Verda raises $189M led by Emergence Capital, becoming Europe's newest unicorn

Helsinki-based AI cloud company Verda said on 22 September that it raised $189 million (€163 million) in new funding, built around an oversubscribed Series B led by Emergence Capital plus additional investment. The company says the round values it at more than $1 billion — no exact figure was disclosed — and brings total funding past $450 million, making Verda Europe's newest unicorn.

Who is investing

Alongside Emergence Capital, the round drew MUFG Innovation Partners, Supermicro, Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company, Lifeline Ventures, 6 Degrees Capital (6DC), byFounders and Tesi, Finland's state investment company. Angel investors include Ola Tørudbakken and Mark Saroufim of Core Automation and GPU MODE.

The company was founded in Helsinki in 2020 as DataCrunch and rebranded to Verda in November 2025, when it announced a $64 million Series A. In April 2026 it raised $117 million led by Lifeline Ventures, combining equity with debt from Nordic lenders; the amount grew to $155 million after the Nordic Investment Bank joined.

What the money is for

Verda says the funding will accelerate product development across every layer of its cloud, from compute capacity to platform services for teams building frontier AI systems and agents, with a particular focus on inference. It plans to multiply its compute capacity over the next year.

Verda runs a full-stack model, managing its own data centres and hardware as well as its cloud platform and AI research. Its facilities in Finland and Iceland run on renewable energy, which the company says allows it to price services up to 90% below AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Verda is an NVIDIA Preferred Partner, and its customers include Nokia, 1X, ExpressVPN and Freepik.

Growth and expansion

Verda reported a $165 million annualised revenue run rate in July, up from more than $60 million around its April round. It employs around 250 people from over 40 nationalities, recently opened offices in London and San Francisco, and plans further expansion across Europe, the US and Asia.

Why it matters

Bloomberg reports that Verda aims to raise up to $1.5 billion in equity and debt during 2026 and up to $10 billion in 2027. Emergence general partner Joe Floyd said the gap between demand for AI compute and available supply keeps growing.

"AI is becoming critical infrastructure across industries, and the next few years are a pivotal window for Europe," said Ruben Bryon, Verda's founder and CEO.