Good morning there,

Event season is drawing to a close. During the last few weeks, the Sifted newsroom has been bare of reporters as we’ve brought you dispatches from VivaTech in Paris, Money20/20 in Amsterdam and SuperVenture in Berlin. This week it’s been the UK’s turn with London Tech Week. Scroll on for our takeaways. 

In other news, UK digital bank Starling has reported its third year of profitability as high interest rates buoyed the UK neobank’s top line. Molten Ventures has also released its annual report. The top line there? The investor has nearly halved the value of its stake in UK semiconductor startup Graphcore. 

Elsewhere today:

• Black Semiconductor secures €254m in funding to ramp up graphene chip production

• Wealthtech Sidekick raises £4.5m to target millennials with cash to splash

— Amy Lewin, editor

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What UK tech is (and isn't) boasting about

Every tech hub has its startup event: Helsinki has Slush. Paris has VivaTech. Munich has Bits & Pretzels. Berlin has SuperVenture. And London — the world’s second biggest startup ecosystem, according to Startup Genome — has London Tech Week.

Launched 10 years ago by the city’s promotional agency London & Partners to boost the city’s tech scene, the event — which isn’t really one conference but a medley of drinks, dinners and parties, panel discussions and speeches from government taking place all over the city — had 45k attendees, 350+ speakers and 200+ exhibitors.

Much of it centred on its new venue — Olympia London (which hosts various events from the Ideal Home Show to the International Security Expo) — where many of the city’s most buzzy startups took to the stage, from autonomous vehicle startup Wayve's founder Alex Kendall (fresh from a much-talked-about $1bn fundraise) to Octopus Energy CEO Greg Jackson. 

London mayor Sadiq Khan kicked things off on Monday — and also addressed a small crowd of Europe founders, VCs and the like at Somerset House yesterday, lauding London’s “openness, diversity and tolerance”.

“Our values are — in VC jargon — our moat,” he quipped.

He also boasted about the 1,500 plus AI startups headquartered in London — more than anywhere else in Europe. UK AI startups raised over $3bn in 2023, according to a report published by Tech Nation this week; more than double the amount raised by startups and scaleups in France and Germany.

Sifted doesn’t enjoy tech ecosystem one-upmanship quite as much as mayors and presidents, but there is plenty to celebrate in the UK capital. The value of London’s tech ecosystem has grown from $70bn in 2014 to $621.5bn in 2023, according to Startup Genome; the city has 103 unicorns, and VCs invested $12bn in the ecosystem last year.

But there’s also plenty to moan about. Hot topics that we’ve heard attendees gripe about this week include Labour’s proposed plan to increase the tax on carried interest; the ongoing lack of growth funding in the UK; and some universities taking too much equity in their spinouts.

Sir Patrick Vallance, former chief scientific advisor to the UK government (and Covid-era TV celebrity), who’s now on the board of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), said at another side event at VC firm LocalGlobe’s office that he’s seeing some positive signs there, however. More academics in the UK are open to commercialising their research, he said — and places like London (as well as Manchester and Cambridge) are strong locations for academics-come-entrepreneurs. 

Today it’s the most sought-after side event of all: Founders Forum — and it isn't even in London. Its 450 attendees include 218 unicorn founders, 130 VCs with a collective $1.5tn in assets under management and a handful of celebrities too. 

Stay tuned for what we find out on the ground there.  

— Amy Lewin, editor

😬 Molten Ventures has nearly halved the value of its stake in UK semiconductor startup Graphcore amid mounting speculation that an acquisition of the Bristol-based company could be imminent. 

• According to Molten’s annual report, which shows financial results for the year up to March 31, 2024, its stake in Graphcore is now worth just £20.6m — a 45% drop from its valuation of £37.2m in 2023. 

• It’s the second year in a row that Molten has written down its stake in the company. In 2022, the investor valued its stake at £113.5m. 

🙌 Starling Bank has reported its third consecutive year of profitability, posting an annual pre-tax profit of £301.1m for the year ending in March 2023. Revenues at the UK digital bank also increased 51% year-on-year to £682.2m as its loan book swelled by 53%. 

• The bank declined to give an update on its IPO intentions — but said that it was only considering a London listing, describing the London Stock Exchange as its “natural home”. 

💰 German startup Black Semiconductor has raised a €254m Series A to make graphene-based microchips, designed for applications ranging from autonomous driving to generative AI. The raise includes €228.7m of government funding and €25.7m in equity led by Project A Ventures and Porsche Ventures.

💸 Sidekick, a wealth and savings app for millennials with cash to splash, has raised a £4.5m seed round led by Pact VC and TheVentureCity. CEO Matt Ford tells Sifted the round gave the startup a post-money valuation of £15.5m.

• Sidekick targets the “mass affluent” — 30-45-year-olds with salaries ranging from around £80k-£200k who mostly work in tech or are entrepreneurs and can pay the app’s £1,000 minimum investment.

🛍️ ‘I thought I was going to die’: Brunch with Depop and Delli founder Simon Beckerman.

💪 Brunch with Plural and HelixNano’s Carina Namih: I needed to go to Silicon Valley to find VCs who could ‘match my ambition’.

🧠 ‘We’re not trying to build an Andreessen Horowitz-style firm’: Brunch with Point Nine’s Christoph Janz.

International investors, secondaries and a focus on DEI - what founders and VCs should know about term sheets in 2024. (Sponsored by HSBC Innovation Banking)

From prompt to profit

Whether they like it or not, AI and machine learning are key considerations for European scaleups. But how can budding CTOs effectively harness its capabilities for a better bottom line? Tune into our upcoming Sifted Talks with Atom Bank and Kry to find out.

Antwerp, Belgium-based Gorilla, a cloud-based data processing platform for utility companies, raised €23m in Series B funding. Headline led the round and was joined by Beringea and PMV.

Copenhagen-based Light, which automates company financials, raised $13m in funding. Atomico led the round and was joined by investors including Entrée Capital, Cherry Ventures and Seedcamp.

Warsaw-based Wealthon, which provides financial support to SMEs and entrepreneurs, raised PLN 50m (~€11.5m) in debt funding from CVI Dom Maklerski.

Paris-based Ray Studios, which specialises in tattoo removal, raised $5m in funding from BPI and BPRI.

Paris-based Spiko, a capital markets startup using blockchain technology to build an open-source platform for the issuance, management and distribution of securities, raised €4m in pre-seed funding. Frst led the round and was joined by investors including Blockwall, Kima, Financière Saint James and Bpifrance.

Helsinki-based Flow Computing, which licences tech that integrates with existing chips to enhance CPU performance, raised €4m in pre-seed funding. Butterfly Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including FOV Ventures, Sarsia, Stephen Industries, Superhero Capital and Business Finland.

Zurich, Switzerland-based Rivia, which specialises in AI-driven analytics and data infrastructure for clinical trials, raised €3m in seed funding. Speedinvest led the round and was joined by investors including Amino Collective and Nina Capital.

London-based Watergate AI, which uses AI to detect and stop water leaks, raised £1.8m in seed funding from investors including Diomedes Capital.

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🎙️ Swedish impact foundation Norrsken has launched a new Spotify podcast series on climate tech hosted by actor Alexander Skarsgård. The Hollywood star will interview impact startups that are trying to solve the climate crisis; first up is Volta Greentech, which is trying to stop cows from burping and farting.

Skarsgård won't be the only Hollywood actor mixing with tech folk in Stockholm this week. Actresses Halle Berry and Reese Witherspoon are among the celebrity attendees at the Brilliant Minds conference along with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

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