Want to keep up to date about European startup news? Want to be in the know about controversies, deals, acquisitions, reports and other interesting tech tidbits from across the continent. Look no further!
Here is all the news about startups in Europe this week, brought to you by our pan-European team of Sifted journalists. If you want the news (and so much more) in your inbox three times a week, sign up to our newsletter here.
VC News
🍄 European VC Creandum has closed its fifth fund, with €265m to invest in early-stage businesses. It’s invested in plenty of big Nordic success stories so far, such as Spotify, iZettle and Small Giant Games. Who’s next?
💵 London-based VC Talis Capital — whose investments include Darktrace and Iwoca – has raised $100m to invest in startups from late seed to Series C. Managing partners Matus Maar and Vasile Foca tell Techcrunch what they are looking for in this Q&A.
🍻 There’s also a new €50m fund for B2B software startups in Europe, from Munich’s 42CAP.
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Big Money
🥂 Everyone’s favourite digital bank, Monzo, has raised £113m. That means it’s now worth more than £2bn — and has plenty of funds to support its launch in the US.
Less big money
🚘 Used car marketplace Motorway, based in London, has raised £11m. Auto1, a Berlin-based competitor (which isn’t live in the UK), was valued at €2.9bn last year when SoftBank invested in the company. So what’s Motorway‘s USP? It doesn’t buy its vehicles, unlike Auto1; it lets buyers compare what’s out there, and then puts them in touch directly with sellers.
🔋Metron, a French startup that makes energy management technology for manufacturers, has raised an additional €10m from investors including NTT DoCoMo Ventures and StatKraft Ventures.
🛡️Bleckwen, a spin-off from French cybersecurity firm Ercom, raised €8.8m to help develop its AI-based fraud detection software.
🏆WeGift, the UK-based rewards platform, raised a £4m Series-A round led by Fred Destin at Stride.vc, as well as Unilever Ventures and the SAP.iO fund.
Big moves
🛏️ Station F, the Paris startup campus (which we wrote about earlier this week), is expanding into co-living with the opening of a 600-room space called Flatmates. It is cheaper and less bureaucratic than normal flat rental in Paris, but you can only apply if you work at Station F – and forget about bringing pets or kids.
🧺 Laundrapp, the UK-based on-demand laundry service, has bought its Berlin-based rival Zipjet, and also completed a new funding round (amount not disclosed) from existing investors.
🦌 Company builder Antler is going back to its founders’ roots – opening in Oslo in January 2020. Is this what Norway — which has a pretty early-stage startup scene — has been waiting for? (Norwegian)
👕 Just 1% of all textiles are recycled to make new clothes. Swedish startup Renewcell has a solution for that — and has just raised €4.7m from H&M (and others). (Swedish)
🥨 Scooter startups Voi and Tier have hit the streets of Berlin.
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