While consumer apps often grab headlines, a more profound transformation is reshaping Europe’s economic foundations. Startups specializing in business-to-business (B2B) deep tech are quietly modernizing the legacy systems that power core industries like energy and retail. This movement, less about flashy disruption and more about essential upgrades, is critical for the continent’s economic sovereignty and productivity.

Powering the Energy Transition with Data

In the energy sector, London-based Previse Systems is addressing a critical pain point. As announced in a press release from global impact investor Lightrock, the firm has backed Previse to scale its cloud-native Energy Trading & Risk Management (ETRM) platform. Traditional ETRM systems, often decades old, are ill-equipped to handle the volatility and immense data flow of modern energy markets, which are increasingly dominated by renewable sources.

“The complexity of trading and managing risk in today’s power markets has increased exponentially,” a Lightrock representative stated in the announcement. “Legacy systems simply cannot provide the real-time analytics and scalability required for the energy transition.” Previse’s platform allows utility companies to manage portfolios, automate trading, and mitigate risk more effectively, a necessity as Europe pushes toward its climate goals.

Automating the Retail Checkout

Parallel innovation is occurring in retail. Czech startup Buylo recently secured a €640K seed round to scale its RFID-powered automated checkout and inventory management system. As reported by tech news source EU-Startups, Buylo’s technology directly tackles acute labor shortages and operational inefficiencies that plague the sector. Their system enables near-instant checkout and provides retailers with real-time, accurate inventory data.

This addresses a multi-billion dollar problem. The company’s announcement cited market research projecting the global retail automation sector to grow to $72 billion by 2034. This growth is driven by the relentless pressure on retailers to improve margins and compete with the logistical prowess of global e-commerce giants like Amazon and Temu.

The Larger Trend: Enterprise-Focused Innovation

The successes of Previse and Buylo are not isolated incidents but part of a significant trend towards B2B, enterprise-focused innovation in Europe. This shift moves beyond consumer-facing apps to fortify the industrial and commercial backbone of the economy. The practical impact is measured in cost reduction, enhanced scalability, and data-driven decision-making, allowing traditional European businesses to compete on a global stage.

Experts see this as a necessary evolution. “The next decade of European tech will be defined by vertical SaaS and deep tech solutions that solve hard problems for industries like manufacturing, logistics, and energy,” noted a venture capitalist specializing in enterprise tech in an industry blog. “It’s less glamorous than B2C, but the economic impact and defensibility are often much greater.”

The drive to modernize core operational technology has precedents in earlier waves of enterprise software. The adoption of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems in the late 1990s and early 2000s, pioneered by companies like Siebel Systems and later Salesforce, fundamentally changed how businesses managed sales and customer interactions, shifting from Rolodexes and spreadsheets to integrated cloud platforms.

Similarly, the current modernization wave in energy ETRM mirrors the earlier digitization of financial trading floors. In the 1980s, the introduction of electronic trading platforms and sophisticated risk management software replaced open outcry pits and manual ledgers, enabling the handling of vastly more complex instruments and higher volumes of trades, a transformation that redefined global finance.