Funding

Northern Gritstone, the investment company focused on science and technology businesses in the North of England and chaired by Lord Jim O’Neill, has announced a combined £4 million seed round investment into Exciting Instruments with co-investors Empirical Ventures, who led on scientific due diligence, NPIF II – Praetura Equity Finance (managed by Praetura Ventures as part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II) and serial entrepreneurs Stan Boland and Jonathan Millner.

Celebratix, a Dutch blockchain ticketing startup backed by Solana, has secured €1.1 million in investments from numerous Dutch serial entrepreneurs, the Swedish VC uBIT, and the UK business angel Justin Rees. The funds will be used to expand internationally. “We are beyond excited to set a new standard of blockchain based ticketing,” says Frank Roskam, Founder and CEO of Celebratix.

AI integration platform Eden AI has announced a €3 million seed round led by Galion.exe, with participation from 50 Partners and several prominent business angels including Olivier Pomel (Co-Founder of Datadog), Sébastien Pahl (Co-Founder of Docker) and Alix de Sagazan (Co-Founder of ABTasty).

“This is the dawn of a zero-emission revival in waterborne transportation,” says Gustav Hasselskog, Candela’s Founder and CEO.

Chartered commercial broker Konsileo has completed a £8 million fundraise to accelerate its expansion across the UK.

FertilAI has raised $4.5 million co-led by Longevity Venture Partners and Redseed with additional investment from angel investors.

Continuous Software, a provider of intelligent strategic portfolio planning solutions, has announced the completion of the first phase of a €2.5 million seed funding round.

UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund, managed by Future Planet Capital and in partnership with the Government Office for Technology Transfer, a part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, has announced pre-incorporation investment into Sona, from the world-leading National Physical Laboratory, which is developing a patented pioneering pre-imaging solution for breast density assessment.

Apideck, a provider of real-time Unified APIs, has announced that it has raised $7.5 million in a Series A funding round. Led by Amsterdam-based Airbridge Equity Partners, the round includes PMV, angel investors, and executives from Atlassian, Rocketreach, Aikido, Teamleader, and Proxyclick. The investment will accelerate the company’s global growth and enhance its product offering, simplifying API integrations for B2B software and fintech companies.

TEKEVER, the European startup in AI-centric Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS), has announced that it has raised €70 million in a funding round led by Baillie Gifford, the investment manager and early backer of Airbnb, Spotify, and SpaceX, and the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), a standalone venture capital fund, backed by 24 NATO allies, that deploys €1 billion in deep tech to advance defence, security, and resilience.

Little Journey, the healthtech company transforming the delivery of paediatric care through personalised psychological support, has announced £6 million in Series A funding. The round, which will be used to accelerate Little Journey’s mission to revolutionise paediatric healthcare globally, was led by Edinburgh and Leeds-based venture capital firm Par Equity.

AI hardware startup GEMESYS has successfully raised €8.6 million in a pre-seed funding round led by the Amadeus APEX Technology Fund together with Atlantic Labs. Participation from NRW.BANK, Sony Innovation Fund, and Silicon Valley-based Plug and Play Tech Centre, as well as grant funding from the German government, complemented the round.

Heim Health, a software platform powering at-home healthcare, has announced a £2.2 million seed round to revive community-based healthcare through a tech-led, scalable model of delivery – easing pressure on hospitals and delivering better experiences for patients.

Gendo, the AI platform which transforms how architects and designers bring ideas and sketches to life, has raised a £4.3 million seed round. This comes less than four months after the company emerged from beta and announced their pre-seed raise of £855k.

CommBox, an enterprise-grade omnichannel, AI-powered customer experience platform, has announced the completion of a $15 million growth investment round from PSG Equity, a growth equity firm that specialises in partnering with software and technology-enabled services companies to help navigate and capitalise on transformational growth.

Pruna AI, the AI optimisation engine empowering ML teams to simplify code and streamline models, has announced that it has successfully raised $6.5 million in a seed funding round led by EQT Ventures with participation from Daphni, Motier, and Kima, along with support from high profile angels including Roxanne Varza, Hervé Nivon, and Olivier Pomel.

Aachen-based startup IonKraft GmbH, a spin-off of RWTH Aachen University, has successfully closed a first equity financing round of €3.5 million. The round was co-led by M Ventures (the strategic investment fund of Merck) and TechVision Fund and joined by High-Tech-Gruenderfonds.

Airbound, a drone technology startup, has announced a $1.7 million seed round led by Lightspeed to build the world’s most efficient delivery drone. With its proprietary blended wing body tailsitter design, called TRT, Airbound aims to transform logistics, reducing delivery costs by two orders of magnitude compared to traditional options.

Atlas.co has announced its $2 million pre-seed funding round led by climate-focused VC fund Pale Blue Dot, high-profile investors Ben Lang (early employee and ex-community lead at Notion), and Andreas Klinger (ex-CTO and founding team at Product Hunt).

Tenity, the global fintech innovation ecosystem and early-stage VC, releases its third Climate Fintech Report. Drawing on data from 750 startups worldwide, the report highlights the subsector’s resilience to economic challenges and its leading position in gender equality in venture funding, with female-founded or led companies achieving funding parity at pre-Series B rounds.