Fundraising

The tokenisation of institutional investment strategies has emerged as one of Europe’s most substantive fintech opportunities. As regulatory clarity solidifies across the continent—particularly through the EU’s MiCA framework—investors and platforms are positioning themselves to capture the structural shift from traditional finance into on-chain markets. Berlin-based Midas has now secured $50 million in Series A funding to accelerate this transition, bringing total capital raised to $58.75 million. The Midas funding round signals sustained institutional confidence in the company’s ability to bridge traditional asset management and decentralised finance infrastructure. RRE Ventures and Creandum led the Series A round, joined by an extensive network of institutional investors including Franklin Templeton, Coinbase Ventures, Anchorage Digital, Framework Ventures, HV Capital, Ledger Cathay, M1 Capital, FJ Labs, North Island Ventures, No Limit Holdings, and GSR. The breadth of the investor syndicate reflects confidence across traditional finance, venture capital, and digital asset sectors alike. Institutional heavyweights back tokenised capital markets infrastructure Vic Singh, partner at RRE Ventures, highlighted the strategic importance of the Midas funding announcement: “Tokenisation will fundamentally reshape global capital markets as TradFi moves on-chain. The platform they forged in the depths of the crypto bear market has emerged with strong product-market fit.” This observation captures a critical narrative: Midas has built and validated its core business during a period of significant crypto market volatility, positioning it to scale when broader adoption accelerates. Simon Schmincke of Creandum characterised the opportunity in similarly expansive but grounded terms: “The opportunity to bring institutional-grade investment products onchain is massive, and Midas has the regulatory set-up, the technical architecture, and the distribution network required to do it best.” The emphasis on regulatory compliance and technical execution reflects how the tokenisation startup funding landscape has matured beyond speculative narratives. Institutional strategies meet distributed infrastructure Midas tokenises institutional investment strategies into regulatory-compliant on-chain products. The flagship product, mTBILL, operates through a partnership with BlackRock, allowing investors to gain exposure to tokenised US Treasury bills on distributed ledgers. This represents a concrete example of how RWA tokenisation—the conversion of real-world assets into blockchain-native tokens—translates into practical financial infrastructure. The company has achieved notable traction: over $1.7 billion in cumulative asset issuance and more than 20,000 token holders. These figures suggest genuine market adoption rather than experimental use cases. The founding team brings relevant expertise: CEO Dennis Dinkelmeyer previously worked at Goldman Sachs; co-founders include Fabrice Grinda (FJ Labs) and Romain Bourgois (formerly of Ondo Finance), both with substantial fintech and blockchain credentials. The Series A proceeds will fund the launch of Midas Staked Liquidity (MSL), a layer designed to enable instant redemptions for tokenised assets. This technical enhancement addresses a real friction point in current tokenised finance: the ability to move capital with the speed and certainty that on-chain markets promise. MSL represents a bridge between the liquidity characteristics investors expect from traditional markets and the operational speed of blockchain infrastructure. European tokenisation gains regulatory and investor momentum The broader context supports this investment thesis. RWA tokenisation expanded by approximately 80 per cent over the past two years, driven by clearer regulatory frameworks and institutional adoption curves. The EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA) has provided legal certainty that was previously absent, enabling platforms to operate with greater confidence about compliance requirements. This regulatory maturation distinguishes the current wave of tokenisation investment from earlier cycles driven primarily by speculative demand. Berlin’s position as a fintech hub has also strengthened: the city hosts a concentrated ecosystem of blockchain-native talent and infrastructure companies, creating natural advantages for platforms like Midas that require both regulatory expertise and technical depth. European fintech funding has increasingly flowed toward companies addressing genuine institutional needs rather than consumer-facing applications, reflecting how the sector has evolved. The Midas funding round represents a vote of confidence in tokenised infrastructure as a durable category within European fintech. With $50 million in capital, the company now has runway to expand product offerings, deepen integrations with institutional investors, and build the technical layer required for true market-scale adoption. The substantial investor syndicate—combining traditional finance institutions, venture capital, and digital asset specialists—suggests convergence around tokenisation as a legitimate strategic priority rather than a peripheral fintech theme. Summary Company Midas Headquarters Berlin, Germany Founded 2023 Funding Round Series A Amount Raised $50 million (€43 million) Lead Investors RRE Ventures, Creandum Total Funding to Date $58.75 million Use of Funds Launch Midas Staked Liquidity (MSL) layer; platform scaling

The convergence of traditional finance and decentralised infrastructure continues to accelerate, with Berlin-based tokenisation platform Midas securing $50 million in Series A funding. The round, led by RRE Ventures and Creandum, signals growing institutional conviction that tokenised real-world assets represent a structural shift in how capital markets will operate — not merely a crypto-native experiment. TradFi meets DeFi in landmark round The Series A was led by RRE Ventures and Creandum, with an unusually diverse consortium of co-investors spanning both traditional finance and crypto-native capital. Franklin Templeton, the $1.5 trillion asset management giant, participated alongside Coinbase Ventures, Anchorage Digital, Framework Ventures, HV Capital, Ledger Cathay, North Island Ventures, M1 Capital, FJ Labs, and GSR. The round brings Midas’s total funding to $58.75 million, following an $8.75 million seed round in March 2024. Vic Singh, General Partner at RRE Ventures, articulated the investment thesis clearly. “Tokenisation will fundamentally reshape global capital markets as TradFi moves on-chain. Midas is building the infrastructure for tokenised capital markets, and we are proud to be on this ride with them,” he stated. Dennis Dinkelmeyer, CEO and co-founder of Midas, framed the company’s ambition in broader terms. “We’re building toward a future where investing works like the internet: open, transparent, composable, and accessible by default,” he said. Solving the liquidity problem Midas occupies a specific niche within the rapidly expanding real-world asset (RWA) tokenisation market. The company’s platform enables asset managers and institutional investors to package investment strategies — including US Treasury exposure, basis trading, and stablecoin yield strategies — into regulatory-compliant, liquid ERC-20 tokens that can be deployed across decentralised finance protocols. Since launching in 2024, Midas has issued $1.7 billion in tokenised assets and distributed $37 million in yield to more than 20,000 token holders. Its flagship product, mTBILL, tracks short-dated US Treasury Bills through a BlackRock-managed fund, whilst mBASIS offers a market-neutral crypto basis trading strategy designed to perform in both bull and bear market conditions. The central innovation accompanying the Series A is Midas Staked Liquidity (MSL), a $40 million liquidity facility that enables instant, atomic redemptions without settlement delays or counterparty risk. This addresses what many institutional investors have identified as the primary friction point in tokenised assets: the inability to exit positions quickly. Rather than unwinding underlying positions on each redemption, MSL uses pre-allocated capital to provide immediate liquidity — a mechanism the company describes as the “missing piece” for institutional adoption. Europe’s regulatory advantage in tokenised finance Midas holds regulatory approval in Liechtenstein under the principality’s progressive DLT framework, which enables EU-wide passporting of its products. Notably, the company’s tokenised funds are among the first in Europe to be accessible to non-accredited retail investors — a distinction that could prove commercially significant as the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation continues to reshape the regulatory landscape for digital assets. The broader context is compelling. Global tokenised RWA assets surpassed $12 billion by March 2026, more than doubling from $5 billion at the start of 2025. Venture capital deployment into crypto and blockchain projects reached $3.1 billion in March 2026 alone, with the majority concentrated in infrastructure and RWA tokenisation. The European market is emerging as a particularly fertile ground, with Binance launching a $500 million RWA tokenisation pilot with European banks and a $1.2 billion fund tokenising European commercial real estate during 2026. The Series A proceeds will fund the expansion of the MSL facility, development of new institutional asset classes including reinsurance-linked securities and asset-receivables strategies, deeper integrations with major DeFi protocols such as Morpho and Pendle, and continued European expansion leveraging the company’s regulatory approvals. Founded in 2023 by Dinkelmeyer, serial entrepreneur Fabrice Grinda (co-founder of OLX and founding partner of FJ Labs), and Romain Bourgois (formerly of Ondo Finance and Criteo), Midas brings together institutional finance expertise and deep DeFi product knowledge. With traditional asset managers now actively moving on-chain, the company’s positioning at the intersection of regulatory compliance and DeFi composability could prove to be precisely where the market is heading. Company: Midas HQ: Berlin, Germany Founded: 2023 Round: Series A Amount: $50 million (€43M) Lead Investors: RRE Ventures, Creandum Total Funding: $58.75 million Use of Funds: Scale MSL liquidity facility, new asset classes, DeFi integrations, European expansion

Europe’s quantum computing sector is entering a new phase of maturity, with institutional capital increasingly flowing toward hardware companies that can demonstrate both commercial traction and a credible path to scale. Finnish quantum computing leader IQM Quantum Computers has secured €50 million in growth financing from funds managed by BlackRock, further bolstering its position as the continent’s most-funded quantum hardware company ahead of a planned US public listing. Strategic investors back European quantum leadership The financing comes from funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, marking a significant direct investment in quantum computing hardware beyond its existing passive exposure through quantum-focused ETFs. For IQM, the deal strengthens its balance sheet at a critical juncture: the company announced in February 2026 a planned merger with Real Asset Acquisition Corp (RAAQ) that would see it listed on a major US exchange at a pre-money valuation of approximately $1.8 billion. Jan Goetz, CEO and co-founder of IQM, described the timing as pivotal. “The financing package comes at a pivotal time for IQM, as we build momentum for our next phase of growth. This financing further strengthens our capital structure, increasing the resources available to enable us to execute on our technology vision and expand into new markets,” he stated. The proceeds will be directed toward accelerating IQM’s technology roadmap, advancing research and development in quantum error correction and qubit quality, expanding into new geographic markets, and preparing for its forthcoming public listing. The growth financing facility is structured to lower IQM’s overall cost of capital whilst diversifying its funding base ahead of the IPO, expected to close around June 2026. From Finnish lab to global quantum contender Founded in 2018 as a spinout from Aalto University and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, IQM has grown into Europe’s leading quantum hardware company. The Espoo-headquartered firm develops full-stack superconducting quantum computers, delivering on-premises systems and cloud-based quantum computing access to research institutions, high-performance computing centres, and industrial partners worldwide. IQM’s commercial traction is notable. The company has delivered 15 quantum computers to 13 customers across multiple countries — the largest publicly disclosed deployment figure among quantum computing companies globally. Its customer base includes Germany’s Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ), where IQM has integrated quantum systems with classical high-performance computing infrastructure, and VTT in Finland, where a joint project aims to deliver a 300-qubit system by late 2027. The company reported approximately $35 million in revenue for 2025, with bookings and visibility exceeding $100 million. Its product range spans from 5-qubit educational systems to advanced 150-qubit platforms, with single-qubit and two-qubit gate fidelities consistently above 99.9 per cent. Europe’s quantum moment IQM’s fundraising underscores a broader shift in the European quantum computing landscape. European quantum funding reached an estimated €1.5 billion in 2025, up approximately 170 per cent year-on-year, though the continent still captures only around 5 per cent of global private quantum investment compared to more than 50 per cent flowing to the United States. Government support has been instrumental. The European Union’s Horizon Europe programme has allocated over €1.9 billion to quantum research, whilst individual member states have committed substantial national programmes — Germany alone earmarked €2 billion for quantum R&D. Finland’s €70 million government grant for the VTT-IQM 300-qubit project exemplifies the public-private collaboration driving European competitiveness in the sector. Comparable European raises in recent months include Alice & Bob’s €100 million Series B in Paris, Multiverse Computing’s €189 million Series B in Spain, and UK-based Quantinuum’s $800 million across two rounds. IQM’s cumulative fundraising of over €600 million places it firmly among the continent’s most-funded quantum ventures. Should the RAAQ merger proceed as planned, IQM would become the first European quantum computing company to list on a major US exchange — a milestone that could catalyse further institutional interest in the sector and validate Europe’s growing quantum ecosystem on the global stage. Company: IQM Quantum Computers HQ: Espoo, Finland Founded: 2018 Round: Growth financing Amount: €50 million (~$57.6M) Lead Investor: BlackRock Total Funding: Over €600 million Use of Funds: Technology roadmap acceleration, R&D, market expansion, IPO preparation

Enterprise orchestration enters a new era As enterprises grapple with increasingly complex technology stacks spanning data pipelines, AI workflows, infrastructure automation, and business processes, the demand for unified orchestration platforms has never been more acute. The proliferation of cloud services, microservices architectures, and AI-driven operations has created an orchestration challenge that legacy tools were never designed to address — and a new generation of open-source platforms is stepping in to fill the gap. Paris-based Kestra has raised $25 million in Series A funding led by RTP Global to build what it describes as “the orchestration standard for enterprises,” with continued participation from existing investors Alven, ISAI, and Axeleo. The round brings the company’s total funding to $36 million. RTP Global leads bet on open-source orchestration The investment from RTP Global, a technology-focused venture firm with a strong track record in developer tools and infrastructure, validates Kestra’s approach to enterprise orchestration. Founded in 2021 by Emmanuel Darras and Ludovic Dehon, the platform unifies data pipelines, AI workflows, infrastructure automation, and business processes into a single declarative control plane with over 1,200 plugins spanning cloud, SaaS, and enterprise systems. Kestra’s language-agnostic, event-driven architecture has resonated with engineering teams seeking to consolidate fragmented orchestration tooling. The platform’s growth metrics speak to this demand: enterprise revenue has increased 25-fold since the seed round eighteen months ago, and the platform executed over 2 billion workflows in 2025, up 20 times year-on-year from 100 million in 2024. Blue-chip enterprises adopt Kestra at scale The calibre of Kestra’s customer base is remarkable for a company at the Series A stage. Apple uses the platform for AI pipeline orchestration across the App Store, Apple Music, and device diagnostics. JPMorgan Chase relies on Kestra for cybersecurity pipelines, whilst Toyota has adopted it for unified AI and data pipeline monitoring. Deutsche Telekom, BHP, and Crédit Agricole round out an enterprise roster that would be impressive for companies at far later stages of development. With over 26,000 GitHub stars and adoption across more than 30,000 organisations worldwide, Kestra has established itself as the fastest-growing open-source orchestration platform in the market. The vibrant open-source community, with hundreds of active contributors, provides a powerful distribution engine that has fuelled the company’s rapid enterprise adoption. Building the orchestration layer for the AI era The newly raised capital will support the development of Kestra 2.0, the company’s most significant product milestone to date. The upgrade will introduce regional deployment capabilities, segregated network support, and dedicated experiences tailored to data, AI, and infrastructure teams. Kestra also plans to expand its fully managed cloud offering and strengthen its commercial presence across North America and Europe. The timing is significant. As enterprises accelerate their adoption of AI, the orchestration layer that coordinates workflows across data preparation, model training, inference, and monitoring becomes mission-critical infrastructure. Kestra’s position at this intersection — combining open-source accessibility with enterprise-grade reliability — places it at the centre of a rapidly expanding market. France’s vibrant open-source ecosystem, which has produced companies like Hugging Face and Mistral AI, continues to demonstrate its capacity to build globally significant developer infrastructure. Company: Kestra HQ: Paris, France Founded: 2021 Round: Series A Amount: $25 million Lead Investor: RTP Global Total Funding: $36 million Use of Funds: Kestra 2.0 development, cloud offering expansion, North America and Europe growth

Tokenised finance infrastructure attracts institutional capital The infrastructure layer underpinning tokenised real-world assets is rapidly becoming one of the most actively funded segments in European fintech. As institutional players from BlackRock to Franklin Templeton commit to bringing traditional financial products on-chain, the companies building the plumbing to make these assets liquid, composable, and accessible are commanding serious investor attention. In 2025 alone, over $2.5 billion flowed into tokenisation infrastructure globally, and the pace shows no sign of slowing. Berlin-based Midas has raised $50 million in Series A funding to scale its platform for tokenised investment products, with the round co-led by RRE Ventures and Creandum alongside a roster of heavyweight backers including Franklin Templeton, Coinbase Ventures, Framework Ventures, and HV Capital. Solving the liquidity problem for tokenised assets At the heart of Midas’s proposition is a problem that has long constrained institutional adoption of on-chain yield products: liquidity. While tokenised assets offer compelling advantages in transparency and composability, investors have historically faced cumbersome redemption processes, with capital locked in vault-like structures that impose waiting periods for withdrawals. Alongside the Series A, Midas launched its Open Liquidity Architecture, anchored by Midas Staked Liquidity (MSL) — a facility with up to $40 million in initial capacity that enables instant, atomic redemptions for tokenised assets without settlement risk or reliance on external market makers. This infrastructure effectively removes one of the most significant barriers to institutional participation in on-chain finance. Strong traction from a young company Founded in 2023 by Dennis Dinkelmeyer (ex-Goldman Sachs), Fabrice Grinda (FJ Labs), and Romain Bourgois (ex-Ondo Finance), Midas has moved quickly to establish itself as a leading platform for composable on-chain investment products. Since launching, the protocol has facilitated $1.7 billion in tokenised asset issuance, distributed $37 million in yield to approximately 20,000 individual mToken holders, and accumulated $500 million in total value locked. The founding team brings precisely the blend of traditional finance pedigree and crypto-native experience that investors increasingly seek in this space. Dinkelmeyer’s Goldman Sachs background provides institutional credibility, whilst Grinda’s track record at FJ Labs — one of the most prolific angel investors globally — and Bourgois’s experience at Ondo Finance, another leading tokenisation platform, bring deep domain expertise. Europe’s growing role in tokenised finance The round brings Midas’s total funding to approximately $58.75 million, following an $8.75 million seed round in 2024. The quality of the investor syndicate is notable: Franklin Templeton, which manages over $1.5 trillion in assets, has been one of the most forward-leaning traditional asset managers in the tokenisation space, whilst Coinbase Ventures and Anchorage Digital bring deep crypto infrastructure expertise. Berlin continues to strengthen its position as a hub for blockchain and financial infrastructure companies, with Midas joining a growing cohort of well-funded German fintechs building at the intersection of traditional and decentralised finance. As the regulatory landscape in Europe matures — particularly through the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) framework — the continent is well-placed to become a global centre for compliant tokenised financial products. Company: Midas HQ: Berlin, Germany Founded: 2023 Round: Series A Amount: $50 million Lead Investors: RRE Ventures, Creandum Total Funding: $58.75 million Use of Funds: Scaling Open Liquidity Architecture, expanding tokenised investment infrastructure

European quantum computing reaches inflection point Europe’s quantum computing sector is entering a defining chapter, with institutional investors signalling growing confidence in the continent’s ability to compete on a global stage. As governments from Helsinki to Paris channel billions into quantum research programmes and the first generation of European quantum startups mature toward commercialisation, the sector is beginning to attract the kind of heavyweight capital that was once reserved for its American counterparts. Finnish quantum computing company IQM Quantum Computers has secured €50 million in growth financing from funds managed by BlackRock, marking a significant vote of confidence from the world’s largest asset manager ahead of IQM’s planned listing on Nasdaq. BlackRock backs Europe’s quantum hardware leader The €50 million financing package, announced on 30 March 2026, comes at a pivotal moment for IQM. The Espoo-headquartered company is preparing for a merger with Real Asset Acquisition Corp (RAAQ), a Nasdaq-listed special purpose acquisition company, in a deal that values IQM at approximately $1.8 billion. The transaction, expected to close around June 2026, would make IQM the first publicly listed European quantum computing company and is projected to provide over $450 million in combined financing. BlackRock’s involvement underscores the institutional appetite for quantum technology. Jan Goetz, CEO and co-founder of IQM, noted that the financing comes at a pivotal time as the company builds momentum for its next phase of growth. The capital will accelerate IQM’s technology roadmap, fuel research and development, and support continued market expansion across its global footprint spanning 12 countries including France, Germany, Japan, and the United States. Commercial traction sets IQM apart What distinguishes IQM in the quantum landscape is its commercial progress. The company reported $35 million in unaudited revenue for 2025 and over $100 million in orders and bookings by year-end — figures that place it among the most commercially advanced quantum computing firms globally. IQM has sold 21 quantum systems to 13 customers, with 15 already delivered, which the company describes as the largest publicly disclosed figure among quantum computer manufacturers. IQM’s product portfolio spans from its entry-level IQM Spark system to its flagship IQM Resonance platform, serving high-performance computing centres, research laboratories, universities, and enterprises. The company employs over 300 people and has built one of the deepest engineering teams in European quantum hardware. A maturing European quantum ecosystem The investment arrives against a backdrop of accelerating quantum investment across Europe. The European Commission’s Quantum Technologies Flagship programme, national initiatives such as France’s €1.8 billion quantum strategy, and Germany’s dedicated quantum computing centres have created fertile ground for companies like IQM to scale. With total funding now exceeding $600 million — including a $320 million Series B led by Ten Eleven Ventures in September 2025 — IQM has positioned itself as the continent’s most well-capitalised quantum hardware company. The planned Nasdaq listing represents more than a liquidity event; it signals that European deep tech companies can chart a path to public markets on their own terms. For the broader quantum computing sector, IQM’s trajectory offers a compelling case study in building globally competitive technology companies from European soil. Summary Company: IQM Quantum ComputersHQ: Espoo, FinlandFounded: 2018Round: Growth FinancingAmount: €50 million ($57 million)Investor: BlackRockTotal Funding: Over $600 millionUse of Funds: R&D acceleration, market expansion, Nasdaq listing preparation

The enterprise AI landscape in Europe is evolving rapidly beyond automation and productivity tools, with a new category of platforms emerging that target the strategic decision-making layer of organisations. As European companies raised over $9 billion for AI ventures in the first two months of 2026 alone, investor attention is increasingly shifting towards applications that serve the boardroom rather than the back office, addressing the growing gap between the volume of available intelligence and executives’ capacity to act on it. Paris-based Omniscient has raised €3.5 million ($4.1 million) in pre-seed funding to develop its AI decision intelligence platform, designed to replace the fragmented ecosystem of monitoring and intelligence tools that large organisations typically rely upon. The round was led by Seedcamp, one of Europe’s most prolific early-stage investors, with participation from Drysdale, Plug and Play, MS&AD, Raise, Anamcara, and xdeck, a global syndicate spanning France, Japan, and the United States. Bpifrance also contributed support to the round. Seedcamp backs ex-McKinsey founders’ vision for unified executive intelligence The company was founded in 2024 by Arnaud d’Estienne and Mehdi Benseghir, both former McKinsey consultants who observed first-hand how global organisations struggled to synthesise intelligence from disparate sources into actionable strategic decisions. Their platform addresses a specific pain point: large enterprises typically manage more than 150 separate intelligence platforms, each covering a different channel, geography, or function, with no unified view of what matters. “Organisations were sitting on vast amounts of data, but with no reliable way to turn it into decisions at the speed the market demands,” said d’Estienne, describing the gap that Omniscient aims to fill. At its core, Omniscient’s platform employs a proprietary architecture of specialist AI agents, each assigned to a defined domain — news monitoring, regulatory developments, supply chain signals, and competitive intelligence — that feed into a unified management cockpit. The system ingests data from more than 100,000 sources across press, social media, web, video, audio, and internal corporate pipelines, then synthesises that information into a two-minute executive briefing updated in real time and delivered across multiple markets and languages. The pre-seed capital will fund key engineering hires, further product development, and the initial expansion of commercial operations. The company is already working with global organisations and plans to extend beyond monitoring into predictive and prescriptive analytics, advising leadership teams on emerging risks and recommended actions before situations demand reactive responses. European enterprise AI investment reflects growing demand for strategic tools Omniscient’s raise sits within a broader wave of European investment in AI applications that target strategic rather than operational use cases. Artificial intelligence accounted for 62 per cent of European venture capital funding in early 2026, with enterprise decision tools identified alongside generative media, autonomous systems, and defence applications as key growth sectors. The decision intelligence category itself is gaining definition, with companies like London-based Quantexa and others building AI-powered platforms for complex data analysis and strategic insight. Omniscient differentiates through its explicit focus on the C-suite and board level, a segment where the consequences of delayed or poorly informed decisions are most acute and where existing tools have largely failed to deliver integrated solutions. The international composition of Omniscient’s investor syndicate, spanning European venture capital, Japanese corporate investment, and American capital, reflects the global applicability of the company’s approach. As regulatory complexity, geopolitical volatility, and information velocity continue to accelerate, the demand for platforms that can distil signal from noise at the executive level is likely to intensify across industries and geographies. Company Omniscient HQ Paris, France Founded 2024 Round Pre-Seed Amount €3.5 million ($4.1 million) Lead Investor Seedcamp Co-Investors Drysdale, Plug and Play, MS&AD, Raise, Anamcara, xdeck, Bpifrance Use of Funds Engineering hires, product development, commercial expansion

The European photonics sector is quietly building the hardware foundations for the next generation of augmented reality devices, with integrated chip-scale solutions poised to solve the miniaturisation and power consumption challenges that have long constrained consumer AR adoption. As major technology companies accelerate their AR hardware roadmaps, the demand for compact, efficient display components is creating significant opportunities for European deep tech startups operating at the intersection of semiconductor design and optical engineering. Brilliance, an Enschede-based photonics startup, has raised €6 million in a funding round led by Cottonwood Technology Fund to scale development of its integrated RGB laser chip platform for AR displays and other projection applications. Existing investors PhotonVentures, Oost NL, and PhotiX also participated in the round, which follows an initial €2 million seed investment secured in November 2023. The capital will support the company’s push towards delivering custom solutions to customers and preparing for initial production by the end of 2026. Cottonwood Technology Fund leads round as AR hardware demand accelerates The investment reflects growing investor confidence in European photonic integrated circuit (PIC) technology as a critical enabler for next-generation display systems. Cottonwood Technology Fund, which focuses on deep technology investments, is joined by returning backers who have supported Brilliance since its earliest stages, indicating continued conviction in the company’s technology roadmap. Founded in 2023 by CEO Tim Tiek and CTO Douwe Geuzebroek, Brilliance has developed a technology platform that integrates laser sources with silicon nitride photonic circuits on a single chip. This approach replaces the bulky optical assemblies traditionally used in light engines for AR glasses and head-up displays, enabling significant reductions in size, weight, and power consumption whilst delivering higher brightness and a wider field of view. “The capital will support scaling development, delivering custom solutions, and preparing for initial production by year-end,” said Tim Tiek, highlighting the company’s transition from research-stage development to commercial readiness. The company’s technology addresses what many in the industry consider the primary bottleneck to mainstream AR adoption: the light engine. Current AR display systems rely on discrete optical components that are too large and power-hungry for comfortable, all-day wearable devices. Brilliance’s integrated approach promises to deliver what it describes as “the smallest and most efficient RGB laser” for projection applications, a claim that, if validated at production scale, could position the company as a key supplier to AR device manufacturers. European photonics ecosystem strengthens position in global AR supply chain Brilliance’s raise adds to a growing body of evidence that Europe’s photonics ecosystem, particularly the Netherlands’ Twente region and broader PhotonDelta cluster, is developing into a globally competitive hub for AR-enabling technologies. Belgian startup Swave Photonics raised €27 million in 2025 for its holographic extended reality platform, whilst several other European companies are advancing complementary display and sensing technologies. The AR market itself continues to attract substantial investment, with industry analysts projecting significant growth as enterprise and consumer use cases mature. The convergence of improved display optics, more powerful mobile processors, and advancing AI capabilities is expected to drive a new wave of AR device launches in the coming years, creating demand for the type of component-level innovation that Brilliance is developing. Beyond AR glasses, the company’s RGB laser chip technology has applications in automotive head-up displays, industrial laser systems, and other display architectures, providing multiple potential revenue streams as the technology scales towards production. With this funding secured, Brilliance is positioned to move from prototype to production within the year, a milestone that would mark an important step in demonstrating Europe’s capacity to compete in the global race to build the optical infrastructure for spatial computing. Company Brilliance HQ Enschede, Netherlands Founded 2023 Round Seed (follow-on) Amount €6 million Lead Investor Cottonwood Technology Fund Co-Investors PhotonVentures, Oost NL, PhotiX Use of Funds Scale development, custom solutions, first production launch (end of 2026) Total Funding ~€8 million

Europe’s precision fermentation sector is entering a decisive phase of commercialisation, as investors and food industry incumbents increasingly back technologies that promise to decouple protein production from animal agriculture. The global precision fermentation market, valued at approximately $3 billion in Europe alone, is projected to grow at a compound annual rate exceeding 38 per cent through the end of the decade, driven by regulatory support, climate commitments, and shifting consumer demand for sustainable food systems. Paris-based Standing Ovation has secured €30 million ($34.2 million) in Series B financing to accelerate the commercialisation of its precision fermentation technology, which produces dairy-identical casein proteins without the use of animals. The round comprises €25 million in equity, jointly led by the Ecotechnologies 2 fund managed by Bpifrance as part of the France 2030 programme and Crédit Mutuel Innovation, supplemented by €5 million in non-dilutive financing from Bpifrance and a banking syndicate. The investment brings Standing Ovation’s total funding to approximately €46 million. Strategic investors signal industrial confidence in alternative proteins The investor syndicate reflects a deliberate convergence of public funding, strategic food industry capital, and impact-oriented venture investors. Existing shareholders Astanor, Bel Group, Seventure Partners, GoodStartUp, and Big Idea Ventures were joined by new investors including Danone Ventures, Angelor, Newtree Impact, and Noshaq. The participation of both Bel Group and Danone Ventures is particularly significant, representing two major European dairy corporations placing strategic bets on precision fermentation as a core component of their future ingredient supply chains. This dual endorsement from industry incumbents suggests that precision-fermented proteins are transitioning from experimental alternative to credible industrial input. “We are bridging the gap between the agri-food industry and deep tech,” the company’s leadership stated, highlighting their circular approach to protein production that converts whey permeates and agricultural sugars into high-quality casein through proprietary fermentation processes. Standing Ovation’s flagship ingredient, Advanced Casein, is produced through a process that the company claims generates 74 per cent lower greenhouse gas emissions and requires three times less water than conventional animal-derived casein. The technology is protected by eight patent families, and the company holds the French Tech 2030 designation, signalling government recognition of its strategic importance to national food sovereignty. European precision fermentation market gathers pace The timing of Standing Ovation’s raise coincides with accelerating momentum across Europe’s precision fermentation landscape. Germany, the United Kingdom, and France are emerging as the continent’s leading centres for fermentation-derived protein production, supported by public funding programmes and a growing network of contract manufacturing partnerships. Founded in 2020 by microbiologist and agronomist Romain Chayot, Standing Ovation now employs 36 people and is led by CEO Yvan Chardonnels, a specialist in B2B strategic transformation. The company plans to use the new capital to launch commercial operations in the United States in 2026, followed by expansion into European and Asian markets from the end of 2027. Manufacturing will be scaled through partner facilities rather than proprietary production plants, a capital-efficient approach that several European biotech companies have adopted to accelerate time to market. The broader context for this investment is the global protein demand challenge. An estimated 250 million additional metric tonnes of protein will be required by 2050 to feed the world’s growing population, a gap that conventional animal agriculture alone cannot sustainably fill. Standing Ovation’s approach positions precision fermentation as a sovereign, European-manufactured response to this challenge, reducing dependence on imported animal feed and volatile agricultural supply chains. With its Series B complete, Standing Ovation joins a growing cohort of European precision fermentation companies progressing from laboratory validation to industrial-scale production, marking a pivotal shift in how the continent approaches food security and climate-aligned agriculture. Company Standing Ovation HQ Paris, France Founded 2020 Round Series B Amount €30 million ($34.2 million) Lead Investors Ecotechnologies 2 (Bpifrance), Crédit Mutuel Innovation Co-Investors Astanor, Bel Group, Seventure Partners, GoodStartUp, Big Idea Ventures, Danone Ventures, Angelor, Newtree Impact, Noshaq Use of Funds US commercial launch (2026), European and Asian expansion (2027), manufacturing scale-up Total Funding ~€46 million Company Website https://www.standing-ovation.fr/

The global rehabilitation robotics sector is experiencing a period of sustained clinical validation and commercial maturation. Driven by an ageing European population, rising incidence of stroke and neurological conditions, and growing demand for technology-assisted recovery pathways, the market for wearable robotic rehabilitation devices is expanding well beyond its academic origins. Institutional investors and hospital procurement networks are increasingly willing to back companies that can demonstrate clinical efficacy at scale — and Italy’s Wearable Robotics, a spin-off of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa, is among the clearest examples of that trajectory. The company has closed a €5 million Series A funding round to accelerate its international expansion, building on a decade of research and a commercially validated product already deployed across 20 countries. The round was led by CDP Venture Capital through its Accelerators Fund, with participation from MITO Technology via the MITO Tech Transfer fund, LIFTT, and SIMEST — drawing on resources from Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation through the F.394/81 Venture Capital and Participatory Investments Section. Additional co-investors include RoboIT and Toscana Next, a co-investment fund managed by CDP Venture Capital and backed by Tuscany’s principal banking foundations. The breadth of the investor syndicate reflects both the national strategic significance of the technology and the depth of conviction among Wearable Robotics’ existing backers. CDP Venture Capital and a nationally strategic investment thesis The involvement of CDP Venture Capital — Italy’s most prominent institutional technology investor — in leading the round is a meaningful signal about the company’s standing within the national innovation ecosystem. CDP has in recent years channelled significant capital into robotics and deep technology platforms, targeting companies that combine university-grade research credentials with demonstrated commercial traction. Wearable Robotics meets both criteria. Founded in 2014 as a spin-off of the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, the company has spent more than a decade developing its flagship product: ALEX RS, a bilateral wearable device for the neuromotor rehabilitation of the upper limb. The system integrates robotics with augmented and virtual reality components, guiding patients through structured rehabilitation exercises designed to support recovery of Activities of Daily Living following stroke and other neurological events. More than 50 ALEX RS units are currently installed in clinical hospitals and rehabilitation centres across 20 countries — an international footprint that is uncommon for a specialist medtech company at this stage of its development. Stefano Molino, Managing Partner at CDP Venture Capital, described the company’s results with ALEX RS as “testament to the team’s executive maturity,” and characterised Wearable Robotics as competing as an industry leader in rehabilitation robotics. Marco Parlani of LIFTT, a longstanding investor in the company, expressed continued conviction in “a team and technology positioned as leaders in rehabilitation robotics.” Lucia Lencioni, CEO of Wearable Robotics, framed the funding round in terms of building durable commercial foundations: “We are building the foundation for sustainable and scalable growth, while investing in product innovation.” North America, regulatory expansion, and a broadened product portfolio The Series A proceeds are earmarked for a set of parallel strategic priorities: completion of the product portfolio beyond the upper-limb ALEX RS into additional rehabilitation modalities; regulatory approvals for new markets; strengthening national and international distribution networks; and a targeted commercial push into North America — a market with both significant clinical demand for advanced rehabilitation technology and the institutional purchasing power to deploy it at scale. SIMEST’s participation, channelled through Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is directly tied to supporting that international expansion. Wearable Robotics holds a family of eight proprietary patents covering the company’s core technical know-how across kinematics, sensors, actuation systems, and exoskeleton architecture. That intellectual property base, combined with the clinical validation represented by 50-plus deployed units, provides a defensible foundation for the product range expansion the company is now pursuing. The Italian medtech sector is increasingly well-supported by institutional frameworks that bridge the gap between research spin-offs and commercial maturity — a gap that has historically constrained the internationalisation of Italian deep tech companies. Wearable Robotics, with this Series A, appears well positioned to demonstrate what that combination of research depth, clinical validation, and institutional investment can produce. Company Wearable Robotics Srl HQ Pisa (Ghezzano), Italy Founded 2014 Round Series A Amount €5 million Lead Investor CDP Venture Capital (Accelerators Fund) Co-Investors MITO Technology, LIFTT, SIMEST, RoboIT, Toscana Next Use of Funds Product portfolio expansion, North American market entry, regulatory compliance, production optimisation Company Website https://www.wearablerobotics.com/

Europe’s biotechnology sector is experiencing a significant structural shift in how the pharmaceutical industry approaches early-stage drug discovery. For decades, the pipeline of novel chemical compounds has been constrained not by a shortage of analytical tools or computational power, but by a fundamental scarcity of genuinely new molecular data. Approximately 97% of the genomic information encoded within microbial life remains unexplored — a largely untapped reservoir of chemical diversity that holds considerable promise for addressing medicine’s most persistent challenges, from antimicrobial resistance to oncology. Paris-based Generare has raised €20 million in Series A funding to systematically unlock that potential. The round was co-led by Alven and Daphni, two of France’s most active venture capital firms in the life sciences and deep tech space, with continued participation from all existing investors: Galion.exe, Teampact Ventures, and VIVES Partners. The capital will be used to scale Generare’s discovery capacity tenfold by 2027 — targeting a library of more than 2,000 novel compounds — and to grow the team from 25 to approximately 50 specialists spanning computational biology, synthetic biology, chemistry, and engineering. Strategic investors back Europe’s molecular discovery push The investment thesis behind the round reflects a growing recognition that drug discovery’s bottleneck lies upstream of the algorithm. As Guillaume Vandenesch, co-founder and CEO of Generare, stated: “Drug discovery has a data problem. The bottleneck is not algorithms — it is the absence of genuinely novel, high-quality molecular data.” Vandenesch co-founded the company in 2023 alongside Dr Vincent Libis, a specialist in natural product biosynthesis, on the premise that the world’s microbial genomes represent a systematically underexploited source of bioactive chemistry. Generare’s platform reads microbial genomes at scale, identifies gene sequences with the highest likelihood of producing bioactive molecules, expresses them in laboratory conditions, and characterises the resulting compounds for structure, biological activity, and drug potential. The output is a growing, proprietary library of molecules that pharmaceutical companies can access through licensing or partnership arrangements. The participation of Alven — a long-standing investor in French deep tech — and the entry of Daphni signal confidence that the platform has cleared early technical risk and is ready for industrial scaling. Results to date support that assessment. During 2025, Generare independently identified more than 200 previously unknown molecules. To put that in context: across the same period, all other players in the natural product discovery space collectively discovered just a few dozen. That differential speaks directly to the industrial nature of the platform Generare has built — not a research tool, but a molecule-generating engine. European biotech market context The broader European biotechnology market is displaying resilience in early 2026, with Series A rounds in the €15–30 million range increasingly common for platform companies that can demonstrate early IP validation and a differentiated data asset. Microbial genomics specifically is attracting growing institutional attention: the global microbial genomics market is projected to expand from approximately $2.5 billion in 2025 to $4.6 billion by 2030, at a compound annual growth rate of 13%, driven by advances in sequencing technology and the pharmaceutical industry’s urgent need for diversified compound libraries. France has emerged as a particularly active node in European biotech investment. Earlier this year, the country’s life sciences sector produced a series of notable early-stage rounds, reflecting both the depth of its research base and the maturity of its venture capital ecosystem. Generare’s raise adds to a mounting body of evidence that Paris-based deep tech platforms are increasingly able to attract capital at meaningful scale for genuinely novel science. For comparable recent activity in European biotech fundraising, Scripta Therapeutics’ €10.3 million seed round earlier this year illustrates the investor appetite for differentiated drug development platforms across the continent. With the Series A secured, Generare is positioned to transition from an early-stage research platform to a scalable molecular discovery engine. The company’s longer-term ambition extends to identifying more than 10,000 novel compounds — a scale that, if achieved, would make it one of the most productive sources of new drug candidates in Europe. For a sector that has long grappled with high late-stage clinical attrition, richer upstream molecular data represents a meaningful structural improvement to the entire discovery chain. < Company Generare (Generare Bioscience SAS) HQ Paris, France Founded 2023 Round Series A Amount €20 million (~$23.2 million) Lead Investors Alven, Daphni Co-Investors Galion.exe, Teampact Ventures, VIVES Partners Use of Funds Scale compound library to 2,000+ molecules by 2027; grow team from 25 to ~50 Company Website https://generare.bio/

London fintech Outpost raises $17.5M Series A led by Ribbit Capital to scale its AI-powered merchant-of-record platform, simplifying cross-border payments, tax, and compliance for global merchants.