Scaling Europe

Marker just came out of stealth and raised a $13m Seed led by Index Ventures. Marker is an AI editor built to help writers develop their ideas and get feedback throughout the writing process.   Jon Steinback is Co-Founder and CEO of Marker. He and co-founder Ryan Bowman built it to support the whole writing process, from thinking through drafting to editing. The result is a modern word processor m...

Singular is a European early-stage venture capital firm investing from Seed through Series B, with portfolio companies including Aikido, Vibe, Basecamp and Spore. Bio.   Laura McGinnis is joining Singular as a Partner. She previously spent several years in venture at Balderton Capital. In London, she'll focus on building out the firm's presence and backing UK and Ireland founders earlier i...

Nyobolt is building fast energy storage systems for AI infrastructure, where data centres and robotics require far higher power density and faster charging than conventional technologies can provide. Sai Shivareddy is Founder and CEO at Nyobolt. The company spent years developing its technology before AI infrastructure created demand for it, and is now deploying its systems in robotics, with data...

THEKER Robotics builds robots that takes over the hardest physical labor inside heavy factories. Carla Gómez Cano is Co-founder at THEKER. Their robots that do manual, physical work, like moving packages, assembling parts and folding garments, and use smart software to handle any task or material on a single platform. The company recently raised an $85m Series A, one of the largest robotics rounds...

Rig just raised $2.8 pre-Seed led by Emerge Capital to build infrastructure that helps companies use their internal data with AI. The platform connects existing data systems so teams can build AI apps, workflows and agents more easily. Toby Mather is Co-founder of Rig. He says the biggest challenge is no longer building AI applications, but giving them secure access to the right internal context....

Orbital recently raised a $50m Series B led by Plural to scale its AI platform for developing advanced materials. Jonathan Godwin is Co-founder and CEO at Orbital Industries. The company is using AI to discover a new GPU cooling material for data centres, with plans to apply the same technology to hardware and manufacturing across sectors such as semiconductors, energy and aerospace. The Scaling E...

Seltz just raised a $12.5m Seed as it launches its first product and looks to build a new generation of web infrastructure for AI. Antonio Mallia is Founder and CEO at Seltz. The company is building for a world where AI agents become a new type of web user, requiring a completely different way to access information online. Instead of returning a list of links, Seltz is rebuilding the entire search...

Seedcamp just closed $220M + $100M funds as it looks to support European founders from their first cheque through to later stages of company building. The new $220M core fund will continue backing early-stage companies, while the $100M select fund allows Seedcamp to double down on breakout portfolio companies from Series B onwards. Will Bennett is Principal at Seedcamp. He believes the definition...

Debtist scaled to €15M ARR in just 3 years as it builds an AI-powered receivables management platform across Europe. Matteo Benedetti is Founder at Debtist. The company started from identifying a gap in traditional debt collection and built an end-to-end software platform that automates receivables management using AI across email, calling, document handling, and legal workflows. It now serves aro...

Venture funds are becoming more systematic about finding founders before anyone else has seen them. As more firms build internal sourcing tools, the real advantage is shifting from collecting signals to knowing which opportunities are actually worth chasing. Jacob Houlberg is Co-founder of Evertrace, which helps more than 220 venture funds identify founders at the earliest stages of company creati...

Conduct just raised $60m in a Series A co-led by Index Ventures and ICONIQ, with strategic investment from SAP and participation from existing investors. JP Haas is Co-Founder and CEO at Conduct. The company builds an AI operating system for enterprise software that maps heavily customised systems like SAP and Salesforce and helps enterprises execute changes across them faster. The Scaling Europe...

Many of the industries that keep the economy running still rely on emails, phone calls and manual coordination between people. AI is starting to change that, allowing companies to automate work that previously required large operational teams. Pablo Palafox, CEO at HappyRobot, believes the biggest opportunity in AI is not building better chatbots, but helping businesses actually get work done. As...

AI is becoming one of the most important questions facing Europe, yet many leaders still underestimate both the speed and scale of the transformation. Judith Dada is General Partner at Visionaries Club and one of the authors behind Europe 2031, a new scenario exploring how Europe could fall behind in an AI-driven world over the next five years. The solution, she believes, is for Europe to move fas...

More people than ever before can now build software, as AI removes many of the technical barriers that previously stood in the way. Lovable is helping lead that shift, with two-thirds of its builders coming from outside the tech industry. Nad Chishtie is Founding Designer and Head of Design at Lovable. He believes the next generation of software will be built by far more people than ever before, w...

UVC Partners is a European venture capital firm investing in early-stage deep tech companies in Europe, including Proxima Fusion and Isar Aerospace. Johannes von Borries and Benjamin Erhart, GPs at UVC Partners, back companies working on fusion energy and space systems, where development takes long cycles and requires high capital and coordination between research and industry. The Scaling Europe...

AI agents are becoming more capable, but most companies still rely on software built for a different era. Zaro just raised a $5.1 million pre-Seed round led by Cherry Ventures to build infrastructure designed specifically for the agentic era. Michael Bajwa is CEO and Co-founder of Zaro. Following the sale of Convergence to Salesforce, he believes enterprises have not yet had their ChatGPT moment,...

Cheap drones are changing modern warfare, creating demand for new air defence systems that can operate at scale. Alta Ares just raised $50 million to help countries defend against emerging aerial threats. Hadrien Canter is CEO and Co-founder of Alta Ares. Drawing on his experience working in Ukraine and the Middle East, he believes Europe has a unique opportunity to build a stronger defence ecosys...

Factorial just raised $150m from General Catalyst at a $2.5bn valuation as the company enters its next phase as an AI-native business. The new capital will be used to accelerate growth through acquisitions across Europe. Jordi Romero is Founder and CEO of Factorial, which recently turned 10 years old. He believes AI is changing how software companies serve their customers and sees Europe as one of...

European investors are moving faster, while global funds are becoming increasingly active across the Nordics. As competition for the best founders intensifies, technical talent is attracting more attention than ever at the earliest stages. Oliver Molander is Founding General Partner of Inception Fund, which recently expanded to €30 million. Drawing on his experience as both a founder and investor,...

European AI startups are raising billion-dollar rounds, while defence and deep tech companies are attracting far larger rounds than the market was seeing a few years ago. Alex McCracken is Head of Venture Capital Relationships, EMEA at J.P. Morgan, where he is seeing US investors move into Europe earlier and more technical AI founders raise capital across the market. The Scaling Europe show is pre...

Transition VC raised a new $150m fund to back highly technical founders building the next generation of energy, compute and industrial companies. David Helgason, Co-founder at Transition VC, says AI is increasing demand for compute, power and industrial systems at a time when venture is moving beyond traditional software. The new fund will focus on companies building across energy, hardware and in...

Checkout.com is one of Europe’s leading payments companies, powering transactions for some of the world’s biggest digital businesses. Ashley Paulus, VP of Revenue (UK & EEA) at Checkout.com, is leading the company’s growth across two of its most important markets after 78% growth in the UK and around 60% growth in Europe last year. As merchants look for better acceptance rates, global coverage...

1KOMMA5° is working to deliver the cheapest and cleanest electricity in the world, at a time when energy is becoming one of the biggest questions behind the AI boom. Philipp Schröder, Co-founder and CEO at 1KOMMA5°, has grown the company from home electrification into one of Europe’s most important energy players. It is already managing one gigawatt of capacity, with a much larger ambition: making...

Scope is building AI for the people who inspect the physical world, from factories and industrial equipment to the assets companies rely on every day. Jonathan Low is CEO at Scope, and the company has just raised $20m led by Index Ventures after growing more than 10x since relaunching last year. Much of this work still runs on pen, paper, Word and Excel, and Scope is turning inspection work into u...

Mouro Capital is a fintech-focused venture firm investing at the intersection of financial services and technology. Manuel Silva Martinez is a GP at Mouro Capital, and they just announced a new $400m fund backed by Banco Santander, giving the firm more capital to back fintech entrepreneurs across the US, Europe and Latin America. Mouro’s thesis has stayed close to financial services, but the oppor...