July in European tech didn’t follow familiar playbooks. From polarising deal sizes and sector shakeups to grant funding stepping into the spotlight and regulators breaking seasonal patterns, the month revealed a handful of market anomalies that deserve a closer look.

Every founder knows the feeling. An investor update is looming. The numbers are solid (ish), the story feels messy, and you’ve rewritten the deck twelve times trying to make it all make sense.

Better Medicine, a startup developing AI-powered diagnostic tools for radiology, has raised €1 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Soulmates Ventures, with participation from Specialist VC, UT Ventures, and several angel investors.

Innerworks, innovators of Synthetic Threat Intelligence, has announced the completion of a $4 million seed funding round to scale their platform approach to delivering the world’s most effective immune system for the internet, led by AlbionVC.

The Norrsken Foundation has announced that Norrsken Evolve has completed an oversubscribed first close of a €57 million fund. The fund will be spearheaded by three General Partners: Johan Attby, Alex Bakir, and Rebecka Löthman Rydå.

Geospatial AI startup, EvaluateLocate, has completed a £300,000 seed investment round at a valuation of £2.75 million. The company is also simultaneously bringing to market its subscription app for the UK, the first territory in a planned global roll-out.

Maven Capital Partners has invested £2.6 million in PowerPhotonic, a provider of precision optics for high-power laser systems.

Qunova Computing, a developer of software applications designed with the goal of bringing quantum advantage to the chemical, pharmaceutical, and industrial engineering sectors, has raised a $10 million Series A funding round.

Midas, a Turkish investment platform, has raised $80 million in its Series B funding round, the largest investment ever secured by a Turkish fintech company. This brings Midas' total funding to date to more than $140 million.

Northern Gritstone has announced a combined £4 million seed round investment into the optical sensor startup PhovIR. Northern Gritstone is co-leading the investment alongside deeptech specialist SCVC, in what was an oversubscribed round.

As AI accelerates the creation of new software, fixing live systems has remained stubbornly manual. Phoebe’s AI agents continuously monitor and react to live system data, diagnosing emerging issues and generating code and infrastructure changes to resolve them. The company has announced $17 million in seed funding led by GV and Cherry Ventures and the public launch of their platform, which is already live with engineering teams from early access customers such as Trainline and PPRO.

UK hospitality tech business Embargo has raised $3.5 million to accelerate its growth across Europe and beyond.

Creem, the Estonian fintech startup redefining financial infrastructure for AI-native teams, has raised a €1.8 million pre-seed round led by Practica Capital, with participation from Antler and prominent angel investors.

Attio, the AI-native CRM for the next era of companies, has raised $52 million in Series B funding. The round was led by GV (Google Ventures), with participation from existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Balderton Capital, Point Nine, and 01A. Attio has raised $116 million to date.

Farang, an AI research lab developing next-generation foundational Large Language Models, has announced it has raised €1.5 million in seed funding led by Voima Ventures and the Amadeus APEX Technology Fund, with notable entrepreneur angel investors including Tero Ojanpera (Co-founder, Silo AI), and Nilay Oza and Niraj Aswani (Former Founders, Klevu).

When it comes to startups, the market is saturated with advice on what investors should look for in founders. But we rarely see the conversation from the other side. What should founders be looking for in their investors? Should they just be taking the first offer that comes their way, grateful for the interest? Or is more discernment needed?

Wype, the UK’s fastest-growing bottom care brand, has closed an oversubscribed £1 million equity round to accelerate its mission of making the most overlooked part of the body the most cared for.