Monzo to get acquired for $10bn+?!?
Seb Johnson
September 28, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes
🌟 QUICK INTRO
Hello and welcome back.
UK AI infrastructure firm Nscale filed for a $35bn US IPO, Portuguese defence-tech scale-up Tekever raised $580m at a $6.4bn valuation, and Monzo may be getting acquired for $10bn.
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💰 BIG ROUNDS
Portuguese Tekever raised a $580m Series D first close led by Baillie Gifford at a $6.4bn valuation, roughly five times its prior mark, to scale AI-enabled autonomous drones. Read more here.
Dutch Bird raised $450m in debt led by JPMorgan with Capital One and Citi, repositioning as an AI communications infrastructure company. Read more here.
Finnish Verda raised a $189m Series B led by Emergence Capital at a $1bn+ valuation to expand its AI cloud capacity. Read more here.
UK-based Basecamp Research raised a $140m Series C led by S32 to develop AI-designed medicines. Anthropic joined as a strategic investor alongside Nvidia, the UK Sovereign AI Fund and NATO Innovation Fund. Read more here.
German Metycle secured a €131.7m credit facility to scale its secondary copper and aluminium supply platform. Read more here.
German Noxtua raised a €100m+ Series C led by C.H. Beck to scale its legal AI platform, already used by 30,000+ users. Read more here.
UK-based Penelope Health raised €87m to advance its real-time healthcare policy intelligence platform serving 200 million patients. Read more here.
Dutch Morphotonics closed a €40m+ Series B to tackle the AI glasses and AR manufacturing bottleneck. Read more here.
French Biolevate raised a €30m Series A to scale life sciences AI automating drug discovery and regulatory workflows. Read more here.
UK-based FintechOS raised $28m in equity and debt led by existing investors including Bek Ventures to push into the US. Reached profitability. Read more here.
UK-based Unit1 Studio raised €23.3m to scale avatar concert production, staging shows by hyper-realistic digital versions of living and deceased musicians. Read more here.
UK-based Outerlimit raised £12m pre-seed led by AlbionVC for a decentralised security and authorisation layer built for agentic AI. Read more here.
💰 SLIGHTLY SMALLER ROUNDS
German Kontext raised $4m led by 42CAP to set policy controls that approve or block AI agent actions before they happen. Read more here.
German Palma.ai raised $1.8m to bring governed AI agents to more enterprises. Read more here.
Dutch Duqu raised €1.5m from Curiosity VC to give businesses faster access to working capital via AI credit underwriting. Read more here.
🎙️ Podcast of the Week - Oliver Vince, Co-Founder at Basecamp Research, announcing their $140m Series C.
The company is teaching AI to read and write DNA, using huge amounts of genetic data it collects all over the world. It has been working with NVIDIA and Anthropic on its models, and both have now come in as investors too.
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📰 BIG NEWS
Nscale
The UK AI infrastructure company raised $3.36 Billion in Pre-IPO Convertible Financing ahead of a NYSE IPO.
In its filing it shows that revenue hit $140.6m in the first half of 2026, up from $10.4m a year earlier, while net losses widened to $1.02bn. It says it has $103.4bn in contracted deals, much of it tied to a reported $45bn compute deal with Anthropic.
Its IPO documents have been heavily criticised for containing misleading charts and omitting that ByteDance is its largest customer.
Read more here.
Monzo Bank
The UK Fintech is in discussions to get acquired by Nubank for £8-10bn.
Discussions are still early but if it does get acquired it would be the latest UK tech scaleup to get acquired by a large foreign company.
It would also give Nubank a very strong foothold in Revolut’s home market.
The company is also exploring an additional fundraise at an £8bn+ valuation instead of being acquired.
Read more here.
📰 SMALLER NEWS
OpenAI admitted that one of its AI agents went rogue and hacked into an Australian Government website in June, accessing private data. OpenAI reportedly only notified a generic Australian Government inbox this month, sparking backlash. Read more here.
Revolut was hit by another fresh security breach the same week it unveiled facial-recognition payments in the UK. Read more here.
Paris overtook London in the first AI Cities Index. Both are still well behind US and Chinese hubs, but the ordering matters. Read more here.
Vesoma, a new European robotics company came out of stealth after building a humanoid robot in just 6 months. Read more here.
The founders of Tink are back with a brand new company after selling the Fintech for $2bn. Read more here.
Legora surpassed $200m in ARR six months after surpassing $100m ARR.
Hacktron AI, the first Project Europe company, successfully hacked OpenAI. Read more here.
💰 M&A
French Schneider Electric offered €1.2bn for Bulgarian Shelly Group, the smart home and IoT devices maker. Read more here.
Taiwanese Taiwan Cement is acquiring Ukrainian IFCEM for up to €750m. Read more here.
French Mistral AI acquired French Pimento to expand into business applications. Read more here.
EQT sold Swiss Ontinue to Scottish Quorum Cyber in a European cybersecurity consolidation move. Read more here.
German feld.energy acquired German AckerKapital to consolidate the agri-PV market. Read more here.
💶 FUND NEWS
German DTCP closed a €455m defence fund, nearing its €500m target, to invest in European AI, autonomous systems, cyber defence and space technologies. Read more here.
Estonian Final Frontier and Myriad combined behind a €100m defence-tech fund backing pre-seed and seed startups across the New Nordics and Ukraine. Read more here.
UK-based Connect Ventures held a $55m first close on its $80m Fund V, anchored by the British Business Bank, to back technical founders across Europe. Read more here.
NatWest made its first-ever VC LP investment, backing Phoenix Court alongside a £50m commitment from the British Business Bank and further capital from M&G. Read more here.
The European Commission and European Investment Bank launched the Institutional Investors Pact to channel European pension and insurance money into tech scale-ups, with 13 institutions signalling intent. Read more here.
German SPRIND and Dutch NADI launched a €40m challenge to fast-track European AI chip design. Read more here.
🎪 EVENTS
Parloa has announced WAVE 2026: The AI + CX conference: October 7-8, 700+ enterprise AI and CX leaders in Berlin for hands-on workshops, a look at real-world AI roadmaps, and a peek into what's coming next. 30+ speakers, including leaders from HealthEquity, AUTO1, Langdock, and SAP, as well as world champion Bastian Schweinsteiger. Register now with code W26-ScalingEu-50 for 50% off here.
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.
THAT’S ALL
Thank you.
Seb