Startups

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 event after event: a composites conference this week, a startup competition the next, followed by an investor summit, a sustainability conference and another pitching session. The logic is understandable. Young companies need visibility, customers and investors, and there is always the hope that the next event will provide the breakthrough introduction. The problem is that events can very quickly become an activity rather than a strategy. Teams return with business cards, LinkedIn connections and a sense of having had many interesting conversations, yet surprisingly little changes in the months that follow. For startups, where both cash and management attention are scarce resources, this is an expensive habit. I prefer to think about events through the lens of sport. A serious athlete does not try to peak every weekend. A season is built around a small number of A-events: the competitions where performance really matters. Everything around them is preparation. Startups should approach their event calendars in much the same way: select a limited number of events, understand exactly why they matter, prepare for them months in advance and then execute with intensity. Building your brand versus going where your customers are There are, in my view, two main reasons for a startup to attend events. The first is to build a brand, which for a young industrial company is largely about building trust. An established supplier enters the market with years or decades of history, references and relationships behind its name. A startup has none of that. Particularly in composites, where qualification cycles are long and customers are understandably cautious about introducing new materials and manufacturing technologies, familiarity matters. For a startup, brand building is ultimately trust building. This is why a composites startup should establish itself visibly within the composites ecosystem. JEC World in Paris is the reference. This is where I experimented a lot to master the game when I was leading the marketing and business development activities at 9T Labs – see picture above. Depending on geographic priorities, CAMX may play a similar role in North America, alongside relevant events in China and regional events in markets such as DACH, India or Southeast Asia. At these industry events, I would encourage startups to be relatively broad. Speak with suppliers, potential customers, competitors, investors and people from applications you may not yet have considered. Explain the technology in depth. The objective is not only to generate immediate leads, but to anchor the company in people’s minds as a serious part of the composites industry. This is also where I believe having your own booth matters. If brand building is one of the objectives, visibility cannot be an afterthought. Many manufacturing and materials companies still take a fairly conservative approach to exhibition design, which actually creates an opportunity for startups. Make the company visible from a distance. Bring parts, samples and, where practical, machinery. Demonstrate the technology rather than covering the walls with paragraphs explaining it. Give visitors something they want to touch, discuss or photograph. You are a startup. You do not have to look like everybody else. And at the events where you are building your brand, you probably should not. The second reason for attending events is much more targeted: meeting the people who can move the business forward. Once a startup has selected its beachhead markets, its event strategy should follow those customers. If aerospace is a priority, composite events alone are not sufficient; you should also consider events such as the Paris Air Show or Farnborough. If aircraft interiors are specifically relevant, Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg may be far more valuable than another general innovation conference. Find the reference events in the markets you have decided to win. And go where your customers go. The physical presence can be different there. You are not necessarily trying to build a major aerospace brand; you are trying to become a trusted supplier to aerospace companies. A smaller booth, a national pavilion, a startup zone or an association stand may therefore be entirely sufficient as a base for demonstrations and meetings. As customer relationships mature, an even stronger form of presence becomes possible: being represented on the booth of a customer or partner. If an established customer displays a component incorporating your technology and identifies you as the supplier, the credibility effect is difficult to replicate with your own marketing. You are no longer telling the market that the customer trusts you; the customer is demonstrating it publicly. Four A-events, prepared like campaigns Once the industry and end-market calendars have been mapped, prioritization becomes critical. My recommendation for most startups would be to identify no more than four genuine A-events per year. This does not mean attending only four events. There will always be smaller conferences, investor meetings and local gatherings worth visiting. But an A-event is different: it is an event around which a significant part of the organization aligns and for which the company is prepared to go all in. Four such events already mean running roughly one major campaign every quarter, because the event does not begin when the exhibition doors open. A-level events should be approached as two- to three-month campaigns, with the exhibition days at the heart of a much broader engagement effort. Proper preparation starts months earlier and should be reverse-planned from the event date. Four to six weeks before the event, for example, a startup could organize a webinar around a topic closely related to the problem it solves. Better still, where appropriate, it could host a small event at its own facility. The purpose should not be to spend 45 minutes explaining why the startup is wonderful. Bring in an external expert, a customer or a research partner. Share useful data or discuss an industry challenge. The aim is to aggregate a community around the problem where the company has something […]

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 24/7 café in Shoreditch? Corgi, the San Francisco insurtech that raised three rounds in eight weeks this summer (TechCrunch, July 2026), already runs two 24-hour cafés in San Francisco and Atlanta. Its London location on Great Eastern Street opens this month, with five more planned including New York (Sifted, July 2026). The pitch: give founders a place to work at 3am, and sell them AI liability insurance while they sip a “Brexspresso.” Is it working? The Mercury News reported in April that the San Francisco café was running at a loss with zero conversions to the insurance business (via Wikipedia). Investors funded three more rounds anyway. That tells you something about what the market believes physical presence is worth right now. AI companies are becoming event organizers Corgi is the extreme case. The pattern is everywhere. Anthropic held its first Code with Claude conference in May 2025 as a single-day event in San Francisco. One year later, it became an international tour: San Francisco on May 6, London on May 19, Tokyo on June 10, with a second SF day added because demand from independent developers exceeded capacity (Anthropic). OpenAI’s DevDay returns to San Francisco on September 29. ElevenLabs ran its Global Hackathon across 30 cities simultaneously last December and launched its own Summit. Lovable’s community events page lists hackathons from Barcelona to Bradford to Tbilisi, funded with credits and swag. Stripe, the company that made online payments invisible, now runs two event franchises: Stripe Sessions at Moscone Center in April, plus Stripe Tour, a global one-day roadshow hitting Paris, New York and other major cities. Even the investors backing these companies have become organizers. a16z presents Tech Week, a decentralized conference series across New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles that reached more than 740 events in New York alone in 2024 (Tech:NYC). The firm also runs a16z Build, an invite-only program of private dinners and retreats designed to connect early builders. A venture firm operating a citywide event franchise and a curated dinner circuit is a firm that treats community as an asset class. These are field marketing budgets that would have gone to paid social five years ago. When every feed is flooded with AI-generated content, a room full of verified humans becomes the scarce asset. The companies building the flood know this better than anyone. The money agrees While AI companies build community from scratch, institutional capital is buying live events at scale. Liberty Media completed its €4.2 billion acquisition of MotoGP in July 2025, adding it to a Formula One Group that also includes F1 and hospitality business Quint (Liberty Media). KKR acquired Superstruct Entertainment, operator of more than 80 festivals including Sziget, Sónar and Wacken Open Air, in a deal reported at €1.3 billion (Music Business Worldwide, June 2024). CVC joined as co-investor a few months later. And Ari Emanuel raised more than $2 billion from Apollo, RedBird and the Qatar Investment Authority to launch Mari, a holding company built to buy events: the Miami Open, the Madrid Open, Frieze, Barrett-Jackson (Bloomberg, October 2025). This week, Mari agreed to acquire ATG Entertainment, owner of 70 theaters across Broadway and the West End, in a deal reported at $6 billion (Axios, August 2026). “Live has only grown more powerful,” Emanuel said in the announcement. Read that list again. Sports, festivals, art fairs, theater. The smartest money in media is converging on one thesis: attention earned in person compounds in a way digital attention no longer does. What this means for founders Here is the contradiction worth sitting with. The companies automating knowledge work are the ones investing hardest in rooms, coffee and handshakes. They understand that when intelligence becomes a commodity, trust becomes the product. And trust still gets built face to face. For startup founders, the lesson is practical. Your customers, your investors and your future hires are recalibrating where they spend their scarce in-person time. The events that win their calendar slots will be smaller, more curated and more expensive to ignore. Where the two worlds meet If you work at an AI company or a scale-up that just discovered field marketing, here is the uncomfortable truth: the event industry has been perfecting this craft for decades. The people who run Web Summit, VivaTech or MWC have solved problems you are about to encounter, from audience acquisition costs to sponsor ROI to the logistics of moving 100,000 people through a venue. That is the room Sesame Summit puts you in. It is the conference of conferences: our annual gathering in Biarritz where leaders from Europe’s top event organizers meet the startups, investors and tech companies betting on IRL. Disclosure: I organize it, so read this with that in mind. But if the smartest money in media is paying billions for audiences that show up in person, spending two days with the people who build those audiences seems like a reasonable shortcut. If your company is doubling down on events this year, what would you want to learn from the organizers who have been doing this for 20 years?

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 one booth. The show runs on a multi-year cycle, so a failed launch means the whole concept probably gets cancelled before it gets a second chance. This is a composite of several conversations I’ve had this year, and the pattern is always the same. The organizer builds a startup area, assigns it to the existing sales team, waits, panics, then calls for help when the calendar has already decided the outcome. The diagnosis is simple: startup acquisition is a different business than exhibitor sales. Most organizers discover this too late. Here are the five reasons why. 1. They sell square meters to companies that buy outcomes A corporate exhibitor renews a booth the way it renews an insurance policy. There’s a budget line, a history, a floor plan discussion. The sales conversation is about location and dimensions. Startups have none of that. They buy pipeline, investor meetings, and proof that the show is worth their time. And their time is expensive: my rule of thumb is two full prep days for every event day, more if the team is small or the show is far. A founder deciding between your startup area and a customer roadshow is running an ROI calculation, and a rate card doesn’t answer it. A sales team trained on renewals and floor plans doesn’t speak this language. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s a different job. 2. They start the clock six months too late Startup areas usually get scoped after the main floor is sold. The launch lands a few months, sometimes a few weeks, before the show. Founders don’t work like that. They lock their event strategy two or three quarters ahead, because attending well requires prep: outreach, meeting scheduling, demo logistics, travel. A six-week sprint is competing against decisions that were made in the spring. The paradox is that organizers know this about their corporate exhibitors, who book 12 to 18 months out. Somehow the assumption becomes that startups, the most resource-constrained companies on the floor, can be converted on short notice. 3. They design the offer around what they can administer Here’s a real example, anonymized. One show’s main startup offer was a 60 percent discount, funded by a national grant. Great deal. One catch: only domestic startups qualified for it, at an international show. The offer wasn’t designed around the buyer. It was designed around available paperwork. The addressable pool shrank to a fraction of the relevant ecosystem, and everyone else got a full-price booth with no story attached. Startup offers that work are built the other way around: define which companies belong on that floor, then engineer the package (price, format, visibility, matchmaking) that makes their decision easy. Administration comes second. 4. They confuse margin kept with money made This one stings, because I’ve watched it happen twice this year. An organizer works with a partner on startup acquisition, hits targets, then decides to insource the next edition to keep the full margin. On a spreadsheet, it’s savings. In reality, the target gets missed, the area sits half-empty, and the organizer comes back mid-campaign asking for rescue. Some results are still possible at that point. The results a proper campaign would have delivered are gone. The full cost of insourcing shows up later: lost booth revenue, a weaker visitor experience in that zone, and a startup program that gets cancelled for “lack of demand.” Against that, the partner commission was the cheapest line on the P&L. 5. They run a program where they need a pipeline Startup acquisition compounds. Alumni come back. Competition applicants become exhibitors. Founders talk to each other, and a good experience at one edition sells the next one. None of that happens inside a one-off project. It requires a multi-year cadence: scouting, competitions, curated programs, follow-up between editions. Shows on two or four year cycles feel this the hardest, because a standalone approach means restarting from zero every single time, with a new team and no institutional memory. What compounding looks like JEC World, the composites industry show in Paris, is the counter-example, and yes, they’re our client, which is exactly the point. The startup work there is a bundle, built over multiple editions: a startup competition that lowers the barrier for first-time startup exhibitors, an Investor Day that brings capital to the floor and gives founders a concrete ROI reason to attend, and a startup village that gives them a curated home inside a very large show. Each piece feeds the others. Startups apply because clients & investors are there. Investors come because the startups are curated. And the ones that grow don’t disappear: they graduate into regular exhibitors. That’s the part most organizers miss. A startup exhibitor is just a first-time exhibitor. Treated well, they’re the cheapest exhibitor acquisition channel you’ll ever have. Treated as filler for a leftover corner of the floor plan, they don’t come back, and neither do the ones watching. The question for organizers If you run a show with a startup area, ask yourself one thing: is it a strategy or a floor plan decision? If the honest answer is the second one, here’s my prediction. The area launches late, gets staffed by a team hired to sell something else, underperforms, and quietly disappears from the next edition. The internal conclusion will be “startups don’t work for our show.” The real conclusion is that the approach didn’t. Startups work fine. They’re just customers who need to be sold to like startups. Disclosure: Sesamers sells startup acquisition and curation services to event organizers. JEC World is a client. Read accordingly.

The event calendar goes quiet in July and August. Deadlines don’t. This article assumes you’re an early stage founder, pre-seed or seed at most, without a marketing team. You are the events team. The next eight weeks are the only window of the year where you can work on your startup event strategy instead of running it. Here’s how to use them, roughly in order of urgency. 1. Search for calls for speakers Most Q1 and Q2 2027 conferences select their speakers in autumn, which means applications open now. SXSW PanelPicker is the obvious one and since it closes on July 26th they always lack submissions from Europe. But every major event runs some version of it, usually buried three clicks deep on their website. Before you apply anywhere, build a speaker one-pager: your topic, three talking points, a short bio, one decent photo, and links to any previous talk. Program teams review hundreds of proposals. Make theirs easy. 2. Apply to startup competitions Autumn competitions open their calls in summer: One warning from someone who reads hundreds of these applications every year: judges can tell when ChatGPT wrote your answers. Roughly 80% of the applications I review show obvious AI usage, and the low-effort ones go straight to the no pile. Use AI to structure your thinking if you want. Write the answers yourself. Sophie wrote a full breakdown of how startup competitions work from the organizer’s side. Read it before you apply. Knowing what organizers optimize for changes how you write. 3. Apply to your country’s delegation for major events CES, MWC, Web Summit: most countries send an official startup delegation, and the selection happens months ahead. For CES only: Netherlands, France, Hong Kong, etc. A quick LinkedIn search gives you tons of results.  Delegations get you a subsidized booth, press attention you’d hardly get alone, and a cohort of founders going through the same thing. The application effort is low compared to what you get. The catch is timing: CES delegations typically close applications in September. 4. Get feedback from founders who exhibited in your industry Summer is the one season when people answer cold messages. Search LinkedIn for founders who exhibited at the last edition of the trade show you’re considering using its hashtag. Ask for 15 minutes. Ask three questions: what did it cost in total, how many qualified conversations did they have, and would they do it again. Three of these calls will teach you more than most post-event reports the organizer publishes.  That’s what we learned interviewing ReSnack founders. 5. Run a pitch practice session with your peers, and moderate it Get five founder friends on a call or around a table. Everyone pitches, everyone gives feedback. You moderate. The pitching part is obvious. The moderating part is the underrated one: keeping time, asking follow-ups, managing the room. That’s a skill you’ll need on every panel you ever join, and nobody teaches it. As Lubomila Jordanova told us on the Selected podcast, small formats with harsh feedback are where you learn to hold an audience. 6. Volunteer at a startup event Unglamorous advice, and one of the best access you’ll ever get. Volunteers see how the machine works from the inside: how speakers get booked, how the VIP room operates, who actually makes decisions. You’ll meet the organizing team, and organizing teams remember people who showed up to work. An obvious one is Slush where 1,800 volunteers come together to produce one of the best startup events on earth: https://slush.org/audience/volunteers  7. Plan a side event for the back-to-office season Every ecosystem has a September event where everyone reappears. For example FDDay in Paris. Don’t compete with the main program. Host a breakfast before it opens or drinks after it closes, 20 to 30 people, one clear theme. Side events cost a fraction of a booth and put you in the host position instead of the badge-wearing position. Start planning now: venues and calendars fill up faster than you’d expect for the first week of September. 8. Budget your 2027 event strategy Nobody wants to open a spreadsheet in July. Do it anyway, because budget season at your company happens whether you participate or not. The mistake founders make is counting the ticket and the flight and stopping there. Every event day requires two preparation days: outreach before, follow-up after. That’s the 2:1 rule, and it changes the math on which events deserve a slot at all.  Pick a maximum of 5 events for 2027. Assign each one a job: sales, hiring, fundraising, or press. If an event has no job, it has no budget line. 9. Check if your summer festival has a business track A growing number of music festivals run pitching sessions or networking programs alongside the main stage. Tomorrowland even hosts a dedicated event around impact & social innovation: Love Tomorrow Summit.  Is the deal flow serious? Sometimes. Is it the most pleasant place you’ll pitch all year? Definitely. If you’re on holiday near one anyway, the marginal cost is a badge upgrade. 10. Rest The circuit restarts in September and doesn’t stop until Christmas. Slush alone will take a week out of your life, and that’s before the follow-up emails. Founders treat rest as a productivity hack, which slightly misses the point. Take actual time off. Turn off the notifications. The events will still be there in September, and so will everyone else, looking exhausted already. Don’t be them. Photo credit: Anik Labreigne on Unsplash + Gemini

The founders behind NUAGE, the sugar-free cotton candy rated Nutri-Score A, share their playbook for event strategy, budget, and pipeline ROI. If you’ve walked the aisles of a French food trade show recently, chances are you’ve seen — or tasted — a small cloud of the impossible: cotton candy with zero sugar and a Nutri-Score A. Behind it is Re.Snack, a startup founded in 2023 near Dijon by Vanessa and Florian, on a mission to reinvent confectionery. Their first product, NUAGE, is built on Sucr’A, a proprietary sugar substitute developed with AgroSup Dijon that uses plant fibres (isomalt and inulin) to recreate cotton candy’s signature melt-in-the-mouth texture — without sugar, allergens, colourants, or preservatives. The traction speaks for itself: revenue up from €200K to €7M in two years, distribution from 100 to 5,000 points of sale, more than 15,000 online orders, national TV exposure on M6 — and a reported acquisition offer from Lindt that the founders turned down. They’d rather build a brand than become a subcontractor. A sugar-free, fat-free popcorn is next. But what caught our attention is how they grew. For Re.Snack, trade shows aren’t a marketing expense — they’re the core of the sales machine, with a dedicated budget, pipeline targets, and hard ROI thresholds. So we sat down with the team and asked the five questions every founder should be able to answer about their event strategy. Sesamers: Let’s start with the basics. What role do events play in your sales motion — sourcing net-new pipeline, accelerating open deals, or closing? Re.Snack: Events are our number one growth channel. They generate new business, strengthen relationships with existing customers, and accelerate ongoing opportunities. In the food industry, people buy products, but they also buy the team behind them. Face-to-face interactions build trust much faster than emails or calls. That’s a big claim — number one channel. Does the budget reflect it? What share of your sales & marketing spend goes to events, and what target does it carry? Around 25% of our sales and marketing budget is dedicated to events. We consider them a strategic investment rather than a communication expense. Our objective is that every euro invested generates multiple times its value in qualified commercial opportunities over the following 12 months. Twelve months is a patient window. When you look across the whole portfolio of events, what does the blended pipeline ROI actually come out to? On average, we generate between 8x and 12x pipeline ROI across our major trade shows. Some flagship events, such as SIAL or ISM, can significantly outperform that because they concentrate the world’s key retail buyers in one place. Meetings are easy to count, revenue less so. Which events actually convert — not just into conversations, but into business? The events that convert best are those attended by decision-makers with active buying projects. For us, SIAL Paris, ISM, Snack Show, and major retail buying conventions consistently generate tangible business. Success isn’t measured by the number of meetings, but by the quality of follow-up and execution afterwards. Last one on the numbers: at what point do you decide an event has earned a bigger budget? What’s your threshold for scaling up? We increase investment once an event consistently delivers at least a 5x pipeline ROI and proves it can generate repeatable business over multiple editions. We look at long-term customer value rather than immediate sales, because retail cycles can take several months. Before we let you go — for the food founders reading this, what would be your top 5 events? My top five would be: What founders should take from this Beneath the answers sits a playbook any startup can copy, whatever the industry. Events have a job description. Re.Snack doesn’t attend trade shows to “be visible” — events source new business, deepen existing relationships, and accelerate open deals. If you can’t name the job an event does in your sales motion, you have travel expenses, not a strategy. The budget is an envelope with a target attached. A quarter of sales & marketing spend, set deliberately and measured against a pipeline expectation over 12 months. No target, no budget. ROI is measured blended, on a realistic clock. Individual events fluctuate; the portfolio number — 8–12x pipeline-to-cost in Re.Snack’s case — is what tells you whether the channel works. And the attribution window matches the sales cycle: judging a trade show by orders signed on the show floor would kill investments that pay off two quarters later. Conversion beats meetings, and follow-up is where ROI is made. The filter is decision-makers with active buying projects — not badge scans. The event budget implicitly includes the week after the show, not just the days of it. Budget growth follows proven return. A 5x floor, plus repeatability across multiple editions, before a single extra euro flows. One great year doesn’t unlock more spend; a pattern does. Run this way, events stop being a cost centre with nice catering — and become a growth channel with receipts. Company background via nuage.resnack.fr, France 3 Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, and Traces Écrites News.

ATMOS Space Cargo, the Franco-German orbital logistics startup, has closed a €25.7 million Series A round to scale production of its PHOENIX re-entry vehicles and establish Europe’s first routine orbital return service. The round, announced on 22 April 2026, was co-led by Balnord and Expansion Ventures, with participation from a broad syndicate of defence-aligned and deep-tech investors. Twelve months after becoming the first private European company to conduct an orbital re-entry — a milestone reached with the PHOENIX 1 demonstration flight in April 2025 — the Lichtenau- and Strasbourg-based firm is transitioning from proof-of-concept to commercial service. Management says the new capital will fund a three-vehicle PHOENIX 2 campaign, seed a new governmental and defence division called ATMOS WORKS, and begin development of PHOENIX 3, a next-generation vehicle capable of returning around one metric tonne of payload from low Earth orbit — roughly ten times the PHOENIX 2 capacity. Inside the round The Series A was co-led by Balnord and Expansion Ventures, and backed by a long list of strategic and financial investors: Keen Defence and Security, the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator programme, OTB Ventures, High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), APEX Ventures, Seraphim, Faber, E2MC, Kirch Ventures, Lennertz & Co., Mätch VC, MBG Baden-Württemberg and Tech Horizons. The composition of the cap table is notable. The mix of defence-specialist funds (Keen Defence and Security, Seraphim), European public finance (EIC Accelerator, MBG Baden-Württemberg, HTGF) and deep-tech specialists (OTB Ventures, Expansion, E2MC) reflects the dual-use positioning that increasingly defines European space financing. ATMOS is courting civilian microgravity customers — pharmaceutical research, in-space manufacturing, life sciences — while pitching the same hardware as a sovereign logistics capability for European governments and militaries. “This financing allows us to move to regular operational service,” said chief executive and co-founder Sebastian Klaus, framing the round as the step that turns a single demonstrated mission into infrastructure. Why return-from-orbit matters The commercial case for returnable capsules has been building for several years. SpaceX’s Dragon has dominated the U.S. market, while Varda Space Industries has commercialised small autonomous re-entry capsules for pharmaceuticals manufactured in microgravity. In Europe, however, there has been no sovereign equivalent — every kilogramme of material returned from orbit has had to travel back on American hardware. ATMOS is pitching PHOENIX as the European answer. The vehicle uses an inflatable heat shield that deploys in orbit to decelerate the capsule during re-entry, enabling a controlled ocean splashdown without parachutes. Recovery operations are based near Santa Maria in the Azores, giving the company an Atlantic landing corridor. The strategic context has shifted sharply since PHOENIX 1 flew. European defence spending is rising, the EU’s Space Act and the EU Defence Industrial Strategy are directing capital towards sovereign capabilities, and in-space manufacturing is beginning to move from research budgets to commercial contracts. A European-built, European-operated return service addresses both sides of that equation. Commercial traction The Series A also arrives against a backdrop of signed demand. In November 2025, ATMOS and France-based Space Cargo Unlimited announced a seven-mission programme to support autonomous in-space manufacturing, with the first flight targeted for 2026. PHOENIX 2 will fly three missions under the new capital plan, expanding cadence from one-off demonstration to a roughly annual operational tempo. The ATMOS WORKS division is the more interesting commercial bet. By carving the governmental and defence business into a dedicated unit, the company signals that it expects contracts for on-demand orbital logistics, sensitive payload recovery and sovereign data return — categories that have until now been almost entirely the preserve of state-owned agencies or cleared U.S. suppliers. Where it fits in the European funding picture ATMOS sits within a growing cohort of European space-tech companies that have attracted Series A capital in the past year, and its round follows a string of recent European deep-tech raises tracked by Sesamers, including orbital and robotics plays. At €25.7 million, the round is meaningful but not outsized by U.S. standards — Varda raised well over $100 million before reaching comparable operational scale. The implication is that European capital is willing to fund category-defining hardware, but expects milestone-by-milestone delivery rather than blitzscaling. For ATMOS, the milestones are concrete: three PHOENIX 2 flights, the launch of ATMOS WORKS, and the PHOENIX 3 design freeze. For European space policy, the question is whether sovereign return-from-orbit gets used widely enough — by public buyers and private manufacturers alike — to justify the infrastructure being built. The next data point will be PHOENIX 2’s maiden flight, slated for later in 2026. If it reaches orbit and returns on schedule, Europe will have something it has never had before: a home-grown, commercially operated downmass capability. Source: Tech.eu — ATMOS Space Cargo secures €25.7M Series A (22 April 2026). Additional reporting from the HTGF press release and ATMOS Space Cargo.

Paris- and London-based Convelio has closed a Series C funding round to accelerate the automation of global fine art logistics and expand its storage footprint into the United States. The company, which has shipped an estimated $1.84 billion of art for major auction houses including Sotheby’s, Christie’s and Phillips, intends to use the capital to deepen its AI-driven operations platform and open a flagship warehouse in New York. The round is led by a prominent French entrepreneurial family, with participation from existing backers Forestay, Mundi Ventures and Acton Capital. Terms have not been publicly disclosed. Founded in 2017 by chief executive Edouard Gouin and Clément Ouizille, Convelio set out to modernise a sector long dominated by legacy freight forwarders and bespoke, manual processes. Its proprietary algorithms generate instant quotes for the transport of paintings, sculptures and other high-value objects, while its in-house operations team manages packing, shipping, customs and installation. The company now serves around 3,000 art businesses worldwide. Building the software layer for the art market The global art market moves tens of billions of euros of objects each year, yet logistics remains one of its least digitised functions. Quotes are frequently produced by hand, condition reports live in email threads, and transport coordination happens across dozens of specialist carriers. Convelio’s pitch — and the thesis behind its Series C — is that this fragmentation can be resolved through a single software and operations stack. The company recently became the primary global logistics provider for Phillips, covering shipping, storage and release services in London, New York and Hong Kong. Phillips reported $927 million in global sales in 2025, making the partnership one of the most significant operational mandates awarded in the sector in recent years. According to chief executive Edouard Gouin, the Series C will help Convelio scale storage infrastructure, invest in automation across operations and serve clients with the same precision at global scale as it does locally. Why New York matters Convelio’s planned New York flagship warehouse is a strategic rather than incidental investment. The United States remains the single largest art market, and storage alongside fulfilment services carries significantly higher margins than pure transport. By anchoring a hub in Manhattan or the surrounding boroughs, Convelio positions itself to serve auction houses, galleries and private collectors with release-on-demand services — a capability previously concentrated among a small number of legacy operators. The company also plans to continue investing in its AI-powered collections management product, which helps institutional clients track provenance, condition and location across distributed holdings. A familiar cap table with a new anchor Forestay, Mundi Ventures and Acton Capital have all backed Convelio through previous rounds, including its €30 million Series B in 2022. The introduction of a French entrepreneurial family office as lead investor signals a shift toward longer-horizon capital — a pattern increasingly common among European scale-ups seeking to avoid premature exit pressure. European competitors in adjacent categories include Gander and ArtHaus, while US-listed Cadogan Tate remains a dominant legacy provider. Convelio’s positioning — software-first, vertically integrated, global — gives it room to differentiate even as the sector consolidates. What comes next Beyond the New York expansion, Convelio is expected to continue hiring in engineering and operations, with particular focus on automation of condition reporting, computer-vision-based damage detection and integration with auction house bidding platforms. For a company that began life as a marketplace connecting galleries with art shippers, the evolution into a software-and-services platform for global fine art logistics reflects a broader pattern in European vertical SaaS: starting with a narrow workflow and growing into the infrastructure layer of an entire industry. For more on European fundraising and scale-up stories, visit our fundraising hub. You can also read our recent coverage of Kelluu’s €15M Series A.

Finnish deeptech company Kelluu has secured €15 million in a Series A round led by the NATO Innovation Fund, marking the fund’s first investment in a Finnish startup. The round includes participation from Keen Venture Partners, Gungnir Capital and Finnish state investor Tesi, and will accelerate the commercial deployment of Kelluu’s autonomous hydrogen-powered airships across defence and civil markets. Headquartered in Joensuu and operating what it describes as the world’s northernmost airship factory, Kelluu builds 12-metre unmanned airships that combine the resolution of drones with the persistence of satellites. The aircraft use hydrogen for both lift and propulsion, allowing missions of more than 12 hours while carrying payload modules of up to six kilograms. Typical configurations include LiDAR, hyperspectral cameras and thermal imagers — enabling high-frequency monitoring of industrial sites, borders and critical infrastructure. A different kind of airborne intelligence Where conventional drones struggle with endurance and satellites lack resolution, Kelluu’s airships are designed for persistent, low-altitude coverage. The company sells the capability as a service: customers commission missions and receive processed data rather than purchasing hardware. The model has gained traction among mining operators, border authorities and NATO planners. Finnish mining company Terrafame already uses Kelluu’s fleet to generate 3D digital models of a 60-square-kilometre industrial site, helping monitor slope stability and optimise operations. On the defence side, Kelluu was recently integrated into NATO’s AI-driven command system and participated in REPMUS — one of the alliance’s largest exercises for unmanned maritime and aerial systems. According to chief executive Janne Hietala, the Series A will enable Kelluu to scale deployments, deepen its geospatial AI capabilities and meet demand from both civil and defence partners. NATO Innovation Fund makes its first Finnish bet The NATO Innovation Fund — the €1 billion multi-sovereign vehicle backed by 24 allied nations — has been steadily investing in dual-use deeptech companies across Europe. Its decision to lead Kelluu’s round signals continued appetite for autonomous systems with defence applications, particularly those offering sovereign alternatives to US and Chinese hardware. The fund’s participation also reflects Europe’s broader push to strengthen its defence-industrial base. Kelluu joins a growing roster of European unmanned-systems companies — from Tekever in Portugal to Helsing in Germany — attracting significant capital as governments rebuild strategic capabilities. Keen Venture Partners and Gungnir Capital both bring deeptech investment experience, while Tesi, Finland’s state-backed investor, continues its pattern of supporting domestic champions in critical industries. What the capital will fund Kelluu plans to use the proceeds to expand its autonomous airship fleet and commercial deployments, further develop its geospatial AI platform through Kelluu AI Labs, broaden its defence-sector partnerships across NATO member states, and scale manufacturing capacity at its Joensuu facility. The company positions itself not as a hardware vendor but as an aerial-data provider, and the investment will help it move further along that axis — investing in the software layer that turns raw sensor output into operational intelligence. A maturing European deeptech play Kelluu’s raise lands at a moment of renewed European focus on sovereign aerospace capability. With NATO exercises increasingly featuring unmanned systems and European governments raising defence budgets, persistent aerial monitoring is becoming a strategic requirement rather than a niche capability. For a company founded in a city closer to the Arctic Circle than to any major capital, Kelluu has carved out an unusually distinctive position: part airship manufacturer, part geospatial AI company, and now a NATO-backed European deeptech scaleup. For more coverage of European fundraising and deeptech, visit our fundraising hub.

Europe’s quantum technology sector is attracting increasing attention from both private investors and public institutions, as governments across the continent position photonics and quantum computing as strategic priorities in the global technology race. With the United States and China accelerating their quantum investment programmes, European deeptech startups are now securing the capital needed to move breakthrough research out of the laboratory and into commercial applications. Münster-based Pixel Photonics has secured €13.5 million in combined funding to accelerate the commercialisation of its superconducting single-photon detector technology. The total comprises a €5 million seed round, led by Futury Capital, alongside €8.5 million from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator — split between €2.5 million in grants and €6 million in equity investment. Additional seed investors include the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation (SPRIND), Kensho Ventures, and High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF). EIC Accelerator validates European quantum ambitions The EIC Accelerator selection represents a significant endorsement of Pixel Photonics’ commercial potential. The company was chosen as one of just 61 recipients from approximately 1,000 applicants — the European Union’s most competitive funding instrument for breakthrough innovation. The dual structure of the funding, combining private venture capital with public institutional backing, reflects a growing pattern in European deeptech where blended financing models are enabling capital-intensive hardware startups to bridge the gap between research and market entry. “This funding enables us to transform what has so far been a highly specialised quantum technology into robust, scalable industrial products,” said Nicolai Walter, CEO of Pixel Photonics. The investment follows a trajectory of increasing institutional confidence in photonic quantum technologies. Futury Capital’s decision to lead the seed round positions the firm alongside established deeptech backers HTGF and SPRIND, both of which have track records supporting German hardware innovation from early-stage through to commercial scale. From university spin-off to quantum hardware contender Founded in 2021 as a spin-off from the University of Münster, Pixel Photonics develops waveguide-integrated superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors (WI-SNSPDs) through its proprietary ARCTIC platform. The technology transforms what has traditionally been bulky, laboratory-scale equipment into compact, chip-based solutions capable of detecting individual photons with exceptional sensitivity and speed. The applications span several high-value sectors, including quantum computing, quantum key distribution (QKD) for secure communications, medical diagnostics, defence, and advanced microscopy. The company has already established strategic partnerships with notable quantum computing firms, including QuiX Quantum, PASQAL, and ORCA Computing, and has delivered detector systems for photonic quantum computer development alongside the German Aerospace Centre (DLR). The European quantum technology market continues to expand rapidly, supported by the EU’s Quantum Technologies Flagship programme and national initiatives across Germany, France, and the Netherlands. As quantum computing architectures mature and demand for high-performance single-photon detection grows, companies like Pixel Photonics occupy a critical position in the hardware supply chain — providing the detection infrastructure upon which quantum networks and computing systems depend. With the new capital, the company plans to scale production, expand its product portfolio — which includes the Dena rack-format and desktop detector systems — and accelerate international market entry. The team, led by CEO Nicolai Walter and CTO Dr Wladick Hartmann, is also preparing for its next funding round as it transitions from development-stage to full commercial operations. Summary Company Pixel Photonics Headquarters Münster, Germany Founded 2021 (University of Münster spin-off) Round Seed + EIC Accelerator Amount €13.5 million (€5M seed + €8.5M EIC) Lead Investor Futury Capital Other Investors SPRIND, Kensho Ventures, HTGF Use of Funds Scale production, expand product portfolio, accelerate market entry Also read: Latest European startup fundraising news ned funding to accelerate the commercialisation of its superconducting single-photon detector technology. The€5 million seed round, led by Futury Capital, alongside €8.5 million from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator — split between €2.5 million in grants and €6 mill

As geopolitical instability, hybrid threats, and the proliferation of disinformation reshape the global risk landscape, the demand for sophisticated intelligence tools that can cut through information overload is intensifying across both public and private sectors. Alicante-based deeptech startup Golden Owl has closed a €1.4 million seed round to scale its AI-powered anticipatory intelligence platform, which fuses open source intelligence with advanced analytics to detect complex risks in real time. The round was led by venture capital firm First Drop, with additional support from business angels and public funding through Spain’s ENISA programme and a NEOTEC grant from CDTI. The investment will accelerate the company’s technical development, expand access to non-indexed sources across the open, deep, and dark web, and fund commercial rollout across sectors including energy, logistics, security, and government. First Drop backs intelligence-as-a-service model Golden Owl, legally registered as Datintel S.L. and headquartered at the Alicante Science Park within the University of Alicante campus, was founded by CEO Ana Beik and CTO Sabi Soltani. The company has built what it describes as an external intelligence operating system that goes beyond traditional data analysis, fusing dispersed signals to anticipate dynamics and scenarios before they fully materialise. The platform operates through a modular Intelligence-as-a-Service architecture comprising three core products. Noctua is a research and analysis platform combining OSINT modules with advanced search capabilities and multi-source data fusion for forensic intelligence work. Strix provides continuous strategic intelligence through configurable monitoring systems designed for early detection and dynamic tracking of actors, risks, and complex environments. A third product, Otus, is planned for launch as a global human intelligence marketplace for deep analysis in high-complexity scenarios. The technology stack draws on advanced AI, neural networks, and high-performance computing infrastructure, processing data from more than 10,000 premium sources and billions of data points across the open, deep, and dark web. European intelligence technology market expands The seed round arrives as European governments and enterprises are significantly increasing their investment in intelligence and security technologies, driven by the evolving threat landscape. The market for OSINT solutions has been expanding steadily, fuelled by the growing recognition that traditional intelligence methods cannot keep pace with the volume and velocity of information generated across digital channels. Golden Owl holds ENISA Certified Startup status and AENOR Young Innovative Company certification, lending institutional credibility to its operations. The company collaborates with the Enterprise Europe Network, the University of Alicante, and participates in Horizon Europe-funded innovation projects, embedding it within the European research and innovation ecosystem. The company’s focus on anticipatory intelligence — identifying emerging risks before they crystallise — distinguishes it from more conventional OSINT tools that primarily serve reactive investigation workflows. By targeting sectors such as energy, logistics, insurance, and government, Golden Owl is pursuing markets where the cost of failing to detect risks early can be substantial, creating a compelling value proposition for its intelligence platform. With hybrid threats, disinformation campaigns, and supply chain vulnerabilities continuing to dominate the European security agenda, Golden Owl’s seed funding positions it to capture early-mover advantage in a market where demand is growing faster than the supply of credible, AI-powered solutions. Summary Company Golden Owl (Datintel S.L.) HQ Alicante, Spain Founders Ana Beik (CEO), Sabi Soltani (CTO) Round Seed Amount €1.4 million Lead Investor First Drop Other Backers Business angels, ENISA, CDTI NEOTEC Use of Funds Technical development, source expansion, commercial rollout rcial rollout across sectors including energy, logistics, security, and government. First Drop backs intelligence-as-a-service model Golden Owl, l— identifying emerging risks before they

The European Union’s eIDAS2 regulation is reshaping how organisations manage digital identity, creating a new market for enterprise-grade identity wallets that can issue, verify, and manage credentials at scale. Spanish startup Sybol has raised over €1 million in combined public and private investment to accelerate the rollout of its corporate digital identity platform, positioning itself at the forefront of Europe’s emerging Business Wallet framework. The round was led by the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT), with participation from energy major Repsol, Grupo Synaptia, Bolboreta Innova Group, Tritemius, Venturade, and Chromata Invest. The capital will fund the expansion of Sybol’s enterprise verification platform and the development of its corporate wallet built on decentralised identity principles. Repsol-backed venture targets enterprise verification Sybol emerged from an intrapreneurship initiative within Repsol Digital, the energy company’s digital transformation unit. Repsol retains a 15 per cent stake in the company and contributed its proprietary decentralised authentication technology to the venture, giving Sybol an unusual head start in enterprise adoption. Led by CEO Raúl López, CTO Iñigo Garcia, and COO Alfredo Abad, the team has built a platform that enables organisations to issue, manage, and verify digital certificates using blockchain-based verifiable credentials. The technology replaces traditional document-based workflows with standardised, reusable credentials linked to verified identities of both issuers and recipients. The platform is already operational at scale within Repsol’s own ecosystem. Repsol Electricidad y Gas currently uses Sybol’s technology to issue more than 2,500 verifiable credentials per month for 500 corporate clients, demonstrating the platform’s readiness for enterprise-grade deployment. eIDAS2 creates a regulatory tailwind for digital identity Sybol’s initial focus on sustainability-related certifications is strategically astute. As ESG reporting requirements tighten across Europe, the demand for verifiable, traceable certification data is growing rapidly. Automated validation of sustainability credentials addresses a genuine pain point for auditors, regulators, and corporate compliance teams. The broader opportunity, however, lies in the eIDAS2 regulation itself. The European framework for electronic identification is establishing standards for both personal and organisational digital wallets, and companies that build compliant infrastructure early stand to capture significant market share as adoption accelerates across the bloc. Spain has signalled its commitment to this digital identity infrastructure through SETT’s public investment in Sybol, reflecting a broader governmental push to position Spanish companies at the leading edge of European digital transformation. The combination of public backing, corporate parentage through Repsol, and alignment with incoming EU regulation gives Sybol a distinctive competitive position in what is expected to become a substantial market. With the European Commission targeting full eIDAS2 implementation by 2027, Sybol’s focus on building enterprise-ready infrastructure now could prove well-timed as organisations across the continent prepare for the transition to verifiable digital credentials. For more startup fundraising news and insights into Europe’s innovation ecosystem, explore our coverage of the latest funding rounds. Summary Company Sybol HQ Spain Founded by Repsol Digital intrapreneurship programme Leadership Raúl López (CEO), Iñigo Garcia (CTO), Alfredo Abad (COO) Round Mixed (public + private) Amount €1 million+ Lead Investor SETT (Spanish Society for Technological Transformation) Other Investors Repsol, Grupo Synaptia, Bolboreta Innova Group, Tritemius, Venturade, Chromata Invest Use of Funds Platform rollout, corporate wallet development, eIDAS2 alignment

Europe’s ageing population is placing unprecedented strain on residential care infrastructure, with demand for intelligent monitoring solutions accelerating as facilities struggle to balance operational efficiency with quality of care. Italian healthtech startup TeiaCare has secured €7 million in fresh funding to expand its AI-powered care monitoring platform across new European markets and into broader healthcare settings. The investment, led by returning backer P101 SGR with participation from existing shareholders and new investors including Spanish family offices Namarel and Inderhabs, will fund TeiaCare’s international expansion into France and Spain whilst supporting the development of advanced Data, Spatial, and Care Intelligence capabilities. P101 SGR leads expansion-stage investment P101 SGR, one of Italy’s most active venture capital firms, led the round as a returning investor, signalling continued confidence in TeiaCare’s growth trajectory. The participation of Namarel and Inderhabs, both Spanish family offices, is strategically significant as it coincides with TeiaCare’s planned entry into the Spanish market alongside France. Founded in 2018 by Guido Magrin and Luca Iozzia, TeiaCare has developed Ancelia, a proprietary platform that combines optical sensors and artificial intelligence to monitor care environments in real time. The system generates actionable insights for care staff in nursing homes, rehabilitation centres, and dementia care units, enabling faster response times and more informed clinical decision-making without intrusive wearable devices. The company has built considerable traction across Italy, serving more than 150 clients across over 200 facilities and covering approximately 75,000 residents. This footprint, concentrated across key Italian regions including Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, and Tuscany, provides a solid foundation for the planned European expansion. European care technology market gains momentum The investment comes at a time when European governments are increasingly recognising the need for technology-driven solutions in eldercare. With the continent’s over-65 population projected to reach 130 million by 2050, the pressure on residential care facilities to deliver better outcomes with constrained resources is only intensifying. TeiaCare’s approach — using ambient optical sensors rather than wearable devices — addresses a critical adoption barrier in care settings, where residents may resist or be unable to use wearable technology. The non-invasive nature of the Ancelia platform has been a key differentiator in securing facility-level adoption across Italy. Beyond its core residential care market, TeiaCare plans to extend its solutions into broader healthcare and home care settings, potentially opening significantly larger addressable markets. The development of Spatial Intelligence and Care Intelligence modules suggests the company is building toward a comprehensive data platform for care environments, rather than remaining a point solution for monitoring. The €7 million round positions TeiaCare to compete in a European healthtech landscape that has seen growing investor interest in AI-powered care solutions, as demographic pressures and workforce shortages make technology adoption in care settings not merely desirable but essential. For more startup fundraising news and insights into Europe’s innovation ecosystem, explore our coverage of the latest funding rounds. Summary Company TeiaCare HQ Italy Founded 2018 Founders Guido Magrin, Luca Iozzia Round Growth Amount €7 million Lead Investor P101 SGR Other Investors Namarel, Inderhabs Use of Funds European expansion (France, Spain), platform development, broader healthcare settings