Late-Stage and Growth Rounds
The headline raise of the day belongs to Helsinki-based AI infrastructure company Verda (formerly DataCrunch), which closed a $189M Series B led by Emergence Capital. The oversubscribed round pushed the company to unicorn status and will fund expansion of its full-stack AI cloud and compute capacity.
- Verda: $189M, Series B, led by Emergence Capital
- Noxtua: more than €100M, Series C, with C.H.BECK taking a majority stake in the Berlin-founded legaltech that spun out of research at Oxford University and Imperial College London
- Morphotonics: more than €40M, Series B, undisclosed lead; the Netherlands-based deeptech company manufactures optical components for AI glasses and augmented reality waveguides
Series A Rounds
Mid-stage activity was anchored by two focused platforms in life sciences and identity verification.
- Biolevate: €30M, Series A, undisclosed lead; the company automates scientific and regulatory workflows for life sciences organisations
- Baselayer: $35M, Series A, led by M13; the startup helps financial institutions verify businesses, assess fraud risk, and now extends that capability to AI agents
Seed and Early-Stage Rounds
Seed activity was notably broad, covering rare materials, defence communications, photonic hardware, AI agents for IT, and sales tooling.
- StandardX: £10M seed, co-led by VSquared and East X; the startup focuses on rare materials sourcing and processing
- Terasi: €11M seed, co-led by the NATO Innovation Fund; the Stockholm-based company builds battlefield communication technology
- Lightspring: €3M seed, led by Atlantic and OVNI Capital; the Besancon-based startup manufactures optical interfaces for photonic integrated circuits
- Primo: $8M, undisclosed stage, led by Headline and Global Founders Capital; the Paris-based platform deploys autonomous AI agents for corporate IT operations
- Zeliq: €7M seed extension, led by The Moon Venture; the sales prospecting platform is building an agentic revenue workspace
- CIOC Energy: €3M, minority investment from renewable energy developer CleverNett; the Belgian company optimises solar and battery systems
Fund Raise
- Connect Ventures: $55M first close of its fifth fund, targeting deeptech founders across Europe
Trends and Editorial Perspective
September 23 reinforced two durable themes running through European venture in 2026. First, AI infrastructure is attracting capital at scale, with Verda's unicorn round demonstrating that European investors and their US counterparts are willing to write large cheques for compute and cloud platforms that sit beneath the application layer. Second, the defence and deep hardware stack is maturing past the novelty stage. Terasi drawing NATO Innovation Fund co-leadership and Morphotonics closing a substantial Series B for optical manufacturing both suggest that patient, capital-intensive categories are finding dedicated pools of funding rather than competing for generalist growth dollars. The spread of raises from €3M to $189M in a single day also points to a market that is functioning across all stages, which is a healthier sign than a landscape dominated only by late-stage activity.