The European Commission and EQT launched the €5 billion Scaleup Europe Fund on June 26, built specifically to keep growth-stage tech companies raising their late rounds, and their listings, in Europe. Four days later, Finnish quantum computer maker IQM did exactly what the fund exists to prevent.
IQM completed a SPAC merger and began trading on Nasdaq on July 1, the first European quantum company on a major US exchange.
That is the week's real tension. Europe now has serious late-stage capital, but its most prominent deep-tech companies are still choosing to list somewhere else.
Startups & Funding
The Scaleup Europe Fund goes live with Denmark's EIFO as anchor
Denmark's state export-credit bank EIFO committed €200 million to the new €5 billion Scaleup Europe Fund on June 26, becoming its only state-backed anchor investor. EQT manages the fund; other founding backers include the European Commission (€1 billion), Novo Holdings, Germany's Allianz, and Spain's CriteriaCaixa and Santander.
The fund will back 30 to 40 growth-stage companies from Series B onward, across AI, quantum, robotics, energy tech, space, biotech, and agritech. First investment is expected in autumn 2026.
The design answers a specific complaint: Europe builds companies, then loses them at the growth stage because the capital isn't there. Whether €5 billion is enough to change that calculus is the thing to track.
(Bloomberg / Tech Funding News)
IQM becomes the first European quantum company on Nasdaq
IQM Quantum Computers completed its SPAC merger with Real Asset Acquisition Corp on July 1, with shares beginning to trade on Nasdaq as IQMX around July 2. The SEC declared IQM's registration effective on June 5, and shareholders voted to approve the deal on June 25.
The Finnish company builds superconducting quantum computers and is one of nine European startups worth a combined $12.3 billion that have chosen the SPAC route to a US listing this year, the highest annual tally since 2021.
Paris-based nuclear firm Newcleo and French quantum company Pasqal are taking the same path. All three could have waited for funds like Scaleup Europe. None of them did.
(TechCrunch / Bloomberg)
Estonia's Vegvisir raises from Iron Wolf Capital to connect allied unmanned systems
Tallinn-based Vegvisir secured new funding from Iron Wolf Capital on June 29 to expand its command-and-control platform, which lets operators coordinate manned and unmanned military systems across land, air, maritime, and underwater domains through one interface.
The company's software is already tested or deployed in nine countries, with the Australian Army running it in unmanned M113 vehicle experiments. The funding follows a communications-module launch at Eurosatory, the Paris defence show, and will fund the shift from product development toward operational deployments across NATO states.
(Tech.eu / Baltic Times)
AVP and Earlybird close first €500M for European defence startups
AVP and Earlybird held the first close of a €500 million fund on June 30, aimed squarely at a gap the two firms have flagged repeatedly: 85% of NATO-aligned defence tech venture funding still goes to US companies, not European ones.
Major banks and corporates are backing the vehicle as limited partners, with a first investment expected by late summer. It lands the same week as BAE Systems' separate €50 million commitment to European defencetech-focused VC funds, announced earlier in June.
Products & Technology
EuroHPC opens its quantum computers to outside researchers for the first time
The EuroHPC Joint Undertaking launched its first quantum access pilot on June 25, letting European researchers, public institutions, and companies apply for free time on four quantum machines: Euro-Q-Exa and VLQ (superconducting), Lucy (photonic), and Piast-Q (trapped-ion).
Applications run on a rolling monthly basis, with the first cutoff on August 1. Two more systems are planned in the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
The point is access, not ownership. Labs and startups can test real applications across competing quantum hardware types before committing to one, on infrastructure Europe already paid to build.
Climate & Energy
Newcleo's SPAC path puts a number on Europe's appetite for nuclear-waste reactors
Paris-based Newcleo, which builds small reactors that run on recycled nuclear waste, agreed on June 29 to merge with Nasdaq-listed NewHold Investment Corp III, securing up to $429 million in cash. The company has raised $780 million in private capital since 2021 and has not yet turned a profit.
Newcleo's technology addresses two problems at once: it generates power and it consumes existing nuclear waste stockpiles rather than adding to them. The SPAC route gives it public-market cash without waiting on an IPO window that hasn't fully reopened for pre-profit industrial companies in Europe.
Research & Deep Tech
TU Wien finds quantum entanglement inside a crystal you can hold in your hand
Physicists at TU Wien reported strong quantum entanglement in a centimetre-sized crystal of a "strange metal" for the first time, using a measurement tool called quantum Fisher information to detect groups of at least nine entangled particles acting collectively. The result appeared in Nature Physics in late June.
Quantum effects are usually confined to single atoms or photons. Finding clear, measurable entanglement in an object large enough to hold links solid-state physics and quantum information theory in a way that could inform new approaches to quantum materials and sensors.
(Phys.org / SciTechDaily)
One to Watch
Whether Scaleup Europe's first checks land before more companies follow IQM to Nasdaq
The Scaleup Europe Fund's first investment isn't expected until autumn 2026. Until then, every growth-stage European deep-tech company weighing a US SPAC has no live counterexample to point to, only a fund that exists on paper.
Watch the fund's first three portfolio companies once they're announced. If they're the kind of company that might otherwise have taken the Newcleo or Pasqal route, the fund is working. If they're smaller, safer bets, the SPAC pipeline to Nasdaq keeps being the default exit for Europe's biggest deep-tech swings.