Growth

Monzo hits £1bn gross profit milestone as UK digital bank accelerates European expansion into Spain

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Monzo, the London-based digital bank, has achieved £1bn in gross profit for the first time and announced its third consecutive year of profitability with a 20% rise in adjusted profit before tax to £172.6m. The fintech is expanding aggressively across Europe, having launched in Ireland in April with 100k customers on the waitlist and announcing Spain as its next market with offices in Barcelona and Madrid. The bank recorded 3m new customers this year and saw business banking customers grow 45% to over 905k.

Munich Agri-PV Startup Feldwerke Secures €12 Million Credit Facility to Expand Solar Portfolio

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Munich-based agri-PV startup Feldwerke secured €12 million in revolving credit facility financing from a French renewable energy debt fund. The facility will enable Feldwerke to construct approximately 100 MW of agrivoltaic installations over the next 18 months. Founded in 2023, Feldwerke has already installed over 20 MW of capacity and aims to reach 1 GW by 2030.

Happy Horizon Acquires B&S Media Internetmarketing in Second Phase of Buy and Build Strategy

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Happy Horizon announced the acquisition of B&S Media Internetmarketing, a digital marketing agency serving over 500 SMB clients in northern and eastern Netherlands. The acquisition marks the second phase of Happy Horizon’s buy and build strategy, with financial details undisclosed. The deal is supported by MG Partners, Happy Horizon’s external investor since 2020.

D-Orbit Sends Mandalorian Helmet to Orbit in Disney Partnership

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D-Orbit, an Italian spacetech scaleup, collaborated with Disney Italia to send a 3D-scanned replica of the Mandalorian helmet to orbit aboard the Wayfinder mission on March 30, 2026, launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base via SpaceX’s Falcon 9 as part of the Transporter-16 mission. The helmet was deployed at approximately 510 kilometers altitude in sun-synchronous orbit and captured unique images with Earth in the background using cameras developed internally by D-Orbit.

Redis Launches Iris Platform to Handle AI Agent Infrastructure Demands at Enterprise Scale

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Redis launched Redis Iris, a context and memory platform designed to replace RAG infrastructure for enterprise agentic AI. The platform addresses the structural problem that AI agents generate orders of magnitude more data requests than human users, requiring a different retrieval architecture. Iris includes data integration via CDC pipelines, semantic context retrieval with auto-generated MCP tools, agent memory capabilities, and Redis Flex storage engine running 99% of data on SSDs at sub-millisecond latencies.

Metro Mondego Surpasses Expectations With One Million Validations, Government Plans Regional Expansion

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Metro Mondego, the electric metrobus system serving Coimbra, Lousã, and Miranda do Corvo, reached one million validations since transitioning to a paid system. Demand exceeded expectations by 20%, with April validations up 57.4% from January. The Portuguese Government announced plans to expand the system to serve additional municipalities including Cantanhede and Condeixa-a-Nova, with integration planned around the upcoming high-speed rail station.

European Commission Selects EQT to Manage €5bn Scaleup Europe Fund for Deeptech Innovation

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The European Commission selected Swedish investment firm EQT to manage its new €5bn Scaleup Europe Fund focused on European deeptech startups. EQT won the mandate over finalists Atomico and other competitors. Around €2.5bn has been committed as of year-end, with €1bn from the EIC and €1.5bn from private limited partners including Novo Holdings, CriteriaCaixa, Santander/Mouro Capital, APG Asset Management, and the Wallenberg family.

Ikea to Cut 850 Jobs Globally as Furniture Giant Seeks Organizational Simplification

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Inter Ikea Group announced 850 job eliminations globally (300 in Sweden) to reduce complexity and costs. The reorganization aims to improve decision-making speed and reduce prices for customers. In Portugal, Ikea is undergoing gradual structural updates with individual transition plans for affected employees. The company reported a 32% drop in net profit to 1.5 billion euros in fiscal year 2024/25.

Spanish genomics startup BioGenómika wins EmprendeXXI Awards for innovation potential in Extremadura

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BioGenómika, certified as an emerging company by Enisa, has won the EmprendeXXI Awards recognizing it as the innovative company with the greatest potential and impact in Extremadura. The awards are promoted by Enisa through the Ministry of Industry and Tourism, and CaixaBank through DayOne, its division specialized in technology companies.

Rubik Hub Marks 9 Years With Major Networking Event Celebrating 600+ Supported Startups

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Rubik Hub, a startup accelerator based in Iași, Romania, is hosting a 9-year anniversary networking event on May 26, 2024. The event features pitch sessions from alumni startups, investor presentations, and panel discussions on investments and local-global ecosystems. The hub has supported over 600 European startups that have collectively raised over 75 million EUR, and was recently recognized as Europe’s top accelerator by Financial Times for the second consecutive year and won the Global Startup Awards for best coworking space globally.