AMD acquires Silo AI, SoftBank acquires Graphcore, and €450M for defencetech Helsing

This week our research tracked more than 60 tech funding deals worth over €1.3 billion, and over 10 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.

In addition to this week’s top financials, we’ve also indexed the most important/industry-related news items you need to know about.

The mid-year mark is a great time to review numbers and highlight significant milestones and trends across the European tech scene, and what they mean for the remainder of 2024.

This week, we released the culmination of our data for the first half of 2024, offering our take on what the numbers mean and the sectors and trends to watch — exclusive to Tech.eu insiders.

If email is more your thing, you can always subscribe to our newsletter and receive a more robust version of this round-up delivered to your inbox.

Either way, let’s get you up to speed.

💸 Notable and big funding rounds

🇧🇪 Team.blue secures €550M at €4.8B valuation

🇩🇪 Helsing raises €450M Series C for AI defence tech

🇩🇪 Planqc raises €50M

🇬🇧 NALA raises $40M to improve payments in Africa and beyond

🫱🏽‍🫲🏻 Noteworthy acquisitions and mergers

🇫🇮 AMD acquires Europe’s largest private AI lab, Silo AI, in $665M deal

🇬🇧 Infinite Reality acquires UK’s Landvault in $450M deal to boost immersive tech

🇭🇷 Visma enters the Croatian market with Moj eRačun acquisition

🇩🇪 Kipu Quantum acquires Anaqor’s quantum platform

🇬🇧 SoftBank acquires AI processor manufacturer Graphcore

🚀 Interesting moves from investors

🤖 European Investment Fund puts €350M into Kembara’s deeptech and climate fund

🇮🇸 Icelandic Frumtak Ventures closes fourth fund at $87M

💻 B2B Software microfund BOOOM to invest €17M in 30 European early-stage startups

🇸🇪 Swedish investment fund Swedfund opens an office in Kyiv

🚀 €170M fund for spacetech unveiled

🗞️ In other (important) news

🇬🇧 Startup founded by CBE-winning fintech pioneer reports losses of £7.5m in 2023

💸 Sharia-compliant digital bank Ethos looks to shake up industry

🇪🇺 EU ends Apple Pay antitrust probe with binding commitments to open up contactless payments

📡 Recommended reads and listens

🇱🇹 Lithuania: Vibrant and rapidly growing hub of innovation

🇬🇧 UK enacts biggest public markets overhaul in ‘three decades’

🤖 Deep tech startups with very technical CEOs raise larger rounds, research finds

🔭 European tech startups to watch

🇬🇧 PolyModels Hub raises £1.1M to digitise pharmacology

🇱🇹 Granta Autonomy raises €1M for Ukraine-tested defence tech

🇬🇧 GoJoe raises £2.4M for gamified employee health and fitness app

🇸🇪 Arkion raises $4M for its energy infrastructure inspection platform

🇳🇱 Solar car company Squad Mobility receives €1.35M grant