European Tech Weekly: Olix, Volta, HappyRobot Raise $762M as Apple Acquires Czech Materials Startup

The week of July 31 – August 6, 2026, was one of the most active periods for European tech dealmaking this year, with four large transactions — three funding rounds and one acquisition — all confirmed by authoritative financial and industry sources.

Olix: Europe's Largest Chip Round

London-based AI chip startup Olix raised $312 million in Series B funding at a $3.3 billion valuation, more than tripling its valuation from $1 billion in just six months . Founded by 25-year-old James Dacombe, the startup is building photonic AI chips (Optical Tensor Processing Units) that replace traditional high-bandwidth memory (HBM) with on-chip SRAM . The round was led by New York-based Fundomo, with participation from Arm, Hudson River Trading, and Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings . The UK government's Sovereign AI Fund also participated . Olix plans to deliver its first chip to customers in the second half of 2027 and will use the capital to hire roughly 80 engineers across Cambridge and Bristol .

Volta Infra: $300M at $2.4B with Nvidia and Dell

Volta Infra Holdings, a seven-month-old AI cloud infrastructure startup, emerged from stealth on August 4 with a $300 million funding round (across seed and Series A) at a $2.4 billion valuation . Andreessen Horowitz and Altimeter Capital co-led, with Nvidia and Michael Dell also participating . The company also secured a $5 billion customer financing pool arranged by asset manager Azora, and signed a $10 billion, six-year cloud-computing contract with Anthropic to build AI factories at Bitdeer Technologies' 133-megawatt data center in Norway . The deal structure — where Nvidia both supplies chips to and invests in Volta — has drawn some scrutiny from analysts who flag potential circular financing concerns .

HappyRobot: $150M Series C and Unicorn Status

Madrid-based AI agent startup HappyRobot reached unicorn status with a $150 million Series C at a $1.2 billion valuation . Co-founders Pablo Palafox, Javier Palafox, and Luis Paarup built the company to deploy autonomous AI agents that automate complex operational workflows across voice, email, documents, and enterprise systems . The round was led by Prysm Capital and co-led by Eurazeo, with existing investors a16z, Base10, and Y Combinator doubling down, joined by Koch Disruptive Technologies, Orange, Deutsche Telekom's T.Capital, and others . The company has grown revenue roughly 5x since its Series B and now serves more than 150 enterprise customers including DHL, Kuehne + Nagel, Naturgy, Repsol, and Uber .

Apple Acquires PlasmaSolve

Apple acquired the entire issued share capital of PlasmaSolve, a Brno-based materials science company specializing in plasma simulation software . The deal was disclosed via an EU regulatory filing and closed through an Apple subsidiary earlier in the year . PlasmaSolve's flagship product, MatSight, is a digital-twin suite that simulates physical vapor deposition (PVD) and plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) processes used to deposit ultra-thin, scratch-resistant coatings on metal components . Apple already uses PVD in its device coatings, and the acquisition is expected to help the company develop thinner, more durable enclosures for future iPhones, Macs, and Apple Watches . Financial terms were not disclosed .

What We Could Not Confirm

The following items mentioned in the original query could not be independently verified within the available search budget, though they align with known market patterns:

• Rebuy acquiring Zeercle (recommerce consolidation)
• Bending Spoons' $1.3B Airtable acquisition as its first post-IPO deal
• Mobilise launching an investment arm
• White Star Capital closing a $250M Fund IV
• The €8.6B July 2026 European startup funding figure
• Modal Labs opening a London office
• Ahbstra launching an atmospheric water generation machine
• Various smaller startup raises across Finland, Italy, France, Bulgaria, and the UK

These claims are plausible but lack independent source confirmation. If specific verification is needed on any of these items, further targeted searches would be required.