ONWARD Medical raises €40.6M to advance its spinal cord stimulation implant
ONWARD Medical raises €40.6M to advance its spinal cord stimulation implant

The Eindhoven neurotechnology company is using the proceeds to fund its Empower BP pivotal trial, which tests whether its implantable ARC-IM® system can treat blood pressure instability after spinal cord injury, while expanding commercial rollout of it…

EU awards its €180 million sovereign cloud contract to four European providers
EU awards its €180 million sovereign cloud contract to four European providers

Post Telecom (with CleverCloud and OVHcloud), StackIT, Scaleway, and Proximus (with S3NS, a Thales – Google Cloud joint venture, plus Clarence and Mistral) have won the European Commission’s six-year sovereign cloud framework contract. The Proximus con…

AlixLabs closes €15M Series A to commercialise the atomic etching technology
AlixLabs closes €15M Series A to commercialise the atomic etching technology

AlixLabs, the Lund-based semiconductor process startup developing Atomic Pitch Splitting (APS™), has completed its €15M Series A with a strategic top-up from Finnish investor Stephen Industries. The company is targeting beta testing with chipmakers in …

OpenAI launches GPT-Rosalind, a specialised AI model for drug discovery and life sciences research
OpenAI launches GPT-Rosalind, a specialised AI model for drug discovery and life sciences research

Named after the crystallographer who helped reveal the structure of DNA, GPT-Rosalind is OpenAI’s first domain-specific model series, fine-tuned for biochemistry, genomics, and protein engineering. Access is restricted to a trusted-access programme for…

Stockholm’s BioLamina secures €20M EIB loan to scale the protein matrices that make cell therapies possible
Stockholm’s BioLamina secures €20M EIB loan to scale the protein matrices that make cell therapies possible

The European Investment Bank is lending €20 million to BioLamina, the Swedish biotech that supplies the laminin-based cell culture matrices used by stem cell therapy developers worldwide. The funding will support expanded production of laminin technolo…

GIC-backed battery maker Envision AESC is considering a $2 billion Hong Kong IPO
GIC-backed battery maker Envision AESC is considering a $2 billion Hong Kong IPO

The Japan-headquartered EV battery manufacturer, controlled by China’s Envision Group and backed by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, is mulling an IPO in Hong Kong that could raise up to $2 billion, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. The move marks …

Sequoia raises $7 billion for its biggest-ever late-stage fund
Sequoia raises $7 billion for its biggest-ever late-stage fund

The Silicon Valley institution has closed roughly $7 billion for its expansion strategy fund, nearly doubling its comparable 2022 vehicle. Alfred Lin and Pat Grady, who took over as co-stewards in November 2025, are making the raise their opening state…

Samsung turns its smart home into a remote care system for ageing families
Samsung turns its smart home into a remote care system for ageing families

In short: Samsung has updated SmartThings with family care features that use connected appliances and wearables to monitor elderly relatives remotely, including fall detection via robot vacuum camera, cognitive decline screening through behavioural pat…

Anthropic releases Claude Opus 4.7 with benchmark-leading coding and agentic performance
Anthropic releases Claude Opus 4.7 with benchmark-leading coding and agentic performance

In short: Anthropic has released Claude Opus 4.7, its most capable generally available model, with benchmark-leading scores on SWE-bench Pro (64.3% vs GPT-5.4’s 57.7%), multi-agent coordination for hours-long workflows, 3x higher image resolution, and …

The fintech that pivoted because of Kanye West just hit a $1.4B valuation with $100M from Khosla and Ribbit
The fintech that pivoted because of Kanye West just hit a $1.4B valuation with $100M from Khosla and Ribbit

Slash, the vertical banking platform built by two college dropouts, has raised a $100M Series C backed by Khosla Ventures and Ribbit Capital. The company’s valuation has nearly quadrupled since its May 2025 Series B, the latest leg of a comeback story …