Sifted

Construction robots are a thing — and they’re just getting started 🏗️ 🦾 It’s an elusive dream. Robots hold promise for construction but the technology has proven difficult to perfect. But founders and investors say this is all going to change in our report, sponsored by Leonard. 🤖 In an industry desperate to attract younger workers, offering the opportunity to use robots would help with recruitment and retention and would help the industry to adapt to this technology quicker. ⭐️ Discover the biggest construction robot deals in Europe, explore the bots already rolling onto sites and uncover the growing opportunities in construction tech in our latest report. Become an expert in the industry in just 23 pages ➡️ https://lnkd.in/emutuGvQ #constructiontech #builderbot #robots

If businesses want to make money this year: Build more products for women. 🙋♀️ Women manage an estimated $31.8tn of economic spending — but there are still huge gaps in healthcare products and services for women. 🧑🔧 Closing this healthcare gap is not as simple as telling companies to build more products and services for women. A chronic lack of funding for women’s health — not just for startups building in this space, but at a research level, too — is exacerbating this healthtech gap. ➡️ Find out where the innovation gaps lie in our article with BCG X #Ad: https://lnkd.in/dmN-W8bK Featuring Alex Friedman, BCG X managing director, Deirdre O'Neill, Hertility’s cofounder and CCO and Ludovica Castiglia, researcher.

French insurtech unicorn Alan has reported €505m in annual recurring revenues for 2024, a 48% jump from the previous year, while reducing losses to €54m. The company was valued €4bn when it last raised a €173m Series F in 2024, led by Belgian bank and insurer Belfius. Adrien Choquet tells Sifted that the while Alan's tech offering and recent growth justify the company’s valuation, “the challenge will be to maintain that tech offering at the forefront over the next few years. If you forget the tech and consider Alan as a traditional insurer, the valuation becomes decorrelated.”

If you were after a story that captured how a single tech company can help put a place on the map, you’d be hard pressed to find a better example than UK chip designer Arm. The Cambridge-based company — which was spun out of computer maker Acorn Computers in 1990 — is a central part of the city’s talent flywheel. Since launching there more than three decades ago it's grown to more than 6,000 employees across 21 countries, and nearly half of them remain in the UK. It's also become somewhat of a founders factory — with heaps of former employees launching their own startups. I tracked down 18 of them below👇 Serban Constantinescu | Hao Zheng | Donatien Garnier | Dominic Vergine | Jon Geater | Alexandra Kogon | Jordan Hatcher https://lnkd.in/em4fukq3

NEW: UK announces plans to create ‘Europe’s Silicon Valley’ in Oxford and Cambridge --- The UK is hoping to create “Europe’s Silicon Valley” by developing transport links and housing infrastructure in Oxford and Cambridge. Plans to develop the cities will help boost funding and attract tech talent to the area, the country’s finance minister, Rachel Reeves, is expected to say in a speech today according to a government statement. It comes as the UK government looks to repair relations with the country’s tech sector, which have become increasingly frosty amid tax hikes and funding cuts in the past seven months. “Oxford and Cambridge offer huge economic potential for our nation’s growth prospects,” Reeves will say. “The area is a hub for globally renowned science and technology firms in life sciences, manufacturing, and AI. It has the potential to be Europe’s Silicon Valley." The two cities are considered hubs for deeptech sectors including life sciences, semiconductors and quantum, and lie around an hour’s travel outside of London. They’re the UK’s best-funded startup scenes outside of the capital — though the gulf is wide. Last year, tech companies in Oxford and Cambridge raised €2bn, according to Sifted data, way short of London’s €17bn. Full story: https://lnkd.in/eCVjXrpd

If you are scaling a business, building a positive team culture or tackling a dive in sales — lead with a Gemba mindset. 💆♀️ What is a Gemba mindset? It's all about going to the place where work is done to observe and improve processes. 🤝 Leaders need to engage with their teams to understand the problems they’re facing, why things aren’t progressing and to solve problems. You need to be in the room to really get it. 📚 Check out our how-to guide on transforming your sales culture, with a great section on leading from the ground up: https://lnkd.in/en4SEckz ✍️ Interested for more 'how-to guides'? Sign up to our free subscription Sifted for Startups here: https://lnkd.in/ezmDHBss Artwork by Ludic Creatives #SiftedforStartups #LeadershipTips #Startups

New: European tech VCs and founders are wrestling with what the surprise success of China's AI startup DeepSeek means for startups on the continent. Some see it as a positive signal that you don't need OpenAI's billions to develop a successful LLM — but others wonder if Europe's existing struggles, like fragmented funding, slower tech adoption and brain drain, may stymie it from capitalising on the shift. More, with Kai Nicol-Schwarz Miriam Partington Daphné Leprince-Ringuet and Martin Coulter https://lnkd.in/d7S8f7gC

Pet tech last year was valued at $6.3bn and it’s projected to grow even further. 🐕 In this week’s podcast we are diving into longevity — could science actually expand the lifespan of pets, and maybe even give some insight into extending our lives too? Produced with UNLEASHED by Purina and featuring Celine Halioua founder and CEO of Loyal, Matt Kaeberlein co-director of the The Dog Aging Project, Philipp Gut expert biology of aging at Nestlé and Pascal Steiner senior director nutrition science at Nestlé. 🎧 Listen to the full podcast here: https://lnkd.in/dtCPc8kv

Sifted is now on Bluesky! 🦋   The new social media platform has soared in popularity, attracting over 25 millions users and caught the attention of many major publishers including Sifted. Bluesky Social offers a decentralised platform to share content and in many ways resembles the old Twitter. We look forward to sharing our in-depth journalism and analysis on the platform to empower startup Europe. Join us on Bluesky here 👉 https://lnkd.in/ejCDbeBF #BlueSky #JoinSiftedOnBluesky #StartupEurope

🎧 First Sifted podcast of the year has dropped — and I'm joined by Jenny Tooth OBE, exec chair of UK Business Angels Association, to discuss all things angel investing. 🧐 How do you actually become an angel investor? 🤔 How much money do you need to commit? 👩💻 How many investments should you be making? 🤷♀️ And how can the UK and Europe lay the groundwork for a more representative next generation of investors? We get into all of that in the episode. Let us know what you think! https://lnkd.in/erKngzve