Our research team tracked about 40 tech funding deals worth nearly €550 million ($654.2 million), plus over 15 M&A transactions, rumors, and related news stories across Europe, including Russia, Israel, and Turkey.

Meanwhile, here’s an overview of the 10 biggest European tech news items for the week (subscribe to our free newsletter to get this roundup in your inbox every Monday morning):

1) E-commerce retailer The Hut Group plans a London initial public offering that would value it at around 4.5 billion pounds ($5.95 billion), potentially the biggest listing of a British company since 2013.

2) Berlin-based Delivery Hero has acquired the entirety of InstaShop, an online grocery marketplace in the Middle East and North Africa. In a press release, the German company says the acquisition is another step in its “quest to pioneer q-commerce”, or quick commerce. Valued at $360 million, Instashop’s initial purchase price was about $270 million.

3) Auto1 Group, the German online used-car marketplace, is ramping up preparations for a planned initial public offering. The Berlin-based company was valued at about €2.9 billion when SoftBank’s Vision Fund invested in 2018.

4) Facebook’s French subsidiary has agreed to pay more than €100 million in back taxes, including a penalty, after a 10-year audit of its accounts by French tax authorities.

5) WorldRemit, a U.K. online money transfer company, has agreed to buy Africa-focused, app-based remittance firm Sendwave as the global pandemic intensifies demand for digital banking. The cash and stock deal is worth more than $500 million, and the combined company will be valued at more than $1.5 billion, according to Bloomberg sources.

6) U.K. challenger Atom Bank is planning to raise £150 million in a shareholder injection – its largest equity raise to date.

7) Israeli open source database company Redis Labs has completed a $100 million Series F financing round at a company valuation of more than $1 billion. The financing round was co-led by Bain Capital Ventures and TCV.

8) BITKRAFT Ventures, a Berlin-based VC with offices in London, Los Angeles and San Francisco, has announced a $165 million fund for esports, gaming and interactive media. Cheques will go to seed and Series A rounds in startups that match the firm’s trademarked investment vision of ‘Synthetic Realities’, where the physical and digital worlds converge and consumers flock for entertainment or play.

9) Napster, the pioneering digital music brand from way back when, is changing hands once more. A publicly-listed U.K. startup called MelodyVR, which creates immersive live music experiences that you watch either through VR headsets or phones, announced that it has acquired Rhapsody International — the company that owns Napster — for $70 million.

10) Checkout lender Klarna has seen “significant changes” over the past six months, with the huge shift from offline to online spending bolstering its pay-later model. The result was a 44 percent leap in Klarna’s gross merchandise volume to a record $22 billion in the first half of 2020, with a resulting net operating income up 36 percent to $517 million. Net losses grew to $63.1 million.

Podcast(s):

Tech.eu Podcast #183: German startups against Google, funding for Omio and Voodoo, and we talk to Elizabeth Varley about TechHub

Bonus link(s):

Meet these 12 incredible women advancing artificial intelligence tech in Europe