Hello Sifted reader,

All the big European healthtech VCs are waltzing around the “messe” at Munich’s Bits & Pretzels healthtech conference this week: Heal Capital and Apollo Health Ventures are here, alongside the likes of Creandum and Speedinvest. Michael J Fox of Back to the Future fame is also among the 2,000 attendees — minus the hoverboard.

Some investors are predicting a golden decade ahead for healthtech on the continent, with plenty of dry powder sloshing about and opportunities across GenAI, hybrid care and the metaverse (apparently it’s not dead). Cannabis, biohacking and longevity are also hot topics.

Others expect trouble ahead for digital therapeutics startups — which were all the rage during the post-Covid startup boom — as investor appetite for the sector dries up.

From the Sifted newsroom:

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💸 Early Deliveroo backer launches new $40m fund. Boost Capital has announced a first close of $30m, is looking to back 35-40 pre-seed and seed-stage user experience-focused startups across a number of sectors, including health, education, sustainability, entertainment and finance. It was founded by Alvaro Alvarez del Rio, a former partner at Initial Capital and a long-time angel investor.

🗣 ElevenLabs, a UK-based AI startup that creates synthetic voices from text prompts, has raised a $19m Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, GitHub founder Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, former machine learning director at Apple.

🦾 Kitchen robotics startup Karakuri brings in administrators. The UK-based company, which built a sushi-serving robotic arm and an automated chip fryer, failed to drum up further funding, leaving up to 30 jobs at risk. (UKTN)

➡️ With only 12 public listings valued at just over €1bn in total, 2023 is on track to see the fewest IPOs by European companies in the last 10 years, according to a new Pitchbook report.

The report also states that:

European VCs could end the year sitting on a record €45bn in dry powder, due to a mix of robust fundraising and slower capital deployment.
US investors are withdrawing slightly from the European VC space. Their participation in European VC deals is at 19% so far in 2023, down from almost 23% in 2022.

🎓 UK universities take four times the amount of equity in spinouts as US institutions, according to a new survey from Air Street Capital of more than 200 spinouts — founders were also dissatisfied with universities filling board seats with tech transfer staff who encumber progress.

Is your finance function up to scratch?

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➡️ What ex-Adyen employees did next. The Dutch payments business is a poster child for European fintech, and it's success and size mean alumni are now spinning out to launch their own startups — here are 10 of the fintechs you need to know about.

👀 How AI startup Mistral bagged its €105m seed round. The French company was the talk of the tech world when it announced its whopping round backed by the likes of Lightspeed, French billionaire Xavier Niel and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Now Sifted's seen the pitch memo (no fancy decks for this team) that convinced them to part with their cash.

🧐 What does a chief revenue officer actually do?

💪 Three startups on how to stand out in a competitive landscape. (Sponsored by Mangopay)

Your next role could be one of these:

Depop, a fashion marketplace, is looking for an iOS Engineer in London
Billie, a B2B payments platform, is on the hunt for a new platform senior product manager in Berlin
Cazoo, an online car retailer, wants a new senior data automation specialist for a hybrid role in London

💰 Series A+

DTE, a Finnish startup that offers a real-time and predictive platform for the management of metal production processes, has secured $10m in Series A funding.
Tomorrow University, a German startup building a remote-first accredited neouniversity offering courses in sustainability, entrepreneurship and technology, has raised a $10m Series A round led by EduCapital.

💰 Pre-seed and seed

The UK's Kitt, which offers office design and management services, has raised $8m in a seed extension round led by Hoxton Ventures.
Rever, a Spanish startup making ecommerce returns and refunds easier for merchants, has raised €7.5m in seed funding. Investors included YCombinator, Mundi Ventures, Barlon Capital and Sequoia's Scouting Fund.
French Hyperline, a flexible billing platform for B2B SaaS companies, has raised €4m in seed funding led by Index Ventures.
Belgium-based NineID, which reduces the risk of corporate cyber attacks by preventing physical security breaches, has added $1.2m to its seed round, bringing the total to $2.6m.
The UK's Adamo Foods, which produces mycelium meat-free steaks, has raised £1.5m in pre-seed funding from SFC Capital and a grant from Innovate UK.

💰 Undisclosed

Sweden's battery manufacturing giant Northvolt has signed a $400m convertible note from Canadian pension fund Investment Management Corporation of Ontario.
Turbine, a biotech spinout from the Technical University of Budapest that is using AI to predict the effectiveness of cancer treatments, has raised an additional €5.5m.
CleanHub, a German startup that offers plastic credits for ocean waste management, has raised $7m from Integra Partners and Lakestar.
Deeploy, a Dutch platform aiming to make machine learning transparent and explainable, has raised €2.5m.
France's Greenbids, which uses machine learning to find the most carbon-efficient form of digital advertising, has raised €1.6m in a round led by Elaia and Famille C Participations.

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