This Week in European Tech: BeReal valuation climbs to €600 million, UK forces Meta to sell Giphy, venture funding still ain’t flowing to women, and more

This week, our research team tracked more than 95 tech funding deals worth over €1.6 billion, and over 25 exits, M&A transactions, rumours, and related news stories across Europe.

As always, we are putting all of them together for you in a list sent in our round-up newsletter next Monday (note: the full list is for paying customers only, and also comes in the form of a handy downloadable spreadsheet).

We’ve also got some news for you: we’re already gearing up for the second edition of the Tech.eu Summit! Save the date:

Tickets are now on sale.

If you haven’t seen them yet, we’ve made all the videos from the Tech.eu Summit last May available as a playlist on our YouTube channel – enjoy!

With that said, let’s get down to business with the biggest European tech news items for the past couple of days (subscribe to our free newsletter to get this round-up in your inbox).

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>> Notable and big funding rounds

Stability AI, a London, UK-based community-driven, open-source artificial intelligence company, raised $101 million in funding.

TechCrunch learned that BeReal closed a round of $60 million earlier this year. The funding is coming in the form of a Series B and it values Paris, France–based BeReal at a valuation north of €600 million.

Munich-based software and services vacation rental startup Holidu has topped up its coffers with an oversubscribed €100 million Series E funding round of equity and debt, led by existing investor 83North, after seeing its year-over-year revenue grew 100% in 2021.

The European Investment Bank is providing a €200 million loan to Siltronic, a Munich-based silicon wafer manufacturer and supplier.

UK-founded Enable, formerly known as DealTrack, has raised $94 million in an oversubscribed Series C round.

London-based Capital on Tap, a credit card and spend management platform for small businesses, has raised £100 million in a corporate revolving credit facility with Atalaya Capital Management.

Fintech lender Koyo has secured a £100 million debt facility and nabbed a £5 million extension of its Series A funding round.

Amsterdam-based fast charging infrastructure for electric vehicles developer Fastned has received a €75 million private placement of 2,032,520 new depositary receipts.

Scottish spaceflight company Orbex has secured £40.4 million in a Series C round that aims to fuel all remaining pre-flight checks as the company gears up for the first vertical launch from UK soil.

Munich-based Quantum Systems has received a $17.5 million investment via Peter Thiel, Project A, Bayern Kapital, 10x Group, and Sanno Capital.

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>> Noteworthy acquisitions, mergers, IPOs and SPAC deals

Softline, the Cyprus-registered global IT and digital transformation solutions and services provider headquartered in London, this week began trading under the new brand name NOVENTIQ.

Camplify, a Sydney, Australia-based peer-to-peer RV rental platform, is acquiring Germany-based PaulCamper for €31 million.

Consentmanager is ‘joining forces’ with iubenda to create one of Europe’s leading providers for consent management and privacy compliance, with nearly 100.000 customers in 100+ countries.

The Netherlands-based BCS HR Group, a Human Resource Management and payroll software provider, has acquired two Dutch-based software companies, Tasper and MediSoft, with the support of software investor Main Capital Partners.

Red Sift, a London, UK and San Francisco, CA-based provider of a digital resilience platform, acquired Hardenize, a London, UK-based Attack Surface Management (ASM) company.

AB Tasty, a Paris, France-based experience optimization company, acquired Epoq, an Ettlingen, Germany-based AI-driven recommendation and smart search solution provider.

SaaS startup Amenitiz has acquired French firm Ododo as it strengthens its position in the travel tech sector.

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>> Interesting moves from investors

Verlinvest, a family-backed, “evergreen”, growth fund investor, that has previously funded a few well-known consumer brands like Oatly, Vita Coco, Tony’s Chocolonely and others, is getting into the venture game. After putting around €50 million into VC initiatives globally, it’s now embarking on being the kick-starter LP in a new VC fund dubbed V3 Ventures, the idea being to invest up to €100 million into founders and brands directly.

The eFounders alumni that went on to launch their own business.

Early-stage venture capital firm OpenOcean returns with an updated version of its interactive market map for automation, adding some 600+ companies.

Luxembourg-based climate tech VC firm Satgana has announced the first close of its fund with a €30 million target size.

The government has created a £15 million fund for British businesses developing satellite communications technology in a bid to boost the country’s space sector.

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>> In other (important) news

Meta, the owner of Facebook, admitted defeat this week after UK competition regulators issued a final verdict ordering the company to sell its animated image making unit Giphy.

MEPs have lifted their threat to press for a cut to the 2023 budget for the European Innovation Council (EIC), after the European Commission made moves to unlock the flow of funding to startups that are due to get equity funding from the EIC Accelerator programme.

The European Commission has extracted extra concessions from Amazon for a potential antitrust pact that could shut down the European Union’s most advanced Big Tech probes.

Coinbase hired Daniel Seifert, a senior executive from German financial technology company Solarisbank, to lead its European expansion while contending with a protracted downturn in cryptocurrency markets and trading.

The European Commission is facing fresh calls to make good on its 2017 antitrust decision against Google Shopping by banning Google from displaying its own shopping comparison ads units in search results.

Berlin-based N26, a challenger bank that offers mobile banking solutions to customers, announced the launch of its cryptocurrency product that will allow eligible customers to buy and sell almost 200 cryptocurrencies in their N26 app.

Dutch challenger bank Bunq has hailed a “landmark” verdict in the Dutch courts over the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for anti-money laundering processes.

Spain’s competition watchdog has opened an investigation into potential anti-competitive behavior by the Dutch online travel agency giant, Booking.com.

Apple has restored Russian apps for social network VKontakte and webmail provider Mail.ru to the App Store, three weeks after removing them and other VK-owned apps in response to UK sanctions.

Eight EU countries are pushing back against stricter conditions for platform workers’ status.

Germany’s interior minister suspended the head of the country’s cybersecurity agency after a television report uncovered an alleged link with Russian intelligence.

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>> Recommended reads and listens

The Unconventional Ventures report is out and yet again we are being forced to report on such dismal figures like ‘1% of funding allocated to women in ‘21’ and the tight purse strings of female General Partners (GP).

🎙️ Molten Ventures’ Marketing Director James Clark joined the Tech.eu podcast this week as we discuss Hoxton Farms, Orbex, Quantum Systems and Schrödinger’s drones, Holidu’s housing of north of €100 million, and Slush vs. Web Summit.

The amount of money invested in private cloud-computing companies in Europe, Israel and the United States dropped 42% in the third quarter of 2022, indicating an industry in the midst of a “reset”, showed a report from VC firm Accel.

Is Europe really a well-built nest for the deep tech ecosystem?

🎙️ The advantages of Vanta with Chief Revenue Officer Stevie Case

‘My biggest mistake was taking the company public’: Sifted’s Brunch with Babylon’s Ali Parsa

Upcoming EU legislation that aims to put users and providers on an equal footing regarding data access is expected to generate billions of euros of additional GDP for Europe, according to European Commission estimates.

Jobbio: why workers are demanding flexibility

WFH in the UK: Men are more likely to work from home if given the choice