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The size of the US market means many European founders have one eye on moving stateside as soon as they start to scale. But whereas the incentives for climate techs are making it a no-brainer, rising competition and a funding crunch mean healthtech founders are having second thoughts. Mimi Billing and Kai Nicol-Schwarz find out if startups will have to kick their US habit below. 

Also from the Sifted newsroom:

• Serial founders who've founded again in 2023
• Can European deeptech challenge the US and China?

Microsoft’s upcoming digital event on May 9, Microsoft SaaS Day for Startups, will teach you all you need to know — including industry trends, how to pick cloud and other technologies, the role of AI in product development and best practices for building SaaS successfully.

— the value of the US healthcare market, making it a lucrative opportunity for European healthtechs who can successfully scale stateside.

But in the middle of a funding crunch and a post-Covid boom in competition, is it trickier than ever to make it in America?

🇺🇸 “There is clearly a time window to get into North America [...] those financial packages won’t last forever.” — The cofounder of Northvolt, Europe's largest climate tech startup, tells Sifted it's set to confirm US expansion plans within weeks.

💪 10 serial founders who've founded again in 2023.

🤖 Should we pause or slow the development of "god-like AI"? Christoph Schuhmann, the founder of the organisation that built the dataset behind Stable Diffusion, doesn't think so — instead he proposes an AI supercomputer financed and built by world governments.

💻 Can European deeptech give the US and China a run for their money? Europe's deeptech startups haven't managed to seriously compete with international superpowers yet — and there's one key thing to fix if we want to, reckons Silicon Roundabout Ventures' Francesco Perticarari.

🩺 From filtering blood to portable ECGs: five European healthtechs that are going strong. (Sponsored by EIT Health Catapult)

Global mobility has become an important leverage in attracting and retaining the best talent — but for HR, it’s a maze of tax and immigration laws and liabilities. In our guide, we cover the startups helping companies managing the process, how to use mobility tech and where to draw the line.

🤝 Founders Forum Group has acquired Tech Nation.

🇬🇧 The UK government has announced an initial £100m for a Foundation Model Taskforce to help the country build and adopt the next generation of safe and reliable AI models. 

🏫 Leading universities and investors share recommendations on how to improve the UK's spinout scene — the USIT Guide offers advice and direction in areas such as equity share and IP.

💰 European Women in VC and IDC are digging into the impact diversity has on VC fund performance — if you're an employee or partner at a VC firm, fill out the survey here. 

🇪🇺 Zalando and Booking are the only two European tech companies that will have to comply with the EU’s set of more rigorous online rules, the European Commission announced yesterday.

Context: Last year the EU agreed on a landmark law that aims to regulate content and transparency on the Internet — the Digital Services Act.

The rules will apply to all online platforms, search engines and marketplaces that operate in Europe; but while startups and smaller companies have until next year to comply with the new rules, the biggest players — those that have more than 45m active users — will have to adjust their operations as of August 25. They’ll also have to follow a specific regime of stricter rules.

More to come? Brussels is still investigating up to five companies that might fall into this basket (which reportedly includes Swedish Spotify).

💰 Series A+ 

• Riverlane, which is building operating systems for quantum computers, has raised a €15m Series B round.

• Zaptic, an operations platform for manufacturing companies, has drummed up $10m in Series A funding led by Molten Ventures. 

• CarbonChain, a platform for businesses to monitor carbon impact, has raised a $10m Series A.
• Ciliatech, which is developing a treatment for glaucoma, has raised €3.5m in Series A funding.

💰 Pre-seed & seed

• Reverion, a Munich-based startup building fuel cell technology and plug-and-play clean power plants, has raised an €8.5m pre-Series A bridge round. It shared the pitch deck it used with Sifted.
• Plumery, a banking infrastructure startup launched by fintech veteran Ben Goldin, has raised a €2m equity and €2.3m convertible debt seed round — the founder tells Sifted if JP Morgan used Plumery for its Chase bank, it could cut down its tech hires from 1,000 to just 30.

• Productive Machines, which builds AI to streamline the machinery industry, has announced €2.2m in seed funding.  

• ESG management platform Infyos has raised £1m led by Pale Blue Dot. 

💰 Undisclosed

• EV charging startup Virta has raised €85m. 
• UK train-booking app SeatFrog has raised £6m from investors including Octopus Ventures. 

Sadia Nowshin

Editorial Assistant

Get in touch with her at

sadia@sifted.eu

She tweets from 

@sadianowshin_

Tom Nugent

Digital Editor

Get in touch with him at

tom@sifted.eu

He tweets from

@TJNugent92

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