Gen AI (2024)

The startups behind our new work wingmen

Last updated: 7 Mar 2024

Market 101

Generative AI’s crazy, breakout year has stirred debate about what the tech means for our future. From the hopeful “it will help us all become productive geniuses” perspectives, to the alarmist “these sentient machines will replace us” sentiments — there is no shortage of hot takes.

Today’s tools can help to produce text, audio, video, music, code, images and design in response to prompts — capabilities that can help automate tasks and cut down on grunt work. A banner 2023 for European GenAI saw startups raise $1.5bn — a sharp increase on the $554m disbursed by VCs in 2022 (six $100m+ megarounds propelled this 2023 growth). 2024 is just over two months old and European startups have already pulled in $267m, almost half the sum raised by the sector in 2022.

One of the big early winners of the year is French GenAI startup PhotoRoom, which raised a $43m Series B last month that brings the company's valuation to around $500m. The four-year-old startup, which can remove and replace photo backgrounds in a blink, has found one of the few compelling business use cases for the technology to have emerged so far.

For all the fun things you can do with GenAI — like creating viral fake images, including the Pope in a giant puffer jacket — report after report prophesies how the tech will upend millions of jobs. If such a future is around the corner, career progress will likely depend on an ability to master these tools. Already, there is a generation split in the workforce, with Gen Z being the most common GenAI users — 63% of this cohort use the technology at least once a week, according to an Accenture survey. Goldman Sachs estimates a quarter of work tasks in the US and Europe could be automated by GenAI. At the upper end of its potential, more than 40% of tasks in administration and the legal profession could be automated. This compares with less than one-tenth of tasks in physically intensive professions such as construction and maintenance.

Some companies are touting the imminent arrival of powerful AI creations capable of performing complex tasks from start to finish. London-based startup 11X has developed four so-called digital workers who perform chunky tasks without constant prompts. Anton Osika, founder of Stockholm-based Lovable, tells Sifted that AI programmes like his will be able to build “80% of all SaaS” software by the end of 2025 and, before long, “you will see software unicorns where there is pretty much no human in the loop — it’s quite likely it will be just one person”.

Still, it would be wise to take certain claims with a pinch of salt. When a sector attracts so much hype so soon, what we often see next is a bunch of startups blowing up on the launchpad. Lofty GenAI valuations also summon unpleasant memories of 2021 when VCs were eagerly deploying capital at unreasonable prices. There will also be some pretty big bumps along the way for GenAI. Already, the tech’s drawing concerns around data security, intellectual property rights and its habit of making stuff up. The extra hurdle for European startups is that they are going up against moneybag American tech giants like Google and Microsoft: finding valuable use cases in narrow, specific domains — like PhotoRoom has managed to do — will be their best ticket to success.

Early stage market map

Deals

Key facts

75%

of leaders using AI say the quality of team collaboration has increased1

$1.3tn

is the forecast for GenAI’s market value by 20322

14%

of frontline workers have received GenAI training3

Startups tracked by Sifted

Sifted take

The AI coworker has already entered the workplace. GenAI will be a work enhancer for white collar workers who will find their duties begin to change over time - from pure execution on tasks to part execution and part verification on work our bot friends lead on. It's going to continue being a feeding frenzy for VCs, who are queuing up to back the latest GenAI talent all over Europe. And while it will be hard for the region to compete with moneybags American tech firms, European founders can find their edge with non-English LLMs.

Rising stars

Reface

Images & video editing

Total funding

€5.3m

Kyiv, Ukraine
2019

Backed by a16z and TQ Ventures, Reface is an AI-powered content creation platform with more than 250m downloads worldwide and 7bn synthetic pieces of content created.

Round

Seed

Valuation

Undisclosed


Date

2020

Size

€5m

Dust

Data practices

Total funding

€5m

Paris, France
2023

Allows teams to create and use collaborative AI assistants for a range of tools — including Notion, Slack, Github and Google Drive.

Round

Seed

Valuation

Undisclosed


Date

2023

Size

€5m

Total funding

€115m

Paris, France
2023

Cofounded by former Github CTO Jason Warner alongside serial AI entrepreneur Eiso Kant, Poolside is an AI platform for developers.

Round

Seed

Valuation

Undisclosed


Date

2023

Size

€92m

Metaphysic

Content creation

Total funding

€6.8m

London, United Kingdom
2021

Develops photorealistic AI-generated content, including face-swap and audio technology.

Round

Seed

Valuation

Undisclosed


Date

2022

Size

€6.8m

Early stage startups to watch

Aindo

Trieste, Italy
2018
Series A

8.9m

6m

-

Aiva Technologies

Luxembourg, Luxembourg
2016
Seed

2.4m

1.5m

-

Aive

Paris, France
2019
Seed

5.5m

3m

-

Algomo

London, United Kingdom
2023
Bootstrapped

-

-

-

askEarth

Zürich, Switzerland
2023
Debt

800k

300k

-

Atlas

Vienna, Austria
2020
Grant

9.6m

4.1m

-

Beam

Berlin, Germany
2023
Angel

1.5m

1.5m

-

Boltzbit

London, United Kingdom
2020
Support Program

1.9m

-

-

Brighter AI

Berlin, Germany
2019
Series A

8m

-

-

Certainly

Copenhagen, Denmark
2017
Seed

-

4m

-

Cogram

Berlin, Germany
2021
Seed

-

450k

-

Colossyan

London, United Kingdom
2020
Series A

25.6m

20m

-

Diffblue

Oxford, United Kingdom
2016
Early VC

56.4m

7.3m

-

Digital First AI

Rzeszów, Poland
2021
Seed

1m

1m

-

Dust

Paris, France
2023
Seed

5m

5m

-

Flower Labs

Hamburg, Germany
2020
Series A

21.6m

18.2m

-

Glyphic

London, United Kingdom
2022
Pre-seed

5m

5m

-

Humanloop

London, United Kingdom
2020
Seed

2.5m

2.4m

-

Hypertype

Stockholms kommun, Sweden
2021
Seed

1.3m

1.1m

-

INTELLITHING

Manchester, United Kingdom
2021
Pre-seed

351k

320k

-

Jina AI

Berlin, Germany
2020
Series A

27.3m

27.3m

-

Kive

Stockholms kommun, Sweden
2018
Seed

7.9m

6.4m

-

Lalaland

Amsterdam, Netherlands
2019
Series A

5m

2.1m

-

LangWatch.ai part of Reasoning Engine B.V.

Amsterdam, Netherlands
2023
Pre-seed

100k

100k

-

Metaphysic

London, United Kingdom
2021
Seed

-

6.8m

-

Mindset AI

London, United Kingdom
2020
Pre-seed

3.2m

1.4m

-

Mindtech Global

Kings Langley, United Kingdom
2017
Early VC

5.2m

2.4m

-

Modl.ai

Copenhagen, Denmark
2018
Series A

9.2m

7.6m

-

Moveo.AI

Athens, Greece
2020
Seed

2m

1.6m

-

Mystic AI

London, United Kingdom
2019
Seed

5m

3.7m

-

NeuralSpace

London, United Kingdom
2021
Seed

3m

3m

-

Nuclia

Barcelona, Spain
2019
Seed

4.9m

4.9m

-

nyonic

Berlin, Germany
2023
Seed

18.2m

18.2m

-

Poolside AI

Paris, France
2023
Seed

114.5m

90.9m

-

Qatalog

London, United Kingdom
2019
Series A

16.8m

13.6m

-

Qdrant

Berlin, Germany
2021
Series A

35.2m

25.7m

-

Quacks.ai

Lisbon, Portugal
2023
Pre-seed

120k

120k

1.2m

Recraft, Inc.

London, United Kingdom
2022
Series A

15m

11m

-

Reface

Kyiv, Ukraine
2019
Seed

5.3m

5m

-

Reword

Exeter, United Kingdom
2023

-

-

-

-

Shai

Amsterdam, Netherlands
2023
Pre-seed

100k

100k

-

SKY ENGINE AI

London, United Kingdom
2018
Series A

9m

6.5m

-

Smoot

Madrid, Spain
2023

-

-

-

-

SuperDuperDB

Berlin, Germany
2023
Pre-seed

1.8m

1.8m

-

Syntho

Amsterdam, Netherlands
2020
Seed

1m

1m

5m

Syntonym

London, United Kingdom
2019
Seed

1.2m

820k

-

Text Cortex AI

Berlin, Germany
2021
Seed

1.1m

1.1m

-

Tiledesk

Galatina, Italy
2020
Pre-seed

600k

600k

-

Turing Intelligence Technology Limited

London, United Kingdom
2018
Support Program

4.8m

3.6m

-

Twain

Berlin, Germany
2021
Seed

1.8m

1.8m

-

Typetone

Amsterdam, Netherlands
2022
Pre-seed

500k

250k

-

UIzard

Copenhagen, Denmark
2017
Series A

16.9m

13.6m

-

VEED.IO

London, United Kingdom
2017
Early VC

31.8m

31.8m

-

VOISEED SRL

Milan, Italy
2020
Seed

2.8m

1m

-

Wondercraft

London, United Kingdom
2023
Seed

2.8m

2.8m

-

Yepic.ai

London, United Kingdom
2019
Seed

370k

370k

30m

YouMakr

London, United Kingdom
2021
Seed

450k

450k

-

Zibra AI

Kyiv, Ukraine
2021
Pre-seed

2.6m

1.1m

20m

Europe’s success stories

Who early stage startups are up against

(Pre-)Seed

SeriesA

SeriesB

SeriesC

SeriesD+

IPO/Exit

First catching the headlines in June 2023 with Europe’s largest ever seed round, which followed just three weeks after the coming began existing, Mistral AI has since established itself as Europe’s leading large language model developer. It recently secured a €15m convertible note from Microsoft, in an extension to its €385m Series A round from leading European and US-based VCs at a €1.9bn valuation.

(Pre-)Seed

SeriesA

SeriesB

SeriesC

SeriesD+

IPO/Exit

Founded by former Apple AI engineering manager Jonas Andrulis, Aleph Alpha raised €580m — including a €340m grant from Dieter Schwarz Foundation and Ipai — to enable companies to deploy their own large language models.

(Pre-)Seed

SeriesA

SeriesB

SeriesC

SeriesD+

IPO/Exit

Text-to-speech AI video generator platform that became a unicorn in 2023 following a $90m round led by investors Accel and NVIDIA-owned NVentures.

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