There is just one week left for founders to submit their applications to be considered for Bits & Pretzels European Pitch Contest where they can put their business in the spotlight in front of 1,500 potential investors from across Europe at the annual Bits & Pretzels festival that takes place in Munich in September. 

Zama, the open-source cryptography company building Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) solutions for Blockchain, announced a $57 million Series B funding round co-led by two US-based investment firms Blockchange Ventures and Pantera Capital, bringing Zama’s total funding to over $150 million, and its valuation to north of a billion USD.

Antler Bio, an AgriTech company transforming dairy farming with gene expression technology, has announced a $4.3 million investment to scale its world-first EpiHerd system.

Czech company Filuta AI, which develops tools based on artificial intelligence (AI), has raised $4.2 million (approximately CZK 90 million) in a seed funding round.

Project A, one of Europe's technology venture capital firms, announces the successful close of its oversubscribed £278 million Fund V, increasing its total assets under management to €1.2 billion ($1.4 billion).

OutSee, a genomics and drug discovery company pioneering a unique AI-based predictive genomics approach to target discovery, announced it has secured £1.8 million in seed funding, led by Ahren Innovation Capital and with additional investment from Kadmos Capital, Empirical Ventures, and Panacea Ventures.

Cellugy, a Danish industrial biotechnology startup developing innovative, biobased solutions to replace fossil-based materials in the personal care sector, has secured €8.1 million to support scaling up the production of its biofabricated cellulose-based rheology modifier material, EcoFLEXY.

Tadaweb has secured $20 million to scale its Small Data Operating System for publicly available information (PAI) and open-source intelligence (OSINT). The software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform is used by defence, national security, public safety, cyber threat intelligence, and corporate security organisations across Europe and the US to boost the efficiency of analysts and investigators by reducing time to insight from days to minutes.

Ahead of Armed Forces Day, Start Up Loans and X-Forces Enterprise announce over £4 million worth of loans has been delivered to members of the Armed Forces community since July 2024.

biotope by VIB has secured €5 million in the first close of its second fund, marking a major step toward its €9 million target over the next 18 months. The fund will enable biotope to invest €250,000 in up to 30 international early-stage biotech startups.

UK Finance has released a new report on the progress made by banks following the introduction of the Disability Finance Code for Entrepreneurship (DFCE) in December 2024, which aims to improve the entrepreneurial landscape for disabled individuals.

Angel Academe, the angel network that has been investing in women leaders for over ten years, has launched the UK’s first female founder focused EIS fund in partnership with fund manager, SyndicateRoom.

Spring 2025 marks a turning point for the European venture capital market: the turbulence of previous years is giving way to a search for new points of stability.

Coralogix, a full-stack observability platform provider, has announced a $115 million Series E funding round.

Swedish deeptech company Embedl has raised €5.5 million in a pre-series A funding round from Chalmers Ventures, Fairpoint Capital, SEB Greentech, Spintop Ventures,  and STOAF. 

Renow, the Nordic startup modernising how returned and second-hand goods are handled and resold, has raised €1.8 million in seed funding to expand its AI-powered recommerce platform across Northern Europe, opening new hubs in Sweden and Norway, and aiming to launch in the Danish and Beneluxian markets.

Orbit Capital is bringing venture debt to Central and Eastern Europe with its Growth Debt II fund. The fund will hold €100 million, allowing technology companies to accelerate further growth. This second fund follows on the success of Growth Debt I, which held €40 million.

The landscape for growth-stage fundraising has fundamentally changed. Today’s Series C and D rounds, typically involving raises of $50–100 million or more, are significantly tougher than in recent years. Investors have become more selective, valuations more restrained, and expectations for business performance far more rigorous.

While innovation and ambition are not bound by gender, the systems that support early-stage business growth too often are. Securing investment is a critical milestone for a startup, but the pathway is often uneven for founders.

Work AI leader Glean has announced it raised $150 million in Series F financing, bringing its valuation to $7.2 billion.