telli Closes €15M for AI-Powered Phone Agents
telli, a German AI startup building autonomous phone agents for businesses, has raised €15 million in a new funding round. The company's core product replaces or augments human call center staff with AI agents capable of handling inbound and outbound calls — a use case that's gaining serious traction as enterprises look to cut operational costs without sacrificing customer experience.
The raise puts telli among a growing cohort of European voice-AI startups competing for enterprise contracts in industries like insurance, logistics, and healthcare. With conversational AI maturing rapidly, the battle is increasingly about reliability, compliance, and language coverage — all areas where a German-market-focused player has a natural edge over US-first competitors.
Passionfroot Secures €15M to Scale Creator Commerce
Passionfroot, a Berlin-based platform that helps creators manage brand deals, sponsorships, and storefronts in one place, has closed a €15 million funding round. The startup targets the growing segment of professional content creators — newsletters, podcasters, YouTubers — who need business infrastructure beyond what platforms like Substack or YouTube natively provide.
The creator economy has matured considerably since its pandemic-era boom. What Passionfroot is betting on is that the top tier of creators increasingly operate like small media companies, and need tools that reflect that complexity: contract management, payment processing, analytics, and multi-channel deal tracking. That's a meaningfully different pitch from pure audience-growth tools.
Lockheed Martin Ventures Invests in Spread
Spread, a German industrial tech company, has received investment from Lockheed Martin Ventures, the corporate venture arm of the US aerospace and defense giant. While deal size hasn't been disclosed, the strategic backing is notable — Lockheed Martin Ventures tends to invest where it sees supply chain, manufacturing, or operational relevance to its core defense and aerospace business.
Spread focuses on vertical farming and automated food production systems. The Lockheed connection may seem counterintuitive, but defense-adjacent interest in food security and resilient supply chains has been a real investment theme, particularly post-pandemic and amid ongoing geopolitical volatility.
Aampere Raises €4.2M for Used EV Marketplace
Aampere, a marketplace for used electric vehicles, has secured €4.2 million in seed funding. The platform aims to address one of the persistent friction points in EV adoption: the opacity and complexity of the used EV market, where battery health, charging history, and software version all matter in ways that don't apply to combustion vehicles.
As new EV sales growth moderates in several European markets, the used segment is becoming increasingly important. Aampere is positioning itself as the trusted infrastructure layer for that transition.
CheckYeti Acquires Manawa in Outdoor Activity Consolidation
Rounding out the week, CheckYeti — an Austrian booking platform for ski and outdoor activities — has acquired Manawa, a French competitor in the adventure and outdoor experiences space. Terms were not disclosed.
The deal continues a consolidation trend in the fragmented outdoor activity booking market, where scale in supplier relationships and SEO footprint increasingly determines who wins. For CheckYeti, absorbing Manawa's inventory and user base accelerates its push beyond the Alps into broader European markets.
