For years, Europe’s energy debate has focused on increased supply — more renewables, more grid capacity, more infrastructure. But as electrification accelerates, from heat pumps to EVs, the real challenge is shifting from how we generate power to how we use it.

Peaks and troughs in demand still force the system to overbuild, waste clean energy, and rely on fossil backup, even when renewable generation is abundant. At the same time, the technologies meant to make homes “smart” remain fragmented with lower adoption than in other parts of the world. This leaves millions of connected devices in our homes, yet very little real, automated control over when and how energy is actually consumed.

Tewke is a London-based climate-tech and smart-home company whose flagship product, Tap, replaces the traditional light switch with an AI-enhanced interface for lighting control, energy management, and environmental sensing.  Through the Tewke app, you can control lighting and connected devices remotely and set up automation based on routines or sensor triggers.

Built-in sensors and software analyse energy usage and offer recommendations to reduce waste and save on costs. Tap can also track home environmental factors like air quality, humidity and CO₂, helping you understand and improve your home health.

Tewke is led by serial entrepreneurs Piers Daniell and Rowan Dixon.  

Piers Daniell founded Fluidata (now FluidOne) in his bedroom in 2006, growing it to over 150 employees before exiting in 2019. Sir James Wates is Chairman of Tewke and former Chairman of the Wates Group, one of the largest family-owned construction, development, and property services companies in the UK.

As his company grew, Daniell shared, “We operated out of 18 data centres, and at certain times of day, the national grid would actually pay those data centres to go offline. That’s when the idea of demand-side control really landed for me: if you could change demand in millions of homes, you could have a massive impact on energy consumption.”

When he eventually exited that business, he realised that no one had truly solved demand-side control at a granular, home level. “

You had companies like Octopus playing around the edges, but not really controlling demand in detail.”

The nuclear-scale prize of shifting household demand

The potential impact for demand control is enormous, according to Daniell:

“If everyone ran their washing machines or dishwashers at three in the morning, we could use all that excess energy and flatten peak demand,”

Daniell said. “I once read an estimate that Europe could save the equivalent output of around 200 nuclear power stations just through better demand management.”

At the same time, Daniell‘s personal experience with home automation exposed a different but related problem: usability.

“I was living in a home with a high-end automation system, Control4. It was powerful but incredibly hard to use,” he said.

“My in-laws once babysat and sat in the dark all night because they turned the system off and couldn’t work out how to turn it back on. Everyone has similar stories — people unplug smart plugs, forget passwords, get logged out of apps.”

 — This is also my experience. Whenever we get a cat sitter, we come home to find every smart device unplugged from the wall, despite how simple we make Google Home instructions.

Daniell realised that if home technology was going to scale, it had to be “usable by absolutely everyone, not just tech enthusiasts,” he said.

“So those two worlds came together: intelligent energy control and genuinely usable home technology. But I needed serious technical firepower to build it — that’s where Rowan came in.”

Dixon was studying Design Engineering at Imperial Collegeand working in Microsoft R&D when Piers approached him.  

He shared: 

“At that stage, it was basically a napkin sketch, but the ambition was very clear. The goal wasn’t just to build a ‘smart home’ — it was to remove human error from energy use.”

Why the light switch is the most powerful interface in the home

The team opted for the light switch because, according to Daniell, it's the most universal interface in the home.

“A three-year-old can use it. A grandparent can use it. Babysitters, builders, visitors — everyone understands it,” Daniell said.

Dixon added:

“We realised that if you control the light switch and the socket, you essentially control all the energy in the home.”

They also insisted on physical buttons. This means that if the internet goes down or software fails, the lights still have to work.

Re-engineering the wall: power, sensors, and a modular brain

The Tewke product has three layers:

• The frame for aesthetic customisation, 
• The wired core that replaces the switch, and,
• A magnetically attached display module that contains the sensors and compute.

Each device contains nine sensors: Doppler radar for presence detection, a microphone, temperature, humidity, air pressure, ambient light, volatile organic compounds, CO₂, and voltage and current sensing.  Together, they give a real-time picture of environmental conditions and occupancy.

Historically, IoT has been fragmented: one device for air quality, another for temperature, another for motion, each with its own apps and ecosystems. Tewke provides a single, integrated platform that could actually reason about what’s happening in a space.  If you ever need to upgrade the intelligence, you don’t need to rewire the wall — you just replace the module.

One of the hardest technical challenges is that a light switch is in series with the load: when the light is off, the power is off. Yet you want sensors, processors, radios and a screen to remain powered. 

“We developed and patented a way to do this with and without a neutral wire, explained Dixon.

This is critical in Europe, where many homes don’t have neutrals at the switch.

Turning lighting control into energy intelligence

More than just a great smart lighting solution, Tap provides real-time energy cost tracking to empower users to make efficient energy use choices, helping them to shift the use of energy-heavy appliances, like the dishwasher, washing machine, tumble dryer or EV charger, to much lower cost times of the day. Paired with a variable energy Tariff, Tap helps users to make informed decisions that could save them considerable money on their energy bills. 

The sensors feed into on-device AI that learns behavioural patterns rather than relying on fixed schedules. It understands when rooms are used, how air quality changes, and how people move through the space, and it automatically adapts lighting, heating, and ventilation.

Adding a natural language layer to the wall

While the physical light switch remains the most universal interface in the home, Tewke includes TewkeAI, a built-in voice interface that allows residents to control lighting, energy use and home settings through natural language, without relying on external assistants or cloud-only processing.

Unlike traditional smart speakers that act as a separate layer in the room, TewkeAI is embedded directly into the wall switch itself, combining microphones, on-device AI and contextual awareness from Tap’s sensor stack.

For Daniell, this is about removing yet another source of friction.

“If a three-year-old, a grandparent and a visitor can all use a light switch, voice should work the same way,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to remember commands or wake words. You should just be able to say what you want to happen in the room.”

Because Tap already understands occupancy, light levels, air quality and routines, voice becomes contextual rather than generic. A request like “make it cosy in here” can translate into a specific lighting scene, temperature adjustment and ventilation change, while “I’m going to sleep” can trigger an energy-optimised night mode across the home.

Privacy first from the get-go

According to Daniell, “being invited into someone’s home is a privilege."

"We keep as much processing on-device as possible. When data leaves the device, it’s anonymised. We don’t know whose home it is or where it is — only that “a room like this” has certain characteristics.

That still allows us to train models and improve performance, without compromising personal privacy. We’re European, and we take European privacy values seriously.”

In turn, TewkeAI processes voice locally wherever possible, keeping raw audio in the home and using anonymised data only to improve models.

Future features will allow users to manage activities such as home security, media and thermostat control, all of which will be activated in the background, without the need for further hardware or configuration.

From electricians to landlords, social housing, and hotels

Tewke’s initial customers are homeowners via electricians and installers. After appearing on Grand Designs, (a UK architecture TV show) the team saw a big spike in consumer interest, which helped build its partner network. 

Dixon explained:

“Our model is that you buy through an electrician — they source it, install it, and become an extended sales and education channel.”

Tewke is also seeing strong interest from landlords, social housing providers, student accommodation operators, and hotels. The same hardware works across residential and commercial use cases, which is important for scale. Presence detection alone is hugely valuable: turning heating and lighting off automatically when rooms are empty, pre-heating before check-in, monitoring air quality, and even detecting vaping or unusual activity in hotel rooms.

“Like building six companies at once”

In explaining why the company chose to manufacture in the UK despite the added complexity, Daniell points to the strategic value of control.

“We’re full-stack: electronics, mechanical engineering, industrial design, software, AI — all in-house,” he said.

“It’s like building six companies at once, but it gives us total control over quality and roadmap.”

The company employs around 16 full-time people and has grown largely through bootstrapping, supplemented by a small group of angel investors. According to Daniell, that constraint has shaped not just the pace of growth but also the company’s culture.

“It forces discipline,” he said. “If we’d raised €10 million on day one, we’d have spent it — and probably built something worse.

Tewke’s long-term vision is to position the home within the smart grid. 

Think white goods, heating systems, EV chargers — coordinated automatically so demand shifts to the cheapest and greenest times. Your washing machine runs when renewable generation is high. Your heating pre-warms your home when energy is abundant.

Piers Daniell contends that in this case, “Instead of everyone having to invest in huge capex like batteries and solar, we optimise what already exists. Shift demand, don’t just add supply. If we can flatten peak load, we reduce the need for massive new power stations.”

In the long run, while we start with hardware, we expect to be seen as a software and energy-intelligence company. The light switch is just the gateway — but it’s the most familiar gateway in the world.”

The UK’s sustainable grocery delivery service, Modern Milkman, has raised £10 million in a funding round led by Salica Investments, bringing its total funding to more than £60 million.

Founded in 2019 by Simon Mellin, Modern Milkman began as a local milk delivery service and has since expanded into a national operation. The company operates an optimized supply chain, sourcing fresh produce from independent British suppliers.

Its app-based platform supports automated routing and order processing to align deliveries with demand and reduce waste. Groceries and breakfast items are delivered up to three times per week in reusable glass bottles and returnable containers, supporting a closed-loop system that reduces single-use packaging.

Mellin said Modern Milkman offers a distinctive and convenient service for households across the UK, adding that the new investment will support the development of more integrated doorstep services. He noted that the company’s growth and customer satisfaction reflect strong demand for sustainable alternatives, positioning the business to scale while helping households reduce their environmental impact.

Modern Milkman now serves more than 100,000 households across the UK and expanded into the US in January 2024 through a strategic acquisition.

The investment will support the continued development of Modern Milkman’s doorstep delivery model and logistics platform, with plans to introduce additional integrated services aimed at making sustainable choices more accessible and convenient for customers.

Founded three years ago by Winfried Vogt and Christina Paap, the Innovation Award was created with a clear objective: to give innovative founders access to what often makes the decisive difference for early-stage success. Visibility, recognition, and entry into strong professional networks remain out of reach for many startups, particularly in highly regulated sectors such as insurance and financial services. The Innovation Award aims to change that.

Drawing on decades of experience in the insurance and financial markets, the founders actively open doors that typically remain closed to young companies. Their approach goes beyond sponsorship or mentoring. It is based on hands-on support and a deliberate sharing of expertise with entrepreneurs prepared to rethink established models and help shape the future!

More than a competition

The Innovation Award 2026 positions itself as more than a traditional startup competition. It serves as a platform for visionaries, doers, and pioneers working on creative, environmentally friendly, and sustainable innovations. The focus is on ideas that address real challenges and have the potential to create long-term impact.

Participants gain access to an ecosystem that brings together founders, investors, experts, corporates, and decision-makers. This environment is designed to help startups move from concept to market readiness while building the relationships required for sustainable growth.

What participants gain

The Innovation Award 2026 offers a combination of financial support, expertise, and exposure. Selected startups benefit from:

• €15,000 in prize money for the most convincing innovation concept
• Up to €75,000 in additional support to help make ideas market-ready
• An exclusive founder support programme led by experienced experts
• High visibility within a well-connected innovation ecosystem
• Direct access to investors, partners, and potential customers

For startups looking to scale responsibly and position themselves for long-term success, the award provides both credibility and practical resources.

The Entrepreneurs.Club: Beyond the award

Alongside the Innovation Award, the Entrepreneurs.Club plays a central role in the broader ecosystem. Participation in the award is not a prerequisite to join. The club is designed as a permanent meeting point for the startup community, where founders present ideas, investors identify opportunities, experts share insights, and corporates and sponsors engage with innovation.

Members of the Entrepreneurs.Club gain access to capital, new customer contacts, and ongoing support on their path towards sustainable entrepreneurial success. The aim is to create an environment where ideas meet the right partners, whether for funding, market access, strategic guidance, or long-term cooperation.

How to apply

The Innovation Award 2026 and the Entrepreneurs.Club are aimed at startups seeking greater visibility, stronger networks, and meaningful growth opportunities.

The application deadline is 15 July 2026.

Further information is available at www.vogtandpaap.com
Contact: world@vogtandpaap.com
Phone: +49 160 4101085 (Christina Paap)

For founders ready to take the next step, the Innovation Award 2026 offers a structured route to visibility, collaboration, and sustainable growth!

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b2venture has closed its Fund V at €150 million, reaching the hard cap and marking the firm’s largest early-stage fund to date. The fund is supported by a mix of long-standing and new limited partners, including family offices, institutional investors, and high-net-worth individuals. Several investors have committed across multiple fund generations, reflecting continued support for b2venture’s investment approach.

New institutional investors include asset manager Flexstone and Swiss pension fund Stiftung Abendrot, alongside portfolio entrepreneurs, operators, and long-standing angel investors such as Thomas Hagemann (SevenSenders) and Joachim Schoss.

Supporting Europe’s next generation of technology companies

Fund V will invest in around 35 early-stage startups across Europe, following an industry-agnostic strategy with a focus on scalable, defensible technologies. The fund has already made several investments, including Nautica Technologies, Hive Robotics, Augmented Industries, and Assemblean. These investments reflect b2venture’s focus on deep technology, AI, robotics, manufacturing, automation, and infrastructure companies shaping Europe’s future.

b2venture’s investment approach is centred on long-term collaboration with founders. Fund V continues the firm’s intergenerational model, in which founders may become investors after exiting their companies and contribute experience, networks, and capital to subsequent generations of entrepreneurs. The firm’s continuity across five fund generations reflects the durability of this long-term, community-based approach.

Jan-Hendrik Bürk, Partner at b2venture, explained that venture capital is fundamentally a people-driven business, highlighting the firm’s angel network as a key differentiator in sourcing, selecting, and supporting founders building category-defining companies.

With Fund V, we are strengthening this model to support the next generation of European tech champions with true domain knowledge, not just capital,

Bürk said.

Over the past two decades, b2venture has supported a range of European technology companies, including DeepL, 1KOMMA5°, Raisin, SumUp, Nelly, and Urban Sports Club. The firm has backed at least one unicorn in each fund generation and has been involved in 11 IPOs and more than 30 trade sales. In 2025, b2venture recorded one IPO with Navan and completed several portfolio exits, including Araris Biotech, Beekeeper, and Neptunes, which was acquired by OpenAI.

A community-driven investment model and generational transition

b2venture integrates a network of more than 350 experienced angel investors who contribute both capital and operational expertise alongside the firm’s institutional approach.

In 2024, b2venture strengthened its team by appointing Mathias Ockenfels as Partner, while long-standing Partner Jochen Gutbrod transitioned into the firm’s Super Angels network.

b2venture has operated across multiple market cycles, from the early internet era to the current expansion of AI. Throughout this period, the firm has maintained a consistent focus on long-term relationships, continuity, and disciplined investing. Fund V continues this approach, emphasising sustained partnerships based on trust and a long-term perspective.

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Carbonaide, a Finnish startup with a mission to turn building materials from a large emission source into a carbon sink, has raised €3.7 million in its latest funding round to scale its operations and accelerate key strategic initiatives.

The combined investment consisted of equity and supporting financial instruments. The round was led by Carbonaide’s existing owners, Vantaan Energia, Redstone, and Ihantola Invest, with participation from a group of private investment companies and investors, including Zero Carbon Future Group, Helkama Kiinteistöt, and Ikorni Invest.

“With this momentum, we are well-positioned to scale our technology, expand our CO₂ partner network, and continue turning concrete factories into carbon sinks. There is clear demand in the construction industry for solutions that reduce emissions, showing that the industry is turning towards a low-carbon built environment,” said Tapio Vehmas, CEO of Carbonaide.

Carbonaide is a spin-out company from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and was founded in 2022. It has developed a technology for mineralising CO2 and sinking it permanently into concrete, making carbon-negative concrete profitable.

The company offers three key solutions: Carbonaide CO₂ curing system offers complete CO₂ curing solutions for concrete producers, from design and setup to integration with new or existing facilities. Carbonaide Service Platform is a cloud-based software platform for managing CO₂ flow, carbon measurements and carbon credit issuance. And lastly, Carbonaide Care offers life cycle support for all Carbonaide systems, from setup to ongoing maintenance.

The startup plans to use the newly raised capital to expand customer acquisition by strengthening its global sales organisation and marketing activities. It also intends to further develop its Carbonaide Service Platform and accelerate research and development beyond precast concrete, beginning with next-generation carbon dioxide curing for concrete element production. According to the company, this is expected to enable future applications in ready-mix and other concrete types.

“With a lifetime focus on decarbonising construction, I am very excited by Carbonaide’s potential. Now that the technology is ready to scale, we are thrilled to support the growth of the company and also to partner with Carbonaide to supply carbon data for low-carbon products,” said Panu Pasanen, CEO of One Click LCA and investor through the Zero Carbon Future Group.

Today, another startup focused on decarbonising the construction industry announced the closing of its Seed financing round. Düsseldorf-based Co-reactive secured €6.5 million to scale its CO₂ mineralisation technology, which utilises CO₂ and binds it permanently in high-performance construction materials. 

Carbonaide’s technology has been in commercial production since 2024. During 2025, Carbonaide entered into agreements with two Finnish companies, concrete producer Lakan Betoni and concrete element manufacturer Lipa-Betoni, for installing its technology in their factories. Production using the Carbonaide systems begins in both facilities in early 2026. 

In January 2026, Carbonaide also sold the first certified carbon credits created through its mineralisation technology to a Finnish law firm.

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London-based Pallma AI, the security layer for agentic enterprise systems, has completed a $1.6 million pre-seed round led by Marathon Venture Capital, with participation from technology leaders from AWS, Meta, Google, and others.

Enterprise adoption of AI is accelerating as large language models and autonomous AI agents move from pilot programs into core operational roles. Many organisations are expected to deploy agentic applications in the near term, increasing reliance on systems that can operate with limited human supervision.

As AI agents take on greater responsibility, this shift also introduces new security and risk considerations. Existing security tools were not designed to manage the probabilistic and adaptive behavior of autonomous systems, which can be vulnerable to prompt manipulation, unintended data exposure, or excessive autonomy. When these systems process sensitive data or are authorised to take actions, errors or misuse can lead to significant operational and security impacts.

Pallma AI addresses these challenges by providing a centralised layer of security, visibility, and control for AI agents. Pavlos Mitsoulis, co-founder and CEO of Pallma AI, explains that the company is building an AI-native security platform designed to protect AI-powered applications by identifying threats in real time and continuously strengthening the security of autonomous systems.

The platform integrates with existing enterprise technology stacks, collects application and system data, and uses AI models to monitor, detect, and mitigate risks such as prompt injection, unintended data exposure, and unsafe agent behaviour in real time. Co-founder and CTO Dionysis Varelas added that the platform combines real-time threat detection with actionable guidance and automated response capabilities, extending beyond a purely passive security approach.

We develop advanced AI models to identify vulnerabilities before malicious actors can exploit them and recommend necessary fixes, ensuring AI applications remain continuously hardened against emerging threats,

Varelas said.

With the new funding, Pallma AI plans to expand its team, accelerate product development, and support growing demand for its AI-powered enterprise security platform.

German climatetech startup Co-reactive has completed a €6.5 million seed financing round led by HTGF, with participation from NRW.Bank, HBG Ventures, AFI Ventures, Evercurious VC, and a group of experienced climate-tech business angels. Additional support is provided through public funding programs, including the Federal Funding for Industry and Climate (BIK) from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy.

Founded in 2024, Co-reactive develops a continuous CO₂ mineralisation process that converts captured CO₂ and natural minerals, such as olivine or metallurgical slags (EAF & BOF), into CO₂-negative supplementary cementitious materials (SCMs). These materials enable a reduction in clinker content and associated emissions while maintaining or improving compressive strength and durability. The technology is designed as a drop-in solution that can be integrated into existing cement and construction material production processes.

The company collaborates across the value chain with CO₂ and raw material suppliers, cement and concrete producers, and certification bodies to support the transition from pilot facilities to industrial-scale plants in the 100–300 kiloton range.

Through this approach, Co-reactive addresses key challenges in the cement industry, including the high emissions intensity of cement production (responsible for around eight percent of global CO₂ emissions), and the increasing scarcity of conventional cement substitutes due to the coal phase-out and structural changes in the steel industry.

With the seed financing, Co-reactive plans to scale its laboratory and pilot activities to a continuous demonstration plant with a capacity of approximately 1,000 tons per year by Q2 2026.

In parallel, the company is working with industrial partners to prepare first-of-a-kind plants at the tens-of-thousands-of-tons scale, which from 2027 onward are intended to mineralise biogenic or process-related CO₂ streams directly at cement and steel production sites.

London-based GoCanopy has raised €2.1 million in seed funding to support the development of its AI-powered operating system for institutional real estate investors. The round was led by ISAI, with participation from BNP Paribas Développement, Yellow, and a group of angel investors.

Institutional real estate investors manage large volumes of deals, tenant, and financial data that are often fragmented across emails, documents, spreadsheets, and teams. This fragmentation can limit the creation of a unified system of record and reduce the ability to systematically leverage historical information for investment and asset management decisions.

GoCanopy addresses this challenge through a centralised, AI-driven platform that extracts and structures data from internal documents such as offering memoranda, rent rolls, and asset management reports. Using human-in-the-loop AI workflows, the platform consolidates unstructured information into a shared institutional knowledge base that evolves as new data is added.

Founded in 2023 by William He and Yash Pabbisetti, GoCanopy develops institutional-grade AI tools for real estate investment teams. The platform supports core investment workflows, including deal screening, underwriting, and investment committee preparation, while also enabling asset management functions such as lease expiry monitoring, rent review tracking, and identification of leasing opportunities. All insights remain traceable to source documents to support transparency and governance requirements.

WilliamHe, Co-founder and CEO of GoCanopy, said his experience in real estate investing showed how fragmented data limits value creation, and that advances in AI now make it possible to consolidate institutional intelligence and unlock additional revenue opportunities.

The new funding will be used to further develop the enterprise platform and support international expansion, including opening an office in London alongside Paris and growing the company’s commercial and engineering teams.

Düsseldorf-based Co-reactive, a ClimateTech startup focused on decarbonising the construction industry at scale, has closed a Seed financing round totalling €6.5 million to scale its CO₂ mineralisation technology. 

The round was led by HTGF, with participation from NRW.Bank, HBG Ventures, AFI Ventures (the early-stage impact arm of Ventech), Evercurious VC and a network of experienced climate tech business angels. 

It has also received support through grants such as the Federal Funding for Industry and Climate (BIK) from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE).

Dr.-Ing. Andreas Bremen, co-founder and CEO of Co-reactive, commented, “With the right co-founders and an interdisciplinary team, we are taking CO₂ mineralisation from the lab into continuous industrial operation. The support of our financing partners, with the HTGF as lead investor, gives us the strength to deliver proof of performance with a 1,000-ton demonstration plant and to prepare large-scale deployment together with industry. We are building a solution that is urgently needed today so that it can create impact at industrial scale tomorrow.”

Co-reactive was founded in 2024 as a spin-off from RWTH Aachen University. After completing his PhD, Dr.-Ing. Bremen teamed up with his fellow student, Orlando Kleineberg and Willi Peter to establish Co-reactive. 

The cement industry is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. According to Co-reactive, the cement production process releases substantial CO₂ from limestone, underscoring the need for solutions that can capture and utilise the resulting CO2.

This is where Co-reactive comes in. The company has developed a continuous process that converts CO₂, together with magnesium- or calcium-containing silicate minerals such as olivine or metallurgical slags (EAF & BOF), into performance-enhancing, CO₂-negative supplementary cementitious materials (CO-SCMs).

The German startup claims that the CO-SCMs have a negative CO₂ footprint and enable a significant reduction of the clinker content in cement and construction materials without compromising performance. The solution can be integrated into existing production processes as it’s designed as a drop-in technology. 

“The construction industry is at a turning point: Conventional supplementary cementitious materials such as ground granulated blast furnace slag and fly ash are becoming scarce and expensive as decarbonisation progresses – prices for fly ash have in some cases quadrupled over the past two years. Co-reactive offers a scalable alternative that is not only CO₂-negative, but can also be integrated into existing processes as a drop-in solution. With strong unit economics and an experienced team of mineralisation and plant engineering experts, Co-reactive has the potential to transform the industry in a lasting way,” said Anna Stetter, Investment Manager, HTGF. 

The company aims to use this fresh capital to scale its current lab and pilot operations in Q2 2026 to a continuous demonstration plant with a capacity of around 1,000 tons per year. 

It is also working with industrial partners to prepare “first-of-a-kind” plants at the “tens-of-thousands-of-tons” scale. From 2027 onward, these facilities are intended to mineralise biogenic or process-related CO₂ streams directly on site at cement and steel plants.

Co-reactive collaborates across the value chain with CO₂ and raw material suppliers, cement and concrete producers, and certification bodies to scale from pilot plants to large industrial units in the 100- to 300-kilotons range. Its team has expertise in CO₂ mineralisation, plant engineering, commercialisation, and scaling sustainable tech.

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Today, Luminance launched the largest update to its Legal-Grade AI platform in the company’s ten-year history. The new architecture retains negotiation history and legal decision-making across all enterprise contracts, addressing a long-standing gap in contract systems that captured outcomes but lost the context behind decisions.

Luminance’s platform now connects the context for contract negotiations, workflows, and analysis across the entire enterprise portfolio.  

Founded in 2015 and developed by AI experts from the University of Cambridge, Luminance’s Legal-Grade AI redefines enterprise decision-making, turning contracts from an administrative burden into strategic intelligence.

The value of specialisation

I spoke to Graham Sills, co-founder and Director of AI, last year at Web Summit, who told me, “I’m very glad we specialised early. 

“Our advantage is that we’ve spent a decade building deep legal expertise and domain-specific models. 

This means that if your entire product depends on a general model whose licensing or capabilities change, it creates real business risk.  Specialisation gives us a much stronger foundation.”

The problem that started it all: Highlighters in law firms

Regarding the impetus for the founding of Luminance, he recalled, 

“Some of my friends had studied law and were very excited to go and work in big law firms. 

They’d spent a huge amount of money and effort on their education, and in their first few years they were basically given a highlighter pen and told to read contracts all day, every day.”

He thought it was a “terrible waste of talent and time”, and it felt like a problem that technology could solve.  “At the time we wouldn’t even have called it AI, but that’s how we ended up building a company focused on specialised legal AI.”

The ‘legal brain’ of the organisation

Luminance’s multi-agent platform automates entire workflows, from creation and negotiation to risk review and compliance. It understands clauses, evaluates legal and commercial impact, takes action,  and learns from every negotiation, becoming increasingly attuned to your business. 

Today, Luminance is used by over a thousand organisations worldwide. 

Sills shared: 

"We think of it as the ‘legal brain’ of the organisation — everything you would normally go to your general counsel for, you can now access through AI agents, supported by humans.”

For example, if you want to understand how something like Trump’s tariffs affect your business, traditionally that would take weeks — reading different contracts, working with analysts, pulling everything together. With Luminance, it can take minutes.” There’s also negotiation.

For simpler agreements like NDAs or service contracts, Luminance has shown that two AI agents can actually negotiate with each other. 

“We’re not quite ready as a society to remove humans from the loop entirely, but a huge amount of the work can already be automated.”

Sills shared a customer anecdote: a customer returned from holiday and realised he was supposed to review a master service agreement, with a deadline in 2 hours. Normally, that would have taken four or five hours at least.

According to Sills:

“He put the document through Luminance, checked it against his company’s risk criteria, and within about five minutes had enough confidence to make a decision and sign. That kind of time saving is transformative.”

For a decade, Luminance has cut contract negotiation time by 70-80 per cent. With this relaunch, that jumps to 90 per cent. 

Further, these capabilities have expanded with the new upgrade. With institutional contract knowledge now available throughout the enterprise, legal teams can regain over 30 per cent of their time.

Solving ‘enterprise amnesia’

According to Eleanor Lightbody, CEO of Luminance:

“Enterprise amnesia is real, and it's costly. Whenever it’s time to renegotiate a contract, executives ask: Who agreed to this, and why? 

Current AI systems are helpful at the moment, but become disconnected over time. Our new platform remembers, reasons, and stays with the work in perpetuity, which distinguishes it from anything else on the market.” 

In 2025, the company's global revenue doubled for the second year, with North America growing 127 per cent YOY, including its first eight-figure enterprise deal. 

To support this growth, Luminance’s headcount grew by over 40 per cent across the  UK, Europe, Australia, and the United States.

Over the past 12 months, Luminance analysed 18M+  contracts across jurisdictions and industries.

Luminance’s new Legal-Grade AI launches in beta to design partners, with broader availability from  February 25.

When four engineering students at TU Delft shared a simple idea in 2013, they had no clue it would change how millions of students study worldwide. Marnix, Lucas, Sander, and Jacques noticed something unfair: students with lots of friends could easily swap great study notes, while others struggled alone. They started by carrying external hard drives from room to room, sharing notes with classmates. That small act of helping each other became Studocu, a platform that now serves 60 million students every month across more than 100 countries.

From Dorm Room to Global Impact

Studocu started with a clear mission: to make education accessible to everyone. The founders believed quality education helps you excel in life, but only when everyone has access to the same resources.

What began as a handful of lecture notes from one Dutch university has grown into a massive library of over 50 million study documents from more than 120,000 schools worldwide. Students upload around 50,000 new notes every day, about one new document every second. From 15 million users in 2021 to 60 million monthly users today, Studocu proves that students everywhere want to learn together and help each other succeed.

The Library That Never Sleeps

Studocu is built around student-shared study materials. When you search by your school and course, you can find notes, summaries, and practice problems that match what you're learning. One person's summary can save someone else hours, and seeing a topic explained differently can make it click. But a big library can feel overwhelming. That's why Studocu also offers AI tools to help students pull out key ideas faster.

Study Smarter, Not Harder: The AI Revolution

A recent survey by Copyleaks showed that 90% of students are turning to AI to help manage their schoolwork. Studocu recognized this need and integrated powerful AI tools directly into its platform.

• Instant Summaries: Upload a dense 40-page textbook chapter, and Studocu AI breaks it down into a clear, organized summary in seconds, extracting key points so you don't have to re-read the same paragraph three times.
• Study Assistant: Think of this as a tutor who's always awake. As you read through a document, you can ask the Study Assistant to explain a concept, simplify a definition, or provide an example.
• Active Recall with Quizzes: Studocu AI turns your notes into interactive quizzes, scanning your uploaded content and generating multiple-choice questions to test your knowledge immediately.

Mock Exams: Practice Like It's the Real Thing

The most anxiety-inducing part of school is the exam itself. Studocu's Mock Exam feature lets you generate a tailored practice test based entirely on your course materials. Upload your lecture slides or notes, click "Mock Exam," and the AI creates a balanced test with multiple-choice, short-answer, and essay questions. You take it under a timer, simulating real exam pressure. After you submit, you get detailed feedback showing what you missed and why, so you know exactly what to study next.

Trusted by Students and Recognized Globally

Studocu was recently named one of the World's Top EdTech Companies of 2025 by TIME and Statista. The platform currently holds a 4.2-star rating on Trustpilot based on nearly 10,000 reviews, with students consistently citing the quality of shared resources as a major factor in their academic success.

Grow Smarter Together

Studocu is built around a simple idea: students learn better when they support each other. Shared notes can save time, and AI tools help you turn messy materials into something you can actually review. If you feel stuck, you don't have to start from zero.

Summary

Studocu is a massive online study group where millions of students share lecture notes, summaries, and practice problems for specific courses. Unlike ChatGPT, Studocu AI focuses exclusively on student-shared documents and your files, keeping answers tied to real academic material. The platform is mostly free and works for all subjects, from engineering to physics, with real-time collaboration support. If you don't have notes to upload, search the library by your university and course to find materials from students who've taken the same class.

Evaro, an NHS-licensed digital healthcare platform, has closed a $25 million Series A funding round led by AlbionVC, with participation from Simplyhealth Ventures, Exceptional Ventures, Cornerstone VC, and BBI.

Founded by medical professionals, the company provides embeddable prescribing and pharmacy infrastructure that enables consumer brands to offer regulated digital healthcare services directly to their customers. The platform supports treatment across more than 80 conditions and has served over two million patients to date, working with a range of consumer brands.

Evaro’s infrastructure includes asynchronous consultations, remote diagnostics, prescribing, dispensing, and aftercare, and can be integrated into existing digital platforms within a short timeframe. For partners, the model enables the addition of healthcare services with limited implementation effort, while supporting new revenue streams and deeper customer engagement.

Dr Thuria Wenbar, CEO and co-founder of Evaro, explained that the company has developed infrastructure that allows trusted consumer brands to offer safe, regulated healthcare for common conditions without building their own systems.

The funding comes amid increasing pressure on primary care in the UK, driven by extended waiting times for GP appointments. Evaro aims to help address this demand by expanding access to regulated digital healthcare services.

Looking ahead, the company plans to broaden its reach and further develop its healthcare-as-a-service offering in the UK market.

Paraglide, an agentic AI product for accounts receivable (AR), has raised a $5 million seed round co-led by Bessemer Venture Partners and DN Capital, with participation from Born Capital and The Nordic Web Ventures. 

Built for high-volume B2B finance teams, Paraglide deploys AI agents that automate two-way billing communication across the AR lifecycle. The agents respond to customers’ billing questions, chase overdue invoices, and take action across the financial stack to reduce Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) and improve cash flow. 

Unlike traditional AR tools that rely on one-way, templated payment reminders that customers often ignore. Paraglide’s AI agents manage full two-way conversations with customers, replying and following up on existing threads in a personal and contextual way at scale. 

Paraglide was founded by the former CFO and Head of Engineering of GetAccept (YCW16), which raised more than $30 million across its Series A and B rounds, Rasmus Areskoug, and Andreas Åström. Having experienced the operational burden of accounts receivable firsthand, the founders set out to modernise one of finance’s most persistent pain points. 

Paraglide is already seeing strong early traction among mid-market and enterprise companies, with customers such as Choco, Ardoq, and Spiideo, and partnerships with the revenue automation company Chargebee. Initial customers report a 34 per cent reduction in DSO and achieving financial inbox-zero within the first week of onboarding. 

Rasmus Areskoug, Co-founder and CEO of Paraglide, commented: 

“As a former CFO, I’ve seen finance teams drowning in billing queries and tirelessly chasing invoices with reminders that customers ignore. AI agents have already transformed customer support by automating high-volume, conversational work.

That same shift is now coming to accounts receivable, where agents can handle billing conversations end to end and help businesses get paid on time.” 

According to Alex Ferrara at Bessemer Venture Partners:

"Paraglide's AI agent helps reduce DSOs and frees the finance team up to work on more valuable, higher-level strategic projects." 

According to Thomas Rubens at DN Capital, this is the year of the 'System of Action,' where AI agents move beyond observation to execute complex workflows with high-level context. 

“Paraglide is defining this category by solving a critical organisational pain point, reducing DSO, and we are thrilled to back a team that combines unparalleled experience with technological velocity to fundamentally change how companies unlock cash and drive growth.” 

The funding will support Paraglide’s expansion across Europe as demand for agentic automation in finance operations grows. 

ZOHO.VC, the venture capital arm of ZOLLHOF – Tech Incubator, has completed the first closing of its inaugural fund, securing 70 per cent of its target volume ten months ahead of the final closing. The fund’s limited partners include entrepreneurial families and startup founders.

The fund focuses on pre-seed and seed investments in technology-driven startups and combines capital with technical expertise and access to ZOLLHOF’s network of corporate partners, technology experts, and co-investors. Its investment strategy targets early-stage companies connected to the ZOLLHOF ecosystem, including startups emerging from its incubation programme, designated a “Startup Factory” by the German Federal Government, as well as selected co-investment opportunities.

ZOHO.VC places a particular focus on deeptech companies and university spin-offs across both software and hardware. Alongside the fundraising process, the team has already completed five investments, including Merge Labs.

The fund’s current volume of approximately €7 million represents an initial milestone. In response to ongoing demand and a growing pipeline, partners Benjamin Bauer and Dennis Kirpensteijn, together with Principal Nicolas Sievers, plan to expand the fund beyond its original target in 2026, with the objective of supporting teams addressing significant technological and societal challenges.

Ascension Ventures, a British VC investing at the pre-Seed and Seed levels, has received a new up to €11.5 million (£10 million) commitment, enhancing access to capital for early-stage businesses across diverse sectors and ensuring that founders outside of London and the South East have access to the patient capital required to scale.

The commitment comes from the British Business Bank through its Regional Angles Programme; an initiative launched in 2019 with the objective of addressing regional imbalances in access to early-stage equity finance, targets angel networks and other early-stage investors outside of London.

This follows the close of their 2024 €19.8 million Tech4Good pre-Seed fund, as covered by EU-Startups.

Jean de Fougerolles, Managing Partner at Ascension, says: “We have long believed that talent is distributed across the UK, but opportunity is not. This up to £10 million commitment from the British Business Bank allows us to double down on our mission to back exceptional founders regardless of their postcode.”

2025 and early 2026 show sustained capital formation at the pre-Seed and Seed end of the European market, particularly through new and expanding early-stage funds.

In Germany, Munich-based Vanagon Ventures raised €20 million to focus on pre-Seed DeepTech and AI companies. In the Nordics, Copenhagen-based The Footprint Firm closed its €76 million Footprint Fund I, targeting early-stage climate and DeepTech startups across Northern Europe. The UK also saw continued activity, with Concept Ventures raising €75 million for a dedicated pre-Seed fund, and 2150 closing a significantly larger €210 million second fund, part of which continues to support earlier-stage companies.

Elsewhere, Milan-based Step Venture launched a €30 million early-stage fund, while the Netherlands’ Rubio Impact Ventures closed €70 million for its third impact-focused vehicle.

In aggregate, these announcements represent well over €480 million committed to early-stage and adjacent funds during this period.

Against this backdrop, Ascension Ventures’ commitment from the BBB sits at the smaller end of fund sizes but is more targeted in intent, reinforcing regional access to Seed-stage capital within the UK.

Mark Barry, Senior Investment Director at British Business Bank, adds: “We’re delighted to partner with Ascension, who have an incredible founder friendly reputation. This reputation, coupled with how they have demonstrated their commitment to invest commercially with impact across the UK, makes this an exciting commitment through our Regional Angels Programme.”

Founded in 2015, Ascension is an early-stage VC firm built by exited operators to back the next generation of tech and impact founders. With €115 million+ (£100 million) in assets, Ascension has backed 150+ early-stage companies, with 15 exits.

Today’s strategic partnership will see Ascension deploy the Bank’s capital alongside its existing funds (EIS/SEIS) and its institutional impact fund, Ascension Fund III.

“Crucially, this partnership bolsters our commitment to the regions, allowing us to deploy capital alongside our other funds. It reinforces our strategy to write high-conviction cheques, providing the patient, long-term support that regional founders need to build category-defining companies,” adds Mark.

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Estonian-founded project management platform Scoro has acquired the Estonian AI-driven expense and bill management company Envoice. 

Professional services firms have long managed time and costs in separate, siloed systems.

This fragmentation often forces businesses to rely on month-end reporting to understand their margins.

By combining Scoro’s control over projects, budgets, time, and resources with Envoice’s control over spend, companies can bridge this visibility gap and capture every project cost as work is done, avoiding month-end surprises that impact the bottom line. Visibility and real-time insights are vital in an era of razor-thin margins and heightened competition as AI disrupts the very services these firms sell. 

The acquisition brings together two complementary solutions: Scoro’s comprehensive project management capabilities and Envoice’s world-class AI-powered bill and expense automation.

While Scoro and Envoice will continue to operate as separate products, together they offer professional services firms a significantly more efficient way to manage project-related expenses, with real-time insights into profitability. Integration is already live between the two products.

Receipts get automatically linked to both projects and purchase orders at the point of capture, making project cost reporting faster and more reliable. Further enhancements will be rolled out over the next two months to fully automate data exchange.

Fred Krieger, Founder and CEO of Scoro, said:

"Service businesses live and die by their margins, and yet external expenses are not always accounted for in project tracking because they sit in disconnected systems. E

nvoice has built a truly innovative solution for automating bookkeeping, bill capture and expense approvals. Together, we ensure no cost goes unlogged, fulfilling our vision of an AI-powered future where repetitive manual tasks are outsourced to AI and automation is applied across the full project lifecycle, from planning and delivery to financial control.”

According to Jaanus Põder, Founder and CEO of Envoice: "

Scoro is the perfect match for our next chapter. For our customers and partners, business will continue as usual, but with the backing of Scoro, we can now accelerate our roadmap and bring new capabilities to market much faster."

Following our series of country articles, today we turn our focus north to Finland, exploring the forces shaping its startup ecosystem and the companies driving innovation across deeptech, energy, health, AI, and mobility.

Finland has long been recognised for its strong engineering tradition, world-class education system, and close collaboration between academia, industry, and the public sector. In recent years, the country has reinforced its position as a key innovation hub in Northern Europe, with Helsinki and Espoo at the centre of this momentum. The ecosystem is supported by research-driven universities, active public actors, and a growing pool of international investors, particularly in areas such as clean energy, quantum technologies, autonomous systems, and healthtech.

In this article, we highlight 10 of the most promising Finnish startups, all founded between 2023 and today, that illustrate the breadth and depth of innovation emerging from the country!

Founded in 2024 in Helsinki, Distance Technologies is a deeptech startup developing AI-driven optics and computer vision technology that transforms transparent surfaces into 3D lightfield displays. Its platform enables pixel-level depth control, allowing digital content to appear at any distance and merge seamlessly with the real world, without the need for glasses or headsets.

The technology is designed for demanding defence, aerospace, and automotive environments, where it acts as a visual front-end for sensor fusion by combining inputs such as lidar, radar, and thermal data into a coherent 3D layer. In vehicles, it enables next-generation lightfield head-up displays that improve situational awareness and safety. The company has raised €11.8 million to further develop its platform and expand industrial deployments.

Launched in 2024, Helsinki-based Donut Lab develops a fully integrated electric vehicle technology platform that combines motors, batteries, control hardware, and software into a single system. The company is best known for its all-solid-state battery technology, designed for real-world deployment, offering high energy density, fast charging, long cycle life, and lower cost compared to traditional lithium-ion solutions.

As part of its unified EV platform, Donut Lab also develops in-wheel electric motors that enable simpler vehicle architectures and higher torque with reduced weight. Its technologies are already in production use across multiple programmes, including electric motorcycles, lightweight EV platforms, and industrial applications such as robotic load control systems. The company has raised €40 million to scale its platform and support partners building next-generation electric mobility solutions.

Founded in 2023 and based in Espoo, Gosta Labs is a healthtech startup building a trusted AI operating system designed to support healthcare professionals in their day-to-day clinical work. Its platform reduces administrative burden by automating tasks such as clinical note generation, structuring patient data, and surfacing relevant insights in real time, allowing clinicians to focus more on patient care.

The system is already used across tens of thousands of clinical appointments and is designed for real-world clinical environments, combining medical expertise with AI developed on secure European infrastructure. Founded by former Kaiku Health entrepreneurs, the company has raised €8.7 million to further develop its AI models, expand deployments across public and private healthcare providers, and support regulatory-compliant scaling across Europe.

Founded in 2024 in Helsinki, NestAI is building autonomous systems and command capabilities for real-world, mission-critical environments. The company operates at the intersection of software, hardware, and AI, developing technologies designed for situations where reliability, safety, and accountability are essential.

With close to 100 engineers and scientists, NestAI focuses on open and interoperable architectures that allow critical systems to evolve without vendor lock-in. Its platforms support autonomous operations across sectors such as defence, infrastructure, and security, combining sensing, autonomy, and command capabilities into deployable systems. To date, they have raised €100 million to scale their technology and expand real-world deployments across Europe.

Founded in 2023 in Helsinki, Perfat Technologies is a food deeptech company developing lipid-based technology that enables healthy liquid vegetable oils to behave like semi-solid or solid fats. Using material physics rather than chemical modification, its solution provides the structure and functionality required for food processing while significantly reducing saturated fat content.

The company’s technology is designed to help food producers replace conventional fats such as butter and palm oil with healthier alternatives, without compromising taste or performance across different food applications. Perfat Technologies has raised €3.5 million to scale its lipid platform, support industrial validation, and expand partnerships within the food manufacturing sector.

Founded in Espoo in 2024, QMill is a quantum computing software company developing algorithms designed to deliver practical quantum advantage in the noisy intermediate-scale quantum era. The company focuses on making quantum computing useful before fully fault-tolerant machines arrive, by creating algorithms and software that can run on near-term quantum hardware.

QMill’s first product, an AI-powered quantum circuit compression tool, enables users to compress, run, and compare quantum circuits more efficiently across different platforms. The company develops quantum-advantage algorithms intended for real-world applications and has raised €5 million to advance its software, expand research partnerships, and support early commercial deployments.

Founded in 2023 and headquartered in Espoo, SemiQon develops silicon-based quantum processors designed to support the large-scale deployment of quantum computers. The company focuses on building cryogenic-ready quantum hardware that is more scalable, affordable, and energy-efficient than existing approaches, targeting the future million-qubit era.

SemiQon’s portfolio includes silicon quantum dot devices, cryogenic CMOS technologies, and next-generation quantum integrated circuits designed for both quantum computing and space applications. They have secured €19.4 million in funding to advance their hardware roadmap, support industrial partnerships, and accelerate the development of scalable quantum processing units.

Based in Espoo, Sensible 4 is a deeptech startup developing autonomous driving software designed to operate reliably in harsh weather and challenging environments. Its technology is built to function in conditions such as snow, ice, heavy rain, and low visibility, addressing one of the key limitations of conventional autonomous systems.

The company’s DAWN platform enables Level 4 autonomy for industrial and commercial vehicles across both closed sites and public roads, with applications ranging from industrial trucking to defence mobility and autonomous transport. Founded in 2017, but reorganised in 2025, Sensible 4 combines AI-driven perception, decision-making, and modular retrofit hardware to enable rapid deployment across existing fleets. To date, they have €14.5 million to scale their technology and expand global deployments.

Founded in 2025 in Helsinki, Solid IO is a biotech startup developing patient-specific tumour-on-chip technology designed to improve precision in cancer care. Its platform replicates an individual patient’s tumour microenvironment, generating real-time insights into how cancers respond to immuno-oncology treatments and enabling more informed, data-driven clinical decisions.

By combining bioengineering, AI, and translational oncology expertise, Solid IO aims to reduce trial-and-error in cancer treatment while accelerating drug development and clinical research. The company’s technology is designed to work across multiple cancer types and therapies, supporting both clinicians and pharmaceutical partners. Solid IO has landed €800k to advance its platform and expand collaborations in precision oncology.

Founded in Helsinki in 2023, Steady Energy develops compact nuclear heating plants designed to provide zero-carbon district heating. The company focuses exclusively on heat production, applying simplified and proven light-water nuclear technology to address one of Europe’s most carbon-intensive energy challenges.

At the core of its solution is the LDR-50 nuclear reactor, which operates at significantly lower temperatures and pressures than conventional reactors, enabling safer, more cost-effective deployment close to urban areas. Steady Energy’s approach is designed to complement renewable energy by decoupling heating demand from the electricity grid, particularly during winter months. The company has secured €44 million to advance its pilot plant and move towards commercial deployment later this decade.

By the way: If you’re a corporate or investor looking for exciting startups in a specific market for a potential investment or acquisition, check out our Startup Sourcing Service!

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