Felix Wagner 
Berlin startup Merch my Day, founded by rapper Montez (Luca Montesinos) and former Pegador employee Justus Stroetmann, aims to reinvent fan merchandise by producing stylish, everyday clothing instead of typical concert T‑shirts. The venture is self‑funded and focuses on high‑quality, wearable merch.
Berlin‑based Deepslate raised €7.7 million in a seed round led by 42CAP to expand its European‑focused speech‑to‑speech AI platform, which processes spoken language directly and is hosted entirely within the EU.
Berlin‑based Everphone, a Device‑as‑a‑Service platform for businesses, obtained a €15 million refinancing facility from Commerzbank and the development bank KfW. The funding will be used to buy new devices for its corporate customers, lower financing costs and support further growth of its circular DaaS model.
Berlin‑based startup Restate, founded in 2024 by the creators of Apache Flink, raised $20 million in a Series A round led by Singular with participation from Redpoint Ventures and Capital One Ventures. The funding brings its total to $27 million and will be used to develop its AI‑agent infrastructure product and expand into the U.S., opening a commercial hub in San Francisco.
Munich‑based HR tech startup Ahron secured €2.2 million in a funding round led by Cusp Capital to accelerate development of its AI agent‑based platform that automates HR processes and to fund international expansion.
Berlin‑based startup Apheris, together with Ginkgo Datapoints, announced the creation of the Antibody Developability Consortium, bringing together pharma giants such as AbbVie, argenx, Lundbeck and Takeda to contribute proprietary antibody sequences. The consortium will compile a 10,000‑antibody dataset and develop AI models within Apheris’s secure federated infrastructure, allowing members to train and fine‑tune models without exposing raw data. The initiative aims to improve early prediction of developability risks, accelerating antibody drug development.
German deep‑tech startup Reverion secured a €154 million Series B round led by the Deeptech and Climate Fund Kembara, with participation from Allianz, KfW Capital, aurum Impact and Carbon Equity, to fund a new factory that will create 800 jobs and scale up its high‑efficiency gas‑powered fuel‑cell power plants across Europe.
German travel‑booking startup Blookery, founded in 2016, raised €500k on TV but the investment fell through; the company now works with the investor as a strategic partner to cut costs and boost marketing.
The article introduces five newly founded European startups – LabThunder, FaceLedger, SURGALFA, Kazimi and VergabeHero – highlighting them as promising additions to the startup scene.
German AI security startup Kontext secured $4 million, led by 42CAP with participation from a16z CSX and HTGF, to grow its runtime security solution that monitors and controls AI agents in real time.