Good morning Sifted reader,

Hopefully the weekend gave you enough time to digest the wild, nearly 5,000-word “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” billionaire US VC Marc Andreessen blowtorched us with last week. It’s literally the Final Boss of LinkedIn posts.

But while we can criticise the piece’s honking lack of humility or reality from our desks in Paris or Berlin, it does also prompt the question: where is Europe’s great tech manifesto? (ideally one that’s — you know — not insane).

And that’s not for a lack of vision or optimism about tech here; Europe’s dreams for a better future include “sustainability” and “social responsibility” — terms which Andreessen argues are part of a sneaky “demoralisation campaign” to slow down progress, but are actually things most people have a prickle of pride about in this region.

I wouldn’t mind seeing a European treatise that introduces the idea that there’s plenty of tech that can be worth our while, even if it never made some people gazillions of dollars. Earlier this year, a paralysed man was able to walk again with brain and spine implants invented in Switzerland. Great big hoovers in Iceland may soon suck carbon out of the sky, while microorganisms grown in Germany could give us planet-friendly cheese. I’m a sucker for small, thoughtful ideas too: like the guys in Norway using AI to stop birds getting shredded by wind turbines.

To be decent, to improve things for all of humanity or leave something for the future, might be as or more important than truck loads of money.

Andreessen’s manifesto finishes with a grand invitation to share in his buccaneering spirit: “The water is warm”. In a time of many badly-written things on the internet, a hero will come: who in Europe is going to step up with a saner vision for tech?

— Éanna, contributing editor

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French investor tax break 'could unlock €500m' a year for startups

There was more good news for French tech last week as it emerged that a tax break for private investors could see an additional €500m a year pumped into early-stage startups.

The incentives, which were included in France's 2024 budget, mean that individuals could be looking at tax breaks of up to €50k when investing into two newly-created categories of companies, “high-growth” startups (JEIC) and “disruptive” startups (JEIR).

The reforms were not as generous as some had hoped. Paul Midy, the politician tasked by French prime minister Élisabeth Borne to help boost French tech, had suggested tax breaks of up to €250k per person per year.

Midy wasn't too disappointed, however, saying: “Between now and 2027, we estimate that the scheme [...] will generate between 30k and 50k jobs.”

The initiative has echoes of the UK's EIS and SEIS schemes, which saw 6,750 startups raise more than £2.5bn in 2022 alone.

Daphné Leprince-Ringuet has more.

💰 A total of 20 UK VC firms have signed a compact to help get more UK pension funds investing in the country’s high-growth companies.

Signatories, which include Octopus, Balderton and Lakestar, will work with the pension funds that agreed with the UK government earlier this year to put at least 5% of their assets towards British startups and VC firms by 2030.

🛠️ London and San Francisco-based Klu has raised $1.7m from Firstminute Capital, along with scout investors from a16z, Sequoia and Atomico.

The picks and shovels startup is helping other businesses build products with generative AI models, and has seen particular interest from SaaS companies and financial institutions like private equity firms.

🚀 Elon Musk's SpaceX is set to blast four of Europe’s geo-navigation Galileo satellites — which also provide a top secret encrypted service for use by government agencies — into orbit next year, amid delays for rival European rockets. The move, if approved by the EU's top brass, is precisely the kind of subcontract work officials want to avoid in their quest to achieve tech sovereignty.

✍️ Web Summit founder Paddy Cosgrave has resigned as chief executive of the annual tech conference over comments he made about the conflict in Israel and Gaza. Cosgrave said that his comments, made on X, had become a distraction from the event. Since the tweets were sent last week, several major companies have pulled out of the event, including Amazon, Google and Meta.

💳 VC funding might be facing its toughest fundraising environment in years, but VCTs (Venture Capital Trusts) appear to be bucking that trend.

£1.08bn was raised by VCTs from shareholders in the year to April 30 — a 4% decrease on the previous year.
That contrasts with a 50% decrease in the funds raised by ordinary VC firms from their LPs in the first nine months of 2023, compared to 2022, according to PitchBook data.
VCTs argue that it is a classic case of slow and steady wins the race: tax benefits only kick in if investors in VCTs keep their shares for five years.

🚗 “We built our first autonomous car in the garage [...] one of the bedrooms was our server room and the other one was our boardroom." Alex Kendall, the CEO of London-based autonomous car startup Wayve, has come a long way since 2017. He joined the Sifted pod to chat competing against Uber and Tesla, winning over Elon Musk and his startup's AV approach of “end-to-end” learning — where a car’s system learns the rules of the road the way a human driver would.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Inside Scotland’s growing scaleup ecosystem — sponsored by Invest2Scale.

🇪🇸 Senior reporter Cristina Gallardo is in Madrid this week — reach out for coffee.

🇸🇪 Climate tech reporter Freya Pratty is scoping out Malmö for the next three weeks. Let her know if you fancy a fika.

🌎 Senior reporter Mimi Billing is bringing together Lawcubator, Leapsome, Eventcombo and Invest Alberta on Wednesday at 2pm BST, to find out how to crack the North American market.

🔥

WSense, an Italian underwater communications university spinout from Sapienza University, has raised a €9m Series A from investors including SWEN Blue Ocean, CDP Ventures, RunwayFBU and Katapult Ocean, Axon Capital Partners, CoreAngels Climate and Moonstone.
Circu Li-ion, a Luxembourg-based battery recycling startup, raised €8.5m in seed funding led by BonVenture.

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