We kicked off the year with real momentum and, this January, all roads led to Ghent, Belgium 🇧🇪.

🦄 Aikido was crowned the fastest-ever European cybersecurity unicorn and, at the same time, we hit the road to Aikido’s hometown to host our first international edition of Built by Few: The Product Summit by Connect (more on that below).

Outside of Belgium, founders across the Connect community have also been starting 2026 with intent. From new investments to product launches to meaningful milestones, there’s plenty to dive into - so let’s get into it 🚀.

Funding news 👊

Crowning a new unicorn and welcoming a new investment

Celebrating Aikido 🇧🇪 Europe’s fastest-ever cybersecurity unicorn

A huge month for Aikido Security as they announce a $60m Series B led by DST Global, as well as for Connect Ventures as we add another unicorn to our portfolio.

When we first met Willem, Roeland, and Felix back in late 2023, everything about Aikido “shouldn’t have worked.” A European team in a Palo Alto / Tel Aviv–dominated market, no traditional cyber pedigree, and a developer-first GTM. But we immediately recognised three exceptional product founders and a strong fit with our thesis: product-first, high velocity, with a bold ‘break the rules’ mentality. We leaned in with high conviction and won the privilege to co-lead their Seed round.

Fast forward just over two years since the Seed round, and Aikido is the fastest-ever European cybersecurity unicorn - it feels like they’re only scratching the surface of what Aikido can achieve.

Dive in with Pietro’s blog post, “Built by few, loved by many: Aikido’s love letter to security, and to Europe”, here.

Let’s get physical! Leading Mosaico’s 🇮🇹 €1M pre-seed round

We’re excited to partner with Mosaico, the open-source, next-generation data management platform built for robotics and physical AI. Robotics teams generate massive, messy, multi-sensor datasets. Most pipelines today are fragile, hard to debug, and nearly impossible to audit - slowing the whole industry down.

Founded by Gabriele, Federico, and Francesco, who spent over a decade building autonomous driving systems, Mosaico is the platform they wish had always existed: handling large-scale sensor data, making experiments repeatable, and letting engineers focus on autonomy, not infrastructure.

Find out more from Pietro on why we chose to invest.

Portfolio Wins 🤘

Celebrating success, product news and launches

TrueLayer 🇬🇧 named in the Sunday Times 100 Tech 2026

TrueLayer was listed as no.34 on the list of 100 of the UK’s fastest-growing software companies in the Sunday Times. Congratulations to the whole team - it’s a testament to the incredible product they are building.

Dust 🇫🇷 introduced Skills: Shared intelligence for your Agent OS

Skills by Dust lets you package instructions, knowledge, and tools once, then deploy them across all your agents so improvements made in one place instantly scale everywhere. Instead of expertise staying siloed in individual agents, Skills spreads best practices across teams while respecting your existing permissions and governance.

Ai-coustics 🇩🇪 ventured across the pond

Ai-coustics hosted their first Audio Layer event in San Francisco, where builders from across the Voice AI stack shared a clear theme: reliability is the next frontier. From on-device models and CI/CD-style QA to observability, input quality, and production failures, 2026 will be about making voice agents truly dependable - and ready to scale beyond PoCs.

Steep 🇸🇪 API released

With AI, B2B software is moving from UI-first tools to API-first infrastructure. AI-native teams don’t want numbers trapped in dashboards - they want systems they can plug into agents, automations, apps, and LLMs. That’s why Steep launched its API: centrally defined, governed metrics that can be used anywhere, with consistent definitions and no drift.

Deepstash 🇷🇴 launched Paladin Paths

Deepstash built Paladin Paths: guided journeys that connect events, decisions, and people across decades, showing how one story leads directly to the next. From Caesar to Augustus and beyond, history unfolds like a century-long thriller. Paladin Paths are now live on iOS.

Cloud Capital 🇬🇧 offers 5% Cash Back on AWS

Already trusted by SaaS and AI-native business leaders worldwide, Cloud Capital is now giving new customers 5% cash back on every AWS bill - starting in month one, guaranteed. No fees, no code changes, and no lock-in.

Connect Community  🧳

Connect on Tour

Taking ‘Built by Few’ international. First stop: Ghent 🇧🇪🎪
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Another Ghent reference? We promise it’s not just a coincidence - this city keeps popping up for all the right reasons!
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Built by Few went international for the first time. Hosted at Aikido’s office, the event brought together ambitious product founders, top talent, and standout speakers: Marie Martens (Tally), Willem Delbare (Aikido), Alexis Eggermont (Accountable), and Jean-Charles Velge (Qover) - for intimate, conversation-led sessions.

Ghent was the perfect launchpad, and we can’t wait to take Built by Few on the road again soon - stay tuned for where we’re headed next! 👀 We also had the pleasure of being invited to speak on Wintercircus Ghent’s funding panel, to 100+ founders and operators from across the local ecosystem.

Where else have we been?

Before the new year, December was a busy one for us in London.Pietro took to the SaaStr AI London stage to speak about ‘Fundraising in the AI Era’ and co-hosted an Italians in VC meet-up with friends from Singular and Founders Factory. Team Connect also made time to celebrate together - winning our local pub quiz 🏆 and wrapping up the month with a Christmas celebration.

P.S.

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

📺 Watching: Industry on BBC iPlayer
🎧 Listening: Reed Hastings: Building Netflix by Patrick O’Shaughnessy
📚 Reading: The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang and Nvidia by Stephen Witt