WHAT A WEEK
Seb Johnson
July 20, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes
🌟 QUICK INTRO
Hello and welcome back.
Munich's Helsing raised $1.8bn at an $18bn valuation (the largest private defence-tech round in European history), Uber agreed to buy Berlin's Delivery Hero for $14.8bn, and SAP completed its €1bn+ acquisition of Freiburg AI lab Prior Labs just 18 months after it was founded.
Read on.
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💰 BIG ROUNDS
Stockholm-based Neko Health raised a €612.7m ($700m) Series C to expand its AI-powered health screening clinics across the US and Europe, with the company preparing to launch its first US clinics in New York and other cities. Read more here.
Renens-based SWISSto12 raised a $70m Series C to scale its multi-orbit satellite communications business, having reached profitability. Read more here.
Munich-based Microagi raised $55m in Germany's largest ever seed round to scale its physical AI platform capturing factory data to train humanoid robots for manufacturing tasks. Read more here.
London-based Valarian raised a $50m Series A to scale sovereign infrastructure for AI-era governments, focusing on infrastructure governance and security. Read more here.
Paris-based Syntetica raised a €30m Series A led by EQT with Lululemon to scale its novel nylon recycling process. Read more here.
Amsterdam-based Monumental raised a €27m Series B to scale its fleet of 150+ AI-powered bricklaying robots across Europe and into the US. Built by ex-Palantir operators. Read more here.
London-based Reformed raised a $22m Series A led by Iris Ventures to scale its functional instant coffee and matcha drinks platform, targeting $100m ARR. Read more here.
London-based Applied Computing raised a $20m Series A to expand its foundation AI models built specifically for energy operations, targeting refineries and energy infrastructure globally. Read more here.
London-based Meticulous raised a $15m Series A to help developers ship AI-generated code faster by generating and maintaining comprehensive end-to-end tests. Built by ex-Dropbox and Palantir brothers. Read more here.
Munich-based Project Q raised a €15m Series A to scale its defence and security technology platform, building tools for next-generation defence capabilities. Read more here.
Munich-based Skalar raised €12m in combined pre-seed and seed funding to build an AI-powered tax and accounting firm designed around automation. Read more here.
💰 SLIGHTLY SMALLER ROUNDS
Italian Nous secured €2.3m+ seed funding to scale Koncentra, its focus-and-productivity platform. Read more here.
UK-based Arq raised $1.4m pre-seed for quantum internet technology. Very early but the category is genuinely interesting. Read more here.
Swiss RAROG secured €162k to turn everyday devices into life-saving rescue beacons. Small round, cool idea. Read more here.
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📰 BIG NEWS
Helsing
Munich-based Helsing raised $1.8bn Series E at an $18bn valuation, the largest private defence-tech round in European history.
New and existing investors included Dragoneer, Lightspeed, Iconiq, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, JPMorganChase, CPP Investments, General Catalyst and Plural, with demand significantly exceeding available allocation.
Helsing's offer now includes the HX-2 strike drone, the Altra AI-enabled battlefield operations software, and the proposed CA-1 autonomous fighter jet concept.
The company remains predominantly European-owned after the raise. Read more here.
EQT / Mistral
Earlier this year it was announced that EQT had been chosen to run the EU's €5bn scale-up fund.
It is now, according to of Sifted, in talks to lead or co-lead Mistral’s Series D via this fund.
The French AI company is raising a €3bn Series D at a valuation rumoured to be around or just under €20bn.
The company is on track to surpass €1bn of ARR this year, and also raised $830m in debt funding earlier this year to build data centres, with the company aiming to build up to 1 gigawatt of capacity in Europe by 2030.
Read more here.
📰 SMALLER NEWS
Germany has just released a open-source AI model which is performing very well compared to benchmarks. Read more here.
Moneybox, the UK Fintech, became a unicorn last week.
Cambridge Aerospace, the UK counter-drone startup, is closing in on a $300m raise at a $3.4bn valuation, here.
The UK is about to get its first AI robotics unicorn in Humanoid, which is building two types of robots: one for industrial manufacturing and one for the home. Read more here.
Tom Blomfield is joining Anthropologic. Read more here.
Revolut confirmed it will launch its US bank in 2027, according to its US boss. A major expansion move that has been rumoured for a while. Read more here.
Finland cleared Bliq.ai for fully driverless vehicle operations, adding to Bliq.ai's earlier Estonia approval and putting the Baltics ahead of most of Western Europe on autonomous driving policy. Read more here.
💰 M&A
Freiburg-based Prior Labs, which builds tabular foundation models for business data, completed its acquisition by SAP for €1bn+ just 18 months after being founded. The company had only raised a €9m pre-seed before the exit.
Berlin-based Omio agreed to acquire Rail Europe, the 90-year-old ticketing platform, consolidating ground-transport inventory and creating a platform selling 22m+ train tickets annually across 70+ countries and 28,000+ operators. Read more here.
Norwegian energy software firm Volue acquired Salzburg-based energytech FlexPowerHub to expand its European energy platform capabilities. Read more here.
💶 FUND NEWS
Lakestar closed its Resilience I fund at €262.2m to back European defence and dual-use companies. Read more here.
Bilbao-based Acurio Ventures closed Acurio Secondaries I, a €115m fund providing liquidity by buying stakes in other European VC funds at secondary prices. Read more here.
Prague-based Aspire11 deployed its first €100m from a €515m pension-backed fund into a portfolio including Revolut, ElevenLabs, Databricks, VAST Data, Vinted and Baseten. Read more here.
Stockholm-based Norrsken Evolve closed a €62m pre-seed fund. Read more here.
Soho Square Partnership Capital Fund II received a £50m cornerstone commitment from the British Business Bank to support established small and mid-sized businesses across the UK's Nations and regions. Read more here.
The British Business Bank committed €25m to EQT Life Sciences' EQT Health Economics 3 Fund, targeting commercial-stage medtech, digital health and life sciences companies across the UK. Read more here.
🎪 EVENTS
Tickets are available for Wave, the leading tech conference in Turin. Confirmed speakers include Dario Amodei, Jony Ive, Charlie Songhurst, and many more. Get 10% off using discount code SCALINGEUROPE-WAVE10 at checkout here.
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Thank you.
Seb