fwiw, TFLN is an alternative to legacy silicon modulators and bulky legacy crystals.
Ⓐ 🇩🇪 hallo theo - AI-powered digital tools with a human network to handle residential building administration
$29 million series A led by Insight Partners
founded three years ago - now handling 17,000 customers and 20,000 apartments across Germany
Insight also led the 10m seed in the winter of 2025.
Ⓐ 🇨🇿 EquiLibre Technologies - algo-based system for trading transactions.
series A led by Creandum
deal reportedly priced at $500m, with the Swedish casually mentioning to have written the largest check in their history.
follows a 10m seed at 140m done with Blossom back in 2023, when the founders quit their Google/IBM US-based jobs and relocated to Europe.
they built an AI model used for quantitative trading via reinforcement learning agents that reportedly haven't lost money since launch - and accordingly make money by powering trades for an NYC hedge fund, and take a cut of the trading profits.
also interesting to note how the tables have turned - Blossom is a series A lead VC rather than a conviction taker at early stage, and Creandum covering most of the A, while they have ventured more at earlier stage in the past 18-24 months.
Ⓐ 🇳🇱 Eye Security - operators of a cybersecurity and insurtech combo
$69 million in series C funding led by Sofina, joined by TIN Capital, JP Morgan and Bessemer Venture Partners.
Bessemer led the 17.4m series A back in 2022, followed by JP Morgan's doing the $39m B in 2024.
USP: developer of cyber-security solutions sold as a SAAS combined with cyber insurance products to SMEs
traction: 1,000 corporate clients across major European markets
Investors on the move
🇫🇷 JB de Boissieu joined Strategic Value Partners as a managing director of European investments out of London - he's been with Davidson Kempner of NYC for fifteen years, prior to.
🇸🇪 Elin Torstensson is the new CEO of SSE Business Lab/SSE Ventures - she's been previously with Zenith and Inception Fund in Stockholm.
We've got many more moves on our live tracker here, with searchable archives by company or country.
Powder
🇨🇿 Orbit Capital made the final close of its second debt fund at €107 million - targeting post series A startups in CEE.
🇩🇪 Senovo raised $100 million for a fourth fund, dedicated to deploy €1m-5m to early-stage B2B software companies.
🇬🇧 Tapestry VC announced a new $80 million fund, its third - founded out of Amaranthine in 2019.
🇬🇧 Osney Capital also raised £60 million for a debut cyber security seed fund.
🇩🇰 Climentum Capital made a first €60 million close for a climate hard tech fund.
🇬🇧 Ruya Ventures announced closings of $50 million for a debut deeptech VC fund.
founded by ex-Speedinvest partner Rick Hao.
Also notable
CFT is a small deeptech venture studio which has been incubating Cambridge startups since 2020 - notable since they also just raised an outside $30m VC fund, besides putting foot in the American door.
Prana last raised a €40 million fund in 2021
combined assets estimated at €600 million AuM
🇬🇧 Firedrop launched a fund initiative with Omnea for seed funding employees after 5 years at Omnea.
Omnea sells an AI-native procurement orchestration platform last raised $50m in Series B funding co-led by Insight Partners and Khosla Ventures, joined by Accel, Point Nine, First Round Capital, and Prosus in 2025.
Liquidity events
🇫🇷 Index Ventures, Iconiq, Motier Ventures, Iris Capital and Factorial exited from Adaptive, French AI startup developing agentic AI for observability and cybersecurity, acquired by Datadog.
the French were seeded with $20m at 100m in 2024, with Index in the lead
founded by former LightOn and Hugging Face researchers - deal's prize, to be integrated into Datadog's research team.
🇳🇴 Accel, Saudi Aramco and TCV exited from Cognite acquired by Schneider Electric for $3.1 billion in cash.
Cognite generated some $170m in revenue for the 2025 fiscal year - 18.2X revenue multiple.
$683.6m was in secondary transactions, mostly done by Baillie Gifford for a remarkable 18X - they got in at just under $1b in 2023 and deployed a total of about $192 million over several private funding rounds leading up to the IPO.
at the end of the week BS trading price was 24% above IPO.
closed up 2% in its Nasdaq debut Thursday
proceeds were added to the balance sheet while investors were locked-up for a year, which can expire after 150 days if IQM’s stock price closes at or above $12/share for any 20 trading days within a 30-day window.
Rumours:
Europeans abroad
🇨🇦 Lakestar and Expeditions Fund chipped into a $97.9 million Series A round led by Georgian and closed by Dominion Dynamics, a Canadian defense startup developing command-and-control software, Arctic surveillance sensors, and autonomous drone systems for defense operations in extreme environments.
Closing thoughts
Significant money chasing Europe's hard problems - a feel-good story we could get used to, with the obligatory sovereign hat on and the inevitable American plot twists - Build Inc's US-first matching Index's acquisition channel, Gaussion's American trade mission, and returning diaspora making money out of Wall Street.
Not least, more liquidity events, hopeful signs of normality in a dry and high market that's mainly dealing defense, AI across the stack and weird stuff at the edges.
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