As the phrase goes, the best-laid plans of mice and men, just minutes after Robin and I finished recording this week's edition of the Drive at Five, Getir's acquisition of Gorillas broke. Needless to say, this would have been a topic we would have addressed, but in lieu of audio, you can find our coverage of the story here.

Up this week:

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿  Atomico, Atcomio, and Atomico. As the London-based VC firm released its mammoth State of European Tech 2022 report, Tech.eu broke down selected portions:

• Robin's view on the (worrying) State of European Tech in 2022 and 15 additional takeaways
• Dan's look at VC activity
• Tamara's country-by-country analysis
• and Callum's look at thematic trends

🇸🇪 Einride posted a big number in funding this week, $500 million, but after a closer look, while it's nothing to sneeze it, the number is comprised of a variety of inputs.

🇪🇺 Following up on the VC dry powder section mentioned in the Atomico report, Robin highlights big raises by VC firms including IRIS, One Peak, Cavalry, Partech, and World Fund

🇩🇪 Speaking of World Fund, along with Porsche, Abacon Capital, and Vsquared Ventures, Germany's battery cell developer and producer Customcells saw a fresh injection of €60 million in a funding round aimed specifically at moving the needle in the e-aviation sector. 
 
And there's one more thing - according to the Atomico report, diversity figures in Europe aren't good. At all.

All this and more on this week's episode of the Drive at Five.

🎄🎄 We're heading down the final stretch - there are only 23 days left until Christmas! 🎄🎄

Up this week:

🇸🇪 From the brains behind Motherbrain, Ark Kapital releases AI-driven forecasting platform AIM to founders everywhere. You can hear more from Henrik Landgren himself at the Tech.eu Summit, this coming May in Brussels. Tickets are now on sale!

🇺🇸 US-based acquisition specialist Carlyle Group has raised $3.12 billion as it targets European B2B technology businesses.

🇧🇪 Crypto market maker Keyrock raises $72 million as it plans to further develop its offer and seek regulatory licences across Europe, the US, and Singapore.

🇳🇱 Dutch e-commerce brand buyer Dwarfs has secured €30 million in a Series B funding round, one that was initially anticipated to be much, much larger. €120 million larger in fact.

🇪🇺 Infarm, Zilch, MessageBird, Lyst, and a whole lotta others announced layoffs this week.

🇮🇪 Facebook parent company Meta has been fined €265 million by the Irish Data Protection Commission.

Fintech acquisitions abound:
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Equals Group to acquire fintech startup Roqqett for up to £2.25 million
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Business banking platform Tide acquires Funding Options
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Toucan has been acquired by PayaCharity
🇱🇺 Mangopay acquires fraud detection and prevention company Nethone

🇫🇮 Breathing new life into spent Tesla EV batteries, Cactos raises €2.5 million to meet growing customer demand.

And there's one more thing:

🇧🇪 Antler has released its 2022 Benelux Unicorn Founder Roadmap: How to build unicorns in Benelux report
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Atomico is releasing its State of European Tech report next week
🇺🇸 Accel's "Europe and Israel’s Startup Founder Factories" reveals that of the 344 VC-backed unicorns since 2008, nearly two-thirds (203) have led to at least one startup being founded by former employees, with 1,018 tech startups emerging in total.

All this, and a whole lot more in Episode 17 of Tech.eu's Drive at Five!

🎄🎄 Yes, that's right boys and girls of all ages, there are only 30 days left until Christmas! 🎄🎄

Up this week:

🇩🇪 After listing on Nasdaq in September of 2021 via a SPAC, Munich-based makers of eVTOL aircraft, Lilium, has now raised $119 million in a concurrent private placement and registered direct offering.

🇫🇮 Finland's Wolt launches new hiring drive in Israel, Sweden. Tech hubs in Tel-Aviv and Stockholm mean new hires and future-proofing for the Helsinki-based delivery platform.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 US e-commerce enablement player AppHub has paid $72 million to snap up the founders' stake in REVIEWS.io, a UK-based customer feedback portal that allows product vendors to source user reviews that can be deployed on e-commerce services and community media outlets.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Anne Hathaway backs female-led Pact as it launches £30 million seed fund aimed at inclusion, well-being, and climate.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Fresh from launching its first electric scooter, Zapp is going public in a SPAC merger deal.

🇦🇹 Amid crypto winter, Austrian unicorn Bitpanda secures Germany’s most comprehensive crypto licence.

And, as always, there's one more thing ...

The EU chip industry. Enjoy.

All this and a whole lot more on this week's episode of the Tech.eu Drive at Five!

While Dan was OOO for a few days this week, Robin was MC'ing The Big Score and collecting tonnes of knowledge. Up this week:

🇧🇪 Belgian co-living startup Cohabs has bagged a massive €110 million round and set its sights on achieving 5,000 bedrooms for co-living rental and real-estate in the next four years.

🇮🇹 Faded from former glory company Evernote is joining the Bending Spoons family.

🇹🇷 As the once white-hot home delivery of just about everything you could imagine continues to cool, Just Eat Takeaway.com and Getir announce a partnership just one day after Gopuff and Uber Eats announce a similar partnership in the UK.

😢 Layoffs, layoffs, layoffs (Typeform, UiPath 6%, Sendcloud 10%, Pipedrive 15%, Dance 16%, Jimdo 16%, Hopin 17%, Juni more than 30%, Wayflyer 40% etc.) and Deliveroo exiting the Australia market.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 London-based Index Ventures is reaffirming its commitment to helping founders get their ideas off the ground and prepare for the road ahead with the launch of its second dedicated seed fund, Origin II at $300 million.

And there's one more thing ...

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Balderton Capital's first Executive in Residence, Dave Kellogg, has authored an invaluable resource in the Founder's Guide to B2B Sales. Don't skip this one!

All this and a whole lot more on this week's episode of the Tech.eu Drive at Five!

Index Ventures Partner Hannah Seal joins the show today to provide deeper insight into the whats and the whys behind the firms' recently launched $300 million Origin II seed-stage focused fund.

TRIGGER WARNING: There's quite a bit of bad and/or sad news in this episode. We've done our best to remember the words of Robert Hunter, "...nothin' left to do but smile, smile, smile."

Up this week:

🇧🇸 The Binance/FTX fiasco and what it means to crypto.

🇺🇸 Zuck slashes 13% of the Meta workforce

🇵🇱 Ramp ramps up with one of the largest funding rounds on record for a Polish company.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Meta presses forward with its metaverse aspirations and acquires Cambridge-based sound recognition developer Audio Analytic.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Made.com, once valued at close to £800 million is acquired by Next for £3.4 million.

🇳🇴 OSLO-based Enode brings home $15 million in a Series A round led by Creandum and saw the participation of Chris Sacca's Lowercarbon Capital.

🇫🇷 Sarbacane, a company Robin's never heard of, raised $110 million, acquires Marketing 1BY1, and rebrands to Positive Group. Keep your eyes on this firm, as we foresee more acquisitions in the future.

🇸🇪 EQT Ventures just keeps on rollin', this time with its third fund at €1.1 billion. Since launching in 2016, the venture capital arm has accrued €2.3 billion. Not. Too. Shabby.

Dry Power? Fire Powder?

🇫🇷 PhotoRoom. It's fast, it's good, and it's the final nail in the coffin for working photographers. And they raised $19 million in a Balderton-led Series A funding round.

Government news:

• 🇪🇺 Microsoft faces a new antitrust complaint over its cloud computing practices as trade group CISPE, whose members include Amazon, took its grievance to EU antitrust regulators on Wednesday.
• 🇪🇺 The European Commission published a new regulation to streamline rental platforms’ operations and data-sharing practices across the EU’s single market, targeting the likes of Booking.com, Airbnb, and Expedia.
• 🇪🇺 EU antitrust regulators are drawing up charges against Facebook parent Meta over its use of customer data and the tying of its classified advertisements service to its social network.
• 🇪🇺 The European Commission is to conduct an “in-depth investigation” into Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of gaming company Activision Blizzard.
• 🇩🇪 Germany has blocked another Chinese acquisition of a domestic semiconductor company, in a further sign of the government’s tougher approach to protecting its high-tech sector.

🇪🇸 And in good news .... The Spanish Parliament has given the green light to a new startups law that will bring tax benefits and other perks to entrepreneurs, remote workers, and digital nomads who want to live and work in Spain.

🇳🇱 And the Dutch American Friendship Treaty, aka DAFT.

All this and a whole lot more on this week's episode of the Tech.eu Drive at Five!

This past May London-based payments infrastructure provider Paddle secured $200 million in a Series D funding round led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., perhaps better known as KKR.

No less than 15 days later, the company announced the purchase of US-based subscription metrics and retention automation startup Profitwell in a deal reportedly worth north of $200 million.

With today’s funding environment for startups getting tougher and tougher, we’ve seen a noted uptick in the number of mergers and acquisitions taking place in Europe. And we expect to see more.

Joining me today to discuss some key items to keep in mind when considering and negotiating an acquisition deal, I’m joined today by a man who’s seen both sides of the table when it comes to an acquisition, closing the Profitwell deal, but also as a Senior Director at Siebel Systems, a popular CRM that was acquired by Oracle back in 2005, Paddle President and COO Jimmy Fitzgerald.

Well alright, alright, alright. Robin's back in the studio this week, and after nine years, he actually has a semi-professional setup. This week:

🇩🇪 The first German developer of quantum computers, eleQtron has raised over €50 million in new funds, including venture capital from Earlybird and Siegerlandfonds.

🇸🇪 Polestar obtained $1.6 billion in financing support from its two major shareholders

🇩🇪 Volkswagen sells its electric car-sharing service, WeShare to Miles Mobility. Here's why.

🇵🇹 Web Summit? That's 71,000 people too many.

🇸🇪 Sweden’s STILRIDE is anything but still, rides ahead with €3.7 million

🇩🇪 Billed as the first European ClimateTech Entrepreneur in Residence programme, Atlantic Labs and FoodLabs launch Founders for Climate initiative

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 / 🇩🇪 Not quite dead yet, but Made.com has indicated that they're headed towards administration, and German nappy service provider Windeln.de has filed an application for insolvency proceedings

🇩🇪 Now closing in on close to $1 billion raised, Volocopter lands another $182 million in second signing of Series E round

🇪🇺 According to the Tech.eu database, European tech companies raised €5.7 billion in total in October, recording a €1 billion decline compared to the total amount raised in September (€6.7 billion).

All this and a whole lot more on this week's episode of the Tech.eu Drive at Five!

As part of Tech.eu's Big Deal feature, this week, we're putting “data orchestration and workflow software for life sciences” Seqera Labs under the microscope and aim to dissect just where the company came from, what part it played in the fight against Covid-19, and what an Addition led €22 million investment round means for the company.

Moreover, instead of just the written word, we managed to sit down with Seqera Labs' CEO and co-founder Evan Flowden and hit the record button.

Read the article in-depth over at Tech.eu.

Well alright, alright, alright. Today is Robin's birthday and he's headed back to Brussels after co-hosting a start-studded event here in London. In the meantime "temporary" Tech.eu writer Fiona Alston sits in and shares her thoughts and opinions on the news items that caught her attention this week.

🇪🇺 First up, Bill Gates throws his support behind new European cleantech scale-up coalition

🇫🇷 Launch of a bioengineered houseplant called Neo P1 purifies your home

🇵🇹 No sheet: eToro acquires portfolio management provider Bullsheet

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Pixera is on a mission to make professional e-learning a more entertaining experience

🇪🇸 Former Tiger Global partner Lee Fixel’s Addition lead Seqera Labs’ €22 million investment round

🇮🇪 Johnson Hana raises €10.5 million to up-end the legal market

🇫🇷 One more thing: insuretech Neat

🖋️ One more one more thing: Dan was interviewed by Black Unicorn PR

All this and a whole lot more on this week's episode of the Tech.eu Drive at Five!