LinkedIn Logo

Facebook Logo

RSS Feed Logo

The latest funding news covering the companies raising in Europe.

The latest news on M&A deals happening in European tech, as well as M&A market trends and insights from companies on the lookout for acquisitions. 

Regional rankings of Europe's fastest-growing startups.

Meet hundreds of rising stars and big beasts of startup ecosystems around Europe.

Discover the latest news and analysis from Sifted covering what it's like to build a startup in Europe.

Discover how (and how not) to launch and scale a startup, with advice from leading founders and operators.

Access Sifted's journalism with our free subscription for startups across Europe.

The latest news covering European VC, including who’s raising, new funds and people moves.

The latest investor surveys of startups to watch, according to VCs.

Exclusive to Sifted Pro subscribers. Europe's most active startup backers, ranked.

Keep your finger on the pulse with the latest news and expert analysis on what's happening across startup Europe.

Get weekly updates on the latest trends, analysis and industry gossip from across Europe’s fintech scene.

Explore the inner workings of Europe’s hottest startups with practical resources and honest advice from leading operators.

Follow the money with a weekly snapshot of the latest trends, new funds and people moves across European VC.

A weekly roundup of the latest dealmaking activity across Europe — exclusively for Pro subscribers.

Your essential read covering the most-talked about sectors in Europe right now.

Our flagship London event, taking place 30th September - 1st October, 2026.

Expert panellists. Free to attend. Live or on-demand.

Our journalists report on the top Sifted Summit highlights, from raw founder stories to the future of European tech.

Exclusive journalism, analysis, interviews and lists — exclusive to Pro subscribers.

Investment-grade research on emerging sectors, powered by proprietary Sifted research. 

Discover market maps, scouted and structured by Sifted, mapping key players across each sector.

Discover which startups investors are actively monitoring.

Track the latest funding rounds across the European tech ecosystem.

Monitor investor activity since 2024 in real time across Europe's startup ecosystem.

Explore where capital is flowing across European tech with Sifted’s interactive data dashboard.

Track startup acquisitions and acquirers across European tech.

Europe's most active startup backers, ranked.

A weekly column from our cofounder and editorial director, John Thornhill.

Every week, Sifted editor Amy Lewin sits down with the most influential and innovative folks in European tech.

Find your next big opportunity in European tech.

Description for this section, should be no more than a few lines

 Exclusive journalism, analysis, interviews and lists — exclusive to Pro subscribers.

Investment-grade research on emerging sectors, powered by proprietary Sifted research.

 Uncover your ideal read with Sifted Search

Sorry about that! It seems we couldn't find what you were looking for. Would you like to try a different search term? If you're a Pro user, why don't you try using the Sifty Chatbot?

Orlando Crowcroft

When Sifted asked experts at the end of 2022 what they expected to see in fintech in 2023, they said more of the same: after the funding bonanza of 2021, 2022 had been a very slow year and 2023 was unlikely to be any different. 

It ended up being not only a slow year for fintech but an undeniably tough one too. 

2023 saw fintech <a href="https://sifted.eu/articles/uk-tech-in-2023-review">fall far behind in overall fundraising</a>, as VCs instead opted for investments into climate tech. On the regulatory front, Europe’s biggest privately owned tech company, Revolut, finished 2023 still lusting after the UK banking licence <a href="https://sifted.eu/articles/what-happens-revolut-uk-bank-licence">that continues to elude </a>it.

Elsewhere, it was a good year for German fintech unicorn Trade Republic, which was granted <a href="https://sifted.eu/articles/trade-republic-gets-full-eu-banking-licence-news">a full EU banking licence</a>, and a <a href="https://sifted.eu/articles/french-tech-2023">bad year for French insurtech Luko</a>, which was placed in receivership after its €14m deal with incumbent insurer Admiral <a href="https://sifted.eu/articles/luko-placed-in-receivership">fell through</a>.

So what is in store for 2024? Sifted asked experts for their predictions. 

Third-party compliance will become a new focus point for fintechs

Stéphie Ndinga, Chief Compliance Officer at Swan

In 2023 we have seen the costly implications of fintechs choosing not to scrutinise third parties for compliance — <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahkocianski/2023/04/07/what-turbulent-times-mean-for-european-banking-as-a-service/">most recently in the case of German BaaS provider Solaris</a>. This has served as an important reminder of the reputational and financial risk that can come with insufficient checks and monitoring of partners. As regulators continue to crack down on third-party compliance, investing in in-house compliance departments will serve fintechs well in 2024, ensuring that the right risk monitoring and onboarding processes are in place.

Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) startups will need to have a rethink on regulation

Marius Galdikas, CEO at ConnectPay

One area where flexibility is crucial is in the matter of compliance. Because the <a href="https://sifted.eu/pro/briefings/baas-2023">BaaS</a> provider holds the banking licence that allows fintechs to offer financial services to their users, it is the BaaS provider that is ultimately responsible for the security of those users’ assets and information. With regulations and risk management requirements becoming more strict, BaaS providers must be ever more prepared to ensure a high level of security and reliability. Where compliance has typically been handled by BaaS providers’ fintech partners, that responsibility is shifting more and more onto the shoulders of BaaS providers themselves.

BaaS providers need to embed compliance into their offerings. Alongside traditional services, like accounts, payments and cards, BaaS providers could also handle onboarding, authentication and monitoring. By offering embedded compliance, or compliance-as-a-service, BaaS providers can reduce the complexity of maintaining compliance, thereby allowing fintechs to focus on their core business, which is one of the principles that gave rise to BaaS in the first place.

Account to account payments (A2A) providers enter the fray

Lucile Cornet, partner at Eight Roads Ventures Europe

There are more than 400 open banking tech providers in Europe alone — but they are largely limited to domestic transactions made on single currencies. Interoperability is key from the consumer perspective, and several players are looking to build a global network challenging today’s card network. In 2024, we anticipate a further expansion of fintech A2A companies into new geographies, enhancing their global presence. This expansion will not only encompass tools for merchants to integrate open banking payment options at checkout but will also introduce innovations such as "smart routing", risk management, instant payouts and payment links, challenging the traditional card network infrastructure.

Carol Hagh, portfolio non-executive director and Chair of Screening Committee at Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of the UK

I don't see crypto making a comeback in a mass or retail sense but still see the significant potential value of blockchain technology and for tokens within closed, trusted ecosystems. Within industry markets like insurance, it can take friction out of transactions, enabling lower cost and greater speed, where the compliance risks, fraud and other issues are significantly reduced within a closed group of trusted parties. It has potential applications across healthcare data management and creating transparency and traceability in supply chains — again where you have a manageable number of transacting parties who are trusted and verified. 2024 might be the year that we see serious use cases and commercialisation.

James Devlin, Fidelity International Strategic Ventures

Following a series of large fines in 2023, regulators will continue to put pressure on financial institutions, large and small, who are not keeping pace with their regulatory obligations around the monitoring of staff communications. As regulators increasingly seek evidence that firms are using up-to-date tech in this space and are taking serious steps to perform adequate oversight, there will be significant upside opportunities for RegTech firms addressing these challenges.

The ‘pass the parcel’ VC funding game will descend into chaos

Curt Hopkins, founder of Consilium Ventures

The venture model of passing an investment to the next-stage VC at a higher valuation is broken and won’t improve in 2024. Therefore, bridge rounds will continue as the primary strategy to avoid downrounds and, sadly, this will lead to less-established VCs becoming poorer. 

Consumers want payments to be easier and will vote with their feet

James Booth, VP Partner Management EMEA, <a href="https://www.ppro.com/">PPRO</a>

We will see a further rise in alternative payment methods, which could take the form of bank transfers, e-wallets or buy now, pay later (BNPL). For instance, British consumers are already using alternative payment methods in more than 50% of online transactions, according to our latest data. Consumers are moving away from wanting to type in their card details on their mobiles, or type in their pin numbers at a store. With 60% of Brits shopping online using a mobile device, they are increasingly choosing alternative payment methods that make their checkout easier and provide a more holistic shopping experience. 

Agree? Disagree? Do you have any thoughts on fintech in the year ahead? Drop us a line <a href="orlando@sifted.eu">here</a>.

Fintech

Funding

Tech

Entrepreneurship

Innovation

Startups

Technology

Venture Capital

What’s in store for European fintech in 2024? The experts give their predictions

Tim Smith

Greece’s startup scene is really only just getting going, with the country having missed out on the “all-encompassing tech boom” that other countries have seen in the last two decades, <a href="https://sifted.eu/intelligence/reports/greeking-out">according to</a> Alex Patelis, chief economic adviser to Greece’s prime minister.

But 2021 was a record year for the country, with investment into startups nearing €500m — more than double the total in 2020 — and earlier this year the country got its first unicorn in <a href="https://greekreporter.com/2022/02/01/jp-morgan-viva-wallet-greece/">Viva Wallet.</a>

“The total valuation of our tech in 2014 was about $340m; today it’s $8.5bn,” says Marco Veremis, partner at Big Pi Ventures, a VC firm in Athens.

And as Sifted continues to <a href="https://sifted.eu/articles/top-deeptech-startups-spain-portugal/">dispel myths</a> about southern Europe being a sleepy continental backwater when it comes to cutting edge tech innovation, we’re now spotlighting some of Greece’s most promising young deeptech startups.

One of the country’s best-funded deeptech startups, Core — which uses machine learning algorithms to improve factory and warehouse operations — has shown that the nation can produce big companies in fields like artificial intelligence.

But which of the next generation of Greek deeptech startups should you have your eyes on? We asked three top investors from the country to send us their picks. There was just one rule: they could only pick one portfolio company.

Here are the Greek deeptech startups you need to know about

Myrto Papathanou, partner — Metavallon VC

Myrto Papathanou, partner at Metavallon VC

Metavallon VC was founded in Athens in 2018 and invests at pre-seed and seed stage. The firm's portfolio includes haulage logistics startup <a href="https://sifted.eu/articles/trucksters-raise/">Trucksters,</a> prototype testing tool Useberry and drug testing company Purposeful.

MarineTraffic is using a range of datasets from the maritime industry to build much-needed analytics products. It’s managed to translate things like radio signals from shipping vessels into a commercial offering. 

It’s grown organically and is now a scaleup with a team of 180 people. It’s attracted top talent, fostered a great company culture and has a large and diverse customer base from all over the world.

iCOMAT has developed “fibre steering process technology” that delivers lighter, stronger and more cost-effective composite products like fibreglass. These are used in the automotive and aerospace industries, allowing manufacturers to reliably deliver higher performing end products. The company is already in early production cycles with tier 1 manufacturers and is rapidly growing its team, client base and technology offering.

DeepMed is a relatively new company that’s using AI to increase the accuracy and speed of diagnostic processes and deliver personalised care solutions for patients. It’s developed an AI decision support tool to assist <a href="https://www.rcpath.org/discover-pathology/careers-in-pathology/careers-in-medicine/become-a-histopathologist.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">histopathologists</a> and has been collaborating with the National Health Service in the UK. "What I also find interesting is that the team is also experimenting with synthetic data to train its models, hence overcoming both bias and data scarcity in the field," Papathanou says.

Cogitat (portfolio company)

The company uses AI to read brain waves and convert them into digital commands, seamlessly merging mind and machine. Cogitat powers virtual reality, which users navigate and interact with using only their thoughts. The applications include rehabilitation and gaming. The company has attracted top Greek engineers in the artificial intelligence/machine learning space in both Thessaloniki and London. It’s closely collaborating with Imperial College and is also backed by <a href="https://sifted.eu/articles/vc-fund-university-deeptech-founders/">Creator Fund.</a>

Stergios Anastasiadis and Dimitrios Maroulis, partners — Genesis Ventures<img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-71854" src="https://sifted.eu/app/uploads/2022/07/Screenshot-2022-07-29-at-18.14.21-1024x764.png" alt="Stergios Anastasiadis Dimitrios Maroulis partners Genesis Ventures" width="1024" height="764" />

Launched in 2021 in Athens, Genesis is one of the newest kids on the block in Greek VC. It invests in early-stage startups based in Greece, or led by Greek founders. Portfolio companies include facial recognition startup Zenus, mental health wearable startup Feel Therapeutics and mobile ad campaign software Lerna AI.

Augmenta provides agricultural companies with innovative solutions to reduce production costs and increase crop yields. Augmenta’s precision farming solutions involve the use of cameras and an AI-based hardware platform. The goal of sustainable agriculture — to meet society’s need for food without compromising the needs of future generations — is one that Genesis considers very important. 

Dyania uses natural language processing to program and train its algorithms to extract clinical value from unstructured patient data. This creates new therapies and outcomes for patients, in a field where more than 80% of healthcare data is unstructured. Dyania builds algorithms that are disease-specialised, with each tool trained to extract specific types of clinical information from physicians’ notes on patient histories. 

Intelligencia uses predictive analytics to estimate the probability of success for clinical trials and optimises their design before the trials start. It partners with existing pharmaceutical companies to provide software that’s meant to minimise the risk of failure in drug development and clinical trials. It raised a Series A round of $12m in 2021.

Panos Papadopoulos, partner — Marathon Venture Capital<img class="aligncenter wp-image-71855" src="https://sifted.eu/app/uploads/2022/07/Screenshot-2022-07-29-at-18.14.35-1024x879.png" alt="Panos Papadopoulos partner Marathon Venture Capital" width="800" height="687" />

Athens-based Marathon has been running since 2017 and invests in seed stage software companies. Its portfolio includes AI-powered sales software Connectly, data analytics tool Avrio and “know your customer” blockchain platform norbloc.

A revolutionary data storage engine that specialises in the storage and very fast retrieval of scientific data like genomics and spatial data.

A breath analysis device that helps track important biomarkers in a very fast and cheap way.

A platform that aspires to be the Bloomberg of maritime data. It uses advanced natural language processing, satellite imagery and other data generated by vessels to help shipping companies, traders and forwarders collaborate.

Augmenta (portfolio company)

The startup automates farming processes such as fertilisation, using machine vision and robotics. This helps farmers to save on inputs but also increase yields. 

Venture capital

Greece

10 Greek deeptech startups to watch, according to investors

Kai Nicol-Schwarz

In Europe only the UK, Germany and France have snapped up more VC cash than Israel this year. 

Investors have written cheques to the tune of €7bn in 2021 for Israeli startups — a record figure, topping last year’s total by almost €3bn. The country has also minted nine unicorns this year already, seven of them <a href="https://sifted.eu/articles/israel-fintech-future/">SaaS companies.</a>

But with more hefty fundraising rounds propelling Israel’s startups into the big time than ever before, which up-and-comers are worth keeping an eye on?

To find out, Sifted spoke to four of the nation’s top VCs. The only rule — the startups they nominate couldn’t be part of their portfolios.

Yaniv Golan, general partner at Lool

Lool is an early-stage VC firm based in Tel Aviv. Golan’s portfolio includes beekeeping startup Beewise and no-code SaaS Lightico.

<a href="https://www.diagnosticrobotics.com/">Diagnostic Robotics</a>

The startup applies the most advanced technologies in the field of artificial intelligence to make healthcare better, cheaper and more widely available. The last 18 months saw accelerated digital transformation across the healthcare industry catalysed by Covid-19 and we expect that in the coming months we’ll learn more about how this impressive team has played a key role in that.

<a href="https://www.empathy.com/">Empathy</a>

Empathy is a digital companion to help families organise affairs after a death. The company was founded by serial entrepreneurs Ron Gura and Yonaton Bergman — both of who have scaleup experience, having spent time in senior exec roles at WeWork, eBay and PayPal. 

<a href="https://www.getsorbet.com/">Sorbet</a>

Sorbet helps companies deal with the significant financial risk of employees’ accrued paid time off — around $224bn a year in unused holiday days. We love Sorbet’s consumer-centric approach and brand coupled with an innovative fintech solution to help CFOs sleep better at night. 

<a href="https://getfabric.com/">Fabric</a> (formerly CommonSense Robotics)

Fabric’s mission is to help all retailers offer on-demand ecommerce profitably, so customers can get two-hour delivery from any retailer. Behind this is a complex hardware, robotics, software and real estate-powered business model with an enterprise sales cycle. A dangerous cocktail that most founders wouldn’t touch. We love Fabric because it typifies the ambition level we see in a new breed of mission-driven Israeli founder. With major retailer partnerships in place (including Walmart) and an expanding number of its own micro-fulfilment centres in the US, we think Fabric is well poised for hyper growth and mega funding rounds to fuel it.

<a href="https://varada.io/">Varada</a>

Organisations are generating huge amounts of data, which they regularly need to analyse and act on in near real time. Varada enables large and complex datasets to optimally serve analytic users and apps by automatically making them extremely fast and instantly operational. This team’s unique approach of sitting inside the organisation’s data lake puts Varada at a huge advantage and I expect we’ll all learn more about the velocity of this business in the coming months.

Kompas is an early-stage VC headquartered in Copenhagen. Rafaeli is based in Israel and has just launched <a href="https://tech.eu/brief/kompas-ventures-launches-160-million-sustainability-focused-fund-aimed-at-early-stage-startups/">Kompas’s first fund.</a> It’s made one investment so far, in US-based smart window startup Tynt.

<a href="https://www.trackerdetect.com/">TrackerDetect</a>

This cybersecurity company introduces an innovative approach for organisations to perform their risk management at the level of all their enterprise applications. Their unique solution brings a new level of application activity analysis, far more accurate and comprehensive. The need to learn the application’s business logic and write specific application rules is made defunct, while exposure and damage to internal and external fraud activities is minimised, thus helping organisations reduce risk.

Wint delivers water intelligence solutions with the aim of allowing enterprises to manage their water effectively so they can reduce consumption, eliminate waste, prevent water leak damage and reduce their environmental footprint. In an era where enterprises are gradually seeking efficiency and carbon neutrality, a solution which advances conservation is increasingly interesting.

<a href="https://www.fixefy.com/">Fixefy</a>

Fixefy aims to solve the growing complexities of logistics at scale by creating a unified source of data for supply chain invoicing. Fixefy combines machine learning with hard-earned industry experience to safeguard the integrity of transparent supply chain relationships. The company aims to become the go-to platform for logistics-narrative integrity, supply chain optimisation and buyer-seller collaboration.

QDM has developed a new generation of commercial superconductors that are capable of 10x current transmission and 100x storage capacity. This technology translates into billions of dollars in savings and lower green gas emissions, as less extra capacity will be required to cover the transmission losses. QDM’s cost-effective superconducting wires will also enable renewable energy solutions such as fusion reactors, solar fields and windmill farms.

Aaron Rosenson, equal partner at Aleph

Aleph is an early-stage VC fund based in Tel Aviv. Rosenson’s portfolio includes delivery logistics platform Bringg, data SaaS startup Coralogix, analytics company Placer and workforce software platform Centrical.

<a href="https://www.pecan.ai/">Pecan</a>

Pecan’s AI-powered predictive analytics platform is putting machine learning into the hands of everyday, non-technical users like analysts and business stakeholders to provide meaningful insights that solve their hardest and most important problems, without the need for coding or data prep.

<a href="https://connecteam.com/">Connecteam</a>

Connecteam provides key building blocks for software solutions that most businesses around the world need to manage their workforce efficiently from one place. From small businesses to large enterprises and corporations, there is a huge global market for simple, mobile-first software to manage operations and communications with deskless employees.

<a href="https://www.explorium.ai/">Explorium</a>

Explorium is a data science platform to quickly access, find and understand impactful data, and extract and aggregate relevant information to create predictive models. Explorium enables confident decision-making.

Nate Jaret, principal at Maniv Mobility

Maniv Mobility is a VC firm with a focus on transport technology. Jaret’s portfolio includes B2B SaaS 2trde, mobility startup Fenix and online grocery fulfilment company Spider.ai.

Headshot of Nate Jaret, principal at Maniv Mobility

<a href="https://urbanico.io/">Urbanico</a>

Municipal data is sparse, inherently messy and rarely used. Several startups are trying to help municipalities make sense of it, but Urbanico's creative business model helps break through the urban data problem, bridging the gap between private and public sector urban data requirements.

<a href="https://www.prettydamnquick.io/">Pretty Damn Quick</a>

Pretty Damn Quick (PDQ) is the result of a founder solving the challenges he faced as a small business owner brewing and selling craft beer. Many small businesses today are struggling to get into the ecommerce game because of the difficulties in managing shipping and logistics flows. PDQ has created a platform that offers flexible and powerful ecommerce logistics capabilities despite being entirely self-service. PDQ will help more and more small businesses, the backbone of our economies, compete more vigorously with the rhinos.

What’s in store for European fintech in 2024? The experts give their predictions

10 Greek deeptech startups to watch, according to investors

14 up-and-coming Israeli startups to watch, according to VCs