Mind The Gap #W28
European Tech & VC: weekly signal over noise. News, deals, funds, & exits.
📅 July 7 – 11, 2026 | Read time: 5 mins
📸 Mind The Gap is now on Instagram: @mindthegap_tech. For daily European tech news, see you there.
Skello raised €200M and somehow ended up with the founders owning more of the company than before. Lovable is in talks at a valuation that would double in six months to reach $13.2B. Kraken Technology builds uncrewed naval vessels and just became a unicorn. These three companies have almost nothing in common except that they are all European and all raising serious capital.
📰 News of the Week
Kraken Technology Group raises $175M Series B, becomes Europe’s newest maritime defence unicorn
The Fareham-based maker of uncrewed surface vessels crossed a $1B valuation backed by DTCP, the NATO Innovation Fund, Rheinmetall, and the British Business Bank. Customers include the UK MoD, NATO, and USSOCOM. Founder Mal Crease spent 20 years setting world speed records in offshore powerboat racing before pivoting into naval autonomy in 2020.
Nscale lands a $900M revolving credit facility for AI data centres
The London hyperscaler secured the facility from a syndicate of 12 banks including J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America, to build data centre capacity across the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. Third debt deal in five months after a $1.4B GPU-backed loan in February and $790M for its Norway campus in May. Total capital raised passes $6.3B.
Lovable in talks to raise $300M at a $13.2B valuation
The Stockholm vibe-coding platform, founded in 2024 by Anton Osika and Fabian Hedin, is reportedly in talks for a round that would double its December 2025 valuation of $6.6B in under six months. The company hit $500M in ARR in June, with users including Workday, Asana, and Nvidia. Menlo Ventures, a backer since the Series B, is expected to lead.
🇪🇺 Top Deals of the Week
Lendable | $670M ABS | United Kingdom | FinTech | Goldman Sachs
Proxima Fusion | €411M Series B | Germany | Fusion Energy | €2.4B EV | XTX Ventures, East X Ventures, RWE, Google
Skello | €200M | France | HRTech | Bridgepoint Development Capital V, Partech, XAnge
Kraken Technology Group | $175M Series B | United Kingdom | Defence Tech | $1B+ EV | DTCP, NATO Innovation Fund, Rheinmetall, British Business Bank
Oxylabs | €113.6M | Lithuania | Data Infrastructure | $3.6B EV | Warburg Pincus
Gradium | $100M Seed | France | Voice AI | FirstMark Capital, Eurazeo, Nvidia, DST Global
QuantumDiamonds | €91M | Germany | Semiconductors | €15M equity led by World Fund + €76M EU Chips Act grant
BIZAY | €48.7M | Portugal | E-commerce | Indico Capital Partners
Thought Machine | $30M | United Kingdom | FinTech | Tier-1 bank
Alchemab Therapeutics | €29.3M Series A | United Kingdom | Biotech | British Business Bank
🚪 Exits
Myricx Bio | Acquired by Novartis | up to $1.5B | United Kingdom | Biotech
Conjura | Acquired by Wayflyer | Ireland | Data Analytics
Cloudsweep | Acquired by Tekever | Portugal | AI
Encodian | Acquired by Circeus | United Kingdom | Document Automation
Efteor / Télôs Watch | Acquired by Vam Investments | Switzerland | Watchmaking
Xink | Acquired by Omnidocs Denmark | Software
🔍 My Personal Favorite
Gyre Energy | CleanTech | Pre-Seed | $1.3M | Speedinvest
Cooling is roughly a fifth of global electricity demand, and it is growing faster than the grid can absorb. Gyre pairs physics-based AI with thermal energy storage to shift cooling load to cheaper, greener hours, so equipment runs less when power costs most. In its first published deployment the platform cut electricity costs by 38% and daily energy use by 35%, with a payback under 18 months. The company is now deploying inside a 140,000 square foot site run by one of the world’s largest cold chain operators. The same infrastructure that cools warehouses points naturally toward data centres next, which is probably where the real market sits.
💸 New Dry Powder
Warren becomes Rift Capital
The Paris-based secondary provider is rebranding. Same thesis, same team: AI, Infrastructure, Robotics, Fintech, Computing, Space and Defence. The new name reflects a sharper positioning around access to pre-IPO companies in categories where the window to invest is narrow by definition.
EIFO | €476M | Denmark / Europe | European energy independence and green transition infrastructure
Expeditions Fund II | €197M | Poland - UK | European defence tech | BAE Systems, Keysight
Primo Space 2 | €120M | Italy | Space and dual-use
Thank you for reading. Don’t just read the market: understand it.
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See you next Monday.
Agathe