AI insurance agents, UK’s private stock market, semiconductors in orbit, and much more...
What's Up Tech? #224
Welcome to our 224th newsletter, written with 🖤 by Annika Bautista, Sarah Luna Mongin, and Aris Sevastianos, featuring current baby vc fellows Hélène Ghosn, Anass El Hamami, Romy Feuereisen and Elena Gonzalo Saul.
🔍 Topics we'll cover this weekGeneral news from the week: Barcelona gets its first hyperscale AI data center, and the UK launches a private stock exchange for startups
Fundraising news from the week: wildfire satellites and space-made semiconductors 🚀
Up-and-coming ventures to watch: agentic AI takes on insurance, carbon credits get a remix, and a PayFit founder goes deeptech 🔬
🆕 Product news from the week: scroll to the end for one-liner, stand-out headlines on the latest tech that you should read more about 👀
Internships & Job offers of the week
Enjoy the read! 💛
🤑 Fundraising of the week🧪 Azafaros raises €132 million to bring game-changing rare disease drug to Phase 3 trials (🇳🇱)
Dutch biotech startup Azafaros just secured €132 million in an oversubscribed Series B co-led by Jeito Capital and Forbion Growth. That’s a major flex in the ultra-niche world of lysosomal storage disorders: a group of rare, often fatal neurodegenerative diseases.
The cash is going toward launching two Phase 3 trials later this year for nizubaglustat, Azafaros’ first-in-class, brain-penetrant molecule that targets NPC and GM1/GM2 gangliosidoses. Think of it as a neurological rescue drug with orphan drug and fast-track creds on both sides of the Atlantic.
Founded in 2018, Azafaros is the rare-disease underdog punching way above its weight. With science straight out of Leiden University, they’re pushing molecules and chasing miracles. 🏃♀
Azafaros Secures € 132M in Oversubscribed Series B Financing to advance Phase 3
🧠 Granola raises 43 million dollars to turn your team’s convos into an AI-powered second brain (🇬🇧)
Granola just dropped Granola 2.0, and it’s more than your basic AI meeting notetaker.
Think of it as your team’s new “group brain”: one that remembers everything, organizes it, and gives you instant, source-cited insights. The upgrade turns Granola into a collaborative workspace that captures all your convos (Slack included), lets you query entire folders, and helps teams work faster by never asking “what did we say on that call?” again. 🙌
The London-based startup locked in $43 million in Series B funding led by NFDG. The company is gunning to be the workspace layer that sits on top of all your org’s real-time convos.
Bonus flex: It transcribes and analyzes millions of minutes daily, and it’s now being called a “second brain” by teams hooked on it. Not bad for a startup launched just last year…
Granola Launches AI Workspace for Teams and Raises $43M Series B
🔥 OroraTech raises €37 million to fight wildfires with satellites and AI (🇩🇪)
OroraTech, a wildfire intelligence startup, just topped up its Series B to €37 million, with backing from the BNP Paribas Solar Impulse Venture Fund and Rabo Ventures.
The company runs a fleet of ten satellites that stream thermal data around the clock. This feeds their Wildfire Solution platform: a kind of digital twin of Earth that predicts wildfire outbreaks, behavior, and spread. Think NASA meets Smokey the Bear, but powered by AI and nano-sats.
With nearly €100 million in recent commercial contracts and VC, OroraTech isn’t just playing defense. It’s building the core thermal infrastructure for governments, insurers, and land managers to fight fires before they get out of control. The fresh funds will go toward expanding its space-tech stack and global customer base. Wildfires beware: Big Data is coming for you! 😳
OroraTech Extends its Series B to €37M with Investments from Two Leading European Banks
🚀 Space Forge raises $30 million to make high-performance semiconductors in space (🇬🇧)
Space Forge just snagged $30 million (£22.6 million) in the biggest Series A in UK space tech history. The round was led by the NATO Innovation Fund.
The startup is building ForgeStar-1, a reusable orbital factory for making next-gen semiconductors like ultra-pure gallium nitride. Think: power wafers that consume 75% less energy, made possible by microgravity and space’s extreme conditions. Their first attempt? A casualty of the Virgin Orbit explosion. But this new version’s heading to orbit on a SpaceX rocket later this year.
The fresh cash will fuel launch prep and scale their vision of space-based manufacturing at industrial scale. This isn’t just about fancy chips - it’s about boosting Europe’s space independence and building a climate-friendly supply chain for tomorrow’s computing. Oh, and yeah… it’s a little cooler than your average factory floor. ❄
📅 Cronofy raises €17.8 million to make scheduling suck less (🇬🇧)
Cronofy just locked in €17.8 million from BGF to supercharge its embedded scheduling tech. Used by Indeed, Wise, and 180,000+ orgs globally, Cronofy’s infrastructure plugs directly into apps and workflows, helping companies ditch the endless email ping-pong of finding a meeting time.
Its tech is slick, privacy-first, and plays nice with whatever tools you’re already using. Notably, Wise cut interview scheduling time from 6 days to 90 minutes thanks to Cronofy. With over 60% of revenue already coming from the US, the company’s doubling down on stateside growth, plus investing in product upgrades and new use cases.
Bonus: the round gives early backers a tidy partial exit. 🪜
Not bad for a Nottingham-born startup that’s been quietly reshaping scheduling since 2016.
British Startup Cronofy Secures €17.8M for its Scheduling Platform
🧑💻 Shakers raises €14 million Series A to streamline how companies build freelance teams (🇪🇸)
Madrid-based Shakers has secured €14 million in Series A funding to further develop its freelance talent platform. The platform is designed to help companies quickly assemble and manage high-performing external teams.
Rather than operating as a traditional freelancer marketplace, Shakers combines AI-driven talent matching, workflow automation, and integrated payment solutions to offer companies a seamless end-to-end platform for managing freelance projects across Europe. 🌍
Since its founding in 2021, the company has supported over 2,000 clients — including Cabify and L’Oréal — scale everything from tech builds to creative sprints.
🔥 Up-and-coming startups to watch🛡️ PayFit cofounder raises €16 million to launch defense tech startup (🇫🇷)
Florian Fournier, one of the brains behind €2B+ HR rocketship PayFit is back, and this time, he’s going deeptech. The French founder just secured €16 million in Seed funding to launch a defense tech startup, marking a bold pivot from payroll to protection. ⚔
New startup Orasio sends a clear signal: Europe’s defense stack is heating up, and seasoned tech operators are jumping in. Fournier spent nearly a decade scaling PayFit across Europe, culminating in a €254 million Series E in 2022. Now, he's channeling that experience into building critical tech at the intersection of national security and software.
This move mirrors a growing trend: top-tier founders are ditching SaaS comfort zones to tackle geopolitically urgent problems, from drones and cyber to AI-enabled infrastructure. With European governments ramping up defense budgets and deeptech getting a second wind, Fournier’s bet is looking very well-timed. ⏱️
👀 One question remains: is France about to produce its first defense tech unicorn?
PayFit Cofounder Raises €16M Seed for New Defence Tech Startup
📑 MarvelX raises $6 million to drag insurance out of the manual era with agentic AI (🇳🇱)
MarvelX just bagged $6 million in Seed funding to overhaul one of the messiest corners of finance: insurance operations. The round was led by EQT Ventures, with angels from DeepMind, Plaid, Elastic, Coinbase, Partior, and Microsoft piling in.
Their pitch? An AI-native “operating system” called ClaimOS MaX that replaces paper-pushing with vertical, agentic automation. Think legacy claims systems, regulatory overload, and back-office chaos all cleaned up by intelligent workflows that plug straight into outdated IT stacks.
The funds will go toward beefing up the product, hiring across AI and infra, and deepening traction in Europe. With most insurers still stuck in decades-old tooling, MarvelX is betting big that agentic AI beats spreadsheets and that the next wave of vertical AI winners, will be built inside regulated chaos. 📊
MarvelX Raises $6M to Launch Agentic AI Platform for Insurance
🌍 Riverse raises €5 million to rebuild trust in carbon credits, one engineered solution at a time (🇫🇷)
The carbon market doesn’t have a credibility problem, it has a relevance problem. And Riverse is on a mission to fix both. The Paris-based climatetech startup just raised €5 million in Seed funding to scale its carbon crediting platform built specifically for engineered climate solutions.
The round was co-led by Alven and Racine², with returning support from SpeedInvest and Kfund. It follows a pre-seed that helped Riverse build its core tech and the Riverse Standard: a rigorous framework aligned with ISO 14064-2 for verifying real-world carbon reductions and removals.
So far? 60+ projects validated, 250,000+ credits issued, and full ICROA endorsement under their new standards. 📈
Paris-based Riverse Raises €5M to Scale Carbon Credits Offering
📰 Tech news of the week🐟 UK greenlights PISCES: a private stock market for tomorrow’s IPO giants (🇬🇧)
The UK just gave the go-ahead to PISCES, short for Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System Sandbox, a new private stock market designed to let growth-stage startups trade shares before IPO. It’s a big move aimed at boosting the UK’s capital markets and giving founders, employees, and angels more breathing room.
With companies staying private longer, there's growing demand for early liquidity and PISCES is the government's answer.
The legislation also confirms that employees will still get tax perks under EMI and CSOP schemes when exercising options on PISCES. Oh, and trades will be exempt from Stamp Taxes on Shares. That’s a double win for startup teams and investors alike. 💪
UK Unveils PISCES Private Stockmarket to Boost Startups, Employee Share Options, and IPO Pipeline
🛰️ CoreWeave and MERLIN Edged launch Barcelona’s first mega-scale AI data center
CoreWeave just flipped the switch on Barcelona’s first large-scale AI supercomputing facility, in partnership with MERLIN Edged. Powered by 10,224 NVIDIA H200 GPUs and InfiniBand connectivity, the 15MW site is built to handle the next generation of AI training and it’s just phase one. The next phase? A Blackwell supercomputer dropping in 2026. 🚀
This move is part of CoreWeave’s $2.2B European expansion play and a major push to bring hyperscale AI compute closer to home. As EU digital sovereignty becomes a strategic priority, Barcelona is being positioned as the Mediterranean’s digital nerve center. The new facility is being plugged directly into the Barcelona Cable Landing Station for fat-pipe access to North America, Europe, and Africa.
With Hopper and Blackwell chips landing, could Barcelona be the new frontline in Europe’s AI race?
📰 Product news of the weekNetflix execs, we have a new sequel for you: featuring Elizabeth Holmes’ partner, Billy Evans, who is raising $50 million in funding for a new blood-testing startup with a pitch that resembles Theranos’ 👀
News giant <> search giant: Le Monde is partnering with Perplexity
👔 Internships & job offersInternships
Visiting Deep Tech Analyst - Extantia (Berlin)
Several Positions - Serena (Paris)
Visiting Analyst - identity.vc (Berlin)
Jobs
Junior Finance Manager - Bonventure (Munich)
PR & Communications Manager - FoodLabs (Berlin)
Associate Fintech (German Speaker) - Speedinvest (London)
You can also read more about baby vc on our website and follow our updates on LinkedIn, or directly reach out to us at hello@baby-vc.co! 🤝
The whole baby vc crew 🖤
Great post ! If you guys want to deep dive on orbital reentry, here is my article summarizing why this is a billion dollar market opportunity that is still under the radar :
https://open.substack.com/pub/nextinvc/p/2-next-in-vc-atmospheric-reentry?r=hoz75&utm_medium=ios