Exclusive: Cactus Lands $7M to Automate Home Service Calls and Bookings with AI
Cactus, a fast-growing startup building automation tools for home service businesses, has raised $7 million in seed funding to expand its AI-powered platform that handles calls, bookings, and follow-ups for small service companies such as plumbers, HVAC technicians, and electricians.
The round was led by Wellington Management and Y Combinator, with participation from Pelion Venture Partners and Rebel Fund. The company plans to use the funds to accelerate product development, expand its engineering and sales teams, and bring its automation platform to more service providers across the U.S.
Founded by Ajith Govind and Avinash Joshi, Cactus offers an “AI copilot” that replaces manual admin work with intelligent voice and text automation. The platform answers incoming calls, qualifies leads, books appointments, sends confirmations, and follows up with customers automatically. It also handles after-care reminders, such as maintenance check-ins or repeat-service offers, helping businesses convert one-time jobs into recurring clients.
Early users report significant improvements in booking rates and customer satisfaction. By ensuring every call is answered and every lead followed up, the system helps small teams operate like larger organizations—without adding staff.
Cactus is targeting a massive but fragmented market: the U.S. home-services industry, where many small businesses still rely on phone calls, spreadsheets, and paper scheduling. The company believes that AI can level the playing field, giving independent operators access to enterprise-grade tools.
With this new funding, Cactus plans to enhance its conversational AI capabilities, integrate with popular scheduling and CRM systems, and expand into new verticals. By automating the “first call to follow-up” journey, the startup aims to redefine how service businesses communicate with their customers—making missed calls and lost bookings a thing of the past.
Nvidia-Backed Vast Data Inks $1.17B Cloud Storage Deal with CoreWeave
In a major move for the AI infrastructure market, Vast Data has signed a $1.17 billion multi-year deal with CoreWeave to power the next generation of cloud-based artificial intelligence workloads. The agreement cements Vast Data as the primary data platform partner for CoreWeave, one of the fastest-growing GPU cloud providers in the world.
Under the terms of the deal, CoreWeave will deploy Vast Data’s AI-optimized storage and data management software across its global data centers. This partnership will support massive data volumes required for training and running large-scale AI models, offering unmatched speed, scalability, and efficiency for compute-intensive workloads.
Vast Data, backed by Nvidia and several top venture investors, provides a unified data platform that integrates storage, database, and processing into one architecture. The company’s software is designed to handle the immense performance demands of AI workloads while simplifying data pipelines and reducing infrastructure costs.
For CoreWeave, which specializes in GPU-powered cloud infrastructure, the collaboration strengthens its ability to deliver high-performance compute services to enterprise and research customers. The integration with Vast Data ensures seamless access to large datasets for machine learning and generative AI applications, improving performance and reliability.
The $1.17 billion agreement marks one of the largest cloud data infrastructure deals to date and reflects the growing demand for purpose-built platforms capable of handling the exponential rise in AI data. For Vast Data, the partnership adds a significant new revenue stream and reinforces its position as a key player in the AI ecosystem. For CoreWeave, it represents a strategic leap toward becoming a dominant force in the AI cloud era—where compute and data platforms converge to fuel the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence systems.
Exclusive: Baltic VC Balnord Nabs €70 M to Build the Next Wave of European Deep-Tech Unicorns
In a clear signal of momentum in Europe’s industrial and frontier-tech revival, early-stage venture firm Balnord has announced the first close of its debut fund at over €70 million, exceeding its initial target. The Luxembourg- and Baltic-focused fund is set on a path toward a final close of €100 million by mid-2026, positioning itself as a major backer of “deep-tech” and dual-use startups across the Baltic Sea region.
Balnord is targeting startups from the Nordics, Baltics, Poland and Germany — backing founders developing technologies in sectors like space, industrial resilience, healthcare, connectivity and defence-capable systems. With cheque sizes of approximately €500 k to €3 million for initial rounds, and follow-on potential of up to €12 million per company, the fund is designed to support ventures from pre-seed through to scale.
The firm’s thesis is bold: the next wave of European unicorns will emerge not from social apps or marketplaces, but from industrial deep-tech businesses that underpin Europe’s reindustrialisation and strategic sovereignty. By focusing on “frontier and dual-use technology”, Balnord aims to build companies that are not only commercially ambitious, but also foundational to large-scale technological infrastructure.
Early deployment has already begun. Balnord reports investing ~€13 million across ten portfolio companies, and the first four have gone on to raise ~€40 million in follow-on capital while generating ~€35 million in revenue this year. These firms include space-logistics innovators, surgical-tech platforms, mmWave connectivity pioneers and laser-communication companies.
What’s clear is that Balnord is entering the European VC scene with conviction and a long-horizon mindset. By concentrating capital on fewer companies and bringing operator-backed experience, the fund aims to provide not just cash, but founder-level support through scaling, exits and building enduring technology platforms.
For deep-tech founders in the Baltic Sea region, this is a meaningful opening — a fund that recognises the high risk/high reward nature of frontier innovation and is willing to back it. And for Europe’s tech ecosystem overall, Balnord’s launch underscores that investors are increasingly recognising the importance of industrial tech, infrastructure-scale systems and sovereign-capable innovation as the drivers of growth.
Expert Talk: How Europe’s Policy Landscape Shapes EdTech Investment
Europe’s education technology (EdTech) sector is at a pivotal moment. While the region boasts a strong research ecosystem, digital education uptake and venture investment have historically lagged behind the U.S. and parts of Asia. Now, shifting policy frameworks—driven by the European Commission’s Digital Education Action Plan, national recovery funds, and new AI and data regulations—are reshaping how investors and startups approach the space.
Policy as a Catalyst—and a Constraint
European EdTech sits at the intersection of two powerful trends: the digitalisation of education systems and the tightening of data and AI governance. The EU’s Digital Education Action Plan (2021–2027) set out to make digital learning a structural priority, not a pandemic-driven stopgap. This has encouraged governments to invest in digital classrooms, teacher training, and hybrid-learning infrastructure. For investors, these initiatives create predictable funding channels and long-term demand.
However, Europe’s regulatory rigor also introduces friction. The AI Act, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and growing scrutiny around algorithmic transparency have forced EdTech startups to bake in compliance from day one. That raises costs but also builds trust—an important differentiator in markets like education, where privacy and ethics carry extra weight.
Public-Private Synergies
Many European countries are blending public procurement with startup innovation. Initiatives like France’s EdTech France, the Nordic EdTech Forum, and Germany’s DigitalPakt Schule have created structured entry points for private innovation in public systems. This hybrid model—public funding meets private agility—has attracted VCs that traditionally avoided slower-moving education sectors.
Investor Outlook
According to sector analysts, the next generation of European EdTech investment will focus on AI tutoring, skills retraining, and lifelong learning platforms aligned with the EU’s Green and Digital Transitions. Investors are also watching for scalable B2B models that can plug directly into universities, training providers, and corporate upskilling programs.
Bottom Line
Europe’s policy landscape is no longer a passive backdrop—it’s an active force shaping EdTech’s growth. Clearer frameworks, public funding streams, and regulatory expectations are giving investors greater confidence in long-term returns. But success will depend on startups’ ability to innovate within those guardrails—turning Europe’s policy complexity into a competitive advantage for sustainable, ethical, and scalable digital education.
Startup in Spotlight: Leil Lands €1.5M to Disrupt Hyperscale Data Storage with Energy‑Efficient Tech
Estonian deep‑tech startup Leil Storage has raised €1.5 million in seed funding to scale its energy‑efficient, high‑density data storage platform designed for enterprises and hyperscale workloads. The round, led by early-stage investors, will allow Leil to accelerate product development and expand its commercial reach across Europe and North America.
Founded in 2022 by infrastructure veterans Aleksandr Ragel (CEO) and Dmitrii Liautov (CTO), Leil aims to make hyperscale‑grade storage accessible to a wider range of organizations. Its platform combines advanced host-managed shingled magnetic recording (HM-SMR) drives with proprietary software that optimizes performance, reliability, and energy efficiency. This approach enables organizations to achieve up to 20% higher storage density per disk while reducing energy consumption by as much as 70% compared with conventional systems for archival and backup workloads.
Leil’s software handles the complexities of sequential writes and drive management inherent to SMR technology, while dynamically powering down idle drives to cut energy costs. The result is a solution that lowers total cost of ownership and reduces the environmental footprint of large-scale data operations.
The new capital will support expanding Leil’s R&D efforts, growing the commercial team, and forging partnerships with hardware vendors and enterprise customers. By targeting AI, high-performance computing, and archival-heavy workloads, Leil is positioning itself as a compelling alternative to traditional storage solutions and cloud providers.
With data volumes continuing to grow exponentially, organizations are seeking cost-efficient and sustainable ways to store and manage information. Leil’s combination of hyperscale-grade performance, energy efficiency, and enterprise accessibility makes it a notable entrant in the data storage ecosystem. As the company scales its technology and market presence, it has the potential to redefine how enterprises approach storage, cost management, and sustainability in the data-intensive era.
Leil Storage is now one of the startups to watch in the evolving landscape of energy-conscious, high-density data infrastructure.
