Hormones in space, sugar-powered biotech, billion-euro AI binge, and much more...
What's Up Tech? #226
Welcome to our 226th newsletter, written with 🖤 by Annika Bautista, Sarah Luna Mongin, and Aris Sevastianos, featuring current baby vc fellows Giulia Sironi, Julia Gollwitzer and David Castells Cercadillo.
🔍 Topics we'll cover this weekGeneral news from the week: Brussels is ready to supercharge Europe’s tech champions 🚀
Fundraising news from the week: earned wages, sustainable fuels, and a billion-euro AI fund steal the spotlight 💸
Up-and-coming ventures to watch: from space-tested femtech to biotech sugars and AI breakthroughs, Europe’s innovation is taking off
🆕 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💸 Payflow secures €10 million to expand its earned wage access platform in Europe and LAM (🇪🇸)
Payflow, the Madrid-based fintech behind an Earned Wage Access platform, has raised €10 million in a new equity round led exclusively by Cusp Capital, who now becomes its largest investor. The company allows employees to access their earned salary instantly, as well as save, learn about finances, and spend tax-free via its Flexflow product.
The funds will be used to deepen expansion in Spain, Portugal, Colombia, and Peru, leveraging Payflow’s integrations with 60+ HR software partners that now cover over 99% of payslips in those markets. With more than 1,000 clients, including Lidl, Mango, and Decathlon, the company is already generating over €6 million in revenue with just 50 employees. 👥
Madrid-based Payflow Raises €10M to Expand their Earned Wage Access Platform Across Europe and LAM
✈️ SkyNRG raises €250 million to fuel sustainable aviation and build plants across three continents (🇳🇱)
Amsterdam’s SkyNRG, a Sustainable Aviation Fuel (“SAF”) pioneer, just locked in €250 million from Dutch pension giant APG, repping its client ABP.
That’s part of a massive €300 million round aimed at cranking out SAF production sites in the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States. Oh, and if you’re wondering, APG is no lightweight; it manages a jaw-dropping €616 billion in pension assets. 😮
So, what’s the tech? SkyNRG makes sustainable jet fuel to help airlines ditch fossil fuels and slash carbon emissions. They’ve already supplied SAF to 130+ customers worldwide, working with big shots like KLM, Microsoft, and Boeing. With this fresh cash, they’re building plants, scaling R&D, expanding advisory services, and rolling out commercial programs to get more planes flying green. This isn’t just another climate play; it’s a big-league bet on one of the hardest-to-decarbonize industries finally going sustainable.
Amsterdam’s SkyNRG Secures €250M to Build SAF Plants in the Netherlands, Sweden, and the US
🚀 Cathay Innovation raises one billion dollars to transform Europe’s industries with vertical AI (🇫🇷)
Cathay Innovation just closed $1 billion for Fund III, the largest AI-focused VC fund ever out of the European Union. The round is led by a crew of international corporate giants, like Sanofi, TotalEnergies, and BNP Paribas Cardif, eager to plug startups directly into industry pipelines. The fund has already thrown €235 million at 14 startups across healthcare, fintech, consumer goods, and energy, half of them proudly European.
So, what’s the tech? Think “vertical AI”, basically hyper-specialized artificial intelligence tools built for specific sectors (not your average catch-all chatbot). Expect the new cash to supercharge startup growth, forge corporate-startup collabs, and push Europe’s industry revamp into high gear.
Bonus points: Fund III is classified under the EU’s Sustainable Finance rules, aiming for innovation with a side of social and environmental impact. 🌍
Paris-based Cathay Innovation Closes €1B Fund Dedicated to AI
⚡ Trawa raises €10 million to make renewable energy buying easier for SMEs 🇩🇪
Berlin-based trawa just pulled in €10 million in Seed funding, led by Balderton Capital, bringing its total raised to over €12 million. Their tech? An AI-powered platform that helps small and midsize businesses buy green energy more easily. Basically, it crunches customer data to figure out when they need energy most and mixes the best combo of renewable sources to save up to 30% on annual energy costs.
The new funds will help trawa scale across Europe, especially as energy prices soar and manufacturers sweat under rising costs. With customers like SETEX-Textil and Amano Hotel Group already onboard, trawa’s pitch is clear: help SMEs ditch the old-school, chaotic energy market and lock in smarter, cheaper, and greener electricity.
Bonus? Their system also integrates with rooftop solar and smart batteries, making them a slick all-in-one solution for sustainability nerds and cost-cutters alike. 🙌
Berlin-based trawa Raises €10M to Use AI to Make Buying Renewable Energy Easier for SMEs
🤖 Inven raises €11.2 million to supercharge AI deal sourcing for private markets 🇫🇮
Helsinki’s Inven just snagged €11.2 million in Series A funding, led by Ventech and Vendep Capital.
This AI-native platform is on a mission to redefine global deal sourcing, sniffing out hidden gems across the private market 10x faster than old-school methods. Think of it as your M&A team’s hyper-intelligent sidekick, slashing through noisy data and surfacing the right opportunities before you even ask.
The funds is going toward doubling or tripling headcount, pumping up engineering and customer success, and expanding across North America. With 21 million companies already mapped and 700+ private equity, VC, and investment banking users, Inven is gunning to own the full M&A intelligence lifecycle, from sourcing to CRM. Honestly, with 670% YoY growth, they’re not just playing in the $12.6 billion M&A data market, they’re here to break the game. 📈
AI-native Deal Sourcing Platform Inven Raises $12.8M Series A to Bolster US Growth
✏️ Grammarly raises $1 billion to supercharge AI-powered work tools 🇺🇦
Ukrainian-born Grammarly just secured $1 billion from General Catalyst to level up its AI productivity game. This pushes Grammarly’s total funding to over $1.4 billion, locking in its status as a decacorn valued at more than $10 billion and pulls in a hefty $700 million+ in annual revenue. With more than 40 million daily users, Grammarly has already baked its AI magic into over 500,000 apps and websites.
So, what’s the play here? Grammarly isn’t just about grammar checks anymore. After snatching up Coda and naming its founder Shishir Mehrotra as CEO, Grammarly is diving headfirst into the enterprise world. 💪
Ukrainian Decacorn Grammarly Raises $1B from General Catalyst
🔥 Up-and-coming startups to watch🚺 Hormona just raised $6.7 million to put hormone testing in your bathroom, and maybe even in space (🇬🇧)
London-based Hormona just secured a $6.7 million Seed round led by Voima Ventures and SuperNode Global to bring its AI-powered hormone testing sticks to the global stage. Also joining the round were DLF Ventures, Nascent Invest, and Techstars.
Hormona replaces costly, lab-based hormone blood tests with simple, AI-scanned urine sticks that work like a pregnancy test. No hardware, no clinics, just scan the QR code with your phone and get real-time readings of estrogen, progesterone, and FSH (follicle-stimulating hormone).
And yes, they’re testing in space too. After a conversation with a SpaceX astronaut, Hormona launched a project to measure hormonal changes in orbit, peeing in zero gravity included. 🚀
The seed round will fund global expansion, team growth, and product launch. Hormona offers a €39/month subscription with four test sticks, plus a premium app with cycle forecasts and hormone health programs.
A $6.7M Fundraise for the Startup that Tested SpaceX Astronauts’ Hormones in Space
💊 Kyron Bio raises €5.5 million to make drug development safer and faster (🇫🇷)
Spin out from Sorbonne Université and CNRS in 2022, kyron.bio just raised a €5.5 million Seed round to solve one of the nastiest problems in antibody therapeutics: the immune system fighting back. The round was led by HCVC with support from Verve Ventures, Entrepreneur First, Saras Capital, and angels.
Led by Dr. Emilia McLaughlin, a former researcher at Institut Pasteur, kyron.bio is pioneering a new kind of drug design using… sugar. More specifically: precision glycosylation, the molecular process of attaching glycans (sugar molecules) to drugs to control how they function in the body. 👫
In short: this is molecular design 2.0 and it could mean fewer side effects, stronger treatments, and a whole new category of IP-rich antibody drugs.
Paris-based kyron.bio Secures €5.5M to Tackle Drug Efficiency and Safety
🧪 Catalyxx lands €3 million to turn Seville into a hub for fossil-free chemicals (🇪🇸)
Seville-based Catalyxx just bagged €3 million in fresh funding from Axon Partners Group to double down on its renewable chemistry ambitions. The round is part of Axon’s Desarrollo Andalucía fund, fueled by the European Investment Bank and the Regional Government of Andalusia.
Catalyxx is taking on the petrochemical industry by transforming humble bioethanol into high-value green chemicals. Think biobutanol, biohexanol, biooctanol, and biodecanol. If it sounds like a mouthful, just know these are sustainable alternatives to the fossil-based chemicals found in your adhesives, paints, and cosmetics. It’s chemical alchemy, minus the carbon guilt. They’ve developed a patented, non-fermentative process that skips the craft beer vibes and goes straight to industrial efficiency.
Fewer emissions. No fossil inputs. Just renewable molecules and big industrial ambition. 📈
Spanish Startup Catalyxx Secures €3M to Boost its Sustainable Chemicals R&D Centre
👨💻 Former Synthesia cofounder Matthias Niessner is back, and this time he's building in 3D (🇩🇪)
From OpenAI’s GPT-4o to Stability’s SDXL, there’s no shortage of foundation models that can generate eerily realistic images from a text prompt. But fully coherent 3D environments from a prompt? That’s still frontier territory.
Now one of Europe’s most prominent AI-for-3D researchers, Matthias Niessner, head of TUM’s Visual Computing Lab and cofounder of $2.1 billion Synthesia, is making the leap from lab to startup. He founded SpAItial, a company aiming to bring generative 3D online. Think: type “a Berlin apartment with Bauhaus furniture” and get a fully rendered room back.
The company has just raised a $13 million seed round, led by Earlybird VC, with backing from Speedinvest and top-tier angels. That’s a serious Seed for Europe, especially for a startup whose only public demo is a teaser video of a 3D room spinning into existence from text. 🤯
One of Europe’s Top AI Researchers Raised a $13M Seed to Crack the ‘Holy Grail’ of Models
📰 Tech news of the week💸 Brussels is finally writing real checks (🇪🇺)
The European Commission has launched the EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy, Choose Europe to Start and Scale, to make the EU a prime destination for building global tech companies.
At the heart of the plan? A €10 billion+ Scaleup Europe Fund, backed by public capital and 4x more private money, designed to invest directly into high-growth European tech companies. The fund, said to launch in 2026, will be managed by private investors and take equity stakes, rather than just offering debt or guarantees.
It’s a big swing, and the timing tracks. The EU still lags badly behind the US and China in producing unicorns. VC appetite is weak, late-stage funding is 7x smaller than in the US, and fragmentation across the 27-country bloc makes scaling a bureaucratic headache.
Finally, some Brussels-scale ambition. 🚀
Commission Launches Ambitious Strategy to Make Europe a Startup and Scaleup Powerhouse
📰 Product news of the weekGoogle just dropped AI Edge Gallery: run Hugging Face models locally on your Android. iOS fans, you’re next!
Microsoft’s Russia chapter’s calling it quits, bankruptcy filing surfaces amid rising tensions with Western tech.
👔 Internships & job offersInternships
Visiting Analyst – XAnge (Berlin)
Visiting Analyst Portfolio Success - Speedinvest (Munich)
Alternance VC Analyst - Femmes Business Angels (Paris)
Jobs
Investment Associate - Apex (Lisbon)
Investment Analyst - lysa (Stockholm)
Investment Analyst - Moonfire (London)
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The whole baby vc crew 🖤