Notion Capital

What an incredible 1st half of the year for Notion Capital. We’ve completed many new investments and we had a few strong up-rounds in our portfolio 💨⚡ Here are some of the highlights: 🎯 Aikido Security - the cybersecurity unicorn, announced their $60M Series B at a $1 billion valuation, led by DST Global. Kamil Mieczakowski led their Seed round, and we now participated with our growth fund led by Jessica Thomas. 🎯 Mews - the leading operating system for hospitality, secured $300M in new funding with a valuation of $2.5Bn, following Jos White’s investment in their Series A in 2016. 🎯 Naboo - the AI-powered event procurement platform for corporate events, announced their $70M Series B, led by Lightspeed. I led their Series A in 2025. 🎯 Isembard - right at the intersection of AI and supply chain sovereignty, announced their $50m Series A fundraise led by Union Square Ventures, and participation of Jos White, less than a year after we led their Seed round. 🎯 Upvest - on a mission to make it radically easier for financial institutions to offer their end users best-in-class investment products, secured $125M, led by Sapphire Ventures and Tencent, following the Series A round led by Patrick Norris in 2019. 🎯 Origin - the world’s first Global Benefits Intelligence platform, raised $30M for their Series A+, doubling down on our Series A investment 9 months prior to this round. The round was led by Andy Leaver, who knows the benefits market inside-out. 🎯 Dex - the team reinventing what recruitment is about, raised a $6M Seed round, led by Kam, joining forces with a16z Speedrun and Concept Ventures. 🎯 Pivot - reimagining procurement from the ground up, secured their $40M Series B co-lead by Jessica Thomas, alongside Forestay Capital and Greyhound. 🎯 OpenTrade - the institutional-grade platform for real-world asset-backed stablecoin yield products, closed a $17M strategic round, co-led by Notion and Mercury Fund. I led a small bridge round in the company back in 2025, and the business has grown its AUM more than 10x in the last 12 months. 🎯 Endra - the purpose-built generative platform for modern MEP engineering, closed a $50M Series A round led by a16z, only a few months after Kam led their Seed round. 🎯 Quantum Systems - the leading European deep-tech company announced Europe’s largest defence technology financing round of $1.2Bn Series D at an $8Bn valuation, following our participation led by Patrick in 2024. 🎯 Bound - raised a $24.5 million Series A led by AlbionVC and with participation from Notion and GoHub Ventures to help businesses automate FX hedging. I backed Bound early in their journey, recognising that the only consistency in exchange rates has been their inconsistency. 🎯 Unannounced - I recently led an investment in a French construction company. More soon 🤫 After such a busy and successful H1, it’s hard to imagine what the next 6 months have in store for us. 🙌 Well done to the whole team and our Founders!

Kraken Technology Group just closed a $175m Series B at a $1bn valuation, led by DTCP - huge congratulations to Mal Crease and the team! 👏 We've been proud backers of Kraken since August last year, drawn to their conviction that the maritime domain needed exactly the kind of fast, mission-ready uncrewed vessels they set out to build. Since then they've gone from early conviction to contracts with the UK Ministry of Defence, NATO partners and USSOCOM, and manufacturing partnerships spanning Germany, the US and Canada. Few teams execute at this speed. Excited for what's next.

Huge congratulations to Quantum Systems on their $1.2Bn Series D at an $8Bn valuation. 👏 We led Quantum Systems' Series B in September 2024, backing Florian and the team's vision to scale software-defined, autonomous systems across air, land and sea. Watching them grow from there into one of Europe's defining defence tech companies has been incredible and this round is a testament to the pace, ambition and execution of the whole team. #defencetech #deeptech #seriesd

We've all been asking the wrong question about AI in GTM. The question isn't "how do we use AI to do what we already do, faster?" It's "what would we do differently if the constraints that shaped modern go-to-market simply didn't exist?" At Notion Capital, our Stephen Millard brought together Harrison Rose, Al Simpson and Even Walser for a workshop with leaders across our portfolio. The conversation went well beyond using AI to do existing things faster. What stood out: 👀 AI readiness is a context problem, not a data project - the businesses making progress are making their entire operating model readable by AI, not just capturing data. 👀 The economics of experimentation have fundamentally changed - tests that once required weeks and multiple teams can now be designed, run and analysed in a fraction of the time. The bottleneck is now the hypothesis, not the execution. 👀 The most important question isn't "can we automate this?" - it's "should this process exist at all?" Automation improves what you have. Redesign asks whether it should exist in its current form. There's a lot more in the full piece - including practical frameworks for where to start and why the biggest wins right now are happening internally, not customer-facing. Link in the comments. Well worth the read. Thanks to Harrison, Al and Even for such a rich and honest conversation. 💚

What does it actually take to build a leadership team for an AI-native company? Team size and composition have changed massively in the last 2–3 years - and this is one of the questions we hear most from founders right now. Our partner Itxaso del Palacio, PhD explored exactly this at a lunch co-hosted with Leticia Llordén, Maitane Serna, and Thomas Diehl at 4YFN in Barcelona. From that conversation, and with input from Notion Capital's JooBee Yeow, PhD and Daniel Miller from True Search - we've put together a practical guide on the leadership frameworks that separate AI-native winners from teams that burn capital chasing the wrong things. A few things every founder building in this environment should sit with: 💡Sequencing your leadership hires matters more than most founders realise - Builders → Validators → Scalers 💡Hire for potential over pedigree: self-awareness, bias toward action, and coachability matter more than track record right now 💡Culture is a system, not a byproduct - and proximity matters more than people expect at this speed of iteration 💡AI fluency at board level is no longer optional A big thank you to Leticia Llordén, Daniel Miller, Maitane Serna, Itxaso del Palacio, PhD and JooBee Yeow, PhD for your contributions to this piece. Full guide in the comments.👇

Last week, Itxaso del Palacio, PhD was in Athens for #Panathēnea, speaking on two panels - one on the evolving role of investors in innovation, and one on the state of European FinTech. The themes she raised - the commoditisation of capital, the enduring power of networks, and the real moats being built through distribution and execution velocity - are ones we think about every day at Notion Capital. The FinTech conversation felt especially timely: AI is moving fast, but trust, data security, and institutional inertia mean the real opportunity may be in building from scratch rather than selling in. Great to see Itxaso representing Notion Capital on stages like this. 🙌 Congratulations to the Panathēnea team for a brilliant event! 👏 #venturecapital #fintech #ai #europeantech

Procurement is a $16B software market - mission-critical for every enterprise, yet one of the last major categories untouched by AI. We recently co-led Pivot's $40M Series B - backing a team of product builders who previously scaled Qonto and Swile to unicorn status, now rebuilding procurement from the ground up for the agentic enterprise. AI agents for benchmarking, intake, and negotiation already live in production. $3B+ in invoices processed annually. Customers like DoorDash, Wolt, Wix, and Lemonade. Jessica Thomas sat down with Pivot Co-founder & CEO Marc-Antoine Lacroix to talk about why they chose each other - and why this is one of AI's biggest opportunities. Thank you for welcoming us into your beautiful office in Paris! 🇫🇷 #procurement #ai #enterprisetech #newinvestment