View this email in your browser

Hi Sifted Reader,

Good news! We have a cracking newsletter for you this morning, including...

Is the 10-min delivery startup funding frenzy rational?
A French quantum computer with 1,000 qubits. Yes, that's right, 1,000!
Portugal’s best under-the-radar startups, according to top investors
Europe's 31 fintech unicorns. Who are they?

\Food

How much is too much when investing in grocery delivery?

Silly amounts of money are flowing into grocery delivery this year. Speedy delivery startups Flink and Getir raised $800m between them last week, while this week Norwegian online supermarket Oda has hit unicorn status after a secondary shares sale.

But does it actually make sense for investors to be clamouring quite so loudly to get into these startups?

Sifted columnist Nicolas Colin takes a look.

\Fintech Unwrapped 2.0

How the payments landscape is changing

Payment processing is being flipped on its head — but which companies are paving the way? Find out in the Fintech Unwrapped 2.0 report.

Download it here.

\For Members Venture Capital

Portugal’s best under-the-radar startups, according to top investors

With a population a quarter of the size of Spain, Portugal is often seen as the younger sibling of the Iberian tech scene.

But with more unicorns to its name, and as the host of the world’s largest tech event Web Summit, the country certainly punches above its weight.

So who are the most exciting startups to watch?

We asked some of the country's top investors to find out.

If you're not yet a Sifted member, subscribe here for as little as £19 per month.

\Sifted Talks

How the payments space is changing

Learn why valuations in the open banking space are soaring and what investors are betting big on at this virtual Sifted Talks event.

Join us today, 12.30pm BST!

\Fintech

It's official: There are now 31 fintech unicorns in Europe

10 new fintech unicorns have been created this year, including SaltPay and Lendable.

But who are they all? And why is European fintech so dominant?

Isabel Woodford takes a look.

\Quantum

1,000 quantum qubits to the rescue

French startup Pasqal is promising to have a 1,000-qubit quantum processor ready by 2023, setting it up as a competitor to tech giants like IBM and Google which are also in the quantum race.

What does 1,000 qubits really mean? Well, basically it's an amount of processing power that allows complex calculations that would overwhelm any conventional supercomputer.

Maija Palmer has more.

For a deep dive (for Sifted members) about how companies are really using quantum, see here.

News that Matters

👩 Salonica Maroon has set up a new £75m UK-based fund aiming to tackle the diversity gap. It is the largest diversity-focused fund announced in the UK in recent years. (Ada Ventures closed a $50m fund in December of last year to fund underrepresented founders and overlooked markets.)

🏃‍♀️ Lenus, a platform helping online fitness instructors build their businesses, has raised Denmark’s largest-ever Series A funding round as investors bet on a future where everyone won’t be rushing back to the gym.

✅ Irish-founded virtual care company LetsGetChecked has closed a $150m funding round valuing the company at $1bn, making it the latest Irish tech unicorn. The company, which supplies at-home diagnostics tests, has seen business boom during the pandemic.

💰 Scalable Capital, the neo-broker and digital wealth manager, has raised more than $180m in a round led by China's Tencent. Five years after launching, the company has over a quarter of a million clients and over $5bn in assets on its platform.

🛍️ About You, the German fashion ecommerce company that aims to digitalise mall visits, is eyeing a €4bn valuation at its IPO.

💳 Tide, the digital business bank, is closing in on a new round of funding that Sky News says could value the company at around £350m.

🛵 The founders and CEOs of Delivery Hero, Bolt, Glovo, and Wolt have joined forces to work on a better model for regulating platform companies.

Sifted Suggests

🖲️ What corporate customers are really doing with quantum computing. So far, not that much. [Member]

Sifted Resources

European tech startups and scaleups to watch in 2021

French tech startups and scaleups to watch in 2021

German tech startups and scaleups to watch in 2021

Europe’s top climate tech investors

How to pitch an opinion piece to Sifted

Michael Stothard
Editor

Get in touch with him at michael@sifted.eu
Or find him tweeting @MStothard

Isabella Pojuner
Editorial Intern

Get in touch with her at isabella@sifted.eu
She's into climate tech and crypto.

What would you like to read about in the next email?

Send us your suggestions

Follow us on social

SIFTED (EU) LTD

Huckletree Shoreditch

18 Finsbury Square

London, EC2A 1AH

United Kingdom

Add us to your address book

Want to tailor what you receive from us?
You can update your preferences to manage your newsletter and report subscriptions, or you can unsubscribe from Sifted if you never want to hear from us again.

Sifted - Feel the power of my quantum qubit!! 💪

\Food

How much is too much when investing in grocery delivery?

\Fintech Unwrapped 2.0

How the payments landscape is changing

\For Members Venture Capital

Portugal’s best under-the-radar startups, according to top investors

\Sifted Talks

How the payments space is changing

\Fintech

It's official: There are now 31 fintech unicorns in Europe

\Quantum

1,000 quantum qubits to the rescue

News that Matters

Sifted Suggests

Sifted Resources

Older messages

Europe's next IPOs: who's getting rich? 💸

The next unicorns, predicted 🦄

The fintechs making their staff rich 💰

Klarna strikes back 🥊

Klarna's in trouble 👀

You Might Also Like

Inside Ireland's tech scene

Inside Ireland's tech scene

Altern, Echotalent.net, Scrappi, Flowjin, KS Status, and more

Are Software Companies Good Businesses?

🦄 How to Deal with Bad Actors

Our Apologies - Here’s the Correct Link

📂 Community connects customers with each other

Robots are rising in Europe

🧠 When should a founder trust gut instincts?

Vexo, DesDeck, and Bridy