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What’s behind Europe’s efforts to ditch US software in favor of sovereign tech

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is far less vocal about his worldviews than Palantir’s Alex Karp. And yet, France is taking steps to reduce its reliance on Windows, while its domestic intelligence agency recently renewed its contract with the increasingly controversial data analytics company.

This paradox is representative of Europe’s messy breakup with U.S. tech. After painful realizations that it comes with strings attached, governments across the region are looking to rely less on American providers. But the steps taken so far have been uneven and often reactive.

The CLOUD Act changed the equation

One change Europe is reacting to dates back to the first Trump presidency. Enacted in 2018, the CLOUD Act forces U.S.-based tech companies to comply with law enforcement requests for data even if the information is stored abroad. This means that even servers located on European soil are no longer enough reassurance when critical data is concerned.

Of all the information that governments sit on, health data is arguably among the most sensitive. Still, the CLOUD Act’s extraterritorial reach didn’t stop the U.K. from striking deals with the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Palantir around data from its National Health Service (NHS) during the pandemic. But if critics have their way, it may end up following France’s lead.

One year ago, the French government announced that its Health Data Hub would be leaving Microsoft Azure in favor of a “sovereign cloud.” This contract has now been awarded to Scaleway, a French cloud provider with a rapidly expanding network of data centers across Europe.

A subsidiary of French group iliad, Scaleway was also one of four providers that won a €180 million sovereign cloud tender from the European Commission (approximately $211 million). AWS European Sovereign Cloud, which Amazon launched to address Europe’s concerns, is not on the list. However, some worry that the U.S. may still have a backdoor due to one winner using S3NS, a “trusted cloud” joint venture between Thales and Google Cloud.

Europe’s alternatives still face steep odds

It wouldn’t be the first time that solutions championed as alternatives to Big Tech face issues caused by their underlying dependencies. Qwant, for instance, was once recommended as the default search engine for public servants in France while relying on Microsoft’s Bing — a partnership that went sour when the French company accused the U.S. giant of abusing its position. The relevant watchdog declined to take action, but Qwant had already made its own move.

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Joining forces with German nonprofit Ecosia, Qwant launched Staan, a Europe-based and privacy-focused search index that could help search engines like theirs reduce their dependency on Google and Bing. But both partners still lag far behind their U.S. rivals in notoriety and reach — even the slightly more popular Ecosia has only about 20 million users, not billions.

Capturing market share is arguably the main issue facing companies challenging U.S. giants — but public contracts could give them a leg up. For instance, the European Commission’s tender will also benefit French cloud providers Clever Cloud and OVHCloud, as well as STACKIT, which Lidl’s parent company Schwarz Group created for its own needs but now commercializes.

The perspective of winning large contracts with European institutions could encourage other players to follow the footsteps of Germany’s retail heavyweight, or at least, that’s the hope. According to its promoters, “an additional goal of the tender was to encourage the market to offer sovereign digital solutions that comply with EU laws and values.”

However, the Commission’s choice to avoid overreliance on a single provider could be a double-edged sword. On one end, diversification could provide more resilience and soothe dependence concerns. On the other hand, it won’t be the best shortcut to fostering Europe’s next trillion-dollar company.

To cynics and pragmatists, sovereign tech may look business-motivated — a way to ensure that euros stay home. But Europe’s conscious uncoupling from U.S. tech hasn’t always translated into contracts for its startups. For instance, France is ditching Windows for the open source operating system Linux. Institutions in Austria, Denmark, Italy, and Germany are similarly looking to replace Microsoft’s suite of products with open source alternatives, such as LibreOffice.

This switch sometimes goes alongside a “build, don’t buy” philosophy that has raised criticism. France’s Court of Auditors has questioned spending on in-house tools such as Visio, a purported replacement for Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Financial newspaper Les Echos also reported on backlash voiced across the tech ecosystem, including this rhetorical question: “If the government doesn’t lead by example, how can you expect large private companies to follow?”

Private buyers may decide the outcome

As a matter of fact, large private companies haven’t followed much. German airline Lufthansa chose Elon Musk-backed Starlink for its Wi-Fi service. So did Air France, now also a private airline but still partly controlled by the French and Dutch states — and there’s a chance that France’s state-owned railway operator SNCF may do the same.

Whether large companies choose alternatives over U.S. providers depends in large part on having technologically compelling European options. In a spat with Poland, Musk stated that “there is no substitute for Starlink” — but European governments intend to prove him wrong. Public sentiment could also play a role, and might not stop at many European individuals and officials leaving X.

Not being American is becoming an advantage

After President Trump threatened to take control of Greenland, apps for boycotting American products surged to the top of the Danish App Store — a sign that demand to cut back on U.S. tech is getting broader. Pressure on European governments to reconsider their contracts is also mounting, and Palantir’s latest mini-manifesto is unlikely to help its cause in the EU and the U.K.

Tech billionaires publicly defending views that many Europeans don’t share is also a sign that the divorce is two-sided. When Meta chose to delay the EU launch of Threads over concerns with European law, it was also a reminder that the region is only a secondary market for tech giants, and that they can afford to ignore it.

Conversely, this creates a market opportunity for solutions built for Europe, its many languages, and cultural nuances. This alone should naturally foster demand in their home markets, with an extra boost if supporters of the EuroStack initiative manage to make it mandatory for Europe’s public sector to buy local

Europe may want to buy European, but there’s also hope that “sovereign tech” will sell abroad. Mistral AI reportedly saw its revenues surge for being an alternative to OpenAI. Meanwhile, the Canadian and German governments are supporting Cohere’s merger with Aleph Alpha to create a “transatlantic AI powerhouse” serving businesses and governments around the world. In 2026, not being American — nor Chinese or Russian — is increasingly a selling point.

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India’s Snabbit closes $56M round as investor interest in on-demand home services heats up

Snabbit, an Indian on-demand home services startup, has closed a $56 million funding round, confirming TechCrunch’s earlier report.

Co-led by Susquehanna Venture Capital, Mirae Asset Venture Investments’ Unicorn Growth Fund, and Bertelsmann India Investments, the company’s Series D round values the Bengaluru-based startup at around $350 million, according to a person familiar with the matter. That’s up from $180 million about six months ago. Existing investors Nexus Venture Partners and Lightspeed also participated, alongside FJ Labs. The company has raised about $112 million in total.

Founded in 2024, Snabbit said it is now processing over 40,000 jobs daily across a network of more than 15,000 workers in five cities, offering services such as cleaning, dishwashing, and laundry as demand for rapid, on-demand home services grows in urban India.

The startup said the amount it loses on each order has fallen about 50%, while its customer-acquisition costs have shrunk roughly 65%.

Snabbit’s fundraise comes as investor interest in India’s on-demand home services sector heats up, with rival Pronto also in talks to raise fresh capital and publicly traded Urban Company reporting more than 1 million monthly bookings.

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Drizzle on top: a new high-end dog food brand is coming for the 1%

The pet food aisle has never been more crowded, which is exactly why Hilary Coles says she was skeptical when Atomic Labs came calling.

“I had the same reaction you did,” Coles told me on a call Monday afternoon, a day before her new company, Golden Child, opened for business. “Surely that can’t be what people need.”

Coles co-founded Hims & Hers with Andrew Dudum, Jack Abraham, and Joe Spector back in 2016 and spent seven years there overseeing brand, physical products, and consumer strategy before taking a year and a half off to have her children. She describes herself as “a consumer person first” who happened to land in healthcare. Dog food wasn’t “on the bingo card,” as she put it.

The pitch that won her over was rooted less in dog food specifically than in a methodology. Atomic, the startup studio founded by Abraham, runs what it calls “painted door tests” — lightweight experiments designed to reveal what consumers will actually do, not just what they say they want. When Atomic ran those tests in the pet food space, interest was clear. The team then studied 11,000 reviews of existing fresh dog food products and found recurring complaints: inconvenience, dogs getting sick, food that felt like a chore to prepare and serve. “We started to peel the onion,” Coles said.

What they found, she and her co-founder Quentin Lacornerie argue, is an industry that hasn’t innovated in about 12 years — a claim that strains credulity, given how crowded the premium and human-grade segment has become — but one they say ties to 11,000 customer reviews showing persistent complaints about existing fresh food options, even as the humans feeding their dogs have dramatically changed their expectations.

Lacornerie, who was part of the founding team at Hims & Hers and spent years spearheading its personalized growth strategy, says there are lots of parallels to the early days of that company. “Wellness has eclipsed Big Pharma by 4x in market cap,” he noted. Pet parents who take collagen for joint health, who read ingredient labels, and who track their own nutrition and increasingly want the same rigor applied to what goes in their dog’s bowl.

Golden Child is launching with two “five-star” products sold direct-to-consumer for now: a fresh frozen meal system and, more intriguingly, a “drizzle” — a shelf-stable liquid topper that can be added to whatever a dog is already eating, whether that’s Golden Child’s own food, kibble, or something else. The drizzle retails for $19.95 a bottle. The meal system starts at $3 a day and is sold primarily on subscription, though a starter box is available for people who want to ease into the relationship.

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The drizzle is the more novel idea and, presumably, the higher-margin one. I asked Coles whether the company had considered just focusing on that product. “Like all entrepreneurs, we have a lot of opportunities to build out worlds,” she answered. “This is just the first inning.”

The food itself is made in the U.S. across multiple manufacturing facilities, using human-grade supply chains — a harder thing to establish than it sounds, said Lacornerie. The recipes were developed by a PhD in animal nutrition; Megan Sprinkle, who is one of only roughly 80 board-certified veterinary nutritionists in the country; and (naturally) a classically trained chef, one who has work ties to Ina Garten and Guy Fieri, says Lacornerie.

The company also developed what it’s calling a “protein block,” a way of delivering chicken and beef with an enhanced amino acid profile that standard meat cuts alone don’t provide, says Coles.

Golden Child is announcing $37 million in total funding today as it comes out of stealth — a seed round and a Series A led by Redpoint Ventures, with Atomic and A* also participating. That’s a meaningful amount for a company selling dog food, but Lacornerie says that doing it right requires actual experts who don’t just dial it in. Indeed, among the company’s 12 employees, the nutritionists and chef are all on staff, not advisors.

The brand name is broad by design. When I asked whether Golden Child might eventually expand into shampoos, travel gear, even some form of veterinary access — getting medication for a dog is its own particular bureaucratic headache — Coles didn’t deny it. “There’s a lot of interest and excitement from pet parents to involve their dogs in all aspects of their life,” she said. The goal, eventually, is to earn a place as a household brand, not just a food company.

Atomic has had notable successes along with some stumbles. Hims & Hers, now 10 years old, is a publicly traded company with a nearly $7 billion market cap. OpenStore, the e-commerce roll-up co-founded in 2021 by Abraham and venture investor Keith Rabois, tells a different story: After years of splashy coverage and more than $150 million in venture funding, it last year slashed its valuation by 95% and pivoted to focus on one of its brands, Jack Archer.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that OpenStore had shut down entirely.

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Otter’s new feature lets users search across their enterprise tools

AI meeting notetaker app companies have realized that transcribing meetings and providing summaries alone is not enough to justify their business models and valuations. They now want the apps to act as a full workspace where users bring in data from different sources, search across all of it, and make decisions about their business. Following notetakers like Read AI, Fireflies.ai, and Fathom, Otter is now launching enterprise search by acting as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) client. That means it can connect to and pull data from outside apps and services using a common standard that AI tools are rapidly adopting.

Otter has been around for nearly a decade now, but it has been making moves toward becoming an enterprise productivity tool in the last few months. Last October, the company launched a way for organizations to build custom MCPs to access Otter data outside the app. The company’s latest move is more about bringing outside data into the app.

With this launch, users can connect their Gmail, Google Drive, Notion, Jira, and Salesforce accounts and query that data along with existing meeting data. The company said that it will soon allow connections with Microsoft Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and Slack. Users can not only search for data across these tools but also push meeting summaries to Notion or draft a Gmail message.

The company said that it has also redesigned its AI assistant to be consistently present across the whole interface, so users can ask questions anytime. The assistant can understand the context of the screen, such as a particular meeting or a channel, and answer questions accordingly.

Meanwhile, most notetakers are following Granola’s lead and allowing for a botless meeting capture — recording meetings using a device’s system audio rather than having a bot join the call. Otter said that it brought this feature to the Mac app late last year and is now launching a Windows app with a similar feature.

There has been a debate around notetaking with bots (where a bot joins the meeting) or without bots. Otter CEO Sam Liang said that the company’s enterprise customers prefer when a meeting notetaker joins the call.

“When we talk to enterprise customers, most of them actually prefer the notetaker that joins the Zoom meeting because it provides the transparency. They also prefer the meeting notes to be shared with all the meeting attendees, so that the note is not limited to one person,” he told TechCrunch over a call.

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Otter said that it has a deduplication feature that prevents a swarm of bots from joining a meeting simultaneously to avoid situations where there are more bots than humans on a call.

Last year, the company said it had 25 million users and $100 million in annual recurring revenue. While the company didn’t provide a new set of financials, it said that the platform now has 35 million users.

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