Last month, the US AI giant Anthropic released a new Claude tool for the legal industry, triggering a sell-off in publicly listed firms like Salesforce and reigniting concerns that AI-native startups could wipe out traditional SaaS giants.

So will Europe’s VC-backed SaaS giants survive the AI area? And what about the VCs who’ve heavily backed them?

In this episode of the Sifted Podcast, host Amy Lewin is joined by senior reporters Freya Pratty and Anne Sraders to unpack what the rise of AI means for Europe’s VC-backed software companies — and the investors who’ve poured billions into them.

Read more here: https://sifted.eu/articles/european-vc-saaspocalypse

The AI debate has been dominated by large language models used to power the likes of ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. But could the next wave of AI look very different?

Yes, some European AI watchers say. Attention is shifting to so-called “world models” — systems designed to build internal representations of how the world works, rather than simply predicting the next word in a sentence. 

A number of prominent researchers, including former Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, have argued this approach could overcome some of the limitations of today’s LLMs — and have launched startups to prove it.

On this week’s episode of the Sifted Podcast, host Freya Pratty is joined by senior reporters Daphné Leprince-Ringuet and Anne Sraders to unpack the hype around world models. What exactly are they? What real-world applications might they unlock? And with researchers like LeCun choosing to base new ventures in Europe, could this be an area where the continent builds a competitive edge in the global AI race?

Sign up to our AI and deeptech newsletter here: https://sifted.eu/newsletters

Europe's in a state of emergency — but when will we all wake up and recognise that?

That’s the question posed on this week’s episode of the Sifted Podcast by Judith Dada, general partner at European VC Visionaries Club, newsletter author, mother and setter-upper of numerous side projects. 

Judith started her career in venture almost a decade ago at La Famiglia, the Germany-based early-stage investor, which later went on to merge with US megafund General Catalyst. She’s now come full circle, joining forces with La Famiglia founding partner (and fellow former Sifted podcast guest) Rob Lacher at Visionaries.  

Visionaries’ portfolio includes plenty of companies that are on a tear right now — Lovable, Black Forest Labs, N8n, Solve Intelligence and Tandem Health — and their thesis, that Europe is in a fantastic position to shape the next wave of disruption in business, seems more relevant than ever.

Amy and Judith sit down to discuss whether legacy SaaS companies can survive in this AI era, why Europe is in “a state of emergency” and what we can do about it, and when Visionaries will raise a new fund.

Sign up to Sifted's daily newsletter: https://sifted.eu/newsletters

Check out Judith's newsletter: https://dadalogue.substack.com/

This episode was sponsored by HSBC Innovation Banking.

How do European startups like Lovable and Black Forest Labs find and hire top tier talent? 

This week Amy Lewin sits down with VP of talent at European VC Creandum Michelle Coventry, who spends a lot of time advising super fast-scaling companies on how to build out their teams and what, exactly, the scaling playbook should look like in the age of AI. 

The pair discuss how hiring is changing, what happens when buzzy European companies scale in the US, when exactly startups should bring in senior talent and what founders should know before they set their pay. 

Read highlights from Creandum’s founder compensation report here: https://sifted.eu/articles/founder-salaries-2025/ 

Sign up to the Sifted daily newsletter: https://sifted.eu/newsletters/

It’s been a busy start to the year for Europe’s tech ecosystem.

We’ve already had five new unicorns born, €5.2bn raised, a $1bn acquisition and Sifted’s landed several scoops revealing that some of the continent’s most interesting investors — the likes of Plural and QuantumLight — are raising big new funds.

To discuss the bumper start to 2026, host Amy Lewin is joined by contributing editor Éanna Kelly, who spends his days sussing out which companies are fast on the rise, which investors are getting in on the buzziest deals and which ecosystems and sectors are hotting up.

They also cover the 26 startups Sifted will be watching especially closely (and why) and what investors tell us they have planned for the next 12 months.

Read Sifted Predicts here: https://sifted.eu/studio/sifted-predicts-european-tech-2026

Explore Sifted Pro here: https://sifted.eu/sifted-pro

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

How do you spot Europe’s next unicorn founder before anyone else does? And where can investors still make outsized returns?

This week on the Sifted Podcast, host Amy Lewin is joined by Linda Rottenberg, founder of global tech network Endeavor, one of the world’s most influential communities of high-growth entrepreneurs.

For nearly three decades, Linda has backed founders long before they hit the mainstream, including Bending Spoons’ Luca Ferrari and ElevenLabs’ Mati Staniszewski. Endeavor is built on a simple idea: that world-class entrepreneurs can come from anywhere — not just Silicon Valley. Today, Endeavor supports more than 3,000 entrepreneurs across 50+ countries, whose companies include over 90 unicorns. 

Amy and Linda discuss what Europe’s most successful founders have in common, why investors should be looking beyond the usual hotspots and how Endeavor Catalyst, the organisation’s investment arm, is backing companies at the scale-up stage as it raises a new fund.

If you’ve been following the recent wave of data centre announcements across Europe, you’ll have noticed one thing: governments are suddenly obsessed with compute. Why is that — and how will France, the UK and others fare in the AI infrastructure arms race? Can startups really compete with Big Tech and is this a sector VCs can play in?

This week, host Amy Lewin is joined by senior reporters Daphné Leprince-Ringuet and Freya Pratty to dig into the fast-moving — and expensive — world of AI infrastructure, from data centres and GPUs to energy and political power plays.

The conversation also explores the risks of overbuilding, parallels with failed battery gigafactories and the unresolved tension between Europe’s dreams of “sovereign AI” and reliance on Nvidia. Plus: what does all this mean for climate tech and local communities  — and is AI infrastructure the safest bet investors can make, or the next bubble waiting to burst?

Sign up to Sifted's AI newsletter here: https://sifted.eu/newsletters 

If 2025 was the year of the AI agent, what will 2026 be? Which companies will make headlines — for all the right, or all the wrong, reasons? And will optimism around Europe’s startup ecosystem continue to mount, or will geopolitical tensions throw spanners in the works?

On this episode of the Sifted Podcast, news editor Martin Coulter joins editor Amy Lewin to discuss what they think will be the big topics this year in European startups and VC — and what you, our dear listeners, should be watching out for. 

They cover: 

• If — or when — the AI bubble will burst
• Which shiny sectors will attract a lot of venture funding 
• What the year might hold for ‘sovereign’ tech startups
• Which tech billionaire might run for president (in Europe)
• What developments are likely to be in store for the VC industry 

This episode was produced by Maya Dharampal-Hornby.

Further reading: 

• A spacetech IPO, a robot decacorn and a (European) entrepreneur running for president: Sifted’s predictions for European tech in 2026
• Sign up to Sifted’s Daily newsletter 

When NATO announced plans to launch a €1bn innovation fund back in 2022, heads turned. €1bn? To invest in defence and security? Backed by 24 countries? At the time, most European VCs were still incredibly wary of backing defence companies — and nothing like this had ever been attempted before.

Three years on, host Amy Lewin is joined on the Sifted Podcast by Dame Fiona Murray, current chair and former vice-chair of the Nato Innovation Fund (NIF), to take stock of how the experiment is playing out.

Since becoming operational in 2023, the fund has faced significant scrutiny. Four of its original founding partners have left, one of them pursuing legal action over a compensation dispute, while former chair Klaus Hommels stepped into a new role last September following questions around potential conflicts of interest.

Amy and Fiona discuss these controversies, as well as what the fund is actively looking to invest in today, the structural challenges facing Europe’s defence tech startups and what still needs to change if European nations are to build long-term technological resilience in an increasingly unstable world.

When Markus Villig founded Bolt 12 years ago, it was one of dozens trying to take on Uber. Today, it’s the only major European ride-hailing company left — worth €7.4bn and expanding across taxis, scooters, car rental and delivery.

This week, Europe editor Mimi Billing sits down with Markus to discuss why it’s now almost impossible to build a new ride-hailing network, why he thinks Europe is sleepwalking into a “disaster” on self-driving cars and physical AI, and how he’s helping shape Estonia’s defence tech landscape.

Markus also explains why founders should engage more with politicians, what Europe needs from a single capital market — and his experience as the youngest board member of any US public company, thanks to buy now, pay later giant Klarna.