There are already two term sheets in the headlines before my morning coffee has finished its journey from bean to cup. It’s been a recurring theme for 2025. The roadmap, it seems, now arrives by acquisition.
A billion-dollar exit here; a nine-figure buy there; an acqui-hire tucked between.
The pattern’s hard to miss. Europe’s AI and defence teams aren’t waiting for the perfect sprint or the neatest roadmap. They’re buying capabilities and shipping sooner.
In AI, Sifted counts 100 European AI startup M&A deals so far this year—already ahead of 85 across the whole of 2024. July and August clocked 18 and 15 exits respectively, the highest monthly totals since Sifted began tracking in 2024.
Workday signed to acquire Sana for ~$1.1bn in September — a capability buy to fuse knowledge, data, learning and agentic UX into the “front door for work.” Salesforce completed its Convergence deal and put the team “at the centre” of Agentforce, its agents platform. NICE agreed to acquire Cognigy in a transaction valued at ~$955m. And Anthropic acqui-hired the Humanloop cofounders and most of the team in August. It’s been busy, and teams have been the theme.
Distribution swallows invention
It isn’t just Big Tech with a shopping list. Europe’s best-funded AI scaleups are building deal muscle to outpace the competition. Sifted reported that Mistral, fresh from a €1.7bn Series C, posted for a role “pivotal” to its M&A push. Poolside hired a veteran dealmaker as CIO to source and instruct acquisitions. In parallel, corporates are shopping for AI-native capability: Check Point agreed to acquire Lakera to anchor an end-to-end AI security stack.
“We’re seeing consolidation among mid-revenue AI software players — clusters of similar-sized vendors getting picked off as buyers prioritise proven tech with enterprise deployment,” Amadeus Partner, Dr. Manjari Chandran-Ramesh, shared with Sifted.
“The most active targets are $6m–20m ARR, especially in LLM tooling and model lifecycle and reliability.”
Defence is moving with the same urgency, only louder. Budgets are up; procurement is modernising. Helsing acquired Grob Aircraft in June; by late September it unveiled CA-1 Europa — an autonomous fighter jet built around its Centaur AI stack. Weeks later, Helsing announced plans to acquire Blue Ocean to extend into autonomous underwater systems. Quantum Systems has acquired three companies in 2025.
“There’s a tremendous focus and realisation that you’ve got to get things into the battlefield quickly, and therefore if you’re a large defence startup, you need to acquire to be able to do that,” shared Nick Kingsbury, Partner at Amadeus, with Sifted.
“The rapidly changing picture on the ground means that the needs change and the larger well-funded players will continue to need to fill capability holes.”
We’ve been here before
Europe has long used consolidation to concentrate capability and compete at scale. In 1960, the British Aircraft Corporation emerged by bringing together English Electric, Vickers-Armstrongs (Aircraft) and the Bristol Aeroplane Company. By 1977, the Aircraft and Shipbuilding Industries Act folded BAC, Hawker Siddeley (Aviation & Dynamics) and Scottish Aviation into British Aerospace.
Fewer seams, faster integration, bigger bets. Today’s “neoprimes” are running a venture-rate version of the same play.
Zoom out: sovereign resilience is the market
As Nick Kingsbury argues in his latest piece for Venture Capital Journal, the mission has widened from “defence” to sovereign resilience—cyber, disinformation, AI threat detection and infrastructure protection that blur defence, civil tech and public safety. That’s where M&A accelerates most: stitching adjacent capabilities into deployable stacks. It’s why our portfolio companies like Sitehop (ultra-low latency quantum-safe encryption) and Periphery (cyber for XIoT in contested environments) sit squarely in the slipstream. The frontline is digital.
Why this matters (for early-stage founders)
Be plug-and-play: clear integration guide, sample code, sign-in with a work account, and an activity log so a partner can drop you in fast.
Prove it: for AI, show time to value and steady performance; for dual-use/defence, bring pilot results and show you fit existing systems.
Map your buyers: list five to seven likely acquirers, the gap you close for each, and keep a tidy evidence pack ready.
By the time my cup is empty, two more deals are in the feed. The pattern doesn’t change: the fastest teams buy capability and ship sooner. Plan for partners, prove it works, keep your evidence pack ready — tomorrow’s release will arrive as a deal, not a demo.
Read on for more news from our portfolio and partners across Intelligence, Human, and Planet this month.
Intelligence
Future-proofing networks against quantum threats. Sitehop raised £7.5m in a round led by Norther Gritstone with participation from Amadeus to scale its SAFEseries™ hardware encryption. UK-sovereign, ultra-low-latency and post-quantum ready technology already live with a Tier-1 carrier and validated at BT’s Gemini test facility. Read the announcement.
Compute efficiency is the new battleground. Sifted spoke with our Partner Amelia Armour on startups squeezing more from existing hardware — from model compression and code optimisation to photonics and data-centre upgrades. Read the feature.
Is today’s AI boom rhyming with dot-com? The Times also spoke with Amelia on what separates signal from froth — scarce chips, “price-to-press-release” hype, and why IP and ROI decide durable winners. Read the analysis.
“Businesses still don’t fully trust AI.” William Tunstall-Pedoe, Founder of Unlikely AI, on accuracy, explanation and consistency as adoption blockers — and how verifiable answers unlock regulated workflows. Read the interview.
AI M&A hits new highs. Amadeus Partner Dr. Manjari Chandran-Ramesh on consolidation among mid-revenue enterprise AI (LLM tooling, lifecycle, reliability) as buyers prioritise deployed tech. Read the piece.
Human
Deploying AI at Scale in European Healthcare. Amadeus Partner Pierre Socha shares a practical playbook (augmentation, interoperability, trust, outcomes) for founders to deploy AI at scale in European Healthcare. Read the blog.
Constructive Bio in The Times. CEO Dr Ola Wlodek on synthetic genomics with impact from disease-resistant cells to sustainable materials and food systems. Read the feature.
Cambridge’s biotech engine keeps moving. Labiotech on why the cluster compounds — world-class science, talent and pharma neighbours — with Amadeus recognised among active backers. Read the deep dive.
Planet
Plastic-free, proven. Xampla’s Morro™ Coating is independently validated by the UK’s National Physical Laboratory as plastic-free and SUPD-exempt — a big step for brands under tightening UK/EU rules. Read the announcement.
Graphene sensors for critical environments. Paragraf signs an MoU with INTRATOMICS (Khalifa University Enterprises Co.) to co-develop next-gen graphene-enabled sensor technologies. Read the release.
Sovereign resilience: why investors should care. Partner Nick Kingsbury in Venture Capital Journal on the shift from “defence” to resilience — cybersecurity, disinformation, AI-driven threat detection and infrastructure protection — and how public vehicles crowd in private capital. Read the column.
News from the team
Founder of the Week. Amadeus CEO and co-founder Dame Anne Glover features in TechRound on resilience, quality and lessons from building through multiple cycles — plus her “Founder’s Five”. Read the interview.
Hermann Hauser on closing Europe’s scaleup gap. Hermann spoke with Sifted about how the EIC and its Trusted Investor Network crowd in private capital for frontier tech at scale. Read the interview.
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