Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast cover art

Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast

Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast

Written by: Sifted
Listen for free

Get to know the brightest and boldest names in European tech with Sifted’s weekly podcast, hosted by John Thornhill and Freya Pratty. John interviews the founders, operators and investors building Europe’s most exciting startups and Freya, in conversation with Sifted’s expert journalists, pulls back the curtain on the most intriguing companies they’ve been reporting on.

© 2026 Startup Europe — The Sifted Podcast
Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Personal Finance
Episodes
  • Carissa Véliz on the dangers of predictive AI
    May 28 2026

    In this episode of the Sifted podcast, host John Thornhill sits down with Carissa Véliz, AI ethicist, philosopher and associate professor at Oxford University to explore how algorithms and data are reshaping our lives and workplaces.

    Carissa's latest book, Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, describes how ancient oracles, medieval soothsayers and modern-day AIs all tend to tell the powerful what they want to hear. What does that mean, for example, when we apply AIs to hiring and firing decisions at our companies or VCs?

    John and Carissa also explore whether tech giants are capable of meaningful self-regulation and what it would look like to build AIs that work for people rather than surveil them.

    Sign up to Sifted's Daily and Deeptech newsletters here: https://sifted.eu/newsletters

    Show More Show Less
    33 mins
  • EQT has won the EU's €5bn superfund. Now what?
    May 19 2026

    The competition that captivated European VC has concluded.

    Earlier this week, the EU chose Swedish investment firm EQT to manage its new €5bn Scaleup Europe Fund after a closely-watched race among the region’s top firms like the UK’s Atomico and France’s Eurazeo.

    On this week’s — somewhat emergency — episode of the Sifted podcast, host Freya Pratty chats to senior reporter Anne Sraders about the selection process to run the fund, when it will begin deploying and which lucky companies might be backed.

    Fresh off an interview with EQT investors, the pair also dig into how the firm wants to manage the fund, their reaction upon hearing the news — and whether there could be a second scale-up fund on its way soon.

    Sign up to our daily newsletter here: https://sifted.eu/newsletters



    Show More Show Less
    9 mins
  • James Wise on why the Sovereign AI Unit criticism is wrong – and the one company he wishes he’d backed
    May 15 2026

    This week on the Sifted Podcast, host John Thornhill is joined by James Wise, partner at Balderton Capital. Since joining the firm in 2012, James has led investments in second-hand shopping platform Depop, AI agent maker Convergence and bank payment fintech GoCardless — as well as AI frontier lab Prior Labs, which was acquired by German software giant SAP earlier this month.

    James discusses how the acquisition came about, including his meeting with the cofounders before the company even existed.

    James also shares about his new gig as chair of the Sovereign AI Unit, a £500m initiative launched by the UK government earlier this year. He talks through its investments to date — which include Isomorphic Labs, Ineffable Intelligence and Callosum — and responds to the backlash it has received.

    The pair also discuss AI's public perception problem, James's biggest investment miss and whether Europe is ready to seize the moment in the race for AGI.

    For quarterly updates of the Sovereign AI Unit’s progress, check out James’ blog: https://www.jameswise.com/author/james-wise/

    Sign up to the Sifted Daily Newsletter here: https://sifted.eu/newsletters

    Show More Show Less
    39 mins
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_c
No reviews yet