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 backed. 

Fresh off an interview with EQT investors, the pair also dig into how the firm wants to manage the fund, their reaction upon hearing the news — and whether there could be a second scale-up fund on its way soon.

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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 existed. 

James also shares about his new gig as chair of the Sovereign AI Unit, a £500m initiative launched by the UK government earlier this year. He talks through its investments to date — which include Isomorphic Labs, Ineffable Intelligence and Callosum — and responds to the backlash it has received.

The pair also discuss AI's public perception problem, James's biggest investment miss and whether Europe is ready to seize the moment in the race for AGI.

For quarterly updates of the Sovereign AI Unit’s progress, check out James’ blog: https://www.jameswise.com/author/james-wise/

Sign up to the Sifted Daily Newsletter here: https://sifted.eu/newsletters

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 existed. 

James also shares about his new gig as chair of the Sovereign AI Unit, a £500m initiative launched by the UK government earlier this year. He talks through its investments to date — which include Isomorphic Labs, Ineffable Intelligence and Callosum — and responds to the backlash it has received.

The pair also discuss AI's public perception problem, James's biggest investment miss and whether Europe is ready to seize the moment in the race for AGI.

For quarterly updates of the Sovereign AI Unit’s progress, check out James’ blog: https://www.jameswise.com/author/james-wise/

Sign up to the Sifted Daily Newsletter here: https://sifted.eu/newsletters

On this episode of the Sifted podcast, associate editor Freya Pratty sits down with news editor Martin Coulter, to unpack how Silicon Valley giant Anthropic is making big waves in European tech.

The LLM builder and OpenAI rival has released new products that go head-to-head with some of Europe's buzziest AI companies like Loveable and Legora, raising questions about the defensibility of businesses built on top of third-party models.

Freya and Martin also discuss how Europe's fintechs are scrambling for access to Anthropic's new model Mythos and a possible deal with chip maker Fractile, an Oxford spinout that's winning support from the UK government.

Sign up to Sifted's Daily and Deeptech newsletters here: https://sifted.eu/newsletters

With over 700k women in the UK waiting for gynecological care, why is half the population still so underserved by its health system?

Yes, women have historically been left out of clinical trials, but there are logistical reasons as to why, Hertility CEO Helen O’Neill tells host Amy Lewin. “ Collecting data from women on the third day of their menstrual cycle at scale is actually feasibly and technically very difficult to do.”

Helen is more familiar with these difficulties than most: Hertility has built a diagnostic testing system to support women through their fertility journeys, and provides onward clinical care — from telemedicine gynecological appointments and ultrasounds to IVF and egg freezing.

The result? Hertility, Helen says, can diagnose endometriosis with 98-99% confidence in eight days — the same condition which takes on average nine years to diagnose via the UK's National Health Service (NHS).

In this episode of the Sifted podcast, Helen shares how she’s building a foundational model for women’s health, why Hertility “started off trying to be a baguette and has twisted itself into a pretzel for every investor” and why it’s important to demystify the “homogeneous idea of women’s health”.

On this episode of the Sifted podcast, host Amy Lewin is joined by Marianne Vikkula, CEO of delivery giant Wolt — one of Europe’s only ‘superapps’ — and chair of Slush, the iconic European startup conference. 

Wolt began life delivering restaurant food to customers in Helsinki, before steadily expanding into groceries, medicine, electronics and offering services like revenue-based financing. It was acquired by American delivery giant DoorDash in May 2022.

Marianne and Amy discuss how European superapps can compete globally, Wolt’s newest partnership with Dott and why the company posts all vacancies externally.

Get tickets to Sifted summit here: https://summit.sifted.eu/2026-tickets

What do hazardous inspections, fighting and cooking crêpes have in common? All three are tasks that robots are now capable (ish) of performing.

In 2025, equity investment into European robotics startups more than doubled, reaching €1.45bn — and in the first quarter of this year, European robotics startups raised €522m.

But what’s triggered this uptick?

On this week’s episode of the Sifted podcast, host Amy Lewin is joined by editors Éanna Kelly and Tom Nugent to discuss the booming sector. The trio dig into whether Europe’s robot makers are moving fast enough, and whether everyday consumers will have robots unloading their dishwashers anytime soon.

Sign up to Sifted's Daily and Deeptech newsletters here: https://sifted.eu/newsletters

Last year, Kitty Mayo was catapulted into the public eye when she took the helm of Project Europe. The accelerator, launched to much fanfare by Harry Stebbings and about 200 entrepreneurs, has a bold mission: to support and invest in founders under the age of 25 to build Europe’s next €100bn companies.

But, one year on, what’s it achieved? What’s been the most unexpected challenge? What will Kitty do differently with the  second fund? And who’s really in charge?

On this episode of the Sifted Podcast, Kitty sits down with host Amy Lewin to discuss all the above, plus: 

• The most telling questions on Project Europe’s application form
• Who makes the best mentors to founders
• Why 996 is “outdated”
• Why she’s stopped trying to be likeable 
• Why more women shouldn't wait to play before a "perfect system" comes along

This podcast was brought to you by HSBC Innovation Banking.

European seed rounds are ballooning. Last month Yann LeCun’s AMI Labs picked up $1bn at a $3bn valuation while David Silver’s Ineffable Intelligence was reported to be raising $1bn at a $4bn valuation. 

“Thankfully, the billion dollar seed round is not the standard across Europe — yet,” Philipp Moehring tells host Amy Lewin on this episode of the Sifted podcast. “That would be concerning.”

Philipp started microfund Tiny VC with Andy Chung almost a decade ago to invest in the hottest companies in Europe before anyone else. Its portfolio of 450+ startups includes self-driving car company Wayve, AI-powered video creator Synthesia, legal tech Lawhive and workflow automation platform N8n. 

But unlike many VCs, Tiny doesn’t join boards, or lead rounds and doesn’t really ‘do’ media. It last raised a third £53m fund in 2023, and was crowned 20VC’s ‘top European microfund’ earlier this year.

This week on the podcast, Philipp and Amy discuss:

• How VC will change over the next 10 years
• When Tiny takes money off the table 
• Why young people make awesome founders
• Anxiety-inducing LinkedIn posts
• And, for better or worse, the return of the tech bro

Within a relatively short space of time, Laura Modiano has come to play a fairly unique and valuable role in Europe’s startup scene. 

Laura, who leads OpenAI’s startup team in Europe, hops from city to city, attending hackathons, events and dinners with Europe’s leading AI companies and investors.

This week she sits down with host Amy Lewin to discuss what the best startups have in common, how she’s automated her work and what she looks for as an angel investor.

This podcast was brought to you by HSBC Innovation Banking.