Analysis of M&A and Fundraising Operations as of July 15, 2026

A busy day, with a clear theme emerging without needing to force it: critical infrastructure — compute, defense, field software — is concentrating the bulk of capital in Europe. In parallel, two significant transactions involving listed assets (Italian pharma, British airline) remind us that private equity sees public markets as reservoirs of underexploited value. And, in the background, a few discreet bets on industrial sovereignty — from made-in-France underwear on the stock market to a compiler aiming to break Nvidia's monopoly.

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🤝 M&A Operations

CVC and GBL Acquire Recordati: When the Stock Market Becomes Too Small for a Cash Machine

CVC Capital Partners and GBL are launching a delisting offer for Recordati, the Italian specialist in rare diseases and specialty medicines, for €10.7 billion — the largest privatization deal in Europe this month.

The immediate interpretation: a classic LBO on a defensive pharma company, with recurring revenues, exposure to rare diseases (high pricing power, limited competition), and predictable cash generation that supports acquisition debt.

What deserves attention is the direction of the movement: taking a listed company private in 2026 is a bet that value is better created away from public markets than under their scrutiny. Recordati is not a company in distress — it is precisely because it performs that its shareholders accept the premium. For French or European capital monitoring its listed assets, the signal is clear: specialty pharma assets with visible cash flow have become a systematic target for private equity, and the privatization premium is now very expensive.

Apollo Edges Out Castlelake for easyJet: A €6.7 Billion Counter-Bid That Says Something About the Price of Infrastructure

Apollo Global Management has secured the in-principle agreement of easyJet's board for a takeover bid of £5.7 billion (approximately €6.7 billion), at £7.15 per share, outbidding Castlelake's previous proposal (£6.90) by 3.6%, which the board has now withdrawn its support for.

The surface narrative: two American funds are vying for a European low-cost airline, Apollo wins by a few extra pence.

But looking at who is buying is more illuminating than the price. Apollo manages over $1 trillion in assets and operates largely through Athene, its retirement insurance arm, which needs real assets with predictable returns to back its long-term commitments. easyJet is not being bought as a company to transform: it is being bought as a mass mobility infrastructure, with airport slots, a captive customer base, and regular cash flows. The fact that Castlelake — a fund specializing in distressed assets — was the first in line, before Apollo prevailed, also says something: easyJet was perceived as a degraded asset, and Apollo, on the contrary, sees it as an undervalued asset. The divergence in analysis between two American funds is often more instructive than the final price.

Scaleway Absorbs Qarnot: Sovereign Cloud Gains a Thermal Engine

Scaleway (Iliad's cloud subsidiary) is acquiring Qarnot, a French specialist in distributed high-performance computing, to strengthen its European HPC offering. The amount was not disclosed.

Qarnot is a unique company: its computing servers recover up to 95% of the heat produced and reinject it into urban heating networks, swimming pools, and industrial facilities. It works for aerospace, automotive, energy, and finance — all sectors that require intense computing power without relying on American infrastructure.

The operation is more strategic than it appears. Scaleway positions itself as the sovereign European alternative to the AWS-Azure-GCP trio, and for that, it needs a credible HPC offering — the intensive computing that engineers and researchers cannot entrust to just any cloud. By integrating Qarnot, Scaleway gains both technical capability and a rare environmental argument in the sector: data centers whose heat is not waste but a product. For large French companies subject to carbon footprint and data sovereignty requirements, this combination is difficult to ignore.

Follow Health Joins Orisha: Consolidation of Health Software Continues

Follow Health, a Rennes-based publisher of software for surgeons and medical specialists (4,500 professionals, 15 million patient records), is joining the European group Orisha. Founded in 2015 by Roman Collin, the company was valued at approximately €20 million before the operation, with 42 employees and notable investors including Xavier Niel.

Orisha is a consolidator of vertical software for the health, retail, and real estate sectors. The acquisition of Follow Health opens the door to specialist practitioners, a segment that is still largely undigitized and high-value.

For an acquirer in health software, the real barrier to entry is not the code — it's the trust of practitioners and the depth of clinical data. With 300 physician shareholders and 15 million records, Follow Health brings exactly what cannot be built quickly.

Equinox Takes Control of an Italian Plastics Recycler

Equinox is acquiring a majority stake in an Italian plastics recycler for an amount under €200 million. Details about the target are not disclosed beyond its location and activity.

A private equity operation in the circular economy, a sector benefiting from increasing European regulatory pressure on recycled content in packaging. No turnaround to force here — this is a clear investment thesis on a regulatory-protected industrial asset.

Vukile Enters Italy with Esperia Properties: Physical Retail as a Contrarian Bet

Vukile Property Fund (a REIT listed in Johannesburg) is acquiring three Italian shopping centers — Le Due Valli in Turin, Le Centurie in Padua, Quarto Nuovo in Naples — for €115 million, with an initial yield of 10%, and is creating Esperia Properties as a local holding vehicle. Two additional acquisitions representing approximately €200 million are reportedly underway.

Vukile has already built a solid Iberian platform (Castellana Properties in Spain, 99.7% owned) from its South African base, and is replicating the same model in Italy.

An initial yield of 10% on Italian shopping centers in 2026 simultaneously says two things: the market values these assets at a discount (e-commerce pressure has depressed prices), and an active operator convinced of its expertise can extract value where a generalist would hesitate. Vukile is not betting on commercial real estate in general — it is betting on its ability to manage better than the market thinks possible. For a French investor looking at commercial real estate, the price signal deserves attention.

Volex Buys Remaining 64% of Kepler SignalTek for €82 Million

Volex (critical cabling, AIM-listed) is acquiring the remaining 64.3% of Kepler SignalTek (KST) that it did not already own, for an amount up to $89.4 million (approximately €82 million), bringing its stake to 100%.

KST manufactures patient-connected products for the medical sector — cables, connectors, monitoring devices. Volex thus strengthens its exposure to the medical sector, one of the most defensive and demanding segments in terms of regulatory certification.

A classic minority buyout to consolidate an already operationally integrated asset. The logic is simple: once you manage a company, paying to own 100% is cheaper than sharing the value created with minorities.

VitalHub Acquires Buddy Healthcare: Digital Care Coordination Consolidates in Northern Europe

VitalHub (health software, listed in Canada) is acquiring Buddy Healthcare, a Finnish care coordination platform, for an initial payment of €8.6 million (cash + shares), plus a potential earn-out of €4.5 million over two years.

Buddy Healthcare improves pre- and post-operative coordination between patients, caregivers, and institutions — a segment where digitalization remains partial in most European healthcare systems. A classic tuck-in acquisition for a consolidator of Nordic health software.

Indutrade Makes Its 8th and 9th Acquisitions of the Year in Nordic Life Science

Indutrade (Swedish industrial conglomerate) is acquiring Dorte Egelund (Denmark) and Albiox (Finland), two life science distribution companies with combined revenues of approximately SEK 60 million (approximately €5 million). Both companies will be integrated into Labema in Finland.

These are Indutrade's 8th and 9th acquisitions in 2026 — a sustained pace of consolidation, consistent with the group's model of aggregating specialized industrial niches with defensible margins. Routine operations in a well-oiled M&A machine.

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🚀 Fundraising

Helsing at €1.6 Billion: European Defense Finally Gets a Credible Unicorn

Helsing, the Munich-based AI software startup for defense systems, closes a €1.6 billion Series E, valuing the company at €16 billion. The round brings together Dragoneer, Lightspeed, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, JPMorgan Chase, CPP Investments (Canadian pension fund), General Catalyst, Iconiq, and others. Investor demand reportedly far exceeded the available volume.

Founded in 2021, Helsing develops AI software for drones, underwater reconnaissance, and an unmanned combat drone (co-developed with aircraft manufacturer Grob Aircraft, acquired in 2025). It already equips the Ukrainian armed forces.

The obvious interpretation: a tour de force in European defense tech, driven by the increase in military budgets on the continent.

What distinguishes Helsing from most defense tech is the nature of the product: not hardware, but AI software that integrates into existing systems. A missile costs once; software that pilots a drone sells as many times as there are platforms to equip. The €16 billion valuation — more than any other defense startup in Europe — reflects this multiplier. For a European institutional investor, Helsing is also a demonstration that defense sovereignty can be a business model, not just a political imperative. The fact that CPP Investments (Canada) and JPMorgan are participating indicates that this is no longer just a European geopolitical bet — it is a globally recognized financial asset.

Skello Raises €200 Million: Software for Invisible Workers Finds Its Moment

Skello, an HR platform for field teams (scheduling, compliance, operational performance), raises €200 million from Bridgepoint Development Capital V, which becomes a reference minority shareholder. Partech and XAnge reinvest. Management increases its stake.

Skello serves 25,000 companies, 600,000 daily users in France, Spain, Benelux, and Italy, and reportedly exceeded €50 million in ARR in 2026 after achieving profitability in 2025.

The 55% of the European workforce who are frontline workers — cashiers, waiters, caregivers, logistics agents — have long been overlooked in digital transformation. Large HR platforms were built for white-collar workers in open-plan offices, not for rotating teams across three sites. Skello built for them, and the profitability achieved before this fundraising validates that the model is not a bet on growth at a loss. For Bridgepoint, this is a defensive software asset: Skello's clients cannot do without scheduling their teams, regardless of the economic climate.

Gradium and Nvidia: When the Chip Supplier Becomes a Shareholder in Voice AI

Gradium, a Parisian voice AI startup from the Kyutai laboratory (supported by Xavier Niel), brings its seed round to over $100 million (approximately €92 million) by welcoming Nvidia as a new investor, which is leading an extension of at least $30 million, in addition to the $70 million raised in December 2025 from FirstMark Capital, Eurazeo, DST Global Partners, Eric Schmidt, and Xavier Niel.

Gradium develops cutting-edge voice language models, with the ambition of turning them into products used by developers and businesses worldwide.

Nvidia's entry into the capital of a French voice AI startup deserves attention. Nvidia does not invest out of philanthropy: when it invests in a startup, it ensures that the startup's models will run on its chips. This is the same mechanism observed on a large scale with OpenAI or xAI — the GPU manufacturer finances its own customers to guarantee future demand. For Gradium, Nvidia's money is validation and an accelerator; but it is also a tie. The real question for Gradium's competitors and customers is whether this capital dependence will one day translate into architectural dependence. For now, it is the largest seed round ever for a French startup — and it comes in part from an infrastructure provider who has every interest in Gradium succeeding on its own rails.

TYLSemi Raises $43 Million for Core Components of Custom AI Chips

TYLSemi raises $43 million (approximately €40 million) to develop the fundamental components ("chiplets" and core IP) needed for manufacturing custom AI chips. Investors are not detailed in available sources.

TYLSemi targets an often-overlooked link: not the final chips, but the elementary building blocks that allow others to design their own. This is an infrastructure position in the semiconductor value chain — further upstream, less visible, but potentially more defensible if standards are adopted. In a context where every hyperscaler and every major industrial player wants its in-house chip to free itself from Nvidia, providers of reusable generic components could capture a discreet but durable rent.

ZML Raises €17.5 Million to Break Nvidia's Software Lock-in

ZML, a Parisian startup founded in late 2023 by Steeve Morin, raises €17.5 million ($20 million) for its LLMD inference server, capable of running open-source language models on competing architectures: Nvidia (CUDA), AMD (ROCm), Google (TPU), Apple (Metal), and Intel.

The problem ZML addresses is real and costly: companies deploying AI in production are currently locked in by incompatible software layers between chip vendors. Changing architecture means rewriting everything. ZML offers a universal compiler — written in Zig, based on XLA and MLIR — that converts models into autonomous binaries, without Python dependency, executable on mixed chip fleets.

The amount is modest compared to the mega-rounds in the AI ecosystem, but the thesis is precisely anti-mega-round: ZML bets that sovereignty over computing infrastructure will come through the software layer, not through chip manufacturing. If successful, it gives European compute buyers real leverage to arbitrate between providers — something Brussels has been calling for for years. For a DSI deploying AI in production, this is the promise of no longer being captive to a single silicon vendor.

Le Slip français Goes Public on July 14: A Symbol More Than a Round

Le Slip français raises €5 million in fresh capital during its listing on Euronext Growth, for a total of €13 million raised from 7,250 individual shareholders (including €8 million from historical shareholders' divestment). The share opened at €14.80, reached €15.90 during the session, and closed up 2% at €15.10. The company reported €21.1 million in revenue and €0.7 million in net profit in 2025.

The July 14 date is deliberate — founder Guillaume Gibault embraces the patriotic narrative. The company went through difficult post-Covid years (store closures, average price drop from €40 to €20) before turning things around.

The operation is modest — below the average for Euronext Growth IPOs — and the structure reveals its limitations: of the €13 million raised, €8 million goes into the pockets of exiting shareholders, not into development. The net €5 million for the company will have to finance an ambition to "reinvent the textile industry" against Shein and Temu. It's a brand bet more than a capital bet. What is real, however, is the base of 7,250 individual shareholders — customers who become co-owners, an original loyalty model in a sector where loyalty is difficult to build.

Helsing and Valarian: Defense Sovereignty, Two Interpretations

Valarian Raises $50 Million for Sovereign AI Infrastructure for States

Valarian Technologies, a British startup founded by a former Palantir executive and a former US Army officer, raises $50 million (approximately €46 million) in Series A, led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA's first investment in a European defense startup), with Lightbank, XTX Markets, Sequel, LitVC, and angels including Gokul Rajaram and Nikesh Arora.

Valarian develops a fundamental infrastructure layer that allows states and defense organizations to deploy AI systems while maintaining sovereign control over data, workloads, and access — without relying on an American cloud provider who can revoke access.

The thesis is simple and powerful: European states are massively increasing their defense budgets (over €392 billion in 2025 according to available sources), but they cannot deploy critical AI on AWS or Azure without accepting a structural dependence on companies subject to US law. Valarian sells the infrastructure that makes this independence possible. This is exactly the same logic as Scaleway-Qarnot in the civilian sector, applied to the military. For a European institutional investor, the convergence between rising defense budgets and the need for digital sovereignty creates a rare captive market.

Skalar Raises €12 Million to Redefine Accounting Firms with AI

Skalar, a Munich-based startup founded in 2025 by Björn Goß (founder of Stocard, sold to Klarna) and four partners, raises €12 million in pre-seed and seed rounds, led by Headline, with QED Investors, futurepresent, Repeat, MS&AD, Foreword, and business angels.

Skalar is not building accounting software with an added AI layer — it is building an entire accounting firm, with its technology, entirely designed around AI agents that manage accounting, payroll, and tax consulting in real time. Human experts intervene in supervision, not execution.

The shortage of accountants and tax experts in Germany (and Europe) is structural: retirements are not offset by new entrants into the profession. Skalar is not selling a tool to existing firms — it is directly competing with them by offering a cheaper and faster service. This is a thesis of sectoral disruption, not optimization. The participation of QED Investors (a recognized fintech specialist) lends credibility to the ambition.

Nopan Raises €7.2 Million: Former Netflix Executives Tackle Account-to-Account Payments

Nopan, a startup founded by former Netflix payment executives, raises a total of €7.2 million for its platform for optimizing account-to-account (A2A) payment performance in Europe. Investors are not detailed in available sources.

A2A payment — direct bank-to-bank transfer, without card intermediaries — has long been a technical reality, but its success rates remain lower than card payments, which hinders its widespread adoption. Nopan positions itself on optimizing this performance, a problem that Netflix teams know well from experiencing it on millions of recurring transactions.

Netflix's expertise here is a real asset: managing recurring subscriptions in dozens of countries with heterogeneous payment methods is exactly the problem European merchants are trying to solve with A2A. The credibility of the founding team compensates for the modest size of the round.

Promptwatch Raises €6 Million for AI Search Optimization

Promptwatch raises €6 million to expand its end-to-end AI search optimization platform — sometimes called "AI search optimization," the equivalent of SEO for generative search engines. Investors are not detailed in available sources.

With the rise of AI assistants as an entry point for information discovery, companies need to understand and optimize their visibility in these new channels. Promptwatch addresses this nascent need. An early-stage funding round in a structuring market.

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