VC Angle Weekly Briefing #39: Mistral’s Revenue Jumps 20X & Station F Unites AI Giants for Startups
VC Angle Weekly Update #39
Hey - welcome to the thirty-ninth edition of VC Angle Weekly Updates! We’re moving weekly briefings to Sundays from now on.
As always, we're keeping tabs on what actually matters across 🇪🇺 European tech, as well as relevant global tech news. If something broke the news this week and it's worth your time, it's probably below. Scroll on for the deals, reads, and reports you'll want on your radar.
In This Edition:
Mistral’s revenue soars 20x to $400M
Station F unites AI giants for startups
Nscale raises $1.4bn GPU-backed debt
PitchBook: AI drives 35.5% of European deals
Dutch scaleups turn to US capital
⏱️ 3:43 Est. Reading Time
💥 Main Events Past Week
French AI startup Mistral’s annualized revenue (previous monthly sales multiplied by 12) hit $400M, up 20-fold from $20M a year ago, as European businesses seek alternatives to US tech. The company raised €1.7bn in September led by ASML and announced €1.2bn to build AI data centers in Sweden.
Station F launches F/ai program uniting major AI companies to back European startups
Station F launched F/ai, a program bringing together Microsoft, Meta, Mistral, Google, AWS, OpenAI, Anthropic, and VCs including Sequoia, General Catalyst, and 20VC to support AI startups. The program kicked off January 13th with 20 AI-native startups selected via recommendation-only process, targeting companies with paths to €1M revenue within six months.
Nscale secures $1.4bn GPU-backed debt to finance European cluster deployments
Nscale signed a $1.4bn delayed draw term loan led by PIMCO, Blue Owl, and LuminArx to finance GPU cluster deployments across Norway, Portugal, Iceland, and the UK. The debt raise follows the company’s $1.1bn Series B in late 2025 (the biggest Series B in European history) and $433M Pre-Series C SAFE, with Goldman Sachs acting as sole placement agent.
Von der Leyen: “If 27 states won't agree on Capital Market Union, I will move ahead with 9 states.”
📰 Other News
Budapest-based robotics startup Allonic has raised a record $7.2m pre-seed round, the biggest even pre-seed round Hungary [See here]
French AI startup Mistral announced it will invest 1.2 billion euros ($1.43 billion) into digital infrastructure in Sweden [See here]
Alibaba enters physical AI race with open-source robot model RynnBrain [See here]
The European Commission has sent a Statement of Objections to Meta, setting out its preliminary view that Meta breached EU antitrust rules [See here]
👇🏼 Read some of our previous weekly reports to stay in the loop with 🇪🇺 European tech news:
💶 Where Funds Went (Or Will Go)
Startups
🇫🇷 Naboo — $70M | AI-powered events procurement (Series B led by Lightspeed).
🇩🇪 Andercore — $40M | AI-based industrial trade platform (Series B).
🇬🇧 Mozart AI — $6M | AI tools for music creation (seed).
🇬🇧 Reflow — $15M+ | Operational visibility platform for enterprises (seed).
🇩🇪 Circle Health — €9M | Preventive health platform using AI (seed; equity + debt).
🇸🇪 Lassie — $75M | Prevention-focused pet insurance scaling across Europe (Series C).
🇬🇧 Bracket — $7M | Treasury intelligence (FX/treasury/cash management) for mid-market businesses.
🇫🇷 Lifeaz — €13M | Expanding access to life-saving interventions (AED/CPR ecosystem).
🇬🇧 Nscale — $1.4B | Large-scale funding round (AI/data-centre infrastructure).
🇫🇷 Eutelsat — €975M | Financing round (satellite operator expansion).
🇬🇧 Olix — $220M | Photonic AI inference chips aiming to compete on faster/cheaper inference vs Nvidia; valuation just over $1B.
Venture Funds
🇫🇷 Elaia — €120M | First close of Digital Venture Fund V (DV5).
M&A 🤝
🇬🇧 Reward — $230M | Acquired (buyer: Rezolve Ai).
🇬🇧 Admiral Group → Flock — £80M | Acquired London commercial fleet insurtech Flock (subject to regulatory approval).
🔍 Reads & Reports
PitchBook: European VC hits €66.2bn in 2025, but AI accounts for 35.5% of all deals
European VC deal value grew 5.1% to €66.2bn in 2025 despite deal count dropping 20.6%, driven by larger rounds concentrated in AI. AI now represents 35.5% of European deal value at €23.5bn, up from 28.1% in 2024. Without AI, the underlying European VC market declined 5.7% YoY. Fundraising hit a record low at €12bn across 148 funds, down from €23.5bn in 2024, while exits reached €67.8bn buoyed by Klarna and eToro IPOs totaling €16.2bn.
Techleap: Dutch scaleups increasingly dependent on US capital as European participation drops
Techleap’s State of Dutch Tech 2026 report shows US involvement in breakout rounds (€50-100M) tripled to 40% in 2025 while European participation fell to 21%. Despite having Europe’s highest AI talent density at 10.9 professionals per 10,000 inhabitants, only 21.2% of Dutch AI companies reach scaleup status compared to 80.9% in the US. The ecosystem employs 135,000 people locally and needs 300,000 additional tech specialists by 2030.
KPMG: Europe’s top 6 VC deals in Q4 span 6 countries, highlighting ecosystem diversity
Europe’s Q4 megadeals showcased geographic breadth with the top 6 rounds spread across 6 jurisdictions: UK’s Revolut ($3bn), Finland’s Oura ($907.7M), France’s Brevo ($578M), Netherlands’ Picnic ($498.1M), Germany’s Tubulis ($360.9M), and Greece’s Spotawheel ($348M). The Nordic region hit a nine-quarter investment high, while AI companies shifted focus from infrastructure to application layer solutions, attracting significant capital alongside growing defense tech investment.
👋 That’s a wrap for this week.
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