The European Innovation Council selected Stockholm-based EQT to manage the €5 billion Scaleup Europe Fund on May 18, the EU's largest-ever growth-stage investment vehicle. The fund will back European technology scale-ups across AI, quantum computing, clean energy, space, and biotech, targeting the Series B to growth-equity gap that continental deeptech has historically bridged with US capital.
First investments are scheduled for autumn 2026, with founding LPs including Novo Holdings, ABP (managed by APG), Allianz, CriteriaCaixa, and Santander. EQT beat Atomico, Eurazeo, and Vitruvian in a competitive selection process run by the EIC Fund Board. (European Commission)
Startups & Funding
Multiverse (London) raised $70 million on May 15, led by Schroders Capital with participation from General Catalyst, Lightspeed, Index Ventures, and D1 Capital Partners, at a $2.1 billion valuation, up $400 million from its last round in 2022. Founded by Euan Blair, the company has repositioned from apprenticeship provider to AI upskilling platform for enterprise workforces.
Its January 2026 acquisition of Berlin-based StackFuel, which trains employees at Mercedes-Benz, IAV, and Telefónica, gives it a German enterprise foothold as it opens hubs in Paris, Amsterdam, and Madrid this year. Revenue grew 50% year-on-year for the third consecutive year; Q1 2026 was its first cash-positive quarter. (Tech.eu)
bunch (Berlin) closed a €30.1 million ($35 million) Series B on May 19, led by Portage with Illuminate Financial, Motive Partners, Cherry Ventures, and Fintech Collective participating. The company builds AI-native fund operations infrastructure for PE and VC managers across European jurisdictions: capital calls, compliance, distributions, and LP reporting in a single platform.
It supports over 150 fund managers and 12,000 LPs. ARR grew 300% in 2025 with net revenue retention of 156%; that figure measures how embedded the platform has become in operational workflows that managers run every day.
Total raised exceeds $58 million. (EU-Startups)
Zerops (Prague) closed a €1.7 million ($2 million) seed from Gi21 Capital in mid-May to scale cloud infrastructure designed for both developers and AI coding agents. Its core proposition: eliminate the gap between development and production environments by running a single unified stack on owned bare-metal hardware, priced up to four times below AWS equivalents.
The company is introducing Zerops Control Panel (ZCP), which connects AI agents (Claude, Codex, Gemini) directly to live cloud infrastructure, enabling them to build, deploy, and debug in real-world conditions. New data centres are planned for US West and Singapore.
It is the most technically specific cloud infrastructure company to come out of the Czech Republic in this cycle. (EU-Startups)
Products & Technology
Mistral AI acquired Vienna-based Emmi AI on May 19, its second acquisition of 2026 after Koyeb. Emmi AI was founded in 2024 and raised the largest-ever seed round for an Austrian startup.
Its models handle complex physics simulations, including airflow, heat transfer, and material stress, enabling engineers in aerospace and automotive to accelerate product design cycles. The acquisition brings over 30 researchers and engineers to Mistral, with co-founder Johannes Brandstetter leading a new AI for science division covering industrial engineering and fundamental research.
The move sharpens Mistral's differentiation against US model providers: purpose-built industrial AI rather than a general-purpose platform play, positioned for European manufacturing clients. (TNW)
Climate & Energy
The EU's Innovation Fund 2025 industrial decarbonisation auctions closed in February 2026 with demand that substantially exceeded available capital. The pilot Industrial Decarbonisation Bank auction for process heat attracted 85 bids from European heavy industry, requesting €1.4 billion; the concurrent European Hydrogen Bank auction drew 58 bids seeking €8.4 billion in support.
Together, against €2.3 billion in available funding, this represents an oversubscription ratio approaching 4x. CINEA is expected to communicate first evaluation results in May or June 2026.
The 4x oversubscription makes the constraint legible: Europe's industrial decarbonisation bottleneck is not demand. It is the speed at which public capital moves from auction to operational project. (European Commission)
Research & Deep Tech
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute published findings in Nature Nanotechnology this week showing that the glycocalyx, the thin layer of sugars coating every human cell, carries a cell-state-specific signature that can be mapped at nanometre resolution using a technique they call Glycan Atlasing. The imaging distinguished activated from resting immune cells and identified separate stages of cancer development in human breast tissue samples, separating cancerous regions from healthy ones without genetic modification.
The team is now automating the analysis pipeline and expanding to additional target structures for larger cohort validation. If reproducible at scale, surface glycan profiling could add a diagnostic layer alongside existing imaging and blood-based tests, particularly for solid-tumour cancers where early-stage specificity remains a clinical gap. (ScienceDaily)
One to watch
Lansdowne Partners (London) hit a €128.9 million ($150 million) first close on May 14 for a new VC fund dedicated to scaling UK university spin-outs into global companies. Anchored by the British Business Bank, Aviva Investors, and Lloyds Banking Group, the fund targets a €171.9 million ($200 million) cap with a second close planned for December 2026.
Investment focus areas include quantum computing, advanced materials, healthcare data, semiconductors, and defence technology. Lansdowne was an early backer of Oxford Science Enterprises, Oxford Nanopore, Raspberry Pi, and Helsing.
The new vehicle is the institutional structure designed to repeat that pattern at the next layer of the UK research stack. Its timing alongside the Scaleup Europe Fund is not accidental: the fund is positioned to be a supply-side counterpart to the EU's demand for scale-up-ready European deeptech companies. (EU-Startups)