• the money in Euro data centers
• unit space economics
• fresh powder and other moves

 

---

 

Highlights

more space tidbits

🇪🇸 ​Pangea Aerospace​, developing propulsion systems for the aerospace industry raised $24 million series A from Hyperion, CDTI and Primo Capital.

• traction: eight paying customers, including the European Space Agency, estimated to 2X turnover in 2025.

We've talked ​before​ about the potential growth of the space ecosystem. As of today, there's an inventory of around 10k satellites in orbit, with 4-5 new ones on average launched daily. Half of those launches are made by American companies, 80% of which managed by SpaceX alone. China's on the second place, doing some 30%. 

Where is Europe? While the US and China are driving the industry expansion, at high level, the EU narrative deemed space as a critical sector in need of developing own capabilities and achieving strategic independence ASAP. And sure, words are ​nice​, and everybody has a can do attitude doubled down by the political urgency, but are they enough?

Efforts are being made On point, Pangea above develops propulsion systems, which typically account for 30% of a rocket’s total development cost. Moreover, propulsion systems define a launcher’s performance and are responsible for 50% of launch failures, making them a key factor in the overall value chain.

The cost of building a rocket propulsion system varies widely depending on the type of rocket, scale, and technology used. A small one can go up to $5 million - for example, Rocket Lab's Electron launch vehicle is some ​$7.5 million​ per launch, so the engine should be some 2-2.5M, or less in the case of cold gas or solid rocket motors, or hybrid ones. The standard rockets in use though are medium-scale, at a unit price of up to 50 million - SpaceX Merlin 1D engine is ​$2M+​per engine, for example. Not least, reusability, like in SpaceX’s Starship, reduces per-flight costs significantly. 

Important to note that the whole value chain is important, and Europe's launching satellites into space is not necessarily dependent on local component manufacturers. A good list with the propulsion systems in use or developed by European launch companies from startups to industry stalwarts is available ​here​. Other producers in Europe include 🇫🇷 ​Ariane​(owned 50/50 by Airbus and Safran), 🇮🇹 ​Avio​ (controlled by Red Black Capital and listed on the Italian exchange) or 🇬🇧 ​B2Space​ (raised some VC money in 2021). 

 

Hot Euro AI

🇨🇭 ​Browser Use​, developing a web interface for LLMs, raised a $17 million seed round led by Felicis Ventures, joined by Paul Graham, A Capital, and Nexus Venture Partners.

• deal led by Felicis GP ​Astasia Myers​ at a $100 million valuation.
• founded by two ETH students last year, built a demo in five weeks and joined YC this winter.
• USP: a scraper tool using a novel way for automated AI agents for interpreting web data in order to automate various tasks online. The tool can manage multiple browser tabs, set up actions like saving files and performing database operations, and handle mouse and keyboard inputs.
• traction: 28k daily downloads as of March 10. 

Browser Use ​became popular​ earlier this month it was showcased by Manus, the viral AI agent platform from Chinese startup Butterfly Effect. Also, they say that more than 20 companies in the current Y Combinator Winter batch used Browser Use for their own requirements.

Their thesis, to which I subscribe 100%:

We wanted to create a foundation layer that everyone will build browser agents on. In our minds, there will be more agents on the web than humans by the end of the year.

 

AI infra

🇸🇪 ​Evroc​, developing hyperscale data centers, made public a $9 million Series A extension deal closed at the end of last year with Blisce, EQT Ventures, Norrsken VC, and Giant Ventures.

• deal done to accommodate Giant Ventures in the captable - the initial series A had been announced at $46M last August.
• the Swedes are managing two co-location facilities in Stockholm and another two in Paris and plan to operate 10 hyper scale datacenters by 2030.

🇪🇸 ​Cartagon​, building an AI infra platform selling access to high-performance Nvidia GPUs, secured $31 million with Core Capital in Spain.

While the Spanish deal is a spinoff from an established cloud company funded by PE money, the Swedes kicked off as a stealth startup in 2022, that later financed it with VC. Both ride the demand for European tech infrastructure, augmented by the existing political context - just a few weeks ago, the EU announced a ​€200 billion​ appetite spend for AI, including a new European fund of €20 billion for AI gigafactories. 

It is a big scale game The unit cost for deploying a mid-sized datacenter is in the lower teens of millions, with yearly running costs of about the same at a 20-30% margin, highly dependent of the energy costs (co-location ones can go down as much as half). A network is where the economies of scale kick in, making for interesting ROIs - to make a parallel, to some extent the incumbent's scale opportunity is similar to what VC-funded q-commerce startups have tried a few years back speculating the Covid-related pent-up demand. Both are hyper competitive - commerce means distribution and inventory turnover, while datacenters involve a lot of iron on the balance sheet requiring high both capex and fixed costs. The major difference though is that the switching costs for cloud customers are high. 

It's complicated The bad news is that the startup play is at the margins, as the established American companies control more than 70% of the European market. The good news is that there's also a little piece of a blue ocean to explore, as cloud adoption in Europe lags, with a penetration rate of just 41% compared to 78% in the US, contributing to Europe’s productivity gap. Startups will, however, also compete with the above mentioned EU-subsidized providers. The reality of it though is that the Europeans are poor at selling - Amazon, Microsoft and Google have been growing in aggregate their Europe share at a pace higher than the rest of the market in the past few years. Big European names fighting for the leftovers include OHCloud, Atos and Scaleway in France, Deutsche Telecom and Hetzner in Germany, Green Datacenter in Switzerland and Aruba in Italy - alongside VC-funded startups that is.

 

Google Adwords for influencers

🇬🇧 ​AMT​, building what they dub a Google Adwords for influencers, raised $3.5 million seed led by NFX, joined by Charge Ventures, EF , Transpose and Mythos Ventures. 

• USP: AI bot helping influencers with tasks like booking campaigns, tracking results, making payments, and answering queries and also able to autonomously find influencers that match a campaign’s goals.
• traction: 2500+ active influencers per month

AMT was incubated at EF in London last summer, then moved to the US and signed contracts worth over $450K in annualized revenue in its first 3 months, now at a 140% growth rate per month

Even though the Brits actually sell themselves as ​an AI assistant​, make no mistake, that's just a gimmick used as a market entry - the prize for AMT is building an alternative ad inventory marketplace outside of Google, LinkedIn and Facebook reach. It's become a fairly competitive space lately as the media business has atomised tremendously at the top, with the long tail not only growing but also commending sizeable segment chunks, sometimes bigger than what an established outlet would take home - i.e. see Mr Beast's whopping ​700 million a year​ worth of a year work.

Alas, there's quite a few other startups tapping into it, with the likes of ​Passionfroot​ in Germany or, to a certain extent, ​Beehiiv​ in the US. Both are running ad marketplaces on top of a premium SAAS tool, with different flavours. On one end, Beehiiv's core proposition is selling mail marketing SAAS, with a run-of-network proposition on top, while the Germans focus on the mid market of running media agencies budgets with a nice additional admin SAAS offered for free.

 

 

---

 

Deals

Nordics

🇩🇰 ​Aisel Health​, developing an AI tool used to conduct pre-assessments and reports within psychiatric workflows, raised a pre-seed funding round with Rockstart, Ada Ventures and angel investors.

🇸🇪 ​Waytobill​, developers of a checkout solution for insurance telesales marketers, raised pre-seed with Gorilla Capital.

🇳🇴 ​Visoid​, developing an AI visualisation tool for architects and interior designers, raised a $730k pre-seed funding round led by StartupLab, joined by Obos and Antler.

• incubated at Antler in 2023.

🇸🇪 ​Remos Space Systems​, doing SAAS for satellite ground operations, raised $1 million in seed funding with Bling Capital and Partnerinvest Norr.

🇳🇴 ​Catchwise​, developing a digital skipper’s assistant for fishery, raised $1.3 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Dreamcraft Ventures, joined by Sondo, Ocean Impact, and angels.

• traction: 50 larger vessels using the tool on daily basis

🇫🇮 ​Capalo AI​, developing virtual multi-market power plants, raised a $4 million seed round co-led by VentureFriends and PROfounders Capital, joined by Inventure and Innovestor.

• customers include major infrastructure operators in Finland and Sweden, will use the money to expand into the Western Europe.
• pre-seeded with 500k by Inventure and Innovestor in 2023.

🇳🇴 ​Kosli​, building automated governance SAAS for financial services, raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Deutsche Bank and Heavybit, joined by Defined Capital, Transpose and angels.

• seeded by Fortino with $3 million back in 2022.

🇸🇪 ​Novatron Fusion​, producers of fusion power technology, raised $10.4 million in an Series A1 round led by St1, joined by Axon, Climentum, InnoEnergy, Granitor and Industrifonden.

• the Swedes have founded the company in 2022 and have a running prototype dubbed ​Novatron 1​, operational yet to be made available on commercial basis.
• St1 is a Finland-based energy company where it runs some 1300 gas stations, among other energy assets.

🇸🇪 ​Rerun​, building a multimodal data stack for Physical AI, raised $17 million in seed funding led by Point Nine Capital, with participation from Costanoa, Sunflower Capital, Seedcamp, and angel investors.

• pre-seeded with 3.2 million in 2022.

UK

🇬🇧 ​Elaniti​, developing a SAAS platform using ML to predict key crop outcomes, secured a $1.6 million seed round co-led by Pinc and joined by Planetary Impact and VIB.

🇬🇧 ​Abex​, selling algo-as-a-service to financial traders, resumed a $6 million seed investment deal with MMC Ventures.

• founded in 2022 by ​Erkan Kaya​, a Turkish IB veteran, ex-MD for JP Morgan in London.

🇬🇧 ​Greenjets​, producer of propelling engines for aircrafts, raised $7 million pre-series A led by India-based Tanglin Ventures.

🇬🇧 ​TurinTech​, developing an evolutionary AI platform that can optimize and validate enterprise codebases, raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Oxford Capital, joined by Circle Rock and IQ Capital.

• spun off UCL in 2014, pre-seeded by IQ Capital in 2019 and seeded by Speedinvest in 2022.

 

DACH

🇨🇭 ​AICA​, developers of a SAAS that simplifies robot integration & programming across diverse hardware, raised seedfinancing with Momenta, Spicehaus, Schaeffler and HTGF.

🇨🇭 ​nunu ai​, developing multimodal AI agents used to QA-test video games, raised $6 million seed in a transaction co-led by A16z and Tirta Ventures.

• follows a $2 million pre-seed led by a16z last summer - the Swiss were also part of YC in the winter 2023.

🇩🇪 ​Cortea​, developing an AI tool for financial audits, raised a $3.2 million pre-seed round led by Cherry Ventures, joined by angel investors.

🇩🇪 ​PulseTrain​, producers of next-gen battery tech integrating multiple powertrain components for EVs, raised $6.3 million in a seed deal led by Vsquared and Planet A, with participation from Climate Club.

🇩🇪 ​June​, selling a AI-enabled case management and automation platform for all legal and administrative processes, concluded a $7.6 million pre-series A equity deal with 5I Ventures. 

• ICYMI, 5I was started as an angel vehicle by ​Dieter Schlosser​ (ex-CEO of SoftwareOne) in 2023 and turned into a fund operated out of Singapore alongside ​Dominic Schacher​ and ​Lars Godzik​ (also ex-SoftwareOne).

🇩🇪 ​Theion​, producer of new-gen tech for quasi solid-state batteries, raised $15.6 million in a Series A funding led by Team Global, joined by Geschwister Oetker and Enpal.

🇩🇪 ​Doinstruct​, developing mobile training SAAS for frontline workers, raised $17.1 million in a Series A funding led by HV Capital, joined by Creandum, HTGF and D11Z.

• seeded with $8.2 million in a round led by Creandum in 2024.

🇦🇹 ​Blockpit​, doing a consumer tax return platform for crypto assets, closed an equity deal with Elevator Ventures.

• the Austrians last raised 10 million Series A funding led by MiddleGame Ventures in 2021.
• profitably operating in ten countries, as for 2024.
• ICYMI, Elevator is a 70 million investment arm operated by Raiffeisen Bank.

🇩🇪 ​Buynomics​, selling revenue management SAAS, raised $30 million in Series B funding led by Forestay Capital, joined by Anais Ventures, VI Partners, Insight Partners, Seedcamp, DvH and Tomahawk.

🇩🇪 ​Tado°​, producing and selling heat pumps, raised a $31 million strategic equity deal with Panasonic.

• the transaction is part of a deeper collab involving tech exchange and back-to-back sales.
• this brings the outside equity financing to $137 million since 2021 - professional investors in the captable include Trill Impact, Bayern Kapital, Kiko Ventures and S2G.
• traction: 1 million customers producing in 2024 a little under $100 million in sales, which is a combo of the pumps and after sales services.

 

France

🇫🇷 ​Aletiq​, developing a digital industrial twin for technical data management solutions, announced a $6.3 million seedround led by Point Nine Capital, joined by Entropy Industrial, Angel Invest and angel investors.

• traction: 5,000 people working mostly for mid-market industrial companies across 10 different countries.
• deal closed at the end of last year, follows a 1.5 million pre-seed with Kima and Angel Invest in 2022.

🇫🇷 ​Galam Robotics​, developing modular robotic solutions for optimizing logistics and storage processes, raised a $10 million series A round with Supernova Invest, Polytechnique Ventures and angel investors.

🇫🇷 ​Dalma​, selling medical insurance services for pets, raised $21 million in Series B funding led by Breega, joined by Northzone, Anterra Capital, and Bpifrance.

 

Other geo

🇳🇱 ​Withthegrid​, developing an asset monitoring SAAS and a teleport gateway for grid owners and energy traders, raised $2 million seed with Move Energy VC.

🇮🇹 ​Bevy​, building a consumer beverage and bulky products delivery service, raised $2.6 million seed with Riello Investimenti and FoodLabs.

• traction: 25k active customers in Milan and 20 surrounding municipalities, 200k orders delivered since 2022 and a loyalty rate of 90%. 

🇵🇱 ​Jutro Medical​, healthcare provider via offline clinics or and mobile consultations, raised $12 million series A co-led by Kaya VC and Rio Asi.

🇪🇸 ​Playtomic​, operator of a network of sport reservations platform, raised $65 million via an equity round led by Match Invest, joined by LFH, Bonsai, Arconas, GP Bullhound and FJ Labs.

• the deal includes 10 million debt provided by Banco Santander
• traction: 6,000 affiliated clubs and 1.5 million active players each month producing €240 million in revenue, with 40% growth yoy.
• founded in 2015 and initially seeded by two Swedish funds - ​Optimizer Invest​ and ​GP Bullhound​

 

 

---

 

 

Investors

On the move

🇸🇪 ​Magda Lukaszewicz​ joined Inventure as partner, after she had covered the Nordics for Balderton from a principal position for six years.

🇸🇪 ​Jesse Tinell​ was made partner at Icebreaker after having spent three and a half years in the Stockholm office.

🇬🇧 ​Sarah Chapman​ joined SET Ventures as a venture partner in the London office - she's previously co-founded and led two energy startups.

 

Powder 

🇬🇧 ICG did a final close of ​€3 billion​ for a second European mid-market fund.

🇫🇷 Sofinnova Partners raised ​€165 million​ for a Europe-focused biotech acceleration fund. 

🇬🇧 2150 announced a final closing at €197 million for a second fund.

• 2150 is an investment fund launched by the Danish real estate company ​NREP​ in 2021.

🇪🇸 Adara Ventures did a first close for a fourth fund targeting ​€100 million​ for backing early-stage deep tech in Spain.

🇬🇧 Elbow Beach did a first close of ​£63 million​ for a second fund dedicated to seed climate deals.

🇨🇿 Soulmates Ventures announced a ​€50 million​ fund to be spent on startups involved in environmental and social change.

🇸🇪 Incore Invest closed a second fund at ​$25 million​ to be spent on Nordic and UK SAAS. 

• founded in 2022 by ​Nicolai Chamizo​ and Minecraft's founder ​Jonas Mårtensson​ (both live in Spain but run a Sthlm office). 

🇪🇸 The City of Barcelona launched a ​€30 million​ Fund of Funds to act as an LP in both local and international VC funds investing in the city.

🇫🇷 Monte Carlo Capital announced a first ​€11.7 million​ close for a solo GP fund operated by former IB trader ​Ian Sosso​.

 

Exits

🇩🇪 Project A Ventures and a bunch of angels exited from Butter, a Danish developer of an all-in-one SAAS for managing interactive workshops, acquired by Miro for an ​undisclosed amount​.

• Butter was seeded with roughly 3 million at the end of 2020.

 

Europeans abroad

🇬🇧 Anthemis led a ​$1.7 million​ pre-seed round raised by Vibrant, Americans doing an AI-powered OS for personalized medicine in the preventative space.

🇦🇹 Speedinvest led a ​$5 million​ seed raised by Leda, a Kenyan startup doing an AI-powered platform for logistics in Africa.

🇱🇺 Mangrove Capital Partners contributed to a ​$11 million​ series A raised by Brain Space, an Israeli startup developing a headset that connects to the brain in order to provide an extensive understanding of a person's mental and cognitive states.

🇩🇪 Bosch Ventures led and BMW tagged along a ​$28 million​ series B raised by Via, Americans doing quantum-resistant, passwordless technologies in defense and enterprise sectors.

 

Also notable

🇩🇪 HgCapital invested ​$6 million​ in Scopevisio, German software company founded in 2007 and selling an integrated CRM and ERP to some 7500 customers in the DACH mid-market area.

🇫🇷 Hexa closed a ​€29 million​ debt transaction with four major European banks.

• ICYMI, we profiled Hexa ​last week​. In 2024, the French have raised €35 million in equity for a double fund - one for startup incubation and another for growth deals.

🇨🇿 Flowpay, selling loans via an embedded platform, secured ​€30 million​ in debt financing with Fasanara Capital.

• the Czechs did a 2M seed late last year with local VCs.

🇫🇷 Mirova invested ​€50 million​ in Greenway, a Slovak EV charging network operator active in the CEE region.

🇪🇸 ​Factorial​, developers of a cloud HR platform for SMBs, raised ​$120 million​ in non-dilutive, non-equity funding from General Catalyst.

• this is the second non-dilutive financing deal closed by the Spaniards with GC, following a similar 80 million one done ​in 2024​
• equity wise, Factorial last raised $120 million in a Series C round led by Atomico in 2022. The captable also includes CRV, Creandum, K Fund, Tiger Global or GIC

🇸🇪 Norrsken VC opened a ​seven floors hub​ in Brussels, located near the European Parliament.

• that would be their fourth, alongside Stockholm, Barcelona and Kigali (Rwanda).

 

Elsewhere

• Susa Ventures raised ​$175 million​ for a fifth seed fund - in Europe they have invested in a 13.5M A round raised by ​Rillet​ last year.
• Long Journey VC announced the closing of a ​$181,818,181.8​ ($181.8M) early stage fund - in stealth(-ish) for five years, notably operated by Cyan Banister (ex-Founders Fund), Arielle Zuckerberg (ex-Coatue and sister of Marc Zuckerberg) and Lee Jacobs (ex-AngelList).
• Ribbit Capital is raising ​$500 million​ for a new fund.
• a16z is also raising a ​new bio fund​.
• Sequoia Capital ​laid off​ its Washington D.C.-based policy team and shut its office there.

 

• Accel led a ​$2.5 million​ pre-seed round raised by Swish Robotics, an American startup building an ecosystem of consumer cooking robots.
• Felicis led a ​$7.8 million​ seed deal closed by Tera AI, West Coast startup building a spatial reasoning AI research SAAS.
• 8VC led a ​$25 million​ seed deal closed by Augment, Americans building an AI-driven logistics platform

 

• Greycroft led a ​$20 million​ series A extension with Prezent, Indian startup doing an AI-driven platform for creating slideshow presentations.
• Kleiner Perkins led a ​$23.5 million​ Series A for Multiply Mortgage, building a mortgage employee benefit program out of US.
• Lux Capital (led), Sequoia Capital (did the seed a year ago) and In-Q-Tel contributed to a ​$39 million​ series A round raised Kela, an Israeli defense-tech startup.
• Lightspeed led a ​$40 million​ Series A funding raised by RedotPay, a Hong Kong-based crypto payment platform

 

• Accel led a ​$52 million​ series B raised by Graphite, an American startup building a AI-powered code review platform.
• 8VC led a late stage transaction at a ​$4B valuation​ for Cognition AI, a coding assistant maker.

 

• Perplexity is reportedly in talks to raise up to ​$1B​ at an $18B valuation.
• SoftBank paid ​$6.5B​ in cash for buying out Carlyle Group and Oracle in order to full own Ampere Computing, an American chip designer founded by former Intel executive Renee James.

 

---

 

Did you find this useful? 🤔

Great    •    Good   •    Meh

 

---

 

Questions or comments? Let us know!