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With Amy away at climate tech conference HackSummit in Switzerland this week, Tim stepped in to host the Sifted pod alongside Eleanor. They're joined by the "father of Alexa" and find out how generative AI is impacting healthcare.

Plus... athlete, connector or intellectual — which type of VC are you? 

Also from the Sifted newsroom today:

• Revolut's CFO quits
• What the 'father of Alexa' did next
• Investors go cold on vertical farms and plant-based meats

EIT’s EU-funded Rocket Up programme can help you enter a new European market in mobility, manufacturing or food tech — with tailor-made mentorship, training, networking and more. Attend the free webinar on 15th May to discover more.

📈 Solar energy is having its time in the sun. Investment in the sector increased from $1.9bn in 2021 to $2.1bn in 2022, and solar energy usage last year rose 25% across the EU as installation costs came down. The latest Sifted Briefing digs into the leading countries for solar funding, the startups to watch and the most active investors.

📉 Vertical farms and plant-based meats are out of vogue, however. Europe’s sustainable food startups brought in a record level of funding last year — $1.9bn — but funding is shifting from once much-hyped vertical farms and plant-based meats to cell-based alt meats and precision agriculture.

William Tunstall-Pedoe — the "father of Alexa"

What's he known for?
Tunstall-Pedoe founded AI startup Evi, which he sold to Amazon in 2013 and now powers the tech giant's voice assistant Alexa.

What is he doing now? Running AI startup UnlikelyAI, which raised $20m last year in a round led by Octopus Ventures and Amadeus Capital Partners. The startup is still in stealth, so he can't share what it's actually building. He chatted to Sifted about generative AI concerns, god-like artificial general intelligence and what he’s working on now.

3,000+ attendees, 200+ speakers, 80+ companies in the expo — Sifted Summit is not to be missed by anyone in the startup scene. 

❌ Revolut CFO quits — Mikko Salovaara's resignation follows a string of senior departures from the neobank’s UK team last year. He says the decision was down to "personal reasons".

💬 "In the fintech space, if any company that raised in 2021 were to raise next week, I’d say the market standard right now is a 50% to 70% devaluation" — Eric Demuth, the CEO of Austrian crypto trading platform Bitpanda, thinks some fintechs are currently clinging on to price tags double what they're actually worth.

👉 12 female-founded startups to watch, according to VCs.

🏥 12 startups tackling cancer to watch, according to VCs from Verve Ventures, MMC Ventures, High-Tech Gründerfonds and Sofinnova Partners.

🤝 How to hire neurodiverse talent — Joseph Williams, cofounder and CEO of inclusive recruitment platform Clu, shares his top tips.

💳 As inflation spikes, where can credit cards innovate next? (Sponsored by Paymentology.)

Incubator or accelerator programmes within Europe — or people with knowledge of startup centres — can register to be considered for a forthcoming guide to Europe’s leading startup hubs, to be published by the Financial Times and Sifted. The survey only takes a few minutes to complete and is open until June 15.

💰 Series A+

• DiogenX, a French biotech developing a treatment for diabetes, has raised €27.5m in Series A funding.
• Endurosat, a Bulgarian spacetech startup developing satellites, has raised $10m in Series A funding.
• Delta Diagnostics, a Dutch microchip maker, has raised a €5.3m Series A. 

💰 Pre-seed & seed

• Saha Robotik, a Turkish robot last-mile delivery startup, has raised $3m.

• Polyloop.io, a Belfast-based startup that's created a digital tool to improve data-driven decision making in the public sector, has raised £1.3m.
• Thrive Beer, a Belgian company that's developed a "sports recovery beer", has raised €1m. 

💰 Undisclosed

• ecoRobotix, a Swiss agritech startup providing robotic solutions to farmers, has raised $48.3m.

• Voltfang, a German startup developing energy storage solutions for residential homes, has raised €5m.
• Doublepoint, a Finnish startup building touch-based interfaces for smartwatches, has raised $3.3m.

Kai Nicol-Schwarz

Reporter

Get in touch with him at

kai@sifted.eu

He tweets from 

@NicolSchwarzK

Tom Nugent

Digital Editor

Get in touch with him at

tom@sifted.eu

He tweets from 

@TJNugent92

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