Welcome to our 279th newsletter, written with 🖤 by Annika Bautista, Sarah Luna Mongin, and Aris Sevastianos.
🔍 Topics we'll cover this weekGeneral news from the week: Europe's rail booking market just got a lot more consolidated 👀
Fundraising news from the week: billion-dollar defense bets, AI materials discovery, and full-body health scans ⚡
Up-and-coming ventures to watch: factory-floor humanoid robots and a natural caffeine rival 🧠
Internship & Job offers of the week
Enjoy the read! 💛
🤑 Fundraising of the week💾 CuspAI raises $450 million to reinvent material discovery with AI (🇬🇧)
CuspAI just pulled in $450 million in a Series B at a $2.6 billion valuation, led by Kleiner Perkins and NEA. The startup is building an AI platform called MIRA that designs and tests new materials end-to-end. The goal is to fix a major bottleneck in industries like semiconductors and clean energy. ⚙️
The fresh capital will fund global expansion across the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific, plus scale its “AI Materials Foundry,” a coalition of 45+ companies including Nvidia and Meta. This is positioned as a first-of-its-kind effort to industrialize material discovery using AI. If it works, it could unlock faster innovation in chips, energy, and manufacturing.
UK Government, Bezos Back CuspAI’s $450 Million Round as Startup Seeks to Discover New Materials
🪖 Helsing raises $1.8 billion at $18 billion valuation to scale AI-powered defense tech (🇩🇪)
Helsing just secured a Series E, raising $1.8 billion led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. The startup builds AI for modern warfare. It started with battlefield software. Now it’s shipping autonomous strike drones, AI pilot systems, and underwater surveillance tech. 🤖
This is one of Europe’s largest-ever startup rounds, and demand reportedly blew past supply. The fresh capital will fund faster development of AI platforms for European and allied militaries, plus hardware expansion. Helsing is also scaling production, including new facilities and drone deployments tied to active conflicts.
🧬 Neko Health raises $700 million to scale full-body scanning and expand into the US (🇸🇪)
Neko Health, the body-scanning startup co-founded by Spotify’s Daniel Ek, just pulled in a $700 million Series C led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and O.G. Venture Partners. The company builds full-body scanners that combine imaging, bloodwork, and Apple Health data to give clinicians a more complete view of your health.
One real-world case: it helped detect a malignant mole early for Calm’s founder. 🧠
With over 100,000 scans completed and 350,000+ users on the waitlist, demand is clearly not the problem. The new funds will fuel US expansion (starting with New York) and continued product development. And yes, Big Tech is circling… Midjourney is even building a rival scanner-slash-spa, because now it seems like diagnostics come with saunas.
Daniel Ek’s Body-Scanning Startup Neko Health Raises Another $700M
🛩️ Lakestar raises $300 million Resilience I fund to back Europe’s defence tech boom (🇨🇭)
Lakestar just closed a $300 million fund. It is the largest dedicated dual-use and defence tech fund in Europe. Lakestar leads the fund itself. It invests in tech that works for both civilian and military use, like AI defence software, drones, and autonomous systems. 🤖
The fund will back early and growth-stage startups across Europe and allied markets. The idea is to build “sovereign tech” so Europe is less reliant on others. The fund was oversubscribed, so demand was high. Portfolio companies have already raised over $5 billion and are supplying governments globally.
🔋 Valarian raises $50 million Series A to build sovereign AI infrastructure (🇬🇧)
Valarian just locked in a $50 million Series A led by NEA, bringing total funding to $70 million. The goal is to let governments, defense, and enterprises run AI without handing over their data. Its core platform, ACRA, keeps sensitive data inside a company’s own environment while still enabling advanced AI deployment.
The fresh cash will scale its UK-first sovereign infrastructure across public and private sectors and double down on secure AI rollouts. Notably, this is NEA’s first-ever dual-use (defense + commercial) investment in Europe, signaling serious global interest in sovereign AI stacks. 🔐
♻️ Syntetica raises $30 million to finally crack nylon’s recycling problem (🇫🇷)
Syntetica has closed a $30 million Series A led by Bpifrance's Ecotechnologies 2 fund, with Lululemon, MAS Holdings, SWEN Capital Partners and returning investor EQT Ventures
Nylon recycling has a stubborn problem: most existing tech can only process one type of nylon at a time, so Nylon 6 and Nylon 6,6 waste has to be painstakingly sorted before it can be reused. Syntetica’s patented process handles both in a single pass, which could unlock a much bigger slice of the textile waste pile.
The cash funds Syntetica’s first commercial demo facility in France, with a recycling project slated to hit market early next year.
Fashion’s circular economy, one legging at a time. 🧵
Lululemon Backs Nylon Recycling Startup Syntetica in $30M Series A
🛢️ Applied Computing lands $20 million to build an AI model for the entire refinery (🇬🇧)
Applied Computing has raised a $20 million Series A led by engineering giant KBR, with Databricks Ventures joining in. The startup builds foundation AI models purpose-built for energy operations, targeting refineries and energy infrastructure globally.
Oil, gas and petrochemical plants run on thousands of sensors, but operators reportedly use less than 8% of the data those sensors generate. Applied Computing’s model, “Orbital”, combines a time-series model, a physics-based model and a language model to flag anomalies, diagnose the cause and test whether a fix might break something else elsewhere in the plant, all within minutes. ⌚️
KBR has already folded Orbital into its INSITE 3.0 platform for ammonia production, and Wipro is on the client list too. The round funds international expansion, including a new Houston office alongside London HQ and a Bengaluru hub.
Applied Computing Wants to Give Oil and Gas Operators an AI Model for the Entire Plant
🔥 Up-and-coming startups 🤖 Microagi becomes Germany’s largest ever seed round to train humanoid robots on factory floors (🇩🇪)
Microagi has closed a $55 million Seed round, the largest Seed round in German history, led by Hummingbird with Hummingbird with Northzone, LocalGlobe, Village Global and Redalpine joining. Founded just ten months ago by a crew that includes two former F1 engineers, an ex-WhatsApp commerce founder and an Alan Turing Institute researcher, the startup is chasing physical AI for manufacturing.
Ten months old and already sitting on Germany’s biggest seed check ever. No pressure. 😅
Microagi buys humanoid robots from Chinese makers like Unitree and UBTech, lease them to factories, and use its Atlas platform to fine-tune them on each client’s own operational footage. That’s meant to close the “last mile” gap between a slick robot demo and one that can actually work a production line unsupervised.
🌿 Nous raises €2.3 million in Seed funding to scale Koncentra, its caffeine alternative for the energy aisle (🇮🇹)
Consumers are souring on synthetic energy boosts, but “natural” alternatives rarely deliver the same punch as caffeine.
Nous, an Italian ingredient maker, has raised a €2.3 million Seed round led by dsm-firmenich Ventures to commercialise Koncentra, its proprietary botanical ingredient designed to support energy, focus and mood. Nous then sells Koncentra to food, beverage and nutraceutical brands to put in their own products.
The funding backs new clinical studies and a supply chain push into the US, where Koncentra launches in November. 🧪
If the clinical data holds up, Nous could quietly become the go-to supplier behind the next wave of “natural energy” products, without ever putting its own name on a can.
📰 Tech news of the week🚂 Omio Group to acquire Rail Europe, aiming to build a global rail travel powerhouse (🇩🇪🇫🇷)
Europe’s rail booking market has long been split between legacy distributors and newer multimodal apps, each only covering part of the journey.
Omio Group has agreed to acquire Rail Europe, folding the 90-year-old rail distribution platform into its consumer booking app, B2B business and Rome2Rio discovery brand. Combined, the group would sell 22 million train tickets a year and work with over 28,000 transport operators and travel sellers across 70+ countries. 🚄
The deal still needs sign-off from France’s works council and isn’t expected to close until September, but if it goes through, Omio becomes the closest thing Europe has to a one-stop shop for rail.
Omio Group to Acquire Rail Europe in Bid to Create Global Rail Travel Powerhouse
👔 Internships & job offersInternships
Visiting VC Analyst - Alstin Capital (Munich)
Jobs
Investment Associate/Senior Associate - Revent (Berlin/London)
Finance Analyst/Associate - Extantia (Berlin)
Product Associate/Fund Finance - b2venture (Berlin)
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