Good morning there,

Today, we're very excited to announce our brand new feature. Introducing: Sifted Scout, exclusively for Pro subscribers.

This hub is the go-to place on Sifted for discovering the most promising early-stage startups within your sectors of interest. Startups across Europe are scouted by our team of analysts, who apply a data-driven methodology to compute a Sifted score for each company based on how they stack up against their competitors.

Look out for scores changing over time (as curated lists are updated) to gain insight into who's generating buzz, who's out in the cold and the new entrants to have on your radar.

We've gone live with the top 20 startups right now in biotech, quantum computing, foodtech, construction tech, BaaS and solar energy. Lots more coming soon!

— The Sifted Intelligence Team

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Welcome to the era of the silly seed round

The last 12 months in tech can be best described as the year that ChatGPT sent investors crazy. And as business leaders and VCs alike cotton onto the big potential for AI, one trend we’ve seen take shape is the silly seed round. 

Investors seem increasingly happy to throw huge sums, and huge valuations, at newly-formed AI companies — particularly when the founding team has a bit of stardust from established companies thrown in.

• Things kicked off in the summer of 2022 when Mustafa Suleyman, one of the founders of DeepMind, raised $225m for his new AI-powered personal assistant startup Inflection.
• In June 2023, Mistral — a French large language model startup founded by Meta and DeepMind alums — raised €105m just weeks after launching and days after hiring its first employees.
• In August, former CTO of Github Jason Warner raised a $126m seed round for his GenAI coding startup Poolside.

This week, it’s the turn of Adaptive — a new Amsterdam-based AI company cofounded by engineers and researchers from Amazon and the French open source platform Hugging Face — who are raising $20m at a $100m valuation. 

Read some highlights from their pitch deck, and the details of the team, here.

— Tim Smith, senior reporter

💵 Revolut appoints interim CFO. Longtime employee Victor Stinga took on the role immediately after former CFO Mikoo Salovaraa resigned from the company due to “personal reasons," according to people familiar with the matter.

• Stinga joined Revolut almost six years ago as part of the office of the CEO Nik Storonsky — a role the company calls “founder associates” internally. 
• As interim CFO, Stinga is in charge of signing off Revolut’s upcoming accounts for the 2022 financial year, after the company had its filing deadline extended for the second year running.

🇫🇷 French quantum startup raises €50m to commercialise computers. Quandela will use the cash to manufacture photonic quantum computers and sell them to industrial customers. 

• The round was a mixture of debt and equity and was co-led by French VC Serena and Crédit Mutuel Innovation, as well as the European Innovation Council (EIC). 
• A few weeks ago, Quandela delivered its first device to cloud provider OVHcloud — the first time a European quantum computer has been bought and hosted by a private company.

💰 Acton Capital closes sixth fund of €225m — its largest to date. 

• The B2B and consumer focused VC will make 15-18 investments with the fund, backing startups at Series A and B stage in Europe and Canada.
• The fund has made five investments so far: including Belgium company Henchman, an AI-driven knowledge tool for lawyers, and Klaus, an AI-powered customer service platform based in Estonia.

📦 Glovo founders close VC fund. Alongside former Atomico VC Adam Lasri, Glovo founders Oscar Pierre and Sacha Michaud have closed a €30m pre-seed fund which will focus on Southern Europe. 

• The fund will invest in startups across any sector, with tickets between €200-500k.

🚗 UK government to roll forward autonomous vehicle (AV) legislation. The bill will allow level four AVs — which are fully driverless but can only operate within a certain area — to drive on UK roads. 

• While it's not yet clear when legislation will come into effect, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is reported to be keen to push the bill through parliament quickly. 
• Currently, only level two AVs — which have autonomously controlled steering and speed but need a human driver present at all times — are able to drive on roads in the country.
• There are a number of trials with level three AVs — which are mostly self-driving but require a safety driver who can manually override if necessary — happening in the UK, too. For example, supermarket Asda has partnered with Wayve on self-driving grocery delivery.

🏦 German neobank N26 to pull out of Brazil. The move leaves N26 focused on markets in Germany, France, Italy and Spain as it looks to cut losses after a bruising couple of years, following a $900m raise in October 2021.

• Earlier this year, the neobank laid off around 4% of its global workforce in an attempt to reduce costs after it significantly increased spending on anti-money laundering controls and compliance.
• Last month, the German financial regulator indicated it would partially lift a ban — imposed in late 2021 — on the neobank taking on new customers in the country.

Meet the startups building a net zero world

Annual spending on climate will need to more than quadruple to $5trn a year if we are to have any hope of limiting global warming to 1.5C. In our new report, we uncover the top subsectors investors are betting on.

Download the report

📸 Founder pics: the good, the bad and the mad. From Wes Anderson cosplay to strange product placements, Sifted's back with another instalment of the occasional series that delves deep into the world of the founder photo.

🇺🇸 Should you base your startup in Delaware? Delaware is a small state with a big reputation. As of 2022, one million companies call the state their legal home, including hundreds of thousands of startups.

• The tax rate (zero, if you’re not doing business there) certainly helps — but for European startups, it's equally good to have a headquarters in a place US VCs have actually heard of.
• “All other things being equal, an investor would prefer a familiar case with known pros and cons over researching an exotic location,” says Mikhail Taver, founder of Taver Capital. An "exotic location" like Paris or Berlin, for example. 

Thinking of making the move stateside and interested in Delaware? Read our guide here. 

For more on expanding to the US: Here’s what not to do when hiring in the US | US expansion 101 | Why European fintechs have failed to break America.

• Vienna's Refurbed has raised a $57m Series C to expand its marketplace for refurbished electronics.
• Milan-based fintech Qomodo, which provides payment options for physical retailers, has raised a giant €34.5m pre-seed round.
• Paris-based Hello Watt — a platform that helps individuals save money on energy — has raised €12m from BNP Paribas and Starquest Capital.
• French climate-friendly wealthtech Goodvest has raised €10m from investors including Ring Capital and Polytechnique Ventures.
• The London base of VC a16z, which opened last week, has written its first cheque: a $4.2m seed round for London-based Pimlico, builder of decentralised apps.
• Social media startup Lounge, based in London, has raised £3.2m in seed funding led by Square Peg Capital.
• Spanish smart grid data platform Adaion has raised €2.6m, with participation from IPW and Fondo Bolsa Social.
• 21bitcoin, the bitcoin platform operated by Fior Digital, has raised €2.1m led by Volksbank Raiffeisenbank Bayern Mitte eG.
• Dutch startup RESONIKS, which has developed acoustic software for identifying anomalies in metal production, has raised €1.5m from Kvanted.
• Rental property management software Nester — based in Barcelona — has raised a €1.2m round led by Successful Ventures and Zone2Boost.

If you’d like to submit a deal, get in touch.

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