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Today's prize for the best event playlist goes to Paris's Sista Summit, where Wannabe and Welcome To The Rock (if you know, you know) set the scene for an afternoon of discussions about how to close the gender gap in tech.

Half of the panels were in French (bien sûr) but I did take away this much: across France, Sweden, Germany, the UK and Spain, just 10% of startups are created by women and just 7% of funding goes to female-founded startups.

At scaleups, the situation is even worse: less than 1% of €50m+ rounds went to all-female founding teams last year. That's despite heaps of organisations like Sista now existing to coax VCs into pledging to fund more women, years' worth of data highlighting the issue and an increasing number of events taking place to help women build the networks they often lack.

How can we speed up change? I'm not sure we've found the answer — yet.

— Amy Lewin, editor

From Sifted today:

• Alan Chang's Tesseract has been on an M&A spree
• French OpenAI competitor raises €105m seed round
• Europe gets a new unicorn 
• The Sifted Summit first 50 speakers: announced

Research shows generative AI can increase your team's productivity by 30% — helping them work faster, focus on significant problems and feel more fulfilled. Now imagine your team using generative AI trained on all your company's knowledge.

🤝 Alan Chang's Tesseract amps up acquisitions. The energy company founded by Revolut's former CRO has been quietly snapping up smaller companies ahead of the planned launch of its consumer product next month.

🦄 Europe gets a new unicorn. The UK's Synthesia, a GenAI-powered video creation platform, has raised $90m in a Series C led by Accel — a round that took its valuation to $1bn.

🤖 Meta and Deepmind alumni raise €105m to build OpenAI competitor. France-based GenAI startup Mistral's huge early-stage round was led by US VC Lightspeed, alongside Xavier Niel, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and a host of other VCs.

💰 Voima Ventures raises third fund, of €90m. It'll focus on deeptech from research labs and university spinouts in the Nordics, and will back around 25 startups, with cheques ranging between €200k-€3m+.

🦄 "We’re looking for the next generation of company, the next Black unicorn.” UK VC firm Black Seed, which aims to address the funding gap facing Black founders, has announced a first close of £5m for its targeted £10m fund. LPs include Atomico, M&G Catalyst and Sam Branson, son of Richard Branson. 

🚚 $31m to let trucks drive themselves. Fernride, a German startup that builds operating systems to power autonomous trucks in industrial settings, saw its Series A round led by the CVC arm of German logistics giant HHLA. 

🍾 The ex-Uber execs bringing the champagne nomad dream to life. Startup Yayem describes itself as “an asset-light Soho House meets Airbnb Experiences meets YPO”. Among the backers of its $2m pre-seed round are angels who were early execs at Meta and Uber.

💳 GoCardless lays off 15% of staff. The UK fintech unicorn announced it was eliminating around 135 roles across the UK, US, Australia and New Zealand. It's also planning to cut its senior leadership team by around 25%. 

Vienna isn’t only a top-ranked place to live, it’s a top destination for entrepreneurs to quickly launch, fund and test their businesses. We uncover why innovators and VCs are setting up shop in the coffeehouse capital and what experts say is needed to keep up the momentum.

😬 New data from Sista Fund and Boston Consulting Group has delivered some more damning insights into the gender diversity — or lack thereof — in the continent's startup scene. Here are five top takeaways from the report.

📝 The Trade Republic alumni-turned-founders. The German online stock trading platform boasts its own yearbook of entrepreneurs who have gone on to found successful startups of their own. 

🔥 The startups emerging from Bulb's ashes. Plenty of alumni from the collapsed energy company have persevered in the startup world and gone on to new endeavours — here's what ex-employees have been building since its crash.

💻 Ranking: the European deeptech startups leading the sector. 

📧 How to tip to Sifted. Got some sensitive info or startup drama you think Sifted should know about? Here's how to confidentially message the editorial team with tips. 

One of these roles could be your next job:

• Aiven, a cloud data platform, is looking for an UX/UI product designer in Berlin.
• Multiverse, a scaleup focusing on apprenticeships, is on the hunt for a director of people experience for a hybrid role in London.
• Flipdish, a restaurant tech company, wants a new remote product designer.

💰 Series A+

• Trucksters, a Spanish startup that uses AI to make long-haul freight journeys more efficient, has raised €33m in Series B funding.
• GenSyn, a UK-based startup developing a blockchain-based protocol for a decentralised compute, has raised $43m in Series A funding.
• DJUST, a French B2B SaaS platform for ecommerce, has secured €12m in a Series A round.
• Ireland's EdgeTier, an AI-powered platform for customer engagement teams, has raised a€6m Series A round.
• Graphext, a Spain-based no-code data analytics platform, has raised €4.6m in a seed round led by Hoxton Ventures.

💰 Pre-seed and seed

• Filigran, a French cybersecurity startup, has raised €5m in seed funding. 
• UK-based crypto and digital currency payments platform BoomFi has raised $3.5m in seed funding. 
• tem., a UK startup that helps businesses access renewable energy options, has raised £2.5m in seed money from investors including Albion VC and Revent.
• UK-based Omnewvue, an accounting platform for ESG, has raised €1.3m in seed funding. 

💰 Undisclosed

• Estonian startup Sunly, which is building renewable energy options in the Baltics and Poland, has raised €30m.
• Luxembourg's Salonkee, a management and booking platform for the hair and beauty industry, has raised €28m led by PeakSpan Capital.
• ClimateView, a Swedish startup that's building a climate finance platform, has raised €14m. 
• The UK's Arda Biomaterials, which uses waste from the beer brewing process to produce animal and plastic-free leather, has raised €1.3m led by Clean Growth Fund.

Get the best of the rest of Sifted's coverage of European tech dropped into your inbox:

💳 Fintech — Every Tuesday Amy O’Brien drops the week's most exciting fintech scoops, hot deals and stats. Sign up here.

🛠️ Startup Life — Every Wednesday Miriam Partington and Anisah Osman Britton tell you how (and how not) to run a business. Sign up here.

🌴 Climate Tech — Every Thursday Freya Pratty shares where the money’s going, how the rules are changing and who the ones to watch are in Europe’s greenest sector. Sign up here.

🗣️ Up Round — Every Friday Amy Lewin and Eleanor Warnock give you a weekly snapshot of the latest VC funds, people moves, investing trends and industry goss. Sign up here.

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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