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Hey there,
Welcome to a new edition of Sunday CET. Let’s get right at it.
Best,
Dragos
Market talk
This week I had a look at the highly-priced early stage startups that were seeded and pre-seeded in Europe last year. This is the core list that should make for the future growth of the local ecosystem and is fairly indicative about investors appetite size and dieting when it comes to Europe.
In total, we’ve had 22 startups that had secured a minimum 20M ticket for the year - we only took into account the ones that were publicly announced, and didn’t consider ulterior extensions. Notably, the second part of the year had fewer such startups compared to the first - probably because of more evident signs of macro deteriorating towards the end of the year and which also saw a less active spending activity on the VC side.
In the second part of the year, we also had fewer AI startups raising above the 20M threshold: 🇩🇪 Black Forest Labs and 🇲🇹 Xbow - compared to the first six months of 2024 which saw announcements from a group of French - 🇫🇷 H, 🇫🇷 Bioptimus, 🇫🇷 FlexAI, and 🇫🇷 Adaptive ML - assorted with the likes of 🇬🇧 CuspAI or 🇩🇪 Matter Neuroscience.
Below the 20M level, some intriguing names include 🇬🇧 Oriole Networks (which also raised series A last year), 🇬🇧 Superlinked, 🇬🇧 Unify AI or 🇬🇧 Beyond Math in the UK, 🇩🇰 Light, 🇩🇰 Tola, 🇸🇪 Fever and 🇱🇹 Nexos AI in the Nordics, 🇫🇷 Raidium, 🇫🇷 Command AI and 🇫🇷 Prelude in France, or 🇭🇷 Orqa and 🇭🇷 Daytona in Croatia, from all places.
I did the digging through as far as 5M ticket size, which at a high 25% equity given up, means a minimum 20M post-money asset valuation. In total, the list includes some 250 interesting startups valued as such last year - first half of the year and second half of the year, available for our N9 customers.
Interesting startup deals
🇬🇧 AMT (Google Adwords for influencers) - 3.5 million
🇳🇴 Kosli (AI governance for finance) - 10 million
🇸🇪 Rerun (multimodal data stack for Physical AI) - 17 million
🇪🇸 Cartagon (AI infra datacenters) - 31 million
🔒 More for Pros:
- the money in the Euro hyper scalers biz
- space makers unit economics
- nine new freshly-closed funds
- European investors active in the US
… and more. Sign up to get it tomorrow AM in the inbox, it’s a banger.
Signals
Current situation European credit markets are trading at a premium to the US for the first time in more than three years.
At the same time, the stocks of some European defence companies that have seen a price surge lately, are targeted by short sellers in a campaign with echoes of the meme stock craze from 2021.
EU vs American tech The EU found that Alphabet was favoring its own services in Google search results + outlined exactly how Apple needs to improve the interoperability of iOS and which features could be available to other smartwatches, headphones, and speakers.
Expect the American government to go ballistic on this soon. Meanwhile in the US, the Federal Trade Commission deleted blog posts critical of Big Tech.
Defence for retail investors Bpifrance will launch a defence-focused fund set to raise €450 million where residents can invest as little as €500.
No growth no more International banks in Paris have quietly shelved expansion plans that would have added hundreds of new roles.
Go West Spain's Santander is pursuing new customers in the USA through deals with Verizon and others - that’s for offering high-yield savings accounts at the new digital bank platform Openbank.
Push that IPO marketing After filing for a public listing last week, Klarna announced closing two major commercial BNPL deals in the USA - one with Walmart and the other with DoorDash.
hamburger paid in four instalments - tell me about a US recession without saying it’s a recession.
here’s a good breakdown of Klarna’s IPO fundamentals.
USA vs EU goes through China ASML will open Beijing facility despite US sanctions on China - the Dutch is currently the world's only supplier of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photolithography equipment, used in the making of advanced chips with smaller features to cram in more circuitry. Export of these products to China was blocked by the Dutch government several years ago.
Robots made in Norway 1X (which is operated from the US) will start testing its humanoid robots in a few hundred homes in California sometimes next year.
as a coincidence, the head of AI for the same 1X, was one of the angels contributing to the 17M seed announced by the above mentioned Swedish startup.
Emotional Spanish government-owned defence company Indra has escalated a situation with an American company by declaring it wants to acquire an arms factory from it although it is not for sale. The owners had bought it 25 years ago from the Spanish state for €5 million at the end of a privatisation process.
The Swiss relationship with money UBS mulls relocating its headquarters outside Switzerland if the country sticks to its plans to require the bank to hold an extra $25 billion in capital - the proposed rules are so onerous that they would make UBS uncompetitive.
European cloud A strategy for how Europe should develop its own cloud infrastructure to reduce reliance on American companies.
Cheat sheets
Active angels and interesting deals from last year:
Presented by
Investors are jumping in - last chance to get on board.
LookyLOO is closing in on its final days.
With $1.2M in projected revenue, 4x growth in partnerships, and over 100K movers using the platform, the momentum behind this raise is real - and so is the deadline.
Don’t let this end without you. April 4th is the last day to invest.
Read the offering information carefully before investing. Obtain a Form C and offering Memorandum at https://wefunder.com/lookyloo
Also notable
🤔 An American investor recently told me: would you pay someone 100 bucks a month to keep you updated with what’s important in European VC? Filter out the media noise, break up the echo chamber and smartly connect the dots, a complement at par value to your professional job. A no brainer - he does and so can you.
🇺🇸 Google settled for a $32B purchase price tag for Israeli Wiz, its largest transaction ever - here’s the supporting presentation. Also the largest ever M&A for a venture-backed company that makes for some happy investors:
Index Ventures gets $4.3B for the equivalent of 13%, roughly 17.6X
Sequoia's 10% stake is worth $3B and 25X
Insight Partners $2.6B for 8%, which is 15.5X
Greenoaks nets $2B and 6.6X
idle observation: Insight invested $213M into Wiz, made $2.6B which didn’t even return a third of their $9.5B fund.
🇬🇧 Deel, the British payroll company founded by Alex Bouaziz and Shuo Wang and moved into the US, is accused of corporate espionage by his American competitor Rippling.
🇬🇧 London’s ~12% cheaper than San Francisco from a cost of living perspective, but entry level PM in London pays a median of £46K vs. ~$130K in SF - 2.3X less.
alas the Euro early stage valuations are also lower than for those on the West Coast, right?
related: optimized rewards for executives who deliver outsized profits are essential to propel founder-led companies to the heights Sequoia aspires to.
🇪🇺 Alternatives in the USA to being a Delaware C Corp - hello, EU Inc?
💲 The US accounted for 43% of global weapons exports between 2020 and 2024, more than four times the share of France, the world’s second-largest exporter.
In the past five years - which cover Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine on the European Union’s doorstep - American-made weapons accounted for almost two-thirds of the arms imported by European members of NATO, up from just over half between 2015 and 2019.
it will be interesting to see the dynamics of those numbers now that Europe is arming to its teeth and aims to become a significant arms producer as well, competing directly with the US vendors.
🤡 Tesla sales are in freefall in Europe - 44% down compared with February 2024, following a decline of 45% in January. The overall European market was down by 3%, while EV sales were up 26% for the month.
same trend in the US, where Tesla owners are also trading in their EVs at record levels.
it’s gotten so bad that the American government is propping Tesla as hard as it can - MAGA investment firm Azoria announced a turbo-charged Tesla ETF that uses derivatives to amplify gains (and losses). That is - after the Commerce secretary recommended buying the stock and president Trump himself did a televised Tesla sales pitch presentation at the White House a couple of weeks ago. To no luck - Tesla shares have fallen 40% as well this year.
Musk thinks it’s unfair that people aren’t as interested in his products due to his far-right political views.
💲 Techcrunch was sold, again - new owner is a PE guy who also owns the likes of PCWorld and Macworld.
From a Q&A with Netflix’s CEO Ted Sarandos: I don’t understand (Apple TV+ losing $1b/year) content strategy beyond a marketing play, but they’re really smart people. Maybe they see something we don’t.
🎾 Novak Djokovic and Nick Kyrgios filed a suit, accusing tennis’ governing bodies of operating as a “cartel” to cap prize money - they are backed by billionaire activist Bill Ackman.
💲 The Boston Celtics was sold for record-breaking $6.1 billion to a group of investors led by a PE guy from the West Coast.
the new ownership group will also include Sixth Street, a private equity firm which just acquired 10% of the San Francisco Giants, a sports club that last year was valued at $3.8 billion, pitting them as the fifth most valuable MLB franchise.
💲 President Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial crypto project raised $250 million in its second token sale, bringing the total amount of coins sold to $550 million.
✈️ New York's JFK airport is going through a $19 billion complete overhaul described as organized chaos -- even as the airport remains open and passenger numbers grow.
meanwhile, in Britain this week London Heathrow was a target of a fire at a nearby substation that stopped its activity and cancelled some 1200 flights. The event is treated as a terorrist act, namely a Russian sabotage attack linked to Vladimir Putin's campaign of disruption.
👀 The city of Chicago sold the rights to all of its parking meter revenue to the UAE for $1.1B in 2008. The city is currently collecting ~$150M/yr (and growing) in parking meter fees and then sends it straight to Dubai... Until 2083.
⚠️ The United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark and Finland have issued advisories warning about travel to the United States after citizens from European countries have been detained and deported by immigration officials.
That’s all folks, have a wonderful week!
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