Fresh Funding, Surprising Poll Results, and FutureTravel Summit Tickets 🛩️

Hi there,

First of all, here comes the news all our readers and all founders and investors from across Europe have been waiting for desperately: Yes, the AC in our EU-Startups headquarter is finally working again! It only took 4 weeks to get it fixed... :)

But wait, we have even more refreshing and cooler updates to share with you this week. Here you go:

👶 LinkedIn "Paternity" Poll: This week, we launched a poll asking if you would support your Co-founder in taking 6+ months of paternity leave. 402 people voted so far. The results might surprise you. 

📢 New Milestone Reached: Today, we’re about to hit 125,000 followers for the LinkedIn page of EU-Startups! Thanks for being part of Europe’s most active startup community. Let’s keep growing together!

💊 HealthTech & MedTech Funding:

• London-based Numan just raised €51.6 million to advance digital, preventative men’s healthcare.
• British startup Cryogenx secured €1.9 million for tech to combat extreme heat stress in military and industrial settings.
• French scale-up Dreampath Diagnostics received new investment to digitise anatomical pathology processes.

🥨 Bits & Pretzels 2025: Under the theme “Connecting Europe,” Bits & Pretzels is back for its 2025 edition, happening during Oktoberfest in Munich. Expect AI talks, startup-investor matchmaking, and big names from tech, business and politics.

🛡️ Cybersecurity Innovators: 

• Italian startup Exein secured €70 million to build cybersecurity tools. 
• Valencia-based Internxt raised €3.3 million to become the “ethical alternative” to Big Tech.
• Guardians of the grid: This week, we introduced you to 10 exceptionally promising European cybersecurity startups that are keeping our digital infrastructure safe.

💥 Insolvency is not the end: This week, Jonathan Bernwieser, former CEO of Agrando and now Co-founder and CEO of EverLeaf, shares the emotional and legal challenges he faced, lessons learned, myths debunked, and much more.

🧠 AI Funding rounds of the week:

• Berlin-based MOTOR Ai raised €17.1 million to build Europe’s first certified autonomous vehicle fleet.
• Barcelona-based Murphy secured €12.8 million to fix the “broken industry” of debt servicing with AI.
• Madrid-based HaloTech raised €10 million to lead the AI-driven industrial safety revolution.
• Copenhagen-based Kiku closed €4 million in fresh funding for its AI-powered recruitment platform.
• Munich-based 36ZERO Vision secured €3.6 million for its data-efficient AI inspection platform.
• Stockholm-based Opper AI raised €2.5 million to make AI infrastructure more reliable, just like Stripe is for payments.
• London-based Inntelo AI raised over €576k to grow its AI Concierge platform for hotels.

🔋 Energy Innovators: Tallinn-based Jälle Technologies just secured €2 million to tackle the growing crisis of electronic waste by repurposing dead batteries, and Berlin-based ALVA Energie raised over €5 million to scale decentralised energy solutions. And due to our recent bad experience with the office AC breaking down, I hope there are some startups that will disrupt this space as well. If you know some, let me know! :)

🛩️ FutureTravel Summit: On October 30 we'll be gathering 500 travel & hospitality leaders, founders and investors at this year's FutureTravel Summit in Barcelona. If you haven't secured your ticket yet, we are giving away 3 tickets for EU-Startups readers this week! Try your luck, and respond to this email by sharing a link to your LinkedIn profile. The selection will be done tomorrow afternoon!

💡 It’s Not You, It’s Us: A new report reveals some of the main reasons why corporate-startup partnerships fall apart. According to research initiated by European Innovation Council (EIC), the problem usually isn’t a lack of ambition - it’s a lack of structure.

💰 Fresh VC Funds: The Dutch VC CapitalT just announced the €50 million first close of its Fund II to back diverse and driven early-stage founders, and Lisbon-based Ventures.eu announced the 1st closing of Ventures.eu Fund I, aimed at supporting early-stage startups across Portugal and Europe.

🎧 EU-Startups Podcast: This week, we were joined by Trevor Neff, Partner at Headline Growth, a global VC firm that has raised over $865 million for its fourth growth fund, with half of it dedicated to Europe.

That's it for this week. Have a nice weekend, whether you are working hard, or hardly working, sipping cocktails at a pool. :)

Your EU-Startups Team