The round. On 8 September the company announced a $450 million Series C led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Atomico and the EQT-managed Scaleup Europe Fund, with Balderton, Plural, Cherry and Red River West participating. Total funding now stands near $680 million. It is reported as the largest round ever secured by an EU-headquartered company led by a female founder and CEO.

The company reports over $2 billion in contracts and commitments, including a Space Act Agreement with NASA.

Why it matters. A woman is now leading Europe's most credible challenge in commercial space logistics, in one of the most capital-intensive and strategically important categories there is. The ceiling for female-led deep tech in Europe just moved.

Company. Loom Light forecasts electricity grid congestion and curtailment risk with probabilistic models, so insurers, infrastructure funds, lenders and developers can price renewable assets correctly. Backed by Cambridge Enterprise, SPARK 2.0 at King's College and Canopy at CISL.

Founder. Co-founder and CEO. PhD in quantum chemistry, former Senior Editor at Nature, former VP Product at infrastructure-forecasting scaleup nPlan.

Investor lens. Curtailment is becoming a material, mispriced revenue risk across European renewables. A calibrated risk layer for energy capital is classic picks-and-shovels exposure to the energy transition.

Company. Unified UV builds compact onboard hardware that uses directional links to connect autonomous platforms directly, so drones and unmanned vehicles can communicate, know their relative position and act in sync without fixed networks or GNSS. First market: defence. The company is pre-launch.

Founder. Founder, building the physical coordination layer for multi-platform autonomy.

Investor lens. GNSS-denied operation is one of the clearest lessons of the current battlefield and a stated NATO priority. Dual-use coordination infrastructure sits exactly where European defence capital is concentrating.

Company. Pit3D develops personalized external breast prostheses for women after mastectomy, combining non-invasive 3D scanning, digital design and biocompatible 3D printing. Incubated at Parc Taulí University Hospital's 3D lab, currently in clinical validation with three prototypes in testing, finalist at The Collider and winner of the Cafè Aventura entrepreneurial project award.

Founder. Innovation lead driving the spin-out, with a PhD and a patient-centred medical device approach built inside a hospital innovation unit.

Investor lens. FemTech medtech serving a painfully underserved patient population, with hospital-embedded clinical validation giving it a credibility most startups spend years chasing. A clear path from TRL5 to a regulated product means the hardest translational risk is already being worked through.

Company. SilviBio develops science-backed, peat-free growing media for food, tree and ornamental growers, replacing peat and coconut coir with locally sourced materials. Built around a consistent manufacturing process, designed for strong germination, water retention and porosity, and aimed at a more circular, secure horticultural supply chain.

Founder. Alicja Dzieciol, Co-Founder and CEO, pairs scientific research with product development and entrepreneurship. Started SilviBio as an R&D soil-additive company, pivoted fully into growing media after discovering inconsistency in existing peat alternatives was the real bottleneck for growers.

Investor lens. A materials and supply-chain play hitting horticulture at exactly the right moment, as peat and coconut coir face mounting environmental and geopolitical pressure. Locally sourced inputs plus batch consistency is a hard technical problem solved, not a branding exercise, giving this a real, hard-to-copy advantage.

Company. Spin-off (planned) develops advanced robotic catheterisation technology for minimally invasive endovascular interventions, with real-time sensing, medical imaging and navigation to guide catheters through blood vessels.

Founder. Beatriz Farola Barata, co-founder, is a KU Leuven researcher in computer-assisted interventions specialising in sensing and perception for endovascular applications. Leads sensing, imaging and navigation development within PROMPT, moving from academic research into founder role.

Investor lens. Medical robotics at the pre-spinout stage, still inside an EIC Transition project rather than an accelerator. Deep, hard-to-replicate technical strength in sensing and navigation for catheter-based procedures, addressing a real clinical safety problem, with a founder who has the specific engineering background to own that IP.

Company. Freyia Labs, founded 2023, develops F.O.R.S.E.T.I.X. (FiX), a governed, software-first fermentation operations layer for fermentation-led food and beverage production. Turns fermentation and production data into actionable insights to improve consistency and visibility at scale. Pre-seed, preparing for external pilot and commercial validation.

Founder. Greta Skemaite, Co-Founder and CEO, brings 15+ years in corporate legal roles into strategic and commercial leadership. Drove customer discovery, market research and business model refinement within FiX, and now leads fundraising, legal structuring and investment readiness.

Investor lens. Fermentation producers today mostly run on operator experience and spreadsheets, not real data, which leaves wide open space for a software layer built specifically for this process. Being pre-seed positions this as a ground-floor opportunity, with pilot and commercial validation as the near-term catalyst to watch.

Company. ELE Biotech, founded in Spain in 2024, develops molecular risk stratification for neurodegenerative diseases, aiming to flag biological risk signals before symptoms appear. First product, ELEarly Dementia, combines proprietary genomic biomarkers run on standard lab infrastructure with a digital interpretation layer.

Founder. Laura Vallés Saiz, CEO and Co-Founder, holds a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biosciences. Leads both scientific and strategic development, from innovation roadmap and validation to go-to-market and fundraising, under a Women TechEU-supported project.

Investor lens. A shift from reactive diagnosis to upstream risk stratification, in a disease area with massive unmet need and no real early-detection layer today. Runs on existing lab infrastructure rather than new hardware, which shortens the path to adoption. Early stage, but the platform ambition beyond dementia is where the real scale sits, and a scientist-CEO who can also run fundraising and go-to-market is a rarer combination than the science alone.

Company. Proskope, founded in Paris in 2022, develops TumorScreen, a blood test for early cancer detection, aiming to catch cancer at earlier stages when patients have more treatment options. MVP and seed stage.

Founder. Meghan Perkins, Co-Founder and CSO, is a cancer biologist from South Africa who moved from academic research into entrepreneurship. Previously R&D lead at an in vitro diagnostics startup. Leads scientific development and the company's Women TechEU-supported project.

Investor lens. A blood-based screening play in a space where earlier detection directly moves survival odds, one of the clearest value propositions in oncology diagnostics. Founder combines cancer biology depth with prior diagnostics product experience, not just lab-side research.

Company. sync2brain, German medtech founded in 2019, develops personalised brain stimulation therapies for mental and neurological disorders, moving beyond standardised treatment models toward individually adapted care. Seed stage with early market traction.

Founder. Dr. Ramona Samba, CEO and Co-Founder, holds a PhD in Physical Chemistry and brings management training plus leadership experience in neurotechnology. Guides the company through the transition from scientific innovation to commercial and clinical application, supported through Women TechEU.

Investor lens. Personalisation in brain stimulation targets a real clinical gap, since standardised protocols leave a lot of non-responders on the table. Female-led deep-tech with five years of runway already behind it and real market traction, further along than most seed-stage neurotech.

Company. TIAV SPACE, Polish deep-tech company, develops electron beam welding technology for in-space manufacturing, assembly and repair. Addresses a core barrier for the in-space economy: joining and repairing metallic structures beyond Earth rather than launching everything pre-assembled.

Founder. Barbara Szulc, Co-Founder and COO, also serves as Welding & Operations Lead Engineer. Combines technical welding expertise with research, industrial operations and team leadership experience.

Investor lens. In-space manufacturing is still early, but welding is a genuine unlock for satellite servicing, station assembly and orbital repair, markets that can't function long-term without it. A founder who is both COO and the lead technical engineer on the core process is a strong signal of hands-on ownership.