(Editor’s note: The Europe Business Briefing is part of Dispatches’ Tech Tuesday series. Dispatches covers tech because so many of our highly skilled internationals are engineers, investors and entrepreneurs.)
Welcome to the Europe Business Briefing for 8 July. While Europe struggles to own any tech sector other than photolithography, there are still signs we can build better products than those plastic bottles with the attached lids. But we can’t do it without world class talent.
Denmark has, like most of Europe, a growing labor shortage. So, the Danes are making Denmark more attractive to internationals with new work rules for workers from 16 selected countries outside the European Union. (Denmark is part of the EU but does not use the euro.)
As part of a deal to attract more highly skilled internationals, Denmark’s coalition government agreed to lower the income threshold for non-European Union workers and cut down on red tape. The minimum salary requirement non-EU citizens must be paid to enter Denmark has been lowered to 300,000 kroner, (€25,247.57 per year) from 514,000 kroner (€43,000) previously, the Ministry of Employment decreed in a statement last month.
Only companies covered by collective agreements will be allowed to hire foreign workers under the new rules. But the government still expects the scheme to initially bring around 550 foreign workers to Denmark, with employers believing the future potential is much greater, according to media reports.
Changes include:
• Danish companies will be able to hire highly skilled internationals for mid-level roles with fewer rules and restrictions, opening the doors to more junior professionals.
• International students and recent graduates will have greater job options after graduation.
The initiative is led by Danish companies such as Novo Nordisk. “It is a good day for Denmark and Danish business,” said Jacob Holbraad, CEO of the Confederation of Danish Employers, according to Bloomberg. “With a shortage of labor in Denmark, international employees have become crucial for Danish companies and the Danish economy in recent years.”
These are the 16 countries approved under the agreement:
Albania, Ukraine, Moldova, United States, United Kingdom, Singapore, China, Japan, Australia, Canada, India, Brazil, Malaysia, Montenegro, Serbia and North Macedonia.
It’s really difficult to judge where Denmark is in terms of startups and scale-ups. Most of the websites we found praise the ecosystem without listing any big exits or acquisitions. That said, there are more successful companies coming out of Copenhagen, including Trustpilot and Zendesk. Trustpilot went public in 2021, and Zendesk was acquired by an American private equity group in 2022, then moved to San Francisco.
Here’s an overview of the Danish tech scene.
Lovable unicorn
Speaking of Scandinavia, two-year-old startup Lovable is aiming to become a Unicorn. The Swedish AI Vibe coding startup plans to raise more than $150 million at a nearly $2 billion valuation. And while the tech might be in Europe, the capital is coming from the United States. (Shocker, right?)
The funding round is led by Palo Alto-based VC Accel, with Creandum in Stockholm and London-based media investor 20VC joining. With $50 million in annual recurring revenue in six months, Lovable is launching a beta AI agent for task automation. They claim they can, for example, build you a website just from your prompts.
As you might expect, Lovable is getting a crazy amount of pub, including an in-depth post in Financial Times. Lovable is so hot, the team increased the amount of money raised and its valuation during the fundraising process “due to overwhelming interest from investors,” according to the FT post. This technology has the potential to make a lot of people rich while putting out of business all the developers who used to charge tens of thousands of euros. Marx had it right … capitalism is all about creative destruction.
TomTom cuts jobs
You know how they predicted that artificial intelligence would start to replace humans? Well, it’s happening at TomTom, one of the original GPS navigation companies. Amsterdam-based TomTom is cutting 300 jobs as it reorganizes and embraces AI, according to Reuters.
TomTom’s workforce has been declining for years, to about 3,600 (minus 300) people worldwide now from about 4,500 in 2019. You can see the company’s 2024 Annual Report here.
High Tech Campus Eindhoven lands French hydrogen startup
Closer to our headquarters in Eindhoven, Netherlands, French pioneer in hydrogen mobility, Atawey, is hitting the gas, so to speak, on growth in Europe with a strategic location at High Tech Campus Eindhoven, Europe’s largest tech R&D campus.
Founded in 2012 and based in the French Alps (Le Bourget-du-Lac, near Geneva), Atawey designs and manufactures hydrogen refueling stations for a wide range of vehicles, including light-duty vehicles, buses and trucks.
The expansion is made possible through collaboration with the Brabant Development Agency (BOM) and the Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency (NFIA).
Groningen gets new ‘AI factory’
Regional rivalries are a fact of life across Europe, and the Netherlands is no exception. We reported last month that Eindhoven is getting a 153 million euro mini-fab to produce photonic chips. Now, the college town of Groningen is getting an “AI factory,” a term we’d never heard before.
Turns out an AI factory is a research center equipped with a supercomputer and sufficient data storage to develop and train AI models, according to the Groningen University website. Currently, American and Chinese vendors provide these services in Europe. The Dutch government has pledged 70 million euros, and economic development agencies have pledged 60 million euros for the project, making a total of 130 million. However, we’ve seen posts stating the project could receive as much as 200 million euros if the European Commission chips in.
This project already has a facility – an old tobacco company complex – in case all the funding comes through.
Portugal is the new Finland, which is the new Berlin, which is the new Silicon Valley
For a continent struggling to compete with the U.S. and China, Europe sure has a lot of tech centers that look impressive, at least on paper, if not in the global rankings.
Tech Funding News has a post on Portugal, touting the country as an emerging healthtech hub. While IT and AI still attract the majority of early stage funding, healthtech startups accounted for 8.45 percent of Portugal’s 4,719 startups in 2024.
Other scoops from TFN include:
• London-based Octopus Energy is planning to spin off software division Kraken Technologies. Valued at up to 10 billion pounds, this move marks a milestone for Octopus. Kraken began as an internal tool to enhance Octopus Energy’s operations but quickly evolved into a global SaaS leader. Its platform now manages more than 70 million customer accounts worldwide, supporting major companies like EDF Energy, E.ON, Tokyo Gas, Australia’s Origin Energy and the U.S.’s National Grid.
• Berlin-based digital automotive sales CarOnSale has raised 70 million euros in a Series C round. The round was led by new investors London VC Northzone, with participation from returning investors HV Capital, Insight Partners, Stripes, and Creandum. CarOnSale was founded in 2018 to address one of Europe’s “largest and most underserved markets,” the 450-plus billion euro used car biz which remains fragmented and mainly offline, according to TFN.
Co-CEO of Dispatches Europe. A former military reporter, I'm a serial expat who has lived in France, Turkey, Germany and the Netherlands.
