These were the 10 biggest European tech stories this week
Happy Friday!
This week, Tech.eu tracked 12 technology M&A transactions, 2 IPOs and 57 tech funding deals totalling about €751 million in Europe, Turkey and Israel.
Like every week, we listed every single one of them in our free weekly newsletter, along with interesting news regarding fledgling European startups, tech investors old and new, a number of good reads published elsewhere, government and policy news, as well as an overview of interesting lists, facts and figures from a wide variety of sources.
You can subscribe to our newsletter below to receive all this information in your inbox every Friday afternoon for free, but here’s an overview of the 10 biggest European tech news items for this week:
1) Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com is investing $397 million in the London-based luxury fashion platform Farfetch. Richard Liu, JD.com’s founder and CEO, will join Farfetch’s board along with the deal. The partnership will combine JD’s logistics, marketing, and technology capabilities with Farfetch’s experience in providing luxury products to a global market.
2) Online food take-away startup Delivery Hero plans to raise nearly €1 billion from its initial public offering later this month, which would value the company at up to €4.4 billion.
3) Snap has acquired Zenly, a French startup that makes a social map so people can see where their friends are hanging out, for $200 million in cash plus additional stock awards
4) Paris VC firm Iris Capital has announced the close of its new €250 million IrisNext fund for investing in European companies from seed to growth stages.
5) Imagination Technologies, the British firm that lost 70 percent of its value after being ditched by its biggest customer Apple, put itself up for sale on Thursday in a disappointing end to a once-great European tech success story.
6) Blockchain, a London, UK-based software platform for digital assets, raised $40 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Lakestar with participation from GV (formerly Google Ventures), Nokota Management, Digital Currency Group and existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, Mosaic Venture Partners, Prudence Holdings, Virgin, and Sir Richard Branson (Virgin Group).
7) The Daimler subsidiary MyTaxi continues to expand internationally and is now buying its Romanian competitor Clever Taxi. The amount of the deal has not been disclosed.
8) Munich and London-based financial robo-advisor Scalable Capital has raised €30 million. The investment round was led by BlackRock along with existing investors HV Holtzbrinck Ventures and Tengelmann Ventures.
9) Berlin-based adtech firm Glispa Global Group has acquired Israeli company RelevanTech, a mobile carrier distribution network. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
10) Fintech startup Soldo has raised $11 million in a round led by Accel. Connect Ventures, InReach Ventures, U-Start, and R204 Partners also participated.
Bonus link: Recognising the value of local events for the European technology sector
Transforming Treasury & Risk Management operating models for successful investment firms through data and technology.
7y3- interesting move by Snap.