EUACC Weekly #24

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01The Big Picture
02Grant World
03Who Got Funded
04Where EU Money Is Flowing
05One Move

The Big Picture

Europe's Deep Tech Layer Is Becoming the Infrastructure of Global AI

The past seven days produced a signal worth naming: the two largest rounds closed in Europe were not AI application companies. They were infrastructure firms solving AI's physical constraints. Skeleton Technologies — a Tallinn-based supercapacitor maker — received a nine-digit strategic investment from Siemens, which simultaneously took exclusive global rights to distribute Skeleton's technology in the data center market. AI workloads generate power spikes that conventional batteries cannot absorb fast enough; supercapacitors bridge that gap in milliseconds. Siemens doesn't make venture bets — it acquires supply-chain positions. The exclusive distribution agreement, not the equity check, is the story: Siemens is treating Skeleton as a critical component manufacturer. A day earlier, Salience Labs — an Oxford photonics firm — closed a $125M Series B with AMD Ventures and Intel Capital as co-investors alongside lead Bullhound Capital. Their all-optical circuit switches replace the copper interconnects that bottleneck data traffic inside AI data centers; photonics moves data at the speed of light and generates almost no heat. Again, the investor list tells the story: AMD and Intel are not making financial bets — they are funding a component they need to exist at scale. The pattern extends to Rabot Energy (€50M Series B, Hamburg), which aggregates home batteries, EV wallboxes, and heat pumps into virtual power plants that stabilise the grid stress AI data centers create on the demand side. Together, the three rounds total roughly €250M in a single week, all solving the same underlying problem: AI compute at scale is breaking electrical infrastructure, and European engineers built the fix. This is not a narrative about European AI catching up to the US. It is a different value chain entirely — one where precision engineering, energy infrastructure heritage, and photonics research create durable advantages that software cannot replicate.

Grant World

Pathfinder Closes in Nine Days — STEP Scale-Up in Five Weeks

Power, Photonics, Energy, Quantum — Six Rounds, Five Countries, One Week

Skeleton Technologies — Tallinn, Estonia · >$100M · Strategic investment · Energy storage / Supercapacitors · Siemens The exclusive distribution deal for data center markets is the substance. Siemens is staking its AI data center electrical infrastructure lineup on Skeleton's technology — and blocking rivals from the same supply. Salience Labs — Oxford, UK · $125M · Series B · Photonic networking chips · Bullhound Capital (lead), AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, SBI Group, Hudson River Trading, British Business Bank Oversubscribed. Salience demonstrated a live 64-port all-optical switch at ECOC 2026 weeks before the close — the round followed proof, not promise. Targeting 128- and 256-port systems next. Rabot Energy — Hamburg, Germany · €50M · Series B · Virtual Power Plant / EnergyTech · Endeit Capital (lead), DeepTech & Climate Fonds, HV Capital, High-Tech Gründerfonds, Bosch Ventures €200M ARR, 200,000+ customers. The round targets one million customers and deeper grid service contracts. Already generating revenue from services that grid operators pay for — not from electricity margin alone. Dougs — Lyon, France · €50M · Growth · AI-powered accounting · Expedition Growth Capital Bootstrapped for eight years. Now 50,000+ small-business clients and €50M+ ARR. Expedition, an existing investor, is doubling down on Dougs' bet that AI agents can replace the manual bookkeeping layer for France's 4 million sole traders. Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech — Barcelona, Spain · €19.6M · Series A (first close) · Quantum computing hardware · Indra Group / IndraMind (lead, €10M), SETT (€9.6M) Eight deployed quantum systems, three at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center. Indra's IndraMind and Spanish state entity SETT make this a sovereign capital play — Spain is building domestic quantum hardware rather than buying American or Chinese systems. A €100–150M round planned for 2027. Undecimal Bio — Cambridge, UK · $18M (~€16M) · Seed · siRNA drug delivery · 4BIO Capital (co-lead), IQ Capital (co-lead), Verve Ventures, Harel Tech, Entree Capital Solving the "liver trap" — most RNA medicines accumulate in the liver before reaching target tissues. Its DELiveri platform screens compounds that carry siRNA into specific cells. Oversubscribed at seed with zero prior external capital. Six rounds across five countries: Estonia, UK (twice), Germany, France, Spain. The three largest all address AI physical infrastructure; the other three show continued depth in fintech automation, quantum hardware, and biotech delivery platforms. The week's capital was not concentrated in one city or one sector.

Europe's Deep Tech Layer Is Becoming the Infrastructure of Global AI

Pathfinder Closes in Nine Days — STEP Scale-Up in Five Weeks

Power, Photonics, Energy, Quantum — Six Rounds, Five Countries, One Week

Three Capital Shifts Behind This Week's Deals

The EIC STEP Scale-Up Closes November 25 — Most Late-Stage Founders Don't Know It Exists

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