welcome to our september newsletter
This month, we led Arlequin AI's €28M Series A, Basecamp Research raised a $140M Series C, Mistral closed the largest equity round ever raised by a European tech company, we celebrated two new Partners from within our own ranks, shared a 6 month update to our European Dynamism report at Sifted Summit, and more! Read on for all our news and highlights...
portfolio funding
redalpine leads Arlequin AI's €28M Series A to make hidden threats visible
Terrorist networks, money-laundering operations and disinformation campaigns hide in the connections between millions of data points, in patterns today's AI models were never designed to see. Paris-based Arlequin AI (RAC VIII) is building a new architecture based on topological neural networks, which learn from the relationships between data points rather than the data points alone. The result: conclusions that can be traced and audited, without the compute and energy demands of today's LLMs.
We are proud to lead Arlequin's €28M Series A together with OTB Ventures, with Bpifrance's Defence Innovation Fund and Xavier Niel joining and Vsquared Ventures and 10x Founders doubling down. Founders Hugo Micheron, a terrorism specialist who has advised multiple French heads of state, and Antoine Jardin, a CNRS data scientist who helped shape France's National AI Strategy, embody founder-product fit. Welcome to the redalpine family, team Arlequin! Read more in tech.eu.
Basecamp Research raises $140M Series C
Basecamp Research (RAC VII) is building a new kind of foundation model for biology. Its EDEN models learn how DNA works across the diversity of life, with the goal of designing new therapies, starting with cell therapies that reprogram a patient's cells inside the body to tackle cancer, autoimmune disease and other conditions.
What sets Basecamp apart is the combination of AI and real-world biology: years of collecting samples from ecosystems around the globe, with partners in more than 30 countries, have produced one of the world's largest genomic datasets. We first backed the team in 2024 and doubled down in this round, led by S32 with participation from Anthropic's Anthology Fund, NVIDIA's NVentures, the NATO Innovation Fund, Singular, True Ventures, and more. Read more in Sifted.
Mistral raises €3B Series D at a €21B valuation
Congratulations to Mistral (Summit Fund) on the largest equity round ever raised by a European tech company, led by Samsung Electronics with Scaleup Europe Fund and PSG Equity as co-leads. That a global technology leader chose to lead says something bigger: international corporations increasingly see European tech as a place to back world-class companies. The round is also proof that Europe can build sovereign AI infrastructure on its own terms while still competing globally. Read more in Bloomberg.
team updates
congratulations to Mira and Marc, our two new Partners!
We couldn't be prouder to see two people who have become such an important part of redalpine grow into these roles from within.
Mira joined almost five years ago, and since then she has built our Portfolio Success function from scratch, worked side by side with our founders, shaped redalpine's AI operating system, and led a number of investments. Mira brings an operator’s mindset to everything she does. For her, empowering game changers isn’t a tagline. It’s something she puts into practice every day. As Partner, she will continue to lead our Berlin office and push the frontiers of our portfolio success and platform pillars.
Marc joined in 2024 and within months was setting up our London office and building our UK network from the ground up. With a PhD in machine learning and experience at Chemify and Creator Fund, he embodies the connection of software and science at the heart of our investment strategy. Since joining, he's made eight investments, including in Basecamp Research, Lyceum, and Albatross AI. Going forward, he will continue strengthening our presence in London and searching for the next unicorn founder.
This is only the beginning! Read more here.
redalpine in the media
what Berlin's election results mean for the startup ecosystem
Our GP and born and bred Berliner Oliver told Gründerszene that a local government becomes a factor in location, investment, and hiring decisions, long before any new regulation is actually passed. Founders' energy belongs in building global companies, not fighting a city's business conditions. Read more in Gründerszene.
event highlights
Sebastian revisited our European Dynamism report at Sifted Summit, London
Six months after publishing the European Dynamism report with Sifted, Sebastian joined reporter Éanna Kelly on stage at the Sifted Summit in London to check our six sector theses against reality. Short version: they aged well, some very well. Here are some takeaways from the discussion:
Energy is the key sector Europe has to win, especially in the age of AI. Europe is well-placed to do so via fusion energy - the continent holds the deepest fusion talent pool and precision supply chain in the world. The biggest development since we published the report in March? Proxima Fusion (RAC VII) raised an impressive €411M at a €2.4B+ valuation.
In robotics, data is the bottleneck, not hardware. The biggest value will be created on the factory floor, and Europe's unrivalled manufacturing base means it has this in abundance. The momentum is clear - European robotics startups raised more in H1 2026 than in the previous two years combined, and robotics deployment startup microagi (RAC VII) recently closed the largest seed round in German history.
In biology, the value sits in data and tools. Every AI-designed drug will depend on them, and Europe produces more life science research than the US. Isomorphic Labs, Tubulis, Memo Therapeutics (RAC II), and Basecamp Research (RAC VII) have all hit major milestones since the report.
The open question remains capital. Only around 6% of the profits from European scale-ups go to European investors. Two things change that: unlocking far more European capital for technology and innovation, starting with the pension funds and insurers that still allocate too little to venture, and keeping the ownership of these companies in Europe so the value they create stays here.
event highlights
From 5 - 11 October Mira and Marc will attend SF Tech Week in San Francisco
On 8 October Mira and Marc will attend Germany at the Frontier in San Francisco
From 6 - 8 October redalpine will join Citywire as their only VC partner at the Private Assets for Wealth event in Lucerne
From 12 - 14 October Sebastian will speak at Istanbul Ignited by Slush'D in Istanbul
From 14 - 15 October Mira and Marc will attend TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco
On 23 October Mira will join the pitch jury of the Stage Two Competition in Berlin