Hello Sifted reader,

"If founders have an option of where to start their company, London is no longer the first choice," says Blossom partner Ophelia Brown, who joined the latest episode of the Sifted Podcast to chat crypto, why generative AI is still mostly hype and which city might be the next capital of European tech. Listen to the interview here, or scroll to read the conversation.

Plus, Berlin is recovering today from the Sifted team hitting the town for a full suite of workshops, panels and networking at yesterday's Sessions event. If you missed out, don't fret. Grab your ticket for the Sifted Summit in London, which is back with a bang October 4-5.

From the Sifted newsroom:

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR SANA

The new AI paradigm: What execs from OpenAI, Sequoia Capital and Spotify actually think

Join 300 leaders at the Sana AI Summit Stockholm on May 31 to hear from top AI founders, researchers and investors. There's now a waitlist for physical seats, but all registered guests will receive recordings.

Register now

🌟 Starling CEO to step down this summer. Anne Boden will leave the company at the end of June, after the neobank saw record pre-tax profits of £195m for the 2022 financial year.

➡️ Blossom Capital loses its fourth partner in five years. Alex Lim joined as managing partner in 2021 from US VC IVP and will leave at the end of May. Instead of hiring a new partner, the firm will bring in two associates this summer.

🪐 €60m for spacetech fund led by former SpaceX exec. Bulent Altan was vice president of satellite mission assurance at Musk's company, and cofounded Alpine Space Ventures in 2021. The European Investment Fund put the money into the fund, which is looking to back companies at Series A and write cheques of €1m-5m.

💳 Tom Blomfield joins YC. The Monzo and GoCardless cofounder has been announced as the newest group partner at the fabled US accelerator.

Downturn Survival Guide podcast

Our new podcast series looks at how to survive — and thrive — in the downturn. Resilient founders and experienced investors from EQT Ventures, Flow Engineering, Instabee and Sonantic joined us to explore lessons from the dotcom crash, maintaining employee morale and the anatomy of an M&A process.

Listen here

🌍 The software collab that could save the planet (just don't call it SaaS). VCs are picking up on the idea that investing in hardware like fusion reactors and solar fields is key to solving the climate crisis — but that could lead to nada if we don't bring climate software along for the ride.

👍 Peter Thiel is still (kinda) into Europe. Funds associated with the Palantir and Paypal founder closed more deals in Europe in 2022 than the year before... but 2023's figures paint a more meagre picture.

💍 Europe's next superapp. Smart ring startup Oura might be used by celebs like Prince Harry and Kim Kardashian to track their sleep, but the Finnish company is setting its sights on much more than that. "We want to be a health tracker and a general purpose application in payments, identity, security access — that's the big vision," CEO Tom Hale tells Sifted. Here's how it's going about fulfilling its superapp ambitions.

🇩🇪 The 10 fastest growing companies in Germany.

📝 Cold showers, emails on an exercise bike and The Big Bang Theory — Mindstone CEO Joshua Wöhle takes us inside the daily routine of a founder.

💼 Who to hire and what to look for after Series A. Experts and founders who've gone through the hiring process share their top tips for later-stage startups looking to splash the cash on headcount.

🏋️‍♀️ "VC by nature is definitely a competitive sport." Blossom Capital partner Ophelia Brown joins the Sifted podcast — here's what she had to say about being ruthless, London losing its tech lead and the genAI hype cycle.

♻️ The tech world is wrapped up in sustainable packaging — but is it here to stay? (Sponsored by European Circular Bioeconomy Fund (ECBF))

💰 Series A+

UK-based Satellite Vu, which offers climate impact insights across industries, has raised £12.7m in Series A funding, led by Molten Ventures.

💰 Pre-seed and seed

WireMock, a UK-based productivity platform for API developers, has raised a $6.5m seed round.
Danish biotech InProTher, which is developing a new immunotherapy against tumours, has secured €6m in seed funding.
Signaloid, a UK-based platform for software teams to project how applications are affected by data, has raised £3m in seed funding led by IQ Capital.
Zero44, a German startup that offers CO2 management software for merchant ships, has raised a €2.5m seed round led by Atlantic Labs.
French startup Loewi, which buys, reconditions and resells electric bikes, has raised a €1m pre-seed.

💰 Undisclosed

Germany's speedy grocery delivery service Flink has raised €150m from existing investors — a downround that takes its valuation down to around €1bn.
Turkey's Insider, an AI-powered marketing platform, has raised $105m.
French cybersecurity startup Sekoia.io has raised $37.6m.
The UK's DataOps.live, a DataOps platform for data science, has secured $17.5m from Notion Capital, Anthos Capital and Snowflake.