Sifted - Does AI deserve an invite?

Good morning there,

Meeting minutes, timesheets, standard operating procedures. Hearing those words might make most employees wince — but they are a necessary part of every company.

The good news is that we might not need to produce them anymore, thanks to the rise (or, invasion) of AI “knowledge assistants”. 

A group of startups, including Sana AI in Stockholm, are hoping to make internal processes for companies more efficient — and there are a lot of options on the market. Sifted’s Europe editor Mimi Billing has more on the topic below.

Elsewhere today: 

• Wise founder and Plural partner Taavet Hinrikus on scaling European deeptech
• 15 Baltic startups to watch, according to investors

— Ali Humayun, junior editor

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Does AI deserve an invite?

Every digital meeting nowadays starts with a ping and a prompt asking to let an AI assistant in. As someone on the Sifted team recently pointed out, “I’m very sorry — I don’t know how to switch it off.”

However helpful they might be, these AI meeting assistants are starting to give me the feeling of an uninvited neighbour crashing your party, who you are too polite to ask to leave. As a reporter, the only real job I’ve found AI useful for so far is transcribing interviews, something we’ve been using for a while.

But these new AI assistants are doing something useful for the organisations that adopt them seriously. Swedish digital health provider Kry/ Livi told Sifted earlier in the year that using AI for internal processes had been a key driver in reaching profitability. 

This week I’ve been trying out a new one from another Swedish startup, Sana, which Joel Hellermark founded when he was still in high school. And this week he is hosting an AI conference in Stockholm featuring some of the industry's biggest names.

Sana’s AI “knowledge assistant” indexes companies’ internal information and data from internal and external applications, into one easily searchable system.

And, even if journalists like me aren’t in love with AI assistants, there’s no shortage on the market. The options include Otter, Supernormal, Sembly, Rewarch, Claap, Fireflies and Avoma, to name just a few. 

It’s unlikely that all of these AI assistants have a long life expectancy but Sana does have the advantage of having been at this for more than eight years. It also has the backing of one of the world’s leading enterprise software investors in US megafund NEA. 

Even with all the big-name investors and the time spent on developing its product, Sana’s tool still makes mistakes like every other AI assistant we’ve tried. When asking it to look for something in one of the two documents I uploaded — it said it couldn’t find it and asked me to upload it. 

GenAI-powered software, for the time being, often leaves much to be desired when it comes to accuracy and reliability — something every company in the space is trying to crack.

So, as I deal with video calls that feel like a house party with an increasing number of unwanted gatecrashers in attendance, I’m at least hopeful they’ll start becoming a bit more welcome — and useful — in time.

Read the full profile on Sana here.

— Mimi Billing, Europe editor

🇩🇪 German lithium-ion battery recycling startup Cylib raises €55m. The Series A was led by climate tech VC World Fund and Porsche Ventures, the venture arm of the car manufacturer. The all-equity deal will enable Cylib to start scaling its technology at an already-secured brownfield industrial facility of 20k sqm near Aachen in Germany.

🇬🇧 British computer maker Raspberry Pi has announced its intentions to list on the London Stock Exchange, in a registration document published on Wednesday.

• The news is an encouraging development for the London stock market. In the last year, it has struggled to attract high-growth tech companies with an increasing preference to list in New York.
• Cambridge-based Raspberry Pi makes high-performance, low-cost single board computers (SBCs) and has sold over 60m units since 2012. It counts Sony and Arm among its shareholders.

🇫🇷 French unicorn and payments provider Lydia is going all-in on banking services. The Accel and Tencent-backed company has announced a €100m investment in Sumeria, a new app it has launched for deposit accounts and card products.

• It will also hire 400 recruits over the next three years to focus on the new strategy — more than doubling its current team of 250. Cofounder Cyril Chiche also said he expects the company will reach profitability in 2025 — even though that target has moved multiple times over the years.

💰 London-based PolyAI has raised a new $500m funding round, the Financial Times reports. Hedosophia and NVentures, the VC arm of Nvidia, led the round to invest in the company which produces AI voice assistants for call centres. There was also participation from Khosla Ventures and Point72 Ventures.

• Last week, autonomous vehicle Wayve raised $1bn — Europe’s largest AI funding round — and PolyAI’s round is a further boost for the UK, which holds ambitions to become a global hub for the technology.

🗣️ Wise founder and Plural partner Taavet Hinrikus on scaling European deeptech.

👀 15 Baltic startups to watch, according to investors.

The Baltics’ VC scene is coming of age. Baltic early-stage VC funds raised €1.5bn last year, according to a new report. In total, VC and PE funds in the region raised €3.4bn. 

• Government agencies remain a key funding source for fund managers,  accounting for 28% of total capital raised since 2018. But things are (slowly) changing; last year, government funding made up 22% of the entire raised capital raised. 
• Endowment and pension funds, as well as fund of funds and corporate investors, are getting more involved. In 2023, capital raised by VCs and PEs from banks increased by 152% in comparison to the 2018-2022 period. From endowment funds it was up by 124%; and from insurance companies, up by 111%.

How to create a standout B2B SaaS startup

In a challenging economic climate, where companies are scrutinising their spending, SaaS tools are often the first to be cut back. Our latest report offers invaluable insights from Europe’s software masters on not just surviving, but thriving, amid the current market lull. 

Athens-based Harbor Lab, which makes software that streamlines port cost management for the shipping industry, raised $16m in Series A funding. Atomico led the round and was joined by investors including Notion Capital, Venture Friends, Speedinvest, The Dock, Endeavor Catalyst and TMV.

Berlin-based trawa, which uses AI to coordinate electricity purchases for SMEs, raised €10m in seed funding. Balderton Capital led the round and was joined by investors including AENU, Speedinvest, Magnetic Capital, Tiny Supercomputer Investment Company and The Delta.

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