Sifted - Northvolt project delayed two years

Good morning there,

Swedish battery giant Northvolt is not having the best week. On Monday it announced plans to cut its workforce and sell some of its businesses; meanwhile, Freya Pratty reports, its plan to build Europe’s largest lithium plant — a joint venture with Portuguese oil and gas giant Galp — is also two years behind schedule. 

Elsewhere:

• Depop founder Simon Beckerman’s food marketplace Delli raises $6m
• Early-stage market map: electric vehicle startups
• All the EV startups actively fundraising (plus pitchdecks!)

P.S. Editor Amy Lewin is at the BVCA’s annual summit in London today, while reporter Kai Nicol-Schwarz is on a farm in the Cotswolds at Tech Nation's Future Fifty Forum. If you’re at either of those, say hi!

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🇸🇪 Northvolt’s plan to build Europe’s largest lithium plant — a joint venture with Portuguese oil and gas giant Galp — is two years behind schedule. The project was announced in 2021, and was targeting commercial production from 2026. That’s now been pushed back to 2028, according to a document released by the European Investment Bank (EIB) in March, which is currently considering an €825m investment into the Portuguese facility. 

• In a statement to Sifted, Galp said it remains committed to the project, known as Aurora, but that access to national and European funds are not guaranteed, and that has delayed the project. Northvolt and Aurora did not respond to requests for comment.

🍯 Depop founder Simon Beckerman’s food marketplace Delli has raised a $6m internal seed extension led by Balderton and HV Capital, early backers of his former company. He also participated in the round. 

• The raise follows 16x revenue growth compared to this time last year, according to Delli, and will be used to scale operations ahead of expansion to the US. 
• The company fills the “big hole” between independent food makers selling their products at street markets and getting their goods on supermarket shelves, says Delli’s CEO and cofounder Marie Petrovicka. She took over the reins from Beckerman earlier this year.

🇬🇧 Amazon’s cloud computing arm AWS plans to spend £8bn in the UK over the next five years to build and manage data centres. It expects the investment to support more than 14k jobs at businesses in the country by the end of 2028.

🏎️ The electric vehicle startups in Europe actively fundraising. (Plus: their pitch decks.) 

🔍 How to find the best startups to invest in. (In partnership with Barclays)

Electric vehicle startup 101

• The race to electrify cars is hitting potholes. Growth in EV sales is slowing, which means major carmakers, in turn, are slowing their investment in new battery-powered models, dialling back electrification goals. 
• Then there’s the not-small issue of competition from China, which has a clear cost advantage in producing batteries — the country is far ahead in making cheap EVs.
• So EV-related costs need to come down — a lot. This is where startups come in. Three big areas of focus include extending the service life of batteries, dreaming up novel — and ideally cheaper — types of battery tech and bulking out charging networks in Europe. 
• There’s big growth potential, in particular, for companies boosting Europe’s charger capacity. This is because plug-in power is still so scarce in many parts of the continent: Germany, France and the Netherlands account for almost two-thirds of charging stations in the EU.

Read our latest briefing on the sector here.

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Bordeaux, France-based Neat, an embedded insurance provider, raised a €50m Series A. Hedosophia led the round and was joined by Mundi Ventures, ETFS Capital and Athletico Ventures. The round is made up of €30m in equity and €20m in debt, according to Techcrunch. 

• This is the second French insurtech that has raised recently — Korint, a Paris-based insurtech, raised €5m in seed funding last week. 

Cambridge, UK-based PhoreMost, a drug discovery startup targeting ‘undruggable’ diseases, raised a $12m Series B extension, taking its total to $50m. Parkwalk Advisors led the round and was joined by BGF, Amadeus Capital Partners, Astellas Venture Management and Dr Jonathan Milner.

Paris-based Jus Mundi, an AI-based legaltech, raised a €20m Series B. Acton Capital led the round and was joined by True Global Ventures, C4 Ventures and FJ Labs.

• Jus Mundi is one of many legaltech startups taking advantage of recent developments in GenAI. Others in this space include Leya, LegalFly, Robin AI and Luminance.

London-based tem, a B2B renewable energy startup that allows businesses to buy energy directly from renewable generators, raised a £10.5m Series A. Atomico, which announced $1.24bn in new capital across two funds this week, led the round and was joined by AlbionVC, Revent and several angel investors including Holly and Sam Branson, and Wise CTO Harsh Sinha and CPO Nilan Peiris.

• As part of the round Atomico partner Terese Hougaard will join tem’s board.

Glasgow, Scotland-based Solasta Bio, which develops green insecticides, raised a $14m Series A. Forbion, FMC Ventures and Corteva led the round and were joined by Cavallo Ventures, Rubio Impact Ventures, Scottish Enterprise, UKi2S, SIS Ventures and the University of Glasgow. 

Jena, Germany-based Quantum Optics Jena, which specialises in quantum encryption technology, raised an €8.5m Series A. Join Capital led the round and was joined by ELAS Technologies and Fraunhofer Technologies-Transfer Fonds. 

Rotterdam, Netherlands-based Spatium Medical, a startup which specialises in insufflation technology for surgeons, raised €5m in funding from InnovationQuarter, Demcon Investment Fund, Van Herk Ventures and Swanbridge Capital. The company is a spinout from Erasmus University Medical Center. 

London-based Ogre AI, a forecasting and management platform for the energy sector, raised €3m in funding. VERBUND X Ventures led the round and was joined by Early Game Ventures, Soulmates Ventures, MMC and Sofia Angels Ventures. 

Oslo-based Vind AI, a startup developing an online platform for wind project design, raised a €3m seed round. Norrsken VC led the round and was joined by Arkwright X and the founders of Spacemaker. 

Stockholm-based Starhive, a no-code app builder, raised a $3m seed round. Node.vc led the round. Node partners Andy Johnston and Henrik Tellving joined the board.

Amsterdam-based Churned, a startup developing an AI-driven customer success management platform, raised €2.5m in funding. Newion and Volta Ventures led the round and were joined by Goldfish. 

Amsterdam-based Brineworks, which uses a seawater electrolyzer to decarbonise the aviation and shipping industries, raised $2.2m in funding. Pale Blue Dot led the round.

London-based Twin Science & Robotics, an edtech startup with focus on STEM education, raised £1.25m in funding. Soulmates Ventures led the round and was joined by APY Ventures.

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