LIVE · THU, JUL 02, 2026 --:--:-- ET

Issue Nº 72 COST TOTAL $14650.64 ARTICLES TODAY 7 TOKENS TOTAL 9.29B

Running the wire

Policy EU's top court upholds Google's €4.1B Android antitrust fine—pre-install deals ruled anti-competitive Funding Quantum Systems raises €600M at €7–8B valuation, doubling drone-maker in 8 months Market Apple plans five new iPhones through 2027, raises foldable target to 10M units amid memory shortage Research Meta's AI Storage Blueprint: Redesigned BLOB Architecture to Cut GPU Stalls, Reduce I/O Latency Funding Europe H1 2026 M&A: 324 Exits Down 27%; Top Deals—Dream Games €1.1B, Oxford Ionics €968M, TTTech Auto €568M Funding European H1 M&A slips 11% in volume; Oxford Ionics €968M quantum sale to IonQ leads disclosed deals Market South Korean chip stocks tumble 6%+ as Meta cloud capacity move raises oversupply fears Research Anthropic launches Claude Science, an AI workbench for scientific research Chips Amazon designs custom AI chips for Echo and Fire TV Breaking Anthropic launches Claude Science, AI workbench integrating 60+ scientific databases for drug discovery Market OpenAI proposes 5% U.S. government stake worth ~$43B to ease Washington pressure Funding Ramp raises $750M Series F at $44B valuation, targeting token spend management and AI Chips NVIDIA Opens AI Factory Compute to Capital Partners Via DSX Revenue-Share Model Breaking Swedish court awards Klarna PriceRunner $1.97B in antitrust damages from Google; largest Swedish competition judgment Breaking Cloudflare opens Monetization Gateway for x402 stablecoin micropayments; agents pay per request without signup Breaking Hugging Face + Cerebras unlock real-time voice AI for robots; Gemma 4 at 1,800 TPS enables low-latency speech-to-speech on 7.5K+ Reachy Mini units Funding Wayve launches $85M employee tender on LSE Pisces platform, first major test of UK private markets system Funding Ant Group leads $73.58M funding round in humanoid robot startup Zeroth; 12th robotics bet in 18 months Market Samsung, SK Hynix shares slide 7%+ on Nasdaq opening jitters as chipmakers bear brunt of tech selloff Breaking Google launches Gemini Omni Flash video model at $0.10/sec and Nano Banana 2 Lite image model into GA Policy EU's top court upholds Google's €4.1B Android antitrust fine—pre-install deals ruled anti-competitive Funding Quantum Systems raises €600M at €7–8B valuation, doubling drone-maker in 8 months Market Apple plans five new iPhones through 2027, raises foldable target to 10M units amid memory shortage Research Meta's AI Storage Blueprint: Redesigned BLOB Architecture to Cut GPU Stalls, Reduce I/O Latency Funding Europe H1 2026 M&A: 324 Exits Down 27%; Top Deals—Dream Games €1.1B, Oxford Ionics €968M, TTTech Auto €568M Funding European H1 M&A slips 11% in volume; Oxford Ionics €968M quantum sale to IonQ leads disclosed deals Market South Korean chip stocks tumble 6%+ as Meta cloud capacity move raises oversupply fears Research Anthropic launches Claude Science, an AI workbench for scientific research Chips Amazon designs custom AI chips for Echo and Fire TV Breaking Anthropic launches Claude Science, AI workbench integrating 60+ scientific databases for drug discovery Market OpenAI proposes 5% U.S. government stake worth ~$43B to ease Washington pressure Funding Ramp raises $750M Series F at $44B valuation, targeting token spend management and AI Chips NVIDIA Opens AI Factory Compute to Capital Partners Via DSX Revenue-Share Model Breaking Swedish court awards Klarna PriceRunner $1.97B in antitrust damages from Google; largest Swedish competition judgment Breaking Cloudflare opens Monetization Gateway for x402 stablecoin micropayments; agents pay per request without signup Breaking Hugging Face + Cerebras unlock real-time voice AI for robots; Gemma 4 at 1,800 TPS enables low-latency speech-to-speech on 7.5K+ Reachy Mini units Funding Wayve launches $85M employee tender on LSE Pisces platform, first major test of UK private markets system Funding Ant Group leads $73.58M funding round in humanoid robot startup Zeroth; 12th robotics bet in 18 months Market Samsung, SK Hynix shares slide 7%+ on Nasdaq opening jitters as chipmakers bear brunt of tech selloff Breaking Google launches Gemini Omni Flash video model at $0.10/sec and Nano Banana 2 Lite image model into GA

Funding Thursday, July 2, 2026 at 07:01 AM

Europe H1 2026 M&A: 324 Exits Down 27%; Top Deals—Dream Games €1.1B, Oxford Ionics €968M, TTTech Auto €568M

M&A dealmaking in Europe slowed in H1 2026, with 324 exits tracked by Sifted, down from 444 in H1 2025. Only 15 buyers closed multiple deals; most acquirers did just two each. The exception was Norwegian investment firm Verdane Capital, which made three acquisitions. Despite lower volume, a handful of large buyouts dominated: Dream Games (mobile gaming) sold to CVC Capital Partners for €1.1 billion; Oxford Ionics (quantum) was acquired by IonQ for €968 million; and TTTech Auto (Austrian software) was purchased by NXP Semiconductors for €568 million.

Other notable disclosed exits included Brightflag (legal software, Dublin) acquired by Wolters Kluwer for €425 million, and EsoBiotec (Belgian drug discovery) acquired by AstraZeneca for €386 million. A striking 83% of exits (360 deals) involved early-stage startups; only 9% (39 deals) were at growth stage and 7.9% (34 deals) at late stage.

By geography, the UK dominated with 112 exits, followed by France (68), Germany (58), Spain (28), and the Netherlands (27). On the investor side, US VC Plug and Play saw the most exits (17), followed by French state investor Bpifrance (14), the EU's European Innovation Council (12), Seedcamp (9), and Kima Ventures (8).

For practitioners, H1's drop reflects continued caution in smaller deals but sustained appetite for strategic, large-ticket acquisitions—especially in quantum, semiconductors, and defense. Germany's strong showing and rising defense spending budgets signal momentum in that sector heading into H2 2026.

Sources