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Agenda – next 30 days
See the full agenda →From the backstage
IFA 2026: the twenty startups who pitched, and the one who won
A company that prints implantable human tissue won a pitch competition at a consumer electronics fair. Cellbricks Therapeutics took the IFA Pitch Battle 2026 on the…
Ben Costantini
Composites Are About High Performance. So Are Events.
A startup event strategy needs the same discipline. Spend enough time around (deep-tech) startups and you start noticing a familiar pattern. The same founders appear at…
The most digital companies in the world are opening coffee shops
The AI industry runs on GPUs, APIs and Discord servers. So why is an AI insurance startup valued at $4 billion signing a lease for a…
Ben CostantiniThe Selected podcast
Tips & advice
The empty startup area: why tradeshows fail at startup sales
Picture this. A strategy director at a major exhibition calls with six weeks to go before the show. The brand new startup area has sold exactly…
Ben Costantini
Why events are lying about their metrics
This week I read about a hackathon claiming 6,000 attendees over a single weekend. The venues hosting it can’t accommodate more than 1,000 people. Nobody in…
Ben Costantini
The hidden costs of events: Why founders get the math wrong
Most startup founders treat events like they’re going travelling: count the days, block the calendar, done. But event tickets don’t come cheap, and the actual affair…
Ben CostantiniSpotlight
Fortaegis
The full-stack Secure Compute architecture for the era of AI and quantum computing
Latest
Arlequin AI raises €28M Series A to scale Europe’s answer to Palantir
Paris-based Arlequin AI raised a €28M Series A co-led by redalpine and OTB Ventures to scale topological neural networks – Europe's homegrown answer to Palantir, now with 30 clients in…
Implicity raises €35M to scale AI cardiac monitoring in the US
Paris medtech Implicity lands €35M from IRIS and Five Arrows to take FDA-cleared cardiac AI deeper into the US, on evidence of 26% lower patient mortality across 120,000 monitored patients.
Olenbee raises €7M to make the meal voucher card disappear
Four Sodexo alumni in Rouen raised €7M led by Go Capital to pay meal vouchers straight through employees' own bank cards – 260 companies signed, 80,000 users targeted for early…
Ground A raises €9.1M pre-seed to put laser drone defence on a pallet
Munich's Ground A raised a €9.1M pre-seed led by Vsquared Ventures, with Quantum Systems joining, to bring its pallet-sized GA 1000 laser counter-drone system into series production.
Limetax raises €36M to build an AI-powered group of German tax firms
Motive Partners leads a €6M pre-seed while German banks lend €30M more: eight months in, Limetax owns four tax firms and wants a big share of Germany's 54,000.
Latest funding
| Company | Round | Lead | Sector | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fortaegis Cybersecurity · Netherlands | Series A | Serendipity Capital | Cybersecurity | €43.3M |
| Chift Embedded Finance · Belgium | Series A | BlackFin Capital Partners | Embedded Finance | €10.5M |
| Tandem Health Health · Sweden | Series B | Scaleup Europe Fund (managed by EQT) | Health | €86.5M |
| Furo Unclassified · Germany | Series A | TQ Ventures | Unclassified | €4M |
| Biorsaf Food Safety · Italy | Series A | P101 SGR | Food Safety | €5.2M |
| Implicity Gov Tech · France | Series C | IRIS, Five Arrows | Gov Tech | €35M |
Browse the ecosystem
Call for startups
Sirha Innovation Awards 2027
Sirha’s award recognises foodservice and hospitality innovation, judged at the show in Lyon. Laureates receive the award itself, a listing among the winners and…
EIC Transition Open 2026
Aimed at deep-tech teams in the EU, Transition Open funds the step between a validated research result and a market-ready product. Only entities that…
BioFIT — Start-up Slams 2026
Start-up Slams gives life sciences founders a five-minute pitch at BioFIT in Marseille, judged by public bodies, industry and investors. It suits early-stage or…
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