Sifted - Bonjour today, Hello Tomorrow?

Good morning there,

This morning, French tech reporter Daphné Leprince-Ringuet brings you a dispatch from Paris deeptech event Hello Tomorrow. Her topline takeaways? Quite a few barefoot folk, a big group of Germans and a lot of AI. Scroll on for that.

Elsewhere, we interview DN Capital’s newly appointed first female partner, dig into UK and Ireland-based VC Frontline Ventures’ $200m capital injection and look at French nuclear fuel producer Orano’s new €50m CVC investment vehicle.

— Tom Nugent, newsletter editor

/A message from our sponsor High-Tech Gründerfonds

Event alert

HTGF Family Day is a convention and conference bringing together up to 1,500 participants from the European venture capital scene in Berlin on June 11-12. This year's themes include AI, venture clienting, new space and climate tech.

Bonjour today, Hello Tomorrow?

Apparently, it’s deeptech week in France. In the past few days, a host of VCs, founders and policymakers have engaged in round-the-clock shoulder-rubbing at deeptech-themed breakfasts, lunches, dinners and drinks, held in some of Paris’s most exclusive venues. It all culminated with Hello Tomorrow — which takes over the French capital every year.

By the end of the week, 3,000 attendees will have clocked in at “Le Centquatre” — a pluridisciplinary artists’ residence and cultural centre located in an edgy, northeastern Paris neighbourhood — to discuss all things AI, quantum, industry and other hardcore tech innovations. 

It kicked off, unsurprisingly, with the topic that has obsessed the startup world lately — AI. But there was also plenty of room for other technologies, particularly climate tech. “All the climate people are here,” said a German investor — who’d joined a lot of peers from across the border. 

Throughout yesterday the sand-covered main stage welcomed high-profile speakers ranging from Google’s ethics advisor Ben Zevenbergen and NASA research scientist Lynn Rothschild through to SOSV general partner and IndieBio CTO Pae Wu — who took to the stage barefoot. 

It’s been an international affair. I’ve come across startups from Mexico to the UK, and bumped into startup organisations from across Europe piling in to represent their tech ecosystems next to the rooster-branded booth of La French Tech, a government group that promotes French startups. 

That’s unusual for a Paris-based conference. French tech may be gathering pace, but it remains a highly Francophone ecosystem. Within startups, just like at the events that founders and VCs attend, it’s often French-first — if not on stage, at least at networking drinks. Whether you’re in favour of protecting the mother tongue or an advocate of employing more business-friendly English, the reality is the same: the language barrier is present, and internationalisation is still a major challenge.

That’s not to say things aren’t changing — most tech events in France now have some English-speaking stages, and panels at Hello Tomorrow have been held almost exclusively in English. Even among the crowd, bonjours are a rarity, with English generally being de rigueur. To a greater degree than other events I’ve been to here, it has succeeded in attracting large numbers of attendees from outside of the country.

These days, some even head to the event purely for the fun of it. “I’m not even going to the conference, just to all the side events”, slipped one Madrid-based investor at a networking event the night before opening.

— Daphné Leprince-Ringuet, French tech reporter

🧑‍⚖️ The entrepreneurs behind UK-startup Builder.ai have been named by authorities in India in relation to high-profile criminal probes in the country, the Financial Times reported yesterday. 

• Sachin Dev Duggal has been described as a suspect in a money laundering investigation, while Saurabh Dhoot is accused in the charge sheet of a loan fraud case, according to court documents cited by the FT. 
• London-based Builder.ai raised $250m led by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund in May 2023. It’s also been backed by Microsoft and SoftBank’s DeepCore AI-focused fund.
• Duggal is appealing the warrant and denies any wrongdoing. Dhoot denies any wrongdoing and said the charges have not yet been accepted by the court.

🇩🇪 German VC World Fund has announced the final close of its first fund at €300m. Three years ago, it emerged from stealth targeting €350m to back the region’s burgeoning climate tech scene. 

• In the years since then, the market has been flooded with more and more specialist climate funds, and it’s an increasingly lively area of European tech. But, founder Danijel Višević says, “There are more and more great companies that need capital and less competition on our side.” 

💰 UK and Ireland-based VC Frontline Ventures has raised $200m for its seed and growth funds to back B2B startups looking to expand across the Atlantic. The money is split down the middle, with $100m going into each fund.

• Its seed fund will write cheques between €1m-3m to back European startups looking to take on the US. Tickets for its growth fund will range between $1m-5m and will be handed out to US scaleups with European expansion in their sights.

🇬🇧 UK fintech Smart, which provides a pensions management platform for employers, has raised a £37.1m Series E extension and made layoffs as it targets profitability. The capital came from existing investors, including Fidelity International Strategic Ventures and Chrysalis Investments. 

• “Smart earlier this year made changes to reduce its cost overhead, in line with the wider financial technology ecosystem,” a company spokesperson confirmed to Sifted. 

🇸🇪 Swedish green cement startup CemVision has raised a €10m seed round from Swedish investors Polar Structure and BackingMinds, and San Francisco-based Zacua Ventures. 

• Last year, it announced that it had reached industrial-scale production of green cement at its demo plant in Poland, equivalent to 4,000 tonnes annually. It is aiming to more than double that this year, with plans to produce 10k tonnes. For an idea of the job it has on its hands, global demand for cement is currently about 4bn tonnes per year. 

🇫🇷 French nuclear fuel producer and state-backed multinational Orano is committing €50m to a new corporate venture capital (CVC) investment vehicle that will back about 20 pre-seed to Series A companies in France and Europe, with tickets ranging from €100k-3m.

• The new fund will invest in companies developing technologies that optimise industrial processes. It’ll also back startups building industrial-grade technologies for decarbonisation, with a focus on the circular economy.

🇨🇭 Yesterday, Switzerland became the first advanced economy to cut interest rates since inflation began spiking several years ago. Venture investors have been hoping rates will go down in 2024, as the era of high rates has put a dampener on dealmaking and valuations. Other central banks, like the UK’s Bank of England, have kept rates steady. 

🇪🇸 Spanish scaleup Job&Talent, a marketplace for finding temporary work, has hit $450m in annual revenue in the US two years after expanding stateside. It represents 22% year-on-year growth, according to a financial report of the company’s US business.

🎤 Interview with Gülsah Wilke, DN Capital’s newly appointed first female partner.

🤝 How to sell to Generation M.

Nature tech — tech which aims to protect, restore or manage biodiversity — is increasingly on the VC agenda. Global VC funding for startups in the sector increased by 18% between 2022 and 2023, from $1.56bn to $1.85bn, according to a new report from Paris-based VC Serena, which also shows nature tech startups in Europe are catching up with their peers in the US. 

• Although the US took top spot as the geography with the most funding in 2023, the $799m invested in nature tech startups across the Atlantic accounted for only 43% of total funding globally — compared to an average of 78% for the five years between 2018-2022. Europe took 25% of the pie, while Asian nature techs brought in 15%.
• Europe was the most active geography for early-stage VC funding (pre-seed to Series A) in the sector — with $273m raised (42% of early-stage funding, compared to America’s 37%) over 70 deals.
• Early-stage investments globally also increased by 35%, from $488m in 2022 to $656m in 2023. Late-stage investments grew by 10%.
• Historically, agritech has dominated nature tech investments, but early-stage funding in 2023 was dominated by biodiversity credit startups. Serena reckons this could be due to controversy over the integrity of carbon credits.

Manchester, UK-based AccessPay, ​​which develops payments and cash-management automation software to connect financial accounts of businesses with corporate clients, raised £18.8m in funding. True Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Praetura Ventures, NatWest, Mastercard, Route 66 Ventures and Beringea.

Cologne, Germany-based NX Technologies, which operates Bezahl.de, a digital payment management platform for businesses, raised €22m in Series B funding. PayPal Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Seaya Ventures, Walter Ventures and Motive Ventures.

Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium-based E-peas, which is developing energy harvesters to improve battery life on wireless devices, raised €17.5m in funding. Otium Capital led the round and was joined by investors including NOMAINVEST, EIC Fund, KBC Focus Fund, The Faktory Fund, Wallonie Entreprendre, Noshaq-Leansquare and invest.bw.

Kista, Sweden-based BL!XT, which is developing a solid-state circuit breaker and voltage control system to support the efficiency and reliability of the grid, raised €5m in seed funding from investors including Union Square Ventures and Energy Revolution Ventures.

Paris-based Pelikan Mobility, a leasing company that aims to simplify the process for commercial fleets switching to EVs, raised €4m in funding from investors including Pale Blue Dot, Frst and Seedcamp.

Munich, Germany-based Eisbach, which is developing novel drugs that target molecular vulnerabilities arising in cancer cells, raised $4.5m in funding from Cancer Focus Fund.

Cluj-Napoca, Romania-based Nordensa, an app that allows fans to invest in upcoming football players by buying shares in their trial contracts, raised €1.65m in seed funding from investors including Vertical Seven Group, Cabrio Investment and DMA Development.

Guildford, UK-based NuKoKo, which is creating ‘bean-to-bar’ cocoa-free chocolate, raised €1.3m in seed funding. Oyster Bay Venture Capital led the round and was joined by investors including SOSV and The Mills Fabrica.

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