Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast

Laura Modiano, who leads OpenAI's startups team in Europe and partners with builders and investors, shares lively stories from hackathons and grassroots events. She talks about how rapid testing grounds turn ideas into products. She explains partnering models with big tech, scaling culture while hiring thoughtfully, and why hands-on community programs spark future founders.

Éanna Kelly, Sifted reporter who interviews founders and tracks hiring trends. Jonathan Sinclair, data analyst on Sifted’s Intelligence team who digs into funding and leaderboard metrics. They discuss London’s 2026 funding surge and what ‘London maxing’ means. They cover the leaderboard’s methodology, digital-health standouts, Revolut alumni and the rise of AI-native startups.

Hélène Huby, founder and CEO of spacetech startup The Exploration Company, is not afraid to take risks — or fail.Her company, which is only five years old, builds reusable and refillable vehicles to carry cargo to and from space stations in low-Earth orbit — and beyond. It’s already (semi-) successfully sent cargo into space — and back — at a fraction of the cost, and time, achieved by other companies. On this episode of the Sifted podcast, Hélène shares The Exploration Company’s roadmap for 2026, including fundraising plans for a “significant amount of money” to build a high-thrust rocket engine. Hélène and Amy also get into: Why the space industry is set to more than double in value over the next decade Collaborating in space during a decidedly antagonistic geopolitical momentContracts in the works The ideal funding roadmap for a deeptech company Dealing with very public failure as a CEO And Hélène’s hopes and dreams for Europe’s space future 

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/newslettersCheck 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-2026Explore Sifted Pro here: https://sifted.eu/sifted-proSign 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.

Daphné Leprince-Ringuet, a senior AI reporter from Paris, and Freya Pratty, a London-based expert on European startups, dive into the hot topic of Europe's AI infrastructure build-out. They discuss the urgency behind government investment in data centers and the strive for cloud sovereignty, while warning against the risks of overbuilding reminiscent of past gigafactory failures. The duo explores the tension between Europe's ambitions and dependence on Nvidia, the potential of startups in this realm, and whether AI infrastructure might be the next bubble to burst.