Venture

• Cybersecurity startup Zenity has raised $125 million in a Series C funding round led by Norwest Venture Partners. • The company provides tools designed to help enterprises secure and govern autonomous AI agents integrated across their internal systems. • This capital injection will be used to accelerate platform development, expand the Zenity Labs research team, and grow the company's footprint in Asia Pacific and Europe.

• Index Ventures has raised approximately €1.7 billion ($2 billion) in new funding, increasing its total investing capital to nearly €3 billion. • The fundraise coincides with the 30th anniversary of the firm, which was founded in 1996 to support entrepreneurs across seed, venture, and growth stages. • This capital expansion strengthens the firm's ability to back high-profile portfolio companies such as Adyen, Figma, Revolut, Robinhood, and Wiz.

• On July 30, 2026, major venture capital firms including Bessemer Venture Partners, Kleiner Perkins, and Lightspeed led a series of funding rounds for tech startups. • Investment is heavily concentrated in AI infrastructure, specifically targeting space tech, clean energy, and data center capabilities. • This shift signals a strategic move by investors toward hardware-heavy, mission-critical fields that support the growing demands of the AI boom.

• Venture capital activity on July 29, 2026, saw significant funding rounds led by firms including Battery Ventures, Elephant, Thomson Reuters Ventures, and Y Combinator. • The largest investments over a 12-hour period were concentrated in AI infrastructure and enterprise technology rather than consumer-facing applications. • This trend indicates a strategic shift where investors are prioritizing foundational business solutions and infrastructure over speculative market hype.

• Venture capital activity on July 28, 2026, shifted away from large foundation models toward practical AI and industrial technology systems. • Funding was directed into specialized sectors including cloud access control, AI-agent governance, enterprise data semantics, voice infrastructure, and pathogen diagnostics. • Investments also targeted high-impact hardware and science, specifically PFAS destruction, radar satellites, and a new quantum-computing architecture.

• The European venture capital ecosystem showed a recovery in capital availability during the first half of 2026, despite a continued lack of IPO activity. • Investor appetite remains strong for defense tech, specifically companies focusing on autonomous systems, satellite infrastructure, robotics, and AI-powered applications. • Germany has become a primary hub for this trend, with Munich emerging as a center for larger funding rounds within the defense-tech sector.

• Beelzebub has raised €3m in a Seed round from United Ventures to develop AI-powered cyber defence technology. • The startup's technology uses AI decoys to trap AI-powered attackers, and it is also developing new tech to protect AI agents. • This funding round brings Beelzebub's total funding to €3.3m, following a €300k pre-Seed round.