Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast

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 increasingly positions itself more like Europe’s answer to Palantir, Freya and Daphné discuss how the new positioning will play into the pricing of its latest round. 
Read our reporting on the round here: https://sifted.eu/articles/e5bn-scaleup-fund-mistral-eqt
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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 this year, he raised $1bn for his Paris-based world models startup AMI Labs, after targeting $500m. He also advises London and Luxembourg-based VC firm Hiro Capital.
Read our reporting on Extelligence here: https://sifted.eu/articles/yann-lecun-new-vc-firm
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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 British companies in this technology, because if we don't, we'll end up reliant on US companies," she tells host John Thornhill on this week's episode of the Sifted podcast.
The pair also discuss whether the brief of AI and online safety minister Kanishka Narayan is too big, the challenge of unlocking more growth capital for British tech companies — and why she'd "love to stay" in her role.
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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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