Today in European Tech: Spain’s idealista bought for €1.3B, Snyk raises $200M and other deals and stories that caught our eyes
by Robin WautersGood afternoon Europe!
Now that summer is over and people have returned to their (home) offices in droves, we figured we might try out a new format to continue keeping you abreast of everything that is going on in European tech.
We already have newsletters and weekly roundups and podcasts for that, but from now on we're also going to publish a nice little daily overview of all the funding and M&A deals, and other interesting stories we picked up on during the day.
Free of charge, of course, because we're nice like that.
Daily Deals
- 20 years in: EQT has agreed to acquire Spanish online real estate classifieds platform provider idealista from Apax Partners and its management for a whopping €1.3 billion. Apax bought idealista in 2015 at a reported €150 million valuation.
- Rien ne va plus: Sweden's Evolution Gaming Group, a company that develops, produces, markets and licenses Live Casino solutions to gaming operators, announced a public offer to the shareholders of digital entertainment company NetEnt to sell all their shares in NetEnt to Evolution. The amount of the deal – whose estimated settlement date is 2 November 2020, is approx. €1.9 billion.
- Notable funding rounds for two Israeli cybersecurity startups: Tel Aviv-based Snyk announced a $200 million investment at a valuation of more than $2.6 billion, while Pcysys has closed a $25 million funding round, bringing its total raised to around $40 million.
- Hello sunshine: Zolar, a Berlin-based startup that develops solar panel systems for consumers, has raised an additional €15 million to expand internationally, closing its Series B round at €25 million.
- Listen up: London-based Curio, which offers a subscription-based, curated audio content platform, has closed a $9 million Series A round led by Earlybird, with Draper Esprit, Cherry Ventures and Horizons Ventures chipping in.
- I see you baby, shaking your asset: Wirecard Card Solutions today announced the signing of an asset purchase agreement with PayrNet Limited, a subsidiary of banking-as-a-service platform Railsbank, to sell its card technology and ‘associated assets’ in the UK. The asset purchase agreement is expected to complete before the end of 2020.
- MOAR FUNDING: EverC $35 million (Israel), TiHive €8.6 million (France), ReciTAL €3.5 million (France), QuadSAT €2 million (Denmark), Turicode €2 million (Switzerland), InviteDesk €500,000 (Belgium), FINEXITY (Germany), Natif.ai (Germany), Relai (Switzerland)
Worth Knowing
- Ireland's privacy watchdog has told Facebook that it will soon have to stop transferring its European users' data to the United States because the social media giant's current procedures fall foul of EU law.
- Not fake news: Two years after agreeing to a self-regulatory code of practice to tackle disinformation, Facebook, Google, Twitter and other tech rivals must try harder to be more effective, the European Commission said today.
- Watching the Watchdog: The EU will set up a new college of supervisors, including national and European authorities, to oversee “significant” digital currencies including Facebook’s Libra, according to the European Commission’s cryptocurrency draft proposal seen by EURACTIV.
- EU-ID: European Union leaders will ask the European Commission later this month to develop an EU-wide public electronic identification system (e-ID) to access cross-border digital services, according to the draft summit conclusions - again, as seen by EURACTIV.
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