Europe's founders spent the week arguing about paperwork. More than a hundred of them signed a letter giving legislators 100 days to stop EU Inc, the proposed single European company form, from being negotiated into something nobody would use.
In the same week, an Italian acquirer bought one of the continent's best-known scaleups for a tenth of its 2022 price. The rules for building a European company and the price of selling one are both being set now, in rooms that rarely talk to each other.
Policy & Regulation
Founders put a 100-day clock on EU Inc
The letter, signed by Daniel Ek, Sonali De Rycker, Niklas Zennström, and founders from Alan, ElevenLabs, Lovable, and Synthesia, defends five features of the Commission's March proposal. The two under real pressure are broad eligibility and a single central registry.
Member States want EU Inc limited to "innovative companies", and they want the registry to be an interface over 27 national systems rather than one European record. Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee takes amendments this month, with a Competitiveness Council discussion to follow.
A company form available only to a contested subset of firms is not a standard. The signatories are betting that saying so now is cheaper than fixing it in 2029.
(EU-INC)
The Ombudsman asks who the industrial AI envoy works for
Emily O'Reilly's office opened an inquiry into how the Commission appointed Siemens chairman Jim Hagemann Snabe as Special Envoy for Industrial AI. It follows the Commission's failure to answer a June letter from Corporate Europe Observatory, LobbyControl, Transparency International, and the Good Lobby.
Snabe took the mandate on 3 June and holds it until 31 March 2027, while remaining chairman of a company that declares at least EUR 3.5 million a year in Brussels lobbying spend. Forty MEPs have asked separately about the transparency of the process.
The inquiry is narrow, since it concerns an unanswered letter rather than the appointment itself. It still tests how the Commission staffs the advisory layer around industrial AI, the layer with the least formal accountability and the most access.
(Contexte)
The Cyber Resilience Act clock started, and the platform was there
We flagged this deadline last week. On 11 September, ENISA's Single Reporting Platform went live on schedule, and manufacturers of products with digital elements became obliged to report actively exploited vulnerabilities within 24 hours.
A full notification follows within 72 hours, and a final report within 14 days of a fix. ENISA published FAQs and user guidance alongside the launch.
An EU digital platform shipping on its stated date is worth recording. The open question is volume: the number of reports filed this autumn will show whether manufacturers know the obligation exists.
Industry asks for a quarter of the next EU budget
At DIGITALEUROPE's board meeting in Brussels, the association asked for 25% of the proposed EUR 2 trillion 2028-2034 budget to go to critical and digital technologies, against roughly 7% today. It also wants the EUR 450 billion European Competitiveness Fund and its EUR 51.5 billion Digital Leadership window protected in negotiation.
The energy half of the pitch is more concrete: a binding 32% electrification target by 2030, and grid and digital infrastructure permits issued within 12 months. EU industrial electricity costs about twice what it does in the United States, and that number decides where data centres get built.
(Tech.eu)
Capital & Investment
Bending Spoons buys Miro for a tenth of its 2022 price
The Milan company agreed on 10 September to pay $1.355 billion in cash for the Amsterdam collaboration platform, an equity value near $1.79 billion once net cash is counted. Miro was valued at $17.5 billion in 2022 and carries roughly $600 million in annual recurring revenue, almost 90% of it from business and enterprise accounts.
Some Miro shareholders are rolling $295 million of their proceeds into new Bending Spoons stock. Five weeks ago the same buyer took Airtable at $1.28 billion.
Europe now has a domestic buyer for software companies that raised at 2021 multiples. That is real market infrastructure, and it prices the decade's growth rounds honestly.
Fewer than one in ten European startups now reaches Series A
Antler puts the seed-to-Series A conversion rate at 9.3% for the 2023 cohort, down from 23.3% across 2008 to 2019. Pre-seed funding grew 197% between 2016 and 2025 while the number of Series A deals rose 5%.
The cause is investor supply, not founder quality. Active pre-seed and seed investors have fallen 42% since 2022, Series A investors 44.7%, and new entrants at early stage 45.2%.
Antler costs the repair at $2.74 billion, about a tenth of what Europe's fastest-growing unicorns have raised. A European Competitiveness Fund could cover that, which makes the budget fight above the same story told from the other end.
(Tech.eu)
Greenly buys Normative as carbon accounting consolidates
Paris-based Greenly acquired Stockholm's Normative in a EUR 64.7 million deal announced on 11 September, combining two of the larger emissions datasets in the sector. The merged company targets EUR 50 million of software ARR within three years, up from EUR 30 million.
This is the fourth carbon accounting acquisition this year, after Optera, Minimum, and Plan A. The Omnibus cut the number of companies obliged to report under CSRD, and the sector is now consolidating into the smaller market that regulation left behind.
The EIF puts EUR 30 million into a Finnish agrifood fund
The European Investment Fund committed up to EUR 30 million to Nordic Foodtech VC's second fund, taking the Helsinki manager close to its EUR 80 million target after a EUR 40 million first close in April 2025. The fund backs about 30 pre-seed and seed companies in agriculture, food, aquaculture, and biosolutions, including university spinouts.
Read it against the Antler numbers. Public money is one of the few sources still writing first cheques in Europe, and this one is doing it in the Nordics rather than the usual three capitals.
(EIF)
Talent & Workforce
Mistral's robotics chief leaves to raise EUR 200 million of his own
Olivier Duchenne, who ran the robotics unit Mistral AI started in December 2025, is raising a EUR 200 million seed for a new venture called Ora at a target EUR 1 billion post-money valuation. The plan is a data factory staffed by human teleoperators, feeding a physical-AI model trained on real deployments.
Mistral closed a EUR 3 billion round at EUR 21 billion a week earlier. Europe's largest AI company is now big enough to have alumni, and the first of them is asking for a seed round larger than most European Series C.
(Sifted)
One to Watch
Von der Leyen's State of the Union on 16 September
The Commission President speaks to Parliament in Strasbourg at 09:00 CEST on Wednesday. The tech files on her desk are the Cloud and AI Development Act and Chips Act 2.0, both tabled on 3 June and both still in Parliament's preparatory phase with negotiating teams unconfirmed.
Watch whether the speech adds new instruments or commits to finishing what is already tabled. Watch too whether EU Inc gets named, in a week when its supporters started counting down from 100.