The funding will support early concept and feasibility work for a point-of-care test covering chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomoniasis, including sample preparation, antimicrobial resistance detection and the development of a complete product-development roadmap.

“Readily is committed to delivering accessible molecular diagnostics. A diagnosis should not depend on where you happen to live,” says Liza Löf, CEO of Readily Diagnostics. “This grant from the Gates Foundation lets us show that an accurate STI test can also be simple and affordable enough to use anywhere. That is the whole point of the technology we have built.”

Readily Diagnostics’ grant comes amid varied funding for decentralised and rapid diagnostics startups in Europe in 2026.

EU-Startups has reported around €34 million across adjacent announcements, including €5 million for Paris-based En Carta Diagnostics to advance at-home molecular tests for Lyme disease and STIs, €1.1 million for Germany’s Intu Diagnostics to develop its lab-free molecular testing platform, and €24 million in total financing secured by Dutch startup ShanX Medtech for rapid antimicrobial-susceptibility diagnostics.

Germany’s NanoStruct also raised €2.6 million for rapid bacterial detection, while, in Readily’s home market of Sweden, Stockholm-based Eyedentity secured €1.3 million for its AI-powered diagnostics platform.

Founded in 2022 and spun out of Uppsala University, Readily Diagnostics develops sensitive, specific and rapid diagnostic testing for infectious disease. The project targets three infections that cause hundreds of millions of new cases every year: chlamydia, gonorrhea and trichomoniasis.

The company explains that in many low- and middle-income countries, people are treated on symptoms alone, because accurate testing is too slow, too costly, or unavailable. This can result in missed infections, overused antibiotics, and continued transmission with risk of increased antibiotic resistance.

Readily is developing a point-of-care platform that delivers a molecular diagnostic result close to the patient, with no need for central laboratories. It builds on the same padlock-probe technology the company developed for respiratory infections, now redirected to STIs.

The test will be designed to run directly on a patient sample and with a cost built for the primary care, family planning, and HIV-prevention settings where testing is hardest to reach.

The platform will also be designed to detect genetic markers of antibiotic resistance in gonorrhea, which the World Health Organization lists as an urgent resistance threat.

Knowing whether an infection is resistant before treating it helps clinicians choose the right antibiotic for that patient, and protects the drugs that still work from further resistance development.

In accordance with the foundation’s global access principles, the project is designed from the outset to support an affordable and widely accessible product.

The post Tackling STI testing, Readily Diagnostics raises €811k for affordable alternative appeared first on EU-Startups.

Each factory can receive up to €10 million in federal funding over five years, matched by private partners. The goal is to produce more viable science-based spin-offs and shorten the path from laboratory research to commercial scale.

For Europe, the programme is a useful test case. Can a country with strong research, an established industrial base and a historically fragmented venture market build the conditions for globally competitive DeepTech companies?

The ten factories span regions with very different industrial and research profiles. Göttingen, Hannover and Braunschweig have strengths in life sciences; Aachen and Cologne in engineering and business; Rhine-Main in science, industry and finance.

Hamburg brings logistics and trade expertise, the Ruhr a dense industrial and university base, while Northern Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and Central Germany are major manufacturing and research regions. Berlin-Brandenburg adds a more internationally connected technology ecosystem, and the southwest has strong cross-border links.

The broader point is that DeepTech ecosystems tend to form around existing concentrations of research, industrial demand, specialist talent and capital.

Germany has to regain technological ground

The debate about DeepTech is often framed as a future risk. In several key technology fields, the race is already well under way. In AI, quantum computing and robotics, Europe is competing primarily with the United States and China. Germany’s high-tech Agenda reflects the political importance now attached to these fields.

Germany’s challenge is therefore larger than technology transfer alone. The country has strong research, experienced industrial companies, a substantial SME base and deep engineering expertise. What remains weaker is the mechanism for converting these assets into companies that can commercialise quickly, attract capital and scale internationally.

This is also a wider European problem. Research strength and industrial capability do not automatically translate into entrepreneurial outcomes. The links between universities, founders, corporates and investors remain uneven, particularly outside the largest technology hubs.

The timing matters

Germany’s traditional economic model is under pressure. According to an EY analysis, the country’s industrial sector shed roughly 124,000 jobs in 2025 alone. At the same time, an estimated 522,000 people worked in German startups and scale-ups in 2024.

That contrast captures a central economic question: how quickly can Germany turn scientific strength, industrial depth and engineering talent into the companies and jobs of the next decade?

New venture creation will not replace industrial employment one-for-one. But the ability to build new technology companies matters increasingly for productivity, investment and the renewal of industrial supply chains.

Stronger links between universities, founders, industry and investors are part of that shift, but the wider regulatory and financing environment remains decisive. Slow permitting, cautious capital and risk-averse hiring practices can constrain growth regardless of the quality of individual programmes.

Industry has to move earlier

For DeepTech companies, pitch events and mentoring are rarely enough. Many require test sites, laboratory access, technical validation, data, certification pathways and first reference customers before they can demonstrate commercial viability.

This is where Germany’s industrial base matters. Regions with concentrations of manufacturing, energy, chemicals or logistics companies can provide access to real operating environments where technologies are tested, refined and evaluated alongside potential customers.

Industrial validation reduces both technical and commercial uncertainty. A pilot can show whether a technology works outside the laboratory, whether customers are prepared to integrate it, and whether a founding team can operate within complex industrial organisations.

For investors, these signals often matter more than early market estimates. The sectoral challenge is to make access to industrial validation systematic rather than dependent on chance or personal networks.

Capital remains the hardest test

DeepTech financing remains one of Europe’s structural weaknesses. A 2026 industry report puts Europe’s annual DeepTech funding shortfall at €3.43 to 20.59 billion ($4 to $24 billion), with much of the gap concentrated at the growth stage.

The problem begins earlier. Research-based companies often require substantial capital before they have a finished product, meaningful revenue or even a fully formed commercial organisation. Development cycles are longer than in many software businesses, while technical risk remains high for longer.

This creates the familiar “Valley of Death” between scientific proof and an investable company. Teams may have strong intellectual property and validated research but lack the capital required for prototyping, certification, manufacturing preparation or customer trials.

Public funding can absorb some early risk, but it cannot substitute for a functioning private capital market. The harder question is whether companies can secure enough follow-on capital to remain in Europe through industrialisation and international expansion.

The next phase is execution

Twelve months in, the visible parts of the programme are largely in place. The more important questions now are about commercial outcomes.

Which teams reach paying customers? Which pilots become contracts? Which companies attract substantial follow-on capital? Which regions can attract specialist talent from abroad? And which companies can scale from Europe without eventually relocating headquarters, intellectual property or core operations elsewhere?

Those are the measures that matter beyond the Startup Factories themselves. They will show whether Germany is improving the underlying conditions for science-based company building or simply adding another layer to an already complex innovation system.

The central issue is whether Europe can create a more reliable path from research to industrial validation, private capital and global scale. Germany’s experience is useful because it shows, in practical terms, where that path remains weak.

The post The last piece to Germany’s DeepTech ecosystems? appeared first on EU-Startups.

This comes amid a notable year of growth for the Elche-based SpaceTech company, having raised an €180 million Series C in March, a €30 million EIB venture-debt facility in April, and a €35 million investment for its Launch Complex at the Guiana Space Centre in June – making 2026 a year of expansion for the launch company.

“ESA’s selection of PLD Space confirms the maturity of the roadmap we have been building for years: a European launch capability designed to grow with a bold footprint, with technology, industry and execution under our own control,” says Ezequiel Sánchez, Executive President of PLD Space .

Today’s announcement comes amid notable capital deployment across Europe’s SpaceTech sector in 2026.

EU-Startups has reported closed financings totalling approximately €672.5 million across satellite manufacturing and connectivity, Earth observation, propulsion, spacecraft components and space-based intelligence, including €450 million for Finland’s ICEYE, €61 million for Switzerland’s SWISSto12, €51 million for Hydrosat, €34 million for SatVu and €27 million for UNIVITY.

Spain is also represented by Castellón-based Arkadia Space, whose founders previously worked at PLD Space and which secured €14.5 million for green spacecraft propulsion.

“For PLD Space, this contract is not an isolated milestone. It is part of a disciplined execution path: from demonstrating our technology with MIURA 1, to proving orbital capability with MIURA 5, developing its upgraded orbital capacity to scale performance and advance reusability, and ultimately transferring those critical technologies to MIURA Next. This is how Europe builds sovereign access to space: with ambition, but also with execution,” adds Ezequiel.

Founded in 2011, PLD Space is a SpaceTech scale-up on a mission to transport satellites and people into space, vertically integrating the engineering, testing, manufacturing, and operations of its reusable and sustainable rockets.

Headquartered in Elche (Spain) and founded by Raúl Torres and Raúl Verdú, PLD Space’s family of MIURA launchers and LINCE crewed capsule position the company as a leader in European technological sovereignty for space transportation, covering the full spectrum of space missions.

At a time when access to space has become a defining factor of strategic autonomy, Europe is reshaping its launch landscape around resilience, competitiveness, and independence.

PLD Space says that today’s news reinforces the company’s role as a European launch provider building the technologies and industrial capacity required to secure reliable and sovereign access to orbit.

The award covers Components A and B of the European Launcher Challenge.

• Component A will support the consolidation of the company’s commercial orbital launch service and the ramp-up of its flight cadence until 2030, responding to growing commercial interest in the MIURA 5 launch vehicle across global market.
• Component B , focused on Upgraded Orbital Capacity, will support the development of enhanced capabilities for MIURA 5, designed to serve institutional and commercial missions that require greater payload capacity and orbital reach, as well as incorporate propulsive landing capabilities as a step toward reusability.

The development of MIURA 5’s upgraded orbital capacity is part of PLD Space’s technology roadmap and represents a strategic step toward MIURA Next – the company’s family of heavy launchers.

Key subsystems and upgrades developed under the Upgraded Orbital Capacity programme are being engineered for direct transferability to future heavy launch vehicles, allowing PLD Space to accelerate the path toward next-generation launch capabilities while reducing technical risk and maximizing technology investments.

This contract supports PLD Space’s position as one of Europe’s leading private space companies and advances its mission to provide sovereign, resilient, and competitive launch capabilities for Europe in the decades ahead.

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The round was led by Highland Europe, with existing investors Ace Ventures, ByFounders, and Y Combinator doubling down. Ace Ventures led the company’s €6.8 million ($8 million) Seed round in late 2024. 

“AI has made it easy to design proteins. Many teams can now create thousands of candidate molecules for a target in an afternoon. Finding out whether those molecules actually work is still the hard part. That requires a wet lab. But most wet labs were built for a world where scientists tested twenty designs per target, not two thousand. Adaptyv closes this gap,” ACE Ventures said. 

Founded by Julian Englert and Daniel Nakhaee-Zadeh Gutierrez, Adaptyv has built “an automated, AI-native lab” where the process starts with a digital protein sequence and ends with real experimental data. DNA is synthesised in-house, proteins are expressed cell-free, and binding is measured using SPR with built-in quality control. Customers can submit their designs through a web platform, or through an API, allowing AI agents to order their own experiments directly.

When ACE led Adaptyv’s Seed round in November 2024, the startup had only nine people and a lab that was beginning to see commercial demand. Fast forward to 2026: the team has tripled, revenue has grown roughly 10x, the company has brought DNA synthesis in-house, scaled lab automation, and even launched its Proteinbase competition platform, attracting “680 participants and 10,000 protein designs to one competition.”

Adaptyv has also shipped a public API now integrated with Boltz, Chai, Cradle, Tamarind, Latent Labs and Benchling. It now counts over 100 customers, including frontier AI labs, top 5 pharma companies and AI-native drug discovery startups.

The company recently ran a benchmark with Anthropic, sending 16 targets from its public design competitions to Claude Science and testing the resulting sequences, anonymised. According to the company, 95% of the 1,320 designs were expressed. 

“Out of 1,320 designs, 354 bound their target, giving Claude an average hit rate of 26.8%. Only a single target yielded 0 binders. Compared to the results of our Protein Design Competitions, Claude’s designs had noticeably higher success rates and would have won 5 out 6, yielding tighter binders,” reported the company 

The test showcased how Adaptyv is “becoming the place frontier labs go when they need real-world proof”. The company noted that Google DeepMind runs a similar validation loop, Chai Discovery used Adaptyv to validate its Chai-2 zero-shot antibody release, and Roche and Novo Nordisk run therapeutic design cycles roughly 4x faster than their internal pipelines. 

The new capital will fund two types of growth: horizontal expansion of lab capacity and vertical expansion into harder biology problems. On the horizontal side, the startup plans to roughly triple its lab capacity by the end of 2026 and keep growing through 2027.

On the vertical side, it intends to move beyond binding measurements, which is a market estimated to be worth “a few hundred million dollars a year”, into developability and full biophysical characterisation, next-generation modalities such as peptides, ADCs and degraders, and eventually cell-based function.

For the horizontal expansion, Adaptyv Bio has announced a new lab and office will open in London in the fourth quarter of 2026, alongside an expansion in Lausanne. The company plans to grow its team from 25 to around 60, with a focus on production, automation and software.

For its founders, the long-term goal is to build a biological gigafactory with enough automated experimental capacity for AI to learn from physical reality as quickly as it learns from text. Adaptyv’s goal is for lab throughput to no longer be the constraint on how fast biology can progress.

The post Lausanne-based Adaptyv raises €34.35 million Series A to build the automated lab for agentic biology appeared first on EU-Startups.

The round was co-led by Invest-NL and Alder Tree Investments, with participation from existing shareholders Horticoop, Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij (BOM), Future Food Fund, Graduate Ventures, Innovation Industries, VDL Groep and Goeie Grutten Impact Fonds. The round also includes a €2.7 million RVO innovation credit. Invest-NL has invested €4 million in this round. 

Erik Hertel, CEO of VitalFluid, explained, “This investment confirms the potential of our technology to make a fundamental contribution to a more sustainable and future-proof food system. It allows us to accelerate our commercial rollout and give more growers access to an effective alternative to chemical crop protection.”

Vitalfluid was founded in 2014 by Paul Leenders and Polo van Ooij and is a spin-out from Eindhoven University of Technology. The company specialises in developing Plasma Activated Water (PAW) applications, which provide a sustainable alternative to chemical pesticides and fertilisers. 

According to the company, stricter regulations, growing resistance, and rising concerns over biodiversity, water quality, and food residues are driving demand for sustainable alternatives that are effective, cost-competitive, and easily integrated into existing farming practices. 

VitalFluid claims to have developed such an alternative. The company transforms water, air, and electricity into plasma-activated water to boost plant health. In a thunderstorm, lightning causes the natural transformation of water into Plasma Activated Water (PAW). The Dutch startup replicates this natural process to create ‘lightning in a box’. 

This on-site PAW production provides a natural and sustainable alternative to the pesticides currently used to enhance plant health. VitalFluid mentions that its PAW has proven to be a safe, effective, and scalable solution for safeguarding vegetable cultivation without adverse effects.

The company notes that its machine can isolate and stabilise the reactive nitrogen and oxygen components in Plasma Activated Water, effectively protecting the plant against fungal diseases, without leaving any harmful residues.

VitalFluid reports that following successful commercial adoption by leading UK growers, including Hall Hunter Partnership, Angus Growers and EC Drummond, VitalFluid has already been deployed on more than 100 hectares of commercial strawberry production. This marks an important step from successful trials to large-scale commercial implementation, as per the startup. 

Daan Meijer and Florentine Beelaerts van Blokland, investment team at Invest-NL, said, “With this investment, Invest-NL supports a company that contributes to the structural sustainability of agriculture. In this way, we help create a more future-proof food system.”

The company plans to use this capital to accelerate commercial growth in the UK, support expansion into the US market, and enable further rollout in crops such as strawberries, apples, and grapes.

In April 2024, VitalFluid announced that it had secured €5 million in funding to accelerate its market introduction.

The post Eindhoven’s VitalFluid raises €17.2 million to protect crops with its “lightning in a box” technology appeared first on EU-Startups.

Join us for a conversation with Karin Fleck, the CEO and Founder of Vienna Textile Lab, an innovator in sustainable textile dyeing through biotechnology.

With a decade of experience in the oil and energy sector, Karin transitioned her expertise to address one of the fashion industry’s most pressing challenges: the environmental and human cost of synthetic dyes.

In this interview, she shares her journey from managing large-scale industrial projects to founding a company dedicated to creating bio-based, eco-friendly dyes derived from microorganisms. Discover how Vienna Textile Lab is transforming the textile industry by offering a commercially viable, safe, and sustainable alternative to traditional synthetic dyes.

The conversation also touches on the role of Women TechEU in supporting deep-tech startups and the importance of fostering a collaborative ecosystem to drive meaningful change in the industry.

Key Points

• The motivation behind transitioning from oil and energy to sustainable textile innovation.
• The process of transforming cultivated microorganisms into usable pigments for fabrics.
• The areas where bio-based pigments deliver the most significant environmental and social impact.
• The current state of industrial adoption and the challenges that remain.
• The primary concerns manufacturers have when evaluating new pigments.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

The Women TechEU scheme is an EU-funded project supporting women leading deep tech startup companies from Europe. As part of the consortium team implementing the programme, our mission is to foster inclusive innovation by supporting women-led startups, including under-represented deep tech sectors and European regions. We believe that diversity drives innovation, and we are here to provide women in deep tech with more opportunities, resources, and support in order to build market-shaping companies at global level.

Between 2026-2028, the current project consortium will run a continuous open call with 4 cut-off dates. Following a rigorous evaluation process, 160 total beneficiaries will be selected. Each beneficiary will receive €75k grants (non-dilutive finance), as well as a tailored package of mentorship, training, expert guidance, matchmaking and networking opportunities, and support in bridging the gap to other EIC funding and support schemes.

The post The EU-Startups Podcast | Interview with Karin Fleck, CEO and founder of Vienna Textile Lab appeared first on EU-Startups.

The company plans to use this capital to take its five live pilots with Belgian industrial, warehouse and logistics players into full production, expand the team and grow its robot fleet, starting in the Benelux. It aims to deploy hundreds of robots across Europe within twelve months

Yair Reem, Partner at Extantia Capital, “The climate transition is ultimately a physical transformation: factories must produce and deploy vastly more batteries, heat pumps, grid equipment and other clean technologies.

“Yet industrial growth is increasingly constrained by labour shortages, lost expertise and inefficient production. By backing Motion, Extantia is investing in the infrastructure needed to scale climate technologies faster, while making European manufacturing more efficient, resilient and globally competitive.”

Founded in 2026, Motion is a Humanoids-as-a-Service operator that offers an AI-powered platform that lets any manufacturer deploy and run humanoid robots without a robotics team.

The company states that its humanoids are trained to load goods into crates, pack containers into boxes and place components on conveyor belts, side by side with the human teams they support.

Its customers pay a single monthly fee with no upfront capital, covering everything adoption requires: data collection, robot selection, task training, IT integration, fleet management, financing, insurance, compliance, and maintenance.

“Europe has a robot adoption problem. Adoption fails on financing, risk and compliance long before it fails on technology. So we take everything that stands between a factory and its first humanoid and turn it into one predictable monthly fee. Hiring a robot should be as easy as hiring a person,” said Alexander Stevens, founder and CEO of Motion. 

Motion states that its field deployment engineers take each customer through every step from idea to working process. Motion claims that it then manages the fleet, finances, and insurance for every robot and keeps it compliant, with fees that adapt to the number of robots as the fleet scales up or down with production.

According to the Belgian startup, two things set its model apart. The first is that Motion is OEM-agnostic, allowing it to select humanoid robots based on each task’s requirements rather than relying on a single manufacturer.

Its second differentiating factor, as per the company, is that every customer benefits from Motion’s deployment experience across its entire network, while each customer’s data remains their own on Motion’s secure European software layer. Cybersecurity measures are incorporated into each deployment.

The company is also opening a partner programme for system integrators and automation specialists, who will deploy humanoids for their own customers on Motion’s platform. 

The post Brussels-based Motion raises €1.7 million to tackle Europe’s “robot adoption problem” appeared first on EU-Startups.

The round was led by Earlybird Venture Capital, with participation from SymbiaVC and Medin VC. The round follows Earlybird’s initial €1 million pre-Seed investment in the company. 

“Hardware may unlock quantum computing, but software determines where its value is created. ColibriTD has built a differentiated software platform with the scientific credibility and industrial traction to become the decision layer for quantum applications. We’re proud to continue supporting the team on that journey,” said Dr. Frédéric Du Bois-Reymond, Venture Partner at Earlybird Venture Capital.

Founded in Paris in 2019 by Laurent Guiraud and Hacène Goudjil, ColibriTD is a DeepTech startup that develops a quantum-powered multiphysics simulation platform built around H-DES (Hybrid Differential Equation Solver), a proprietary variational quantum algorithm designed to solve partial differential equations (PDEs). 

ColibriTD explains that PDEs are the mathematical backbone of multiphysics simulation, governing everything from fluid dynamics and material deformation to financial risk modelling, at a level of precision and complexity that neither classical computing nor artificial intelligence can fully address.

“AI excels at pattern recognition and statistical approximation. It cannot replace the exact, physics-grounded solutions that high-stakes industrial engineering demands. This is precisely where quantum computing opens a new frontier, and where ColibriTD has planted its flag,” mentioned the company. 

The company also highlighted that IBM identifies solving PDEs as an application where quantum computers could provide significant near-term benefits. ColibriTD’s QUICK-PDE Qiskit Function is available in the Qiskit Function Catalogue for IBM Quantum Premium and Flex Plan users.

ColibriTD reports that over the past several years, it has completed co-construction projects across six computationally demanding sectors in industry: defence and aerospace (radio-frequency design, combustion modelling for propulsion systems), space and climate science, semiconductor design, nuclear energy, automotive engineering, and quantitative finance. 

“When we founded ColibriTD in 2019, our vision was to move quantum computing past academic theory and deliver tangible business value to industry. Today, we have reached an inflection point. With seven successful co-construction projects across six sectors, we’ve proven that quantum-powered simulation is a present capability, not a future promise. This seed round accelerates our momentum as we scale our hardware-agnostic platform to help more enterprises capture the quantum advantage,” said Dr. Laurent Guiraud, co-founder and CEO of ColibriTD.

The company plans to use this capital to invest in R&D for H-DES, recruit quantum researchers and domain-expert engineers to support client engagements, expand hardware, expand academic and industrial partnerships, and pursue international growth to prepare for scale. 

ColibriTD is also actively seeking co-construction partners, enterprises in finance, defence, semiconductors, aerospace, automotive, and energy. 

The post Paris-based ColibriTD raises €4 million to scale its quantum-powered multiphysics simulation platform appeared first on EU-Startups.

The companies featured on this list cover a wide range of areas, including early-years learning, classroom technology, tutoring, AI-powered study support and professional training.

Although their approaches differ, all ten are helping shape how people learn, how teachers teach and how organisations support ongoing skills development.

BiMA

Also headquartered in Munich, BiMA takes a more physical approach to educational technology by developing devices and software intended to make reading and storytelling more engaging for children.

Founded in 2024, the startup combines digital content with a screen-free projector designed to turn stories into immersive experiences.

Its proposition sits between EdTech, consumer electronics and children’s media, with the aim of giving families an alternative to conventional screen-based entertainment while still using technology to support storytelling, imagination and learning.

BOOKR Kids

Founded in Budapest in 2015, BOOKR Kids develops interactive digital learning experiences designed to improve literacy, reading comprehension and language skills among children.

Its BOOKR Class platform combines curriculum-based interactive books with narration, educational activities and teaching tools. The company has also expanded its educator-facing technology with curriculum mapping, learning-data analysis, content recommendations and AI-powered teacher support.

In August this year, BOOKR Kids raised €6.1 million in Series A funding to expand internationally and develop new literacy, assessment and teacher-support products. The company is also developing BOOKR Next, which will extend its learning platform to students aged 10 to 18.

BrainBite

Based in Den Bosch in the Netherlands, BrainBite develops an AI-powered tutoring platform for children aged six and above.

Founded in 2023 by Damian Ashworth and Sayed Shahidi, the company uses conversational AI to provide personalised one-to-one learning support across primary and secondary education. Its platform is designed to adapt explanations, exercises and pacing to the individual learner, giving students a more tailored alternative to standardised digital coursework.

Edumentors

London-based Edumentors is an online tutoring platform connecting school students with tutors from leading universities.

Founded in 2022, the company provides personalised academic support across a range of school subjects, including exam preparation and ongoing one-to-one tutoring. Alongside its tutor marketplace, Edumentors has been expanding its use of AI to support learning, assessment and personalised study.

The company has grown to a team of around 35 people, according to a founder update published in 2025.

EDURINO

Munich is home to EDURINO, an EdTech company founded to introduce young children to digital learning through a combination of physical toys and educational software.

Its learning system is aimed primarily at children aged four to eight and combines an app with physical figurines and an ergonomic stylus. Children can explore subjects through games and interactive activities, while parents can follow their progress and set limits on screen time.

Rather than treating tablets purely as entertainment devices, EDURINO positions digital interaction as part of a structured early-learning experience that can be adapted to a child’s developmental stage.

Gility

Founded in Milan in 2022, Gility develops a digital learning platform for companies and professional education providers.

The Italian EdTech company works with business schools, training institutions and employers to deliver and manage digital learning programmes. Its platform combines educational content with tools for organising training, monitoring participation and supporting workforce development.

JetLearn

Based in Amsterdam, JetLearn provides live online classes in coding, artificial intelligence and robotics for K-12 students.

Founded in 2021 JetLearn focuses on helping children build technology skills through personalised one-to-one instruction.

Its curriculum covers subjects including coding and robotics and is designed to adapt to each learner’s pace, availability and abilities. JetLearn works with instructors and educational specialists to introduce students to emerging technologies at an early age rather than waiting until university or professional training.

LEXIMORE

Founded in Milan in 2025, LEXIMORE develops physical and digital tools at the intersection of education, speech therapy and assistive technology.

The company was founded by Eleonora Beccaluva, Mathyas Giudici and Yu Hu and describes its approach as combining science with play.

Its products are designed for use across therapy, speech-language development and education, giving teachers and specialists interactive ways to support children who may require additional help with communication and learning.

Praktiki

London-based Praktiki applies EdTech to professional medical education, using AI to capture specialist expertise and turn it into learning experiences for clinicians.

Founded in 2024 by Matt Eisenstadt and Rajesh Roy, the startup combines medical evidence with the practical reasoning of specialists to create case-based micro-learning modules and AI-supported clinical guidance.

Its technology is designed to address the gap between knowing medical guidelines and understanding how experienced clinicians apply those guidelines in real-world situations.

Redmenta

Budapest-based Redmenta develops an AI-powered platform that helps teachers create learning materials, assignments and assessments while tracking student progress.

Founded as a business in 2020, the company is designed to reduce the amount of time teachers spend preparing worksheets and assessments while helping them incorporate skills such as problem-solving, creativity, analytical thinking and communication into learning activities.

The platform can be used for everything from project work to assessments, with AI supporting content creation and personalised learning workflows.

The company was also highlighted by EU-Startups in 2026 as one 10 Hungarian startups making us take notice.

Conclusion

Taken together, these startups show how broad the European EdTech landscape has become. Some are rethinking how young children first encounter reading, technology and digital learning, while others are using AI to personalise tutoring, reduce teachers’ workloads or turn specialist knowledge into practical professional training.

What connects them is a shift away from one-size-fits-all education. Whether through physical learning devices, adaptive platforms, live instruction or AI-powered tools, these companies are building learning experiences around the needs of individual students, educators and professionals.

As AI becomes more embedded in education and demand grows for flexible, personalised learning, Europe’s EdTech startups will have an increasingly important role to play in deciding what the next generation of learning looks like.

BTW: Are you a corporate or investor looking to invest or acquire exciting startups in specific markets? Check out our Startups Sourcing Service!

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The proposal forms part of the IVCA Pre-Budget Submission 2027, which calls on the Irish Government to establish a government-convened investment vehicle capable of aggregating commitments from pension funds, insurers, banks and other institutional investors.

Sarah-Jane Larkin, Director General of the IVCA, says: “VC investment in the quarter fell by almost 60% to just over €221 million with 85% of the capital raised coming from international investors. That combination points to a market with strong companies and real investor interest, but one that remains heavily dependent on external capital conditions.”

Founded in 1985, the IVCA represents Irish-based venture capital and private equity firms, alongside their investors and professional advisers.

According to them, IVCA members have provided more than €10 billion in funding to innovative Irish companies over the past decade, supporting areas including technology, life sciences, MedTech and other export-focused industries.

EU-Startups’ coverage of Irish funding announcements in 2026 points to approximately €350.4 million in funding. The total is concentrated in a relatively small number of larger transactions: Fonoa, Neurent Medical, Equal1 and CameraMatics account for up to €256.9 million, or around 73% of the headline sum, while smaller Seed and pre-Seed rounds have continued across AI, HR software and industrial climate technology.

The association argues, however, that Ireland’s startup ecosystem continues to face a significant shortage of domestic capital at later stages. Its document identifies funding gaps at late Seed, Series A, Series B and subsequent scale-up rounds, warning that Irish companies frequently turn to overseas investors as their capital requirements increase.

At the centre of their proposal is a government-convened fund-of-funds inspired by Denmark’s Dansk Vækstkapital model.

Richard Watson, Chairperson of the IVCA, says: “And this can be implemented quickly as we have an off the shelf working example in the Danish Dansk Vaekstkapital model which has pumped more than €1.5 billion into domestic companies.”

Under the IVCA’s proposed structure, the Irish Government would act as a convener and potentially an anchor investor through the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) or a newly created vehicle.

Institutional investors would make multi-year commitments to approved Irish venture and growth funds, while individual investment decisions would remain under private sector-led governance and commercial management.

Richard adds: “Ireland has a good track record in getting startups off the ground thanks to government initiatives through EI (Enterprise Ireland) and ISIF (Ireland Strategic Investment Fund), but the gap in institutional scaling finance means that these companies usually have to go overseas to raise the capital necessary to grow into major employers.”

The IVCA also sees the proposed Personal Investment Account as a potential future source of capital for the ecosystem. It argues that, over time, a professionally governed fund-of-funds could provide a route for allocating a modest share of household investment savings to productive domestic assets, alongside more conventional market investments.

The association is also calling for changes to pension architecture. One recommendation proposes an opt-in provision for new entrants to Ireland’s auto-enrolment pension system, allowing savers to allocate a small proportion of their contributions to a vehicle supporting Irish enterprise.

The association stresses that the proposal is intended to catalyse private investment rather than create a major new public spending programme.

Sarah-Jane says: “At a time when all government departments are facing spending pressures, crucially, this can be done without material Exchequer cost. The objective is not to create a new spending commitment, but to use a limited portion of existing ISIF capital strategically to convene, structure and catalyse much larger pools of private investmen.”

Ireland would not be acting in isolation. The IVCA compares its proposal with several European initiatives already attempting to channel institutional savings towards venture capital and private markets. These include:

• France’s Tibi Initiative
• Denmark’s Dansk Vækstkapital
• The UK’s Mansion House reforms
• Germany’s Deutschlandfonds
• The Dutch Venture Initiative
• The European Tech Champions Initiative managed by the European Investment Fund

For the IVCA, these initiatives point towards a wider European effort to mobilise pension and institutional capital for innovation, at a time when European policymakers are increasingly concerned about promising companies having to seek large growth rounds elsewhere.

Sarah-Jane adds: “This would help create the financial foundations for more indigenous companies to scale from Ireland, deepen domestic ownership of innovation, and build a stronger base of employers over time. This is therefore not only a response to a funding gap, but a time-sensitive opportunity to strengthen the long-term structure of the Irish economy.”

The proposal now depends on whether the Irish Government chooses to incorporate the recommendations into Budget 2027 and move towards placing Ireland firmly within the wider European debate over how to keep more startup and scale-up financing, ownership and economic value within the continent.

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