Europe

European early-stage investor Seedcamp has announced the $180M close of its “Fund VI”. It’s a long way from a London university lecture hall 15 years ago in September, when Founding Partner and co-CEO Reshma Sohoni stood up and introduced the first Seedcamp cohort (Incidentally, this was the same day TechCrunch launched in Europe, and my first day

In 1846, London surgeon John Hutchinson invented the spirometer, a thing you blow hard into, to measure the volume of air inspired and expired by the lungs. It’s a pretty basic idea. Incredibly, since then, the technology has barely evolved. Today, the modern spirometer doesn’t even measure the amount of CO2 expelled by the lungs,

Welsh in-space manufacturing startup Space Forge has developed a satellite reentry system to enable rapid recovery and reuse of its in-space manufacturing spacecraft. The new system, which includes a heat shield and a water vehicle designed to soften the spacecraft’s landing, will be incorporated into the company’s in-space manufacturing satellite platform called ForgeStar. As opposed

Building and maintaining relationships is hard, and COVID-19 definitely didn’t help. Multiple studies have shown that adults have gotten even more lonely since the start of the pandemic. Founders are trying to find tech solutions. There are many startups looking to combat loneliness — some formed years before the pandemic — including senior-focused ElliQ and

Reminder: Today is the deadline for the Meta’s lead privacy regulator in Europe to adopt a final decision on a nearly decade-long complaint against Facebook’s transfers of personal data from the EU to the US that could see the company ordered to stop the flow of data. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) confirmed to

Wingcopter, a startup out of Germany that has made a name for itself in the world of delivery drones used primarily for delivery of medicine and other goods to remote areas, has picked up some more financing to expand its business. The European Investment Bank is putting €40 million (close to $44 million) into the

Builder.ai tapped into a new wave of businesses wanting their own native apps with a turnkey approach, accelerated by the rapid digitization of life during the pandemic. That led to led to a $100 million Series C funding round last year led by Insight Partners, taking the company’s total funding to $195 million. It’s now

In a series of votes in the European Parliament this morning MEPs have backed a raft of amendments to the bloc’s draft AI legislation — including agreeing a set of requirements for so called foundational models which underpin generative AI technologies like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The text of the amendment agreed by MEPs in two committees

A legal opinion on a controversial European Union legislative plan set out last May, when the Commission proposed countering child sexual abuse online by applying obligations on platforms to scan for abuse and grooming, suggests the planned approach is incompatible with existing EU laws that prohibit general and indiscriminate monitoring of people’s communications. The advice

Most U.S.-based tech investors are likely familiar with smaller-ticket investor marketplaces AngelList and Carta. In Europe, Germany’s Bunch and the UK’s Vauban (acquired by by US-based Carta last year) have attempted to do similar job. But the back-story to this is that although launching many years ago, AngelList struggled with Europe’s regulatory environment. UK Angel

Clearview AI, the US startup that’s attracted notoriety in recent years for a massive privacy violation after it scraped selfies off the Internet and used people’s data to build a facial recognition tool it pitched to law enforcement and others, has been hit with another fine in France over non-cooperation with the data protection regulator.

For founders and investors, there’s no platform like TechCrunch Disrupt. Just as the industry is always evolving and innovating — especially in recent months — we’re doing the same to keep Disrupt on the cutting edge for first-time founders, seasoned investors, visionaries and everybody in between. It’s time to disrupt TechCrunch Disrupt This year, we’re

Last year we covered how late-stage tech backer Liquidity Group had raised $775M for its fintech platform from Apollo (private equity) and MUFG (a Japanese bank). Liquidity is part tech platform and part lender, using its technology to make decisions on deploying debt facilities and other financial solutions from $5M to 100M relatively quickly compared

Conferences and other in-person events rushing to impose facial recognition on attendees in Europe without doing the necessary due diligence over data protection risks beware: The organizers of the global connectivity industry shindig, Mobile World Congress (MWC), which takes place annually in Barcelona, have been fined €200,000 (~$224k) by Spain’s data protection watchdog over a breach

The U.K.’s competition authority is adding Adobe’s proposed $20 billion bid for digital design rival Figma to its ever-growing to-do list. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) confirmed today that it’s launching an initial “phase 1” merger inquiry, with the relevant stakeholders given a two-week period to provide comment. Adobe first confirmed it was tabling

Well that was fast. The UK’s competition watchdog has announced an initial review of “AI foundational models”, such as the large language models (LLMs) which underpin OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s New Bing. Generative AI models which power AI art platforms such as OpenAI’s DALL-E or Midjourney will also likely fall in scope. The Competition and

Netherlands-based Instruqt has a product allowing companies to more easily test how a new software would run inside their organization. After bootstrapping its way to growth, it has now raised €15 million in a Series A round led entirely by Blossom Capital. It’s much easier to sell a software product into a company if they

More regulatory woes for Meta: France’s competition watchdog has announced interim measures on the adtech giant — saying it suspects it of abusing a dominant position in the French market for ads on social media and across the broader (non-search-related) online ads market. It’s ordering Meta to suspend application of the current criteria it imposes

If you’ve heard of Flixbus, SumUp, StudiVZ, Seatwave, Cafe Press, Zalando, Wooga, HelloFresh, Depop, Delivery Hero, and Agreena, then you’ve heard of companies invested in by HV Capital. The German early and growth stage VC has been a stalwart of the European tech startup ecosystem since at least the early 2000s, funding largely German-born companies

The European Union’s top court has handed down a couple of notable rulings today in the arena of data protection. One (Case C-300/21) deals with compensation for breaches of the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); and the second (Case C-487/21) clarifies the nature of information that individuals exercising GDPR rights to obtain a copy

French startup Green-Got is building an alternative to your traditional bank account with a focus on climate change. Essentially, Green-Got guarantees that your savings and the money that is sitting in your bank account aren’t going to finance fossil fuel projects and other polluting industries. The startup recently raised a $5.5 million (€5 million) funding

A coalition of more than 50 European consumer and digitals rights groups, smaller ISPs and broadcasters have inked their name to a joint statement urging EU policymakers and Member States to reject a controversial network fee proposal being lobbied for by major telcos in the region. They suggest any move to legislative for a mechanism

GAFAM giants will have marked their calendars today as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the European Union’s plan to curb the market power of Big Tech, now technically applies, after entering into force last November. The next major milestone is a few months out, in early fall, when the Commission will confirm which of the

Users of ChatGPT in Europe can now use web forms or other means provided by OpenAI to request deletion of their personal data in order to stop the chatbot processing (and producing) information about them. They can also request an opt-out of having their data used to train its AIs. Why might someone not want

A few days after OpenAI announced a set of privacy controls for its generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, the service has been made available again to users in Italy — resolving (for now) an early regulatory suspension in one of the European Union’s 27 Member States, even as a local probe of its compliance with the

The concept of SaaS as a business model changed the game in tech by moving users away from buying software outright and towards paying for service availability based on time-based subscriptions, typically with per-month or annual pricing. Today, a startup out of London called M3ter that is building tools to take the next step in

Meta’s earning call yesterday was upbeat on better than expected revenue for the quarter. However buried in its disclosures to investors is a stark warning on looming regulatory risk it’s facing in Europe — where a decision is expected in a matter of weeks (by May 12) that could see the tech giant ordered to

Italian climate startup Energy Dome, which has developed a “CO2 Battery” for storing renewable energy, has closed a €40 million (~$44M) Series B round — bringing the total raised for its novel energy storage solution to €54M (or just shy of $60M). The round was co-led by Eni Next, the corporate VC arm of Italian

Meet Bastion, a French startup that was created in October 2022 to help small companies tackle cybersecurity risks without too many complexities. Created by former Palantir employees, the company has already raised $2.8 million. What makes Bastion different from other cybersecurity startups is that it wants to be your first and last cybersecurity subscription. It

Twitter was only confirmed yesterday as one of 19 major tech platforms subject to centralized oversight by the European Union’s executive starting this fall, when so-called very large online platforms (VLOPs) are expected to be compliant with the Digital Services Act (DSA). But the Commission has not wasted any time warning the Elon Musk-owned social