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Six bullets of updates

1. 🇬🇧 UK's Labour party plans to reform carried interest taxation, potentially impacting VCs with a 28% to 45% tax hike.

2. 🏛️ Washington's political class is largely unaware of Y Combinator's existence, but efforts are underway to change that.

3. 📱 BeReal, the popular Gen-Z app with 40M active users, has been acquired by Voodoo for €500M in a cash and earnout deal.

4. 💶 European early-stage startup funding jumped to €1.7B in May, with France leading the pack at €340M.

5. 🤖 Startup Battlefield 200’s application deadline extended by one week; join the competition and showcase your innovation!

6. 👥 Brex ditches co-CEO model; Dubugras to become chairman. Franceschi takes over as sole CEO to boost agility.

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TikTok takes on Google: the battle for image search supremacy

TikTok is making a strategic move to challenge Google’s dominance in search by introducing image search capabilities within TikTok Shop. This new feature allows users to take or upload a photo to find similar products available for purchase on the platform. Initially available to users in the United States and Southeast Asia, the feature aims to enhance the shopping experience by enabling visual search, similar to Google Lens and Amazon's image search tools. This development follows observations that TikTok and Instagram have been cutting into Google’s search product, with TikTok now aiming to drive more purchases directly through its app.

By integrating image search into TikTok Shop, TikTok seeks to bolster its e-commerce ambitions and increase user engagement. The company recently reported having over 15 million sellers worldwide and has invested heavily in platform safety, spending more than $400 million and employing a team of over 7,500 people. Despite the looming threat of a potential U.S. ban due to its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, TikTok continues to expand its e-commerce capabilities.

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Startup Events and Deadlines

1. Financial Modeling Bootcamp | June 17 | Live 1 week Bootcamp

2. How to close a Funding Round (it’s not just the pitch deck) | July 2 | Webinar

3. Crash Course in Financial Modeling | July 10 | Webinar

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These companies just raised money

1. 🔋 UK-based Zenobe raises £870m for energy storage and electric buses, now holding 20% of the UK's battery capacity.

2. 🧩 Black Semiconductor raises €254.4M to boost Europe's semiconductor sector with graphene-based chips.

3. 📈 AccountsIQ takes in $65M to boost its AI-powered bookkeeping tools for mid-sized companies.

4. 🇮🇳 India's 360 One acquires mutual fund app ET Money for $44M, expanding its wealth management offerings.

5. 💸 Mexican fintech Félix secures $15.5M Series A to expand remittance services in LatAm via WhatsApp chatbot.

6. 💡 Sheel Mohnot's InScope raises $4.3M seed funding to revolutionize financial reporting with AI and ML.

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Mega fund alert: Vsquared Ventures bets big on deep tech with €214M

Munich-based Vsquared Ventures has announced the closure of a record-breaking €214 million early-stage fund aimed at deep tech startups across Europe. This fund, the largest of its kind for the sector in Europe, will be distributed among 25 companies, with individual investments ranging from €500,000 to €5 million, and additional reserves for follow-on investments. The fund will target growth themes including AI, energy transition, new computing and sensing, new space, robotics and manufacturing, and biotech.

Backed by prominent investors such as Novo Holdings, the NATO Innovation Fund, and the European Investment Fund, Vsquared Ventures aims to propel Europe into a leading position in the global deep tech landscape.

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Why patents make no sense

Discover why patents are often useless for software startups and the real truth behind patenting tech innovations. Learn from our experience at Slidebean and see real-world examples of patentable vs. non-patentable inventions 🕶️ Subscribe for more!