Weekly update #85

Welcome to this edition of the weekly newsletter. The idea behind this is to gather all the information in the startup ecosystem in one place, with a special focus on the fintech market and the VC industry.

No episode of Builders this week, but you can always recover the last one with Jonatan Allback , CEO and founder of NjiaPay, here on youtube, or here on Spotify or here on Apple Podcast.

Jonatan comes from a very traditional background in finance at Goldman Sachs and RBC. Then he took the fintech way, being one of the first 100 employees at Adyen , where he led strategic projects and accounting management for 8 years.

After a first experience at Skipify and consulting, he co-founded and currently leads as CEO NinjaPay. NjiaPay is the Payments-as-a-Service provider that simplifies payments for online businesses in Africa.

Coming back to us, I was reading an interesting report this week, the “Tech nation report 2025” on the status of the UK startup ecosystem by Tech Nation. The report is a very interesting study on the UK tech ecosystem, highlighting main trends in terms of investment and new startups, trying to understand what’s the actual status of the market. Here my main takeaways:

Let’s start from investments. UK startups have secured over $7 billion in venture capital during the first half of 2025, marking a strong rebound in the market. Notably, Q1 2025 alone brought in $4.2 billion—the highest first-quarter total since 2022—signaling renewed investor confidence after the uneven activity seen in 2023 and 2024. This recovery is driven by a sharp rise in growth-stage deals, particularly at the Series C level, which accounted for 81% of VC funding in Q1 2025, compared to just 19% for early-stage rounds. While early-stage investment has remained relatively stable, Seed funding has declined steadily from $296 million in Q1 2023 to $163 million in Q1 2025, reflecting growing investor caution toward nascent ventures.

London reaffirmed its position as the leading tech city in Europe for venture capital investment, with startups based in the UK capital raising $10.8 billion in 2024. This figure is nearly double the amount secured by startups in Paris and accounted for 68% of the total VC investment across the UK. Cambridge also showed strong performance, ranking seventh in Europe, with funding rising to $1.2 billion last year—further underlining the strength of the UK’s regional innovation clusters.

Despite the broader global decline in venture capital activity following the exceptional highs of 2021 and 2022, the UK remains Europe’s dominant investment hub. In 2024, UK startups raised $16.1 billion in VC funding, a figure that stands in sharp contrast to the $8.6 billion raised in France and the $8.2 billion secured in Germany. This performance highlights the UK's sustained ability to attract international capital and maintain leadership in Europe’s tech investment landscape, even amid a more cautious global funding environment.

UK startups are securing larger funding rounds across all stages compared to last year, reflecting increased investor confidence and stronger deal sizes. Early-stage startups are seeing record-breaking figures, with the median round reaching $2 million in 2025—up from $1.7 million in 2024 and nearly double the $1.1 million recorded five years ago. Growth-stage companies are also attracting more capital, with the median round rising to $32 million from $30 million last year. Meanwhile, late-stage rounds have experienced the most significant increase, with the median deal size climbing 50% year-over-year, from $120 million in 2024 to $180 million in 2025.

The UK has solidified its status as Europe’s leading venture capital ecosystem, with UK-based VCs raising significantly more capital than their continental counterparts. In 2024, UK VC firms secured $10.9 billion—around 70% more than the combined total raised in France and Germany, which reached $6.4 billion. While the UK market showed strong signs of recovery, fundraising activity in both France and Germany declined, further widening the gap and reinforcing the UK’s dominance in European venture capital.

Anyway we saw a lot of interesting news this week, Stripe acquired Privy, Gemini filed for the IPO and Buckaroo joined Wero. Chime went public with a $18.4 billion valuation, Klarna launched an AI clone of its CEO to speak with customers while at the same time partnering with Marqeta on debit cards in the US, Bank of America is working on its own stablecoin and Coinbase partners with American Express to offer Bitcoin based rewards for credit cards. In the VC industry, Angel Invest closed a $160 million fund to back european early stage startups, and YADAY closed a $100 million fund to back B2B AI startups. And finally, we saw some very interesting funding rounds from fintech startups like Tebi, Teal, Noah, Abacum, Payrails, GrailPay, Aiera, OneBalance and many others.

But let's take a closer look at the main news of the last seven days.

Closed deals

• Octaura raises $46.5 million to expand electronic trading in syndicated loans and CLO markets
• Agibank debuts in FIDC market with R$2 billion raise to expand credit operations
• TBC Bank Group PLC secures $200 million bond to accelerate expansion of Uzbekistan’s digital banking ecosystem
• Decentro secures INR 30Cr ($3.5M) in Series B to Reinforce India's financial infrastructure backbone
• Atome secures $75 million to expand BNPL services in the Philippines
• Parlay Finance raises $2 million seed to modernize small business lending for community banks
• Finnish fintech FinanceKey raises €3 million to redefine treasury infrastructure across Europe
• Adyen Co-founder’s new venture Tebi raises €30 million from Alphabet Inc.’s CapitalG to expand across Europe
• Teal raises £1.4 million to reinvent credit checks through real-time payroll data
• Noah raises $22 million Seed to build global Stablecoin infrastructure, adds former Adyen EVP as Cofounder
• Turnkey secures $30 million series B to build the open infrastructure layer for Crypto
• Indian fintech CRED raises $75 million at $3.5 billion, a 45% drop from 2022 peak
• LoanTap Financial Technologies raises ₹74 Cr ($8.6 million) to expand credit access for India’s SMEs sector
• Singapore fintech Sleek raises $23 million Series B to accelerate expansion in SMEs compliance tech
• Abacum secures $60 million series B to transform the CFO's role through vertical AI
• Payrails secures $32 million to expand its enterprise payment infrastructure platform
• GrailPay raises $6.7 million to modernize risk intelligence for ACH bank payments
• Aiera secures $25 million Series B to redefine AI in financial research
• OneBalance raises $20 million to eliminate cross-chain friction in crypto payments

Insights on the VC industry

• Angel Invest expands to €160 million to back over 250 early-stage European startups
• YADAY launches €100 million fund to back B2B AI scaleups across three continents

News on the market

• Visa integrates with Pix and launches Visa Conecta in Brazil
• Buckaroo joins EPI Company to strengthen the rollout of Wero, Europe’s sovereign payment solution
• Gemini files confidentially for U.S. IPO as crypto markets reignite
• There's not only Wero trying to build a payment champion in Europe, STELLA CARD launches to reclaim Europe’s sovereignty in digital payments
• Financial Conduct Authority and NVIDIA join forces to supercharge AI innovation in fintech
• Walmart is managing credit cards through its fintech arm OnePay with Synchrony after shift from Capital One
• Revolut pursues “Lean Bank” license as it deepens expansion into Israel
• Blackstone targets $500 billion European expansion amid signs of reform-driven growth
• Navro secures first US license as it expands global payments footprint
• Stripe doubles down on crypto with Privy acquisition, solidifying its position in Stablecoin Infrastructure
• Klarna launches an AI hotline featuring CEO clone to speed up its customer support
• Bank of America is developing its own stablecoin
• PayPal expands PYUSD to Stellar to boost cross-border utility and real-world payments
• Chime surges 59% in Nasdaq debut, hits $18.4 billion valuation and signals IPO market rebound
• Stripe and Shopify partner to enable stablecoin payments for millions of merchants
• Coinbase partners with American Express to launch Bitcoin rewards credit card in the U.S.
• Klarna expands U.S. footprint with new debit card powered by Marqeta and Visa

A special look in the Italian market

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And here some useful resources for everyone involved in the ecosystem:

Events you don’t want to miss

• European women in Tech - Amsterdam | 25-26.06.2025 (link to event)
• Italian Tech Week - Turin | 1-3.10.2025 (link to event)

You have a cool event you want to mention or to sponsor? Feel free to send me a DM.

Startups raising funds

• Loyyal - Loyalty platform from the MENA region, with entities in the US and South East Asia, provides a B2B2C platform to handle multiple loyalty programs and earn rewards all over the world. Raising a $6M Series A
• Freedhome - Proptech and fintech platform, enabling people to be able to gain profit from real estate by renting them to intermediaries. Raising a $1M seed round

• Weagle - B2B Tech startup that provides the very first browser designed for company, with total security for sensitive data. Raising $6 millions for their seed round.

• Shoppy Code:Gift card platform that offers a points based loyalty program. They share part of the profits coming from marketing budgets with their customers. Raising $500k.

Take also a look at the last edition of the newsletter, Weekly update #84