Sifted - The man who catfished London's VCs

Good morning there,

If you visited the Burlington Arms in London’s upmarket Mayfair district in the first half of this year, you may have happened upon a crowd of venture capitalists all gathered around one man: a 50-something billionaire called Ian Slater.

Slater said he had inherited wealth from his father, which he’d put into a family office to invest into VC firms. Amid a tough fundraising environment, VCs were keen to get to know him.

There was just one problem. Although the VCs, fellow family offices and even the lawyer that often accompanied Slater were real, his promises of money were often not. 

Five firms tell Sifted that Slater promised them money which never materialised, leaving most wondering whether he ever had the money at all. “Everyone knew of him, but no one really knew him,” says one investor.

Sifted made multiple attempts to contact Ian Slater for comment — via email, LinkedIn and over the phone — but did not receive a reply. 

Here, we tell the story of how one man managed to catfish the London VC ecosystem.

Elsewhere today: 

• ‘No sane customer would use GenAI’: Why UiPath’s Daniel Dines isn’t sweating over threats from OpenAI or Anthropic
• Comand AI raises €8.5m to build battlefield AI software for officers

— Freya Pratty & Miriam Partington

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🪖 Paris-based Comand AI, a two-year-old startup building AI battlefield strategy planning software, has raised €8.5m. 

• The seed round was led by Eurazeo. Existing investor Frst, a French seed-stage fund, and newcomer Expeditions Fund, a Poland-based VC, also participated. 
• Comand AI’s software platform, called Prevail, provides AI simulations and takes data inputs from operation orders and documents from higher command, as well as real-time operations data like terrain and enemy data — letting officers deliver orders to human and robot units in the battlefield quickly.
• The startup’s team already includes former employees of OpenAI and Palantir — and it’s eager to hire more. 

🥼 UK TV celebrity investor Steven Bartlett is amplifying harmful health misinformation in his Diary of a CEO podcast, reports a BBC investigation. 

• The investor in personalised nutrition startup Zoe and meal replacement startup Huel allowed guests to make “harmful health claims” with little or no challenge, including that evidence-based medication is "toxic" for patients, autism can be “reversed” with diet and anti-vaccine conspiracies, said the BBC. 
• The BBC found that in 15 health-related episodes, each contained an average of 14 harmful health claims that went against “extensive” scientific evidence.
• Bartlett’s podcast production company Flight Studio said guests were offered "freedom of expression" and were "thoroughly researched".

🇫🇷 France has a new prime minister (again). Following the collapse of Michel Barnier’s three-month-old government earlier this month, president Emmanuel Macron has appointed centrist political veteran François Bayrou as the country’s next prime minister.

• Bayrou heads the liberal democrat movement (MoDem) party that is allied to Macron’s political group Renaissance.
• He faces the challenge of forming a new government and passing a budget for 2025 while working with a divided parliament where no political group has an absolute majority — a situation that is keeping French tech, and businesses in general, on their toes.

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🦾 How is UiPath adapting to the age of GenAI? Romanian unicorn UiPath was one of the pioneers of using technology to automate enterprise  processes, and has gathered some 10k business customers since launching in 2005. But are its days numbered now that generative AI has come of age? 

• Not at all, says UiPath founder and CEO Daniel Dines, who tells Sifted that new AI capabilities are actually a big opportunity for the company, which is building new products that complement its existing offering. 
• GenAI is also a very bad tool to use for plenty of business tasks, says Dines. "No sane customer will run such a thing.”

🤡 Gloucester Circus: The family office that catfished London’s VCs. 

“Everyone knew of him, but no one really knew him.”

🌬️ A hairdryer for heavy industry and a virtual energy manager: Meet two startups helping industry to decarbonise. (Sponsored by New Energy Challenge)

🌍 How to plan your go-to-market strategy for 2025 | Online. As a founder, creating the perfect go-to-market strategy is a top priority. But what exactly are investors looking for? Join our free, virtual Sifted Talks on January 29 to find out. RSVP.

London-based Baller League, which is six-a-side indoor football league and sports media company, raised $25m in Series A funding led by EQT Ventures.

Switzerland-based Waterfall Network, a blockchain-based smart contract platform, raised $11.6m in funding. Bolt's Capital led the round and was joined by investors including Alpha Token Capital and Enflux.

Cologne, Germany-based eyva.ai, which optimises product portfolio development for beauty and care brands, raised €2.7m in seed funding. Earlybird and Wenvest Capital led the round and was joined by investors including True Global Ventures, Xdeck, Wepa Ventures, Robin Capital and Superangels.

Edinburgh-based Concinnity Genetics, which designs novel control mechanisms for RNA-based therapies, raised €3m in seed funding. Eos Advisory led the round and was joined by investors including Scottish Enterprise, Old College Capital and Maven Capital Partners.

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