Good morning Sifted reader,

Forget Mistral; Paris has a new sexy AI startup — and this one isn’t even French.

Sifted has learnt that US startup Poolside AI has just raised a monster $126m seed round — and decided to move its HQ to France.

Poolside, which is founded by former GitHub CTO Jason Warner and serial entrepreneur Eiso Kant, plans to create a ChatGPT-like tool that can write code. French billionaire Xavier Niel, state bank Bpifrance and VCs Frst and NewWave all participated in the deal.

The move is quite the coup for Macron and la French Tech, reversing the usual brain drain of European startups stateside, and cementing Paris’ position as one of the continent’s AI hotspots.

On the other side of the channel, Rishi Sunak has announced that Bletchley Park — home to British codebreakers during WWII — will host the UK’s inaugural AI Safety Summit, which will be held in November.

Matt Clifford, cofounder and CEO of talent accelerator Entrepreneur First, has been tasked with “rallying leading AI nations, companies and experts” to attend, and shaping the agenda. Clifford announced on LinkedIn that he’ll be taking a “short sabbatical” from EF to do so.

The plan is to bring major nations and companies together for the first time to consider the risks AI poses and discuss how they can be avoided.

To hear from Clifford — and Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch — plus a whole bunch more AI experts, come along to the Sifted Summit on October 4-5. Get your ticket here.

— Amy Lewin, editor

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B2B SaaS rising 100 — our latest ranking

2023 has been hard for startups — but great companies are still creating value. Our latest ranking lists 100 high-momentum startups across Europe and Israel rising to the top.

Who made the cut?

🤖 It's a really good day for AI. Germany-based commercial decision and performance tracking app Aily Labs becomes the latest AI-powered startup to benefit from VC cash after securing a €19m Series A led by Insight Partners.

🇬🇧 The UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund, an early-stage VC fund backing companies based on academic research in the UK, has received a fresh injection of £29m from UK Research and Innovation and the Ministry of Defence. The fund has so far invested £30m in more than 90 companies.

🎬 “If Netflix and National Geographic had a love child, that's kind of what we are" — WaterBear, a Prince Harry-approved streaming platform created by some of the producers behind Oscar-winning documentary My Octopus Teacher, is a rarity for a media startup — it has managed to get VCs to part with their cash.

⚡️The European energy startups with the fastest growing teams.

🤝 How to hire a chief people officer — Lauren Joseph, chief people officer at Berlin-based fintech Mondu, shares her top tips.

🎙 The weight loss drug mania hitting Europe, speedy grocery Getir's latest struggles and a hefty investment for alternative meat: find it all on the latest episode of the Sifted Podcast.

Who is he? Illia Polosukhin, one of the founding fathers of AI. He was one of eight Google staffers to co-create the transformer model architecture that powers generative AI systems like ChatGPT.

Why does he matter? Because rather than jostle in on the endless supply of generative AI hype circling the web right now, he's focusing on the hype sector of yore. Polosukhin is one of the founders of NEAR, which helps developers build apps in Web3 and has raised more than $520m from investors including Tiger Global and Andreessen Horowitz.

So... why's he doing that? Though Web3 has since been discounted by VCs in favour of AI, Polosukhin is determined to reform the reputation of the sector and is convinced it isn't dead yet. Especially in social media and gaming. “There's potentially new revenue streams for the game developers," he says. "There's community-generated content where the community creators and curators are receiving a portion of the revenue... You’ll have all these different new ways of interacting with content.”

How to size your VC fund

First-time fund managers don’t have access to the seemingly endless supply of cash and optimism that their predecessors did in the heyday of 2021. Yet new VC funds are still popping up across Europe.

Sifted spoke to emerging fund managers across several key European tech hubs to find out what first-timers need to consider when sizing up how much to raise, including:

Figure out your portfolio construction. Work out what stage you want to invest in and match the size of the fund to the typical cheque size of each stage. You might also want to allow for some flexibility for exciting deals a stage up/down from your core focus.
Decide on the verticals. Focusing on a specific industry vertical rather than being a generalist investor can impact your fund size: “LPs see a thesis driven fund that operates within a very specific space and has a good network as an unfair advantage."
Work out how much you want to own, and how many companies you'll invest in. Choosing to lead or follow other investors in a funding round plays a role in ownership distribution, so decide on how you'll position yourself first.

Check out our partners for Sifted Summit

OpenPayd have joined the lineup — joining partners such as Stripe, BT, NIF and Harmonic. Make sure you get your ticket to meet them at Sifted Summit this October 4-5 at Magazine, London. Early bird ticket prices expire next week!

Get an early bird ticket!

💰 Series F

EQT Growth, one of Europe’s biggest venture growth funds, has pitched into US-based corporate wellness platform Gympass's $85m Series F. Carolina Brochado, deputy head of the EQT Growth advisory team, will join the Gympass board.

💰 Series A

beeOLED, a German startup developing new, efficient emitters for electronic displays, has raised a €13.3m Series A led by eCAPITAL and Innovation Industries. Investors including High-Tech Gründerfonds, KBC Focus Fund and M Ventures also participated.
HOLY, the German healthy soft drinks startup, has raised a €10.5m Series A led by Left Lane Capital.

💰 Pre-seed and seed

UK-based Scriptic, which offers phone-first shows and generative AI entertainment applications, has secured $6.2m from Sony Innovation Fund, bringing the total seed round to $8.7m.

💰 Undisclosed

UK independent music ticketing platform DICE — backed by the likes of Kima and SoftBank — has secured $65m led by MUSIC, an investor focused on music businesses.
Germany's Schüttflix, a bulk materials marketplace for the construction industry, has raised €45m — the raise includes a credit line.
Anytype, a no-code web builder based in Germany, has raised $13.4m led by Balderton Capital, with Inflection and Square One also chipping in.
Communications platform Conversation24, based in the Netherlands, has raised €3m.
Swedish startup DREM, a heat pump platform for homeowners looking to adopt greener heating alternatives, has raised €2m led by Peak.