Good morning Sifted reader,

Time's almost up for the thousands of British startups that took money from the UK's £1.14bn Covid support programme, the Future Fund. The scheme, designed to help fledgling businesses affected by the pandemic, offered them a capital lifeline in the form of convertible loans.

But now that lifeline might spell some startups' demise.

The conversion deadline on those loans is looming — and the terms of the agreement mean that if a startup hasn't raised a new round since taking the government's money, it will have to repay the full amount, plus a 100% "redemption premium".

Youch.

Elsewhere:

– Amy Lewin, editor

🛵 VanMoof finds a buyer. The struggling Dutch ebike company declared itself bankrupt last month — but has now found a saviour. Lavoie, a British e-scooter company, has acquired the business and says it plans to expand its operations. Redundancies are likely, however.

💸 Glovo could have to pay €400m in legal costs related to the employment status of its couriers. If Spanish authorities reclassify the Barcelona-HQ'd startup's self-employed riders as employees, Glovo could have to pay fines, retrospective taxes and social security contributions. Its parent company, Delivery Hero, estimates the potential costs could range from €200m to €400m.

🛍 Klarna cuts its losses. The buy now, pay later company has released its Q2 results, which show that cuts made to the business in 2022 — including laying off 700 employees — have seen losses decrease by 77% in comparison to Q2 2022. According to its CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the business also recorded a month of profitability in Q2.

👀 N26 chief product officer steps down. In the latest of a string of exec departures from the German fintech, N26 CPO Gilles BianRosa will be leaving in September. He will remain a supervisory board member at the company.

🏥 Babylon bags a buyer for its UK healthcare business. Administrators say that the sale means Babylon's clinical services — and its GP at Hand app — should continue to operate as normal.

🩺 UK healthtech Huma to lay off nearly 10% of its workforce. The remote patient monitoring platform is cutting around 45 jobs amid a slowdown in revenues and a tricky fundraising environment.

💻 PhotonVentures is raising a €100m fund to invest in startups that are developing technologies related to photonic chips.

Bit niche? Maybe — but photonic chips could be a huge deal one day. They're very fast, highly energy-efficient and could solve some of the challenges posed by electronic chips, which currently power everything from phones and laptops to cars and medical devices.
What's the deal? The new Dutch VC has closed €60m of the fund so far, and plans to invest in 10-15 more early-stage startups.

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€100k awaits! Awards now open for pioneering startups shaping the future of food retail

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🇬🇧 The Future Fund was meant to save startups — will it kill them instead?

🍌 Equal pay, equal bonuses, equal carry. Creandum partner Johan Brenner isn't a typical VC — and neither, it seems, is his firm, as Mimi Billing discovers over brunch.

😇 Europe's most active angel networks. Angel investors sometimes band together to create collectives that back startups as a single unit — here are the groups that have signed the most cheques over the past 12 months.

🌳 The climate software startups to watch, according to investors.

👼 All of Europe's women angel investors.

🤝 The women VC partners closing deals in Europe.

➡️ From founder to VC partner — the investors that made the switch.

🪦 11 companies that have gone bust so far in 2023.

👀 Employees vs contractors: The laws you need to know in Europe’s top startup hubs. (Sponsored by Remote)

Think we've missed someone or something from these lists? Let us know.

Early bird tickets end today

Join the rest of startup Europe this Oct 4-5 at Magazine London. We've made networking easy with community-led meetups, dedicated networking areas and meeting zones, early access to other attendees on the app, the afterparty and so much more.

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In our Startup Life newsletter on Wednesday, we announced that UK quantum startup Oxford Ionics had an exciting new hire — but we got his job title wrong. Dipesh Patel, former CTO of chip giant Arm, is joining the company as a non-executive director.

💰 Series A+

French Teale, an employee mental health platform, has raised €10m led by Alter Equity and Bpifrance.

💰 Pre-seed and seed

AI-powered automation software askui, based in Germany, has secured €4.3m in seed funding led by Eurazeo.
Finnish product design software for data teams provider Ellie.ai has raised €2.5m in seed funding from Newion and Crowberry Capital.
Ukrainian Bitcoin yield-boosting startup Stroom has raised $3.5m.

💰Undisclosed

Ireland's UrbanVolt, which provides solar panels and retrofit lighting for commercial buildings, has raised €26m from Verdane.
ReOrbit, a Finnish startup building software-first satellites, has banked $7.4m led by Inventure VC.
Branchspace, a UK startup that helps airlines improve digital retail options, has raised £5m from Gresham House Ventures.
UK-based longevity startup clock.bio, which is working to prevent and treat age-related diseases, has emerged out of stealth with $4m in funding.
Context.ai, a UK analytics platform for large language model apps, has secured $3.5m.
OneID, a UK-based bank-verified digital identification service, has raised £1m from ACF Investors.