Hello Sifted reader,

In the last year British telehealth giant Babylon has laid off staff, consolidated shares and scrambled to find extra investment in a bid to stay afloat on the New York Stock Exchange.

Ultimately, none of it has worked.

Just 18 months after its SPAC listing — during which time the company’s share price has dropped more than 99% — it now plans to delist and form a new company with Swiss digital therapeutics unicorn MindMaze. Shareholders — including founder and CEO Ali Parsa — will have their stakes wiped, losing them hundreds of millions of euros.

It's far from the only European scaleup to have succumbed to SPAC mania and since regretted it. Secondhand car marketplace Cazoo, electric vehicle maker Arrival and drug discovery company BenevolentAI have also all seen their share prices plummet since listing via a SPAC in 2021.

If you have a good word to say about SPACs, we want to hear it. Hit reply.

Also from the Sifted newsroom:

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Rising 100: The ultimate B2B SaaS startup list

Despite the macroeconomic climate, Europe and Israel continue to churn out high-momentum B2B SaaS startups. We put a spotlight on 100 companies we think show the most promise and likelihood of achieving $1bn-plus valuations. See who made the cut in our new report — coming soon.

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💰 Frst announces first close of new €100m fund. The French-based VC, which has previously backed fintech Pigment, AI-powered medtech Owkin and payroll software Payfit has raised €72m so far and plans to back 30 French seed-stage startups with cheques of between €1m-3m. 50% of the fund will be reserved for follow-ons.

🌞 German solar panel installation startup 1KOMMA5 has raised a €430m Series B, giving it unicorn status just 23 months after launch.

🇵🇱 Startups in central and eastern Europe saw funding shoot up by almost 44% in 2022. Sifted's latest briefing looks into the quiet rise of CEE as a startup powerhouse, and gives you the top sectors for funding, most active investors and trends to follow. (Exclusively for subscribers)

🌎 Hey VCs, do you have a geopolitical policy? For a long time VCs blissfully turned a blind eye to politics. But with tech sovereignty on the EU's agenda, geopolitical tensions rising and investors dipping into sensitive areas like space and defence, the two worlds are being brought closer and closer together.

💁‍♀️ "She's not ambitious enough" — it's hard enough to raise right now, but add the extra barriers that women face and it becomes a Sisyphean task. Anh-Tho Chuong, cofounder of Lago, shares the lessons she's learnt raising as a female founder.

🇫🇷 The 15 fastest growing French startups.

💼 What VC job titles actually mean. Do you know your analysts from your associates, or what a principal gets up to day-to-day? Here's what the main roles at investment firms really entail.

🎧 A former British prime minister, a Nato accelerator and the pitch memo that bagged Mistral €105m — all on the latest episode of the Sifted podcast.

➡️ How to plan your go to market strategy. (Sponsored by AWS startups)

🤖 How GenAI can actually help achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. (Sponsored by Microsoft Entrepreneurship for Positive Impact)

Meet some of the startups VCs are most excited about in:

Deeptech pitch event | Tomorrow
Deeptech takes centre stage at our next subscriber pitch event, tomorrow at 12:30pm BST. Meet Cradle, yuri, Small Robot Co, Quadrant and Fairbrics, five of the very best from Europe’s early-stage cohort, as they show off their cutting-edge tech and business models.
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How to reignite your growth | Wednesday
The era of “growth-at-all-costs” is behind us, so are you ready to get your revenue back on track? Join us on June 28 as experts from Stripe, Personio, Travelperk and Crane Venture Partners will discuss whether startups should scale back or invest in new revenue streams.
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Unlock the secret to hiring top talent | July 19
Are you ready to grow your team but don’t know where to start? This Sifted Talks will dig into how to attract and recruit a top-tier team.
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