VC Angle Weekly Briefing #41: Europe Gets Its Own AI Semiconductor Giant
New unicorns, self-driving cars and AI semiconductors.
Hey - welcome to the forty-first edition of VC Angle Weekly Updates!
As always, we're keeping tabs on what actually matters across 🇪🇺 European tech, as well as relevant global tech news. If something broke the news this week and it's worth your time, it's probably below. Scroll on for the deals, reads, and reports you'll want on your radar.
In This Edition:
Wayve raises a huge Series D round
European quantum computing startup going public
Europe gets its own AI semiconductor player
OpenAI raises the biggest ever private company round
20VC: TSIC ranked Europe’s best micro-fund
European mobility sector funding drops 27% YoY
⏱️ 2:57 Est. Reading Time
💥 Main Events Past Week
The London-based autonomous driving company closed a $1.2B round led by Eclipse, Balderton, and SoftBank Vision Fund 2, with Microsoft, NVIDIA, Uber, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Stellantis also participating. Uber committed additional milestone-based capital tied to robotaxi deployments across 10+ markets, starting in London in 2026. Consumer vehicles with Wayve’s AI Driver follow from 2027. The company claims to be the first AV developer to drive zero-shot in over 500 cities across Europe, North America, and Japan without city-specific tuning.
The Eindhoven-based AI semiconductor company closed a round led by Innovation Industries, with BlackRock and SiteGround Capital joining as new investors alongside existing backers including Samsung Catalyst Fund, EIC Fund, CDP Venture Capital, and Bitfury. Total capital raised since founding in 2021 now exceeds $450M. Axelera has shipped to 500+ customers across defense, manufacturing, retail, and robotics, with its Metis and Europa platforms built around energy-efficient inference at the edge rather than in centralized data centers.
The Finnish quantum computing company, spun out of Aalto University and VTT in 2018, announced a SPAC merger with Nasdaq-listed Real Asset Acquisition Corp., with plans to also list on a Nordic exchange. IQM reported $35M in 2025 revenue and $100M+ in bookings, and will hold $450M+ in cash post-close. The company has raised $569M to date, including a $320M Series B last September. It joins Infleqtion and Xanadu in a wave of quantum companies choosing the SPAC route to U.S. markets.
📰 Other News
Allica Bank becomes Europe’s newest unicorn with $155m Series D [See here]
Monzo former CEO TS Anil appointed board vice-chair [See here]
EU Commission to delay high risk AI guidance [See here]
OpenAI announces $110bn round, the largest one ever for a private tech company [See here]
French research actors call on Europe to unite around competitiveness [See here]
Deutsche Telekom Launches €200M Deep Tech Fund to Back Europe’s Next Wave of Innovation [See here]
37% of Berlin’s VC-backed startups reach Series A [See here]
Checkout.com’s EBITDA says 2025 full-year is profitable [See here]
👇🏼 Read some of our previous weekly reports to stay in the loop with 🇪🇺 European tech news:
VC Angle Weekly Briefing #39: Mistral’s Revenue Jumps 20X & Station F Unites AI Giants for Startups
💶 Where Funds Went (Or Will Go)
Startups
🇩🇪 VoiceLine — €10M | Enterprise voice AI for frontline teams.
🇪🇪 Frankenburg Technologies — €30M | Missile-defence startup building affordable, mass-manufacturable interceptors.
🇳🇱 Axelera AI — $250M | AI inference chipmaker.
🇬🇧 Power Protocol — $15.4M | Blockchain gaming infrastructure ecosystem.
🇫🇷 Verley — €32M | Next-generation functional whey ingredients (Series A).
🇬🇧 Allica Bank — $155M | Challenger business bank; funding expected to make it a unicorn.
🇩🇪 Secfix — $12M | End-to-end security compliance platform (Series A).
🇬🇧 Wayve — $1.2B | Embodied AI for autonomous driving.
🇬🇧 BeyondMath — $18.5M | Foundational physics AI model.
🇬🇧 Thema — $6.2M | Mapping market expansion opportunities for private equity.
🇬🇧 SolveAI — $50M | Platform that lets employees build enterprise software.
🇬🇧 Kinfolk — $7M | AI-native HR workforce operations platform.
🇩🇪 Oska Health — €11M | AI-driven hybrid care expansion.
🇩🇪 ISPTech — €5.5M | In-orbit mobility / propulsion (seed).
Venture Funds
🇧🇪 Syndicate One — €22M | Closed second fund to back Belgian tech founders.
M&A 🤝
🇬🇧 Radiant ↔️ Ori Industries — merged | Sovereign AI cloud at utility scale.
🔍 Reads & Reports
20VC published “The State of European Micro-Funds,” ranking 80+ funds under €25M. Tiny Supercomputer topped the list (n8n, Synthesia, Wayve), followed by Prototype and Kima Ventures. Median fund size sits at €19.5M with €300k median check sizes. 63% of these funds were created after 2022, and 50%+ have yet to generate a meaningful exit.
European mobility VC drops to $4.8B in 2025, down 27% year-on-year
Dealroom and Via iD’s state-of-the-industry report shows European mobility VC is now $10B below its 2021 peak, with late-stage megarounds seeing the steepest decline. The sector has produced 82 unicorns and thoroughbreds and 578 colts, but still ranks among Europe’s top five most-funded industries — for now, with security growing fast enough to potentially overtake it in 2026.
👋 That’s a wrap for this week.
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