Ten Deals Took Most of Europe’s August Tech Money

Ten companies took 60.5 per cent of Europe’s August tech funding, or most of the €3.2 billion that landed across 165 rounds. July had put €8.6 billion to work across 267 deals, so the cash drop was about 63 per cent and the deal drop about 38 per cent.

The UK booked €1.4 billion. ESA, the European Investment Bank, PIMCO, SoftBank and a UK state fund wrote several of the other large cheques, and 155 rounds split about €1.26 billion that was left.

Ten Rounds Took 60.5% of the Month

Only 10 of those 165 rounds cleared €100 million, and the value of 32 deals was not disclosed. Artificial intelligence still led by sector, at €677.1 million, around 21 per cent of the month, after €1.8 billion in July, a fall of about 62 per cent. Software, fintech, semiconductors, security, healthtech, robotics, energy and space still drew money. It just drew it in a much shorter list of names.

THE AUGUST LEADERBOARD

Three of those ten lines are not startup venture rounds in the usual sense. PLD Space took a European Space Agency award, Ingenico took a PIMCO-led cheque, and Elekta took an EIB research facility. The August ranking mixed venture cheques and public contracts on one tape.

The UK Booked Four Mega-Deals and €1.4 Billion

Britain was the largest market, at €1.4 billion, about 44 per cent of all European tech funding in the month, across 51 of the 165 deals. Four of the ten largest names sat there: OLIX, Cambridge Aerospace, Volta and Nexeon.

That is a cash share far above the deal share. The rest of Europe still closed rounds. It closed smaller ones. Sweden placed the single biggest cheque, Lovable, and an EIB line for Elekta. Spain placed PLD Space and HappyRobot. Switzerland placed Gravis Robotics. France placed Ingenico. Germany, which often argues with London for the second slot, did not appear on this ten at all.

A fatter spring still sits on the same calendar. The €7.5 billion European tech raised in March was more than double August. The summer month did not dry up because founders stopped building. It dried up because the money that still moved went to a few UK and Nordic names, plus two Spanish files and one French payments group.

Lovable’s Cheque Came From Menlo and an EU Fund

Stockholm-based Lovable raised $400 million in Series C on 12 August at a $13.3 billion valuation, double the $6.6 billion mark set with a $330 million round in December 2025. Menlo Ventures led. The Scaleup Europe Fund, managed by EQT, co-led. New money arrived from Balderton Capital and Carmignac in Europe, Kaszek Ventures and LTS Growth in Latin America, Tencent and World Innovation Lab in Asia, and Regent in the United States. Accel, Antler, CapitalG, DST Global, Evantic Capital, HubSpot Ventures and Salesforce Ventures came back in.

The company said annual recurring revenue had nearly tripled from $200 million and was tracking toward $600 million by the end of August. Its own announcement counts 60 million projects and 900 million visits a month on apps built since launch in November 2024, with employees at nearly two-thirds of the Fortune 500 using the product. It plans to grow to about 450 people this year, keep headquarters in Stockholm, and add staff in London, Boston, San Francisco and New York. Adidas, NVIDIA, Deutsche Telekom, Zendesk, Handshake and Checkr are among the companies named as users.

Chief executive Anton Osika used the round to say Lovable would become a place to run a business, not only to prompt one into existence. The national cheer was real. Gustaf Alströmer, a general partner at Y Combinator, wrote, “I am proud to be Swedish today.” The lead firm on the term sheet is still a Menlo Park venture house. The EU fund’s presence is how a European institution stayed in the room.

Anton, Fabian, and the Lovable team have built one of the most ambitious and fastest-growing AI companies we’ve seen. They prove that Europe has no shortage of exceptional founders. We’re excited to co-lead this investment in Lovable through the Scaleup Europe Fund, which reflects exactly why the Fund was established: to help Europe’s most ambitious technology companies become global leaders.

Victor Englesson, Partner at EQT and Co-Head of the Scaleup Europe Fund, Lovable Series C announcement

Osika posted the same raise from his own account the morning it closed.

https://x.com/antonosika/status/2087479638939652601

Chips, Interceptors and a Seven-Month-Old Cloud

OLIX, founded in London in 2024 by James Dacombe, then 25, announced a $312 million Series B at $3.3 billion on 3 August, up from about $1 billion after a $220 million round in February. Fundomo, Arm and Hudson River Trading joined, with Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings among the angels. Hummingbird Ventures, Crane, Plural, Creandum, Phoenix Court and Transition all increased their stakes. The company appointed Nick McKeown, co-inventor of software-defined networking, to its board and Matt Briers, the former Wise chief financial officer, as CFO. It employs more than 140 people in London, Bristol, Toronto, Austin and San Francisco.

The first chip, DX-1, is a decode accelerator for the stage where a model writes its output. OLIX says that for models of about 100 billion parameters, DX-1 can deliver more than 10,000 tokens per second per user, using on-chip SRAM and no high-bandwidth memory. First customer racks are due in the second half of 2027. Kanishka Narayan, the UK AI minister, said the government’s Sovereign AI venture fund had backed the company: “The future of AI will be built on chips that power models. Countries that build chips will build leverage.”

Cambridge Aerospace, also founded in 2024 and led by chief executive Steven Barrett, raised $300 million in Series C at a $3.4 billion valuation, led by DFJ Growth, with Lux Capital, Accel, Lakestar, Never Lift, Ora Global and Elad Gil & Co. in the round. That followed a $200 million Series B at $1.3 billion in April. The firm sells the Skyhammer drone interceptor, the Starhammer missile interceptor and the Looking Glass radar, and it has UK Ministry of Defence contracts, including work under the Low-Cost Effectors & Autonomous Platforms programme. Barrett said the new money would scale manufacturing “to meet the pace of threats and the needs of allied nations.” Defence Secretary Wes Streeting called Skyhammer “an example of the low-cost interceptor missiles our Armed Forces need.”

Volta, founded in January by Ricard Boada and Sofia Gumuzio, two former Brookfield infrastructure executives, raised $300 million at a $2.4 billion valuation, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Altimeter Capital, with Nvidia and Michael Dell in the round. The company said it had a $10 billion, six-year contract to supply cloud capacity to a leading AI developer it declined to name, plus $5 billion of financing from Spanish infrastructure firm Azora, and about 1 gigawatt of near-term power. The first large site is a hydropower campus in Norway leased from Bitdeer. Volta also plans sites in Texas and Wyoming. It is a London-headquartered financier of GPU halls more than a model lab, and it is one of the four UK names that ate so much of August.

Who Wrote August’s Biggest Cheques?

SoftBank, ESA, PIMCO, the EIB and the UK’s National Wealth Fund sat on the same top-ten list as Menlo, DFJ Growth and Andreessen Horowitz. That is the other split in the month: several of the winners were not competing for a classic Series B, and several of the writers of those cheques were not European venture partnerships. Gravis Robotics, the ETH Zurich spinout that turns excavators into autonomous machines, took a $200 million Series A from SoftBank. HappyRobot, placed in Spain’s column, announced a $150 million Series C at $1.2 billion on 4 August, led by Prysm Capital and co-led by Eurazeo, with Andreessen Horowitz, Base10 and Y Combinator returning. Chief executive Pablo Palafox said the company had more than 150 enterprise customers, among them DHL, Kuehne + Nagel, Naturgy, Repsol and Uber, had grown fivefold since its Series B, and now has about 200 staff. Total funding is about $200 million.

PUBLIC AND STRATEGIC CHEQUES

• ESA contract: PLD Space received €158.9 million under the European Launcher Challenge, funded mainly by Spain with a German contribution, to ramp MIURA 5 launches through 2030 and add propulsive landing.
• EIB facility: Elekta secured up to €100 million from the European Investment Bank for cancer and neurological treatment research running through 2029.
• PIMCO group: Ingenico took €150 million from a PIMCO-led investor group for cloud-based payment acceptance.
• National Wealth Fund: Nexeon raised €116.7 million for silicon anode materials, with the UK’s National Wealth Fund among the backers.
• Sovereign AI fund: The UK government fund joined OLIX’s Series B, alongside Arm, as London tried to put a domestic name into inference silicon.

PLD Space, founded in 2011 in Elche by Raúl Torres and Raúl Verdú, is already past the ESA line. On 1 September it added €108 million to its Series C, led again by Mitsubishi Electric, taking that round to €288 million and funding to date to €488 million, with more than 500 staff. The August ranking still counted the ESA award, not the later equity, which is a reminder that the monthly top ten is a mix of contracts, loans and stock.

Germany Led Exits as 155 Rounds Split the Rest

Exit activity slowed with the fundraising. Europe recorded 37 exits in August, down from 51 in July. Germany led that tape with 12 transactions, about 32 per cent of the total. The UK had six. The country that took 44 per cent of the fresh equity did not take the sales.

After the ten largest files, about €1.26 billion remained for 155 rounds. Some of those amounts were never published, so the leftover pool is a ceiling on what the middle of the market can claim, not a precise average. What the tape does show is that a 6 per cent slice of deal count, 10 rounds out of 165, took 60.5 per cent of the cash. The other founders still raised. They raised in a month that reserved almost two thirds of the money for ten names, four of them British, two of them Swedish, and three of them paid by ESA, PIMCO or the EIB rather than a Series B.

August Printed the Same €3.2 Billion as Last Year

The headline total is not a new floor. It is a repeat. European tech also raised last August’s €3.2 billion total, that time across 189 deals, with eight companies above €100 million and the top ten taking about 59 per cent. Deal count this August was 24 lower. The number of nine-figure files rose from eight to ten. Concentration was already the summer pattern. It tightened a little, and the names changed.

AUGUST 2025 AND AUGUST 2026

The UK’s August haul rose from €907.9 million to €1.4 billion against a frozen continental total, so London and its satellites took share from everyone else. Last summer’s largest European file was Bending Spoons’ €500 million of debt in Milan, and energy led the sector table at €746.9 million. This August’s largest file was a Stockholm coding platform, and the next rungs were an inference chip, a counter-drone firm and a seven-month-old GPU financier. Same €3.2 billion. Different winners. A thinner middle.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Is the PLD Space Award Different From a Venture Round?

It is a European Space Agency contract under the European Launcher Challenge, not a priced equity round, and ESA originally capped awards at €169 million per company before member states raised the programme pot to about €900 million at the November 2025 ministerial in Bremen. Spain provided the bulk of PLD Space’s €158.9 million, with Germany adding a contribution, split between a commercial launch ramp through 2030 and an “Upgraded Orbital Capacity” track that funds heavier payloads, higher orbits and propulsive landing. Germany’s Isar Aerospace (€197.8 million) and Rocket Factory Augsburg (€186.9 million) signed ELC contracts in the same batch.

When Will OLIX Deliver Its First DX-1 Chips?

OLIX says the Series B funds delivery of DX-1 to first customers in the second half of 2027, after a tape-out planned for later this year, with racks that include the chip, optical links and a deterministic compiler rather than a standalone processor sold into someone else’s server. The design skips high-bandwidth memory and advanced packaging, which the company presents as a way around the parts shortage that has slowed other silicon startups. Hiring is listed across silicon, photonics, compiler and systems engineering in London, Bristol, Austin, Toronto and San Francisco.

What Is the Scaleup Europe Fund?

It is an EQT-managed vehicle set up to put European institutional capital into late-stage technology companies, and Lovable was among its early direct investments, with Victor Englesson, a partner at EQT, serving as co-head. The fund co-led the $400 million Series C alongside Menlo Ventures, which is how an EU-backed cheque sat on Europe’s largest August round even though a US firm had the lead. Englesson described the mandate as helping European companies become global leaders rather than selling early.

What Did Lovable Raise Before the August Series C?

In December 2025 it raised $330 million at a $6.6 billion valuation, a round Menlo Ventures also led, with CapitalG as co-lead, after Accel had led a $200 million Series A at $1.8 billion in July 2025. PitchBook records about $1.05 billion raised across the company’s life by the time of the Series C. The August round therefore roughly doubled the December valuation in eight months and extended a cap table that already included Accel, Antler, CapitalG, DST Global and Salesforce Ventures.

Elekta’s EIB line is written to fund research through 2029, so one of August’s ten files will still be drawing money long after the month’s tape is closed. The other nine already have the cash.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on completed funding rounds, contracts and monthly tallies, and it is for information only. It is not investment advice, a solicitation to buy or sell securities, or a recommendation of any company, fund or financial product named above. Readers who are considering an investment in private or public technology companies should consult a qualified financial adviser or licensed investment professional who can review their circumstances. Deal sizes, valuations and headcounts reflect company statements and the August 2026 funding tallies cited here and may be revised as later filings appear.