Europe's quantum rise, autonomous cybersecurity, sovereign legal tech, and much more...
What's Up Tech? #221
Welcome to our 221st newsletter, written with 🖤 by Annika Bautista, Sarah Luna Mongin, and Aris Sevastianos, featuring current baby vc fellows Giulia Sironi, Celina Schweizer, Anja Senkmüller and Somit Fessehazion.
🔍 Topics we'll cover this weekGeneral news from the week: Europe's quantum leap and startup drama heats up
Fundraising news from the week: industrial sustainability, sovereign legal AI, and SME lending boom 🚀
Up-and-coming ventures to watch: real-time industrial AI, smarter space traffic, and dyslexia therapy enabled by tech ✨
🆕 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! 💛
🫵 We need your opinion🚀 Help us shape a new section
We want to spotlight promising early-stage European startups before or when they fundraise, giving them (and you!) more visibility at the moments that matter most.
We’d love your quick input:
🤑 Fundraising of the week🏭 KOMPAS VC closes €150 million Fund II to back startups enhancing industrial sustainability (🇩🇰)
KOMPAS VC has closed its second fund at €150 million to invest in up to 25 industrial tech startups worldwide. The firm is deepening its collaboration with industry partners to back top tech solutions in manufacturing and the built environment, offering founders capital and unmatched industry access.
Fund usage? Expand the team to offer even deeper operational and manufacturing expertise. As global supply chains face new vulnerabilities and sustainability pressures rise, KOMPAS is capturing growing investor interest by aligning with major trends like the EU Green Deal and the energy transition. ⚡️
KOMPAS VC Closes €150M Fund II to Back Sustainability and Productivity-Focused Industrialtech
⚖️ Xayn raises €80.7 million to bring sovereign legal AI to Europe 🇩🇪
Berlin-based Xayn just locked in €80.7 million in a Series B led by legal heavyweight C.H. Beck. They’re building Noxtua, Europe’s first sovereign legal AI platform, laser-focused on privacy, compliance, and strict professional secrecy laws. In short: Noxtua helps lawyers do contract reviews, document analysis, and legal research without needing to sell their souls (or client data) to Silicon Valley.
The tech blends reinforcement learning, transformers, and recurrent neural nets, slashing energy use by up to 98 percent compared to typical models. Noxtua is trained on 55 million+ documents from Beck’s massive legal database. Bonus: it doesn’t touch client data, keeping everything court-proof and scandal-free.
Fresh funding will supercharge Noxtua’s third-gen rollout, add new automated workflows like redlining and email drafting, and expand public sector adoption. In a world paranoid about foreign tech, Xayn is pitching a rare gem: sovereign, compliant, European AI... and apparently, Germany is eating it up. 😋
🛡️ Cynomi is creating the AI-powered OS for cybersecurity with $37 million Series B funding (🇬🇧🇮🇱)
Cynomi is ready to serve SMB’s (small and medium businesses) with it’s AI-powered “virtual CISO” (Chief Information Security Officer). 🫡
The company has just raised their Series B funding, co-led by Insight Partners and Entrée Capital. With SMBs increasingly targeted by cyberattacks, Cynomi automates cybersecurity guidance, helping them build and manage resilient defenses. CEO David Primor, a former Israel Defense Forces R&D chief, aims for Cynomi to become "the operating system" of the $163 billion cybersecurity consulting market.
Cynomi Cinches $37M for Its AI-based ‘Virtual CISO’ for SMB Cybersecurity
From student VC to €35 million Fund II: Europe’s pre-seed VC for technical founders launches new fund (🇩🇪)
First Momentum Ventures just sealed a €35 million Fund II to charge Europe's next wave of deeptech and B2B startups. They’re hunting for founders building the future from labs, machine rooms, and codebases - not just pitching PowerPoints.
With first checks between €200,000 and €1 million, the German VC plans to back up to 35 startups across AI, novel materials, industrial tech, and beyond. But they’re not just writing checks: they’re stitching together Europe’s deeptech backbone too, through initiatives like the Spinoff Summit and a PhD Fellowship program.
In short: if you're hacking atoms, inventing the next AI breakthrough, or reimagining industrial tech, First Momentum wants to be your first yes. 🛠️
First Momentum Ventures Closes €35M Fund II to Support European Tech Founders
💶 Froda secures €20 million to supercharge SME lending across Europe (🇸🇪)
Froda just raised €20 million to speed up SME lending across Europe, making it faster and easier for small businesses to get funded. The round was backed by Incore Invest and the European Investment Fund (EIF), giving a big vote of confidence to Froda’s embedded lending model.
Their pitch? Help SMEs access financing right where they already do business without the paperwork headaches. With fresh capital, Froda plans to expand into new markets and level up their tech. The big vision is simple: turn financing into a growth engine for small businesses everywhere. 💪
Froda Raises €20M to Accelerate Embedded SME Finance Across Europe
🔥 Up-and-coming startups to watch📈 Lace AI is listening in on your calls with $19 milion in Seed funding (🇧🇬)
Revenue intelligence platform Lace AI is all ears.👂
The company has just closed a $19 million Seed round led by Bek Ventures after achieving 1000% growth in 2024 and becoming one of Bulgaria’s fastest-growing startups. The platform automatically analyses all inbound sales calls, flags missed opportunities, and delivers coaching insights. They’ve helped clients boost booking rates up to 98% and net sales by 35% without extra marketing spend or hires. 🤑
Lace AI Raises $19M Seed after 1000% Growth in 2024, Emerges as Bulgaria’s Fastest-growing Startup
⚙️ Emmi AI raises €15 million to turbocharge real-time industrial simulations (🇦🇹)
Austria’s Emmi AI just pulled in €15 million in the largest-ever seed round for an Austrian startup. The round was led by 3VC, Speedinvest, Serena, and PUSH VC.
Emmi AI is like if ChatGPT and an engineering PhD had a baby 👶 . It replaces clunky, slow physics simulations (think fluid dynamics, thermal analysis, material stress tests) with deep learning models that run in milliseconds. Goodbye, manual number-crunching marathons. Hello, real-time digital twins that actually learn and adapt!
The new cash will fuel hiring for Emmi’s engineering team and help them scale their real-time simulation platform across heavy industries like aerospace, energy, and automotive. Bonus points: the company’s name is a nod to Emmy Noether, the math icon who basically built modern physics.
Austria’s Emmi AI Raises €15M to Bring Real-Time AI Simulations to Industrial Engineering
🛰️ OKAPI:Orbits raises €13 million to make space a little less Wild West (🇩🇪)
German startup OKAPI:Orbits just secured €13 million in Seed funding, with Ventech leading the round. OKAPI’s tech is like space traffic control, but smarter: its AI platform predicts collisions, simulates satellite missions, and helps space operators dodge the cosmic equivalent of a 10-car pileup.
The team, spun out of the Technical University of Braunschweig, is turning decades of dusty academic research into the first industry-standard tools for managing space traffic. With 99% collision prediction accuracy and a 10-day lead time, they’re giving satellite operators a fighting chance against orbital chaos.
The new funds will help OKAPI beef up its tech, hire more brainpower, and take its “don’t crash into space junk” mission global. Fun fact: in an industry where most players only realize they need help after a near-death experience 😳, OKAPI is basically building seatbelts for the final frontier.
OKAPI:Orbits Secures €13M to Build the Future of Space Traffic Management
🎮 Poppins raises €5 million to level up digital therapy for kids with dyslexia (🇫🇷)
Paris-based Poppins just scored €5 million in fresh funding to expand its video game app that helps kids with dyslexia practice at home. The round was led by Racine².
The tech is simple: a home-based video game that does not replace speech therapists but boosts progress between appointments. It's already battle-tested with over 6,000 families in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. In a country with only 25,000 speech therapists for 1.3 million dyslexic kids, that’s a real-world power-up.
Poppins plans to plug into official care pathways next. TL;DR - less waiting, more learning, and a real shot at shrinking the brutal 12–24 month therapy waitlist. 🔝
Poppins Raises €5M to Expand Digital Therapy for Children with Dyslexia
📰 Tech news of the week💻 IQM Quantum Computers installs Poland’s first superconducting quantum computer (🇵🇱)
IQM just fired up Poland’s first full-stack superconducting quantum computer, plugging it straight into the Kraken supercomputer at Gdańsk University of Technology. 🧠
The goal? Supercharge quantum research in AI, cryptography, and materials science, and put Poland squarely on Europe’s quantum tech map. This move comes hot on the heels of IQM’s new Warsaw office and signals a serious play to make the country a heavyweight in quantum innovation.
IQM to Deploy Poland’s First Superconducting Quantum Computer
⚖️ Oussama Ammar ordered to cough up £6.5 million over startup scandal (🇫🇷)
Oussama Ammar, co-founder of French startup incubator The Family, just got hit with a £6.48 million damages bill by a UK court for fraud and breach of fiduciary duty. The drama? Ammar allegedly funneled investor money into his own company, Fabuleo, and bought shares at jacked-up prices instead of properly backing startups like PayFit and Algolia. He didn’t even show up to the final hearing, resulting in the court ruling against him by default.
This isn’t Ammar’s first courtroom. In 2023, a Cayman Islands court also ordered him to pay €7.3 million over shady dealings involving big names like Stripe, Airbnb, and SpaceX. Now, The Family is racing through exequatur procedures in France and Delaware to actually collect the cash. Ammar’s response? A casual “good luck with that.” 🤷♂
The Family Cofounder Oussama Ammar Ordered to Pay £6.5M in Damages
📰 Product news of the weekThe DOJ just kicked off its trial against Google: buckle up, the fight’s just getting started
Build, vibe, and ship together: Lovable 2.0 is live, and it’s bringing multiplayer vibes to coding
👔 Internships & job offersInternships
CEO Office Intern - Axeleo Capital (Paris)
VC Investor Intern - 360 Capital (Milan)
VC Analyst & Program Manager - Sopra Steria Ventures (Paris)
Jobs
Investor - Founders Factory (London)
Associate - Fly Ventures (Berlin)
Portfolio Manager - Octopus Ventures (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! 🤝
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Who’s doing foundational research on quantum in Europe?