Pathfounders Newsletter: All the news this week; plus, "LUSH", the new Pathfounders retreat

Before we get into what’s happened this week, here’s something fun for you:

We’re launching LUSH: A Pathfounders Founder/Investor winter-sun retreat, right after Slush (but you don’t have to go to Slush to attend!)

‘LUSH’ is the new Pathfounders, by application only, retreat for founders, investors and ecosystem players designed specifically to generate those conversations. 

The experience:

Applying doesn't commit you to anything or take a payment. If you're selected, you'll get the full itinerary and booking details.

Deadline to apply: Midnight, Sept 30

Included:

Week ending 25 September 2026

Consider the Top 5 Stories a takeaway you can use over dinner table conversation on the weekend. Europe's defence and AI-infrastructure (note, I said infrastructure) startups are raising more money. Meanwhile, the frontier AI labs have spent most of the week trying to explain why their agents keep breaking into other people's systems. As Artur from Mistral said this week (to paraphrase), all this talk of AI danger is a good way to obfuscate from the fact that the AI frontier labs are either building bad cybersecurity systems and/or just flat out breaking the law. You can almost hear the Comms Strategists saying: ”Let’s all call it ‘killer AI ’, m’kay”?

Tekever's $580M Series D possibly makes it Europe's defining defence-tech scale-up
The Lisbon-founded maker of AI-enabled autonomous drones and surveillance systems (which now also has a large UK manufacturing presence) has banked $580M in the first close of a Series D at a $6.4B valuation (according to most news outlets), roughly five times its previous price. Baillie Gifford is in, and UC Investments is making its first direct European bet. The raise landed straight after Tekever won a contract worth up to £400M to replace the British Army's Watchkeeper drones, and the company is calling this only a first close, so the round (and possibly the price) may yet go up.
Why it matters: Defence tech in Europe is entering a growth stage during this cycle, in part because many of the companies are winning sovereign contracts from governments, not just the main Defence Primes. So that’s the new benchmark.
Read: Tech.eu ·  Tech Funding News ·  FT ·  Resilience Media

Nscale files for a US listing at up to $35bn — and the ByteDance questions follow it to the SEC
The UK AI-infrastructure start-up filed for a New York IPO seeking a valuation of up to $35bn, off the back of a huge contract to supply compute to Anthropic. The FT reported that ByteDance (Chinese-owned, remember?) was Nscale's largest customer last year, although this barely features reports, some of which imply that a ByteDance subsidiary is accessing Nvidia chips in a way that sidestepped US rules. Board member Nick Clegg, the former Meta guys and UK politician, holds more than 917,000 shares, worth roughly £30m at the target price. He may eve start to rival Tony Blair in post-politics wealth (at least in UK terms).
Why it matters: This was a decent test of whether a British-born AI infra company would choose New York over London to float.
Read: FT ·  FT (2) ·  Sifted ·  Guardian ·  Silicon Republic ·  FT (3)

Verda (ex-DataCrunch) becomes Finland's newest unicorn with a $189M raise for a cheaper, European AI cloud
Helsinki's Verda has raised $189M (€164.8M), an oversubscribed Series B plus additional investment led by Emergence Capital, with MUFG Innovation Partners, Supermicro, pension insurer Varma, Lifeline Ventures, byFounders and Tesi among the backers. It takes total funding past $450M and the valuation past $1B. Verda says it is cash-flow positive and can undercut AWS, Azure and Google Cloud by up to 90%. Founder Ruben Bryon built his first server rack in a Helsinki garage in 2020.
Why it matters: A profitable, sovereign European ‘neocloud' funded partly by Nordic pension money is leaning into the requirment for soverign compute in Europe. Whether it can actually deliver that 90% cost saving will be answered when US hyperscalers decide to take them out or not. And they probably could.
Read: EU-Startups ·  Tech Funding News ·  ArcticStartup ·  Tech.eu ·  Sifted

Anthropic and Nvidia back Basecamp Research's $140M Series C for AI-designed medicines
London's Basecamp Research, founded in 2019, uses AI plus proprietary biodiversity data to design next-generation treatments for cancer, autoimmune and other diseases. Its $140M Series C features Nvidia and, as a new investor, Anthropic. Other new investors are Catalio, the NATO Innovation Fund, Rockefeller, European Tech Collective and the UK government’s Sovereign AI Fund. Returning investors include Firebrand, River Capital King Philanthropies, and Redalpine. Basecamp was founded by doctor Glen Gowers and doctor Oliver Vince and is based on the co-founders' PhD studies in synthetic biology and bioengineering and a 2019 expedition to Iceland's Vatnajökull ice cap, where they set up the first off-grid DNA sequencing operation.
Why it matters: Anthropic investing shows is further evidence that frontier labs may no longer just sell API access, but will also take strategic stakes in application-layer companies, not just selling them API access. This has implications for European companies who are typically application layer rather than frontier plays. It also shows AI+bio could be a strong suit for Euroean founders.
Read: Tech.eu ·  Sifted

Legora's valuation reset: $300M talks at $8.5B, down from the $10B+ it was chasing five weeks ago
According to Bloomberg, the legal-AI company was in talks to raise at least $300M at an $8.5B pre-money valuation. That’s a long way from the $5.6B set by its $600M Series D in April, but it is below the $10B-plus Legora was reportedly seeking only weeks earlier. Is sanity starting to prevail or did they over-egg the earlier pudding? Or is the market cooling for legal tech? You decide. It’s worth noting that also this week the Berlin legal-AI scale-up Noxtua, spun out of Oxford and Imperial research in 2017, launched its first product in 2024 and now counts 30,000-plus users, about 100 staff and six European offices. It closed a €100M+ Series C.
Why it matters: Hot vertical-AI might be hitting price resistance. Or maybe there are too many legal tech startups, and the frontier labs got better? Noxtua raising €100M+ and a wave of AI-native professional-services firms arriving (see below), legal AI is getting crowded, right?
Read: Tech Funding News

Kontext raises $4M to vet AI agents' actions before they happen
Munich's Kontext, just four people, sets policy controls that approve or block what AI agents do before they act, with an initial focus on banks, fintechs and software teams. 42CAP led, with a16z CSX and Germany's HTGF. Founders Jens Ernstberger and Michel Osswald say its runtime security for the agent era.
Read: Tech Funding News ·  Tech.eu

FintechOS raises $28M after reaching profitability, to push into the US
Existing backers Bek Ventures, IFC, Cipio Partners and Molten Ventures provided equity, with a senior debt facility from Santander CIB for the Romanian-founded, London-headquartered company. I can’t believe they are still going, after I wrote about them over 10 years ago on TechCrunch. So good. 
Read: The Recursive ·  Tech.eu

Revolut: a fresh security breach, and face payments
Customers were hit by another breach in the same week Revolut unveiled facial-recognition payments in the UK. Such a lovely company. 
Read: Sifted · Engadget 

Duqu raises €1.5M to advance cash against unpaid invoices
The Amsterdam startup's AI underwriting engine automates 95% of credit assessment and is also sold white-label to banks. Curiosity VC and No Such Ventures backed the pre-seed.
Read: EU-Startups ·  Tech.eu

Connect Ventures holds a $55M first close on an $80M Fund V
Anchored by the British Business Bank with Aldea, Sella and Molten returning, to back technical and deep-tech founders across Europe. 
Read: Tech.eu ·  Sifted

EU and EIB launch an institutional investors pact for scale-ups
The voluntary European Institutional Investors Pact aims to channel long-term pension and insurance money into tech; 13 institutions have signalled intent.
Read: EU-Startups

Debut and small funds
Forty.5 Ventures closed $30M for Southeast European pre-seed and seed. Belgium's NewSchool VC hit its €10M target, having been the country's most active investor in H1. Project Ventures launched a £5M Imperial College alumni fund. OWOW Venture Studio raised €2.65M from family offices for B2B industrial ventures. Phoenix Court (LocalGlobe, Latitude) announced partnerships with the British Business Bank and NatWest. A new solo GP firm hit a first close for AI and deep tech.
Read: The Recursive ·  Tech Funding News ·  EU-Startups ·  Tech.eu ·  EU-Startups (2) ·  Tech.eu (2) ·  Tech.eu (3) ·  Startups Magazine ·  Sifted

US money in Europe: a16z wants more, New York is coming
a16z wants to back more European startups but will not reopen an office. TFN finds US investors as active as UK ones in Europe. Sifted asks if New York is warming to European tech.
Read: Sifted ·  Tech Funding News ·  Sifted (2)

CSEM's Start-up Elevate gives five Swiss deep-tech startups CHF 50,000 of engineering support each; Bluelion, GENILEM and IMD/Innovaud announced new cohorts; Enterprise Nation and Visa Foundation launched AI for Every Business; Venturefest South and Barclays Eagle Labs launched VFS Connects; Swiss startups raised via crowdinvesting.
Read: Startupticker ·  Startupticker (2) ·  Startupticker (3) ·  Startupticker (4) ·  Startups Magazine ·  Startups Magazine (2) ·  Startupticker (5)

Schneider Electric offered €1.2B for Bulgaria's Shelly Group. Gen Digital approached GoDaddy. Delivery Hero's CEO stays on after Uber's takeover. EQT sold Zurich's Ontinue to Scotland's Quorum Cyber. Planik joins LogObject; Bosch deploys c.technology's vehicle platform; Taiwan Cement is buying Ukraine's IFCEM for up to €750M.
Read: The Recursive ·  FT ·  FT (2) ·  Startupticker ·  Startupticker (2) ·  Startupticker (3) ·  AIN.Capital

Tech.eu counted more than €1.7B across 70-plus European deals last week; Swiss tech raised over €1.1B in H1. Paris overtook London in the first AI Cities Index; TFN lists 20 industrial AI startups to watch; Sifted ranks Europe's top pre-seed investors. All-female teams still got just 2.5% of European equity in 2025; EU-Startups lists 10 funds for women founders.
Read: Tech.eu ·  Tech.eu (2) ·  Tech Funding News ·  Tech Funding News (2) ·  Sifted ·  EU-Startups ·  EU-Startups (2)

Northern Gritstone's CEO says selling to US acquirers is not failure; RSM on London vs New York for UK flotations; Lithuania's bootstrapped unicorn Oxylabs on why it never raised; and Central European VCs on 'building for a flip'.
Read: Sifted ·  UKTN ·  The Recursive ·  Tech.eu

Cherry Ventures' Tatiana Shalalvand thinks Europe's first trillion-dollar company will be Nordic. An early-stage GP says 'boring is where the value hides'. Plus: five European success stories investors passed on, and what investors look for in founders.
Read: Tech Funding News ·  Tech Funding News (2) ·  EU-Startups ·  The Recursive

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