Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast

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  Who are Europe’s fastest-growing companies? 02.10.2026 32мин

  This week at Sifted we launched the Sifted 250 — a ranking of the 250 fastest-growing startups by revenue-growth across the continent, as well as a new research report. London-based wellness marketplace Healf was crowned winner, followed by body scanning startup Neko Health and Ghent-based security management platform Aikido. Notion Capital, Accel, YC, BpiFrance and Balderton topped the investor rankings, backing the most companies on the list. On the podcast this week, host Freya Pratty disc...
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  Is New York warming to European tech? 23.09.2026 17мин

  Senior reporter Anne Sraders has just spent two weeks in New York, and one thing was impossible to miss: AI was everywhere. From subway ads to investor breakfasts, it was the only conversation in town. "Everyone wants to find the next Anthropic for every other domain," Abby Meyers of Bain Capital Ventures told Anne. And some US investors are looking to Europe's neolabs, from Yann LeCun's AMI Labs to David Silver's Ineffable, to find it. So how do New York VCs really feel about European tech? ...
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  Does Europe have a voice in AI safety? 15.09.2026 18мин

  Last week, the resignation of Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon catapulted the discussion over AI safety into the mainstream. A thread he posted on X quickly garnered millions of views. “The consensus is that the next year or two is crunch time for humanity,” Coxon later told tech publication Wired. “From [my former colleagues’] perspective, this is when Anthropic and its competitors decide the fate of humanity.” How is this debate materialising in Europe, where no AI company is pushing th...
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  Is Mistral's monster fundraise a win for European sovereignty? 11.09.2026 20мин

  There's been talk all summer about who would fund Mistral's next round. This week it was confirmed: €3bn at a €21bn valuation, co-led by Samsung, the EU's Scaleup Europe Fund and US growth firm PSG Equity. A year ago Mistral was worth €11.7bn. Mistral has always pitched itself as Europe's sovereign alternative to US AI giants like OpenAI and Anthropic. With few European investors capable of meeting its huge capital needs,many were watching closely who the French scaleup would seek money from ...
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  Why Legora isn't building its own model 03.09.2026 17мин

  Legora has had a busy year. The Swedish legal AI firm raised $550m in March, led by Accel, and has made five acquisitions since January. The company is often pitted against its US rival Harvey. But while the two are comparable in many ways, they diverge on some key things, including whether to build their own AI models. Harvey has launched one ; while Legora says training a frontier model doesn't make business sense. This episode of the Sifted podcast comes live from TechBBQ in Copenhag...
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  Are the Nordics really on fire? 28.08.2026 17мин

  There’s a lot of talk at the moment about the momentum in the Nordic tech scene. Companies like legal AI firm Legora and vibe coding startup Lovable continue to bring in megarounds. But is the momentum spread across the region, or just confined to Stockholm? The Swedish capital has brought in the majority of funding in the region, thanks to Legora and Lovable, among others. This episode of the Sifted podcast comes live from TechBBQ in Copenhagen, Denmark. Host Freya Pratty is joined by...
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  Domyn CEO Uljan Sharka: ‘We're a few quarters away from $1bn ARR’ 19.08.2026 40мин

  This week on the podcast, host John Thornhill is joined by Uljan Sharka, the founder and CEO of Italian AI unicorn Domyn. Uljan migrated from his home country Albania to Italy back in 2008 — without knowing a word of Italian. He soon developed a fascination with tech, later working for Apple in Silicon Valley. In 2016, he launched Milan-based Domyn, a company developing AI models and agents for enterprise use cases, as well as AI gigafactories. The pair discuss the virtues of small langua...
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  European fintech has a culture problem 14.08.2026 18мин

  Sifted's fintech reporter Damisola Sulaiman makes her first Sifted podcast appearance to discuss her recent reporting on the culture at Danish fintech Pleo. Interviews with seven former employees revealed a company transformed by the leadership overhaul. They described a tougher management culture, internal friction among executives and growing internal concerns that Pleo’s product is losing ground to rivals. Pleo cofounder and CEO Jeppe Rindom told Sifted: "As anyone who has scaled a busin...
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  VCs are taking on operator roles. Why? 30.07.2026 11мин

  VCs taking on interim roles at their portfolio companies is something that’s happened for a long time — as is VCs making the permanent switch to the operator side. But a new trend seems to be gaining steam in Europe: VCs adding a CEO or operator title alongside their investor role, and doing both at the same time. Judith Dada, general partner at Visionaries, for example, has made that move this month, taking a role as co-CEO at AI startup Langdock, while Carmen Alfonso Rico, who f...
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  Inside Mistral’s monster fundraise and Palantir-like repositioning 21.07.2026 21мин

  Mistral’s latest fundraise has got the ecosystem chattering. The French AI darling is reportedly raising a €3bn Series D round at a valuation of around €20bn. Last week, Sifted broke the news that the EU’s €5bn Scaleup Fund, managed by EQT, is in talks to lead or co-lead the round. This week on the podcast, senior reporter Daphné Leprince-Ringuet joins host Freya Pratty to discuss the EU Scaleup Fund’s potential involvement and who else might get in on the deal. And, as Mistral increasi...
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  Yann LeCun launched a new VC fund — then quit. What happened? 15.07.2026 11мин

  Last Friday, Europe’s tech ecosystem was abuzz with the news AI godfather Yann LeCun was launching an AI VC firm. Then, hours later, he quit. This week on the podcast, reporter Maya Dharampal-Hornby joins host Freya Pratty to discuss the curious tale of Yann LeCun’s shortly-lived firm, Extelligence Invest. The pair chat about where Extelligence was going to invest, who was involved and why Yann might have left the fund. The former Meta chief AI scientist still has a lot on his plate. Earlier ...
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  Liz Kendall: ‘I’d love to stay as UK tech secretary’ 07.07.2026 33мин

  Liz Kendall was appointed as the UK's Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology just under a year ago. But will she keep her role under the country's new prime minister? There is one area her views diverge from those of Andy Burnham, widely tipped to be the country's new leader: autonomous vehicles. While Burnham's team is reported to have reservations about the technology, Kendall has thrown her support behind the British companies building it. "We should be backing Bri...
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  Should the EU block the UK from its €5bn superfund? 02.07.2026 11мин

  The UK is home to the third-highest number of unicorn startups in the world. Does it make sense to lock it out of the EU's new Scaleup Fund? The €5bn fund, which is yet to deploy a cent of capital, has already been through a hotly contested race to find a manager (Swedish firm EQT came out on top), and now it's caught up in a political tussle over whether the UK — which famously left the bloc back in 2016 — will get a look-in. This week Sifted reported that France is pushing to block UK parti...
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  Brent Hoberman on UK tech post-Starmer: 'Are we going to tax everyone to high hell?' 25.06.2026 44мин

  While the UK's tech scene booms, political uncertainty looms. In this week's episode of the Sifted podcast, John Thornhill is joined by serial entrepreneur and investor Brent Hoberman. Brent, who cofounded Lastminute.com in 1998, is one of the UK’s most experienced and best-connected operators. Today, he runs the early-stage VC firm Firstminute Capital and Founders Forum, a global community of entrepreneurs that co-hosts London Tech Week. John and Brent discuss Keir Starmer's resignation as U...
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  What the Anthropic shutdown means for Europe 16.06.2026 15мин

  Late last week, the European tech ecosystem got a glimpse of a future many had worried about. US AI giant Anthropic announced it had been ordered by the US government to suspend access to its most advanced AI models for foreign nationals. In response, Anthropic cut access to all customers, including those in the US, to ensure compliance. The move is the first example of the US activating a so-called digital “kill switch” with the potential to disrupt or turn off access to technolo...
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  Newton Venture Program CEO Anu Adebajo on Europe’s ‘zombie funds’ 11.06.2026 44мин

  This week on the Sifted Podcast, host John Thornhill is joined by Anu Adebajo, former Atomico partner and, as of February this year, CEO of the Newton Venture Program. Launched in 2020 by VC firm Phoenix Court and London Business School, the educational programme aims to train new generations of VC talent — whether they are experienced investors or simply exploring new career paths. Anu began her career in Sheffield in 2012, where she joined a fund and later went into the British Business Ban...
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  ‘Built in Europe’: Can Balderton’s new campaign spark Europe’s vibe shift? 04.06.2026 15мин

  It’s been a curious fortnight in European tech. There was a fresh bout of anxiety after US AI giant Anthropic announced its latest funding round — which, at $65bn, is nearing the amount raised by the entire European ecosystem last year. But there’s also growing pushback against the doom and gloom. This week, VC firm Balderton launched its “Built in Europe” campaign, aimed at celebrating the continent’s successes and reshaping the way the ecosystem portrays itself. On this week’s episode...
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  Carissa Véliz on the dangers of predictive AI 28.05.2026 32мин

  In this episode of the Sifted podcast, host John Thornhill sits down with Carissa Véliz, AI ethicist, philosopher and associate professor at Oxford University to explore how algorithms and data are reshaping our lives and workplaces. Carissa's latest book, Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, describes how ancient oracles, medieval soothsayers and modern-day AIs all tend to tell the powerful what they want to hear. What does that mean, for example, when we apply AI...
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  EQT has won the EU's €5bn superfund. Now what? 19.05.2026 9мин

  The competition that captivated European VC has concluded. Earlier this week, the EU chose Swedish investment firm EQT to manage its new €5bn Scaleup Europe Fund after a closely-watched race among the region’s top firms like the UK’s Atomico and France’s Eurazeo. On this week’s — somewhat emergency — episode of the Sifted podcast, host Freya Pratty chats to senior reporter Anne Sraders about the selection process to run the fund, when it will begin deploying and which lucky companies might be...
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  James Wise on why the Sovereign AI Unit criticism is wrong – and the one company he wishes he’d backed 15.05.2026 39мин

  This week on the Sifted Podcast, host John Thornhill is joined by James Wise, partner at Balderton Capital. Since joining the firm in 2012, James has led investments in second-hand shopping platform Depop, AI agent maker Convergence and bank payment fintech GoCardless — as well as AI frontier lab Prior Labs, which was acquired by German software giant SAP earlier this month. James discusses how the acquisition came about, including his meeting with the cofounders before the company even exist...