A week of semiconductor physics, orbital logistics, defense installations and carob-based chocolate tells you something about the vastness of Europe and Europe’s contiguous capital right now.
The dominant thread isn’t a single sector, it’s a single instinct: bring back the infrastructure layer, whether it’s the interconnection of chips, satellite transmissions, or the AI plumbing beneath enterprise workflows.
Kandou AI – $225MA series | Lausanne, Switzerland
Swiss semiconductor company Kandou AI, founded in 2011 and recently rebranded from Kandou Bus, has raised $225 million in Series A led by Maverick Silicon, with $40 million in strategic participation from SoftBank, Synopsys, Cadence Design Systems and Alchip Technologies. Based on a signaling method called Chord, the company’s copper interconnect technology quadruples up to twice the throughput while cutting power consumption in half, positioning it as a potential alternative to the optical interconnects expected to dominate AI infrastructure.
Air Street Capital – Close $232M Fund III | London, Great Britain
Air Street Capital has closed its third fund at $232 million, making it the largest solo GP venture fund ever raised in Europe, according to Sifted. The London firm, led by Nathan Benaich, backs early-stage AI companies and will write initial checks of between $500,000 and $15 million, with a small allocation for growth-stage investments of up to $25 million.
Granola – $125M Series C | London, Great Britain
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London-based AI dating app Granola has raised $125 million in Series C led by Danny Rimer at Index Ventures, valuing the company at $1.5 billion, up six times from its $250 million valuation a year ago. The round brings total funding to $192 million and positions Granola’s meeting notes as an enterprise AI infrastructure rather than a simple productivity tool.
Ysios Capital InceptionBio – €100M fund | Barcelona, Spain
Ysios Capital, Spain’s largest life sciences VC, has launched InceptionBio, a €100 million fund entirely dedicated to building biotech companies from Spanish university and research center spinouts, with CDTI as its lead LP. The fund targets the riskiest and most avoided stage in biotechnology, turning laboratory discoveries into legal entities with enough capital to reach preclinical data that attracts institutional investors.
Credo Ventures – $88M Fund V Closes | Prague, Czech Republic
Credo Ventures has closed its fifth fund at $88 million, its largest fund to date and a step up from its fourth fund of €75 million closed in 2022, continuing its fifteen-year strategy of writing the first institutional check for founders from Central and Eastern Europe and its diaspora. The Prague and Krakow firm, whose early bets include UiPath and ElevenLabs, will write typical checks of $1 million to $5 million in advance.
360 Capital – €85M deep tech fund | Paris, France
Paris-Milan VC firm 360 Capital, which manages more than €500m in assets, has raised €85m for a new deep-tech vehicle backed by at least one European defense minister as the firm moves towards dual-use technologies at the intersection of software, hardware and national security. The fund represents a clear integration of Europe’s defense ambitions into a deep technology investment strategy, a pattern now seen in several continental funds.
PaperShell – €40.3 million EU Innovation Fund grant | Tibro, Sweden
Swedish Deeptech company PaperShell, which produces kraft paper structural composite materials and biobinders derived from agricultural waste, has signed a Grant Agreement with the European Commission under the EU Innovation Fund and opened a 40.3 million euro project worth 83 million euros to increase its Tibro plant to 23,000 tons per year. and shipping to customers in construction, defense, electronics and transportation is described by the company as stronger than plastic and lighter than aluminum.
PAVE Space – $40M seed | Rennes, Switzerland
PAVE Space, a Swiss startup founded in 2024 and spun off from EPFL’s student rocket program, has raised $40 million in one of the largest seed rounds ever in the European space, led by Visionaries Club and Creandum. The company is building a fleet of orbital transfer vehicles designed to move satellites from their launch orbit to their operating orbit in less than 24 hours, versus the six to twelve months typical for onboard electric propulsion today.
Lace Lithography – $40M Series A | Bergen, Norway
Lace Lithography, a Norwegian startup founded in 2023 by physicist Bodil Holst, has raised $40 million in Series A funding led by Atomico, which also includes Microsoft’s M12, to develop a chip patterning technology that uses helium atoms rather than light. The company claims its approach has features up to ten times smaller than what current extreme UV lithography can achieve, positioning it as a potential challenger to ASML’s near monopoly in advanced lithography systems.
Origination – $30M Series A+ | London, Great Britain
The London-based HR tech startup (acquired by Mercer in 2016), founded by the team behind Darwin (acquired by Mercer in 2016), has raised $30 million in Series A+ led by Notion Capital to expand its AI platform that unifies fragmented global employee benefits data into a single intelligence layer. The company targets a structural blind spot for multinationals: benefits are typically a company’s second-biggest expense after headcount, but the data supporting them is scattered across insurance policies, broker reports and vendor portals in dozens of languages.
JAAQ – $17MA Series | London, Great Britain
London-based digital health engagement platform JAAQ has raised $17 million in Series A funding from Meridian Health Ventures, Fuel Ventures, Bolt Angels and Guinness Ventures to expand venture partnerships and expand in the US. The company, which uses direct-to-consumer mental health content to embed a library of more than 10,000 clinically reviewed videos into its products for insurers, employers and healthcare organizations, says it now covers 1.5 million eligible lives.
Laigo Bio – €17M seed | Utrecht, Netherlands
Laigo Bio, a Utrecht-based biotech, has completed the latest close of a €17m seed round with Biovance Capital joining as new lead alongside existing colead Kurma Partners to develop its SureTACs platform. Instead of blocking proteins, the company is targeting cancer and autoimmune diseases where traditional drug discovery has repeatedly failed, destroying membrane-bound proteins that have been classified as intractable for decades.
Interloom – $16.5M seed | Munich, Germany
Munich-based Interloom, a startup building what it calls a context graph for enterprise decision-making, has raised $16.5 million in a round led by DN Capital with participation from Beck Ventures and existing backer Air Street Capital. The company maps how operational decisions are actually made within large organizations, using millions of real events rather than documentation to give AI agents the institutional knowledge that experienced employees carry and rarely write down.
Arkadia Space – €14.5 million | Castellón, Spain
A Spanish engine startup based at Castellón Airport and the first Spanish space company selected for a European Innovation Council Accelerator has raised €14.5 million to expand its hydrogen peroxide propulsion system as a non-toxic alternative to hydrazine. Its DARK system was launched on a SpaceX mission in March 2025, becoming the first hydrogen peroxide carrier system to fly in orbit in Europe.
Epoch Biodesign – $12M | London, Great Britain
Epoch Biodesign, a London startup founded in 2019, has raised $12 million to take its AI-engineered nylon 6,6 recycling enzymes from pilot to commercial scale, bringing its total funding to $50 million. Its process converts nylon waste, from leggings to car airbags and carpets, into monomers from which it is remanufactured, recovering more than 90% and eliminating the need for virgin petroleum feedstock.
Giraffe360 – $10M Series B | London, Great Britain
London-based proptech Giraffe360, founded in Riga in 2016 by brothers Mikus and Madars Opelts, has raised $10 million in Series B led by Cipio Partners to expand its AI proprietary media platform. The company combines a custom robotic camera with AI software to produce a full suite of proprietary media, including HDR photography, virtual tours, LiDAR floor plans, video and social assets, from a single site visit.
Egide – €8M seed | Paris, France
Egide, the Paris-based air defense startup founded in 2025 by former MBDA engineers Simon Calonne and Florian Audigier, has raised an €8 million seed round co-led by Expeditions, Eurazeo and Heartcore Capital. The company develops electrically powered interceptors and a hardware-agnostic software platform called Mystique that use AI-driven detection to counter mass-produced drones in the air, land and sea domains.
Theia Insights – $8M Series A | Cambridge, UK
Theia Insights, a Cambridge-based AI company founded by a former Amazon Alexa researcher, has raised $8 million in Series A, led by MiddleGame Ventures, with the return of Uncommon Ventures, to replace static industry classification systems with a self-learning economic map. The company addresses the fundamental inadequacy of systems like SIC and NAICS for modern, diversified businesses by modeling companies as multidimensional entities rather than forcing them into a single sector box.
Zevero – $7M | London, Great Britain
London-based carbon management platform Zevero has raised $7 million in a second round backed by Spiral Capital, Gazelle Capital and Deep 30, bringing its total funding to $14 million as regulatory pressure transforms carbon reporting from an annual obligation to a requirement for ongoing data infrastructure. The company has doubled its customer base and grown its annual ARR by 400% and is expanding into Asia-Pacific and continental Europe.
Foreverland – €6M | Bari, Italy
Foreverland, the Italian foodtech startup behind Choruba, a cocoa-free chocolate ingredient made from Mediterranean carob fruit, has raised €6m in a new round backed by CDP Venture Capital, Linfa and Newtree Impact, bringing its total funding to €9.4m. The company, which produces 500 tonnes a year from its Puglia plant and holds IFS Food certification, said it is now the only producer on an industrial scale to offer an organic cocoa-free alternative.
SOUS – €4M seed | Amsterdam, Netherlands
SOUS, an Amsterdam startup founded in 2022, has raised €4 million in a seed round led by seed + speed Ventures, with participation from PeakBridge, altitude and Gekko Capital, to build an AI platform that manages customer discovery, direct ordering and warehousing for independent food and beverage operators. The company targets the structural gap between the digital infrastructure available to large chains and the tools available to independent restaurants.
The most impressive signal of the week may not be any growth, but the convergence of space, defense and deep materials science, which attracted serious capital in the same seven days. European investors are no longer waiting for American approval before writing checks for tough, patient technology, and that patience may be what the next wave of infrastructure companies require.
