Sifted - The gravlax offensive

Good morning there,

I was invited by the CEOs of digital healthcare provider Kry and mobility startup Voi to moderate a panel of founders on Wednesday night as part of a summer party they hosted. The invite-only event in Stockholm brought together around 250 of the city’s top tech folk. What I didn’t expect, however, was that it would involve schmoozing with the top tier of Swedish and Estonian politics. More on that below. 

Elsewhere today: 

• Quantum startup Pasqal partners with US competitor IBM to develop ‘quantum-centric supercomputing’.
• ‘I thought I was going to die’: Brunch with Depop and Delli founder Simon Beckerman.
• Sifted Scout: 20 industrial tech startups to watch.

Yesterday in our dispatch from SuperVenture we mentioned that Hedosophia founder Ian Osborne held an invite-only 50th birthday party in Berlin on Wednesday. Correction: He’s actually 41 and it wasn’t his birthday.

— Mimi Billing, Europe editor

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The gravlax offensive

At an invite-only summer mingle on Wednesday evening organised by Fredrik Hjelm, CEO of mobility startup Voi, and Johannes Schildt, CEO of digital healthcare provider Kry, I expected a lot of drinks, some tapas and good music.

I’d also agreed to moderate a panel of startup founders including Susanna Campbell, cofounder of Harald Mix’s Syre, Markus Villig of Bolt and Patrick Söderlund of Embark Studios, so I knew stage appearances were a theme of the night. There were around 250 of Stockholm’s top tech people there. I didn’t, however, expect a lineup of people high up in business and politics.

It made sense for Adam Kostyal, the CEO of Nasdaq, to be there. I also wasn’t surprised by a handful of large corporate and banking executives who turned up. But when the Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson and his Estonian equivalent Kaja Kallas appeared on stage, I started thinking what kind of “party” is this?

I should have guessed though. A week ago, pictures on LinkedIn showed guests such as the Swedish Prime Minister, a couple of VCs and startup founders like Northvolt’s CEO Peter Carlsson, Campbell and Söderlund at a lunch organised by Hjelm and Schildt at Schildt’s home.

Hjelm told me that the lunch and summer mingle are about “relationship building between finance, tech and politics” (and a few media people, seen as “friends” of the ecosystem).

Perhaps it’s smart for politicians and startups in Sweden to discuss things more openly. It’s usually been the way for large family corporations. But in the past, startups like Spotify (before its IPO) used media to send a message instead – like its threat to leave Sweden because of the lack of housing in Stockholm and regulation around employee stock options. 

Hjelm told me he’s heard from politicians that this approach doesn’t work. The Swedish Prime Minister’s office told Sifted that Kristersson’s message is politics and business need to work together, not against each other.

Eight years on, Ek brought up Stockholm’s housing problem again at a fireside chat on Monday, saying it makes it difficult to attract great talent. I’m not actually sure if better dialogue between tech folk and politicians during that time would have changed the housing situation here either.

These conversations are nice to have, though, and as Hjelm says about Sweden, it’s not in every country you can have lunch with the Prime Minister. Whether that changes anything for Sweden’s startups in the future is TBC.

I'm not sure panels are what people want at a party though. But when those were done and dusted, it turned out to be a pretty great party. And watch out London, I’ve heard Hjelm and Schildt are planning a get-together there in the coming weeks.

— Mimi Billing, Europe editor

🤝 French quantum startup Pasqal is teaming up with US tech giant IBM, a global leader in quantum computing, to work on ‘quantum-centric supercomputing’, a technology that combines the capabilities of both quantum and conventional computers. 

• IBM and Pasqal are typically seen as competitors — but the two companies say that the partnership will set new standards in the sector by enabling customers to use quantum technologies in a more integrated way. The collaboration has not involved any transfer of capital or relocation of R&D resources.

🎓 The German Startup Association, which represents startups, and UnternehmerTUM, the startup lab of the Technical University of Munich (TUM), have called for German universities to dedicate 1% of their budget to spinouts, in an article published yesterday in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a daily newspaper in Germany. 

• Germany spends the same on R&D as a percentage of GDP and publishes nearly the same number of scientific publications per 1,000 people as the US, according to a 2021 report by Lakestar VC — yet Germany produces just under a quarter of the number of unicorns per 1m inhabitants as the US. 
• Verena Pausder, the chair of the German Startups Association, says universities should focus more on entrepreneurial training rather than purely theoretical knowledge. She adds that integrating more real-world business challenges into university curricula can better prepare students for the demands of running a company.
• On LinkedIn, Pausder posted: “We demand that universities make at least one per cent of their budget, including third-party funding, available specifically for spinoffs. This should not be a requirement of politics, but a voluntary commitment (by universities) to show: We take this issue seriously. In doing so, we value the independence of research and teaching – it must be guaranteed. But scientific breakthroughs must be made more usable – society and the economy benefit from this.”
• According to a LinkedIn post from UnternehmerTUM’s CEO Helmut Schoenenberger, the Technical University of Munich puts 5% of its budget towards “entrepreneurial support services”.

📉 The European Central Bank lowered interest rates from 4% to 3.75% yesterday, the first cut since 2019. Dealmakers have been keen to see rates go down, as the last few years of rising interest rates and increased borrowing costs for companies have put downward pressure on activity.

🗣️ Depop founder Simon Beckerman sat down for brunch with Sifted’s Kai Nicol Schwarz to discuss his latest venture, independent food marketplace Delli, alongside cofounder and new CEO Marie Petrovicka.

• Over the course of the two-hour chat at a Japanese noodle bar in central London, the cofounders talk about changing leadership, taking on the US and the pressures of startup life.

🏭 Sifted Scout: 20 industrial tech startups to watch. (Sifted Pro subscribers)

👀 Nordic early-stage startups to watch — according to investors.

Readers, we want to hear from you. What’s the best thing on European tech you’ve read recently? Drop us a line.

For the past two days, I’ve been pottering around health.tech in Munich. It’s the first year since the Bavarian conference — which brings together healthtech founders, investors and healthcare providers — rebranded from ‘Bits & Pretzels HealthTech’, in an unsubtle attempt to steal hyperlinks whenever it’s mentioned in emails, Slacks and WhatsApps.

There was a lot of investor talk on the conference floor about the promise of AI to automate healthcare admin tasks. The tech is seen as one solution that could help tackle global staff shortages in the healthcare sector. 

That tallies with an investor survey Sifted ran earlier this year, which asked VCs which non-portfolio AI healthtechs they had their eyes on. Nearly half of their picks were startups that do things like automate clinician notes and laborious paperwork like medical coding.

It could be the sub-sector that produces the next healthtech unicorn, one investor told me, before caveating that we’re unlikely to see VCs splash the kind of money on a round in the sector that would see a company hit a $1bn valuation any time soon. 

So far this year, Italy’s Medical MicroInstruments, which makes robotic surgical tools, is the only healthtech startup (excluding biotech and pharma) that has raised a $100m+ round, according to Dealroom. Only five have raised more than $40m. 

Another sector on people’s lips was weight loss care — spurred on by the meteoric rise of GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy. One investor told me that they’re seeing “tonnes” of early-stage startups pivoting to weight loss care this year. 

So, green shoots — but it’s still anyone’s guess where the next Doctolib, Kry or Alan will come from. 

— Kai Nicol-Schwarz, healthtech reporter

Paris-based Smart Energies, which specialises in financing, constructing and operating medium-sized solar projects, raised €87m in funding from investors including Plenium Partners, SWEN Capital Partners and RGREEN INVEST. 

Berlin-based M^0, which allows institutions to issue a fully fungible cryptodollar called M, raised $35m in Series A funding. Bain Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Galaxy, Wintermute, GSR, Caladan and SCB 10X.

Berlin-based Quantica, which specialises in additive manufacturing, raised €19.7m in a Series A extension round. West Hill Capital led the round and was joined by Quantica management and Big Bang Angels.

London-based Slip, a platform which digitises receipts to help retailers better understand customer data, raised £2.5m in seed funding. Adjuvo led the round and was joined by investors including Haatch Ventures, Unbundled VC and the Side by Side Partnership.

Hamburg, Germany-based SmartLoC, a B2B payments solution for international trade, raised €1.8m in seed funding. High-Tech Gründerfonds led the round and was joined by investors including Loggerhead Ventures and MBG Mittelständische Beteiligungsgesellschaft Schleswig-Holstein.

Amstedam-based Prêts, which provides financing solutions for homeowners to make sustainable home improvements, raised €1m in funding from investors including Innovatiefonds Noord-Holland, Rubio Impact Ventures and Rockstart.

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