This Week in European Tech: GRIDSERVE raises £200m, Deliveroo leaves the Netherlands, several European tech startups begin to flounder, and more

This week, our research team tracked more than 75 technology financing agreements Upper value 690 million eurosand more 20 releases, M&A deals, rumorsand related reporting across Europe.

As always, we’re rounding them all up for you in a list sent out in our summary newsletter next Monday (note: the full list is for paying customers only and also comes in the form of a handy downloadable spreadsheet).

We also have news for you: we are already preparing for the second edition of the Tech.eu Summit! Save this date:

Tickets are now on sale.

If you haven’t seen them yet, we’ve made all the videos from last May’s Tech.eu Summit available as a playlist on our YouTube channel – enjoy!

That said, let’s get down to business with the biggest European tech news of the past few days (subscribe to our free newsletter to get this roundup delivered to your inbox).

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>> Notable and important funding rounds

UK technology-based sustainable energy company GRIDSERVE has raised £200m in funding from Infracapital, the infrastructure capital investment arm of M&G, to decarbonise transport through vehicle infrastructure electrical.

Frankfurt-based AAA game developer Gunzilla Games has provided $46 million in funding. The round was led by Republic Capital.

Following the acquisition of Berlin neo-bank Kontist, Danish fintech start-up Ageras Group has secured €35 ​​million in growth capital funding from CIBC Innovation Banking.

Grizzly.fi, a Zurich, Switzerland-based provider of a crypto platform that simplifies investing in the best DeFi opportunities, raised $26 million in funding.

London-based Patchwork Health, a healthcare workforce platform built by NHS doctors, has raised £20m in funding to tackle the NHS staffing crisis.

Dutch clinical-stage medical device company Xeltis has raised €15 million in funding from China-based Grand Pharmaceutical Group.

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>> Notable SPAC acquisitions, mergers, IPOs and transactions

Wallbox, a provider of electric vehicle (EV) charging and energy management solutions based in Barcelona, ​​Spain, has Acquired coilan electric vehicle charging installation service in the United States.

Investment manager abrdn has become the largest outside shareholder in the UK’s first regulated digital stock exchange, archax.

Legado, a specialist in document and open data platforms, has acquired consumer and B2B invoice management technology from London-based WonderBill.

Based in Stockholm, Swedish digital game studio founded by Candy Crush veterans Nørdlight is acquired by Spin Mastera Canadian multinational toy and entertainment company.

UPSKLS, a Colorado-based on-demand job search platform, has acquired the British company Work Simplra startup that built a virtual internship hosting and management solution for the future of work.

Qualitest, a London-based, AI-powered quality engineering company, has acquired ZenQ, an India-based software testing company.

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>> Interesting investor moves

Lord Hammond, the former British chancellor, is among a host of heavyweights conscripted to backing a new £1bn fund aimed at accelerating the expansion of some of the most promising UK fintech companies.

London-based venture capital firm Balderton Capital has had an exceptional year of profits and its partners are benefiting from the new fund to the tune of £12 million.

In other Balderton news, the investment firm has named Elodie Broad as the first “responsible for impact and sustainable future objectives”.

London-based investment firm Portfolio Ventures has closed its second angel fund, with over £5 million to invest in early-stage UK startups.

Capify, the specialist SME lender, has launched a £40m fund for UK small businesses to help manage their operations in difficult business conditions.

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>> In other (important) news

Last spring, French scale-up BeReal raised Series B funding at a pre-money valuation of $600 million in a round led by DST Global, reports The Information.

The former chairman of the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has filed a £10billion claim against crypto companies, including Binance and Kraken, which are accused of “anti-competitive behavior”.

The German competition watchdog is ready to consider whether Microsoft should come within the scope of new rules that allow the country to quickly prohibit anti-competitive behavior.

Revolution was got first crypto clearance of the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission, which will form a new European crypto-asset hub to provide additional crypto services to its 17 million European customers.

London-based food delivery service Deliveroo has released its half-yearly financial update to investors and there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that revenues are up, the bad news is that so are losses. Deliveroo will begin to wind down its operations in the Netherlands.

Amazon has been fined again for violating labor laws in Catalonia, Spain. The e-commerce giant has been under investigation by regional labor authorities into its outsourcing practices for several years.

London-based event agency The pollen is on the verge of collapse; he emailed employees confirming he was restructuring after failing to find a buyer. The announcement comes just months after the company announced new $150 million in venture capital funding.

Fast grocery delivery startup Gorillas is set to close a funding cyclebut at a significantly lower valuation (for reasons we no longer need to explain).

Some startups are starting to falter: German crypto-focused digital bank Nuri has filed for insolvencyas did Saigaa personal digital assistant, and British neobank Dozens.

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>> Recommended reading and listening

Big Deal: Inside German fintech Auxmoney’s €500m haul

The UK government’s investment fund largely supported “zombie companies”.

dreaded ‘low turns’ shave billions off startup valuations.

Tech.eu Summit: Exploring the Metaverse with The Sandbox, Decentraland and Metav.rs

Venture capital deal activity in companion animal technology in Europe has fall after a pandemic-fueled investment surge.

5 reasons why the Ukrainian fintech sector is growth despite the war.

New data from tech nation reveals that nearly a quarter of UK tech companies achieve Series C or exit in 2022, but warns that these big liquidity events should not detract from the need to support the majority (50%) of tech companies that are in the early stages of growth, especially R&D-intensive companies that tend to have longer product development cycles and time to market.