Can you believe it?

Hi there,

Another week has passed by, soon is Christmas and then we'll celebrate New Year's Eve and welcome 2024. Can you believe it? ;) Well before all of that,?here comes your weekly edition of the EU-Startups Newsletter with some interesting updates:

??? Startup Festival Malta:?Since yesterday morning I'm in Malta to visit the Startup Festival organised by Malta Enterprise. It was a great event so far, and representatives of Malta also?just announced the launch of a new Startup Framework?which sounded quite exciting. Later today there will be the PitchBlack pitch competition. After seeing this event, I'm more excited than ever before to host next year's edition of our EU-Startups Summit in Malta. See you there on May 9-10!

?? How to Web Conference 2023 has announced the winner of its grand investment prize of €880k - the startup Collabwriting from Serbia! Spotlight, the biggest competition for early-stage startups in the region, took place on the 2nd day of the conference. Out of more than 300 Eastern European startups registered, 40 participated in the Spotlight program and 6 of them made it to the grand final of the competition. Find out more about How to Web here.

?? Let’s talk about Coffee: With around two billion cups consumed globally daily, there are boundless opportunities for fresh and pioneering ideas. In honour of this week's International Coffee Day, we have curated a list of 10 promising European coffee startups to watch. Also diving into the coffee realm, Barcelona-based Incapto just secured €6 million to expand its specialty coffee subscription operations.

?? Fintech Startups: Based in Stockholm, Brite Payments secured an impressive €57.3 Million aiming to make instant bank payments across Europe a reality. The French startup Qobra snaped €10 million to make automated commission management the gold standard for sales teams. Düsseldorf-based getpaid raised €5.7 million to supercharge payments for B2B platforms and marketplaces.

?? AI Funding Boom: Cordys Analytics, an AI-powered software platform for electrocardiogram analysis which offers a new and innovative solution to detect heart diseases, just secured an extra €900k in seed fund. Unitary, an AI-powered visual moderation company from London, raised €14.3 million to further develop its ML capable of understanding the content and context of videos and images, and Amsterdam-based Orquesta secures €800K for its all-in-one LLM operations and integration platform.

???Team Communication/Management: Paris-based Kraaft just raised €3.2 million for its team messaging app focused on the construction industry. Barcelona-based HR SaaS unicorn Factorial recently acquired expense management startup Fuell. Does your team operate in a remote set-up? Our guest contributor Dr. Owain Rhys just shared his expertise on how to maintain a culture of collaboration within your team despite working from home.

?? VC News / Insights: Given the rise of Venture capital investments into climate tech within the last decade we asked prominent VCs focused on this area about the critical factors that truly influence their investment decisions. Find out what they told us here. Also this week, the Bristol-focused impact fund, BBRC has successfully deployed over €1 million into ventures addressing inequality, bringing the total city funds investment to over €11.5 million.

?? Environment focused Startups: Umiami, a food-tech company specialising in the production of plant-based alternatives to meat, just announced a new €32.5 million financing round, bringing the total amount secured to €100 million, and?FlexSea, based between London and Lisbon, has raised €2.3 million to replace single-use plastic with seaweed-derived materials.

Have a lovely Sunday evening!

Your EU-Startups Team