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 participation in the superfund, casting doubt on hopes that British startups could tap into the bloc's flagship late-stage investment vehicle.

On this episode of the podcast, host Freya Pratty is joined by news editor Martin Coulter to unpack France’s move to block the UK, ask whether it was “the MOST French move imaginable” and break down the quota system being discussed by EU officials as a compromise.

Read this week’s reporting here: https://sifted.eu/articles/eu-scaleup-fund-uk-france-blocked-eqt-british-business-bank

https://sifted.eu/articles/eu-scaleup-europe-fund-uk-france-block-reaction

https://sifted.eu/articles/scaleup-e5bn-uk-france

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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 UK prime minister — less than two years after Labour's landslide 2024 election victory — and whether Andy Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester who looks set to collect the keys to 10 Downing Street in the coming weeks, is likely to bring a new era of socialist politics to the country. Brent also shares how he's changed his mind on "LLM wrapper" companies, the rising scale of ambition on show at London Tech Week and what it is actually like taking a business public.

Disclaimer: Brent is a personal shareholder in Sifted. 

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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 technologies that European organisations heavily depend on to run critical services. 

The restrictions may prove temporary but they’ve caused a big reaction in Europe.

On this week’s episode of the Sifted podcast, host Freya Pratty chats to senior reporter Daphné Leprince-Ringuet about what happened, why it matters and what Europe should do next.

Read our reporting on the ban here: https://sifted.eu/articles/anthropic-kill-switch-european-sovereignty

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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 Bank. After nearly five years, she moved to the LP side, where she personally deployed over £365m into funds, before moving to Atomico where she led its fund of funds strategy.

The pair discuss what LPs want from Europe’s VCs now, how far away a Newton Venture’s fund might be and the dangers of Europe’s re-emerging “boys’ club mentality”.

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Read John’s article about the needs for reinventing VC: https://sifted.eu/articles/vc-needs-to-reinvent-itself

Find out more about Newton Venture Program here: https://newtonprogram.vc/

This podcast was brought to you by HSBC Innovation Banking.

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 of the Sifted podcast, host Freya Pratty chats to senior reporter Daphné Leprince-Ringuet and news editor Martin Coulter about whether European tech is finally shaking off its inferiority complex and if a new, more confident narrative can help the ecosystem better compete on the global stage.

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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 AIs to hiring and firing decisions at our companies or VCs?

John and Carissa also explore whether tech giants are capable of meaningful self-regulation and what it would look like to build AIs that work for people rather than surveil them.

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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.

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