Mind The Gap #W27
European Tech & VC: weekly signal over noise. News, deals, funds, & exits.
📅 June 29 – July 03, 2026 | Read time: 5 mins
📸 Mind The Gap is now on Instagram: @mindthegap_tech. For daily European tech news, see you there.
Two IPOs, a $1.2B drone round, and a $1.97B antitrust win against Google. Bending Spoons opened at $18B on Nasdaq and popped 40% by close. Quantum Systems, whose Vector drones ran 19,000 missions in Ukraine last year, more than doubled its valuation to $8B and is now openly talking about merging with Stark. And Klarna extracted two billion dollars from Google through a Stockholm court.
Let’s dive into the data.
📰 News of the Week
Quantum Systems raises $1.2B Series D at an $8B valuation
The Munich drone maker doubled its valuation with a Series D co-led by Blackstone, Noteus, Airbus, and Advent, with Bond, Fidelity, Wellington, Balderton, and HV Capital also participating. Florian Seibel is now openly talking about acquisitions and a possible merger with Stark. This is Europe’s largest private defence-tech financing on record.
Bending Spoons lists on Nasdaq at $18B, pops 40% on day one
The Milan-based serial acquirer of Evernote, WeTransfer, Vimeo, AOL, and Eventbrite opened on Nasdaq on July 1 at an $18B valuation and closed up 40%. CEO Luca Ferrari says the company will keep buying underperforming software assets using AI to extract margin.
Klarna wins a $1.97B antitrust case against Google
A Stockholm court ruled that Google gave its own comparison shopping service preferential treatment over Klarna’s PriceRunner subsidiary and ordered roughly $1.97B in damages. A European company extracting two billion dollars from Google via a court sets a precedent the rest of the sector will watch closely.
🇪🇺 Top Deals of the Week
Quantum Systems | $1.2B Series D | Germany | Defence Tech | $8B EV | Blackstone, Noteus, Airbus, Advent
InSoil | €120M Credit facility| Lithuania | AgriFinTech | Pollen Street, EIF
Openchip | €115M | Spain | Semiconductors | SETT
Andercore | €30M revolving credit facility | Germany | IndustrialTech | UniCredit, KfW Venture Tech Growth Financing
Theo | €25M Series A | Germany | Real Estate | Insight Partners, BlackRock (debt)
Gaussion | €24.5M | United Kingdom | DeepTech | BGF, AlbionVC
StirlingX | $20M Series A | United Kingdom | Defence Tech | Ventura Capital, RCM Private Markets Master Fund
Telum Therapeutics | €18M Series A | Spain | BioTech | AMR Action Fund, Inveready
Alva Industries | €16M | Norway | DeepTech | Nysnø Climate Investments
🚪 Exits
IQM | Nasdaq IPO via SPAC | ~$1.9B valuation | Finland | Quantum Computing | First European quantum company to list in the US. Shares opened and spent most of the day below the offering price.
Bending Spoons | Nasdaq IPO | $18B opening valuation, +40% by close | Italy | Software
Acasi | Acquired by Qonto | France | Accounting Software
European Astrotech | Acquired by The Exploration Company | Europe | SpaceTech
🔍 My Personal Favorite
BRYM | NeuroTech | Pre-Seed | €650K | Lotus One Investment, Antler
BRYM builds wearable EEG headbands that turn focus into a trainable skill. The pitch is straightforward: attention spans are collapsing, and the productivity cost is measurable. The company started in automotive manufacturing, where operator errors have real safety consequences, and reported a 46% reduction in errors in early pilots. The longer-term ambition is to make EEG-based cognitive training as accessible as a gym membership, with a subscription model riding on proprietary hardware the round is funding. At €650K this is genuinely pre-product-at-scale, and EEG consumer hardware has a long history of promising demos that never reach mass adoption. But the founding team at BRYM has been thoughtful about where to land first: enterprise, where willingness to pay is higher and the productivity ROI is concrete. Stockholm-based, led by Charlie Ohlén and Nils Hagberg.
💸 New Dry Powder
Tapestry VC Fund III | €70M | United Kingdom | European repeat founders, Series A and B
Orbit Capital | €107M | Europe | Venture debt for CEE scale-ups
Osney Capital Fund I | Osney Capital | €69M | United Kingdom | UK cybersecurity seed, pre-seed to seed
Climentum Capital | €60M (first close) | Nordics | Climate hardtech, seed and Series A
Ruya Ventures | $50M | Europe | Deeptech, solo GP
P101 / Prana Ventures | €100M | Italy | Seed and early stage, expanded with Prana Ventures integration
Omnea / Firedrop | Omnea + Firedrop | United Kingdom | Fund backing employees as future founders
Thank you for reading. Don’t just read the market: understand it.
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See you next Monday.
Agathe