Weekly RoundUp Week #14 — Still Pouring
Less noise from funds this week. Plenty of movement everywhere else.
📅 March 30 – 03, 2026 | Read time: 5 mins
👋 The Week in Review
While things look a bit quieter on the funds side this week, the pace hasn’t really slowed.
Late-stage is picking up again. Between crypto and fintech, new unicorns are emerging, which wasn’t a given a few months ago.
At the same time, the infrastructure push continues. Data centers, compute, energy, all still expanding, financed through a mix of large debt facilities and equity.
Also, the first episode of my defense tech mini-series is officially live. If you want a front-row seat to the French startups rewiring modern warfare, read On the Edge right here. Ep. 2 dropping tomorrow.
Let’s dive into the data.
📰 News of the Week
Nebius begins construction on one of Europe’s largest data centres
Following its massive $4.3B fundraise, the European cloud provider is rapidly building a sprawling physical facility for high-density GPU clusters to challenge US hyperscalers.
France doubles down on Bull supercomputers to ensure European digital sovereignty
To reduce reliance on American hardware, the French government is actively backing its domestic supercomputing champion to secure sovereign compute power for regional defense and AI initiatives.
London-based 9fin secures $170M to reach a definitive $1.3B valuation
The AI-powered private credit platform cemented its unicorn status with a major round designed to scale its critical data infrastructure for investment banks navigating the leveraged finance market.
Belgian crypto liquidity provider Keyrock achieves unicorn status as its valuation quadruples
Riding the digital asset market resurgence, the Brussels-based market maker secured fresh capital to aggressively scale its algorithmic trading infrastructure across global exchanges.
UK AI chipmaker Fractile targets a $1B valuation in $200M funding talks with Accel
Seeking to challenge Nvidia, the London-based silicon startup is negotiating a massive round to scale the manufacturing of its novel, energy-efficient hardware designed specifically for fast AI inference.
Mistral AI secures $830M in debt financing to build out its European data centre infrastructure
Opting for non-dilutive capital, the French AI champion is leveraging a massive debt facility to construct its own compute clusters and accelerate its shift toward vertically integrated cloud operations.
🇪🇺 Deals of the Week
🔍 The Deep Dive
Wearable Robotics (MedTech) | Series A | €5M
The Deal: Italy-based startup developing neuromotor rehabilitation robotics and exoskeletons to scale patient recovery and mobility solutions secured €5M.
The Investors: Led by CDP Ventures Capital
The Analysis: Traditional neuromotor physical therapy suffers from an intensity deficit, leaving 90% of stroke and injury patients without full mobility recovery. Italy’s Wearable Robotics solves this by commercializing clinically validated exoskeletons that merge mechanical assistance with virtual reality. Through its flagship ALEX RS device, the company provides a tendon-actuated, five-degree-of-freedom robotic arm that enables highly repetitive, data-tracked rehabilitation. Operating dual divisions for both medical recovery and industrial load-bearing, the startup bypasses the commoditization risks of software-only approaches through a robust eight-patent hardware portfolio. Wearable Robotics is aggressively targeting the North American market, capitalizing on new Medicare reimbursement codes within a global exoskeleton sector projected to reach $24.28B by 2031.
What’s Next: Product portfolio completion, regulatory approvals in new markets, commercial and distribution network expansion, and production capacity optimisation.
Pickmybrain (CreativeTech) | Pre-Seed | €1.8M
The Deal: Tallinn-based AI-powered platform enabling experts to transform their knowledge into digital counterparts raised €1.8M.
The Investors: Led by Business Angels including Garri Zmudze
The Analysis: The traditional creator model forces professionals into an exhausting cycle of constant content production just to monetize their expertise. Pickmybrain dismantles this bottleneck by enabling domain authorities to clone their specific knowledge into highly personalized Digital Brains. The platform trains its AI exclusively on an individual’s curated interviews, books, and insights to create a scalable and on-demand consulting layer. This system handles routine inquiries automatically while routing high value questions directly to the human expert for asynchronous video responses. By shifting the focus away from ad driven attention and toward transactional utility, the startup provides the essential infrastructure for a personalized knowledge market where intellect can be monetized passively.
What’s Next: Grow the team, scale into new markets, and improve the product.
⚡ Deal Flow
🇫🇮 IQM Quantum Computers (Computing) — €50M Additional Round: Espoo-based leader in full-stack superconducting quantum computers for global research institutions.
🇮🇪 Manna Air Delivery (Logistics) — €44M Series B: Dublin-based consumer drone delivery company providing rapid, low-emission order deliveries.
🇫🇷 Generare (BioTech) — €20M Series A: Paris-based techbio startup decoding microbial genomes to uncover novel small molecules for AI-driven drug discovery.
🇳🇱 Brilliance (DeepTech) — €6M Seed: Enschede-based startup manufacturing integrated RGB laser chips for energy-efficient AR displays.
🇫🇷 Alice & Bob (Computing) — €3.5M Grant: Paris-based quantum computing company developing fault-tolerant cat qubits for materials discovery.
🇱🇹 WhiteBridge AI (Data) — €2.6M Seed: Kaunas-based AI-driven platform automating individual intelligence and verification through public data.
🇩🇪 deeplify (IndustrialTech) — €2M Pre-Seed: Bochum-based industrial AI startup automating critical infrastructure inspection to significantly reduce downtime.
🇨🇭 Lobby (TravelTech) — €1.9M Seed: Zurich-based AI-driven platform automating group bookings for the travel and hospitality industry.
🇫🇮 Test of Things (Cybersecurity) — €1.2M Pre-Seed: Oulu-based platform automating cybersecurity safety and compliance testing for IoT devices.
🇮🇹 Capsule Corporation (SpaceTech) — €800k Seed: Milan-based developer of sustainable, water-based propulsion systems for small satellites.
👉 See the full database of 70+ rounds from this week: here.
💸 New Dry Powder
Spotlight: 🇬🇧 Women Backing Women Fund (BootStrap4F) — £130M
Managed by Bootstrap4F, the UK government-backed “Women Backing Women” fund of funds recently announced a £130M first close against a £250M target. This vehicle executes a systemic thesis: it is the UK’s first fund of funds explicitly mandated to back female and mixed-gender VC managers, who will subsequently finance female founders. The managing partners bring immense precedent pedigree, boasting a collective £4.4BN track record in fund selection. Distinctly anchored by heavyweight institutions like Barclays, M&G, and the British Business Bank, the fund’s unique edge lies in structurally correcting the UK’s funding gap where only 2% of equity reaches female-founded businesses. It achieves this by driving diversity at the capital-allocation level to generate alpha.
Other Fund Launches:
🇬🇧 British Growth Partnership Fund I (£200M): Newly formed vehicle coordinated by the British Business Bank, with capital commitments from Aegon UK, Cushon Master Trust, and M&G to back high-growth domestic tech companies like Wayve.
🇵🇱 EIF & BGK (€85M): Commitment via the €350M Future Tech Poland fund of funds to three Polish VC funds (Expeditions, Cogito Capital Partners, and Balnord) targeting startups and scaleups in defence, cybersecurity, and space tech.
🇬🇧 Empirical Ventures (£10M): Capital boost dedicated to backing UK-based “venture scientists” focused on building early-stage deeptech breakthroughs.
🇪🇺 Scaleup Europe Fund (N/A): EQT and Atomico named as the final contenders to manage this major pan-European initiative aimed at bridging the late-stage funding gap for tech scale-ups.
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See you next week for more Tech & VC insights.
Best,
Agathe