Hello Sifted reader,

Tech has been an invaluable source of inspiration for books and television in the past decade. Thank you, Elizabeth Holmes, for Bad Blood and The Dropout. Thank you, Adam Neumann, for WeCrashed. And I’m going to echo the rest of the internet in asking for Jonah Hill to play Sam Bankman-Fried in the inevitable FTX movie. I have my popcorn ready.

There are two common threads to these infamous tech fiascos: self-obsessed founders overselling their companies, and greedy investors who chose to drink the Kool-Aid.

These personality-driven scandals were also a product of a particular moment in time. We were living through arguably the easiest financing environment in history, which created the perfect conditions for a charismatic founder with a big vision to raise hundreds of millions for something very shaky.

Now, central banks are raising rates. Inflation is up. The easy money music has stopped. Why take a bet on a risky startup when you can get over 4% interest on a savings account with Apple and Goldman?

There will be new scandals for a new time. Here’s my bet: there are going to be a lot more involving startups, governments and politicians.

We’ve had a taste in recent weeks. UK PM Rishi Sunak has faced questions about his wife’s undeclared investment in London childcare startup Koru Kids, which could be a beneficiary of a new policy. Sunak has since declared his wife’s shares.

Last week, Sifted reported that a political corruption scandal at a public body in Poland responsible for distributing EU grants means dozens of startups haven’t gotten their cash. Some are facing bankruptcy.

Governments have become much closer to startups since Covid, when many had to accept government loans and investment to stay alive. Plenty of former politicians and officials have "retired" into tech advisory roles — but we’re sure not all of those relationships began when their jobs in the public sector were over.

The climate tech boom — and the regulation that will come with it — will also create more intersections between governments and startups. There will be opportunities aplenty in opaque procurement systems, poorly regulated subsidies and grants and kickbacks on offer for favouring one gigafactory over another.

Backscratching is rife in the world of tech and VC. Most companies — and firms — are black boxes. The transparency that’s required of public officials is sorely lacking.

I don’t doubt the characters that will populate these scandals will be just as colourful as the ones we’ve seen already. Bring on the Netflix series.

— Eleanor Warnock, deputy editor

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🎙️ Sifted Podcast: End of the road for Cazoo? This week on the pod Amy and Eleanor discuss what's gone wrong at the used car company, a corruption scandal that's left dozens of Polish startup facing bankruptcy and toxic VC culture.

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AI automation is the talk of the town — so which tools are startup teams finding helpful? On April 27, experts from Make, Delivery Hero, January Ventures and FINN will share hacks for improving productivity without splashing on new hires. Register for free.

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💰 Series A+

French expense management fintech Mooncard has raised a €37m Series C.
Weaviate, a Dutch database for scaling machine learning models, has raised a $50m Series B from Index Ventures.
Oso-AI, a French patient monitoring platform using AI-based sound recognition tech, has raised a €10m Series A.

💰 Pre-seed & seed

Woodoo, a French startup that makes carbon-free materials out of wood molecules, has raised a $31m seed round from investors including Lowercarbon Capital.
Berlin-based Nosh, which is creating ingredients for the food industry from microbial biomass, has raised a €3.2m seed round led by Earlybird.
Rabot Charge, a German startup that helps homeowners purchase cheap electricity, has raised €1.5m.
Spacedrip, an Estonian startup developing water cleaning robots for sewage treatment, has raised $1.5m.