Insights

The DESY spinoff looks inside rocket engines and turbines that X-rays can't penetrate. First Momentum led the €7.1m round with Caelora, backed by the EU's Horizon Europe program.

First Momentum invested in Atlas Bio at pre-seed. The Basel-based techbio company replaces Phase II drug trials with AI, and it now comes out of stealth with a $11m seed round led by Creandum.

Axios reports Magentic's $18 million Series A, led by Felicis, backing AI agents that help procurement teams work across fragmented data under shifting tariffs and tighter budgets.

Turn2X converts renewable electricity and CO2 into e-Methane, a molecule chemically identical to fossil gas that runs through the infrastructure Europe already has. First Momentum invested at pre-seed and has now followed on into its €20M Series A.

Turn2X raised a €20 million Series A, led by Antwerpen Ventures, with LEA Partners, First Momentum, and Verve Ventures. The money goes into commercial e-methane plants in Spain and further European markets.

Sifted asked investors which geothermal startups to watch in 2026 and published a list of seven, with Telura among them. The piece frames the field around bringing drilling costs down and giving Europe more energy independence.

Private fusion has raised $14.2 billion and still hasn't delivered a single net watt to the grid. The physics is on schedule, as the 1950s predicted, but manufacturing is not. What's missing? Short answer: the factory.

What determines a first-round raise? Most happens before the pitch. Get insights from a VC investor and three founders who built $16m Series A materials startups or $30m Series B electric drive companies.