Welcome to our 265th newsletter, written with 🖤 by Annika Bautista, Sarah Luna Mongin, and Aris Sevastianos.
🔍 Topics we'll cover this weekGeneral news from the week: OpenAI is taking a break from the UK, while this Croatian startup rolls out its first real robotaxi service 👀
Fundraising news from the week: sovereign AI funds spin up, and satellites become the source of truth ⚡
Up-and-coming ventures to watch: security for AI agents, crypto as liquid as cash, and photonic chips shrinking the future of AR 🧠
Internship & Job offers of the week
Enjoy the read! 💛
🤑 Fundraising of the week🚀 UK launches £500 million Sovereign AI fund to back homegrown founders (🇬🇧)
The UK government is putting serious money behind AI. 👀
Sovereign AI, a new £500 million venture fund, launches April 16th with a mission to help British AI founders start, scale, and win globally. The fund will be chaired by James Wise, Partner at Balderton Capital.
But this isn’t just capital. Portfolio companies get access to the UK’s largest AI compute infrastructure, unique government datasets, and streamlined procurement pathways for public sector contracts. That last one is huge: navigating government sales cycles kills startups.
Sovereign AI is trying to clear the runway.
Sovereign AI Launches £500M Venture Fund to Support AI Founders
💚 Eka closes £80 million Fund II to become the UK’s largest early-stage impact VC (🇬🇧)
Eka Ventures has closed its second fund at $107 million (£80 million), making it the UK’s largest early-stage impact firm investing across health, wellbeing, and sustainability. Total AUM now sits at $200 million.
The thesis hasn’t changed since 2018: impact and returns aren’t trade-offs. ❌
The biggest commercial opportunities of the next decade will come from companies reshaping the systems society depends on. Eka sees three structural shifts driving this. First, healthcare is finally pivoting from reactive to preventative (the UK spends just 5p on prevention for every £1 on treatment). Second, consumer behavior now drives the largest share of UK emissions, not factories. Third, tech is expanding access to essentials like insurance, housing, and education for underserved populations.
Each shift is a massive market hiding in plain sight.
Eka Closes $107M Fund II to Becomes the UK’s Largest Early-Stage Impact VC
🌍 Xoople raises $130 million to become AI’s eyes on the physical world (🇪🇸)
Xoople, the data infrastructure company building what it calls “Earth’s System of Record,” has closed a $130 million Series B.
Here’s the pitch: every computing era creates a new system of record. Salesforce built it for customers. AWS built it for software. Xoople is building it for the physical world.
After seven years in stealth, the company has developed a proprietary satellite-based system that generates scientific-grade datasets on physical change across the planet. Think supply chain optimization, infrastructure monitoring, insurance risk modeling, disaster response, and geopolitical analysis. As AI shifts toward autonomous agents, they’ll need “ground truth” to act on. Xoople wants to be that layer. 🛰️
Early customers include government agencies and Fortune 500s using the platform for agricultural forecasting, urban planning, and scenario modeling.
The bet: whoever owns the real-world data layer owns the next era of AI.
Xoople Raises $130M Series B to Build Earth’s System of Record
✈️ Aura Aero secures €340 million to build Europe’s next aviation giant (🇫🇷)
Aura Aero has closed a €50 million Series B backed by Safran Corporate Ventures, EDF, the European Innovation Council, Bpifrance, Innovacom, Florida Opportunity Fund, and Blast. Add €120 million in grants and €170 million in debt for factory buildout, and you’re looking at €340 million total.
Founded in 2018 by three ex-Airbus engineers, Aura Aero is building electric and hybrid aircraft for training and regional transport. The flagship? ERA, a 19-seat hybrid-electric plane with 1,500 km range that cuts CO2 emissions by up to 80%. First flight is slated for 2027, certification in 2028, and market launch by 2030. The company already has ~700 letters of intent from 16 airlines and operators. 💌
Oh, and there’s a military division too, led by France’s former air force chief, developing drones for European defense.
Airbus started in Toulouse. Aura Aero wants to be next.
Aura Aero Obtient 340 millions d’Euros pour Prendre son Envol depuis Toulouse et la Floride
🧊 Subra raises €40 million Series A to supercharge Europe’s superconductor future (🇳🇴)
High-voltage cables that don’t lose power? Subra just raised €40 million to scale them with superconductors.
The round, led by Novo Holdings, also supported Subra’s acquisition of German manufacturer THEVA, uniting cutting-edge cable tech with 30+ years of materials expertise.
The new Subra-THEVA combo aims to become a European leader in zero-loss power transmission, fusion energy, and strategic infrastructure. Think energy cables that stay cool without resistance, radically cutting loss and grid strain.
👁️🗨️ neuroClues locks in €10 million to reinvent neurodiagnostics with eye tracking (🇧🇪🇫🇷)
Parkinson’s disease affects 13 million people globally, but many are diagnosed years too late.
neuroClues wants to fix that, replacing subjective finger tests with eye-tracking biomarkers that give neurologists early, objective signals.
The medtech startup just closed a €10 million Series A led by Teampact Ventures, White Fund, and the EIC Fund.
Its compact, CE-certified device captures high-speed eye movements, then uses AI to detect neurological anomalies in minutes. ⚡️
Already used in hospitals across 7 countries, neuroClues now aims to train its system on 25,000+ patients to help pinpoint conditions like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and concussion impairments before symptoms visibly appear.
🔥 Up-and-coming startups 🛡️ Trent AI comes out of stealth with $13 million in Seed funding to keep AI agents secure (🇬🇧)
Autonomous agents are making decisions. But who’s keeping them safe? 🦸
Trent AI is betting that security needs to be part of the agent’s brain from day one. Because, by the time agents run critical infrastructure, they’ll need other agents guarding their every move.
The startup just raised $13 million led by LocalGlobe and Cambridge Innovation Capital to launch the first AI-native security platform for agentic systems.
Instead of scanning code after it’s written, Trent deploys agents that continuously monitor, judge, and patch threats right inside AI workflows.
💳 Kulipa lands $6.2 million Seed to close the last mile between stablecoins and spending (🇫🇷)
Kulipa just might be making stablecoin payments as easy as paying with your phone at the corner store.
The startup raised $6.2 million in Seed funding co-led by Flourish Ventures and 1kx to expand its infrastructure for issuing white-label stablecoin cards across Europe, Nigeria, Argentina, and the US. 🌍
Clients like Flutterwave and Solflare already plug into Kulipa’s APIs to get cards live fast, skipping the painful compliance work of going direct to some of the big traditional credit card institutions. With over hundreds of thousands of cards issued and 70% MoM growth, it’s clear making the big bucks.
Stablecoin Card Issuing Infrastructure Platform Kulipa Raises $6.2M Seed Round
💡 Brilliance raises €6 million to miniaturize AR light engines (🇳🇱)
Brilliance RGB just secured €6 million in fresh funds to shrink the guts of AR displays into sleek photonic chips. The Series A was led by Cottonwood Technology Fund.
Brilliance merges RGB laser sources and silicon nitride photonic circuits into a single chip, cutting out the bulky optics that have kept AR glasses chunky and power-hungry. 🕶️ The new cash fuels production prep and custom model development by year-end, all aimed at blazing brighter AR wearables and even sharper automotive head-up displays. Not just AR hype… this might light up future industrial laser systems too.
📰 Tech news of the week🤖 OpenAI hits pause on massive UK data centre over regulatory red tape and energy bills (🇬🇧)
OpenAI just told the UK, “brb.” The Microsoft-backed AI giant has paused its flagship Stargate UK project, blaming a swamp of regulation and lofty electricity costs. The move undercuts the UK government’s big dream of becoming an AI superpower… a bit awkward given Prime Minister Keir Starmer had made AI the centerpiece of his growth playbook. 🫣
Launched with Nvidia and Nscale last fall during Trump’s investment-heavy UK visit, Stargate aimed to boost Britain’s “sovereign compute” power… basically giving the nation its own muscle for AI development. The company says it’s still exploring plans for Stargate and will revive it only when the UK sorts out friendlier rules and cheaper watts.
🚖 Verne raises strategic funding from Uber to launch Europe’s first commercial robotaxi service in Zagreb (🇭🇷)
Croatia just pulled off a quiet flex. Verne, the autonomous mobility spinout from hypercar legend Rimac Group, launched Europe’s first commercial robotaxi service in Zagreb. Backed by a strategic investment from Uber and using Pony.ai’s seventh-gen self-driving tech, Verne’s fleet of Arcfox Alpha T5s is now zipping through the city with human safety operators riding shotgun (for now).
The trio’s setup is tidy: Pony.ai supplies the autonomy brains, Verne owns and runs the fleet, and Uber plugs it into its ride-hailing empire. The fresh funds will drive Verne’s push to go fully driverless once regulators give the nod and to prep production of its futuristic, no-steering-wheel, two-seater robotaxi. Bold move from a city of under a million, while giants like Waymo are still only planning London for later this year. 🤖
Europe’s First Commercial Robotaxi Service Is Live in Zagreb
👔 Internships & job offersInternships
Analyst VC - Angelsquare (Paris)
Analyst VC - Via ID (Paris)
Startup/Portfolio Success Intern - XAnge (Paris)
VC Internship Deeptech/Biotech - Invivo Partners (Barcelona)
VC Internship Agritech - Demea Sustainable Investment (Paris)
VC Interns - Antler (Berlin)
Visiting Analysts - World Fund (Munich/Amsterdam)
Jobs
Analyst - Sella Direct Ventures (Milan)
Associate - Angelsquare (Paris)
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