Fintech for boomers, privacy-first blockchain, civictech tools, and much more...
What's Up Tech? #230
Welcome to our 230th newsletter, written with 🖤 by Annika Bautista, Sarah Luna Mongin, and Aris Sevastianos.
🔍 Topics we'll cover this weekGeneral news from the week: A multi-million euro pledge to back AI-for-good, and civictech steps up to mobilise the next generation of movements 🗳️
Fundraising news from the week: From encrypted blockchains to voice-first enterprise tools 💸
Up-and-coming ventures to watch: Sovereign cloud infra out of stealth 🥷
🆕 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🦄 Project A raises €325 million to back Europe’s next unicorns starting day zero (🇩🇪)
Project A just closed €325 million for its fifth fund — oversubscribed and raised in just four months, bringing total AUM to €1.2 billion. 🤯
The fund focuses on backing Europe’s boldest startups even before they incorporate. Their unique in-house studio is built for founders at the earliest stages to go through Pre-seed and Seed.
It’s already helped launch hits like Trade Republic, sennder, and Quantum Systems. Expect this fresh capital to fund high-conviction bets and hands-on operational help (e.g., hiring, Series A prep, and scaling chaos control). 🧠
Project A Closes €325M Fund V, Boosting Total Assets to €1.2B
🤑 Movens Capital raises €60 million to supercharge CEE tech founders (🇵🇱)
Movens Capital just launched a €60-million early-stage fund to back scrappy startups from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), targeting AI, fintech, climate tech, and enterprise software.
Backed by the EBRD, PFR Ventures, and over 80 tech insiders, the fund will write checks from €250,000 to €3 million across pre-seed to Series A+.
The goal is to plug the brutal €72-per-head VC funding gap between Western Europe and CEE and keep founders from bouncing to Berlin or London.
Movens’ team boasts ex-founders offering deep operational help, with Fund 1 alums like Packhelp and Alokai already going global. 🌍
🔐 Zama raises $57 million to bring encrypted smart contracts to the blockchain masses (🇫🇷)
Zama just scored $57 million in Series B funding to launch its mainnet and bring its fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) tech to the crypto crowd.
FHE is a breakthrough in data privacy. It lets developers run computations on encrypted data without ever decrypting it. This means sensitive information like financial records or identity credentials can stay secure even while being processed.
That’s game-changing for onchain finance, identity, and governance. Oh, and, Zama’s tools plug right into existing Solidity contracts, so there’s no need to rebuild apps from scratch. 🤯
The round, co-led by Blockchange Ventures and Pantera Capital, pushes Zama past the $1 billion valuation mark, making it the first fully homomorphic encryption unicorn ever.
Zama Becomes 1st Fully Homomorphic Encryption Unicorn with $57M Raise
🧑💻 Metaview raises €30 million to help recruiters remember each candidate (🇬🇧)
Metaview is turning interviews into AI-powered insights with a €30-million Series B round. The round was led by GV, and it’s fuelling their quest to turn “vibe checks” into real hiring intelligence.
Their AI tools analyse interviews in real time and auto-generate role-specific notes. 🧠
With over 3 million interviews processed and clients like Sony, Brex, and Deel, Metaview is selling recruiters back their time, saving up to two hours per job post.⏱️
London-based AI Platform Metaview Raises €30.1M to Help Recruiters in “The War for Talent”
🛡️ Orus raises €25 million to keep European SMB’s secure and insured (🇫🇷)
Orus just snagged €25 million in a Series B round led by Singular to supercharge its European expansion and launch a slick new broker platform.
Its secret sauce is a data-packed platform that uses 300+ real-time indicators to personalize coverage for SMBs. Think everything from climate risk to a café’s financial health. ☕️
In just 18 months, Orus has grown revenue 10x and now covers over 30,000 businesses, offering startup-speed onboarding and lightning-fast claims.
Orus Raises €25M to Become Europeʼs One-Stop Shop for SMB Insurance
📞 Voice comes to enterprise masses: no-code Synthflow AI raises $20 million dollars in Series A funding (🇩🇪)
Synthflow AI just secured $20 million in Series A funding to roll out its eerily human-sounding voice agents to enterprise and mid-market clients worldwide.
The startup's no-code platform lets non-techies build and deploy AI phone agents that can handle everything from customer support to lead qualification. All that without a six-month onboarding nightmare. 😴
Accel led the round, which brings the total raised to $30 million since 2023. The cash will fund global expansion (hi, new U.S. office 👋) and ramp up its AI Voice OS, which already saved over 5 million hours of contact center ops and answered 35% more calls than humans.
🔥 Up-and-coming startups to watch☁️ Lyceum raises €10 million to build Europe’s first user-centric GPU cloud (🇩🇪🇨🇭)
Lyceum has emerged from stealth with €10 million in Pre-seed funding, led by Redalpine. They’re reinventing cloud infrastructure with a focus on European sovereignty. 🇪🇺
The company is building a GPU-first cloud that makes it radically easier to deploy and scale high-performance workloads in just one click.👇
Founded to counter Europe’s lag in compute capacity, Lyceum offers a software abstraction layer that simplifies infrastructure and accelerates cloud-native AI development.
Sovereign by Design: Lyceum Emerges with €10.3M to Redefine Cloud Infrastructure in Europe
👵 Skarlett raises €8 million in Seed funding to help the boomers with financial planning (🇫🇷)
Skarlett has raised an €8 million Seed round to serve the financial needs of your grandparents, a demographic that holds €3 trillion in real estate and €1 trillion in under-optimised savings in France alone. 💰
The platform offers AI-driven tools for personalised health insurance, mortgage and equity-release financing, and low-fee investment products specifically for older adults.
With backers like 115K (La Banque Postale’s VC arm), Raise Seed for Good, and Alven, Skarlett aims to fill the gap left by traditional banks and insurers in a growing, underserved market. ✨
Skarlett Raises €8 Million Seed Round to Reinvent Personal Finance for the 60+ Generation
📣 Qomon lands €5.5 million to give power to the people (🇫🇷)
Vive la révolution 🤘 Qomon, a civictech startup, is helping nonprofits and political movements mobilise their communities with a fresh round of €5.5 million in funding. The round was led by Asterion Ventures, Ternel, and Good Only Ventures.
The platform turns volunteer enthusiasm into action by equipping organisations with digital tools to coordinate supporters, donors, and voters. It’s already enabling 100,000+ mobilisation efforts for 600 orgs. 👏
Qomon now aims to double its reach by 2026 and expand across Europe’s 1.4 million NGOs and 94 million volunteers.
Qomon Secures €5.5M to Help Nonprofits and Political Movements Mobilise at Scale
📰 Tech news of the week🌍 Norrsken Foundation commits €300 million to fund AI-for-good startups (🇸🇪)
Norrsken Foundation is done playing with productivity fluff and wants AI that addresses broken systems and real human needs.
They just pledged €300 million to back European startups using AI to tackle global issues — from climate, to health, food, education, and society. 🫶
The capital will be deployed via its VC fund, accelerator, and launcher. Startups will be screened based on UN SDG-linked impact criteria, making this one of the most mission-driven AI investment strategies in Europe.
Norrsken Foundation Commits €300M to AI Startups Tackling Global Challenges
📰 Product news of the weekChatGPT is listening: ‘Record’ is now live…even without your meeting guests knowing👂
Whodunit? 🕵️ Instagram and Facebook users are getting mass banned, and the lead culprit is AI
xAI is getting an upgrade all geeks will love: an advanced code editor will run inside Grok 🤓
👔 Internships & job offersInternships
Visiting Analyst - Adara Ventures (Madrid)
Analyst - Next Tier Ventures (Barcelona)
Visiting Analyst - Creandum (Stockholm)
Bras Droit des Fondatrices - WinEquity (Paris)
Jobs
VC Associate - Breega (London)
VC Associate - Northzone (Stockholm)
VC Associate - Mangusta Capital (London/Milan)
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 🖤
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