Pathfounders

Eileen Burbidge is one of the best-known figures in UK venture capital. As a co-founder of Passion Capital, she backed companies including Monzo, GoCardless and Marshmallow, after an earlier career spanning Apple, Yahoo and Skype. Now she’s starting again with NFG, her new VC vehicle targeting £20 million to invest at the earliest stages. She spoke to Pathfounders’ editor Mike Butcher. 

Swedish healthtech startup Tandem Health has raised $100 million in Series B funding, led by EQT’s €5 billion Scaleup Europe Fund, taking its total funding to $160 million. Tandem started with an AI scribe designed to take the administrative burden off doctors. But its ambitions are now much bigger: it wants to build an AI-native operating system for healthcare. @Pathfounders Mike Butcher spoke to Dr Katie Baker, Tandem Health’s Director for the UK and Ireland and a former NHS GP.

Mistral just raised €3 billion in a Series D, valuing it at more than €21 billion, the largest equity fundraising ever completed by a European technology company.With this, Mistral still intends to build frontier AI models, but will also invest heavily in compute, infrastructure and sovereign AI, positioning itself as an alternative for governments and companies that want more control over their technology and their data.So is Mistral still trying to become Europe’s OpenAI or Anthropic, taking a leaf out of the Chinese playbook, or is it building something potentially much more defensible in the long term?To unpack the round, the valuation, and what it means for the future, Paul Murphy, Mistral’s earliest investor at Lightspeed, spoke to Pathfounders Editor, Mike Butcher. P.S. Apply now to join the Pathfounders Network of vetted founders, investors and key players in Europe, plus first access to exclusive content. Launching soon!https://pathfounders.com/network

Nine-month old German defence-tech startup Ground A has raised a €9.1 million pre-seed round to for its laser-based counter-drone system. Pathfounders editor Mike Butcher speaks to co-founder and CEO Dr Tobias Brune about how this device could change the battlefield.

The energy transition depends on scarce critical minerals used in batteries, hydrogen electrolysers, solar panels and electronics. Oxford, UK-based startup Milvus Advanced believes there is another option besides digging more mines: engineering abundant nano-scale materials that can mimic critical minerals such as platinum, iridium and indium.Pathfounders editor Mike Butcher speaks to founder and CEO Dr Assia Kasdi about the science behind Milvus, its move from laboratory experiments to kilogram-scale production, and whether engineered replacements could reduce the West’s dependence on fragile global supply chains.