Pathfounders Newsletter: The Monzo no-sale; Eleven Labs hits $22bn; to sovereign or not to sovereign

Coming up:
• Top Stories on Pathfounders this week
• A review of the top stories in European Tech
• We’re launching LUSH: A Pathfounders Founder/Investor winter-sun retreat
• Other stories this week that were worth noting
• Join our Pathfounders Network

Exclusive: Planning a big fund-raise, AskGVT emerges from stealth with AI consumer app that 'sees' gestures in video
By Mike Butcher
London-based GVTLabs is betting that its platform for understanding what people are physically doing in video will be a big consumer platform, an enterprise play, and even a new approach to Physical AI.

DIG Ventures raises $120m to back the “engine room” of AI infrastructure
By Amelia Isaccs
The European venture firm is investing its Fund III in the founders building the software AI can’t scale without

1. Monzo's sale talks with Nubank collapse, and Britain's exit problem is back on the table
The FT reported that Monzo was in talks to sell to Brazil's Nubank, while also discussing the sale of a significant stake to private equity. Within days, Nubank had halted the talks after its own shares plunged as the market reacted to the news. The episode reignited a familiar complaint about UK tech along the lines of  'we build them and flog them' (rather than growing them). Monzo crowdfunders would have gotten a 50x return. (By contrast, Revolut Crowdfunders are looking at 1000x after dilution). It now looks like Monzo will instead court private equity investors such as European buyout group CVC and US private equity firm Advent International. One of the few UK consumer-fintech scale-ups big enough to list, it shows the late-stage exit options in Europe remain sparse, and continue to cast aspersions on London as a listing venue.
Read: FT ·  Sifted ·  Sifted (2)

2. ElevenLabs doubles to $22bn in under a year via a $300M employee tender
Existing investors and staff sold $300M of stock in a tender offer (secondaries rather than primary rounds to reward its team) that valued the London-based AI-voice company, founded in 2022, at $22bn, double its price less than a year ago. CEO Mati Staniszewski said its AI agents now handle more than 15 million customer-service conversations a week.  This route to employee liquidity is becoming fashionable for UK scaleups. It also showed Voice AI agents are now 100% a real enterprise business.
Read: Tech.eu ·  FT ·  Sifted ·  Silicon Republic

3. Oura pulled its Nasdaq IPO, sought at up to $15bn, 'despite strong demand'
The Finland-founded smart-ring maker postponed its US listing just days after announcing it. It cited market uncertainty and gave no new date. The FT put the target valuation at up to $14bn, while the BBC and Tech.eu said $15bn. Researchers commenting noted the IPO market started the year strongly but faded in Q3. Oura was supposed to prove that a Nordic consumer-hardware company could go public in New York, but the delay squeezes an IPO window that is already narrowing and mainly obsessed with AI these days.
Read: Tech.eu ·  BBC ·  Guardian ·  FT ·  Sifted ·  FT (2)

4. Reverion raised €154.2M Series B to mass-produce net-zero fuel-cell power plants - Will the environmentalists please now calm down?
The Bavarian energy-tech company, based in Eresing, builds decentralised power plants that run on gas, can be switched on and off on demand, and which it says are carbon-negative. The $175M round was led by Kembara, Mundi Ventures' €1bn deep-tech and climate fund, and will fund the scale-up of production. This was one of the largest European climate-hardware rounds this year, and the timing was interesting, given the backlash over how data-centres will be powered. If local generation becomes the preferred option, maybe AI companies can push back and win over consumers. I mean, Scotland even faces a pushback on building a gigantic £16.5bn data centre on a former nuclear plant site. Good giref.
Read: EU-Startups

5. Europe's fight for sovereign tech reared its head again 
Cohere's chief AI officer warned the US and China will have Europe 'by the throat' without local capability. Multinationals say a lack of 'AI openness' will shape where they invest. The FT urged the UK to back its own AI companies and avoid a split over Chinese models, in contrast to talk by Axel Springer’s chief, who poo-pooed the European sovereignty issues on the ETN show. Meanwhile, ASML's Christophe Fouquet said the AI boom is not actually a bubble, and an FT op-ed called an AI sovereign wealth fund for any country would amount to ‘techno-imperialism’. This is why why can;t have nice thinigs I guess.
Read: Sifted ·  FT ·  FT (2) ·  FT (3) ·  FT (4)

‘LUSH’ is the new Pathfounders, by application only, Winter retreat for founders, investors and ecosystem players designed specifically to generate those conversations. 

The experience:

Applying doesn't commit you to anything or take a payment. If you're selected, you'll get the full itinerary and booking details.

Included:

Neoclouds and agent infrastructure
H Company co-founder Charles Kantor has launched a new AI neocloud. Granite raised €4M led by Bifrost Studios for an 'agentic cloud' that combines compute, storage and hardware.
Read: Sifted ·  Tech.eu ·  

Foundational exits stealth with £8.2M to track satellites and debris
The London company, founded in 2025, promises millimetre-level positioning. Inflection, BACKED, Final Frontier, Adjacent and Type One invested.
Read: Tech.eu ·  EU-Startups

Sofinnova closed an oversubscribed €82M MD Start IV
It will build six to eight medtech companies in Europe and the US; Fund III's six have raised €140M-plus.
Read: Tech Funding News ·  EU-Startups ·  Tech.eu

Checkout.com reached $750M annualised net revenue and targets $150M profit
The $12bn payments company grew 28% and released selective financials for the first time.
Read: Tech.eu

Blackwall becomes Estonia's newest unicorn
The cybersecurity company's valuation rose 368% to €1bn in the annual TopTech ranking, which Wise tops at €11bn, ahead of Bolt and Veriff.
Read: Tech.eu

Fedorov launched the 'Army of Robots'
Ukraine's former defence and digital minister has started a private initiative to accelerate robotic warfare, with the stated aim to 'make robots fight instead of people'. He is recruiting a CTO.
Read: Tech.eu ·  Resilience Media

Inbolt raised €11M for real-time robot vision
Shift4Good led the Paris company's round to fund US and APAC expansion and a move into data-centre and electronics manufacturing.
Read: EU-Startups ·  Tech.eu

Metaview raised $60M Series C for agentic recruiting
Insight Partners led the London company's round, with GV, Seedcamp, Vertex Ventures US, Plural and others. Its agents handle sourcing, application review, interviewing and reporting. Sequoia-backed Juicebox is also landing in London to take on Jack & Jill.
Read: EU-Startups ·  Sifted

Restate raises $20M Series A for the plumbing behind AI agents
The Berlin-founded team behind real-time data tech used in banking raised its round from Singular, with Redpoint and Capital One Ventures, taking its total to $27M.
Read: Tech.eu

Voice and conversation AI: Europe builds its own stack
Berlin's Deepslate raised €7.7M led by 42CAP for its own speech-to-speech model, hosted in Germany and benchmarked at 0.44 seconds of latency. Sweden's Klang raised €1.32M at a €13.2M valuation and released an open Swedish speech-to-text model. Copenhagen's Good Tape spun out of Zetland with €600k from Nordic Makers, with Zendesk's Alexander Aghassipour joining the board. Interhuman AI is teaching models to read non-verbal cues.
Read: Tech.eu ·  Tech Funding News ·  EU-Startups ·  ArcticStartup ·  EU-Startups

Zenithon raises $10M for world models of extreme physics
The UK startup says it is building the first world models for extreme physical systems. BACKED, Lunar, Seraphim, MMC and SOSV invested.
Read: Tech.eu ·  Sifted

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