Good morning Sifted reader,

November seems to be the season for new events.

First up is the UK's much-discussed AI Safety Summit on November 1-2. Then comes Europe's other AI conference — the one being held in Paris on November 17 — which looks set to be pretty interesting for the 1,000 attendees. (Our French tech reporter Daphné Leprince-Ringuet will be there, helping even out the not-so-great ratio of men to women on stage. Say hi.)

We've also heard about a new Web3 hackathon happening in the south of Italy, and the second iteration of the Barcelona Deeptech Summit.

For less specialist audiences, there's also, of course, the OGs of the European event scene: Web Summit and Slush.

We'd love to keep you up to date with the best events happening around Europe in this newsletter so, if you've got one coming up (organising or just attending), let us know! Email news@sifted.eu — which is also, to remind you, the place to send any deals you'd like included in this newsletter.

– Amy, editor

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⚡ Aira, the latest startup from Northvolt and H2 Green Steel founder Harald Mix, has raised €87m.

The company sells heat pumps and home energy tech to consumers, to help reduce their reliance on gas-based heating.
Aira plans to expand to the UK later on this year, having already launched in Italy and Germany.

🪜 French DIY marketplace ManoMano, once valued at $2bn, is hitting some stumbling blocks.

Les Echos reports that the company is planning to layoff up to 230 staff — a quarter of its total workforce — as growth slows down and funding dries up.
It's a sign that layoffs are far from over; grocery delivery app Getir, healthtech Huma and fintech GoCardless have also cut their headcount in the past several months.

✋ The UK doesn't want to be the world's AI regulator. Britain's tech secretary Michelle Donelan told the Politico Tech podcast that the UK's upcoming AI Safety Summit won't involve setting up a global AI regulator.

Instead, the summit will help set up international networks and long-term frameworks to identify and manage risks from AI. This confirms what Matt Clifford, the prime minister's representative for the summit, told Sifted in an interview two weeks ago.
She also said the UK wants the summit to take place regularly, as often as every six months if needed, rotating around different countries. But participating governments haven't yet agreed which one should host the second gathering.
It "wouldn't be very effective" to ignore China on this conversation, she added. "We do need to have some consistency in our approach, we do need to collaborate on things like research if we are to be effective, we want to discuss what mitigations need to be in place now but also in the future. I think it is fundamentally important that we are doing that with China and with other countries that have a leading role in terms of AI production as well as AI consumption."

👀 Five Eyes security alliance warns startups against IP theft. The heads of cybersecurity from the UK, the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand have urged startups and spinouts to be more vigilant when it comes to IP threats from hostile states — with China very much in mind.

The alliance this week outlined five (pretty basic) “principles of secure innovation” to help small businesses step up their protections.
MI5 director general Ken McCallum said all of the Five Eyes countries have seen a “sharp rise in aggressive attempts by other states to steal competitive advantage.” The contest is “particularly acute on emerging technologies”, including AI, quantum computing and synthetic biology, he added.

🇵🇹 Brazilian tech founders are moving to Portugal — but not all of them love what they find there.

🏎️ 39 European deeptech startups closing in on $1bn valuations. Are they all on your radar?

🌽 Future farms: How European agritechs can capture the North American market. (sponsored by Invest Alberta)

🔻 Europe saw just over 2,000 deals in Q3 2022 — the lowest number on record since Q4 of 2015.

The fundraising total was boosted by some chunky climate tech deals — from Swedish startups in particular.
Green steel producer H2 Green Steel (🇸🇪), charging infrastructure startup Zenobe Energy (🇬🇧) and battery developers Northvolt (🇸🇪) and Verkor (🇫🇷) altogether raised $4.5bn — comprising 25% of the entire European tech ecosystem’s spoils in Q3.

For more data on Q3, read Sifted's latest Pro briefing. Not a subscriber? Join Pro here for investment-grade research and the rising stars across European tech.

🧑‍💻 Engineering managers earn more in London and Berlin than Paris.

The Paris tech scene might be pretty buzzy right now — but it's still more lucrative to be an engineer in the UK, finds new data from compensation benchmarking tool Figures.
Engineering managers in London earn an average of €127k, compared to €80k in Paris.
“In the UK, employees tend to cover more costs out of pocket, which leads to higher negotiated salaries," says Pierre Lallinec, data analyst at Figures. "Meanwhile, in France and Germany, there are more employer costs associated with employment, which often results in comparatively lower salaries."

🔥🔥

Community-management platform Hivebrite, based in Paris, has raised a $37m Series B led by Quadrille Capital, alongside existing investor Insight Partners.

🔥

Spanish mobile AI assistant Luzia has raised €9.5m from investors including Gasol16 Ventures (former basketball player Pau Gasol's fund) and Khosla Ventures, six months after launch. It says it already has 17m users worldwide.
3D-printing software startup AI Build, based in London, has raised an €8.5m Series A led by IQ Capital, with participation from Japanese multinational Nikon.
Parisian startup Poppins, which develops digital therapeutic musical video games for children with neurodevelopmental disorders, has raised €8m in a round led by Eurazeo, alongside Verve Ventures, Allianz France and HEC Ventures. It's a spinout from the Écloe Polytechnique.
Barcelona-based fintech Flanks, which has developed an API for accessing wealth management data, has raised a €7.5m Series A led by Earlybird.
Stockholm-based climate fintech Cloover has raised €7m in equity and debt financing from 9900 Capital, QED Investors and Centrotec.
Italian gen AI company Aindo, which generates synthetic data for training machine learning models, has raised a €6m Series A led by United Ventures.
Long-stay corporate housing provider Apartool, based in Barcelona, has raised a €5.5m Series A led by ROCH Ventures and Barlon Capital (backed by Lionel Messi).
Beta Bugs, the Edinburgh-based producer of insect protein for animal feed, has raised £1.7m in funding led by Scottish angel syndicate Tricapital.
Berlin-based startup Circadian, a specialist in solar energy management systems, has raised a €1.25m round led by BayWa r.e. Energy Ventures.

"Seed founder hiring a Chief of Staff."

— Meme glory goes to Dirk Sahlmer, on LinkedIn

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