🔥 A heat wave has stretched across Europe last week and things across the Connect portfolio have been heating up to match.

We welcomed a new company, watched existing portfolio companies ship some of their most significant product updates yet, and headed to Barcelona for Built By Few. Next stop: Berlin.

Details below, plus plenty more. 👇

Funding News

Leading Dessn's 🇬🇧 $6M seed and backing their mission to reinvent product building

Gabriella Hachem and Nim Cheema are exactly the kind of founders we back: deeply technical, bold, and building something they couldn't find anywhere else.

They saw the same problem that everyone ignores because it feels unsolvable: designers live in mocks, developers live in code, and users live in production.

Dessn is the fix. An AI-native design-in-production platform, it lets designers and PMs prototype directly inside their company's real codebase with zero setup, no local dependencies, no hand-off friction. Because Dessn runs the repo in the cloud, teams can explore and iterate on what's actually in production, not a static mock that diverges the moment a developer touches it.

Proud to have led the $6M seed, with participation from betaworks, N49P, and others.

Pietro shares why we backed Gabriella and Nim here.

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Dust’s 🇫🇷 $40M Series B to build the multiplayer operating system for enterprise AI

A huge congratulations to Gabriel Hubert, Stanislas Polu, and the entire team at Dust.

Gabriel and Stanislas raised a $40M Series B from Abstract and Sequoia Capital, with participation from Snowflake and Datadog, to scale what they're calling "multiplayer AI": a collaborative, company-wide operating layer where humans and agents work together with the same context and tools.

We've been on this journey with Gabriel and Stanislas from day zero and we can't wait to see what's next. Full story here.

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Portfolio Wins 🤘

Celebrating successes, product news, and launches

Aikido 🇧🇪 introduced Pentest Escalate, was named AWS’ Rising Star, and the NYSE ticker symbol $CODE was reserved

Aikido launched Pentest Escalate: a finding gets verified, then pauses - letting users decide whether agents should push deeper down the attack path. Humans back in the loop, safer by default, deeper when you choose. Check it out here. They were also named 2026 AWS Rising Star Technology Partner of the Year. Software development is accelerating fast, especially with AI-native tooling entering the mainstream and security needs to keep up: “Engineering teams are under enormous pressure to ship software faster while managing growing security complexity. The status quo is broken” - Willem, Co-Founder & CEO. Finally, Aikido reserved the NYSE ticker symbol $CODE, as they continue to build the defining software security platform of this era.

ai-coustics 🇩🇪 Quail Voice Focus 2.1 keeps delivering

Telli, one of Europe's fastest-growing AI startups, has processed 5M+ calls in under two years on LiveKit - and at that volume, a single misheard word compounds fast. So they integrated ai-coustics' Quail Voice Focus 2.1 directly into their pipeline, delivering sharper audio in and better outcomes out across speech detection, transcription, and conversational timing. Fabian, Corvin, and Tim have built Quail for machine understanding - its best-in-class primary speaker isolation lifts accuracy across every downstream system, and at scale, that difference is a game changer.

TrueLayer 🇬🇧 acquired in3 and Bank on File is now live

We backed Francesco and Luca from day 0 because they saw a different future for payments in Europe, one rooted in bank accounts, not card networks. TrueLayer has now built the continent's leading pay-by-bank networks, processing $150bn annually across 22 countries, and just acquired in3 to bring credit into the same experience. The launch we teased last issue is also now live: Wave 1 of Bank on File brings Variable Recurring Payments to utilities, telcos, train operators, and regulated financial services — recurring Pay by Bank, finally a reality for everyday consumer spend. Wave 2, including one-click checkout, is already in the works.

Mosaico 🇮🇹 relicensed to a fully permissive Apache 2.0

The team at Mosaico have relicensed their open-source repository under Apache 2.0, making the data layer fully permissive and removing any friction for adoption. Gabriele, Francesco and Federico's goal is simple: maximise community use, accelerate integration into any robotics stack, and establish Mosaico as the de facto standard data layer for robotics and Physical AI.

Connect Community  🧳

Connect on Tour

Built By Few: From Barcelona to Berlin 🇪🇸🇩🇪

Ghent 🇧🇪, Milan 🇮🇹, and Barcelona 🇪🇸 are all ticked off for 2026. Next, we're heading to Berlin - bringing together more of Europe's most thoughtful founders and builders for our fourth Built By Few of the year.

Joining us as speakers are founders from ai-coustics and Hopkins, with more to be announced. To express your interest in joining us, you can do so here.

We're also bringing back our flagship London event this November, 250+ builders from across Europe. Invites to follow shortly, but you can express your interest here.

A full recap of Barcelona is below. 👇

Welcoming the Italian Angel Network to London 🇮🇹

Last week we had the pleasure of welcoming IAG and The Angel Way to Connect HQ.

Pietro went deep on our thesis and how we identify outlier founders at the earliest stages. He shared two key convictions: in early-stage venture, the sin of omission is far worse than the sin of commission; and when you meet an exceptional founder, lean in, even if the company doesn't fit your current thesis.

The conversation didn't stop. Exactly the kind of evening we love hosting. We rounded it off with an aperitivo, of course. 🥂

Team Connect hits Brighton 🏖️

We headed to Brighton for our annual offsite, where we had four seasons in 24 hours, but we made the most of it. Incredible food, a painting class, and a tour of one of the city's best historical sites.

Between the laughs, we came together to align on strategy, workflow, and where we're headed. There's a lot to be excited about. Well worth the trip and the odd grey cloud.

P.S.

Here’s what to save offline for your next flight, drive, or quiet time:

📺 Watching: The Pitt on NOW TV

📚 Reading: London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe

🎧 Listening: Bret Taylor of Sierra on AI agents, outcome-based pricing, and the OpenAI board