Gaining startup funding is notoriously difficult. With venture capital (VC) as the dominant model, it’s been down to startups to push hard, seeking to outshine competitors in a race to the top.

Exein, the embedded IoT cybersecurity company, has raised €70 million in a Series C round. The round was led by Balderton and joined by Supernova and Lakestar, with 33N, United Ventures, and Partech following on from the previous round.

Auriga Space, a company in electromagnetic hypersonic launch technology, has announced $6 million in additional funding in the form of a seed round and Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts from the US AFWERX and SpaceWERX, the innovation arms of the US Air Force and Space Force respectively.

AI auditing platform Warden AI has announced a new funding round led by the founders of Onfido, the digital identity verification company acquired by Entrust in 2024. The round also includes participation from Playfair, an early-stage VC firm, and will support Warden’s geographic expansion and product development.

cocreatd’s first incubation, System7, an AI automation and development platform for marketing and sales teams, has been acquired by Vault PLC in a seven-figure deal just eight months after it launched.

The team behind Unomaly, the machine learning-based observability platform acquired by LogicMonitor in 2020, has re-emerged with a new mission: to make AI infrastructure as reliable as Stripe is for payments.

Numan, the digital health provider has announced that it has raised $60 million in fresh funding, following another year of exceptional growth.

Cryogenx has raised a £1.7 million seed funding round to accelerate the development of its breakthrough portable cooling technology. As part of the round, the UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund (UKI2S), managed by Future Planet Capital, has invested £430,000.

Think of an investment pitch and you think of the numbers. You think of spreadsheets, metrics, margins, and forecasts. But the bigger picture that many businesses are missing is that securing investment is more often than not about emotion. Because, when it comes down to it, investors are just people.

UK-based hospitality technology company Inntelo AI has raised more than £500,000 in a pre-seed funding round to fuel its commercial growth. It follows impressive early traction, with multiple hotels adopting its AI Concierge platform.

After her personal experience with the condition, a former Ernst Young (EY) corporate lawyer and founder of the successful French PCOS blog Les Natives, has raised €1.6 million in seed funding to help women suffering from Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS).

British Business Bank has announced a new £400 million Investor Pathways Capital initiative which will support diverse and emerging fund managers across the economy and make it easier for new entrants, particularly those from underrepresented groups, to break into venture capital. The initiative, which will capture the value of a more inclusive investment ecosystem, is expected to launch in 2026.  

Belgian biosurfactants developer AmphiStar has been awarded €12.5 million in funding following the European Innovation Council’s (EIC) latest evaluation round.

Series A doesn’t come easy, and most startups never get there. Fewer than a third of seed-funded startups make it that far, and the numbers drop sharply for female founders. In 2024, just 3.5% of Series A capital went to all-women founding teams, with mixed-gender teams accounting for 21%.

As sugar consumption rises and dental visits become increasingly expensive, nearly 3.5 billion people worldwide struggle with oral diseases. The dental industry faces mounting pressure to increase manufacturing efficiency, particularly in markets where centralised manufacturing is becoming the norm.

AI-powered enterprise intelligence and automation platform Oraion has raised $3.5 million in a pre-seed funding round to support product development and accelerate expansion into the US and Latin America. The investment will also enable Oraion to expand its team, with the aim of tripling the workforce to 45 staff focused on engineering, R&D, and go-to-market by the end of 2026.

XPANCEO, a deeptech startup that is focused on redefining computing through smart contact lenses, has confirmed the close of its $250 million Series A funding round, pushing its valuation to $1.35 billion and marking its entry into unicorn territory.

Belfast-based digital health technology company Cumulus Neuroscience has successfully closed a £3.25 million equity funding round that will be used to scale up its commercial operations.

Helsinki-based e-mobility tech startup, Donut Lab, continues its remarkable journey with a busy and productive first half to 2025.

Arago, a Paris and Silicon Valley-based deeptech startup pioneering a new class of energy-efficient AI chips powered by light, has raised $26 million in seed funding to accelerate the commercialisation of its photonic processor, codenamed “JEF”.