This Week in European Tech: Wise’s direct listing and its ripple effects, the birth of a few new unicorns, Rimac rides with Bugatti, and more

July 9, 2021 Editor Ripple 0

Happy Friday!

This week, our research team tracked more than 100 tech funding deals worth over €2.3 billion, and 25 exits, M&A transactions, and rumours, and related news stories across Europe, including Russia, Israel, and Turkey.

As always, we are putting all of them together for you in a handy list sent in our round-up newsletter (note: the full list is for paying customers only).

Recently, we also started publishing ‘Today in European Tech’, a daily round-up of deals and news stories that caught our attention. Keeping you updated on all things EU tech is our priority!

Today, instead of a daily round-up we give you an overview of the 10 biggest European tech news items for the past week (subscribe to our free newsletter to get this round-up in your inbox every Monday morning).

1) Wise’s direct listing will generate ripple effects for years to come

Fintech scale-up Wise was valued at 7.95 billion pounds ($11 billion) on its market debut through direct listing, making it the largest ever tech listing in London by market capitalisation.

2) ManoMano raises lots of MoneyMoney

Online DIY platform ManoMano today announced it has raised a $355 million round of financing giving the French scale-up a valuation of $2.6 billion.

3) AnyVision shakes off controversy, scores $235 million in funding

Israeli AI-based face recognition startup AnyVision has completed a $235 million Series C funding round led by SoftBank and Eldridge Industries.

4) Dutch neobank Bunq raises the largest Series A round evva

Amsterdam’s bunq has closed a record-breaking European fintech Series A round at €193 million. This now gives the neobank a valuation of €1.6 billion. Not too bad for a company that until this announcement had remained bootstrapped by its founder Ali Niknam for close to a decade.

5) France’s Younited Credit secures $170 million in financing

French startup Younited Credit has raised a $170 million funding round. Goldman Sachs is leading the round with existing investors Eurazeo, Bpifrance and AG2R La Mondiale also participating. The company offers several credit products to European consumers.

6) Fintech scale-up Pleo valued at $1.7 billion in fresh funding round

Danish startup Pleo, which sells corporate expense management software and linked “smart” payment cards, has boosted its valuation to $1.7 billion in a $150 million equity financing round.

7) Poland’s eobuwie raises $130 million in SoftBank-led round

Quietly announced last weekend, Polish footwear and accessories retailer eobuwie’s majority shareholder CCC signed the papers with SoftBank Vision Fund 2 that saw a $130 million investment.

8) Another European VC looks to the public markets for scale

London-based VC firm Forward Partners has announced its intention to trade on AIM (Alternative Investment Market), a sub-market of the London Stock Exchange.

9) Dream team: Croatia’s Rimac and Bugatti join automotive forces

Bugatti and Croatia-based Rimac are partnering to create one hypercar mega-company, with both firms to team up on future technologies. Rimac will effectively take control of Volkswagen’s Bugatti brand in a deal that cements its position as an established automotive force.

10) Switzerland’s national postal service acquires Tresorit

Swiss Post, the former state-owned mail delivery firm which became a private limited company in 2013, diversifying into logistics, finance, transport and more while retaining its role as Switzerland’s national postal service, has acquired a majority stake in Swiss-Hungarian startup Tresorit, a European pioneer in end-to-end-encrypted cloud services.

Podcast:

Scaling up rapidly in Europe — with Hanno Renner, co-founder and CEO of Personio

Bonus link(s):

– European startups are raising more money than ever before, producing a class of tech companies with valuations comparable to peers in the US and Asia. But after a record-breaking start to the year, even some of the industry’s biggest cheerleaders are starting to worry that the momentum isn’t sustainable.

– Washington told the EU not to tax its tech giants. So Brussels is making plans to tax everyone instead. The European Commission is eyeing a 0.3 percent tax on the goods and services sold online by companies operating in the EU with an annual turnover of €50 million or more, officials briefed on the plans told POLITICO.

– Stellantis, the automaker born out of a merger between Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and French automaker Groupe PSA, will invest €30 billion in electric vehicles and new software over the next four years as part of a major push to transition away from internal combustion engines.

– A relatively unknown Swedish company (Embracer) has become Europe’s most valuable video-game developer after the region’s most prolific deal spree.

– The European Parliament has approved a controversial law that would allow digital companies to detect and report child sexual abuse on their platforms for the next three years.

– EuroVC has published its Q2 ’21 European VC fundraising note.

– Sweden’s financial watchdog is investigating whether buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) fintech Klarna has violated bank secrecy laws following a security breach in May.