2025 was a significant and positive year for all of us at Dawn. Thank you to our founders, investors, advisors and friends, for making it such a memorable year.
Together, we shared:
- Five realisations: We supported the strategic acquisitions of Onum, Showpad, Zivver, OpenGamma and Vulcan.
- A new unicorn and further rounds: We doubled down in Flatpay as it raised its Series D at $1.75bn and became the latest Dawn unicorn – and the quickest ever Danish unicorn. This followed Quantexa’s announcement of its Series F at $2.6bn in February.
- Seven new investments: We were thrilled to announce our investments in Blackwall, Oneleet, Runware, Kraaft, Doubleword, deepdots and inforcer.
- 130 Dawn events: We hosted 130 events across 12 cities, from CPO, CMO, and CTO summits to AI Engine hackathons, bringing together over 6,000 founders, operators, and investors.
- Media coverage: Dawn and our portfolio companies were featured in global outlets including Sky News, TechCrunch, The Times and Fortune.
- Dawn Horizons: We launched Dawn Horizons, sharing our investment team’s analysis of the European market, as well as our more recent Dawn Market Studies, on areas including GenAI Adoption and E-Commerce. You can follow all of our perspectives here.
Below is a look back at some of the moments that defined our year together:
Kicking off the year – January
- We led Kraaft’s €13m Series A to digitise construction
We started the year by leading Kraaft’s €13m Series A. The Paris‑founded company helps construction teams replace paper, WhatsApp groups and siloed tools with a modern collaboration layer for field workers, bringing real‑time visibility and better decision‑making to one of the world’s most complex, offline industries. Read the round coverage here, Fortune’s subsequent deep-dive here, and our blog explaining why we invested here.
- Our General Partner Josh visited 10 Downing Street to celebrate the UK’s AI ecosystem.
Josh joined founders and policymakers at 10 Downing Street in a celebration of AI founders and the wider ecosystem.
- Vulcan Cyber was acquired by Tenable.
We are proud to have worked with Vulcan’s exceptional founding team, who were focused on meeting the growing demand from businesses struggling with vulnerability alerts.
- We hosted a People Summit in collaboration with Mazi
Our Portfolio & Talent Lead, Chloe and our Director of Talent, Avalon hosted a group of Chief People Officers for a People Summit, kicking off a year‑long focus on people and culture, sharing lessons on using data, collaboration and transparency to build resilient, high‑performing teams. You can read the lessons from the summit here.
February
- Our Vice President Zoe kicked-off our first-ever AI Engine UK University Hackathon.
The event brought together over 200 students and alumni from UCL, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, and Imperial College London, alongside AI leaders from Google Cloud, OpenAI, Anthropic, NVIDIA, Canva, and many more.
Our Principal Daniela joined the Zero One Hundred Conference in Vienna for their State of Regional Venture Capital Ecosystem.
The panel explored the key challenges and opportunities shaping the DACH venture capital landscape.
We finished the month with a flurry of events:
- We hosted the London stop of South Summit’s Scale Up Series with our Partner Henry joining the panel on ‘Fueling the Fire: Investment Insights’ alongside Nic Gorini of Spin Ventures, Guy Ward Thomas of DN Capital and Susan Lin of Felix Capital.
- A CFO dinner with Eurazeo, featuring Sam Goh of Copper.co in conversation with our General Partner, Josh.
- An AI & Data in VC/PE Roundtable hosted by our Head of Data, tech and AI Ties for a small group of PE and VC Data leaders to discuss how funds can best leverage AI and Data for operational efficiency.
- A VC Roundtable with Callum Anderson MP and Startup Coalition, exploring government policy and how best to support the startup ecosystem in the UK. Our friends at AlbionVC, Antler, Transition VC, Form Ventures and InMotion Ventures joined Josh and our Communications Lead Jack for the roundtable.
- A panel discussion and reception for Palantir alumni with Concept Ventures.
March
- Quantexa announced its $2.6bn Series F
As Quantexa announced its latest round led by Teachers’ Venture Growth, part of OTTP, our Partner Henry shared “Global Muscle, Startup Hustle: Secrets from Quantexa’s Series F”, distilling what we’ve learned from backing Europe’s leading decision intelligence platforms since their Series A in 2017.
- We led Blackwall’s €45m Series B
SMBs are extremely vulnerable to cyber attacks, yet traditional solutions have been priced and designed for enterprises. We were excited in March to announce that we were backing Blackwall and the stellar founding team of Nik Rozenberg (CEO) and Denis Prochko (CTO), who are defending SMBs and web ecosystems from malicious automated threats. Read why we invested here and TechCrunch’s coverage here.- Additionally, Nik joined our Partner Shamillah on stage at Latitude59 in Tallinn, Estonia in May, and again at Slush in November for their session on AI and Resilience.
April
- Our General Partner Evgenia spoke at the Scaling Europe Summit in Brussels.
The summit, organised by Stripe and The Lisbon Council, brought together leading investors, operators and policymakers to focus on building a competitive landscape in Europe. Read Evgenia’s reflections here.
- Dataiku took over Nasdaq Tower to launch AI Agents
Dataiku launched AI Agents on its Universal AI Platform – the only cloud and LLM agnostic platform where enterprises can create, connect, and control AI agent systems that actually work at scale. (And they did so in style!)
- Stablecoins: The Next Global Payment Rail
Our Partner Dan, Principal Daniela and Investor Andrea shared this deep-dive into Stablecoins, concluding that value in the stablecoin infrastructure space will accrue to companies that can successfully drive down FX costs and drive up settlement speeds.
May
- We led Doubleword’s £9m Series A for self‑hosted AI inference
Doubleword is on a mission to make self‑hosted AI inference effortless for enterprises, helping them deploy and run the models they need, on the infrastructure they control, without building an in‑house infra team. Read Sky News’ report here.
- We welcomed Alex Tsylnitska to our investment team
Alex focuses on early‑stage B2B SaaS and fintech opportunities across Europe, joining us from Seedcamp where she helped founders go from idea to Series A.
- Ties was recognised as one of the Top 20 Data-Driven VC Thought Leaders
Our Head of Data, Tech and AI Ties was recognised as a thought leader for the third year running by the Data-Driven VC Landscape report.
- We hosted a Marketing Summit in partnership with Erevena
Our Portfolio & Talent Lead Chloe brought together 60 CMOs and VPs of Marketing to discuss the challenges facing senior marketing leaders in 2025.
June
- We led deepdots’ €5.5m seed to help companies “connect the dots” in their data
Brilliant co-founders Nima Vali Rajabi and Francisco Arias are transforming how companies understand and act on customer feedback, with a full AI platform that connects the dots across every customer interaction, helping companies turn feedback into meaningful action. Read why we invested here.
- Raito was acquired by Collibra
Bart Vandekerckhove and Dieter Wachters founded Raito to enable teams to manage data access at scale, and were themselves the product of Collibra’s high-performing team. As Collibra looked for the next frontier in secure AI and analytics, Raito’s solution made this acquisition in June a true ‘better together’ story following a close partnership.
- Zivver was acquired by Kiteworks
Kiteworks, which empowers organisations to effectively manage risk when using their private data, announced the acquisition of our portfolio company Zivver, an innovative secure email platform headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. This strategic acquisition enhances Kiteworks’ capabilities in secure communication while further expanding its European presence with the addition of Zivver’s professional team and large customer base.
- We hosted the EU Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation at Dawn
We were delighted to welcome Ekaterina Zaharieva, EU Commissioner for Startups, Research and Innovation, to our office. Together with our friends at Startup Coalition, we brought together UK-based investors to discuss investing across Europe and the implications of the EU Startup and Scaleup Strategy for doing business.
July
- We led inforcer’s Series B
We led inforcer’s $35m Series B, designed to help the team scale their fast‑growing MSP platform that brings security and AI to every small business. The round followed a year of rapid traction for the company, which was also named a key Microsoft partner for their new AI‑focused managed service initiative. Read why we invested here, and Alex Konrad’s report for Upstarts Media here.
- How close are we to AI lawyers?
In “How close are we to AI lawyers?”, our General Partner Evgenia, Partner Shamillah, Vice President Zoe and Investor Andrea dug into the realities (and limits) of applying AI to legal workflows and what this will mean for B2B software over the coming decade.
August
- Onum was acquired by CrowdStrike for $290m
We backed Onum early and with conviction, leading their $28 million Series A in 2024. This August, they were acquired by CrowdStrike, giving the cybersecurity leader a powerful new data observability layer.
Our Partner, Henry and Principal, Daniela reflected on the journey in “Onum x CrowdStrike: Building to Last in a Fast‑Fashion World.” Fortune’s coverage of CrowdStrike CEO, George Kurtz’s thinking on the deal and the broader cybersecurity M&A landscape can be found here.
- Zoe hosted the AI Engine Summer Hackathon
Our Vice President, Zoe brought together more than 150 builders for 36 hours of intense hacking and serious problem-solving at theAIEngine Summer Hackathon. We saw an incredible range of projects, with truly impressive execution.
- We ran our second annual Work Experience Programme
We welcomed 20 ambitious students to our office, as part of our work to expand access to the VC and tech ecosystem. Alongside workshops with our team, we also brought together a raft of external speakers who brought perspectives from startup life, politics and banking, including: Jamie Dborin, Co-founder & Head of Research at Doubleword, Kanishka Narayan MP, MP for the Vale of Glamorgan, and Amit Nayyar, Head of EMEA Fintech Banking at J.P. Morgan.
- Showpad acquired by Vector Capital
Showpad entered a new chapter, with private equity firm Vector Capital agreeing to acquire the company and combine it with Bigtincan to create a global AI‑powered revenue enablement platform.
- Roméo Walter joined our investment team
This summer, Roméo Walter joined us as a Vice President, covering early‑stage startups across Europe with a particular focus on France, DACH, Benelux and the UK. Roméo brings founder and operator experience from Docplus and Jumia, as well as prior early-stage investing experience at Fly Ventures.
- Maddy Rudge joined us as Front of House Coordinator
We also welcomed Maddy Rudge as Front of House Coordinator, becoming the first point of contact at our Soho HQ and helping ensure every founder, investor and guest feels at home when they walk through our doors.
September
- Shamillah was promoted to Partner
We were absolutely thrilled to announce the promotion of Shamillah Bankiya to Partner. Since joining us in 2020, Shamillah has become a go-to name across the European AI ecosystem and now leads our investments in AI, infrastructure and automation. Shamillah spoke to Dominic-Madori Davis at TechCrunch to discuss her promotion, why European founders are winning, and what it means to her to truly support her companies. You can listen to the full interview here.
October
- We led Oneleet’s $33m Series A to end “compliance theatre”
We were delighted to announce that we had led Oneleet’s $33m Series A. Oneleet is the unique all-in-one platform delivering real security and ending the “compliance theater” that leaves companies vulnerable to attacks, led by former penetration tester Bryan Onel. Read more from our Partner, Henry and Investor, Andrea on why we invested here, and the report from TechCrunch here.
- We took AI Engine to the The House of Lords
Together with AI Engine and UKAI, we brought together an AI-focused event at the House of Lords. Our General Partner, Evgenia Plotnikova led an expert panel on AI transformation: from Government adoption to bringing AI into legacy brands, while our Vice President, Zoe announced the start of AIEngine’s next chapter: working with individuals within corporations who are leading AI adoption across industries. We were also grateful to Lord Timothy Kirkhope and Lord O’Neill for hosting us.
- We hosted a CTO AI summit in partnership with Heidrick & Struggles
Over 50 CTOs and VPs from companies including Meta, Checkatrade, Codat, Blockchain.com, TrueLayer, Encord and Tem Energy joined us for an afternoon of panels and fireside chats on how leading tech teams are using AI in their products and daily operations.
November
- We backed Flatpay again as it became Denmark’s fastest ever unicorn
We first led Flatpay’s Series B in early 2024, and have supported them closely on their extraordinary trajectory since then. In November, we doubled down again as Flatpay announced its Series D round valuing the company at $1.75 billion, which means Flatpay now holds the record for the fastest Danish company ever to reach unicorn status. For insights from Josh on why his new favourite spot, Cafe Verona in London, and 60,000+ customers across Europe have switched to Flatpay, read his blog here along with TechCrunch’s report here. Josh and Sander’s interview with The Times is pictured.
- Slush
We hosted our annual ‘Slunch’ with our friends at J12 and T Capital – the opening brunch for Slush which is now a fixture in the calendar. Shamillah also took to the stage alongside Nikita Rozenberg (CEO, Blackwall) and Anna Heim (TechCrunch) at Slush in Helsinki to talk about AI and resilience, and how Blackwall is redefining AI ROI. Read more from Shamillah’s perspective here.
December
- We led Runware’s Series A
We were thrilled to lead Runware’s $50m Series A. Runware has already powered more than 10 billion media generations for over 200,000 developers. We’re excited to support Flaviu Radulescu and Ioana Hreninciuc (both of whom spoke at our AI Hackathons earlier in the year) and the entire Runware team as they expand their team globally and work towards a future where any developer can deploy any model through a single, high‑performance API. You can read TechCrunch’s coverage of the deal here, and our blog on why we invested here.
- OpenGamma was acquired by Trading Technologies
Finally, OpenGamma was acquired by Trading Technologies. This is a strategic acquisition for Trading Technologies, which will integrate OpenGamma’s tools directly into its own platform, and gain access to their top-tier client base. In turn, the OpenGamma team will have access to Trading Technologies’ scaled go-to-market and global distribution capabilities.
From everyone at Dawn: thank you for your partnership, trust and collaboration this year. We wish you a restful festive season and an energising start to 2026.
