The European startup ecosystem is full of interesting and exciting news, twists and turns. At EU-Startups, our aim is to keep you informed on everything that’s going on and share the inspiring entrepreneurial spirit this continent has to offer. From big funding announcements, duocorns picking up pace, to new partnerships and conscious collaborations – there’s never a dull day!
This week, new developments in family tech, collaborations to help push forward a green agenda, and, new funds on the horizon.
Launches and Expansions
- European artificial intelligence startup Axelera AI announced its MetisTM AI Platform, encompassing the Metis AI Processing Unit (AIPU) chip and the Voyager SDK software stack – available as cards, boards, and vision systems – to accelerate computer vision processing at the edge.
- Exberry, a provider of capital market trading technology that helps exchange pioneers launch, pivot, break ground, and scale, announced its latest product, Exberry for Carbon, a turnkey solution to ignite carbon markets and fight global climate change.
- Liechtenstein-based VNX, launched the VNX Euro (VEUR) and Swiss VNX Franc (VCHF) tokens referencing respective fiat currencies stablecoins on Emirex crypto exchange.
- Berlin-based FamTech Totoli launched the first all-in-one media app today for children aged 2 to 5 in the DACH region. Together with psychologists, educators and media experts, they developed a safe digital space for children that bundles educational games with video and audio content into one app.
Acquisitions and Partnerships
- Luxury holiday brand Le Collectionist acquired The Greek Villas, Greece’s leading luxury villa operator. The acquisition is part of Le Collectionist’s ongoing strategy of strengthening its offering in both new markets, and destinations, they already operate.
- Munich-based GameInfluencer, the world leader in gaming influencer marketing shared a new partnership with Sanlo, the financial operating system that helps game and app developers scale with a full suite of financial tools, insights, and non-dilutive capital.
- UK-based food and catering supplier JJ Foodservice partnered with Solaris and Ecospend to implement an open banking payment solution to enable its 100,000 customers to pay for orders directly from their business bank accounts instead of through card transactions.
- Food tech startup WNWN is collaborating with Milan-based luxury gift seller DLISH to create an indulgent chocolate-hazelnut gianduja from cocoa-free choc and Italian hazelnuts.
- Sojo announced the strategic acquisition of zero-emissions courier and logistics startup Spedal. Brought together by their shared focus on social entrepreneurship and environmental impact, Sojo initially partnered with Spedal in the summer of 2022 with Spedal providing delivery services for Sojo’s customers using their fleet of e-cargo messenger bikes.
- The Original Fit Factory acquired eight international wellbeing and lifestyle companies to further develop its balanced ecosystem of products and services that deliver physical and mental health benefits to communities across the world.
- Leading RegTech provider Rivero announced it has signed a deal with Paymentology, a global issuer-processor. Under the terms of the agreement, Paymentology will deploy Rivero’s scheme compliance SaaS solution, Kajo, to digitalise its compliance processing requirements and to make it easier to scale with guaranteed quality control for all its compliance needs.
- Partnering with Hubs for custom part production, EV charging company LEKTRI.CO developed a range of revolutionary EV chargers to cut energy costs and make EV charging more accessible.
- Single.Earth, the greentech company offering the world’s first nature-backed currency, has partnered with Salv, the regtech company founded by Wise and Skype employees to combat financial crime. Salv provides client screening and risk-scoring solutions to mitigate the risk of onboarding users and landowners whose background doesn’t align with the risk parameters. With its nature-backed MERIT token, Single.Earth tackles the destruction of ecosystems that support life.
- phos, a provider of software-only point of sale (SoftPoS) orchestration for businesses, has partnered with market-leading Open Banking business Nuapay to allow UK and EU partners to offer direct account payments for merchants and customers.
- Finnish startup Nosto, the commerce experience platform, acquired the AI-powered product discovery platform, Findologic. This is Nosto’s third acquisition in 18 months as the company moves to become the technology of choice for ecommerce site search – and cement its position as the leading commerce experience platform for online brands globally.
- GetResponse acquired Recostream, an AI product recommendations technology company. GetResponse is an email marketing and marketing automation solution that developed a marketing automation suite for ecommerce businesses earlier this year.
- Billhop, the smart online bill payment platform, announced a new partnership with UnionPay International (UPI), the global network servicing the world’s largest cardholder base, enabling support for UnionPay card products across its digital payment solutions. The agreement highlights Billhop’s and UPI’s commitment to prioritising accessibility and adoption within the card payments sphere.
- Aegiq, a startup developing solutions to enable wide-scale adoption of quantum technologies, launched project U-Quant in partnership with the Luxmoore Lab from the University of Exeter. Both parties are building upon a successful collaboration within the UK’s Quantum Communications Hub. The project will deliver improved space communication capability leveraging the benefits of true quantum light sources, as well as exploring novel materials for single-photon generation.
Milestones and Insights
- Barcelona-based OXYCO are creating vegan melanin with enzymes. The startup harness tech to produce melanin through biocatalysis -that is, by using enzymes, proteins found in nature that have the ability to catalyze different chemical reactions. The new tech, biomelanin, could be used to create cosmetics, vegan food colouring and solar panels.
- SET University and a Ukrainian startup ZibraAI launched the charitable NFT project Tech Ukraine: building the future. The initiative presents 30 NFT-artworks that were generated using in-house AI-based technology. The goal of the project is to raise funds through the sale of arts to cover educational scholarships in cybersecurity, blockchain, and AI programs for Ukrainian students.
- Studies suggest that the banking and financial sector are among the keenest to attract female coders into their workforce. Starling Banks and Lloyds Banking Group have become the latest firms to actively search for female tech talent with Code First Girls – the largest provider of free coding courses for women in the UK.
- Bluu Seafood, a European pioneer in cultivated fish and seafood, has reached another R&D milestone – cell growth in suspension In general, cell suspensions are the best system for the production of animal cells at a large scale.
- Baltic Sandbox Ventures, a new VC investing in early-stage deeptech startups from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), closed a €10 million investment into its latest €13 million deeptech fund and accelerator. The cornerstone investor is INVEGA, a Lithuanian government agency, the program is financed from its Innovation Promotion Fund, with the balance coming from private investors, including Vytautas Kašėta, (SUPER HOW?) and Pijus Makarevičius (Furniture1). The fund will be split into two equal parts of €6.5 million each, aimed at pre-seed and seed investments into up to 80 emerging Baltic deeptech startups, building grassroots deeptech and life sciences ecosystems.
- Clarity AI, a global sustainability tech platform, announced that Klarna is using Clarity AI’s data and capabilities to promote environmentally conscious brands to 150 million shoppers. Clarity AI is a sustainability tech platform that uses machine learning and big data to deliver environmental and social insights to investors, organizations, and consumers
- Advertisement - 
