Allergy-free milk, lifelike game characters, AI for factories, and much more...
What's Up Tech? #227
Welcome to our 227th newsletter, written with 🖤 by Annika Bautista, Sarah Luna Mongin, and Aris Sevastianos, featuring current baby vc fellows Laetizia Hellmeister and Paul Bonacker.
🔍 Topics we'll cover this weekGeneral news from the week: Europe goes green on chips and a German healthtech gets a last-minute rescue 😅
Fundraising news from the week: big bets on FinTech, factory ops, legal AI and France makes noise in editing tech and cyber insurance
Up-and-coming ventures to watch: AI for checkups, allergy-free milk and Europe’s digital edge keeps growing 🇪🇺
🆕 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📈 Scalable Capital raises €155 million to level up retail investing for the masses (🇩🇪)
Germany-based Scalable Capital just scored a €155 million cash injection — its biggest round ever. The raise was led by Sofina and Noteus Partners. The fresh capital brings total funding north of €470 million.
So, what’s the play? Scalable offers a sleek, tech-driven platform for retail investors to access everything from ETFs to crypto to private equity, without the Wall Street gatekeeping. Think: an investing buffet with no wealth manager required. Their recent moves include launching the European Investor Exchange, rolling out kids’ investment accounts, and letting average folks tap into institutional-grade private equity via ELTIFs.
The new funds will go toward scaling this all-in-one platform even faster. Scalable says it’s on a mission to democratize wealth creation, and honestly, it’s giving “Robinhood with a retirement plan” vibes, but with better UX and a European passport. 🛂
Scalable Capital Receives €155 Million and Continues to Expand Its Digital Investment Platform
🧠 Fabriq raises €22 million to put whiteboards out of their misery and digitize factory floors (🇫🇷)
French startup Fabriq just snagged €22 million in fresh funding to drag industrial performance into the 21st century. The round was led by Expedition Capital. Fabriq’s SaaS replaces old-school whiteboards and clunky spreadsheets with a sleek platform that digitizes Lean Daily Management, helping factory teams track safety, productivity, and quality in real time. Think: smarter checklists, faster problem-solving, and way fewer Excel headaches. ✅
Now profitable and live in over 600 factories across 43 countries, Fabriq is gunning for €50 million in ARR by 2029. The new funds will supercharge hiring, expand its product, and push deeper into the US and Europe, where digital adoption on the shop floor is still laughably low. Their goal? Become the go-to operating system for industrial performance, complete with AI-powered insights and a frontline-first user experience. Bonus points for actually engaging workers, not just automating them out of relevance.
Factories have sunk billions into machines, but forgot the humans running them. Fabriq’s cheeky fix? Give those humans software that doesn’t suck.
Fabriq Raises €22 Million to Become the Global Standard in Industrial Performance
🛡️ Baobab raises €12 million to shield Europe’s SMEs from cyber chaos (🇩🇪)
Berlin-based Baobab just secured €12 million in Series A funding to help small and mid-sized businesses sleep easier at night. The round was led by eCapital VC. No valuation was disclosed, but the money’s headed toward beefing up its tech, scaling teams, and going full throttle on European expansion. 🌍
Baobab’s tech? It’s like a cyber bodyguard for SMEs. The startup bundles insurance policies with automated risk scans, flagging weak spots in a company's digital setup and serving up actionable fixes. Businesses also get 24/7 emergency support, plus a sleek platform that brokers love for onboarding and managing policies.
Behind the scenes, Baobab’s running on some solid machine learning risk-assessment research, co-funded by Investitionsbank Berlin and the European Regional Development Fund. Cyber threats might be getting smarter, but so is Baobab.
🎬 Aive raises €12 million to turbocharge AI-powered video post-production (🇫🇷)
Paris-based startup Aive just locked in €12 million in Series A funding to beef up its AI-driven video editing tech. The round was led by Invus, coming hot on the heels of Aive’s commercial launch in early 2024.
So, what’s the tech? Aive uses its own Multimodal Generative Technology to edit and personalize videos automatically, think of it as a hyper-efficient creative AI that does in minutes what used to take hours. It tailors videos for different platforms, formats, and audiences without frying your creative team’s sanity.
With ARR already beyond €1 million, a client list that includes LVMH, Publicis, and Stellantis, and a claim to be 30x faster and 20x cheaper than old-school workflows, Aive’s not just talking the talk. The new funds will help it scale globally, triple headcount by 2026, and make its platform more accessible to SMBs and solo creators. Because apparently, video editing shouldn’t feel like digital duct-taping. 🎥
French Startup Aive Raises €12 Million To Scale Its Editing Tech
🤖 Flank raises $10 million to automate boring legal busywork with invisible AI agents (🇩🇪)
Berlin-based Flank just raised $10 million to let corporate legal teams stop playing email tag with NDAs. Insight Partners led the round. That brings Flank’s total funding to $18 million, all to replace repetitive legal tasks with AI agents that operate inside your Slack, email, or Teams. No new UI. No training. No excuses.
Flank doesn’t just help with legal work, it does the legal work. Its flagship agent, Flank-a0, acts like a tireless, context-aware paralegal that handles thousands of compliance requests, NDAs, and vendor contracts with zero whining. 😂 Even better? It’s supervised by a hybrid AI-human oversight layer, so it’s not flying blind.
Already embedded at high-velocity ops like DeepL, SumUp, and TravelPerk, Flank is crushing over 5,000 legal requests per month at some companies. Funds will fuel deeper product development and headcount expansion, as Flank pushes to make autonomous legal intelligence as boringly reliable as Excel.
Flank Raises $10M to Replace Legal Bottlenecks with Embedded AI Agents
🔥 Up-and-coming startups to watch💉 Aeon Health raises €8.2 million to scale AI-powered preventive checkups across Europe (🇨🇭)
Zurich-based Aeon wants to make preventive healthcare more than a New Year’s resolution. 🎊 The startup just raised an €8.2 million Seed round to build what it claims is the world’s most advanced early detection platform, combining full-body MRI, blood biomarkers, and genetic testing into a 60-minute check-up. The result is a dynamic digital twin of each user’s health, housed in the Aeon app and continuously updated with actionable insights.
The round was led by Concentric, with participation from Calm/Storm Ventures, GoHub Ventures, Kadmos Capital, EWOR, and Swiss super angel Daniel Gutenberg.
Insurance companies are buying in, too. Aeon is reportedly the first full-body health check platform eligible for reimbursement from Swiss insurers like KPT, with up to 80% of the cost covered depending on the plan.
Swiss HealthTech Startup Aeon Raises €8.2M to Scale its AI Preventive Health Platform
💊 Porto’s PFx Biotech raises €2.5 million to brew the future of human milk proteins (🇵🇹)
Portugal’s foodtech scene is heating up, and Porto-based PFx Biotech is leading the charge with a bold mission: to brew bioidentical human milk proteins through precision fermentation. No cows, no GMOs, no allergens. 🐮
The company just raised a €2.5 million Seed round led by Buenavista Equity Partners, with support from EIT Food and Beta Capital. This follows a €2.5 million grant from the EIC Accelerator, bringing the total injection to €5 million.
Founded in 2022, PFx Biotech is building an engineering biology platform to produce functional human milk proteins starting with Lactoferrin, a key immune-boosting molecule. Their fermentation tech promises a clean, scalable, and animal-free alternative to traditional dairy proteins, unlocking use cases in infant formula, sports nutrition, and elderly care. Their goal? Create a new category of precision-fermented ingredients that deliver real health benefits, sustainably.
Portuguese Startup PFx Biotech Lands €2.5M to Develop Allergy-Free Human Milk Proteins
🏗️ Lumoview raises €3 million for ultra-fast building data capture (🇩🇪)
Lumoview, the Cologne–Berlin PropTech spin‑off from DLR, has secured €3 million in Seed funding, following a €2.5 million EIC Accelerator grant, bringing total funding to €5.5 million. The round was led by Greencode Ventures, with participation from IBB Ventures, WakeUp Capital, business angels, and family offices.
The company’s tech combines mobile hardware and intelligent software to scan any room and capture floor plans, 3D models, and thermal data in just two seconds per room. It's aim? Accelerate energy‑efficient building retrofits by creating automated digital building inventories.
With the new capital, Lumoview plans to automate its solution further, grow its team, and scale across Germany and Europe. This tech tackles a major bottleneck in the green transition, rapidly collecting reliable building data. 🏭
👩🏭 Manex AI raises $8 million to bring AI-powered precision to industrial manufacturing(🇩🇪)
While most people don’t think about what happens between an order and a finished product, Munich-based Manex AI is betting that factories do, and that they’re ready to upgrade.
The startup just raised $8 million in Seed funding from top-tier backers like Lightspeed Venture Partners and BlueYard Capital, with participation from Capmont Technology and the CDTM Venture Fund.
Founded just 18 months ago, Manex AI is already working with names like BMW, Audi, Stellantis, Henkel, and TDK. Their secret? A full-stack software platform called “Qualitatio”, designed to bring intelligence and oversight to every step of the manufacturing lifecycle, from the moment an order is placed to when the finished product ships. Instead of patching together disconnected systems, Manex AI offers a unified data layer and smart analytics to reduce waste, improve quality, and streamline operations.
It’s not just about spotting defects; it’s about optimizing entire processes.🌀
👨💻 Latent Technology scores $8 million to replace pre-scripted animation with generative physics in gaming (🇬🇧)
London-based Latent Technology just raised $8 million to rethink how movement works in games. Not by optimizing old pipelines, but by rewriting the rules entirely.
Latent is building “Phoenix”, a generative physics model that replaces manual animations with real-time, AI-driven movement. Think fewer repetitive jump cycles and more emergent, responsive gameplay.
The Seed round was co-led by AlbionVC and Spark Capital and funding will go toward accelerating development of the “Latent Behaviour Engine”. The toolkit lets developers program emergent behaviors through physics-based AI, opening the door to a new kind of immersive storytelling. 📖
London’s Latent Technology Secures $8M to Supercharge Gaming with Generative Physics
📰 Tech news of the week🍪 Europe bets €55 million on sustainable chips with launch of GENESIS project (🇪🇺)
Europe just fired the first major shot in the race for climate-conscious chips.
Led by France’s CEA-Leti, the €55 million GENESIS project (Generate a Sustainable Industry for Semiconductors) brings together 58 partners, from industrial giants to niche research labs, to tackle the full environmental impact of chipmaking, from raw materials to waste treatment. ♻️
Backed by the Chips Joint Undertaking (Chips JU) and co-financed by the European Commission, EU member states, and Switzerland’s SERI, the three-year project is designed to align Europe’s booming semiconductor ambitions with its equally bold Green Deal goals.
One of the headline targets: eliminating PFAS, the so-called “forever chemicals” widely used in chip etching and cleaning. With regulators in the EU and US tightening the screws on PFAS usage, GENESIS aims to deliver scalable alternatives that can go industrial. The initiative also promises real-time emissions tracking, sensor-based abatement systems, and circular material use to drastically cut greenhouse gas output and resource consumption.
Europe Launches €55M GENESIS Project to Address Semiconductors' Environmental Impact
🩺 Doctorly acquired by FREY ADV to avert insolvency (🇩🇪)
Berlin-based healthtech doctorly has been fully acquired by FREY ADV in a 100% share deal.
The startup, known for creating Germany’s first fully cloud-based, VC-backed, and regulated practice management software, filed for preliminary insolvency in March after failing to secure a new funding round. With the acquisition, it has now withdrawn the insolvency application and can continue operations as normal.
FREY ADV brings deep expertise in healthcare software, offering a stable platform for doctorly’s cloud-native tools for medical records, billing, appointments, and prescriptions. 📝
German HealthTech startup doctorly kept from insolvency in full acquisition
📰 Product news of the weekMusk goes hunting: xAI eyes $300M secondary sale at jaw-dropping $113B valuation
Rippling drops bombshell: Accuses Deel of corporate espionage, calls it a “criminal syndicate”
👔 Internships & job offersInternships
Climate Investment Internship - World Fund (Berlin/Munich)
VC Investment Intern - First Momentum Ventures (Munich)
VC Analyst - Neva SGR (Torino)
Jobs
Investment Analyst - Climate Founders (Remote/Berlin/Munich/Cologne)
Investment Analyst - Primo Capital (Milan)
(Senior) Associate (B2B Software & AI Applications) - FoodLabs (Berlin)
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