Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast

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 language models, what Europe can hope to gain from the EU's Europa frontier model consortium — which Domyn is leading — and what founders can learn from Revolut’s Nik Storonsky. 

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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 business knows, this growth inevitably brings with it changes in structure, culture and approach which sometimes require tough decisions," he said. "We will always be a people-focused business, and we are incredibly proud of the talent and commitment of our high-performing team."

Dami also talks host Freya Pratty through her reporting on the culture at UK fintech Cleo, and reflects on the broader question of culture at Europe's fintechs.
Read our Pleo investigation here: https://sifted.eu/articles/pleo-culture-crisis
Read our Cleo investigation here: https://sifted.eu/articles/cleo-fintech-startup-toxic-workplace-allegations
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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 founded UK-based angel investment firm Cocoa, announced she’s joining her portfolio company, British chip startup Fractile, as VP of business operations. Both are retaining investment roles at their firms.
Joining host Freya Pratty to discuss the trend is senior reporter Anne Sraders. The pair chat about why these moves are happening now and whether they could bring up issues for the firms further down the line. They also discuss further changes at Visionaries, as a number of partners transition from their full-time investment positions to entrepreneurial roles. 

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This episode was brought to you by HSBC Innovation Banking.

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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